Striking the Balance w-4

by Harry Turtledove

  Striking the Balance

  ( Worldwar - 4 )

  Harry Turtledove

  At the bloody height of World War II, the deadliest enemies in all of human history were forced to put aside their hatreds and unite against an even fiercer foe: a seemingly invincible power bent on world domination. With awesome technology, the aggressors swept across the planet, sowing destruction as Tokyo, Berlin, and Washington, D.C., were A-bombed into submission. Russia, Nazi Germany, Japan, and the United States were not easily cowed, however. With cunning and incredible daring, they pressed every advantage against the invader's superior strength, and, led by Stalin, began to detonate their own atom bombs in retaliation. City after city explodes in radioactive firestorms, and fears grow as the worldwide resources disappear; will there be any world left for the invaders to conquer, or for the uneasy allies to defend? While Mao Tse-tung wages a desperate guerrilla war and Hitler drives his country toward self-destruction, U.S. forces frantically try to stop the enemy's push from coast to coast. Yet in this battle to stave off world domination, unless the once-great military powers take the risk of annihilating the human race, they'll risk losing the war.

  Harry Turtledove

  Striking the Balance

  (Worldwar-4)

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  (Characters with names in CAPS are historical, others fictional)

  HUMANS

  ANIELEWICZ, MORDECHAI Jewish fighting leader, Lodz, Poland

  Apfelbaum, Moisei Colonel Skriabin’s clerk,gulagnear Petrozavodsk, USSR

  Auerbach, Rance U.S. Army cavalry captain, Lamar, Colorado

  Avram Partisan near Hrubieszow, Poland

  Bagnall, George Flight engineer, Pskov, USSR

  Beck Wehrmacht captain, Riga, Latvia

  BEGIN, MENACHEM Jewish guerrilla, Haifa, Palestine

  Birkenfeld; Oskar Jewish Order Service policeman Lodz, Poland

  Boleslaw Pole in Lodz, Poland

  Borcke, Martin Wehrmacht captain, Pskov, USSR

  BRADLEY,OMAR U.S. Army lieutenant general, outside Denver

  BROCKDORFF-AHLEFELDT, WALTER VON Wehrmacht lieutenant general, Riga, Latvia

  Casimir Partisan leader outside Hrubieszow, Poland

  Chaim Jewish guard, Lodz, Poland

  CHILL, KURT Wehrmacht lieutenant general, Pskov, USSR

  Daniels, Peter (“Mutt”) U.S. Army second lieutenant, Chicago

  Dolger, Hans Wehrmacht captain and adjutant, Pskov, USSR

  DONOVAN, WILLIAM (“WILDBILL”) U.S. Army major general, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Donskoi, Yakov Soviet interpreter, Cairo

  Drucker, Johannes Panzer driver north of Lodz, Poland

  Easter British Army colonel, Haifa, Palestine

  EDEN, ANTHONY British foreign secretary

  Embry, Ken RAF pilot, Pskov, USSR

  Fleishman, Bertha Jewish fighter, Lodz, Poland

  Fritz Wehrmacht ammunition hauler north of Lodz, Poland

  Fyodorov, Ivan Soviet prisoner in transit

  GERMAN, ALEKSANDR Partisan brigadier, Pskov, USSR

  GODDARD, ROBERT Rocket scientist, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Goldfarb, David RAF radarman, Dover, England

  Gorbunova, Ludmila Red Air Force senior lieutenant, Pskov, USSR

  Grabowski U.S. Army corporal, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Grillparzer, Gunther Wehrmacht gunner outside Lodz, Poland

  GROVES, LESLIE U.S. Army brigadier general, Metallurgical Laboratory, Denver

  Gruver, Solomon Jewish fighter, Lodz, Poland

  Hanrahan U.S. Army captain, outside Fordyce, Arkansas

  Hawkins U.S. Army lieutenant, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Hines, Rachel U.S. Army cavalry private, Lamar, Colorado

