In the Balance & Tilting the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  He was sure he was dead. After what seemed an age but had to have been only a heartbeat, the Lizard pointed the muzzle of its rifle to the floor, gestured with its free hand: get your wounded buddy out of here.

  Sometimes—far from always—the Germans had extended that courtesy in France; sometimes—just as far from always—the Americans returned it. Daniels never expected to encounter it from a thing that looked like one of the monsters in the serials his ballplayers liked to watch.

  “Obliged,” he told the Lizard, though he knew it couldn’t understand. Then he raised his voice to the men hiding somewhere in the ruins: “Don’t shoot this one, fellas! He’s all right.”

  Staggering under the weight of the soldier he’d lifted, he carried him back to the wall behind which he’d laid the other wounded man. At the same time, the Lizard slowly backed out of the factory building. Nobody fired at it.

  The tiny truce held for perhaps half a minute. Mutt rolled the second injured soldier off his shoulder, discovered he wasn’t breathing. He grabbed the fellow’s wrist; his finger found the spot just on the thumb side of the tendons. No pulse. The soldier’s arm flopped limply when he let it fall. “Aah, shit,” he said dully. The strange moment of comradeship had gone for nothing, lost in the waste that was war.

  More Lizards dashed into the building. They fired their automatic weapons from the hip, not aiming at anything in particular but making the Americans keep their heads down. Only a couple of rifle rounds answered them. The fellow who shoots first has the edge, Daniels thought. He’d learned that in the trenches, and it still seemed true.

  All at once, he realized that with Schneider dead, he was the senior noncom present. He’d been in charge of more men than these as a manager but the stakes hadn’t been so high—nobody shot you for hanging a curve ball no matter how much people talked about it

  The first wounded man he d dragged to cover was still very much alive. “Fall back!” Mutt yelled He started crawling away, dragging the hurt soldier after him. Stand up now and you’d stop one of those sprayed bullets just as sure as sunrise.

  A beam crashed down behind him. Flames crackled, then roared at his back He tried to crawl faster. “Over here!” somebody shouted.

  He changed direction. Hands reached out to help pull the wounded man behind a file cabinet that, between its metal and the reams of paper spilling from it, probably could have stopped a Lizard tank round. Mutt got in back of it himself and lay there, panting like a dog on a Mississippi summer day.

  “Smitty still alive up there?” asked the soldier already under cover.

  Daniels shook his head. “For all I know, he could’ve been dead when I picked him up. Goddamn shame.” He didn’t say anything about the Lizard who’d refrained from shooting him. He had the strange feeling that mentioning it would take the magic away, as if it were the seventh inning of a building no-hitter.

  The other soldier—his name was Buck Risberg—pointed and said, “The fire’s holding the Lizards back.”

  “Good to know somethin’ can.” Daniels made a sour face. He was turning cynical fast in this fight I’m gettin’ old, he thought, and then, Gettin’? Hell, I am old. But he was also in command. He dragged his mind back to what needed doing right now. “Get Hank here out of this mess,” he told Risberg. “There ought to be a medic a couple blocks north o’here, less’n the Lizards drove him out by now. But you gotta try.”

  “Okay, Mutt.” Half dragging, half carrying the now-unconscious Hank, Risberg made his way out of the firing line. The burning beam helped light his way through the gloom, and also provided a barrier the Lizards hesitated to cross.

  Shells screamed down on the factory and the street outside: not from Lizard tank cannon, these, but out of the west from American batteries still in place on Stolp’s Island in the middle of the Fox River. The gunners were bringing the fire right down onto the heads of their own men in the hope of hitting the enemy, too. Daniels admired their aggressiveness, and wished he weren’t on the receiving end of it

  The incoming artillery made the Lizards who were poking their snouts into the factory building stop shooting and hunker down. At least, that was what Mutt assumed they were doing—it was certainly what he was doing himself. But all too soon, even in the midst of the barrage, they started up again with nasty three and four-bullet bursts that would chew a man to rags. Mutt felt as inadequate with the Springfield jammed against his shoulder as Pappy Daniels must have if he’d ever tried to fight Yankees toting Henry repeaters with his single-shot, muzzle-loading rifle musket.

