“Is it all right, Alicia?” he asked her. “I know this is a lot to put on a little girl, but we have to, you see, or there won’t be any Jews at all anymore.”

“It’s all right, Father, it really is,” she answered. “It-surprised me. I don’t really know if I like it yet, but it’s all right.” She nodded in a slow, hesitant way that said she thought she meant it but wasn’t quite sure.

That sufficed for Heinrich Gimpel. Finding out you were a Jew in the heart of the National Socialist Germanic Empire was not something anyone, child or adult, could fully take in at a moment’s notice. A beginning of acceptance was as much as he could hope for. Alicia had given him that.

His daughter and Anna Stutzman yawned together, then giggled at each other. Susanna Weiss got up, grabbed her handbag, walked over to Alicia, and kissed her on the cheek. “Welcome to your bigger family, dear. We’re glad to have you.” She turned to Heinrich. “I’d better get home. I have an early class tomorrow morning.”

“We ought to go, too,” Esther Stutzman said. “Either that or we’ll wait till Anna falls asleep-which shouldn’t be more than about another thirty seconds-and bundle her into the broom closet.” Her daughter let out an indignant sniff.

Lise and Heinrich passed out coats. The friends stood gossiping on the front porch for a last couple of minutes. As they chattered, a brightly lit police van rolled by. Alicia gasped in horror and tried to bolt inside. Her father held her arm until the van turned a comer and disappeared. “Everything’s fine, little one,” he said. “They know of us only if we give ourselves away. Do you understand?”

“I-think so, Father.”

“Good.”

The Stutzmans and Susanna walked off toward the bus stop. The Gimpels went back inside. Lise went with Alicia to get her ready for bed. Heinrich rinsed off the dishes and started loading them into the washer. He was still busy when Alicia came out for a good night kiss. Usually that was just part of the nighttime routine; tonight it felt special.

He said, “You don’t have to be frightened every second, darling. If you show you’re afraid, people will start to wonder what you have to be afraid of. Keep on being your own sweet self and no one will ever suspect a thing.”

“I’ll try, Papa.” When she hugged him, she clung for a few extra seconds. He squeezed her, then ran his hand through her hair. “Good night,” she said, and hurried away.

Lise walked into the kitchen a couple of minutes later. She dragged in a chair from the dining room, sat down, and waited till the sink was empty and the washer full. Then, as the machine started to chum, she got up and gave him a long, slow hug. “And so the tale gets told once more,” she said.

As he had with his daughter, Heinrich held on to his wife. “And so we try to go on for another generation,” he said. “We’ve outlasted so much. God willing, we’ll outlast the Nazis, too.”

“And of course, now that the tale is told, the risk we’ll get caught also goes up,” Lise said. “You did well there, keeping her from running from the police van.”

“Couldn’t have that,” Gimpel agreed. “But she’ll be nervous for a while now, and she’s so young.” He shook his head. “Strange how our greatest danger lies in making sure our kind goes on. No one would ever suspect you or me.”

“Why else buy pork?”

“I know.” Gimpel took off his glasses, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, set the spectacles back on his nose. “Why else do all the other things we do to seem like perfect Germans? I can quote Mein Kampf more easily than Scripture. But it’s not so easy for a child. And we have two more yet to go.” He let out a long, worn sigh, hugged Lise again. “I’m so tired.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s easier for me, staying home with the Kinder like a proper Hausfrau. But you have to wear the mask every day at your office.”

“It’s either pretend to others I’m not a Jew or pack it in and pretend the same thing to myself. I’m not ready for that. I remember too well.” He thought again of the hidden yellowing photographs from the east. “We will go on, in spite of everything.”

Lise yawned. “Right now, I think I’m going on to bed.”

“I’m right behind you. Oh-speaking of the office, on the way home today Willi said he admired how content I was here and now.”

“Good,” Lise said at once. “If you must wear the mask, wear it well.”

“I suppose so. He also asked if we were busy tonight. I told him yes, since we were, but we’ll be going over there one evening soon.”

“I’ll arrange for my sister to stay with the girls,” Lise said. “Let’s give Alicia a little more time to get used to things before we take her out.”

“Sensible. You generally are, though.”

“Ha!” Lise said darkly. “I’d better be. So bad you.”

“I know.” He chuckled. “Besides,, we’ll be able to play more bridge.”

“That’s true.” Lise also laughed. Both of them were long used to the strangeness of having good friends who, if they knew the truth, might well want to send them to an extermination camp. Heinrich was looking forward to getting together with Willi and Erika Dorsch for an evening of talk and bridge., Within the limits of his upbringing, Willi was a good fellow.

Gimpel pondered the limits of his own upbringing, which were a good deal narrower than Willi Dorsch’s. In one way, telling Alicia of her heritage was transcending those limits. In another, it was forcing them on her as well. In still another-He gave up the regress before he got lost in it. “Didn’t you say something about bed?”

“You’re the one who’s been standing here talking,” Lise said.

“Let’s go.”

THE R STRAIN

Although I’m Jewish, I’m not particularly observant: I eat pork, for instance. One morning, after a breakfast of bacon and eggs, I thought, That’s so good, I wish it were kosher. “The R Strain” followed shortly thereafter. Curiously, after Stan Schmidt bought it but before it saw print, there was a story in Science News about the babirusa, a Southeast Asian pig that actually does more or less chew its cud. One of the scientists who was working on the babirusa saw the story in Analog and thought her work had given me the idea. It didn’t, but who knows? It might have.

Even in Los Angeles, it is out of the ordinary for the star of a press conference to be a small pink pig. Peter Delahanty had been anxious about how Lionel would react to the SV lights, but the shoat was doing just what he’d hoped: ignoring them. He was happily feeding his face from a plastic washtub full of potatoes and carrots. Delahanty beamed at him like a proud father, which, as he headed Genetic Enterprises, in a way he was.

Still cameras flashed and stereovision cameras whirred, but there were, after all, only so many pictures to be taken of a pig. After a while, Delahanty took the tub away from Lionel and put it on a table by the lectern.

Following it with his eyes, Lionel let out a grunt of piggy indignation. “Sorry, pal,” Delahanty told him. “Maybe later.” As if he understood, Lionel settled back-he really was a good-natured beast. His throat and jaws began to work.

More flashes went off. “That’s what you came to see, ladies and gentlemen,” Delahanty said. “Lionel’s one of Genetic Enterprises’ new R strain of pigs-R for ruminant, of course. In other words, unlike ordinary, unimproved swine, he chews his cud.”

“Just why is that an improvement?” asked a lady reporter in the second row.

“It makes him and his brothers and sisters more efficient food processors. Ruminant animals-cattle, sheep, goats, deer, antelope are some of the ones occurring in nature-partially digest food, then store and regurgitate it for rechewing and more complete digestion. They get more out of a given amount of food than non-ruminants. Lionel will gain weight on less feed or lower-quality feed than an unimproved pig.”