In the Balance w-1

by Harry Turtledove

  After a while, Larssen noticed he heard no more Lizard planes, though the rest of the fireworks display continued as gunners blazed away at their imaginations. “I think it’s over,” he said.

  “This time,” Barbara answered. He felt her tremble in his arms; for that matter, he felt pretty shaky himself. One by one, sirens fell silent. His wife went on, “I don’t know how much more of this I can handle.” Like a tight-stretched wire, her voice vibrated with hidden stress.

  “The English stuck it out,” he said, remembering Murrow again.

  “God knows how,” she said. “I don’t.” She squeezed him even tighter than she had when the bombs were falling.

  Being a thoroughly rational young man, he opened his mouth to explain to her how bad a beating London had taken, and for how long, and how the Lizards seemed, for the moment anyhow, to be much more selective than the Nazis about hitting civilian targets. But however thoroughly rational he was, the springy firmness of her body locked against his reminded him that he was young. Instead of explaining, he kissed her.

  Her mouth came open against his; she moaned a little, deep in her throat, whether from fear or desire or both commingled he never knew. She pressed the warm palm of her hand against his hair. He rolled on top of her, careful even then not to knock his head on the underside of the table. When at last their kiss broke, he whispered, “Shall we go in the bedroom?”

  “No,” she said, startling him. Then she giggled. “Let’s do it right here, on the floor. It’ll remind me of those times in the backseat of your old Chevy.”

  “All right,” he said, by then too eager to care much where. He shifted his weight. “Raise up, just a little.” When she moved, he undid the buttons on the back of her blouse and unhooked her bra with one hand. He hadn’t tried that since they were married, but the ease with which he accomplished it said his hand remembered the backseat of the old Chevy, too.

  He tossed the cotton blouse and bra aside. Presently, he said, “Lift up again.” He slowly slid her panties down her legs. Instead of pulling off her skirt, he hiked it up. That made her laugh again. She kissed him, long and slow. His hands wandered where they would.

  So did hers, unbuckling his belt, opening his trouser button, and, with several delicious pauses, lowering his zipper. He yanked down his pants and jockey shorts, just far enough. They were both laughing by then. Laughing still, he plunged into her, leaving behind for a little while the terror outside the blacked-out apartment.

  “I should have taken off my shirt,” he said when they were through. “Now it’s all sweaty.”

  “It? What about me?” Barbara brought both hands up to his chest, made as if to push him vertically away from her. He raised up on his elbows and knees-and this time did catch the back of his head on the bottom of the kitchen table, hard enough to see stars. He swore, first in English, then in the fragments of Norwegian he’d picked up from his grandfather.

  Barbara, whose maiden name was Baker and who had a couple of several-times-great-grandfathers who’d fought in the Revolution, always thought that was the funniest thing in the world. “You’re in no position to laugh now, wench,” he said, and tickled her conveniently bare ribs. The linoleum made moist squelching noises under her backside as she tried to wriggle away. That set him laughing, too. He grabbed her. They might have begun again, but the telephone chose that moment to ring.

  Larssen jerked up in surprise-he hadn’t thought the phone was working-and, gave himself another crack in the head. This time he started out swearing in Norwegian. Trousers flopping around his ankles, he hobbled into the bedroom. “Hello?” he growled, annoyed as if it were the caller’s fault he’d knocked his brains loose.

  “That is you, Jens? You are all right, you and Barbara?”

  The accented voice on the other end of the line threw ice water on his steam. “Yes, Dr. Fermi,” he said, and made a hasty grab for his pants. Of course Fermi could not see him, but he was embarrassed even to be talking to the Italian physicist, a dignified man if ever there was one, with trousers at half-mast. “We came through safe again, thank you.”

  “Safe?” Fermi echoed bitterly. “This is a word without meaning in the world today. I thought it had one when Laura and I came here four years ago, but I am wrong. But never mind that. Here is the reason I call: Szilard says-and he, is right-we must all meet tomorrow, and tomorrow early. Seven o’clock. He would say six if he could.”

