Down to Earth

by Harry Turtledove

  “I promise, Father.” Heinrich’s face shone.

  “You have to keep your promise, just like Mother has to keep hers,” Mordechai said, and his son nodded eagerly. He went on, “And even if you do, the beffel goes if he turns out to be a nuisance.”

  His younger son nodded again. “He won’t. I know he won’t.” A Biblical prophet listening to the word of God could have spoken no more certainly.

  Squeak! Mordechai chuckled. He couldn’t help himself. “Well, let me have a look at this fabulous beast.”

  “Come on.” Heinrich grabbed his arm. “He’s great. You’ll see.” He led Mordechai into the front room. The beffel was under the coffee table. One of its eye turrets swiveled toward Anielewicz and his son. It squeaked and trotted toward them. Heinrich beamed. “There! You see? It likes people.”

  “Maybe it does at that.” Anielewicz crouched down and held out his hand to the beffel, as he might have to give a strange dog or cat the chance to smell him. He was much more ready to jerk that hand back in a hurry than he would have been with a dog or a cat, though.

  But the beffel acted as friendly as it sounded. After one more of those ridiculous squeaks, it stuck out its tongue at him. The end of the long, forked organ, amazingly like a Lizard’s, brushed the back of his hand. The beffel cocked its head to one side, as if trying to decide what to make of something unfamiliar. Then, with yet another squeak, it butted Anielewicz’s leg with its head.

  “You see?” Heinrich said. “You see? He likes you. Pancer likes you.”

  “Pancer, eh?” Mordechai raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to call him Tank in Polish?”

  “Sure,” his son replied. “Why not? With scales all over him, he’s armored like a tank.”

  “All right. You’ve got all the answers, it seems.” In an experimental sort of way, Anielewicz scratched the beffel’s head. “What do you think of that, Pancer?”

  “He likes this better,” Heinrich said, and rubbed the beffel under the chin. The beffel put its head up so he could rub it more easily. Its tail thumped the carpet. If it wasn’t enjoying itself, it put on a mighty fine act. Maybe Heinrich really did have all the answers.

  “How did you find out it likes that?” Mordechai asked.

  “I don’t know.” His son sounded impatient. “I just did, that’s all.” He rubbed Pancer some more. In ecstasy, the beffel rolled over onto its back. Heinrich scratched its belly, whose scales were a couple of shades paler than those on its back. It wriggled around and let out several more preposterous squeaks.

  David watched all this in fascination, Bertha with an expression that said she was a long way from reconciled to having the creature in the flat. Miriam chose that moment to come home from her music lesson. Pancer squeaked at her, too. She didn’t squeak. She squawked. She squawked even louder when she found out the beffel would be staying.

  “Oh, Mother, how could you?” she cried, and retreated to her room. The beffel started to follow her. Heinrich held on to it. That was one of the wiser things he’d done in his young life.

  Anielewicz asked, “Since you magically know all about this creature, do you happen to know what it eats?”

  “I gave it some salted herrings,” Heinrich answered. “It liked them fine. I bet it’ll eat chicken, too.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Mordechai admitted. “All right, we’ll feed it like a pet and see how things go.” He remembered the first beffel he’d seen, and what it had been doing when he saw it. “If that doesn’t work, we can start giving it the neighbors’ cats.”

  His wife said: “One more thing: if we find out that it belongs to some particular Lizard who wants it back, we’ll give it back to him. We’d do the same thing if we took in a stray cat or dog.”

  Heinrich sent a look of appeal to Anielewicz. But Mordechai only nodded. “Your mother’s right. That’s fair.” And if Bertha had sounded a little too hopeful such a thing might happen, then she had, that was all.

  Pancer ate boiled beef with enthusiasm. The beffel wouldn’t touch carrots, but ate potatoes with the same almost thoughtful air it had had after licking Mordechai: as if it wasn’t sure what to make of them but would give them the benefit of the doubt. Having eaten, the little scaly creature prowled around under the dining-room table. Toward the end of supper, Miriam squealed and sprang up out of her chair. “It licked my ankle,” she said in a high, shrill voice.

