Down to Earth (37 page)

Moishe Russie went past the male without a word. Reuven, younger, was more inclined to argue. “It isn’t right that we should have to pay anything,” he said. “People should be free to worship any way they please.”

“No one stops you,” the Lizard answered in hissing Hebrew. “You worship any way you please. But if you do not go to the shrine to Emperors past, you have to pay. That is all. It is a small thing.”

“It’s wrong,” Reuven insisted.

“It’s wrong to block the door,” someone behind him called. “That’s what’s wrong.” Muttering, Reuven went into the synagogue.

As usual, he and his father sat together in the men’s section. As usual, lately before services, conversation centered on the worship tax. Someone asked, “Has anybody actually gone to see what sort of shrine the Lizards have for their Emperors?”

“I would never even look,” somebody else said. “I wouldn’t go to a church, I wouldn’t go to a mosque, and I don’t see how this is any different.”

That drew several nods of agreement, Moishe Russie’s among them. But the man who’d asked the question said, “The Lizards never persecuted us, the way Christians and Muslims have. If it weren’t for the Lizards, a lot of us in this room would be dead. If that isn’t different, what is it?”

“It isn’t different
enough
,” insisted the other fellow who’d spoken. That started a fine, almost Talmudic, discussion of degrees of difference and when different was different enough.

With the argument going on, services seemed almost irrelevant. And, sure enough, as soon as they were done, the discussion picked up again. “Confound it, Russie, you’re supposed to be able to fix
tsuris
like this,” somebody said to Reuven’s father. “Why haven’t you gone and done it?”

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” Moishe Russie said. “I’ve talked to the fleetlord. And I’ve talked even more to his adjutant, because Atvar is sick of talking with me. All I can tell you is, the Lizards aren’t going to change their minds about this.”

“Does anybody actually go to the shrine they built here?” someone else asked.

“I’ve seen some people do it,” Reuven said. “A few Christians, a few Muslims . . . a few of us, too.”

“Disgraceful.” Three men said the same thing at the same time.

“I don’t think the world will end,” Reuven said. “I wouldn’t care to do it myself, though.”

“The world may not end if a few Jews go to this shrine,” Moishe Russie said heavily, “but we haven’t got so many Jews that we can afford to waste even a few.” Reuven had a hard time disagreeing with that.

And then, the next Monday, he’d just got into his seat at the medical college when the Lizard physician named Shpaaka said, “You Tosevites here are an elite. You have the privilege of learning from us medical techniques far more sophisticated than any your own kind would have developed for many years to come. Is this not a truth?”

“It is truth, superior sir,” Reuven chorused along with the rest of the young men and women in his class.

“I am glad you concede this,” Shpaaka told them. “Because you are an elite, more is expected from you than from other Tosevites. Is this not also a truth?”

“It is truth, superior sir,” Reuven repeated with his classmates. He wondered what the Lizard was getting at. Most days, almost all days, Shpaaka simply started lecturing, and heaven help the students who couldn’t keep up.

Today, though, he continued, “Because you are privileged, you also have responsibilities beyond the ordinary. Another truth, is it not so?”

“Another truth, superior sir,” Reuven said dutifully. He wasn’t the only one puzzled now. Half the class looked confused.

“One of the responsibilities you have is to the Race,” Shpaaka said. “In learning our medicine, you also learn our culture. Yet you do not participate in our culture as fully as we would like. We are going to take steps to correct this unfortunate situation. I realize we should have done this sooner, but we have only just reached consensus on the point ourselves.”

Jane Archibald caught Reuven’s eye—not hard, because his gaze had a way of sliding toward her every so often anyhow.
What he talking about?
she mouthed. Reuven shrugged one shoulder. He didn’t know, either.

A moment later, Shpaaka finally got around to the point: “Because you are privileged to attend the Moishe Russie Medical College and learn the Race’s medical techniques, we do not think it unjust that you should also learn more of the Race’s way of doing things. Accordingly, from this time forward, you shall be required to attend the shrine in this city dedicated to the spirits of Emperors past at least once every twenty days as a condition for attending this college.”