  Then from in back of him came a long, ripping burst of fire that made him wonder for a dreadful instant how the Lizards had got round to his rear. But not only did the Lizards usually have better fire discipline than that, the weapon did not sound like one of theirs. When Daniels recognized it, he yelled, “You with the tommy gun! Get your ass up here!”

  A minute later, a soldier flopped down beside him. “Where they at, Corporal?” he asked.

  Mutt pointed. “Right over that way; leastways, that’s where they shot from last.”

  The tommy gun chattered. The fellow with it—not a man from Daniels unit—went through a fifty-round drum as if he were going to have to pay for all the rounds he didn’t fire off. Another submachine gun opened up behind Daniels and to his left. Grinning at Mutt’s surprised expression, the soldier said, “Our whole platoon cathes ’em, Corporal. We got enough firepower to make these scaly sons of bitches think twice about messin’ with us.”

  Daniels started to say, “That’s crazy,” but maybe it wasn’t. Out in open country it would have been; a tommy gun fired a.45-caliber pistol cartridge, and was accurate out to only a couple of hundred yards. But in street fighting or building-to-building combat like this, volume of fire counted for a lot more than accuracy. Since the U.S.A. couldn’t match the Lizards’ automatic rifles, submachine guns were probably the next best thing.

  So instead of cussing the high command for a worthless brainstorm, Mutt said, “Yeah, some of the German assault troops in France carried those damn things, too. I didn’t much care to go up against ’em, either.”

  The tommy-gunner turned his head. “You were Over There, were you? I reckon this is worse.”

  Daniels thought about it. “Yeah, probably. Not that that was any fun, mind you, but it’s always easier bein’ on the long end of the stick. And this here fightin’ in factories—I didn’t used to think they made anything worse’n trenches, but I’m comin’ round to believe I was wrong.”

  An airplane roared by, just above rooftop height. “Ours,” the tommy-gunner said in glad surprise. Daniels shared it; American planes were all too few these days. The aircraft pounded the advancing Lizards for a few seconds, machine guns bellowing. Then came another bellow, an almost. solid wall of noise, from the ground. The airplane’s engine stopped screaming; the machine guns cut off at the same time. The plane crashed with a boom that would have broken windows had Aurora had any windows left to break.

  “Damn!” the tommy-gunner and Daniels said together. Mutt added, “I hope he came down on top of a whole pile of the baatards.”

  “Yeah,” said the soldier with the Thompson gun. “I just wish he could have got away so he’d be able to hit ‘em again tomorrow.” Daniels nodded; he sometimes thought no American ever lived to fly more than one mission against the Lizards. Using up pilots as fast as planes was a losing way to do business.

  The tommy-gunner squeezed off a burst in the direction of the Lizards. He said, “Corporal, I’ll cover you if you want to slide away from here. You ain’t much good in this fight with just your old Springfield.”

  Had he left off the second sentence, Daniels might have taken him up on the offer. But he discovered he had pride left to flick. He could think of himself as old and he’d already thought of his rifle as antiquated, but he wasn’t about to let this punk kid tell him he couldn’t cut it “I’ll stick,” he said shortly.

  “However you want it,” the tommy-gu
nner said, shrugging. Mutt got the idea that only his stripes kept the kid from tacking Pop onto the end of the sentence.

  The Lizards skittered forward, firing as they came. The flames that leapt from the burning beam lit them up but also helped screen their movements. Daniels snapped off a shot. A skitter turned into a tumble. He raised a Rebel yell his grandpappy would have been proud of. “No good in a fight, am I?” The soldier beside him looked innocent “Did I say something?”

  The kid got up on one knee to fire, then went over backward with almost the grace of a circus acrobat. Something hot and wet splashed Daniels. The flickering firelight showed red-streaked gray on the back of his hand. He violently wiped it against his trouser leg. “Brains,” he said, shuddering. When he glanced over at the tommy-gunner, the top of the youngster’s head was clipped off, as if by a hatchet. A spreading pool of blood reached toward him.