  Hsia Shou-Tao Communist guerrilla leader, Peking

  HULL, CORDELL President of the United States

  Ignacy Partisan leader outside Warsaw

  Irma Waitress, Lamar, Colorado

  Jager, Heinrich Wehrmacht panzer colonel outside Lodz, Poland

  Joachim Wehrmacht ammunition hauler north of Lodz, Poland

  Jones, Jerome RAF radarman Pskov, USSR

  Jordan, Constantine RAF flight lieutenant, Dover, England

  Kagan, Max American nuclear physicist, north of Moscow

  Kapellmeister Wehrmacht major Kristianstand, Norway

  Kaplan, Naomi Barmaid, White Horse Inn, Dover, England

  Karol Farmer north of Lodz, Poland

  KURCHATOV, IGOR Nuclear physicist, north of Moscow

  Kurowski U.S. Army private, Chicago

  Lidov, Boris NKVD colonel, Moscow

  Liu Han Ex-peasant woman; guerrilla, Peking

  Liu Mei Liu Han’s daughter

  Logan Radioman near Fall Creek, Illinois

  Magruder, Bill U.S. Army cavalry lieutenant, Lamar, Colorado

  MAOTSE-TUNG Communist Party leader, Peking

  Marchenko NKVD captain,gulagoutside Petrozavodsk, USSR

  MARSHALL, GEORGE U.S. Secretary of State

  Mather, Donald Captain, SAS, Dover, England

  Mavrogordato, Panagiotis Captain of the freighter Naxos

  Maxi SS officer north of Lodz, Poland

  McBride RAF flying officer, Dover, England

  Mehier, Karl Panzer loader north of Lodz, Poland

  Mendel Jewish guard, Lodz, Poland

  Mieczyslaw Farmer north of Lodz, Poland

  Mikhailov, Anton Zek ingulagnear Petrozavodsk, USSR

  MOLOTOV, VYACHESLAV Foreign commissar, USSR

  Mori Japanese Army major, west of Peking

  Muldoon, Herman U.S. Army sergeant, Chicago

  NIEHHO-T’ING Guerrilla leader, Peking

  Nussboym, David Political prisoner in transit

  Osborne, Andy Guide near Karval, Colorado

  Palchinsky, Yuri Guard, GULag near Petrozavodsk, USSR

  PATTON, GEORGE U.S. Army lieutenant general near Fall Creek, Illinois

  Peterson, Richard T echnician, Metallurgical Laboratory, Denver

  Pirogova, Tatiana Red Army sniper, Pskov, USSR

  Rasmussen U.S. Army lieutenant, Chicago

  RIBBENTROP, JOACHIM VON German foreign minister

  Rita Madam, Elgin, Illinois

  Roundbush, Basil RAF flight lieutenant, Dover, England

  Rudzutak, Stepan Gang boss ingulagnear Petrozavodsk, USSR

  Russie, Moishe Jewish leader, approaching Palestine

  Russie, Reuven Moishe and Rivka Russie’s son

  Russie, Rivka Moishe Russie’s wife

  Saul Jewish guard, Lodz, Poland

  Schultz, Georg German mechanic attached to Red Air Force, Pskov, USSR

  Sholom Partisan outside Hrubieszow, Poland

  SKORZENY, OTTO SS Standartenfuhrer, North of Lodz, Poland

  Skriabin NKVD colonel, GULag outside Petrozavodsk, USSR

  Smithson, Hayward U.S. Army major, Medical Corps, Karval, Colorado

  STALIN, IOSEF General Secretary, Communist Party, USSR

  Stefarnia Partisan outside Hrubieszow, Poland

  STERN Jewish guerrilla leader, Jerusalem

  Summers, Penny Refugee, Lamar, Colorado

  Su Shun-Ch’in Muslim qadi, Peking

  Suzie Whore, Elgin, Illinois

  Sylvia Barmaid, White Horse Inn, Dover, England

  Szymanski, Stan U.S. Army captain, Elgin, Illinois

  Tadeusz Farmer outside of Lodz, Poland

  TOGO, SHIGENORI Japanese foreign minister

  VASILIEV, NIKOLAI Partisan brigadier, Pskov, USSR

  Witold Blacksmith, Hrubieszow Poland

  Wladeslaw Partisan near Hrubieszow, Poland

  Yeager, Barbara Sam Yeager’s wife

  Yeager, Jonathan Sam an
d Barbara Yeager’s son

  Yeager, Sam U.S. Army sergeant, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Yitzkhak J ew in Lodz Poland

