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.

Seeing everyone in the apartment having a good time and no one paying any attention to him, Pancer let out a plaintive squeak. Heinrich Anielewicz patted his own lap. The beffel jumped up into it and rubbed himself against the young Big Ugly as he might have against a member of the Race.

Maybe the alcohol had something to do with the solemnity with which Nesseref spoke: “Watching something like that makes me hope our two species really will be able to live in peace for many years to come.”

“Alevai,” Mordechai Anielewicz said in his language. As he had before, he translated for her once more: “May it be so.”

“May it be so,” Nesseref agreed, and then tried the Tosevite word: “Alevai.” Maybe it was the alcohol, but she had no trouble saying it at all.