Shpaaka insisted on decorum in his lecture hall. Normally, he had no trouble getting it and keeping it. This was not a normal morning. Instead of holding up their hands and waiting to be recognized, his human students shouted for attention. Reuven was as loud as any of them, louder than most.

“Silence!” Shpaaka said, but he got no silence. “This is most unseemly,” he went on. The racket just got louder. He spoke again: “If there is no silence, I shall end lectures for today and for as long as seems necessary. Are you more attached to the pursuit of knowledge or to your superstitions?”

In answer to that, Reuven shouted loud enough to make himself heard through the din from his fellow students: “Are
you
more attached to teaching your knowledge or to teaching
your
superstitions?”

Shpaaka drew back behind his lectern, plainly affronted. “We teach the truth in all matters,” he declared.

“How many spirits of Emperors past have returned to tell you so?” Reuven shot back. “Have you ever seen one? Has anybody ever seen one?”

“You are impertinent,” Shpaaka said. He was right, too, and Reuven wasn’t the only one being impertinent, either—far from it. The Lizard went on, “Anyone refusing to give reverence to the spirits of Emperors past shall not continue at this college. I dismiss you all. Think on that.”

He left the lecture hall, but the clamor didn’t die down behind him. Some of the students, the ones without much religion of their own, didn’t care one way or the other. Others did care, but cared more about what would happen to them if they were forced from the medical college.

Reuven and the Muslim students seemed most upset. “My father will kill me if I go home to Baghdad without finishing my medical studies,” Ibrahim Nuqrashi said. “But if I bow before idols, he will torture me and then kill me—and I would not blame him for doing it. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet.”

No one would kill Reuven, or torture him, either, if he went to the shrine the Lizards had built here in Jerusalem. Even so, he couldn’t imagine such a thing, not for himself. The Nazis had wanted to kill his family and him for being Jews. He couldn’t slough that off like a snake shedding its skin.

He made his way over toward Jane Archibald. She nodded to him. “What are you going to do?” she asked, seeming to understand his dilemma.

Except it wasn’t a dilemma, not really. “I’m coming to say goodbye,” he answered. “I’m not going to stay. I can’t stay.”

“Why not?” she asked—no, she didn’t understand everything that was on his mind. “I mean, it’s not as if you believe everything that’s in the Bible, is it?”

“No, of course not,” he answered. He bit his lip; he didn’t know how to explain it, not so it made rational sense. It didn’t make rational sense to him, either, not altogether. He tried his best: “If I went to the Lizards’ shrine, I’d be letting down all the Jews who came before me, that’s all.”

Jane cocked her head to one side, studying him. “I almost feel I ought to be jealous. I can’t imagine taking the Church of England so seriously.”

“So you’ll go to the shrine, then?” Reuven asked.

“Why not?” she said with a shrug. “If I don’t believe in what I grew up with and I don’t believe in this, either, where’s the difference?”

That was perfectly logical. Part of Reuven wished he could see things the same way. Part of him was relieved he hadn’t got intimately involved with Jane. And part of him—a bigger part—wished he had. He said, “Good luck to you.”

When he said no more, she nodded as if he’d passed a test, or perhaps as if he’d failed one. She found another question for him: “What will your father say when be finds out about this?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ll find out when he gets home tonight. But I don’t see how I can do it. And even if I don’t finish here, I know more about medicine than anyone who just went to a human university.”

Jane nodded again, then hugged him and kissed him, which had to drive every male student in the class wild with envy. “I’ll miss you,” she said. “I’ll miss you a lot. We might have—” Now she shook her head. “Oh, what’s the use?”

“None,” Reuven said. “None at all.” He left the lecture hall, he left the cube of a building that housed the medical college named for his father, and he left the razor-wire perimeter around the building.

One of the Lizard sentries at the perimeter said, “It is not time for you Tosevites to be leaving your classes.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” Reuven answered in the language of the Race. “It is time for me; in fact, it is past time for me.” The sentry started to say something to that, then shrugged and waved Reuven out into the world beyond the perimeter—
the real world
, he thought as he headed home.

