In the Balance w-1

by Harry Turtledove

  More shells rained down; more of the little rolling mines scattered from them. A couple went off with short, unimpressive cracks, hardly louder than the screams that followed them, “They keep throwin’ those at us, we ain’t gonna be able to move around at all, Sergeant Daniels,” Donlan said.

  “That’s the idea, son,” Mutt said dryly. “They pound on us for a while, freeze us in place like this, then they bring in the tanks and take the ground away from us. If they had more tanks, they’d’ve finished kickin’ our butts a long time ago.”

  Donlan-hadn’t seen close-up action yet, he’d joined the squad during the retreat from Aurora. He said, “How can those things beat on us like this? They ain’t even human.”

  “One of the things you better understand right quick, kid, is that a bullet or a shell, it don’t care who shot it or who gets in the way,” Daniels said. “Besides, the Lizards got plenty o’ balls of their own. I know the radio keeps callin’ ’em ‘push-button soldiers’ to make it sound like all their gadgets is what’s whuppin’ us and keep the civilians cheerful, but don’t let anybody tell you they can’t fight.”

  The artillery barrage went on and on. Mutt endured it, as he’d endured similar poundings in France. In a way, France had been worse. Each of the Lizards’ shells was a lot more deadly than the ones the Boches had thrown, but the Germans had thrown a lot of shells, so it sometimes seemed whole steel mills were falling out of the sky on top of the American trenches. Men would go mad from that-shell shock, they called it. This bombardment was more likely to kill you, but it probably wouldn’t drive you nuts.

  Through a pause in the shelling, Daniels heard running feet behind him. He swung around with his tommy gun-maybe the Lizards had used their whirligig flying machines to land troops behind human lines again.

  But it wasn’t a Lizard: it was a gray-haired colored fellow in blue jeans and a beat-up overcoat running along Chicago Avenue with a big wicker basket under one arm. A couple of shells burst perilously close to him. He yelped and jumped into the trench with Daniels and Donlan.

  Mutt looked at him. “Boy, you are one crazy nigger, runnin’ around in the open with that shit fallin’ all around you.”

  He didn’t mean anything particularly bad by his words; in Mississippi, he was used to talking to Negroes that way. But this wasn’t Mississippi, and the colored man glared at him before answering, “I’m not a boy and I’m not a nigger, but I guess maybe I am crazy if I thought I could bring some soldiers fried chicken without getting myself called names.”

  Mutt opened his mouth, closed it again. He didn’t know what to do. He’d hardly ever had a Negro talk back to him, not even up here in the North. Smart Negroes knew their place… but a smart Negro wouldn’t have braved shellfire to bring him food. Braved was the word, too; Daniels didn’t want to be anywhere but here under cover.

  “I think maybe I’ll shut the fuck up,” he remarked to nobody in particular. He started to address the black man directly, but found himself brought up short-what did he call him? Boy wouldn’t do it, and Uncle wasn’t likely to improve matters, either. He couldn’t bring himself to say Mister. He tried something else: “Friend, I do thank you.”

  “I’m no friend of yours,” the Negro said. He might have added a couple of choice phrases himself, but he had an overcoat and his basket, of chicken to set against Daniels’ stripes and tommy gun. And Mutt had, after a fashion, apologized. The colored man sighed and shook his head. “What the hell’s the use? Here, come on, feed yourselves.”

  The chicken was greasy, the baked potatoes that went with it cold and savorless without salt or butter. Daniels wolfed everything down anyhow. “You gotta eat when you get the chance,” he told Kevin Donlan, “on account of you ain’t gonna get the chance as often as you want to.”

  “You bet, Sarge.” The kid wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He took his own tack in talking to the Negro: “That was great, Colonel. A real lifesaver.”

  “Colonel?” The colored fellow spat in the dirt of the trench.

  “You know damn well I’m not a colonel. Why don’t you just call me by my name? I’m Charlie Sanders, and you could have found it out by askin’.”

  “Charlie, that was good chicken,” Mutt said solemnly “I’m obliged.”

  “Huh,” Sanders said. Then he scrambled up out of the trench and dashed away toward the next couple of foxholes maybe thirty yards off.

