Harry Turtledove - Aftershocks

Nesseref’s mouth fell open in amusement. “Ah, yes-the famous Pancer.” She pronounced the Tosevite name as well as she could. “He may be interested in meeting me, too-I probably smell like a tsiongi, and that is an odor that will always get a beffel’s attention.”

Anielewicz spoke three words in his own language: “Dogs and cats.” Then he explained: “These are Tosevite domestic animals that often do not get along with each other.”

“I see,” Nesseref said. She skittered after Anielewicz so she wouldn’t lose him in the cavernous train station. Tosevites stared and pointed at her and exclaimed in their unintelligible languages. Many of them inhaled the burning herb that always struck her as noxious; its acrid smoke filled her scent receptors.

Outside, the cold smote her. Mordechai Anielewicz repeated, “It will not be far.”

“Good,” she said, shivering. “Otherwise, I do believe I would freeze before I got there. This winter weather of yours makes me see why you Tosevites deck yourselves in so many wrappings.”

“I have seen members of the Race do it, too,” Anielewicz said. “Staying warm is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I suppose not.” Nesseref hurried down the street after him. “But wrappings are rarely necessary back on Home. We do not like to think they should be necessary anywhere we live.”

“What you like to think is not always what is true,” Anielewicz remarked, a comment with which she could hardly disagree.

She sighed with relief on entering the lobby to his block of flats, which was heated. “You must understand, you have more tolerance for cold than we do,” she said. “Here, frozen water falling from the sky is something you take for granted. Back on Home, it is a rare phenomenon at the North and South Poles and at the peaks of the highest mountains. Otherwise, for us, it is unknown.”

That made the Big Ugly let out several of the barking yips his kind used for laughter. “It is not unknown here, superior female,” he said, and tacked on another emphatic cough. “If the Race is going to live in large parts of Tosev 3, you will have to get used to cold weather.”

“So we have discovered,” Nesseref said, with an emphatic cough of her own. “The males of the conquest fleet have had more of a chance to grow accustomed to your weather than we newcomers have. I must tell you, my first winter here was a dreadful surprise. I did not want to believe what the males had told me, but it was true. And seasons here on Tosev 3 last twice as long as they do on Home, so that winter seemed doubly dreadful.”

“Without winter, we could not enjoy spring and summer so much,” Mordechai Anielewicz said.

Nesseref answered that with a shrug. Suffering to make pleasure seem sweeter struck her as more trouble than it was worth. She didn’t say so; she didn’t want to offend her friend and host. Instead, she followed him upstairs.

That the apartment building had stairs instead of an elevator said something about the level of technology the local Big Uglies took for granted. Nesseref remembered the fire that had destroyed not just Anielewicz’s apartment but his whole apartment building. Such a disaster would have been impossible in her building, with its sensors and sprinklers and generally more fireproof materials.

On the other fork of the tongue, this building was more spacious than the one in which she lived. Part of that was because Tosevites were larger than members of the Race, but only part. The rest… The Big Uglies didn’t seem to build as if every particle of space were at a premium. The Race did. The Race had to. Home, and especially Home’s cities, had been crowded since before the Empire unified the world. The Tosevites’ architecture said they still felt they had room to expand.

Their technology has come very far very fast, Nesseref thought. Their ideologies lag behind. In a way, that was a comforting thought; it let her view the Big Uglies as primitives. In another way, though, it was frightening. The Tosevites had the means to do things they could scarcely have imagined a few generations before.

She wished she hadn’t thought about how expansive they were.

“Here we are.” Anielewicz led her down the hall and opened the door to what was, she presumed, his apartment. It did not seem so very spacious, not with so many Big Uglies inside it. They greeted her in turn: by their wrappings, she identified two females and two more males besides Mordechai Anielewicz.

And there was a beffel: a very fat, very sassy beffel who swaggered out as if he owned the apartment and the Tosevites in it were his servants. He stuck out his tongue at Nesseref, taking her scent. For a moment, it was as if he had to condescend to remember what a member of the Race smelled like. But then he caught Orbit’s odor clinging to her, and swelled up in anger and let out a sneezing, challenging hiss.

“Pancer!” Heinrich Anielewicz said sharply. He spoke to the beffel in his own language. Nesseref had no idea what he said, but it did the trick. The beffel deflated and became a well-behaved pet once more.

“You have him well trained,” Nesseref told the youngest Tosevite. “I have known many males and females of the Race who let their befflem be-come the masters in their homes. That is not so here.”

“Oh, no,” the hatchling said. “My father would not allow it.”

Mordechai Anielewicz laughed again. “Convincing Heinrich of that was easy enough. Convincing Pancer of it has been harder.”

Nesseref laughed, too. “Even among us, befflem are a law unto themselves.”

Anielewicz’s mate did not speak the language of the Race nearly so well as he did, but she spoke with great intensity: “Superior female, I thank for to help Mordechai for to find us. I thank you for to help to go to Kanth, too.”

“You are welcome, Bertha Anielewicz.” Nesseref was pleased she’d recalled the name, even if she didn’t pronounce it very well. “I am glad to be a friend to your mate. Friends help friends-is that not a truth?”

“Truth,” Anielewicz’s mate agreed, along with what was surely intended to be an emphatic cough.

Nesseref had wondered what sort of food the Tosevites would serve her; Anielewicz had made it plain that following the Jewish superstition limited what he and his kinsfolk could eat. But the shuttlecraft pilot found nothing wrong with the roasted fowl that went on the table. Big Uglies ate more vegetables and less meat than the Race was in the habit of doing, but if Nesseref enjoyed more pieces of the bird and less of the tubers and stalks that went with it than did her hosts, no one seemed to find that out of the ordinary.

“Here.” Mordechai Anielewicz set a glass half full of clear liquid in front of her. “This is distilled, unflavored alcohol. I have seen members of the Race drink it and enjoy it.”

“I thank you,” Nesseref said. “Yes, I have drunk it myself.”

“We have a custom of proposing a reason for drinking before we take the first sip,” he told her. Raising his glass, he spoke in his own tongue: “L’chaim!” Then, for her benefit, he translated: “To life!”

“To life!” Nesseref echoed. Imitating the Tosevites around her, she raised her glass before sipping from it. The alcohol was potent enough to make her hiss; after it slid down her throat, she had to concentrate to make her eye turrets turn in the directions she wanted. She asked, “May I also propose a reason for drinking?”

Anielewicz made the affirmative gesture. “Please do.”

Raising her glass, the shuttlecraft pilot said, “To peace!”

“To peace!” The Tosevites echoed her this time, Anielewicz again translating. They all drank. So did she. The alcohol was strong, but it was also smooth. Before Nesseref quite noticed what she was doing, she’d emptied the glass. Anielewicz poured more into it.