His mother exclaimed in surprise when he walked in. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “You should be in class.” He laughed a little at how much she sounded like the Lizard. But then he explained. His mother’s face got longer and longer as she listened. After he finished, she let out a long sigh. “You did the right thing.”

“I hope so.” He went into the kitchen, took a bottle of plum brandy off a pantry shelf, and poured himself a good dose. He didn’t usually do that in the middle of the day, but it wasn’t a usual day, either.

“Your father will be proud of you,” Rivka Russie said.

“I hope so,” Reuven repeated. He hefted the bottle of slivovitz. His father wouldn’t be proud of him if he drank himself blind, which was what he felt like doing. Instead, with a sigh, he put the bottle away.

The twins also exclaimed when they got home from their school and discovered Reuven there ahead of them. He made his explanations all over again. Judith and Esther’s faces grew unwontedly serious by the time he was through.

And he explained one more time when, his father came home. “No, you can’t do that,” Moishe Russie said gravely. “Or you could, but I’m glad you didn’t. Till we see what else we can arrange, how would you like to help me in my practice?”

“Thank you, Father!” Reuven let out a long sigh of relief. “That would be very good.” As good as staying at the college? He didn’t know. He had his doubts, in fact. But it would do.

 
10

“Dammit, I want another chance at him!” Monique Dutourd said in a savage whisper as she examined tomatoes in the greengrocer’s.

“Not right now,” Lucie answered, choosing one for herself. “If things change, then yes, certainly. But we don’t want to draw too much heat from the Nazis down on our heads, not for a bit.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to sleep with him.” Monique knew she sounded bitter. Why not? She damn well was.

“No, I’m sleeping with your brother.” Lucie’s voice made the prospect sound extraordinarily nasty, even though she and Pierre Dutourd were both on the dumpy side. “And getting the Lizards to do things isn’t so easy, whether you know it or not. They were very unhappy when they rubbed out that fishmonger.”

“Not half so unhappy as I was,” Monique said mournfully. “I had my hopes up—and then the miserable fool started shooting too soon. And I’m still stuck with Kuhn.”

Lucie shrugged. “If you want to put arsenic in his wine, I won’t tell you not to do it, but you’re liable to get caught. The advantage of the Lizards is, if they do the job, you get away scot free.”

“So do you. So does Pierre.” Monique put a tomato into her string bag. “The only reason Kuhn started bothering me was to get at Pierre—and I didn’t even know Pierre was alive then.”

“Only an American would expect life to be fair all the time,” Lucie said. “It isn’t as though the
Boches
gave us no trouble.”

That was undoubtedly true. It didn’t make Monique feel any better. It didn’t keep Dieter Kuhn out of her bedroom, either. “Maybe I will put arsenic in his wine,” she said. “And after they arrest me for it and start working me over, I’ll tell them it was your idea.”

“They already want to get their hands on me,” Lucie said with a shrug. “Giving them one more reason isn’t so much of a much.”

Monique was tempted to throw a tomato at her. But if she angered Lucie, her own brother might stop having anything to do with her. What would she do then? Stay an SS man’s unwilling mistress till the end of time? That was intolerable. “I want to get away!” she cried, loud enough to make the greengrocer look up from what he was reading—a girlie magazine, by the cover.

“Well, then, why don’t you?” Lucie said. “If you stay in your flat and let the Nazi come over whenever he chooses and do whatever he wants, why do you think you deserve anything in the way of sympathy?”

Again, Monique felt like hitting her. “What am I supposed to do, sneak out of my flat, throw away my position at the university, and sell drugs with you in Porte d’Aix?” Without waiting for an answer, she took her vegetables up to the shopkeeper. He gave her an unhappy look; totting up what she owed made him put down the magazine. She paid, got her change, and went out into the warm air of late summer. The sun didn’t stand so high in the sky as it had a couple of months before. Autumn was coming, and then winter, though winter in Marseille wasn’t the savage beast it was farther north.

