“You are new to Tosev 3, sure enough,” Mordechai Anielewicz answered patiently. “I must remember: this means you are new to the way groups deal with one another, for the Race has no groups, not as we Tosevites do.”
“And a good thing, too,” Nesseref said, with an emphatic cough. “We do not spend our time squabbling among ourselves. In our unity is our strength.”
Anielewicz’s mouth went up at the corners. “That holds some truth, but only some. With us Tosevites, disunity is our strength. Had we not had so many groups competing against one another, we could never have come far enough fast enough to have resisted when the Race landed on our planet.”
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 Jager 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.