  “Watch out for them little mine things the Lizard shells throw around,” Daniels yelled after him. He turned back to Donlan. “Hope he makes it. He keeps goin’ all around like that, though, his number’s gonna come up pretty damn quick.”

  “Yeah.” Donlan peered over in the direction Charlie Sanders had run. “That takes guts. He doesn’t even have a gun. I didn’t think niggers had guts like that.”

  “You’re under shellfire, son, it don’t matter if you’ve got a gun,” Mutt answered. But that wasn’t the point, and he knew it. After a while, he went on, “One of my grandfathers, I misremember which one right now, he fought against colored troops one time in the States War. He said they weren’t no different than any other damnyankees. Maybe he was right. Me, I don’t know anything any more.”

  “But you’re a sergeant,” Donlan said, in exactly the same tone some of Daniels’ ballplayers had used in exclaiming, But you’re the manager.

  Mutt sighed. “Just on account of I’m supposed to have all the answers, son, that don’t mean I can pull ’em out from under my tin hat whenever you need ’em. Hell, come to that, it don’t even mean they’re really there. You get as old as I am, you ain’t sure o’ nothin’ no more.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Donlan said. By the way things were going, Mutt thought, the kid didn’t have much chance of getting that old.

  “No,” General Patton said. “Hell, no.”

  “But, sir”-Jens Larssen spread his hands and assumed an injured expression-“all I want to do is get in touch with my wife, let her know I’m alive.”

  “No,” Patton repeated. “No, repeat no, traffic about the Metallurgical Laboratory or any of its personnel save in direst emergency-from which personal matters of any sort are specifically excluded. Those are my direct orders from General Marshall, Dr. Larssen, and I have no intention of disobeying them. That is the most basic security precaution for any important project, let alone one of this magnitude. Marshall has told me next to nothing about the project, and I do not wish to acquire more information: I have not the need to know, and therefore should not-must not-know.”

  “But Barbara’s not even with the Met Lab,” Jens protested.

  “Indeed not, but you are,” Patton said. “Are you so soft that you would betray the hope of the United States to the Lizards for the sake of your own convenience? By God, sir, I hope you are not.”

  “I don’t see how one message constitutes a betrayal,” Larssen said. “Odds are the Lizards wouldn’t even notice it.”

  “Possible,” Patton admitted. He got up from behind his desk and stretched, which also gave him the advantage of staring down at Jens. “Possible, but not likely. If the Lizards’ doctrine is at all like ours-and I’ve seen no reason to doubt that-they monitor as many of our signals as they can, and try to shape them into informative patterns. I speak from experience, sir, when I say that no one-no one-can know in advance which piece of the jigsaw puzzle will reveal enough for the enemy to form the entire picture in his mind.”

  Jens knew about security; the Met Lab had had large doses of it. But he’d never been subject to military discipline, so he kept arguing: “You could send a message without my name on it, just ‘Your husband is alive and well’ or something like that.”

  “No; your request is refused,” Patton said. Then, as if reading Larssen’s mind, he added, “Any attempt to ignore what I have just said and inveigle a signals officer into clandestinely sending such a message will result in your arrest and confinement, if not worse. I remind you I have military secrets of my own here, and I shall not permit you to c
ompromise them. Do I make myself quite clear?”

  “Yes, sir, you do,” Larssen said dejectedly. He’d been all set to try to find a sympathetic radioman no matter what Patton said; he still didn’t believe such an innocuous message would have blown the Met Lab’s cover. But he couldn’t gauge how much outgoing, messages might endanger the offensive still building here in western Indiana. That had to succeed, too, or nothing that happened in Chicago would matter, because Chicago would belong to the Lizards.

  “If it helps at all, Dr. Larssen, you have my sympathy,” Patton said.

  In a gruff sort of way, he probably even meant it, Jens thought. He said, “Thank you, General,” and walked out of Patton’s office.

  Outside, the ground was mottled with melting snow and clumps of yellowish dead grass. Thick low yellow-gray clouds rolled by overhead, The wind came from out of the northwest, and carried a nip that quickly started to turn Jens’ beaky nose to an icicle. It had all the makings of a winter storm, but no snow fell.

