Upsetting the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  “The war against whom?” Molotov asked. “General Secretary Stalin views the Lizard presence in Poland, at least for the time being, as a useful buffer between us. If we do not touch, we cannot fight.” And you cannot resupply your troops inside the Soviet Union. As they exhaust their stores, they become mare and more dependent on us—and vulnerable to us.

  Ribbentrop looked so innocent, Molotov expected a halo to spring into being above his head at any moment. “The Reich has no intention of continuing its former campaign against the Soviet Union. Circumstances have changed.”

  “Circumstances changed, as you put it, in 1939, and then changed again in 1941. They could change yet again at a moment’s notice,” Molotov said. “Thus the value of the buffer.”

  “If we do not cooperate against the Lizards, we shall never have the chance to pursue our private grievances,” Ribbentrop answered.

  That was the first sensible thing he’d said since he boarded the Russian freighter. Molotov eyed him warily. “True enough, but cooperation must run both ways. If you enjoy all the advantages, you must not expect us to be your dupes.”

  “If we did not honestly cooperate with you, you would not have got the explosive metal from which to make your bomb,” Ribbentrop said. “Do remember that half the team which took the metal was made up of German soldiers, who supplied all the heavy weapons for the raid.”

  “True enough,” Molotov said, and then paused to think. Ribbentrop had now made sense twice running, which, as far as the foreign commissar knew, equaled his all-time record. Was the jumped-up champagne salesman actually developing competence in his old age? An alarming notion, if true. More cautiously than he’d spoken before, Molotov asked, “When will your country have its own explosive-metal bombs? We cannot very well coordinate our strategy if we do not know when that strategy becomes effective.”

  “Ja,” Ribbentrop said, not very happily. He paced up and down along the deck, his interpreter an obsequious half pace behind and to his left. At last he said, “Gott mit uns, we shall have our first bomb next spring, with others following quickly on its heels. What of Soviet Russia? When will you be ready to give the Lizards another dose of their own medicine?”

  “Our timetable is tightly similar to yours,” Molotov answered. For years, he had trained himself to reveal nothing with his face, with his voice, with his stance. That training served him in good stead now. The Soviet program would not produce a bomb of its own next spring, and probably not for a couple of years thereafter.

  Molotov wished he could pace. What to do, what to do? If Ribbentrop was telling the truth, the Nazis had not only recovered from the disaster their nuclear program had suffered but were also ready to produce their own explosive metal in large amounts.

  What to do? Ribbentrop had let slip that the heart of the German effort lay somewhere not far from the Rhine. Word ever so discreetly leaked to the Lizards would mean they—and the Soviet Union—might be freed of the threat of explosive-metal bombs in the hands of a madman like Hitler.

  But the Nazis were also putting up a stubborn resistance against the Lizards. If they collapsed under a cloud of nuclear fire, the imperialist aggressors from the stars would be able to turn more force on the peaceloving people of the Soviet Union. They were already giving signs of realizing the USSR was not in a position to deploy more nuclear weapons against them. Keeping Germany in the fight might keep the Soviet Union alive, too.

  It was a delicate calculation. Molotov knew the final decision would not be his. Only Stalin would make it. Stalin’s cult of personality maintained that the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was never wrong. Molotov knew better, but this time Stalin had to be right.

  Nieh Ho-T’ing maneuvered his pedicab through the streets of Peking. He swerved to avoid a horse-drawn wagon, then again to keep from being run down by a lorry full of Lizards with guns. He wished he could fling a grenade into the back of the truck, but no, not now. If you couldn’t be patient, you didn’t deserve to win.

  Men on foot got out of the way for Nieh. When they didn’t move fast enough to suit him, he screamed at them: “Move, you stupid wooden-headed sons of a turtle mother!” The men he abused shouted insults back at him. They also grinned and waved, as did he. It was all good fun, and helped pass the time.