Monique was swinging aboard her bicycle when Lucie came out, too. Her brother’s mistress said, “If you want to disappear, Pierre and I can arrange it. It’s easier than you think, as a matter of fact. And if it gets that German out of your hair and out of your bed, why not?”

“You must be crazy,” Monique said. “I’ve spent my whole life training to be a Roman historian. Now that I finally am, I can’t just throw that over.”

“If you say so, dearie,” Lucie answered. “But I’m damned if see why not.” She got on her own bicycle and pedaled away.

With a muttered curse, Monique rode back to her own block of flats. No bloodstains remained to show where the luckless fish seller had been gunned down instead of
Sturmbannführer
Dieter Kuhn, but she saw them in her mind’s eye.
But I’m damned if I can see why it wasn’t him.
The words gnawed at her as she went upstairs.

They gnawed even more after Kuhn paid her a visit that evening. As usual, he enjoyed himself and she didn’t. “I wish you would leave me alone,” she said wearily as he was getting dressed to leave again.

He smiled at her—a smile both sated and something else, something less pleasant. “I know you do. That is one of the things that keeps me coming back, sweetheart.
Bonne nuit
.” He turned on his heel and walked out, jackboots thumping on her carpet.

After he was gone, she got up, cleaned herself off—the bidet didn’t seem nearly enough—put on a robe, and tried to read some Latin. None of her inscriptions seemed to mean anything. She fought them for a while, then sighed, scowled, and gave up and went to bed.

She slept late the next morning: it was Sunday. Church bells clanged as she made her morning coffee. Along with a croissant and strawberry jam, it made a good breakfast. She lit a cigarette and sucked in harsh smoke.

A flat full of books, a university position where promotion would be slow if it ever came at all, a German lover she loathed.
This is what I’ve made of my life?
she thought, and the notion was far harsher than the smoke.

She didn’t want to go back into the bedroom even to dress; it reminded her too much of Dieter Kuhn’s odious presence. As soon as she had dressed, she left and manhandled her bicycle down the stairs. She couldn’t stand staying cooped up in there, wrestling with a dead language and with dead hopes. Off she rode, away from her troubles, away from Marseille, up into the hills back of the city that rose steeply from the Mediterranean Sea.

The Germans had placed antiaircraft-missile batteries in those hills. Otherwise, though, she had a surprisingly easy time escaping from civilization. Presently, she pulled off a dirt track and sat down on a flat yellow stone. Somewhere a long way off, a dog barked. Skippers flitted from dandelion to thistle to clover.
If only I didn’t have to go home,
Monique thought.

Here and there in the hills, men scratched out a living from little farms. Others herded sheep and goats.
One of them is bound to be looking for a wife.
Monique laughed at herself. Not going home was one thing. Spending the rest of her life as a peasant woman was something else again. Next to that, even Dieter Kuhn looked less appalling . . . didn’t he?

Monique didn’t have to think about the German now. She didn’t have to think about anything. She could lean back on the stone and close her eyes and let the sunshine turn the inside of her eyelids red. She wasn’t free. She knew she wasn’t, but she could pretend to be, at least for a little while.

A bee buzzing round her head made her open her eyes. Another bicyclist was coming up the dirt track toward her. She frowned. Company was the last thing she wanted right now. Then she recognized the man on the bicycle. She stood up. “How did you find me?” she demanded angrily.

Her brother smiled as he stopped. “There are ways.”

“Such as?” Monique said, hands on hips. Pierre’s smile got wider and more annoying. She thought for a moment. Then she got angry for another reason. “You put some miserable Lizard toy on my bicycle!”

“Would I do such a thing?” Her brother’s amiability was revoltingly smug.

“Of course you would,” Monique answered. She looked at the bicycle that had betrayed her. “Now—did the Germans do the same thing? Will that dog of a Kuhn come pedaling up the road ten minutes from now?” If anything, she would have expected the SS man to get out from Marseille faster than her brother. However much she despised Dieter Kuhn, he was in far better shape than Pierre.

“I don’t think so.” Pierre still sounded smug. “I would know if they had.”