  “This is not the end of the world,” Anielewicz told her. “Sit down and finish eating.”

  She didn’t. “You don’t care,” she burst out. “You don’t care at all. We’ve got this ugly, horrible, Lizardy thing in here, and you think it’s funny.” She stormed off to her room again. The rest of the meal passed in silence, punctuated by occasional squeaks.

  To Bertha’s obvious disappointment, no Lizard posted a notice offering a reward for the return of a missing beffel. Mordechai wondered if the beast had got lost in Lodz, or if it had wandered into the city from one of the new Lizard settlements to the east. From what he’d seen of the other one in the alley, befflem were more than able to take care of themselves.

  As one day followed another, he got used to having Pancer around. Heinrich was in heaven, and didn’t even mind changing the cat box the beffel quickly learned to use. David liked the creature, too. Even Bertha stopped complaining about it. Only Miriam stayed unhappy. Anielewicz had trouble understanding why she did; it was as good-natured a pet as anyone could have wanted.

  “It’s ugly,” she said the one time he asked her about it, and said no more. He gave up. The beffel didn’t strike him as ugly, but he didn’t think anything he said along those lines would make her change her mind.

  A couple of nights after that, Heinrich shook him out of a sound sleep. “Father, I think there’s a fire in the building,” the boy said urgently. “Pancer woke me up. He’s never done that before. I was going to be mad at him, but then I smelled smoke.”

  Anielewicz smelled it, too. Bertha was sitting up beside him. “Get out to the fire escape,” he told her. “Take Heinrich with you.”

  “And Pancer,” Heinrich said. “I’ve got him right here.”

  “And Pancer,” Mordechai agreed. “I’ll get the other children.”

  “David’s already getting Miriam,” Heinrich said, which made Anielewicz feel useless and inefficient.

  But he didn’t just smell smoke. He could see flames now—they were burning through the door. “Go on, then, both of you—and Pancer,” he said, and ran up the hall to make sure David and Miriam were coming. They were; he had to stop abruptly to keep from running into them. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Bertha’s feet and Heinrich’s were already rattling on the cast iron of the fire escape. Mordechai shoved his older son and daughter out onto the escape ahead of him. He hurried after them; flames were starting to lick across the carpet, and the smoke was getting thick.

  As he stepped out of the flat, he paused a moment, sniffing. Along with the smoke, he smelled something else, something familiar, something he didn’t expect to smell inside the block of flats. After a heartbeat’s worth of puzzlement, he recognized it. “Gottenyu!” he exclaimed. “That’s gasoline!”

  He didn’t know if anyone heard him. His family—and other people in the block of flats—were hurrying down the iron stairs. They let down the last leg of the stairway with a screech of unoiled metal and reached the street. More people spilled out the front door, but cries and shrieks from above warned that not everyone who lived in the building would be able to get out.

  A clanging announced the arrival of the fire engine, which had to come from only a couple of blocks up Lutomierska Street. The firemen started playing water on the blazing building. Mordechai turned to Bertha and said, “That fire didn’t just happen. Somebody set it.” He explained what he’d smelled and what it had to mean.

  “Vey iz mir!” his wife exclaimed. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” h
e answered, “but whoever tried to shoot me not so long ago is a pretty good guess, I’d say. And I’d also say the mamzer, whoever he is, doesn’t care how many other people he kills as long as he gets me.” In the flickering light of the flames, Bertha’s eyes were wide with horror as she nodded.

  Heinrich, meanwhile, rounded on Miriam. “If it hadn’t been for Pancer, we might never have woken up at all,” he said, and thrust the beffel in Miriam’s face. After a moment’s hesitation, she bent down and gave it a quick kiss on the snout. Pancer squeaked.

  Nesseref was glad she had her tsiongi. He was better company than a lot of the males and females she knew. He didn’t argue with her. He didn’t try to get her to taste ginger so he could mate with her. He didn’t give her stupid orders. He lived contentedly in her apartment, and enjoyed going for walks when she took him out.

