An Arab man came up. “What you do, Jew?” he asked in bad Hebrew, then in worse English.
“I’m a doctor. I try to help her.” Moishe also spoke in both languages.
The man turned his words into rapid-fire Arabic. Halfway through, the woman stopped struggling. It wasn’t because she acquiesced. Moishe grabbed for her wrist. He found no pulse. When he let her arm drop, the Arab man knew what that meant.“lnshallah,” he said, and then, in English, “The will of God. Good you try to help, Jew doctor.” With a nod, he walked away.
Shaking his head, Russie went back to his family. Now, too late for the poor woman, the Lizard bombardment was easing. Staying close to the sides of buildings in case it picked up again, Moishe led his wife and son through the streets of Jerusalem. He didn’t know just what he was looking for. He would have taken a way out of the city, a good shelter, or a glimpse of the Wailing Wall.
Before he got any of those, a spatter of small-arms fire broke out, no more than a few hundred meters away. “Are the Lizards here?” Rivka exclaimed.
“I don’t think so,” Moishe answered. “I think it’s the Jewish underground rising against the British.”
“Oy!”Rivka and Reuven said it together. Moishe nodded mournfully. The shooting-rifles, submachine guns, machine guns, the occasionalpop! of a mortar-spread like wildfire, fanning out in every direction. Inside a couple of minutes, the Russies were flat on their bellies in another doorway as bullets pinged and ricocheted all around.
Several British soldiers in tin hats and khaki tunics and shorts dashed up the street. One of them spotted Moishe and his family. He pointed his rifle at them and screamed, “Don’t move or you’re dead, you Jew bastards!”
That was when Moishe remembered the submachine gun that lay on the ground beside him.So much for taking up arms, he thought. “Take the gun,” he told the Englishman. “You have us.”
The soldier called, “Permission to take prisoners, sir?” That didn’t mean anything to Russie for a moment. Then it sank in: if the man didn’t get that permission, he was going to shoot them and go on about his business. Moishe got ready to reach for the Sten gun. If he was going to go down, he’d go down fighting.
But a fellow with a second lieutenant’s single pips on his shoulder boards said, “Yes, take them back to the detention center. If we start murdering theirs, they’ll slaughter ours, the buggers.” He sounded weary and bitter beyond measure. Moishe hoped Rivka hadn’t followed what he said.
The British soldier darted forward to grab the submachine gun. “On your feet!” he said. When Moishe rose, the soldier plucked the spare magazines from the waistband of his trousers. “Hands high! Those hands come down, you’re dead-you, the skirt, the brat, anybody.” Moishe said that in Yiddish so he was sure his wife and son got it. “March!” the Englishman barked.
They marched. The soldier led them into what looked as if it had been a market square. Now barbed wire and machine-gun positions all around turned it into a prisoner camp. To one side was a tall wall of large stones that looked to have been in place forever. Atop that wall stood a mosque whose golden dome was marred by a shell hole.
Moishe realized what that wall had to be just as the British soldier herded him and his family into the barbed-wire cage. There they stayed. The only sanitary arrangements were slop buckets by the barbed wire. Some people had blankets; most didn’t. Toward noon, the guards distributed bread and cheese. The portions were bigger than those he’d known in the Warsaw ghetto, but not much. Water barrels had a common dipper. He scowled at that; it would make disease spread faster.
He and his family spent two miserable, chilly nights, sleeping huddled together on bare ground. Artillery shells fell all around, some alarmingly close. Had any landed inside the barbed-wire perimeter, the slaughter would have been gruesome.
On the morning of the third day, bigger explosions rocked Jerusalem. “The British are pulling out!” exclaimed someone who sounded as if he knew what he was talking about. “They’re blowing up what they can’t take with them.” Moishe didn’t know whether the fellow was right, not then, but before long the guards deserted their posts, taking machine guns with them.
They hadn’t been gone more than a few minutes before other men carrying guns entered the square: fighters from the Jewish underground. The prisoners cheered themselves hoarse as their comrades released them from confinement.