  Zelkowitz, Leon Jewish fighter, Lodz, Poland

  THE RACE

  Aaatos Intelligence operative, Florida

  Atvar Fleetlord, conquest fleet of the Race

  Bunim Regional subadministrator, Lodz, Poland

  Chook Small-unit group leader near Fall Creek, Illinois

  Essaff Guard and interpreter, Peking

  Fsseffel Headmale, Race Barracks One,gulagnear Petrozavodsk, USSR

  Gazzim Prisoner and interpreter, Moscow

  Kirel Shiplord,127th Emperor Hetto

  Mzepps Prisoner, Dover, England

  Nikeaa Infantry officer outside Pskov, USSR

  Oyyag Prisoner,gulagnear Petrozavodsk, USSR

  Ppevel Assistant administrator, eastern region, main continental mass, Peking

  Pshing Atvar’s adjutant, Cairo

  Ristin Prisoner, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Saltta Psychological researcher, Canton, China

  Straha Tosevite propagandist, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Strukss Tosevite liaison officer, Cairo

  Teerts Killercraft flight leader, Florida

  Tessrek Researcher in tosevite behavior

  Ttomalss Researcher in tosevite behavior, Peking

  Uotat Atvar’s interpreter, Cairo

  Ullhass Prisoner, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Ummfac Aircraft armorer, Florida

  Ussmak Mutineer outside Tomsk, USSR

  Zolraag Negotiator with Jewish guerrillas, Jerusalem

  I

  In free fall, Atvar the fleetlord glided over to the hologram projector. He poked the stud at the base of the machine. The image that sprang into being above the projector was one the Race’s probe had sent back from Tosev 3 eight hundred local years earlier.

  A Big Ugly warrior sat mounted on a beast. He wore leather boots, rusty chainmail, and a dented iron helmet; a thin coat woven from plant fibers and dyed blue with plant juices shielded his armor from the heat of the star the Race called Tosev. To Atvar, to any male of the Race, Tosev 3 was on the chilly side, but not to the natives.

  A long, iron-pointed spear stood up from a boss on the contraption the warrior used to stay atop his animal. He carried a shield painted with a cross. On his belt hung a long, straight sword and a couple of knives.

  All you could see of the Tosevite himself were his face and one hand. They were plenty to show he was almost as fuzzy as the beast he rode. Thick, wiry yellow fur covered his jaws and the area around his mouth; he had another stripe above each of his flat, immobile eyes. A thinner layer of hair grew on the back of the visible hand.

  Atvar touched his own smooth, scaly skin. Just looking at all that fur made him wonder why the Big Uglies didn’t itch all the time. Leaving one eye turret aimed at the Tosevite warrior, he swung the other in the direction of Kirel, shiplord of the127th Emperor Hetto. “This is the foe we thought we were opposing,” he said bitterly.

  “Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. His body paint was almost as colorful and complex as Atvar’s. Since he commanded the bannership of the conquest fleet, only the fleetlord out-ranked him.

  Atvar stabbed at the projector control with his left index claw. The Big Ugly warrior vanished. In his place appeared a perfect three-dimensional image of the nuclear explosion that had destroyed the Tosevite city of Rome: Atvar recognized the background terrain. But it could as easily have been the bomb that vaporized Chicago or Breslau or Miami or the spearhead of the Race’s assault force south of Moscow.

  “As opposed to the foe we thought we faced, this is what we are actually dealing with,” Atvar said.

  “Truth,” Kirel repeated, and, as mournful commentary, added an emphatic cough.

  Atvar let out a long, hissing sigh. Stability and predictability were two of the pillars on which the Race and its Empire had flourished for a hundred thousand years and expanded to cover three solar systems. On Tosev 3, nothing seemed predictable, nothing seemed stable. No wonder the Race was having such troubles here. The Big Uglies did not play by any of the rules its savants thought they knew.

  With another hiss, the fleetlord poked at the control stud once more. Now the threatening cloud from the nuclear blast vanished. In a way, the image that replaced it was even more menacing. It was a satellite photograph of a base the Race had established in the region of the SSSR known to the locals as Siberia, a place whose frigid climate even the Big Uglies found appalling.

  “The mutineers still persist in their rebellion against duly constituted authority,” Atvar said heavily. “Worse, the commandants of the two nearest bases have urged against committing their males to suppress the rebels, for fear they would go over to them instead.”

  “This is truly alarming,” Kirel said with another emphatic cough. “If we choose males from a distant air base to bomb the mutineers out of existence, then, will it truly solve the problem?”

  “I don’t know,” Atvar said. “But what I really don’t know, by the Emperor”-he cast down his eyes for a moment at the mention of his sovereign-“is how the mutiny could have happened in the first place. Subordination and integration into the greater scheme of the Race as a whole are drilled into our males from hatchlinghood. How could they have overthrown them?”