  His thoughts as gloomy as the weather, Larssen walked on in Oxford, Indiana. Potemkin village ran through his mind. From the air, the, little town undoubtedly seemed as quiet as any other gasoline-starved hamlet in the Midwest. But concealed by houses and garages, haystacks and woodpiles, gathered armored forces plenty, Jens thought, to give the Nazis pause. The only trouble was, they faced worse foes than mere Germans.

  Larssen stepped into the Bluebird Cafe. A couple of locals and a couple, of soldiers in civvies (nobody not, in civvies was allowed on the streets of Oxford-security again, Jens thought) sat at the counter. Behind it, the cook made pancakes on a wood-burning griddle instead of his now useless gas range. The griddle wasn’t vented; smoke filled the room. He looked over his shoulder at Larssen. “Waddaya want, mac?”

  “I know what I want: how about a broiled lobster tail with drawn butter, asparagus in hollandaise sauce, and crisp green salad? Now, what do you have?”

  “Good luck with the lobster, buddy,” the cook said. “What I got is flapjacks here, powdered eggs, and canned pork and beans. You don’t fancy that, go fishing.”

  “I’ll take it,” Jens said. It was what he’d been eating ever since that wonderful chicken dinner with General Patton. He wasn’t as skinny as he had been when the Army scooped him up, but he’d long since sworn he’d never look a baked bean in the eye again if and when the war ever ended.

  The only virtue he could find to the meal was that he didn’t have to pay for it. Patton had taken over the handful of eateries in town and incorporated them into his commissary department. Larssen supposed that was fair, without the supplies they drew from the Army, they’d long since have closed down.

  The better to conceal his soldiers, Patton had also billeted them on the townsfolk. As far as Jens knew, he hadn’t asked anybody for permission before he did it, either. If Patton worried about that, he didn’t let on. Maybe he had a point, the Founding Fathers hadn’t anticipated an invasion from outer space.

  But if you started fiddling with the Constitution and pleading military necessity, where would you stop? Jens wished he’d been in a better position to take that up with Patton. It might have made an interesting philosophical discussion if the general hadn’t been steamed at him for trying to get a message to Barbara. As things were, Patton would either roar at him or ignore him, neither of which constituted an enlightened exchange of views.

  “Anybody got a cigarette?” asked one of the soldiers in civvies.

  The only answer Larssen expected to that was a hoarse laugh, and the soldier got one. Then a civilian, a leathery fellow in a hunting cap who had to be pushing seventy, looked the kid over and drawled, “Son, even if I did have one, you ain’t pretty enough to give me what I’d want for it.”

  The young soldier turned the color of the fire under the griddle. The cook solemnly sketched a hash mark in the air. Larssen whistled. The old-timer let out a dry chuckle to show he wasn’t all that impressed with his own wit, then returned to his cup of what the Army called, for lack of a suitable term of opprobrium, coffee.

  High overhead, above the clouds, a Lizard jet flew by, its wail thin and fading with distance. Larssen’s shiver had nothing to do with the weather. He wondered how well the aliens’ sensors, whatever they were, could peer through the gray mass that shielded Oxford and the countryside around it from the sky and how well Patton had managed to hide the carefully husbanded gear here. He’d know soon enough.

  In one corner of the cafe stood a broken pinball machine, the mournful word TILT permanently on display. Since that constituted the place’s entire potential for entertaimnent, Jens handed his plate and cutlery back to the cook and went out onto the street.

  The wind had picked up while he ate. He was glad for his overcoat. His nose was also relieved at the fresh air. Full of soldiers as it was and without much working plumbing, Oxford had become an odorous place. If the buildup here went on a little longer, the Lizards wouldn’t need visual reconnaissance to find their human foes: their noses would do the job for them.

  Something stung Jens on the cheek. By reflex he brought up his hand, but felt only a tiny patch of moisture. Then he got stung again, this time on the wrist. He looked down, saw a fat white snowflake melting away to nothingness. More slipped and slid wildly through the air, jitterbug dancers made of ice.

