Page 17 of Aftershocks (Colonization 3)

Orbit jumped into the wheel and started to run. Before long, he hopped out again. Maybe he’d worn himself out doing his best to lend Nesseref a hand. Maybe he didn’t feel like running in it no matter what it smelled like. Tsiongyu had a reputation for perversity. On a smaller scale, they were something like Big Uglies.

“Miserable beast,” Nesseref said, more or less fondly. As if doing her a favor, Orbit deigned to turn an eye turret in her direction for a moment. Then he curled up by the exercise wheel, slapped his tail down on the floor a couple of times, and went to sleep.

Nesseref’s laugh quickly turned rueful. Orbit had no worries bigger than not being able to go outside for a good run. She wished she could say the same.

Reuven Russie came home to find his father on the telephone with Atvar. “Anything you might be able to do would be greatly appreciated, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe Russie said. “Mordechai Anielewicz is a longtime friend, and he has also helped the Race a great deal in the fight against the Deutsche.”

“I can do less than you might think,” the fleetlord of the conquest fleet replied. “I can encourage our males and females in the subregion of Poland to assist him, and I shall do that. But the Reich retains political independence. That limits actions available to me there.”

“How unfortunate,” Reuven’s father said, and used an emphatic cough.

“I regret not being able to do more.” Atvar didn’t sound regretful. He sounded, if anything, indifferent. After a moment, he went on, “And now, if you will excuse me, I have a great many things to do.” His image vanished from the screen.

Moishe Russie turned away from the telephone with a sigh. He looked up in surprise. “Hello, Reuven. I didn’t think you’d be back from the office so soon.”

“My last two appointments canceled on me, one right after the other,” Reuven answered. “You took the afternoon off; I got mine by default. The Lizards don’t care what happened to Anielewicz’s family?”

“Not even a little.” His father made a disgusted noise, down deep in his throat. “We’re good enough to do things for them. But they’re too good to do things for us, especially if that would take some real work from them. I’ve seen it before, but never so bad as now. You don’t even remember Anielewicz, do you?”

“I was just a little boy-a very little boy-when we got smuggled out of Poland,” Reuven said.

“I know that. But if Anielewicz had decided to fight for the Germans against the Race when the conquest fleet landed, Poland might have stayed in Nazi hands,” his father said. “That’s how important he was. And now Atvar doesn’t care whether his family is alive or dead.”

“Lizards don’t really understand about families,” Reuven said.

“Emotionally, no,” Moishe Russie agreed. “Emotionally, no, but intellectually, yes. They aren’t stupid. They just don’t want to take the trouble for someone who’s done a lot for them, and I think it’s a disgrace.”

“What’s a disgrace?” Reuven’s mother asked. She glanced over to her only son. “You’re home early. I hope there’s nothing wrong?”

He shook his head. “Only canceled appointments, like I told Father.”

“Better canceled appointments than a canceled family,” Rivka Russie said. She turned a mild and speculative eye on him. “And when will you be bringing Jane by the house again?”

Was that a hint he should settle down and start having a family of his own? He was within shouting distance of thirty and still single, so it might well have been. On the other hand, Jane Archibald remained a student at the Lizards’ Moishe Russie Medical College, while he’d resigned because he wouldn’t go to their temple and give reverence to spirits of Emperors past.

And she wasn’t Jewish herself, which struck Reuven as likely to prove a bigger obstacle in his parents’ eyes.

He wasn’t sure how big an obstacle it was in his own eyes. It certainly hadn’t been enough to keep him from becoming Jane’s lover. Every male student at the medical college had wanted to be able to say that. Now that he’d actually done it, he was still trying to figure out what it meant to his life.

“You don’t answer my question,” his mother said.

Bringing Jane by had been simpler in the days when they were just fellow students and friends. Being lovers with her complicated everything, not necessarily because of what it meant now but because of how it might change his whole future. For the time being, he temporized: “I will, Mother, as soon as I can.”

“Good.” Rivka Russie nodded. “I’ll be glad to see her, and you know the twins will.”

Reuven snorted. His younger sisters looked on Jane as the font of everything wise and womanly. Her contours were certainly a good deal more finished than theirs, though they’d blossomed to an alarming degree the past couple of years.

Thoughtfully, Moishe Russie remarked, “I wouldn’t mind seeing Jane again myself.”

Rivka Russie was wearing a dish towel around her waist. She’d been back in the kitchen, cooking. She took off the towel, wadded it up in her hands, and threw it at her husband. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t,” she said darkly-but not too darkly, for she started to laugh before Reuven’s father tossed the tow

el back to her.

“Say something simple and you get into trouble.” Moishe Russie rolled his eyes, precisely as if he hadn’t expected to get into trouble by saying that particular simple thing. Jane Archibald was definitely a girl-a woman-worth seeing.

Laughing still, Reuven’s mother went back to the kitchen. His father pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and lit one. “You shouldn’t smoke those things,” Reuven said, clucking like a mother hen. “You know how many nasty things the Lizards have shown they do to your lungs.”

“And to my circulatory system, and to my heart.” Moishe Russie nodded-nodded and took another drag. “They’ve shown all sorts of horrible things about tobacco.”

“It’s not ginger, for heaven’s sake,” Reuven said. “People can quit smoking.”

“And Lizards can quit tasting ginger, too, for that matter,” his father answered. “It just doesn’t happen very often.”

“You don’t get the enjoyment out of tobacco that the Race gets out of ginger,” Reuven said, to which his father could hardly disagree, especially when his mother might be listening. He persisted: “What do you get out of it, anyhow?”

“I don’t know.” His father eyed the glowing coal on the end of his cigarette. “It relaxes me. And one tastes very good after food.”

“That doesn’t sound like enough,” Reuven said.

“No, I suppose not.” Moishe Russie shrugged. “It’s an addiction. I can hardly deny it. There are plenty of worse ones. That’s about the most I can say.”

“What’s the most you can say about which, Father?” one of the twins asked. Reuven hadn’t heard the twins come into the front room; they’d probably been helping their mother get supper ready. They sounded even more alike than they looked-Reuven couldn’t be sure whether Esther or Judith had spoken.

Moishe Russie held up his cigarette. “That there are worse drugs than the ones that go into these.” A thin, gray column of smoke rose into the air from the burning end of the cigarette.

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