  Now Kirel sighed. “Fighting on this world corrodes males’ moral fiber as badly as its ocean water corrodes equipment. We are not fighting the war that was planned before we set out from Home, and that by itself is plenty to disorient a good many males.”

  “This is also truth,” Atvar admitted. “The leader of the mutineers-a lowly landcruiser driver. If you can image such a thing-is shown to have lost at least three different sets of crewmales: two, including those with whom he served at this base, to Tosevite action, and the third grouping arrested and disciplined as ginger tasters.”

  “By his wild pronouncements, this Ussmak sounds like a ginger taster himself,” Kirel said.

  “Threatening to call in the Soviets to his aid if we attack him, you mean?” Atvar said. “We ought to take him up on that; if he thinks they would help him out of sheer benevolence, the Tosevite herb truly has addled his wits. If it weren’t for the equipment he could pass on to the SSSR, I would say we should welcome him to go over to that set of Big Uglies.”

  “Given the situation as it actually is, Exalted Fleetlord, what course shall we pursue?” Kirel’s interrogative cough sounded vaguely accusing-or maybe Atvar’s conscience was twisting his hearing diaphragms.

  “I don’t know yet,” the fleetlord said unhappily. When in doubt, his first instinct-typical for a male-was to do nothing. Letting the situation come nearer to hatching so you could understand it more fully worked well on Home, and also on Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, the other inhabited worlds the Race controlled.

  But waiting, against the Tosevites, often proved even worse than proceeding on incomplete knowledge. The Big Ugliesdid things. They didn’t fret about long-term consequences. Take atomic weapons-those helped them in the short run. If they devastated Tosev 3 in the process-well, so what?

  Atvar couldn’t leave it atso what. The colonization fleet was on the way from Home. He couldn’t very well present it with a world he’d rendered uninhabitable in the process of overcoming the Big Uglies. Yet he couldn’t fail to respond, either, and so found himself in the unpleasant position of reacting to what the Tosevites did instead of making them react to him.

  The mutineers had no nuclear weapons, and weren’t Big Uglies. He could have afforded to wait them out… If they hadn’t threatened to yield their base to the SSSR. With the Tosevites involved, you couldn’t just sit and watch. The Big Uglies were never content to let things simmer. They threw them in a microwave oven and brought them to a boil as fast as they could.

  When Atvar didn’t say anything more, Kirel tried to prod him: “Exalted Fleetlord, you can’t be contemplating genuine negotiations with these rebellio
us-and revolting-males? Their demands are impossible: not just amnesty and transfer to a warmer climate-those would be bad enough by themselves-but also ending the struggle against the Tosevites so no more males die ‘uselessly,’ to use their word.”

  “No, we cannot allow mutineers to dictate terms to us,” Atvar agreed. “That would be intolerable.” His mouth fell open in a bitter laugh. “Then again, by all reasonable standards, the situation over vast stretches of Tosev 3 is intolerable, and our forces seem to lack the ability to improve it to any substantial extent. What does this suggest to you, Shiplord?”

  One possible answer was,a new fleetlord. The assembled shiplords of the conquest fleet had tried to remove Atvar once, after the SSSR detonated the first Tosevite fission bomb, and had narrowly failed. If they tried again, Kirel was the logical male to succeed Atvar. The fleetlord waited for his subordinate’s reply, not so much for what he said as for how he said it.

  Slowly, Kirel answered, “Were the Tosevites factions of the Race opposed to the general will-not that the Race would generate such vicious factions, of course, but speaking for the sake of the hypothesis-their strength, unlike that of the mutineers, might come close to making negotiations with them mandatory.”

  Atvar contemplated that. Kirel was, generally speaking, a conservative male, and had couched his suggestion conservatively by equating the Big Uglies with analogous groupings within the Race, an equation that in itself made Atvar’s scales itch. But the suggestion, however couched, was more radical than any Straha, the shiplord who’d led the effort to oust Atvar, had ever put forward before deserting and fleeing to the Big Uglies.

  “Shiplord,” Atvar demanded sharply, “are you making the same proposal as the mutineers: that we discuss with the Tosevites ways of ending our campaign short of complete conquest?”

  “Exalted Fleetlord, did you yourself not say our males seem incapable of effecting a complete conquest of Tosev 3?” Kirel answered, still with perfect subordination but not abandoning his own ideas, either. “If that be so, should we not either destroy the planet to make sure the Tosevites can never threaten us, or else-” He stopped; unlike Straha, he had a sense of when he was going too far for Atvar to tolerate.