“Were they ever here?” the other Jew answered. “News to me if they were. But I’ve only been here a couple days myself.”
“Wonderful,” Mordechai muttered. He looked around again. He’d thought a good many Jews had come from Lodz to Widawa, but Rabinowicz’s was the only face he recognized. What had happened to the Jews who were here, then? Were they dead? Were all they hauled off to the Reich for a fate that couldn’t possibly be good? He asked some of the Poles, and got a different answer from each of them.
“Damn Nazis took ’em away,” a woman said.
“Not everybody,” a man disagreed. “Some got taken away, yes, but some got shot right here and some ran off.”
“Nobody got shot right here,” another man insisted. “The Germans said they were gonna, but they never did.”
“Does anybody know if Bertha and Miriam and David and Heinrich Anielewicz got away safe, or if they got taken back to Germany?” Mordechai asked.
Nobody knew. Any which way, people were too busy arguing over what had happened to be very interested in giving details. The two men who’d disagreed went nose to nose with each other, both of them shouting at the tops of their lungs. Mordechai wanted to knock their heads together. That might have let in some sense. He couldn’t think of anything else that would.
He lacked the energy to treat the two loud fools as they deserved. Instead, he turned away, sick at heart. His wife and children were either carried off to Germany or dead: a bad choice or a worse one. He would have to beard the Nazis in their den to find out. He’d need help from the Lizards there, but he thought they would give him the paperwork and help he’d require. They despised the German ruling party, too.
He tried one more thing: “My son, Heinrich, had a beffel for a pet, an animal from the Lizards’ world. It would squeak when it was happy. Does anybody remember that?”
And two people did. “That damned thing,” a woman said. “Yes, the Germans nabbed the people who had it. They took them away when they got run out of here.” The other person, an old man, nodded.
“They did go into Germany, then,” Mordechai breathed. “Thank you both, from the bottom of my heart.” He didn’t know if he ought to be thanking them. Jews who went into Germany were not in the habit of coming out again. But his family hadn’t simply been slaughtered here. That was something… he hoped.
Nesseref was feeding Orbit, her tsiongi, when the telephone hissed for attention. The pet started eating while she hurried into the bedchamber, wondering who was calling. “I greet you,” the shuttlecraft pilot said, waiting to see whose image appeared on the computer monitor.
To her surprise, it was not a male or female of the Race but a Big Ugly. “I greet you, superior female,” he said in the language of the Race. “Mordechai Anielewicz here.”
“Good to see you,” Nesseref answered, glad he’d named himself. No matter how well she liked him, she had trouble telling Tosevites apart.
“I hope you are well,” the Big Ugly said.
“On the whole, yes,” Nesseref replied. “The fallout levels have been high, but my apartment building was damaged only once, and even then the filters functioned well. By now, everything has been replaced, and radioactivity levels are falling. But I hope very much that you are well, Mordechai Anielewicz. You have not been shielded from all the radioactivity that descended on Poland.”
“I am well enough for now,” Anielewicz told her. “Past that, I do not worry about myself. I worry about my mate and my hatchlings. They have been carried back into the Reich by retreating Deutsch armies, and they very well may be dead by now.”
“Yes, they are of the Jewish superstition, as you are-is that not a truth?” Nesseref said. “I have never understood the irrational loathing of the Deutsche for Tosevites of the Jewish superstition.” It struck her as no more absurd than any other Tosevite superstition. Belatedly, she realized she should say something more. She’d forgotten the strong ties of sexuality and other emotions that linked Big Uglies in family units. “For your sake, I hope you find them well.”
“I thank you,” Mordechai Anielewicz said. “They were alive, at least fairly recently. I have found Tosevites who saw and remember my youngest hatchling’s beffel.” He did an excellent job of imitating the squeak of the little animal from Home.
At that squeak, Orbit came racing into the bedroom, plainly furious that Nesseref might have concealed a beffel somewhere in the apartment. His tail lashed up and down, up and down. His mouth was open so his scent receptors could better pick up the hated odor of a beffel. But images on the monitor meant nothing to him. At last, with the air of someone who knew he’d been tricked but couldn’t figure out how, the tsiongi went away.
Nesseref said, “There is still some hope, then. I am glad of that.” She used an emphatic cough to show how glad she was.
“I thank you,” Mordechai Anielewicz said again. “I want you to help me locate them, if that should prove possible.”
“What can I do?” Nesseref asked in some surprise. “If it is within my ability, you may rest assured that I will do it.” As the ties of family were less important among the Race than with the Big Uglies, so the ties of friendship were more important. And Mordechai Anielewicz, though a Tosevite, was unquestionably a friend.
“Once more, I thank you,” he said. “As you surely know, I have some prominence with the Race because of my rank among the Jews of Poland. Still, my primary dealings these past many years have been with the Race’s authorities in Lodz. Now those authorities are reporting only to the spirits of Emperors past.” He didn’t cast down his eyes. Other than that, his knowledge of the Race’s beliefs was flawless. He finished, “I would like you to help me obtain the assistance of the authorities in Warsaw.”
“Warsaw also received an explosive-metal bomb from the Deutsche,” Nesseref reminded him. “The present administration for this subregion is in Pinsk.”
“Ah. Pinsk. Yes. I understand. I had forgotten because of my own troubles.” Anielewicz’s face twisted into a grimace Nesseref believed to denote unhappiness. “The Deutsche would not have tried to bomb that city, for fear the bomb would go wrong and strike the Soviet Union, which they did not want. In any case, this new administration is made up of males and females unfamiliar to me. I would greatly appreciate your good offices in dealing with them.”
“Are you planning to travel there in person?” Nesseref asked.
“If I must, but only if I must,” the Big Ugly answered, and used another unhappy grimace. “I hate to travel all the way to the eastern edge of this subregion when all my concerns are here in the west. That is another reason I want your help.”
“I understand. You shall have it,” the shuttlecraft pilot said. She waved aside the Tosevite’s further thanks. “Friends may ask favors of friends. Let me make inquiries in Pinsk.” She noted the telephone code from which he was calling. It wasn’t his phone, of course, but one belonging to some military detachment or bureaucratic outpost of the Race. “May I leave messages for you here?”
“You may,” Mordechai Anielewicz said. “And, again, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” That was a Tosevite idiom literally translated, but Nesseref figured out what it had to mean.
After Anielewicz broke the connection, Nesseref telephoned the new authorities in Pinsk. “Yes, we have heard from this Tosevite,” a female told her. “We are hesitant to grant his request for assistance in entering the Reich in search of those other individuals, for we know that the Deutsche are liable to make it as difficult as possible for him to carry out the aforesaid search.”