When his wife could get a word in edgewise, she said, “Bunim telephoned a couple of hours ago.”
“Did he?” That brought Mordechai to full alertness; Bunim was the most powerful Lizard stationed in Lodz. “What did he want?”
“He wouldn’t tell me,” Bertha answered. “He said leaving a message would not be proper protocol.”
“Sounds like a Lizard,” Anielewicz said, and Bertha nodded. He went on, “I’d better ring him up. Can you keep the menagerie down to low roars while I’m on the telephone?”
“I can try,” his wife said, and proceeded to lay down the law in a fashion Moses might have envied. In the brief respite thus afforded-and he knew it would be brief-Mordechai went into his bedroom to use the telephone.
He had no trouble getting through to Bunim; the regional subadministrator always accepted calls from his phone code. “I have for you a warning, Anielewicz,” he said without preamble. His German was fairly fluent. Hearing the Nazis’ language in his mouth never failed to set Anielewicz’s teeth on edge.
“Go ahead,” Anielewicz answered, not showing what he felt.
“A warning, yes,” the Lizard repeated. “If you Tosevites plan any interference against the anticipated arrival of colonists in this region, it will be suppressed without mercy.”
“Regional Subadministrator, I know of no such plans inside Poland,” Anielewicz answered, on the whole truthfully. As he’d thought before, most of the human inhabitants of Poland, Jews and Poles alike, preferred their alien overlords to any of the humans who aspired to the job.
“Perhaps you should know more,” Bunim said, and added an emphatic cough. “We have received a communication threatening that if a million males and females of the Race colonize Poland, that entire million shall die.”
“First I’ve heard of it,” Anielewicz said, which was completely true. “Probably a lunatic. In what language was this… communication? That may give you a clue.”
“It gives no clue,” Bunim said flatly. “It was in the language of the Race.”
Nesseref used her maneuvering thrusters to ease the shuttlecraft away from the outer skin of the 13th Emperor Makkakap. She checked the shuttlecraft’s instrument panel with special care. Like the ship with which it had come, it had just crossed a gulf of space even light would have needed more than twenty of the Race’s years to travel. Of course the revived engineers had already been over the shuttlecraft again and again: that was how the Race did things. But Nesseref was no more inclined than any other female or male to leave anything to chance.
Everything seemed normal till she got to the radar display. With a hiss of surprise, she swung both eye turrets toward it, turning what had been a routine glance to a shocked state.
A fingerclaw activated the radio link with the ship. “Shuttlecraft to Control,” Nesseref said. “Shuttlecraft to Control. I wish to report that the radar set is showing impossible clutter.”
“Control to Shuttlecraft,” a technician aboard the 13th Emperor Makkakap replied. “Control to Shuttlecraft. That clutter is not, repeat, is not, impossible. We have a crowded neighborhood around Tosev 3 right now: the ships of the colonization fleet, the ships and satellites of the conquest fleet, and the ships and satellites of the Tosevites-the Big Uglies, the males of the conquest fleet call them. Remember your briefing, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”
“I remember,” Nesseref answered. Things hadn’t been as anticipated for the Race, disorienting in and of itself. The conquest fleet had not conquered, or not completely. The Tosevites had proved improbably far advanced. Nesseref had believed what the briefing male said-he wouldn’t have lied to her. But she hadn’t begun to think about what it meant. Now she was seeing that with her own eyes.
As she scanned more instruments, she discovered that radar frequencies the Race did not use were striking the shuttlecraft. Any one of them might guide a missile on its way to her. “Shuttlecraft to Control,” she said. “You can confirm that we are at peace with these Tosevites?”
“That is correct, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the controller said. “We are at peace with them-or, at least, no great fighting is going on right now. On advice from males of the conquest fleet, we have relayed the time of your burn and your anticipated trajectory to the Tosevites and assured them we have no hostile intentions. The ones with whom I spoke used our language oddly but understandably.”
“I thank you, Control.” Nesseref did not want to speak to touchy, possibly hostile aliens, no matter how well they used the language of the Race. As far as she was concerned, they had no business using radio and radar at all. That they had such things disrupted plans the Race had made centuries before. Nesseref took it almost as a personal affront.
Moments slid past. Nesseref spent them aligning the shuttlecraft with fussy precision. When the job was done, she waited till it was time to leave orbit. Her fingerclaw hovered above the manual-override control, in case the computer didn’t begin the burn at the right time. That was most unlikely, but training held. Never take anything for granted.
Deceleration slammed her back into her padded couch. It seemed to hit harder than she remembered, though all the instruments showed the burn to be completely normal. As the computer had begun it in the proper instant, so the machine shut it down when it should.
“Control to Shuttlecraft,” came the voice from the 13th Emperor Makkakap. “Your trajectory is as it should be. I am instructed to recommend that you acknowledge any radio signals the Tosevites may direct toward you while you are descending from orbit.”
“Acknowledged,” Nesseref said. “It shall be done.” She wondered what things were coming to, when the Race had to treat with these Tosevites as if they held true power. But, if they were out in space, they did hold some true power. And obedience had been drilled into her as thoroughly as into any other male or female of the Race.
Before long, that obedience paid off. The computer reported a signal on one of the Race’s standard communications frequencies. By its direction, it came from an island off the northwestern coast of the main continental mass. The computer indicated the Race did not control that part of Tosev 3. Nesseref tuned the receiver to the indicated frequency and listened.
“Shuttlecraft of the Race, this is Belfast Tracking,” a voice said. The accent was strange and mushy, unlike any she’d heard before. “Shuttlecraft of the Race, this is Belfast Tracking. Please acknowledge.”
“Acknowledging, Beffast Tracking.” Nesseref knew she’d made a hash of the Tosevite name, whatever it meant, but she couldn’t do anything about that. “Receiving you loud and clear.”
“Thank you, Shuttlecraft,” the Tosevite down on the ground said. “Be advised your trajectory matches the flight plan your shiplord sent us. The Nazis will have nothing to complain about when you pass over their territory.”
Nesseref neither knew nor cared what Nazis were. Whatever they were, they had a cursed lot of nerve presuming to complain about anything the Race did. The Big Ugly from this Beffast Tracking had his-she supposed it was a male-nerve, too, for talking with her as if they were equals. “Acknowledging,” she repeated, not wanting to give him anything more than that.
Another Tosevite hailed her. He identified himself not as a Nazi but as a tracker from the Greater German Reich. Nesseref wondered if the Tosevite back at Beffast had been trying to mislead her. As that first Big Ugly had predicted, though, this one did find her course acceptable.
“Do not deviate,” he warned, his accent still mushy but somehow different from that of the first Big Ugly with whom she’d spoken. “If you deviate, you will be destroyed without warning. Do you understand?”
“Acknowledged,” Nesseref said tightly. She was low in the atmosphere now, dropping down toward the speed of sound. If the Tosevites could build spacecraft, they could assuredly blow her out of the sky. But they would have no need. “I shall not deviate from my course.”