“I have heard that from other members of the Race,” Anielewicz said. “I notice you have not brought any of these peoples to Tosev 3.”
“No: both these expeditions were fitted out from Home,” Nesseref answered. “Once this world is brought fully into the Empire, though, Hallessi and Rabotevs will come here, as they have gone to each other’s worlds and to Home as well.”
“You will find many Tosevites who do not think this world will ever be fully brought into the Empire,” Anielewicz said. “As a matter of fact, I am one of them. I hope this does not offend you.”
“Offend me? No. Why should it?” Nesseref said. “But that is not to say I believe you are right. By all appearances, you Tosevites are an impatient species. The Race is a great many things. Impatient it is not. Time is on our side. In a few thousand years, you Tosevites will be contented subjects of the Emperor.”
Bunim, the regional subadministrator in Lodz, had said much the same thing. Such confidence was unnerving. Were the Lizards right? The only thing Mordechai knew was that he wouldn’t live long enough to find out. Seeking to shake the female’s calm confidence a bit, he said, “I do wish you the best of luck finding a spot for your shuttlecraft port.”
“I thank you,” Nesseref replied. “You are well-spoken indeed, for a Tosevite.”
“And I thank you,” Mordechai said. “And now, if you will excuse me, I have to check on the security of my explosive-metal bomb.”
Nesseref’s mouth fell open. “You are a funny Big Ugly, Mordechai Anielewicz,” she said, “but you cannot fool me so easily as that.” Anielewicz shrugged. Just as well-better than just as well-she hadn’t believed him.
As much as Johannes Drucker relished going into space, he also treasured leave time with his family. He treasured it more than ever these days; he’d come too close to losing Kathe. He didn’t know what he would have done without her. He didn’t know what his children would have done, either. Heinrich was fifteen now, Claudia twelve, and Adolf ten: old enough to get through better than they would have a few years before, perhaps, but losing a mother could never be easy. And losing a mother for the reason the Gestapo had put forward…
“Go on, Father,” Heinrich said from the back seat of the Volkswagen. “The light is green. That means you can.” He would be eligible to learn to drive next year. The thought made Drucker cringe, or at least want to go back behind the steering controls of a Panther or some other panzer the next time he needed to hit the road.
He put the car into gear. It was a 1960 model, and burned hydrogen rather than gasoline. The engine was a lot quieter than those of the older buggy VWs that helped clog the streets of Greifswald. Christmas candles and lamps burned in the windows of shops and taverns and houses. They did only so much to relieve the grayness the town shared with so many others near the Baltic.
“Maybe it’s the weather,” Drucker muttered under his breath. In wintertime this far north, the sun rose late and set early and never climbed very far above the southern horizon. Mists from the sea often obscured it even during the brief hours when it condescended to appear at all. Most days from November to February, streetlights shone around the clock. But they could not make up for the sun, any more than a distant cousin could make up for a missing mother.
Drucker wished that particular figure of speech had not occurred to him. He wished he’d had no cause to think of it. He glanced over to Kathe, who sat in the front seat beside him, with the children crowded into the back. She smiled. For once, evidently, she hadn’t guessed what he was thinking.
“When we go into the shops, you will not come with me,” she said, as much at home with giving orders as Major General Dornberger. “I want your present to be a surprise.”
“All right,” he agreed, so mildly that she gave him a suspicious stare. He returned it as blandly as he had turned aside the Gestapo interrogation earlier in the year. “After all, I want to get you a surprise or two myself.”
“Hans-” She shook her head. Light brown curls flew. “Hans, I am here. That is your doing. What greater present could you give me?”
“Greater? I don’t know.” Drucker shrugged, and then, steering the Volkswagen as precisely as if it were the upper stage of an A-45, took for his own a parking space into which it barely fit. That done, he gave his wife his attention once more. “I can go on giving you things if I want to, I think. And I do want to.”
Kathe leaned across the gearshift and kissed him on the cheek. In the back seat, Claudia giggled. She was at the age where public displays of affection amused, horrified, and fascinated her all at the same time. Drucker supposed he ought to count his blessings. All too soon, she’d likely put on public displays of affection that would horrify him without amusing him in the slightest.
“Heinrich, for whom will you shop?” Kathe asked.
Drucker’s older son said, “Why, for you and Father, of course. And for-” He broke off, two words too late, and turned red.
“For Ilse,” Claudia said; she was becoming an accomplished tease. “When are you going to give her your Hitler Youth pin, Heinrich?” Her voice was sweet and sticky as treacle.
Heinrich turned redder still. “That’s none of your business, you little snoop. You’re not the Gestapo.”
“Nobody should be the Gestapo,” Adolf said fiercely. “The Gestapo doesn’t do anything but cause trouble for people.”
Privately, Drucker agreed with that. Privately, he’d said much worse than that. But Adolf was only ten. He couldn’t be relied upon to keep private what absolutely had to be kept private. Drucker said, “The Gestapo does do more than that. They hunt down traitors to the Reich and rebels and spies for the Lizards and the Bolsheviks and the Americans.”
“They tried to hunt down Mother,” Adolf said. “They can-” The phrase he used would have made a Feldwebel with thirty years’ experience as a noncom blush.
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, young man,” Drucker told him, hoping he sounded severe. He’d never said anything like that about the Gestapo, even if he agreed with the sentiment expressed. “You must always keep a civil tongue in your head, for your family may not be the only people listening to you. What would happen to you, do you suppose, if the Gestapo had planted a microphone in our auto?”
Adolf looked appalled. Drucker had hoped he would. Drucker also hoped-devoutly-that the Gestapo hadn’t planted a microphone in the VW. Such a thing was far from impossible. The snoops might have planted one to see if they could catch Kathe admitting her grandmother was a Jew. Or they might have planted it in the hope of hearing some other seditious statement.
Adults-adults with a gram of sense, anyhow-watched what they said as automatically as they breathed. Children had to learn they couldn’t shout out the first thing that came into their heads. If they didn’t learn fast, they didn’t last long.
“Just remember,” Drucker told his son-told all three of his children, actually, “no matter what you think, no matter how good your reasons for thinking it may be, what you say is a different business. Nobody can hear what you think. You never can tell who might hear what you say.” He paused a moment to let the lesson sink in, then went on, “Now let’s not say any more about it. Let’s go shopping and see what sorts of nice things the stores have in them.”
He remembered the war years and the ones right after the fighting. In those days, the stores had had next to nothing in them. They’d tried to trick out the nothing with tinsel and candles, but hadn’t had much luck. Now, though, the lean times were over. The German people could enjoy themselves again.