“Never is a long time,” Reuven said before his father could speak. “Jews are useful to them right now. One of the reasons we’re useful to them is that so many people treat us so badly-we haven’t got many other places to turn. But that could change, or the Lizards could decide they need to make the Arabs happy instead of us. If either one of those things happens, where are we? In trouble, that’s where.”
He waited for Esther and Judith to argue with him, not so much because of what he’d said as because he’d been the one who said it. But they both nodded solemnly. Either he’d made more sense than usual, or they were starting to grow up.
His father quoted the Psalm: “Put not your trust in princes.”
“Or even fleetlords,” Reuven added.
“If we don’t trust princes, if we don’t trust fleetlords, whom do we trust?” Esther asked.
“God,” Moishe Russie said. “That’s what the Psalm is talking about.”
“Nobody,” Reuven said. He’d been raised in the Holy Land, in the cradle of Judaism, but was far less observant than either of his parents. Maybe it was because he’d been persecuted less. Maybe it was because he had a better secular education, though his father had had a good one by the standards of his time. Maybe he just had a hard time believing in anything he couldn’t see.
“Reuven,” his mother said reprovingly.
And maybe he had reasons for doubt his parents hadn’t had when they were young. “What’s the use of believing in a God Who lets His chosen people go through what the Reich has put them through?”
“I’m sure men thought the same in the time of Philistines, and in the time of the Greeks, and in the time of the Romans, and in the Middle Ages, and in the time of the pogroms, too,” his father said. “Jews have gone on anyhow.”
“They didn’t have any other answers in the old days,” Reuven said defiantly. “We have science and technology now. God was a guess that did well enough when there wasn’t any competition. Today, there is.”
He waited for his parents to pitch a fit. His mother looked as if she were on the point of it. His father raised an eyebrow. “The Nazis have science and technology, too,” Dr. Moishe Russie observed. “Science and technology tell them how to build the extermination camps they like so well. But what tells them they shouldn’t like those camps and shouldn’t want to build them?”
Reuven said, “Wait a minute. You’re confusing things.”
“Am I?” his father asked. “I don’t think so. Science and technology talk about what and how. We know more about what and how than they did in the days of the Bible. I have to admit that-I could hardly deny it. But science and technology don’t say anything about why.”
“You can’t really answer questions about why,” Reuven protested: the same thought he’d had not long before. “There’s no evidence.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Moishe Russie said. “In a strictly scientific sense, I suppose you are. But if someone asks a question like ‘Why not slaughter all the Jews we can reach?’-what kind of answer do science and technology have to give him?”
“That Jews don’t deserve to be slaughtered because we aren’t really any different from anybody else,” Reuven said.
It wasn’t the strongest reply, and he knew it. In case he hadn’t known it, his father drove the point home: “We’re different enough to tell apart, and that’s all the Germans care about. And we aren’t the only ones. They know they can do it, and they don’t know why they shouldn’t. How and why should they know that?”
Reuven glared at him. “You’re waiting for me to say God should tell them. You were talking about the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, God told the goyim to go out and slaughter all the Jews they could catch. That’s what they thought, anyhow. How do you go about proving they were wrong?”
His father grimaced. “We’re not going to get anywhere. I should have known we wouldn’t get anywhere. If you won’t believe, there’s nothing I can do to make you believe. I’m not a goy, to convert you by force.”
“And a good thing, too,” Reuven said.
His twin sisters looked at each other. He didn’t believe in telepathy. The Lizards thought the idea was laughable. But if they weren’t passing a message back and forth without using words, he didn’t know what they were doing. They both spoke at the same time: “Maybe you should convert Jane instead, Father.”
Moishe Russie raised an eyebrow. “How about that, Reuven?” he asked.
Glaring at Esther and Judith failed to help. They laughed at Reuven, their eyes wide and shining. He couldn’t strangle them, not with his parents watching. In a choked voice, he said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” It wasn’t quite true, but he wouldn’t admit as much. He went on, “Maybe I’ll bother you two when you have boyfriends.” It didn’t do a bit of good. The twins just laughed.
15
Living in Texas since the fighting stopped, Rance Auerbach had heard a lot of horror stories about Mexican jails. The one in which the Lizards kept him didn’t live up to any of them, much to his surprise. It was, in fact, not a great deal less comfortable than his apartment, if a lot more cramped. The Lizards even let him have cigarettes.
Every so often, they’d take him out and question him. He sang like a canary. Why not? The only person he could implicate was Penny, and he couldn’t get her in any deeper than she was already, not when they’d caught her with lime-cured ginger in her fists.
One day-he’d lost track of time, lost track and stopped worrying about it-a pair of Lizard guards with automatic rifles opened the door to his cell and spoke in the language of the Race: “You will come with us at once.”
“It shall be done,” Auerbach said, and slowly rose from his cot. The Lizards backed away so he couldn’t grab their weapons. That was standard procedure, but he still found it pretty funny. However much he might have wanted to, he couldn’t have leapt at them to save his life.
They took him to the interrogation chamber, as he’d expected. Like the rest of the jail, it was well-lighted and clean. Unlike the rest, it boasted a chair built for human beings. Unlike people, the Lizards didn’t seem to go in for the third degree. That did nothing but relieve Rance; had they felt like working him over, what could he have done about it?
Today, he noticed, the interrogation chamber held two human-made chairs. That gave him hope of seeing Penny, which the Lizards hadn’t let him do since capturing the two of them. She wasn’t there now, though. Only the guards and his chief interrogator, a male named Hesskett, were. With Rance’s bad leg and shoulder, assuming the posture of respect was painful for him. He did it anyway, then nodded to Hesskett human-style and said, “I greet you, superior sir.” Politeness didn’t hurt, not in the jam he was in.
“I greet you, Prisoner Auerbach.” Hesskett knew enough to keep reminding him he was in a jam. Having done so, the Lizard pointed to a chair. “You have leave to sit.”
“I thank you,” Auerbach said. Once, he’d sat without leave. The next time, he hadn’t had a chair. Standing through a grilling came closer to torture than his captors perhaps realized. He’d minded his manners ever since.
As he sank into the chair now, two more guards escorted Penny into the chamber. She looked tired-and, without any makeup, older than she had-but damn good. He grinned at her. She blew him a kiss before going through the greeting ritual with Hesskett.
Once she was in the other chair-too far away to let Auerbach touch her, dammit-Hesskett started speaking pretty fluent English: “You are both found guilty of trafficking in ginger with the Race.”
“You can’t do that! We haven’t had a trial,” Auerbach exclaimed.
“You were caught with much of the herb in your possession,” the Lizard said. “We can find you guilty without a trial. We have. You are.”