“And I greet you. Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref, returning your call.”
“Ah. I thank you for being so prompt,” Gorppet said.
“Mordechai Anielewicz is not just an acquaintance to me,” Nesseref said. “As you will probably know, he is a friend. From your call, I presume that he is now a friend in trouble. How can I help him?”
“He is indeed a friend in trouble.” Gorppet made the affirmative gesture. “He is being held hostage by several males of the Jewish superstition here in Kanth. They may well kill him. It is even possible they have killed him already.”
“Wait!” Nesseref exclaimed. “You must be mistaken. Anielewicz belongs to this superstition himself.”
“I spoke truth,” Gorppet said. “You do know that these Jews in Poland have an explosive-metal bomb.”
“I know Anielewicz claimed to have one,” Nesseref replied. “I never knew whether that was a truth, or only a fiction intended to impress me.”
“It is, unfortunately, a truth,” Gorppet told her. “And Jews, it seems, are no more immune to factional squabbles than any other Big Uglies. A faction that wanted to damage the Deutsche to the greatest possible degree seized control of the bomb during the late fighting and moved it to this vicinity.”
“I…see.” Nesseref saw only too well, and liked none of what she saw. “What will the Deutsche do if such a bomb bursts among them? What can they do?”
“No one precisely knows except for their own high-ranking officers,” Gorppet said. “No one is eager to find out. We are operating on the assumption that they have more weapons than they surrendered to us. All evidence strongly points that way. That is why Anielewicz agreed to try to persuade these Jews to give themselves up.”
“To help the Race? To help the Deutsche?” Nesseref said. “That is extraordinarily generous of him.” She used an emphatic cough.
Gorppet’s voice was dry: “I doubt those were his main motivations. I think he was more concerned lest Poland, his homeland, receive the brunt of whatever counterattack the Deutsche might make.”
“Ah. Yes, that does make a certain amount of sense,” Nesseref agreed. “But you have not answered the first question I asked you: how can I help him?”
“I have not thought of any direct way,” Gorppet said. “Still, you know him well and you know Big Uglies well in general, especially for a female from the colonization fleet. Would you be willing to enter the Reich and become part of the team that is seeking to regain control over this bomb?”
“Provided my superiors approve, I would be happy to,” Nesseref said.
“I have taken the liberty of making those arrangements before speaking to you,” Gorppet said. “I will send transportation for you shortly.”
“Have you? Will you?” Nesseref couldn’t decide whether to be grateful or annoyed. “How very…efficient.” She grudgingly gave the male the benefit of the doubt.
He proved as good as his word. Nesseref had just got Orbit’s food and water ready for her own absence when an official motorcar pulled up in front of her apartment building. The driver telephoned from the motorcar, as if to leave her in no possible doubt: “I await you, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”
“Coming.” Nesseref hurried to the elevator, waited impatiently for it to arrive, and then rode down to the lobby. When she went out to the motorcar, she asked the driver, “Will you take me to this town by Breslau?”
“No, superior female,” he said, and drove her out of the new town to where a helicopter waited on the yellowish, dying grass of a meadow. She did not care for helicopters, reckoning them unsafe. But she boarded this one with no more than a minimal qualm. It sprang into the air and flew off toward the west.
When it landed, it came down not far from the wrecked and radioactive Deutsch city, at an encampment almost as large as the nearby Tosevite town of Kanth. At first, Nesseref was surprised to discover that the encampment contained Deutsch Tosevites as well as members of the Race. Then she realized that made good logical sense. The Deutsche, after all, were the ones most intimately concerned with the explosive-metal bomb.
“Yes, it is a considerable embarrassment for us,” Gorppet said when she was escorted to his tent. “The Jews, after all, are Big Uglies who are sup-posed to be under our control. For them to act so emphatically against our interest makes us look like fools to the Deutsche.”
“And to other Big Uglies,” Nesseref remarked.
“And to other Big Uglies,” the male from Security agreed. “The problem the Jews pose the Deutsche is at present the most urgent, however.”
“These Jews refuse to release Anielewicz?” Nesseref asked.