  Nieh did not swear at men afoot who were dressed in Western-style clothes. Instead, he called out to them in beseeching tones: “Ride, noble sir?” Sometimes he varied that by using the little scaly devils’ phrasing: “Ride, superior sir?” Other pedicab drivers also loudly solicited the little devils’ running dogs. So did rickshaw men, who toiled between the shafts of their carts like bullocks. Anyone rich enough to dress like a foreign devil was also rich enough to pay for a ride.

  Little scaly devils patrolled the streets on foot. No one asked them if they wanted a ride: people knew better. The scaly devils skittered along in squad-sized packs. They didn’t go out in Peking by ones and twos: they knew better.

  “Ride, superior sirs?” Nieh Ho-T’ing called to a couple of men in white shirts and ties who walked along with jackets slung over their shoulders. They looked tired, the poor running dogs.

  They climbed into the back of the pedicab. “Take us to the Ch’i Nien Tien,” one of them said. “Go fast, too; we need to be there quickly.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nieh Ho-T’ing started to pedal. “The Hall of Annual Prayers it is. You pay me five dollars Mex, all right?”

  “Stop the cab. We will get out,” the man answered. “We do not need to ride with a thief. If you asked for two dollars Mex, that would still be too much.”

  Nieh slowed down but did not stop. “If I let you out, gentlemen, you will be late on your important journey. Suppose you give me four Mex fifty; I suppose, if I am stingy, my wife and children will not starve on that fare.”

  “Do you hear the gall of this man?” one of the scaly devils’ henchmen said to the other. “He talks of his wife and children, but thinks nothing of ours, who will suffer if we meet his extortionate demands. Anyone who expects to get more than three dollars Mex for such a short journey would surely steal coppers from a blind beggar.”

  “Rich men who refuse to share their bounty—something dreadful will surely happen to them in the next life if not in this one,” Nieh said. “Even four Mex twenty-five would not be altogether without virtue.”

  They finally settled on three Mex dollars seventy-five cents, by which time they’d nearly reached the Hall of Annual Prayers. Nieh scorned the running dogs as inept hagglers; anything over three dollars Mex was too much to pay for that ride. When he worked as a pedicab driver, he became a pedicab driver. Anything else, anything less, was dangerous.

  The two lackeys of the scaly devils paid him, alighted, and headed off toward the tall circular building with its domed triple roof of blue tiles. Nieh slowly pedaled away, every now and then jingling a brass bell to try to lure in another fare. He soon did, a worn-looking woman with a straw basket filled to overflowing with chicken feet, rooster combs, giblets, and other bits of meat no one who could afford better would want. She told him to go to a little cookshop in one of Peking’s innumerable hutungs, not to a fancy public building.

  “Your load there will make many tasty soups,” Nieh said. The woman nodded. He hardly haggled with her at all; solidarity between proletarians came ahead of desire for profit. She noticed his generosity and smiled at him. He took note of where her eatery was. The Party needed all the friends it could find, and all the hiding places, too.

  He pedaled back out onto the bigger streets, jangling his bell. He felt dispirited; those two men in Western clothes should have sent him where he wanted to go. If worse came to worst, he might have to head for the P’an T’ao Kung without anyone in his pedicab. Going to the Spiral Peach Palace with an empty pedicab was risky, though. He would be remarked upon. But how long could he wait for just the right fare?

  “Patience,” he said out loud, reminding himself. The revolution was built o
ne small step at a time. If anyone tried to rush it, it would fail. He picked up another meaningless fare, won the haggle without effort, and took the man where he wanted to go.

  Back and forth across the city Nieh pedaled. Sweat soaked through his black cotton tunic and ran down his face from under the straw hat that shielded him from the merciless sun. That sun slid steadily across the sky. Soon it would be evening, and time for Nieh Ho-T’ing to go back to his lodging till morning came again. For a whole cadre of reasons, Nieh did not want to do that.

  “You! Driver!” a fat man shouted imperiously. Anyone fat in Peking these days surely trafficked with the little scaly devils. Nieh zoomed toward him, cutting off another fellow with a pedicab whom he might also have been calling.

  “Where to, superior sir?” he asked as the man climbed in.

