Second Contact (48 page)

Nesseref wished the Big Uglies had not come far enough fast enough to be able to resist the Race. At the moment, though, that was a side issue. She returned to the main point: “I still do not understand why a small group of Tosevites would need such a thing as an explosive-metal bomb.”

“Because even a large group will think twice about harming a small group that can, if pressed, do a great deal of harm in return,” Mordechai Anielewicz replied. “Even the Race will think twice about harming a small group of Tosevites that can do it a great deal of harm in return. Do you understand now, my friend?”

“Yes, now I understand—at least in theory,” Nesseref said. “But I do not understand why so many Tosevite groups remain small and separate instead of joining together with others.”

“Old hatreds,” Anielewicz said. Nesseref had to laugh at that. Anielewicz laughed, too, in the yipping Tosevite way. He continued, “Nothing here seems old to the Race. I understand that. But it does not matter. Anything that seems old to us may as well be old in truth.”

In one way, that was an absurdity, a logical contradiction. On the other fork of the tongue, though, it made a twisted kind of sense. Many things on Tosev 3, Nesseref was discovering, made that kind of sense if they made any.

Anielewicz had trouble telling females of the Race from males, but he’d gained some skill in reading the reactions males and females had in common. He said, “I think you begin to understand the problem.”

“All I understand is that this world is a much more complicated place than Home,” Nesseref said. “This little place called Poland, for instance. It has Poles in it, which makes sense, and you Jews, which does not.”

“If you think I will argue with that, you are mistaken,” the Tosevite said.

Ignoring the interruption, Nesseref went on, “In one direction are the Deutsche, who hate both Poles and Jews. In the other direction are the Russkis, who also hate both Poles and Jews. Does this make them allies? No! They hate each other, too. Where is the sense in this?”

“Nowhere I can find,” Anielewicz replied; Nesseref got the idea she’d amused him, though she couldn’t understand why. He went on, “Oh, by the way, you missed one thing.”

“And that is?” She was not sure she wanted to know.

Anielewicz told her nonetheless: “Poles and Jews hate each other, too.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Nesseref asked.

“I do not know. Why are you not surprised?” The Tosevite laughed his kind’s laugh once more. Then he asked, “Did you ever find a site you thought would make a good shuttlecraft port?”

“None yet that satisfies me and Bunim both,” Nesseref replied. “And anything near Glowno is also near the explosive-metal bomb you may have.” She chose those words with great care; she did not want him to reach for the rifle again.

“Tell me where you do decide to put the shuttlecraft port, and I will move the bomb close to it,” Anielewicz said, just as if he seriously meant to help.

“Thank you so much,” Nesseref said. “Maybe it is the nature of your reproductive patterns that makes you Big Uglies so full of deceit.”

“Maybe it is,” Anielewicz said. “And maybe the Race will learn such deceit now, too.” And off he went, having got the last word.

Today, of course, Mordechai Anielewicz’s legs decided to act up on him. He had to keep stopping to rest as he bicycled up to Glowno. Had he not breathed in that nerve gas all those years before, he would have been able to make the trip with ease. Of course, had he not breathed in that nerve gas, the Nazis might have touched off the atomic bomb with which he was presently concerned. In that case, he wouldn’t be breathing at all at the moment.

He had radio and telephone codes warning the Jews who kept an eye on the bomb of an emergency. He hadn’t used them. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake by not using them. He’d feared those warnings might be intercepted. If he brought the alert himself, it couldn’t very well be. He didn’t think Lizard commandos would rush the shed where the bomb lay hidden before he could get up to it. He wasn’t sure they would rush it at all. But he’d run his mouth when he shouldn’t have, and now he was paying the price in worry. And he wanted to be on the spot if the alarm came—that was the other reason he hadn’t used his codes.

He dug his fingers into the backs of his calves, trying to loosen up the muscles there. The rest of him could be philosophical about breathing in nerve gas. His legs hurt. As if in sympathy, his shoulders started aching, too. Trying to rub one’s own back was among the most unsatisfactory procedures ever devised.

Pain or no pain, he got rolling again. Ludmila Jäger lived with more discomfort every day than he felt when his aches and pains were at their worst. But, again, that was philosophy. It might spur him on, but didn’t make his body feel any better.