But with the Jews came Lizards. Moishe stiffened: wasn’t that one there by the gate Zolraag? And, at the same time as he recognized the Lizard, Zolraag recognized him. Zolraag hissed in excitement. “We want this one,” he said, and added an emphatic cough.
“Progress at last!” Atvar said. A pleasant breeze blew off the sea toward him. He walked along the northern shore of the little triangular peninsula that separated Egypt from Palestine. The warmth, the sand, the stones put him in mind of Home. It was very pleasant country-and yet he’d had to come here by helicopter, for the Big Uglies didn’t bother with roads leading away from their railroad.
Kirel paced beside him for a while without speaking: perhaps the shiplord was also thinking of the world he’d left behind for the sake of the greater glory of the Emperor. A couple of feathered flying creatures glided past the two males. They were nothing like the leather-winged fliers with which Atvar had been familiar before coming to Tosev 3, and reminded him this was an alien world. Males and females hatched here after the colonization fleet arrived would find these Tosevite animals normal, unexceptional. He didn’t think he would ever grow used to them.
He didn’t think he would ever grow used to Big Uglies, either. That didn’t keep him from hoping to conquer their world in spite of everything. “Progress!” he repeated. “The most important centers of Palestine are in our hands, the drive against Denver advances most satisfactorily on the whole… and we may yet triumph.”
For Kirel not to respond then would have implied he thought the fleetlord mistaken. A male implied that at his peril these days. And so Kirel said, “Truth. In those areas, we do advance.”
That, unfortunately, reminded Atvar of the many areas where the Race still did not advance: of Poland, where the Deutsche were being troublesome in the extreme; of China, where holding the cities and roads left the countryside a sea of rebellion-and where even control over the cities sometimes proved illusory; of the SSSR, where gains in the west were counterbalanced by Soviet advances in Siberia; of the central United States, where missiles were making starships vulnerable; of India, where Big Uglies weren’t fighting much, but showed a willingness to die rather than yielding to the commands of the Race.
He hadn’t come here to think about places like those, and resolutely shoved them to the back of his mind. Even with the ugly flying creatures to remind him it wasn’t quite Home, it was a place to relax, enjoy decent-better than decent-weather, and make the best of things.
Resolutely sticking to that best, he said, “We also have the agitator Moishe Russie in custody at last, and his mate and their hatchling. We can either control him through them or take vengeance upon
him for the manifold troubles he has caused us. This is also progress.”
“Truth again, Exalted Fleetlord.” Kirel hesitated, then went on, “Before punishing him as he deserves, it might be worthwhile to interrogate him, to learn exactly why he turned against us after his initial cooperation. Despite all his subsequent propaganda, this has never been completely clear.”
“I want him punished,” Atvar said. “Treason against the Race is the inexpiable crime.”
That wasn’t strictly true, not on Tosev 3. The Race maintained polite relations with Big Uglies who had turned on it and then professed friendship once more: antagonizing them for good would have caused more trouble than it solved. But conditions on Tosev 3 created ambiguity and doubts in a great many areas. Why should that one be any different? Atvar had stated the letter of the law.
Kirel said, “Punished he shall surely be, Exalted Fleetlord-but all in good time. Let us first learn all we can from him. Are we Big Uglies, to act precipitately and destroy an opportunity without first learning if we can exploit it? We shall be attempting to govern the Tosevites for thousands of years to come. What we learn from Russie may give us a clue as to how to do it better.”
“Ah,” Atvar said. “Now my chemoreceptors also detect the scent. Yes, perhaps that could be beneficial. As you say, he is in our hands, so punishment, while certain, need not be swift. Indeed, most likely he will view our exploitation of him as punishment in its own right. This world does its best to make me hasty. I must remember, now and again, to resist.”
X
Mordechai Anielewicz had company as he approached the meeting with the Nazis: a squad of Jews with submachine guns and rifles. He wasn’t supposed to bring along that kind of company, but he’d long since stopped worrying about what he was supposed to do. He did what needed doing.