“Yes, sir,” Groves said. Although he was as security-conscious as a man in his position had to be, he also had a well-honed curiosity—and how often did you get to pick the brain of the President of the United States? “How bad is it over in the Soviet Union, sir?”
“It’s not good,” FDR said. “Stalin told me that if I had any men to spare, he’d leave them under their own officers, leave them under my direct personal command if that was wanted, as long as they went over there and fought the Lizards.”
Groves’ lips puckered into a soundless whistle. That was a cry of pain if ever he’d heard one. “He’s not just worried, sir, he’s desperate. What did you tell him?”
“I answered no, of course,” Roosevelt said. “We have a few small differences with the Lizards on our own soil at the moment.” The high-pitched laugh so familiar from the radio and the newsreel screen filled the office. As it had so often in the past, it lifted Groves’ spirits—but only for a moment. The danger facing—filling—the United States was too great to be laughed off. The President continued, “For instance, the Lizards are pushing hard against Chicago, too. They have us cut in half along the Mississippi almost as badly as the North did with the South during the Civil War, to say nothing of the other areas they’ve carved out of the country. It hinders us every way you can think of, militarily and economically both.”
“Believe me, sir, I understand that,” Groves said, remembering how he’d had to bring the plutonium to Denver by way of Canada. “What can we do about it, though?”
“Fight ’em,” Roosevelt answered. “If they’re going to beat us, they’ll have to beat us, no other way. From what we hear from prisoners we’ve captured, they’ve taken over two other whole worlds before they attacked us, and they’ve ruled them for thousands of years. If we lose, General, if we lay down and give up, it’s for keeps. That’s why I came to talk about the atomic bomb: if I have any weapon I can use against those dastardly creatures, I want to know about it.”
“I’m sorry I can’t give you better news, sir.”
“So am I.” Roosevelt hunched his shoulders and let out another long sigh. His shirt and jacket both seemed a couple of sizes too big. The burden of the war was killing him; Groves realized with a jolt that that was literally true. He wondered where Vice President Henry Wallace was and what sort of shape he was in.
He couldn’t say that to the President. What he did say was, “The trick will be to get through the time between using the one bomb we can make fairly quickly and the rest, which will take longer.”
“Yes indeed,” FDR said. “I’d hoped that would be a shorter gap. As it is, we’ll have to be very careful picking the time when we use the first one. You’re right that we would be very vulnerable to whatever atomic response the Lizards make.”
Groves had seen pictures of the slag heap the Lizards had made of Washington, D.C. He heard men who’d seen it talk about the incongruous beauty of the tall cloud of dust and hot gas that had sprouted over the city like a gigantic, poisonous toadstool. He imagined such toadstools springing into being above other cities across the United States, across the world. A bit of Latin from his prep-school days came back to haunt him: they make a desert and they call it peace.
When he murmured that aloud, the President nodded and said, “Exactly so. And in a curious way, that may turn out to be one of our greatest strengths. Our Lizard prisoners insist to a man—well, to a Lizard—that they don’t want to use their atomic weapons here on a large scale. They say it would do too much damage to the planet: they want to control Earth and settle colonists on it, not just smash us by any means that come to hand.”
“Whereas, we can do anything we have to, to get rid of them,” Groves said. “Yes, sir, I see what you mean. Odd that we should have fewer constraints on our strategy than they do when they have the more powerful weapons.”
“That’s just what I mean,” Roosevelt agreed. “If we—humanity, that is—can say, ‘If we don’t get to keep our world, you won’t use it, either,’ that will give our scaly friends something new and interesting to think about. Their colonization fleet will be here in a generation’s time, and I gather it can’t be conveniently recalled. If the Lizards lay Earth to waste, the colonists are like somebody invited to a party at a house that’s just burnt to the ground: all dressed up with no place to go.”
“And no one to pass them a hose to put out the fire, either,” Groves observed.
That won a chuckle from FDR. “Nice to know you were paying attention when I made my Lend-Lease speech.”