Grunting, he leaned forward and put his back into the work. No matter what he did, he couldn’t recapture the ease of motion he’d known the last time he went up to Glowno. By the time he got to the small Polish town, he was about ready to fall off his bicycle.

Before he went to the shed where the bomb hid, he walked into a tavern to wash the dust of the road from his throat. “A mug of beer,” he said to the Pole behind the bar, and set down a coin.

“Here you go, pal.” The fellow slid the mug to him without a second glance. He looked no more Jewish than the half dozen or so men already in the place. As usual, he had his Mauser on his back. Compared to them, he was underdressed. A couple of them wore crisscrossed bandoleers, giving themselves a fine piratical aspect. One had an old Polish helmet on his head, another a German model with the swastika-bearing shield on one side painted over.

“Yeah, we’ll take it,” the tough in the Polish helmet said, knocking back some plum brandy. “We’ll take it, and we’ll get it the hell out of here.”

One of his pals sighed. It might have been the sigh of a lover pining for his beloved. “And when we’ve got it,
we’ll
be the big shots,” he crooned.

Mordechai sipped his beer, wondering what sort of robbery the roughnecks were plotting. Finding out seemed a bad idea. They had a lot more firepower than he did. He wondered how much cash the local bank held. Then he wondered if Glowno boasted a local bank.

“We’ll be big, all right,” another ruffian said. “And about time, too. The kikes will all burn in hell, but they act like cocks o’ the walk here. Been going on too damn long, anybody wants to know.”

“Won’t last forever,” said the first tough, the one with the helmet. “As soon as they lose it and we get it, everybody’s going to have to listen to us.”

After that, Anielewicz didn’t think they were going to knock over a bank any more. He knew how Nesseref had found out the explosive-metal bomb was here: he’d talked too damn much. He had no idea how these Poles had found out, but how they’d found out didn’t matter. That they’d found out did.

He finished the beer and slipped out of the tavern. The ruffians paid him no attention. They had no idea they’d said anything he might understand—or care about if he did. He looked like a Pole. If he knew what they were talking about, they’d figure he’d be cheering them on.

A lot of Poles would have cheered. The Lizards in Poland did lean toward the Jews. That was partly because the Jews had leaned toward them and against the Nazis in 1942. It was also because there were a lot more Poles than Jews; the Lizards got more benefit from supporting small faction against large than they would have the other way round.

Furthermore, Jews did not dream of an independent Poland strong enough to defy all its neighbors. Poles did. Anielewicz thought the dream a delusion even if the Poles got their hands on an explosive-metal bomb. They didn’t, for which he could hardly blame them—except that they wanted
his
bomb.

His legs groaned when he got back on the bicycle. He didn’t think the Polish nationalists could touch off the bomb even if they got it, but he didn’t want to find out. He wasn’t sure the Jews could touch it off, either. He didn’t want to find that out any more than the other. Pulling down the Philistines’ temple while he was in it had made Samson famous, but he never got to hear about it.

The shed in which the bomb was stored lay at, or rather just beyond, the northern edge of Glowno. Before the war, it had been attached to a livery stable. Livery stables, these days, were in no greater demand in Glowno than anywhere else. That part of town had taken damage in the fighting between the Nazis and the Poles, too, and then again in the fighting between the Nazis and the Lizards. Rubble and scrubby second growth surrounded the shed. There were only a couple of houses in the area, both owned by Jews. The Poles were just as glad the Jews had chosen an area where they didn’t draw attention to themselves.

Anielewicz swung off his bicycle as soon as the poplars and birches and bushy plants of whose names he wasn’t sure screened him from most of the town. “Good thing you did that,” somebody remarked, “or you’d have been mighty sorry you were ever born.”

That warning might have been in Yiddish, but Anielewicz had all he could do to keep from laughing out loud: it came straight from a U.S. Western film he’d watched the week before dubbed into Polish. He fought down the temptation to respond in kind. Instead, he said, “How many guards can we get in a hurry, Joshua? We’re about to be attacked.”