  “I’ll be there,” Larssen promised. “What’s up?”

  “The Lizards, they are moving toward Chicago.”

  The words seemed to hang on the wire. “But they can’t,” Jens said, though he knew perfectly well they could. What the devil was there to stop them?

  Fermi understood what be meant. “You are right-they must not. If they come here, everything we do since we begin is lost. Too much time lost, time we have not to waste even against Germany, to say nothing of these creatures.”

  “Germany.” Larssen kept his voice flat. He’d been relieved past all measure when the atomic bomb that exploded above Chicago proved not to have a swastika painted on its casing. He once more had no idea how far along the Nazis were on their own bomb program. It would be a hell of a note, though, for humanity to have to depend on them alone for a weapon with which to do the Lizards some real damage. He wondered if he would sooner see Earth conquered than Adolf Hitler its savior. Just maybe, he thought. On the line, Fermi cleared his throat. That brought Larssen back to the here-and-now. “I’ll be there,” he said again.

  “Good,” Fermi said. “I go, then-many others to call while phones are working. I see you in the morning.” He hung up without saying good-bye. Larssen sat down on the bed, thinking hard. His pants slid back down to his ankles. He didn’t notice.

  His wife walked into the bedroom. She carried a candle to light her way. Outside, fire-engine sirens rang through the night as their crews fought to douse the fires the Lizards had started. “What’s up?” Barbara asked. She tossed her blouse and underwear into the wickerwork laundry hamper.

  “Big meeting tomorrow,” he answered, then repeated Fermi’s grim news.

  “That’s not good,” she said. She had no real notion of what he was working on under Stagg Field; she’d been studying medieval English literature when they met at Berkeley. But she knew the project was important. She asked, “How are we going to stop them?”

  “You come up with the answer to that one and you win the sixty-four dollars.”

  She smiled at that, then set the candle in a silver stick-a wedding present Larssen had never thought they’d use-on top of the dresser. With both hands, she took off her skirt and threw it at the hamper. She glanced over to him. “You still haven’t pulled up your pants.”

  “I did so,” he said, then had to add lamely, “They must have fallen down again.”

  “Well, shall I put on a nightgown now, or not?”

  He considered. The meeting in the morning was early, but if he poured down enough coffee, he’d get through it okay… and Barbara, naked in the candlelight, made him want to forget tomorrow anyhow. “Not,” he said.

  “Good. This time, take your shirt off, too.”

  Nothing was running the next morning when Larssen headed for the University of Chicago, not the buses, not the elevated, nothing. Only a few cars crawled cautiously along the street, inhibited not only by the gas shortage but also now by the risk of rubble.

  A rifle-toting air-raid warden in a British-style tin hat and a Civil Defense armband nodded to Jens as he walked past. The wardens had flowered like weeds after a drought in the panicky weeks following Pearl Harbor, then disappeared almost as quickly when their services proved unnecessary. But these days, they really were needed. This one looked as though he hadn’t slept in a month. His face was covered with graying stubble; an unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. But he was going on as best he could, like everyone else.

  An hour’s brisk walk got Larssen onto the university campus. While he supposed t
hat was good for him, he also gave some serious thought to trying to get his hands on a bicycle. The sooner the better, he decided, before everyone got the same idea and the price went sky-high. He didn’t have two hours to spare every day going back and forth to work.

  Eckhart Hall stood on the southeast corner of the Quadrangle. It was a new building, having opened in 1930. New or not, however, it didn’t boast air conditioning; the windows to the commons room were open, allowing fresh warm muggy air to replace the stale warm muggy air already inside. In deference to the hour, someone had put out a big pot of coffee and a tray of sweet rolls on a table set under those windows.

  Larssen made a beeline for that table, poured himself a paper cup of coffee, gulped it down hot and black, then grabbed a roll and got a second cup. With the caffeine jolt kicking in, he drank this one more slowly.

  But as he carried the coffee and sweet roll to a chair, he wondered how long such things would continue to exist in Chicago. The coffee was imported, of course, and so were some of the ingredients in the roll-the cinnamon, certainly. How long could commerce continue at even its wartime level with Lizard bases scattered over the United States like growing tumors?