Any military man who didn’t pay attention to what his commander-in-chief said was an idiot, as far as Groves was concerned. He replied, “The question is how far we can push that line of reasoning, sir. If the Lizards are faced with the prospect of either losing the war or hurting us as badly as we hurt them, which will they choose?”
“I don’t know,” Roosevelt said, which made Groves respect his honesty. “I tell you this, though, General: compared to the problems we have right now, I shouldn’t mind facing that one at all. I want you and your crew here to exert every effort possible to producing that first atomic bomb and then as many more as fast as you can. If we go down, I’d sooner go down with guns blazing than with our hands in the air.”
“Yes, sir, so would I,” Groves said. “We’ll do everything we can, sir.”
“I’m sure you will, General.” Roosevelt turned his wheelchair and rolled toward the door. He got to it and opened it before Groves could come around the desk to do the job for him. That made the old jaunty look come back to his haggard features, just for a moment. He liked to preserve as much independence as his circumstances allowed.
And in that, Groves thought, he was a good representative for the whole planet.
XVIII
Mordechai Anielewicz had never imagined he would be relieved that the Lizards had set up a rocket battery right outside Leczna, but he was. That gave him an excuse to stay indoors, which meant he didn’t have to see Zofia Klopotowski for a while.
“It’s not that I don’t like her, you understand,” he told Dr. Judah Ussishkin over the chessboard one night.
“No, it wouldn’t be that, would it?” Ussishkin’s voice was dry. He moved a knight. “She’s fond of you, too.”
Anielewicz’s face flamed as he studied the move. Zofia would have been more fond of him in direct proportion to any increased stamina he showed. He’d never imagined an affair with a woman who was more lecherous than he was; up till now, he’d always had to do the persuading. But Zofia would drop anything to get between the sheets—or under a wagon, or into the backseat of Dr. Ussishkin’s moribund Fiat.
Trying to keep his mind on the game, Mordechai pushed a pawn one square ahead. That kept the knight from taking a position in which, with one more move, it could fork his queen and a rook.
A beatific smile wreathed Ussishkin’s tired face. “Ah, my boy, you are learning,” he said. “Your defense has made good progress since we began to play. Soon, now, you will learn to put together an effective attack, and then you will be a player to be reckoned with.”
“Coming from you, Doctor, that’s a compliment.” Anielewicz wanted to be a player to be reckoned with, and he wanted to mount an effective attack. He hadn’t got to be head of the Jewish fighters in Lizard-occupied Poland by sitting back and waiting for things to happen; his instinct was to try to make them happen. Against Ussishkin, he hadn’t been able to, not yet.
He did his best; the midgame might have seen a machine gun rake the chessboard, so fast and furious did pieces fall. But when the exchanges were done, he found himself down a bishop and a pawn and facing another losing position. He tipped over his king.
“You make me work harder all the time,” Ussishkin said. “I got some plum brandy for stitching up a farmer’s cut hand yesterday. Will you take a glass with me?”
“Yes, thank you, but don’t ask me for another game of chess afterwards,” Mordechai said. “If I can’t beat you sobe
r, I’m sure I can’t beat you shikker.”
Ussishkin smiled as he poured. “Chess and brandy do not mix.” The brandy came from a bottle that had once, by its label, held vodka. People still had vodka these days, but it was homemade. For that matter, the plum brandy had to be homemade, too. Ussishkin lifted his glass in salute. “L’chaym.”
“L’chaym.” Anielewicz drank. The raw brandy charred all the way down; sweat sprang out on his face. “Phew! If that were any stronger, you wouldn’t need gasoline for your automobile.”
“Ah, but if I got it running, think how disappointed you and Zofia would be,” Ussishkin said. Mordechai blushed again. In the candlelight, the doctor didn’t notice, or pretended he didn’t He turned serious. “I know telling a young man to be careful is more often than not a waste of time, but I will try with you. Do be careful. If you make her pregnant, her father will not be pleased, which means the rest of the Poles here will not be pleased, either. We and they have gotten on as well as could be expected, all things considered. I would not like that to change.”