“Oy!”
the unseen Jew said. “There’s Mottel and there’s me, and we can get Pinkhas, I guess. Benjamin and Yitzkhak would be around, but their cousin got hit by a bus in Warsaw, so they’re there.”

“Get everybody here, fast but quiet,” Mordechai ordered. “Who’s on the switch?” If that switch was tripped, the bomb would go up—if it could go up. Somebody always had to be ready to use it.

“You are, now,” Joshua answered. “You know the bomb better than anybody, and—” He broke off. He’d undoubtedly been about to say something like,
and you’d have the nerve to do it.
Anielewicz didn’t know if he would or not. One more thing he wasn’t anxious to discover by experiment. After a moment, Joshua asked, “How much time have we got?”

“I don’t know, not exactly,” Anielewicz answered. “I saw six Poles drinking in a tavern. I don’t know how long it’ll be before they do what they came to do. I don’t know if they have any friends along, either.”

“It would be nice if you did know a few things,” Joshua remarked.

Ignoring that, Anielewicz picked his way up the twisting path to the shed. The wooden building looked weathered and sad. The two locks on the door seemed to have seen better days. Anielewicz opened them in the right order. Had he unlocked the top one first, something unpleasant would have happened to him.

He went inside. It was dark and dusty in there; a cobweb caught in his hair. But the interior was very different from the exterior. Inside the rainand sun-faded timbers the shed showed the world was reinforced concrete thick enough to challenge medium artillery. It had firing slits for a German-made machine gun; the MG-42 was at least as good a weapon as any the Lizards manufactured.

Also keeping Anielewicz company was the big crate that housed the bomb. He wondered what those half-dozen Poles would do with it if they got it. Did they think they could put it in their back pocket and walk off with it? That would need to be a big, sturdy pocket, considering the size and weight of the thing.

He supposed he should have been glad the Lizards weren’t attacking. They would have known what they were doing, and would have come in overwhelming force. All the Poles knew was that the Jews had something they wanted. Back in the old days, that was all the Poles had needed to know. Things were different now, even if the nationalists hadn’t figured that out.

“A good gun battle will teach them,” Mordechai muttered under his breath. But that wasn’t the answer, either. With or without a gun battle, the bomb would have to leave Glowno now. That was obvious. One small hitch, though: how could it leave? Everyone would be watching the shed from now on.

Joshua came in, not through the door but up out of a tunnel that ran from somewhere in the middle of the rank second growth. “People are posted,” he said. “We’ll give them more than what they want.”

“Good,” Anielewicz said. Sudden decision crystallized in him. “You stay here. You can handle the detonator if you have to. I’m going to try to make sure you don’t have to.”

Before Joshua could protest, Anielewicz opened the door—it was very heavy, but well balanced and mounted on strong hinges, so it swung easily—and stepped outside again. He stooped and picked up a rather rusty large nail or small spike from the dirt by the shed. Smiling a little, he went down the track and waited.

After about half an hour, his patience was rewarded. Here came the Polish nationalists, all of them with weapons at the ready. Mordechai stepped out into the open where they could see him. He held up the nail or spike so the head and a little of the shank protruded from his fist. “Hello, boys,” he said in friendly tones. “If I drop this, the bomb goes off. That means you want to be careful where you point those guns, doesn’t it?”

One of the Poles crossed himself. Another one said, “Christ, it’s that bastard from the tavern. Damn him, he doesn’t look like a Jew!”

“Life is full of surprises,” Anielewicz said, still bland. “The last surprise you’ll ever get, though, is how high you’ll blow. If we Jews don’t keep the bomb, nobody gets it, and that’s a promise.”

If another band was heading for the shed from a different direction, none of this playacting would matter. But, by the way the Poles talked furiously among themselves, Anielewicz didn’t think that was so.

A tough shook a fist in his direction. “You damned Jews won’t keep this thing forever!”

“Maybe not,” Mordechai answered. He thought it all too likely, in fact. They’d have to move the bomb and hide it again, which wouldn’t be easy—it wasn’t the simplest thing either to move or to conceal. But if they didn’t, they’d face more raids, a stronger one from the Polish nationalists or one from the Lizards or the Nazis or even the Russians. He went on, “But we’ve got it now, and you won’t be the ones who get it away from us.”