They seemed that way to him, too. With a chuckle, he said, “Aber naturlich,” and then went back to French: “That is the way of the strong with the weak.”
“And who is strong and who is weak, between the Reich and the Lizards?” Monique asked: almost but not quite a rhetorical question.
“Oh, they are stronger, no doubt about it,” Dieter Kuhn answered at once, for which she reluctantly gave him credit. “But we are-or we had better be-strong enough to make the rules on our own territory. Do you want the Lizards back again?”
“I am not a political person. It is not wise for anyone French to be a political person. And so I do not have to answer that question,” Monique said. “And now, if you will excuse me, I would like to go back to my work.”
She started to hang up the phone. Before she could move it more than a few centimeters, Kuhn said, “Wait.” His voice had the flat snap of command. Even as she obeyed, she wondered where he’d learned it. He couldn’t be old enough to have fought against the Lizards when the conquest fleet landed.
“What do you want with me?” she cried. She wished he’d only been trying to seduce her; that, she could have dealt with, even if he’d succeeded. Here she felt like a mouse trying not to let a rhinoceros trample it. No, two rhinoceri: Kuhn had made it plain the Lizards were in this up to their eye turrets, too.
“Your help, for the sake of mankind,” Kuhn answered.
Some Frenchmen wore field-gray uniforms with tricolor patches on the left sleeves and coal-scuttle helmets with tricolor shields painted on them. They thought they were serving for the sake of mankind. As far as she was concerned, they were serving for the sake of the Nazis. “Were you not listening when I said I cared nothing for politics?” she asked.
“I listened. I chose not to hear,” Kuhn said. “Monique, it would be unfortunate if you failed to cooperate with us. It would be both professionally and personally unfortunate. I would regret that. You would regret it more.”
“I will not betray my brother, damn you,” Monique whispered. This time, she managed to hang up before the Sturmbannfuhrer ordered her not to.
Afterwards, though, she stood by the phone, waiting for it to ring again, waiting for Dieter Kuhn to give her more orders in his calm, reasonable voice. No, she thought fiercely. I will not. Not for anything. You can do whatever you want to me.
She wondered how true that was. She’d never thought of herself as the stuff from which heroes were made. The Spartan boy had smiled when the fox under his cloak gnawed his belly. She was sure she would have screamed her head off. Who wouldn’t have? Who couldn’t have? A hero-and she wasn’t.
The telephone did not ring. Eventually, she went back to her desk and tried to get more work done. She accomplished very little. Looking back on it, she found it startling she’d accomplished anything at all. She kept glancing over toward the phone, and toward the front door. One day soon, she would hear a ring, or a knock. She was sure of that. She could feel it in her bones. Then she would have to find out just how much of a hero hid inside her.
As Reuven Russie came into the house, he announced, “Mother, I asked Jane Archibald if she’d have supper here with us tonight, and she said she would.”
“All right,” Rivka Russie answered. “I’m making beef-and-barley soup. I’ll put in some more barley and onions and carrots. There’ll be plenty.” She didn’t say anything about putting in more beef. Meat was harder to come by than produce. From what Reuven had learned from the Lizards, too much meat wasn’t good for the human organism. Fat clogged the arteries, leading to heart attacks and strokes. But it tastes so good, he thought, wishing he’d skipped a lesson.
“Esther, chop the onion,” his mother called to his twin sisters. “Judith, take care of the carrots.”
“Maybe you could throw them in the soup pot,” Reuven suggested. Before anyone could answer, he shook his head and went on, “No, don’t bother-I know they would spoil the taste of the soup.”
That got him a couple of almost inaudibly shrill squeals of rage, as he’d hoped it would. It also got him a dire threat: one of the twins-he couldn’t tell which-said, “Wait till you see what happens to your friend tonight. She’ll be sorry she ever came around here.”
They’d done that before. They could be holy terrors when they chose-and even more terrifying when they chose to show how smart they were. But Reuven said, “Good luck. It’s Jane tonight. You weren’t listening-and what else is new?”
As he’d hoped, his sisters shut up. Jane Archibald did intimidate them. For one thing, they had most of the height they’d have as adults, but almost none of the shapes they’d acquire. Jane was, most emphatically, a woman. And, for another, she was too good-natured to let them get her goat. They’d tried before, without any luck. Reuven hoped that didn’t mean they’d try especially hard tonight.
His father came in a few minutes later. From the kitchen, his mother called, “Moishe, you have a letter from your cousin in the RAF.”
“What’s in it?” Moishe Russie asked.
“How should I know?” Rivka answered. “It’s in English. David speaks Yiddish well enough, he reads it, but I’ve never yet known him to try and write it.”
“I’ll read it if you want, Father,” Reuven said. He saw the letter on the table by the sofa.
“Never mind,” his father said. He saw the sheet of paper, too. “My English can always use practice. It’s not perfect, but I can use it.”
“You’ll get some more practice in a little while,” Reuven said. “Jane is coming to supper, and then we’re going to study.”
Moishe Russie raised an eyebrow. “Is that what young people call it these days?” Reuven’s ears got hot. His father went on, “Should be interesting dinner-table conversation: Hebrew, English, and bits of the Lizards’ language to fill in the cracks. Arabic, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Jane has bits, doesn’t she?”
“Hard to live here without learning some.” Reuven made a sour face. “Allahu akbar, for instance.” He pointed to the letter, which his father had picked up. “What does your cousin have to say?”
“He’s your cousin, too,” Moishe pointed out, “only once further removed.” He read on; glum vertical lines filled his face. “It’s getting harder for his family to get by in Britain, even in Northern Ireland. Little by little, being next door to the Reich is turning the British into anti-Semites.”
“That’s not good,” Reuven said, and his father nodded. He went on, “He should take his family out while he still can and come here. If he can’t come here, he should go to the USA. From everything you’ve always told me, too many people stayed in Poland too long.” He wished he remembered even less of Poland than was the case.
“We certainly stayed in Poland too long,” his father said, and tacked on an emphatic cough. “If the Lizards hadn’t come, we’d probably all be dead. If the Lizards hadn’t come, all the Jews in Poland would probably be dead.”
“Hitler and Himmler have certainly done their best, haven’t they?” Reuven said.
Moishe Russie shook his head. He couldn’t be flippant about it. “I can’t imagine England going the same way, but they’re starting down the path.” He lowered the letter for a moment, and in that moment looked older and tireder than Reuven ever remembered seeing him. Then he plainly made himself go back to reading. When he frowned a moment later, it was a different sort of frown, one of puzzlement rather than mourning.
“What is it, Father?” Reuven asked.
“He’s wondering if I know anything about a couple of shipments of ginger that went awry,” his father answered. “It seems an officer in a position to do him either a great deal of harm or a great deal of good is somehow involved in the ginger traffic, and wants to use him to use me to find out what happened to them and how to keep it from happening again.”