“Would you?” Monique didn’t trust anyone any more.
I wonder why,
she thought. “Remember, the Nazis are starting to be able to listen to your talk on the telephone, even though you didn’t think they could do that. So are you sure the gadgets you have from the Lizards areas good as they say?”

To her surprise, her brother looked thoughtful. “Am I sure? No, I’m not sure. But I have a pretty good notion with this one.”

Monique tossed her head. No matter how good a notion he had, she didn’t particularly want him around. She didn’t want anyone around. Why else would she have come all the way out here? “All right, then,” she said grudgingly. “What do you want? You must want something.”

“I should resent that,” Pierre said. Monique shrugged, as if telling him to go ahead. He laughed, annoying her further, and went on, “There you have me.”

“Say your say, then, and leave me what’s left of the day. Monday morning, I have to be a scholar again.”

Pierre clicked his tongue between his teeth. “And Monday night, very likely, you will have another visit from the fellow you love so well.”

She spent the next minute or so cursing him. One of the main reasons she’d come up here was to forget about Dieter Kuhn for a little while. It didn’t seem she could even do that.

Her brother waited till she ran down, then said, “If you want to be rid of him for good, you really should come down to the Porte d’Aix. He won’t bother you there, I promise you that, and you might be very useful to me.”

“I don’t care whether I’m useful to you or not,” Monique flared. “All I want is to be left alone. I haven’t had much luck with that, and it’s your fault.”

He bowed, more than a little scornfully. “No doubt you are right. Do you care about whether the
Boche
comes to your bedroom tomorrow night?”

“Damn you,” Monique said. If it weren’t for Kuhn—and it wouldn’t have been for Kuhn except for Pierre . . . “All I want is to be left alone.” She’d already said that. Saying it again underlined it in her own mind.

Saying it again did nothing for Pierre, though. “You can’t have that. It might be nice if you could, but you can’t. You can have the Nazi up your twat, or you can have the Porte d’Aix. Which will it be?”

Monique looked around for a rock. There by her feet lay a good one, just the size of her hand. If she bounced it off her brother’s head, she might shut him up for good. It wasn’t so simple. It couldn’t be so simple. If she stayed where she was, that didn’t just mean Kuhn. It meant her classes, her research, her friends at the university—not that she’d had time for them lately. And her research had gone to hell; she’d thought that the night before. As for her classes, Kuhn had got to know her through them. So what did that leave her?

Nothing, which was exactly what her life had become.
How could it be worse, down there in the Porte d’Aix?
One word and she’d find out how it could be worse. The past couple of years had taught her such things were always possible.

“Porte d’Aix,” she said wearily. If it was worse, it was worse, that was all. At least she’d escape Dieter Kuhn.

Pierre beamed. “Oh, good. I won’t have to tell my friends to put all that stuff back into your flat.” She glared furiously. He kept right on beaming. “Little sister of mine, I knew you would see sense when someone pointed it out to you.”

“Did you?” Monique said. Her brother nodded. She asked another question: “Did I?” Pierre couldn’t answer that one. Neither could she. But she’d find out.

Nesseref bustled about, making sure everything in her apartment was just the way she wanted it to be. She didn’t have guests all that often, and these would be special. She’d even borrowed a couple of chairs for the occasion.

She swung an eye turret toward Orbit. The tsiongi wasn’t too happy about being on a leash inside the apartment. Maybe she’d be able to let him off later on. But maybe she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t know for a bit, and didn’t feel like taking chances: very much a shuttlecraft pilot’s view of the world.

When the knock came, she knew at once who it had to be: no male or female of the Race would have knocked so high on the door. Few males or females would have knocked at all; most would have used the hisser set into the wall by the door frame. But using the hisser required a fingerclaw, and her guests had none.

She opened the door. “I greet you, Mordechai Anielewicz,” she said. “Come in. And this is your hatchling?”

“I greet you, Nesseref,” the Tosevite said. “Yes, this is my hatchling. His name is Heinrich.” He said something to the younger Big Ugly in their own language.