Down to Earth by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

the beginning of the end for Jews there. Waiting for trouble to land wasn’t in his blood, or Naomi’s, either.
    Without leaving the RAF, he couldn’t go to Canada, and he couldn’t get out of the RAF. He didn’t think he could go to the United States, either, though the secretary at the American consulate hadn’t been quite so definite about it. “Have to find out,” he muttered under his breath.
    Suppose the Yanks said no? He didn’t want to suppose that. He wanted to suppose anything but that. The way his luck was running, though—the way Basil Roundbush and his pals were helping to make his luck run—he wouldn’t have bet on anything going his way.
    “Where else can I go?” Another question, this one addressed to the washed-out, smoke-stained sky. The few bits of Europe the Germans didn’t occupy were far more subservient to the
Reich
than the United Kingdom. The Soviet Union? He snorted again. That would be jumping back into the frying pan his parents had fled. The Russians might want him for what he knew about radars, but that didn’t mean they’d treat him like anything but a damn Jew.
    Goldfarb was about to climb aboard his bicycle to ride back to his flat in the officers’ housing and give Naomi the bad news when he paused. If all he wanted was to escape Britain, he was leaving more than half the world out of his calculations—the part the Lizards ran.
    “Well, it’s no wonder I didn’t think of that straight off,” he said, as if someone had asserted the opposite. He’d fought the Lizards even harder than he’d fought the Nazis. He’d gone into a Polish prison carrying a Sten gun to get his cousin Moishe Russie out of there, and he’d fought with everything he could get his hands on when the Race invaded England.
    And now he wanted to live under their rule?
    He shook his head. He didn’t want to. Living under the rule of the Race was one of the last things he wanted to do. But staying in Britain any longer was the very last thing he wanted to do.
    After a moment, he shook his head again. That wasn’t right. He might think it was when he was feeling down, but it wasn’t. Getting arrested in Marseille had been very instructive in that regard. He would much sooner have tried to spend the rest of his life in Britain than set foot in the Greater German
Reich
again for even ten minutes—which was about how long he thought he’d last.
    “And I’ve even got wires to pull,” he murmured. These days, Moishe Russie, far from languishing in a Lizard prison, sometimes advised the fleetlord himself on how to deal with troublesome Tosevites. His cousin’s influence had got him out of that Nazi gaol. Maybe it could get him out of Britain, too.
    He swung onto the bicycle and started to ride. As he did so, a new name welled up in his mind.
Palestine.
His cousin Moishe lived in Jerusalem. He’d gone there after the Nazis resentfully turned him loose. What would living in Palestine be like?
    Next year in Jerusalem.
For how many centuries had that been a Jewish prayer? Could he make it come true?
    An Austin-Healey almost ran him over. He shouted something unkind at the driver, who kept on going without a clue about the near miss. Goldfarb had had to make his way against the tide of anti-Semitism throughout his life. He’d conducted himself creditably in combat on the ground and in the air, and had the medal ribbons above his breast pocket to prove it. Against idiot drivers, though, the gods contended in vain.
    After his brush with death, Goldfarb realized he’d asked himself the wrong question. He thought he had a good chance of being able to move his family to Palestine if he couldn’t get to Canada or the USA. Which counted for more, freedom or simple survival?
    “How much freedom will I have ten years from now if I stay here?” he mused. “How much will my children have?” He didn’t like the answers he found for either of those questions. His parents had known enough to get out when the