  She’d named him Orbit, partly because she was a shuttlecraft pilot, partly because he had at first liked to walk around her on his leash if she gave him the chance. Little by little, she was training him out of that unfortunate habit. Pretty soon Orbit would be as fine a companion on the street as he was in the apartment—with a couple of other exceptions.

  One of those exceptions was as ancient as the history of domestication back on Home. Ever more befflem roamed the streets of the new town outside Jezow. Whenever Orbit saw one of them, the tsiongi seemed to think he was duty-bound to try to kill the little squeaking beast. As often as not, the befflem were ready to squabble, too.

  That, Nesseref could have dealt with. The Race had been dealing with squabbling tsiongyu and befflem since before civilization hatched from the egg of barbarism. She had more trouble with Orbit’s encounters with Tosevite flying creatures.

  She supposed she could hardly blame the tsiongi. The little feathered beasts were so slow and awkward on the ground, they looked as if they ought to be the easiest prey imaginable. And so, joyously, Orbit would rush at them—and they would fly away.

  The tsiongi would leap at them, miss, and then turn an indignant eye turret toward Nesseref, as if to say, They are not supposed to be able to do that. To Orbit, the unexpected abilities of the birds were as confusing and demoralizing as the unexpected abilities of the Big Uglies had been to the males of the conquest fleet.

  Once, one of the gray feathered creatures with green heads waited so long before taking to the air that Orbit’s leap after it was even higher and more awkward than usual, though no more successful. The tsiongi crashed back to the pavement with a piteous screech.

  As the disgruntled beast picked itself up, a male called, “Does he think he is going to learn to fly, too?” His mouth gaped wide; he plainly enjoyed his own wit.

  Nesseref didn’t. “He has a better chance of learning to fly than you do of learning to be funny,” she snapped.

  “Well, pardon me for existing,” the male said. “I did not know the Emperor had come to Tosev 3.”

  “There are, no doubt, a great many things you did not know,” Nesseref said acidly. “By the evidence you have shown so far, you demonstrate this every time you speak.”

  She and the male were eyeing each other’s body paint before they exchanged more insults. The male was only a data-entry clerk; Nesseref outranked him. If he tried coming back at her again, she was ready to blister his hearing diaphragms. He must have seen as much; he turned and skittered away.

  Orbit kept on trying to catch birds. So did the other tsiongyu Nesseref saw in her walk along the streets of the new town. Noting that made the shuttlecraft pilot feel better, though it did nothing for her pet.

  And then, as she was heading back toward her apartment building, a beffel trotted past with one of those plump gray birds in its mouth. Orbit saw the beffel—and the prize the beffel had, the prize the tsiongi hadn’t been able to get—an instant before Nesseref did. That instant was all Orbit needed. The tsiongi streaked after the beffel and, catching Nesseref by surprise, jerked the leash out of her hand.

  “No! Come back!” she shouted, and ran after Orbit. The tsiongi, unfortunately, ran faster than she did. Tsiongyu also ran faster than befflem. The beffel, looking back with one eye turret, saw Orbit gaining on it. Hoping to distract its pursuer, it spat out its prey.

  The ploy worked. The beffel dashed away as Orbit stopped in front of the feathered Tosevite creature and stuck out his tongue to find out what it smelled like before devouring it. Only then did the tsiongi discover the beffel had seized the bird without killing it. With a flutter of wings, the bird, though hurt, managed to get into the air and fly off. Orbit snapped at it but missed, even though its flight was as slow and awkward as that of a badly damaged killercraft.

  Before the tsiongi could go after it, Nesseref came dashing up and grabbed the end of the leash. “No!” she said once more when Orbit tried to break loose. This time, because she had hold of the leash, Orbit had to listen to her.

  Nesseref scolded the tsiongi all the way back to the apartment building. That probably didn’t do much good as far as Orbit was concerned: he was going to keep right on chasing befflem and trying to catch birds. But it did make the shuttlecraft pilot feel better.

  When she got into the apartment building, she discovered the day’s mail had come. She didn’t expect much; most things where time mattered came electronically instead. But some of the local shops advertised themselves on paper, and she’d already found a couple of good bargains by paying attention to their flyers. Maybe she would be lucky again today.