  “The P’an T’ao Kung,” the fat man answered. Springs creaked under him as his large, heavy fundament pressed down on the seat “Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes—just south of the Eastern Wicket Gate,” Nieh answered. “I can take you there for five dollars Mex.”

  “Go.” The fat man waved, disdaining even to dicker. His pudgy face puffed out farther with pride. “I am to meet with the little scaly devils in the Spiral Peach Palace, to show how my factory can work for them.”

  “Eee, you must be a very powerful man,” Nieh said, pedaling harder. “I will get you there safe, never fear.” He raised his voice: “Move, you sluggards! I have here a man who cannot waste the day.”

  Behind him, his passenger shifted smugly on the padded seat, enjoying the face he gained by having his importance publicly proclaimed. Traffic did not vanish for Nieh’s pedicab as he rolled east down Hua Erh Shih—Flower Market Street. He hadn’t expected it would. Most of the people on the street would have sworn at Nieh’s passenger had they dared, and desisted only for fear he might have been important enough to get them in trouble if he wanted. Some went out of their way to obstruct Nieh’s progress. In their sandals, he would have done the same.

  Along with the artificial flowers that gave it its name, Flower Market Street also boasted a number of shops that sold cheap costume jewelry. Hsia Shou-Tao probably would have loved the area, for a great many pretty women frequented it. Nieh Ho-T’ing frowned. Hsia was politically progressive, but he remained socially exploitive. The two should not have coexisted in the same man.

  Nieh Ho-T’ing turned north off Hua Erh Shih toward the Spiral Peach Palace. It was not a prepossessing building, having only two small rooms, but it was the headquarters of the little scaly devils in charge of turning the output of human factories to their own advantage.

  Nieh steered the pedicab right up to the entranceway of the Spiral Peach Palace. A scaly devil stood guard outside it. Nieh’s passenger dropped five silver Mex dollars into his hand, got down from the pedicab, and strutted over to the guard. He showed him a card and gained entrance to the palace.

  After reaching down to the frame of the pedicab, as if to adjust the chain, Nieh also went over to the guard. “You watch my cab, hey?” he said in slow Chinese. He pointed across the street to a couple of men selling noodles and pork and fish from two big pots. “I go over, get some food, come back, all right?”

  “All right, you go,” the guard said. “You come back fast.”

  “Oh yes, of course I will, superior sir,” Nieh answered, speaking faster now that he saw the guard understood him.

  Several people crowded round the noodle-sellers for late lunch, early supper, or afternoon snack. As soon as he got into the crowd, Nieh let his hat fall onto the back of his neck; the string under his chin held it in place there. Even that small change in his appearance should have been plenty to confuse the guard about exactly who he was. He asked the noodle-sellers their prices, exclaimed in horror at the answer he got, and departed.

  He did not go back to reclaim the pedicab. Instead, he ducked into the first narrow little hutung he came upon. He took the first chance he got to doff the straw hat and throw it away. All the while, he rapidly walked south and east, turning corners every chance he got. The more distance he put between himself and the Spiral Peach Palace—

  Blam! Even though he’d gone better than a half a li, the blast was plenty to stagger him. Men shouted. Women shrieked in alarm. Nieh looked back over his shoulder. A very satisfactorily thick cloud of smoke and dust was rising from the direction of the Spiral Peach Palace. He and his comrades had loaded more than fifty kilos of high explosive and a timer under the seat of the pedicab and in the steel tubing of the frame. The blast had surely killed the sentry. With luck, it had knocked down the palace and disposed of the little scaly devils who exploited mankind for their own advantage. The little devils needed to remember not every man could be made into a running dog or a traitor.

  He came out on a street big enough to have pedicabs on it, and hailed one for the journey back to his lodging house in the western part of the city. He haggled with the driver for form’s sake, but yielded sooner than he might have had his heart been in the dicker. He knew just how hard the gaunt fellow was working for his coins.

  11

  Teerts sat, worn and depressed, in the debriefing room at the Race’s air base in southern France. He spoke into a recorder: “On this mission, I shelled and bombed targets on the island known by the Big Ugly name of Britain. I returned to base with minimal damage to my aircraft, and inflicted substantial damage on Tosevite males and materiel.”