“No, neither would I,” Mordechai said. For one thing, Leczna held a good many more Poles than Jews; strife would not be to the minority’s advantage. For another, strife among the locals was liable to draw the Lizards’ unwelcome attention to the town. They already had more interest than Anielewicz liked, for they drew their food locally. He preferred staying in obscurity.
“You seem sensible, for one so young.” Ussishkin sipped his brandy again. He didn’t cough or flush or give any other sign he wasn’t drinking water. An aspiring engineer till the war, Anielewicz guessed he’d had his gullet plated with stainless steel. The doctor went on, “You should also remember—if she does conceive, the child would be raised a Catholic. And she might try to insist on your marrying her. I doubt”—now Ussishkin coughed, not from the plum brandy but to show he did more than doubt—“she would convert. Would you?”
“No.” Mordechai answered without hesitation. Before the Germans invaded, he hadn’t been pious; he’d lived in the secular world, not that of the shtetl and the yeshiva. But the Nazis didn’t care whether you were secular or not. They wanted to be rid of you any which way. More and more, he’d decided that if he was a Jew, he’d be a Jew. Turning Christian was not an option.
“Marriages of mixed religion are sometimes happy, but more often battlegrounds,” Ussishkin observed.
Mordechai didn’t want to marry Zofia Klopotowski. He wouldn’t have wanted to marry her if she were Jewish. He did, however, want to keep on making love with her, if not quite as often as she had in mind. If he did, she’d probably catch sooner or later, which would lead to the unpleasant consequences the doctor had outlined. He knocked back the rest of his brandy, wheezed, and said, “Life is never simple.”
“There I cannot argue with you. Death is simple; I have seen so much death these past few years that it seems very simple to me.” Ussishkin exhaled, a long, gusty breath that made candle flames flutter. Then he poured fresh plum brandy into his glass. “And if I start talking like a philosopher instead of a tired doctor, I must need to be more sober or more drunk.” He sipped. “You see my choice.”
“Oh, yes.” Mordechai put an edge of irony in his voice. He wondered how many years had rolled past since Judah Ussishkin last got truly drunk. Probably more than I’ve been alive, he thought.
Far off in the distance, he heard airplane engines, at first like gnats with deep voices but rapidly swelling to full-throated roars. Then roars, these harsh and abrupt, rose from the rocket battery the Lizards had stationed out beyond the beet fields.
Ussishkin’s face grew sad. “More death tonight, this time in the air.”
“Yes.” Anielewicz wondered how many German or Russian planes, how many young Germans or Russians, were falling out of the sky. Almost as many as the Lizards had shot at—their rockets were ungodly accurate. Flying a mission knowing you were likely to run into such took courage. Even if you were a Nazi, it took courage.
Somewhere not far away, a thunderclap announced a bomber’s return to earth. Dr. Ussishkin gulped down the second glass of brandy, then got himself a third. Anielewicz raised an eyebrow; maybe he did mean to get drunk. The physician said, “A pity the Lizards can slay with impunity.”
“Not with impunity. We—” Anielewicz shut up. One glass of brandy had led him to say one word too many. He didn’t know how much Ussishkin knew about his role as Jewish fighting leader; he’d carefully refrained from asking the doctor, for fear of giving away more than he learned. But Ussishkin had to be aware he was part of the resistance, for Anielewicz was not the first man who’d taken refuge here.
In a musing voice, as if speculating about an obscure and much disputed biblical text, Ussishkin said, “I wonder if anything could be done about those rockets without endangering the townsfolk.”
“Something could probably be done,” Anielewicz said; he’d studied the site with professional interest while the Lizards prepared it. “What would happen to the town afterwards is a different question.”
“The Lizards are not the hostage takers the Nazis were,” Ussishkin said, still musingly.
“I have the feeling they knew war only from books before they got here,” Mordechai answered. “A lot of the filthy stuff, no matter how well it works, doesn’t get into that kind of book.” He glanced sharply over at Ussishkin. “Or are you saying I should do something about that rocket installation?”