  He didn’t have time to be as sick as he would have liked. As far as he could tell, he was the forwardmost American still fighting. He fired at one Lizard—a miss, he thought, but he made the little monster duck—then whirled through a quarter-circle to shoot at another.

  He had no idea what, if anything, that second round did. He did know that if he had to keep using a bolt-action rifle against what were in essence machine guns, he was going to get his ass killed—and the rest of him with it. He snatched up the tommy gun. The kid lying dead beside him was carrying another couple of drums of ammo, so he could use it for a while.

  It bucked against his shoulder like an ornery horse when he opened up. He sprayed bullets hose-fashion out in front of him. The prolonged muzzle flash nearly blinded him before he dropped back behind cover. Hell of-a way to fight, he thought—lay down a lot of lead and hope the bad guys walk into it

  It was, he realized, a hell of a place to fight, too: gloom-filled ruins lit only by fires and muzzle flashes, echoing with gunshots and screams, the air thick with smoke and the smells of sweat and blood and fear.

  He nodded. If this wasn’t hell, what the hell was it?

  * *

  The hospital ship 13th Emperor Poropss—the Merciful should have been a taste of Home for Ussmak. And so, in a way, it was: it was heated to a decent temperature; the light seemed right, not the slightly too blue glare that lit Tosev’s third world, and, best of all, no Big Uglies were trying to kill him at the moment. Even the food was better than the processed slop he ate in the field. He should have been happy.

  Had he felt more like himself, he might have been.

  But when the Big Uglies blew the turret off his landcruiser, he’d bailed out of the driver’s escape hatch into a particularly radioactive patch of mud. The detectors had chattered maniacally when males in protective suits got near him. And so here he was, being repaired so he could return to action and let the Tosevites figure out still more ways to turn him into overcooked chopped meat

  Radiation sickness had left him too nauseated to enjoy the good hospital food at first By the time that subsided, his treatment was making him sick. He’d had a whole-blood-system transfusion and a cell transplant to replace his damaged blood-producing glands. The immunity-suppressing drugs and the others that resuppressed triggered oncogenes made him sicker than the radiation had. He’d spent a good many days being a very unhappy male indeed.

  Now his body was beginning to feel as if it might actually be part of the Race again. His spirit, however, still struggled against the most insidious hospital ailment of all: boredom. He’d done all the reading, played all the computer simulations he could stand. He wanted to go back to the real world again, even if it was Tosev 3 full of large ugly aliens with large ugly cannon and mines and other unpleasant tools.

  Yet at the same time he dreaded going back. They’d just make him part of another patched-together landeruiser crew, another piece of a puzzle forced into a place where he did not quite fit. He’d already had two crews killed around him. Could he withstand that a third time and stay sane? Or would he die with this next group? That would solve his problems, but not in a way he cared for.

  An orderly shuffled by, pushing a broom. Like a lot of the males who did such lowly work, he had green rings painted on his arms to show he was being punished for a breach of discipline. Ussmak idly wondered what he’d done. These days, idle wondering was about the only sort in which Ussmak indulged.

  The orderly paused in his endless round of sweeping, turned one eye toward Ussmak. “I’ve seen males who looked happier, friend,” he remarked.

  “So?” Ussmak said. “Last I heard, the fleetlord hadn’t ordered everybody to be happy all the time.”

  “You’re a funny one, friend, you are.” The orderly’s mouth fell open. The two males were alone in Ussmak’s chamber. All the same, the orderly swiveled his eyes in all directions before he spoke again: “You want to be happy for a while, friend?”

  Ussmak snorted. “How can you make me be happy?” Except by leaving, he added to himself. If this petty deviationist kept bothering him, he’d say it out loud.

  The orderly’s eyes swiveled again. His voice fell to a dramatic half-whisper: “Got what you need right here, friend, you bet I do.”

  “What?” Ussmak said scornfully. “Cold sleep and a starship ride back Home? And it’s right there in a beltpouch, is it? Tell me another one.” He nodded slightly while opening his own mouth: a sarcastic laugh.

  But he did not faze the other male. “What I’ve got, friend, is better than a trip Home, and I’ll give it to you if you want it.”