  Elifrim, the base commandant, asked, “Did you encounter any Tosevite aircraft during your support mission over Britain?”

  “Superior sir, we did,” Teerts answered. “Our radar identified several Big Ugly killercraft circling at what is for them extreme high altitude. As they were limited to visual search, they spotted neither us nor our missiles, and were shot down without even having the opportunity to take evasive action. Later, at lower altitude, we met more skilled Tosevite raiders. Because we had exhausted our missiles, we had to engage them with cannon fire. Pilot Vemmen in my flight did have his killercraft badly damaged, while I am told two other males in different flights were shot down.”

  Elifrim sighed heavily. “These Tosevite aircraft at high altitudes . . . They were merely circling? They did not seek to dive on you?”

  “No, superior sir,” Teerts said. “As I say, we knocked them down before they knew we were in the vicinity. I admit it did strike me as a little odd. Most British pilots are more alert. The ones who attacked us at low altitude certainly were. We had to fly slowly then, to enhance the accuracy of weapons delivery, and were only a little faster than their machines, and, frankly, not as maneuverable. That was a difficult encounter.”

  “Your reports of losses in it are correct,” Elifrim said. “It was made more difficult by the fact that you had expended your antiaircraft missiles, was it not?”

  “Yes, certainly,” Teerts said. “But—”

  The commandant overrode him. “But nothing, Flight Leader Teerts. Over the past several days, our forces on the ground in Britain have recovered wreckage from some of these high-altitude circlers. It is their opinion that these aircraft were never piloted, that some sort of automatic device flew them to altitude and set them circling as diversionary targets, with the deliberate intent of inciting our males to expend missiles without bagging skilled Tosevite pilots in exchange.”

  Teerts stared at him. “That’s—one of the most underhanded things I’ve ever heard,” he said slowly. “Superior sir, we cannot afford to ignore aircraft circling above us. If they are not bluffs such as the one you describe, they dive on us and have the potential to hurt us badly.”

  “I am painfully aware of this,” Elifrim said, “and I have no good solution to offer. The British have concluded—and it is a conclusion that strikes me as reasonable—that one of their aircraft, if not piloted, is worth exchanging for one of our missiles. They can produce aircraft faster and more cheaply than we can manufacture missiles. And, by making us use missiles early and on the wr
ong targets, they improve their pilots’ chances of survival in subsequent encounters.”

  “Truth.” Teerts also sighed. “After my experiences, no Tosevite perfidy should much surprise me.”

  “No Tosevite perfidy should surprise any of us,” the commandant agreed. “I am given to understand that no more missions will be flown in support of the northern pocket in Britain.”

  “I see,” Teerts said slowly. He did, too, and didn’t like what he saw. The Race had lost that battle. Before long, he feared, no flights would be going into the southern pocket of Britain, either. That one wasn’t shrinking, but it wasn’t getting any bigger, either. Resupply by air let it hold its own, but the cost there was high, not just in the males on the ground but in the irreplaceable males and aircraft without which the infantry and armor could not long function.

  “Dismissed, Flight Leader Teerts,” the commandant said.

  Teerts left the debriefing room. Another worn-looking pilot, his body paint smudged, went in to take his place. Teerts headed for the door that led outside. After his interrogations at the hands of the Nipponese, debriefing by an officer of his own kind was so mild as to be hardly worth noticing. Elifrim hadn’t kicked him or slapped him or threatened him with hot things or sharp and pointed things or things that were hot and sharp and pointed or even screamed that he was a liar and would suffer for his lies. What kind of questioning was that supposed to be?

  Tosev shone down brightly on this part of its third world. The weather struck Teerts as about halfway between crisp and mild—better than it was most of the time over most of the planet. Tosev 3 might not have been such a bad place . . . if it weren’t for the Tosevites.

  Thanks to them, though, the Race was fighting not just for victory here but for survival. Thanks to them, most of the males who’d flown into Britain with such high hopes of knocking a foe out of the war would fly out wounded or wrapped in plastic for final disposal—or would never fly out at all.