  He nodded to Enrico Fermi, one of the two or three men who had beaten him to the meeting. The Italian physicist was wiping his mouth on a paper napkin (the pulp from which it was made was yet another import, Larssen thought). “We’d best enjoy life while we can,” the younger man said, and explained his reasoning.

  Fermi nodded. His receding hairline and oval face made him the literal embodiment of the word egghead, and also made him look older than his forty-one years. His smile now was sweet and rather sad. “My world has already turned upside down once of late. Another time seems somehow less distressing-and I doubt the Lizards concern themselves over my wife’s religion.”

  Brought up comfortably Lutheran in a land where one could fairly comfortably be anything, Jens had never much concerned himself with religion. But Laura Fermi had been a Jew in fascist Italy. The Italians were not rabid on the subject like the Germans, but they had made matters sticky enough for the Fermis to be glad to get out.

  “I wonder how far along this trail the Axis would be if Hitler only had the sense to leave some of his brightest people alone and let them work for him,” Larssen said.

  “I am not to any great degree a political man, but it has always seemed to me that fascism and sense do not mingle,” Fermi said. He raised his voice to address a newcomer: “Is this not so, Leo?”

  Leo Szilard was short and stocky, and wore a suit with padded shoulders which emphasized the fact. “What do you say, Enrico?” he asked. When Fermi repeated himself, he screwed up his broad, fleshy face in thought before answering, “Authoritarianism in any form makes for bad science, I believe, for its postulates are not rational. The Nazis are bad for this, yes, but anyone who thinks the American government-and hence its projects like our so-called Metallurgical Laboratory here-free of such preconceived idiocy is himself an idiot.”

  Larssen nodded vehemently at that. If Washington had really believed in what the Met Lab was doing, it would have poured in three times the research money and support from the day Einstein first suggested the violent release of atomic energy was possible.

  Nodding also helped Jens keep a straight face. Szilard was both brilliant and cultured, and expressed himself so. But the Hungarian scientist’s accent never failed to remind Larssen of Bela Lugosi’s in Dracula. He wondered if Szilard had ever seen the movie, but lacked the nerve to ask.

  More people drifted in, by ones and twos. Szilard looked pointedly at his watch every few minutes; his attitude declared that being bombarded by creatures from another planet wasn’t a good enough excuse for missing an important meeting.

  Finally, at about twenty-five after seven, he decided he could wait no more. He said loudly, “We have a question to face today: in light of the Lizards’ move on Chicago, what is our proper course? Shall we abandon our research here, and seek some new arid safer place to continue it, accepting all the loss of time and effort and probably also of material this would entail? Or shall we seek to persuade the government to defend this city with everything in its power for our sake, knowing the army may well fail and the Lizards succeed here as they have so many other places? Discussion, gentlemen?”

  Gerald Sebring said, “God knows I want an excuse to get out of Chicago-” That occasioned general laughter. Sebring had been planning to go do some research back in Berkeley in early June-and, incidentally, to marry another physicist’s secretary while he was out there. The arrival of the Lizards changed his plans, as it did so many others’ (come to that, Laura Fermi was still back in New York).

  Sebring waited for the chuckles to die down before he went on. “Everything we’re doing here, though, feels like it’s right on the point of coming to fruition. Isn’t that so, people? We’d lose a year, maybe more, if we had to pull up stakes now. I don’t think we can afford it. I don’t think the world can afford it.”

  Several people nodded. Larssen stuck up a hand. Leo Szilard saw him, aimed a stubby forefinger in his direction. He said, “Strikes me this doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition. We can go on with a lot of our work here at the same time as we get ready to pull out as fast as possible if we have to.” He found he had trouble baldly saying, if the Lizards take Chicago.