  Along with the bright-colored printed sheets, her box held a plain white envelope of peculiar size. The paper was strange, too: of coarser manufacture than she’d ever seen before. When she turned it over, she understood, for it had her address written not only in the language of the Race but also in the funny-looking characters the local Big Uglies used. Something had been pasted in one corner of the envelope: a small picture of a Tosevite in a lorry partly obscured by a rubber stamp with more Tosevite characters. Nesseref needed a moment to remember that was how the Big Uglies showed they’d paid a required postage fee.

  “Why would a Tosevite want to write me?” she asked Orbit. If the tsiongi knew, he wasn’t talking; his experience with all things Tosevite had been less than happy. Nesseref scratched him below his hearing diaphragm. “Well, let’s go up and find out.”

  Once she’d closed the door to the apartment behind her, she opened the envelope—awkwardly, because it wasn’t made quite like the ones the Race used. She tore the letter inside, but not badly. After she got it unfolded, she turned both eye turrets to the page.

  I greet you, superior female, she read. Mordechai Anielewicz here. I do not often try to write your language, so I am sure this will have many mistakes. I am sorry, and I hope you will excuse them. She had already noted and discounted a couple of misspellings and some strange turns of phrase, and had dismissed them—she couldn’t have written Anielewicz’s language at all.

  He went on, The reason I am writing to you is that I want you to find for me whatever sort of treat a beffel might like most. My hatchling brought one home, and it may have saved our lives, because it woke him when a fire started in the building where I lived. We lost our goods, but otherwise escaped without harm. We are very grateful to the beffel, as you will understand.

  Nesseref turned one eye turret toward Orbit; the tsiongi had gone to rest on the couch. “It is a good thing you do not understand what is in this letter,” she said. Orbit, fortunately, didn’t understand that, either.

  Whatever you find, please mail it to me at my new address, Anielewicz wrote. Here it is, in characters a Tosevite postal delivery male will understand. You have only to copy them. He’d printed the characters very plainly. Nesseref thought she could imitate them well enough to let a Big Ugly make sense of them—or she could scan them into her computer and print them out. Her Tosevite friend finished, Let me know what this costs and l will arrange to pay you back.

  Exchange between the Big Uglies and the Race was often problematical. That didn’t matter,
though, not here. Nesseref wouldn’t have expected repayment from a male or female of the Race for such a favor, and saw no reason to expect it from Anielewicz, either.

  She went to the computer and wrote, I greet you. I am glad to be able to greet you. How strange that an animal from Home should have saved you from the fire. How did it start? That question loomed large in her mind. The Race’s buildings were nearly fireproof, and were equipped with extinguishing systems in case a blaze did somehow break out. She’d seen, though, that the Big Uglies didn’t build to anything like the same standards.

  With this letter I will send a cloth animal full of ssrissp seeds, she continued. Befflem like the scent very much. You need not pay me back; it is my pleasure. I am glad you are safe. You write my language well. That was an overstatement, but she had been able to understand him.

  After printing the letter, she scrawled her name below it. “How strange,” she said to Orbit. One of the tsiongi’s eye turrets turned toward her He knew she was talking to him, but not why. She explained: “Who would have thought a Big Ugly would take charge of a beffel?”

  Orbit rolled onto his back and stuck his feet in the air. Maybe he followed more than she thought, for every line of his body said that he cared nothing for befflem—or for Big Uglies, either. He’d always ignored the rubbish collectors and other Tosevites he sometimes saw on the streets of the new town.

  Even so, Nesseref went on, “And who would have thought a beffel could—or would—save a Tosevite’s life?”

  Still on his back, the tsiongi opened his mouth in an enormous yawn. He probably would have been just as well pleased to learn that a lot of Big Uglies had burned, so long as that meant the beffel went up in flames with them. Nesseref understood the attitude, but didn’t sympathize with it.

  The next day, after she got back from the shuttlecraft base not far outside the new town, she visited the pet store where she’d bought Orbit. When she chose a ssrissp-seed animal, the female who ran the place remarked, “I hope you know that tsiongyu care nothing for these toys.”