  For a moment, he just watched. The start of a snowfall always took him back to his Minnesota childhood, to snowmen and snow angels and snowballs knocking stocking caps off heads. Then the present rose up and smote nostalgia. This snow had nothing to do with childhood’s pleasures. This snow meant attack.

  19

  Yi Min felt bigger than life, felt, in fact, as if he were the personification of Ho Tei, fat little god of luck. Who would have imagined so much profit was to be made from the coming of the little scaly devils? At first, when they’d raped him away from his home village and then taken him up into the plane that didn’t land, the plane where he weighed nothing and his poor stomach even less, he’d thought them the worst catastrophe the world had ever known. Now, though… He smiled oleaginously. Now life was good.

  True, he still lived in this camp, but he lived here like a warlord, almost like one of the vanished Manchu emperors. His dwelling was a hut in name only. Its wooden sides were proof against the worst winter winds. Brass braziers gave heat, soft carpets cushioned his every stride, fine pieces of jade and cloisonne delighted his eye wherever it happened to light. He ate duck and dog and other delicacies. When he wanted them, he enjoyed women who made Liu Han seem a diseased sow by comparison. One waited on his mattress now. He’d forgotten her name. What did it matter?

  And all from a powder the scaly devils craved!

  He laughed out loud. “What is it, man full of yang?” the pretty girl called from the other room. She sounded impatient for him to join her.

  “Nothing-just a joke I heard this morning,” he answered. However full of masculine essence he was, he still had too much hard sense to make a hired mattress partner privy to his thoughts. What one set of ears heard in the afternoon, a score would know by sunrise and the whole world by the next night.

  Without false modesty (Yi Min had little modesty, false or otherwise), he knew he was far and away the biggest ginger dealer in the camp, probably in China, maybe in the whole world. Under him (the girl crossed his mind again, but only for a moment) were not only men who grew the spice and others who cured it with lime to make it particularly tasty to the scaly devils, but several dozen scaly devils who bought from him and sold to their fellows, either directly or through their own webs of secondary dealers. How the loot rolled in!

  “Will you come soon, Tiger of the Floating World?” the girl said. she did her best to make herself alluring, but she was too much a businesswoman-and too little an actress-to keep a strident note from her voice. What’s keeping you? she meant.

  “Yes, I’ll be there in a moment,” he answered, but his tone suggested she wasn’t worth hurrying over. Having a woman
resent him for what he made her do fed his own excitement. He wasn’t just taking pleasure that way, but also control.

  What should we do when I finally go to her? he wondered: always an enjoyable contemplation. Something she wouldn’t care for-she’d annoyed him. Maybe he’d use her as if she were a boy. He snapped his fingers in delight. The very thing! Women were so proud of the slit between their legs; ignoring it in favor of the other way never failed to irritate them. Besides, it would hurt her a little too, make her remember to treat him as the person of consequence he was.

  Warmth flowed through him, tingled across his skin. He felt himself rising. He took one step toward the bedroom, then checked himself. Anticipation was also a pleasure. Besides, let her stew.

  After a minute or two, she called, “Please hurry! Longing eats at me.” She played the game, too, but her mah-jongg hand did not have the tiles to beat his.

  When at last he judged the moment ripe, he started off to the back part of the dwelling. Before he’d gone three paces, though, a scratching noise came from the front door. He let out a long, angry hiss. That was a scaly devil. The girl’s comeuppance would have to wait. No matter how thoroughly he controlled the devils who bought ginger from him, the illusion remained that he was servant and they masters.

  He opened the door. Cold nipped at his fingers and face. A little scaly devil indeed, but not one he’d seen before-he’d grown skilled at telling them, apart, even when, as now, the swaddlings they wore against winter hid their body paint. He’d also grown fluent in their speech. He bowed low, said, “Superior sir, you honor my humble hut. Enter, please, and warm yourself”

  “I come.” The little scaly devil skittered past Yi Min. He closed the door after it. He was pleased it had answered him in its own language. If he could do business in that tongue, he wouldn’t have to send away the courtesan. Not only would she have longer to wait, she’d be impressed at how he dealt with the little devils on their terms.