Harry Turtledove - Down to Earth

While that thought was still going through his mind, he got the warning hiss that told of an electronic message arriving. He checked to see who’d sent it: it could have been from Straha from Kassquit, relaying news from Jonathan; or from Sorviss, the Lizard exile who’d first gained access to the network for him. He hadn’t yet used what he’d got from Sorviss, so he couldn’t very well give him any proper answer.

But the message turned out to be from Straha. Yes, I received this information, this warning, from Gordon, the ex-shiplord wrote. I hope you will use it wisely.

I thank you, Yeager wrote back. I think I can do that .

He chuckled under his breath. “What a liar I’m getting to be in my old age,” he muttered. He knew what Straha meant by using the information wisely: staying out of things his own superiors thought were none of his business. He’d never been good at that, not when his itch to know wanted scratching. If things went wrong with what he was about to try, he’d land in even more hot water.

With a snort, he shook his head. People had already tried to kill him and burn down his house. How could he get into worse trouble than that?

After turning off the Lizard-made computer he used to join the Race’s electronic network, he removed his artificial finger-claws and turned on the larger, clumsier American-built machine he used much less often. Its only advantage he could see was that it used a keyboard much like an ordinary typewriter’s.

Even though it was made in the USA, it used a lot of technology adapted from what the Race also used. When he inserted the skelkwank disk he’d got from Sorviss, the computer accepted it without any fuss. The Lizard was convinced his coding would defeat any traps mere inexperienced humans could devise. Sam was interested in seeing if he was right.

Somewhere in the rudimentary American computer network lay an archive he’d tried to access a couple of times before, an archive of communications and radio intercepts covering the time just before and after the surprise attack that had done the colonization fleet so much harm. Less harm than the Germans have done it now, he thought, but that wasn’t really what mattered, not any more. What mattered was that he’d tried repeatedly to access the archive and failed every time. And bad things had happened after every try, too.

By now, he wanted to know what was in there as much for his own sake as because he wanted to see whoever’d bombed the colonization fleet punished. Curiosity killed the cat, he thought. His own curiosity might well have come close to killing him. But the proverb had another line, too. Satisfaction brought it back.

There was the archive. He’d made it this far a couple of times-and the screen had gone blank as he’d been disconnected from the network. The first time, he’d thought that an accident. He didn’t think so any more.

His computer started making small purring noises. He suspected he knew what that was: Sorviss’ coding at war against the measures the government had set up to keep unwelcome visitors out of the archive. If humans had learned more about computers than Sorviss thought, Sam might be in live steam, not just hot water.

For a second, the screen started to go dark. He cursed-softly, so Barbara wouldn’t notice. But then it cleared. ENTRY AUTHORIZED, it read. PROCEED. Proceed he did. As he read, his eyes got wider and wider. He finished, then left the archive at once. For good measure, he turned off the computer, too.

“Jesus!” he said, shaken as he hadn’t been since watching a teammate get beaned. “What the hell do I do now?”

The first thing Nesseref did when she got up in the morning was check her computer monitor. That was the first thing she did any morning, of course, to see what the news was and what electronic messages had come in during the night. But she had a more urgent reason for checking it today: she wanted to find out what the fallout level was, to see if she could safely leave her block of flats.

She let out an unhappy hiss. It was very radioactive out there this morning. Were it not for the filters and scrubbers newly installed in the heating and air purification systems, it would have been very radioactive inside the apartment, too. The Deutsche were taking quite a pounding. In the abstract, Nesseref didn’t mind that at all. But the prevailing winds on Tosev 3 blew from west to east. They brought the radioactive ashes from the Reich ’s funeral pyre straight into Poland.

And the Deutsche had also managed to detonate several explosive-metal bombs of their own inside Poland. Those only made the fallout level worse. They’d also done a lot of damage to Tosevite centers and to those of the Race in this subregion.

Lodz had gone up in a hideous, beautiful cloud. Nesseref wondered if the Big Ugly called Mordechai Anielewicz remained among the living. She hoped so. She also wished his youngest hatchling well-she’d met young Heinrich, after all, and heard about his beffel. Her concern for the rest of Anielewicz’s family was considerably more abstract. They mattered to her not for their own sakes but because her friend would be concerned if anything happened to them.

Orbit came up and turned an eye turret toward the screen, as if the tsiongi were examining the fallout levels, too. His other eye turret swung toward Nesseref. When she made no move to take him outside for a walk, he let out a dismayed hiss of his own. No matter how he looked at the monitor, he couldn’t understand what the numbers displayed on it meant.

Unfortunately, Nesseref could. “We cannot go walking today,” she said, and scratched him between the eye turrets. She’d said that so often lately, Orbit was starting to know what it meant. This time, the look he gave her was halfway between dismayed and speculative, as if he was wondering whether biting her on the tail-stump might get her to change her mind. She waggled a forefinger at him. “Do not even think about it. I am the mistress. You are the pet. Remember your place in the hierarchy.”

Orbit hissed again, as if to remind her that, while inferiors were bound to respect superiors, superiors had responsibilities to inferiors. One of her responsibilities was taking the tsiongi for a walk whenever she could. She’d never been home and still failed to take him out for such a longtime. As far as he could see, she was falling down on the job.

The trouble was, Orbit couldn’t see far enough. “Suppose I feed you?” Nesseref told him. “Will that make you happier?”

He wasn’t smart enough to understand what she’d said, but he followed her out of the bedchamber and into the kitchen. When she pulled a tin of food from the shelf reserved for him, his tail lashed up and down, slapping the floor again and again. He knew what that meant.

She opened the tin. The food plopped into his dish. He started eating, then paused and turned an eye turret toward her. “I know,” she said. “It is not just what you would get back on Home. It is made from the flesh of Tosevite animals, and it probably tastes funny to you. But it is what I have. You can eat it, or you can go hungry. Those are your only choices. I cannot give you what I do not have.”

Orbit kept on giving her that reproachful stare, but he kept on eating, too: he kept on eating till the bowl was empty. Nesseref knew the food was nutritionally adequate for tsiongyu; the label on the tin assured her of that. But Orbit hadn’t evolved eating the beasts from which the food was made. Animals were even more conservative than males and females of the Race. If something was unfamiliar to them, they were inclined to reject it.

Nesseref heated a slice of smoked and salted pork for herself. She found ham and bacon quite tasty, even if they weren’t salty enough to suit her. After she’d eaten, she went back into the bedroom and ordered an exercise wheel for Orbit. It would take up a lot of space in the apartment, but it would also go a long way toward keeping the tsiongi healthy and happy.