  “That is sensible, and practical for some of our projects,” Szilard agreed. “The chemical extraction of plutonium, for instance, though it requires the most delicate balances, can proceed elsewhere-not least because we have as yet very little plutonium to extract. Other lines of research, however, the pile you are assembling among them-”

  “Tearing it down now would be most unfortunate, the more so if that proves unnecessary,” Fermi said. “Our k factor on this one should be above 1.00 at least, perhaps as high as 1.04. To break off work just when we are at last on the point of achieving a sustained chain reaction, that would be very bad.” His wide, mobile mouth twisted to show just how bad he thought it would be.

  “Besides,” Sebring said, “where the heck are we likely to stay safe from the Lizards anyhow?” He was far from a handsome man, with a long face, heavy eyebrows, and buck teeth, but as usual spoke forcefully and seriously.

  Szilard said, “Are we agreed, then, that while, as Jens says, we take what precautions we can, we ought to stay here in Chicago as long as that remains possible?” No one spoke. Szilard clicked his tongue between his teeth. When he continued, he sounded angry: “We are not authoritarians here. Anyone who thinks leaving wiser, tell us why this is so. Persuade us if you can-if you prove right, you will have done us great service.” Arthur Compton, who was in charge of the Metallurgical Laboratory, said, “I think Sebring put it best, Leo: where can we run that the Lizards will not follow?”

  Again, no one disagreed. That was not because Compton headed the project, nor because of his formidable physical presence-he was tall and lean and sternly handsome, and looked more like a Barrymore than the Nobel prize-winning physicist he was. But the rest of the talented crew in the commons room were far too independent to follow a leader simply because he was the leader. Here, though, they had all reached the same conclusion.

  Szilard saw that. He said, “If it is decided, then, that Chicago must be held, we must convince the army of the importance of this as well.”

  “They will fight to hold Chicago anyhow,” Compton said. “It is the hinge upon which the United States pivots, and they know it.”

  “It is more important than that,” Fermi said quietly. “With what we do here, Chicago is the hinge on which the world pivots, and the army, it does not know that. We must send someone to tell them.”

  “We must send some two,” Szilard said, and all at once Larssen was certain he and Fermi had planned their strategy together ahead of time. “We must send two, and separately, in case one meets with misfortune along the way. The war is here among us now; this can happen.”

  Sure enough,
Fermi spoke up again, as if with the next line of dialogue in an ancient Greek play: “We should send also native-born Americans; officers are more likely to hear them with attention than some foreigner, some enemy alien who is not fully to be trusted even now when the Lizards, true aliens, have come.”

  Larssen was nodding, impressed by Fermi’s logic at the same time as he regretted the truths that underlay it, when Gerald Sebring raised a hand and said, “I’ll go.”

  “So will I,” Larssen heard himself saying. He blinked in surprise; he hadn’t known he was going to volunteer until the words were out of his mouth. But speaking up turned out to make sense, even to him: “Walt Zinn can ride herd, on the gang of hooligans working on the pile.”

  Zinn nodded. “As long as I can keep ’em out of jail, I’ll get along all right.” He gave away his Canadian origins by saying oat for out.

  “Then it is settled.” Szilard rubbed his hands in satisfaction. Fermi also looked pleased. Szilard went on, “You will leave as soon as possible. One of you will go by car-Larssen, that will be you, I think. Gerald, you will take the train. I hope both of you get to Washington safe and sound-and I hope Washington will still be in human hands when you arrive.”

  That sent a nasty chill through Larssen. He hadn’t imagined Lizards marching up Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House. But if they could move on Chicago, they could surely move on Washington. He wondered if the invaders from another world had figured out it was the capital of the United States.

  Looking at Szilard’s smug expression, he realized the Hungarian had gotten exactly what he wanted. For all his devotion to democracy, Szilard had maneuvered the meeting like a Chicago wardheeler. Larssen chuckled. Well, if that wasn’t democracy, what was it? A question better left unanswered in Chicago, perhaps.

  The chuckle turned into a guffaw that Larssen fortunately managed to strangle before it got loose. If you played with the letters in Dr. Szilard’s name just a little… Larssen wondered if Szilard himself had noticed, and how one said lizard in Magyar.