  “Nothing is better than a trip Home,” Ussmak said with conviction. Still, the fast-talking Orderly stirred his curiosity. That didn’t take much; in the middle of stultifyingly dull hospital routine, anything different sufficed to stir his curiosity. So he asked, “What do you have in there, anyhow?”

  The orderly looked all around again; Ussmak wondered if he expected a corrector to leap out of the wall and bring new charges against him. After that latest survey, he took a small plastic vial out of one of the pouches he wore, brought it over to Ussmak. It was filled with finely ground yellowbrown powder. “Some of this is what you need.”

  “Some of what?” Ussmak had guessed the male was somehow absconding with medications, but he’d never seen a medication that resembled this stuff.

  “You’ll fmd out, friend. This stuff makes you forgive the Big Uglies for a whole lot of things, yes it does.”

  Nothing, Ussmak thought, could make him forgive the Big Uglies either for the miserable world they inhabited or for killing his friends and landcruiser teammates. But he watched as the orderly undid the top of the vial, poured a little powder into the palm of his other hand. He held that hand up to Ussmak’s snout. “Go ahead, friend. Taste it—quick, before somebody sees.”

  Ussmak wondered again why the orderly was sporting green stripes—had he poisoned someone with the stuff? All at once, he didn’t care. The doctors had been doing their level best to poison him, after all. He sniffed at the powder. The smell startled him—sweet, spicy…tempting was the word that sprang to mind. Of itself, his tongue flicked out and licked the fine grains off the scales of the orderly’s hand.

  The taste was like nothing he’d known before. The powder bit at his tongue, as if it had sharp little teeth of its own. Then the flavor filled his whole mouth; after a moment, it seemed to fill his whole brain as well. He felt warm and brilliant and powerful, as if he were the fleetlord and at the same time in the bosom of the Race’s deceased Emperors. He wanted to go out, hop into a landcruiser—by himself, for he felt capable of driving, gunning, and commanding all at the same time—and blast Big Uglies off their planet so the Race could settle here as it should. Getting rid of the Tosevites seemed as easy as saying, “It shall be done.”

  “You like that, friend?” the orderly asked, his voice sly. He put the vial of powder back into the pouch.

  Ussmak’s eyes followed it all the way. “I like that!” he said.

  The orderly laughed again—he really was a funny fellow, Uss
mak thought. He said, “Figured you would. Glad you found out it doesn’t have to be a mope in here.” He made a few haphazard swipes with his broom, then went out into the hallway to clean the next healing cubicle.

  Ussmak reveled in the strength and might the Tosevite—herb, he supposed it was—had given him. He desperately wanted to be out and doing, not cooped up here as if he were being fattened for the stewpot He craved action, danger, complication…for a while.

  Then the feeling of invincibility started to fade. The harder he clung to it, the more it slipped between his fingers. Finally, too soon, it was gone, leaving behind the melancholy awareness that Ussmak was only himself (all the more melancholy because he so vividly remembered how he’d felt before) and a craving to know that strength and certainty once more.

  Dull hospital routine was all the duller when set against that brief, bright memory. The day advanced on leaden feet. Even meals, till now the high points on Ussmak’s schedule, seemed hardly worth bothering over. The orderly who took away Ussmak’s tray—not the same male who’d given him his moments of delight—made disapproving noises when he found half the food uneaten.

  Ussmak slept poorly that night. He woke up before the daytime bright lights in the ceiling went on. He lay tossing in the gloom, imagining time falling off a clock until at last the moment for the broom-pushing orderly to return arrived.

  When that moment came, however, he was not in his cubicle. The doctors had trundled him into a lab for another in a series of metabolic and circulatory tests. Before he tasted the Tosevite powder, he hadn’t minded being poked, prodded, and visualized by ultrasound and X-rays. None of it hurt very much, and it was more interesting than sitting around all day like a long-unexamined document in a computer storage file.

  Today, though, he furiously resented the tests. He tried to get the technicians to hurry through them, snapped when they sometimes couldn’t, and had them snapping back at him. “I’m sorry, landcruiser driver Ussmak,” one of the males said. “I didn’t realize you had an appointment with the fleetlord this forenoon.”