Gorppet made the affirmative gesture. “He went to them, they seized him, and he has not been seen since. We cannot prove he is still alive, but we presume he is, or the Big Uglies with the bomb would likely have tried to detonate it.”
“I…see,” Nesseref said, as she had when he telephoned her. “You have a lot of optimistic speculation resting on very little evidence, or so it seems to me.”
“That may well be so,” Gorppet said.
“Has anyone found a way to extract Anielewicz from his predicament?” Nesseref asked.
Now Gorppet used the negative gesture. “ Not without unacceptable risk of having the bomb go off,” he replied.
“That would be unfortunate,” Nesseref said.
“Truth. And especially for Anielewicz.” Yes, Gorppet’s voice was dry. “Consideration is also being given to a bombardment so sharp and intense, it would kill everyone in the house before anyone could trigger the bomb.”
“That would be wonderful, if it worked,” Nesseref said. “How likely is it to work, do you think?”
“If either we or the Deutsche thought it likely, it would have been attempted by now,” the male replied. “That no one has attempted it shows how risky it is. That it remains under consideration shows how seriously both we and the Deutsche view this situation.”
“I understand,” Nesseref said. “Have you come to any better notion of how I may help rescue Anielewicz and keep the bomb from going off?”
“Unfortunately, no,” the male from Security told her. “But, since you know him well, I was hoping you might have insights and ideas that have not occurred to me.” Another male came in. His body paint was slightly more elaborate than Gorppet’s. To him, Gorppet said, “Superior sir, here is Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref. Shuttlecraft Pilot, I present to you Hozzanet, my superior.”
“I greet you,” Nesseref said.
“And I greet you,” Hozzanet replied. “Welcome to the waiting room, Shuttlecraft Pilot. We hope we are far enough away to escape the worst effects of blast and radiation. We also hope we do not have to try to find out experimentally.”
“I can see that you might.” Nesseref swung an eye turret from Hozzanet to Gorppet and back again. “Are all Security males as cynical as the two of you?”
“Probably,” Hozzanet answered. “It is a useful part of our professional baggage. Believing the males and females and Big Uglies we are in charge of investigating would only trap us in a net of lies.”
“From your point of view, I suppose that makes sense,” Nesseref said. “You must have endless trouble with such unreliable and ever-shifting circumstances. I am glad I deal with the physical universe, with constants rather than variables.”
A couple of other males in the body paint of Security pushed their way into the tent. Nesseref paid them no special notice till one of them asked, “Small-Unit Group Leader Gorppet?” When Gorppet made the affirmative gesture, both males drew pistols and aimed them at him. The one who’d spoken before said, “You are under arrest, on suspicion of dealing in ginger and violent assault on the Race in the subregion known as South Africa. Your Tosevite accomplices have been captured in the not-empire of France, and have made full confessions.”
Nesseref stared in astonishment. Gorppet said, “I deny everything.” He sounded convincing. But he’d just shown he, like Hozzanet, believed in very little. He would sound convincing, regardless of whether he spoke truth.
Hozzanet spoke to the males with the pistols: “We are in an emergency situation here. For the good of the Race, I ask that you allow my subordinate to stay free till it is resolved. If it is resolved satisfactorily, he will probably have earned a pardon. If not”-he shrugged-“we are all liable to be dead.”
The Security male who’d been quiet till then said, “We have no authority to bargain with you or with him.”
“Then you had better get some.” Hozzanet was as ready to bend the rules as a Big Ugly. “Go on. I give my pledge, in the Emperor’s name, that he will not flee.”
After whispering to each other, the Security males made the affirmative gesture. “On your snout be it,” one of them said. He left. His partner stayed.
“I thank you, superior sir,” Gorppet said quietly.
“I warned you when I recruited you for Security that we would not tolerate large-scale ginger operations,” Hozzanet said. “But you have a chance to redeem yourself even there-if that bomb does not burst.”
“If it does, spirits of Emperors past will judge us,” Nesseref said, and cast down her eye turrets.
“That is a truth,” Hozzanet agreed. “And they will judge harshly-they have never heard of ginger.”