The doctor hesitated; he knew they were treading dangerous ground. At last he said, “I thought you might perhaps have some experience in such things. Was I wrong?”
“Yes—and no,” Anielewicz said. Sometimes you had to know when to drop your cover, too. “Playing games with the Lizards here is a lot different from what it’s like in a place like Warsaw. A lot more buildings to hide among there—a lot more people to hide among, too. Here their rocket launchers and everything they use for them are set up right out in the open—hard to get at without being spotted.”
“I don’t suppose the razor-wire circles around them make matters any easier, either,” Ussishkin murmured.
“They certainly don’t.” Anielewicz thought about going off in the night and trying to pot a few Lizards from long range with his Mauser. But the Lizards had gadgets that let them see in the dark the way cats wished they could. Even without those gadgets, sniping wouldn’t really hurt the effectiveness of the battery: the Lizards would just replace whatever males he managed to wound or kill.
Then, all of a sudden, he laughed out loud. “And what amuses you?” Judah Ussishkin asked. “Somehow I doubt it’s razor wire.”
“No, not razor wire,” Anielewicz admitted. “But I think I know how to get through it.” He explained. It didn’t take long.
By the time he was done, Ussishkin’s eyes were wide and staring. “This will work?” he demanded.
“They had enough trouble with it in Warsaw,” Mordechai said. “I don’t know just what it will do here, but it ought to do something.”
“You’re still lying low, aren’t you?” Ussishkin said, then answered his own question: “Yes, of course you are. And even if you weren’t, I’d be a better choice to approach Tadeusz Sobieski, anyhow. He’s known me all his life; when he was born, my Sarah delivered him. I’ll talk with him first thing in the morning. We’ll see if he can be as generous to the Lizards as you have in mind.”
With that, Anielewicz had to be content. He stayed inside Dr. Ussishkin’s house. Sarah wouldn’t let him help with the cooking or cleaning, so he read books and studied the chessboard. Every day, a horse-drawn wagon rattled down the street, carrying supplies from Sobieski the grocer to the Lizards at their rocket battery.
For several days, nothing happened. Then one bright, sunny afternoon, a time when neither the Luftwaffe nor the Red Air Force would be insane enough to put planes in the air over Poland, the battery launched all its rockets, one after another, roar! roar! roar! into the sky.
Farmworkers came running in from t
he fields. Mordechai felt like hugging himself with glee as he listened to scraps of their excited conversation: “The things have gone crazy!” “Shot off their rockets, then started shooting at each other!” “Never seen fireworks like them in all my born days!”
Dr. Ussishkin came into the house a few minutes later. “You were right, it seems,” he said to Anielewicz. “This was the day Tadeusz laced all the supplies with as much ginger as he had. They do have a strong reaction to the stuff, don’t they?”
“It’s more than a drunk for them; more like a drug,” Mordechai answered. “It makes them fast and nervous—hair-trigger, I guess you might say. Somebody must have imagined he heard engines or thought he saw something in one of their instruments, and that would have been plenty to touch them off.”
“I wonder what they’ll do now,” Ussishkin said. “Not the ones who went berserk out there today, but the higher-ranking ones who ordered the battery placed where it was.”
They didn’t have long to wait for their answer. At least one of the Lizards must have survived and radioed Lublin, for inside the hour several Lizard lorries from the urban center rolled through the streets of Leczna. When they left the next day, they took the rocket launchers with them. If the battery went up again, it went up somewhere else.
With the Lizards out of the neighborhood, Anielewicz had no more excuse for staying indoors all the time. Zofia Klopotowski waylaid him and dragged him into the bushes, or as near as made no difference. After his spell of celibacy, he kept up with her for a while, but then his ardor began to flag.
Just as he’d never imagined he’d have been relieved to see the Lizards erect their rocket battery in his own back yard, so to speak, he found equally surprising his halfhearted wish that they’d come back.
A disheveled soldier shouted frantically in Russian. When George Bagnall didn’t understand fast enough to suit him, he started to point his submachine gun at the grounded aviator.
In the Balance & Tilting the Balance Page 132