Upsetting the Balance

It occurred to him then that he owed his chance of going to the Holy Land to the Lizards. Before they came, he’d been one more Jew among tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of others starving in the Warsaw ghetto. He’d been out on the streets in dead of night, trying to cadge some food to stay alive and praying to God to grant him a sign that He had not forsaken His people. He’d taken the sun-like glow of the explosive-metal bomb the Lizards had set off high above the city as an answer to that prayer.

A lot of other people had taken it the same way. Almost willy-nilly, they’d made him into their leader, though becoming one had been the last thing in his mind. Because he’d looked like a leader to his people, he’d looked like one to the Lizards, too, when they drove Hitler’s thugs out of Warsaw. Had it not been for them, he would have stayed ordinary till the day he died-and he’d probably be dead by now.

Haltingly, he spoke that thought aloud. Rivka heard him out, then shook her head. “Whatever you think you owe them, you paid it off long ago,” she said. “Yes, they saved us from the Nazis, but they did it for themselves, not for us. They just used us for their own purposes-and if it suits them to start killing us the way the Nazis did, they will.”

“You’re right, I think,” Moishe said.

“Of course I am,” she answered.

He smiled, but soon sobered. Rivka had repeatedly shown she was better at dealing with the real world than he was. If she made a pronouncement like that, he would be wise to take it seriously. Then, all at once, he started to laugh: who would have thought that going to the Holy Land was part of the real world?

16

Inside the landcruiser, which was inside the heavy transporter, Ussmak was thoroughly shielded from the outside world. What he was not shielded from was fear. After all he and his crewmales had endured in Britain, he knew he would never again be shielded from fear.

He spoke into the intercom microphone: “How does your wound feel today, superior sir?”

“Getting better all the time,” Nejas answered. “High time I was back on duty.” He hesitated, perhaps making sure the crew of the transporter could not hear the next thing he had to say. Once he was sure they were out of the circuit, he went on, his words all at once quick and breathy: “Do you by any chance happen to have another-taste of ginger, landcruiser driver?”

“I’m sorry, superior sir, but I don’t have any even for myself,” Ussmak answered. He wished he hadn’t had to start his commander tasting. If he hadn’t, though, he and Skoob would have had to leave Nejas behind. The landcruiser commander would never have made it to Tangmere and evacuation. Maybe none of them would have made it out of Britain alive.

“Too bad,” Nejas said. “Oh, too bad. How I crave the herb!”

“As well you can’t get it, then, superior sir,” Skoob told him. The gunner and commander had been crewmales since long before Ussmak joined them; Skoob had earned the right to speak bluntly to his chief. “That filthy stuff’s no good for any male, believe you me it’s not.”

He’d said as much back in Britain, but he hadn’t turned Ussmak in to the disciplinarians once they’d escaped the chaos of evacuation and reached the relative safety of southern France-relative safety, because even there the Big Uglies proved themselves able to lob poison gas at males and females of their own kind who labored on behalf of the Race. And Skoob had turned both eye turrets away from Nejas when his commander kept tasting while recovering. Skoob disapproved, but was too loyal to do anything about it.

Shame licked at Ussmak like the flames from a burning landcruiser. Hidden away in the driver’s compartment, he had several-maybe more than several-tastes of ginger. He told himself he’d lied to Nejas because he didn’t want to see the landcruiser commander plunge into degradation as he had done. It was even true-to a degree. But the main reason he’d said he had no more ginger was simple and selfish in the extreme-he didn’t want to share it.

“Attention, landcruiser crews.” The voice of the transporter pilot filled the audio button taped to Ussmak’s hearing diaphragm. “Attention, landcruiser crews. We are beginning our descent to the landing. Please be alert for possible abrupt motions of the aircraft. Thank you.”

“Thankyou — very much,” Ussmak muttered, having first made sure he was not transmitting even to his crewmales.Please be alert for possible abrupt motions of the aircraft, indeed! He’d flown into Britain in a landcruiser aboard a heavy transporter. He knew too well what that innocent-sounding euphemism meant. Had the pilot wanted to be honest, he would have said something like,We may have to dodge like maniacs because the stinking Big Uglies are doing everything they can to shoot us down.