Striking the Balance w-4

by Harry Turtledove

  At Atvar’s gesture, Zolraag activated one of the little screens in the chamber. Sure enough, there stood von Ribbentrop, looking somewhere between arrogant and afraid. A Lizard the screen did not show spoke to him in hissing English. The German foreign minister’s eyes widened, his mouth dropped open, a hand groped for the edge of the table.

  “Exalted Fleetlord, that is a surprised man,” Moishe declared.

  “So we thought,” Atvar agreed. “This raises the following question: is the delivery of false information part of some devious scheme on Hitler’s part, or was the information intended to be true? In either case, of course, von Ribbentrop would have believed it accurate as he delivered it.”

  “Yes.” Moishe scratched his head again, trying to figure out what possible benefit Hitler might have derived by deliberately deceiving his foreign minister into threatening the Lizards. For the life of him, he couldn’t come up with any. “I have to believe the Germans intended to attack you.”

  “This is the conclusion we have also drawn, although we warned them they would suffer severely if they made any such attacks,” Atvar said. “It is unsettling, distinctly so: somewhere on our frontier with Hitler’s forces, or perhaps beyond that frontier, there is probably a nuclear weapon that for whatever reason has failed of ignition. We have searched for such a weapon, but have not discovered it After El Iskandariya, it is by no means certain we would discover it Now: will Hitler be willing to accept failure and resume talks, or will he seek to detonate the bomb after all?”

  Being asked to peer inside Hitler’s brain was rather like being asked to debride gangrenous tissue: revolting but necessary. “If the Germans find any way to detonate the bomb, my guess is that they will,” Moishe said. “I have to say, though, that’s only a guess.”

  “It accords with the predictions our researchers have made,” Atvar said. “Whether this makes it accurate, only time will show, but I believe you are giving me your best and most reasoned judgment here.”

  “Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe said in the language of the Race.

  “Good,” the Lizard answered. “I am of the opinion that we previously tried to exploit you too broadly, and, as with any misused tool, this caused difficulties we would not have had if we kept you within limits appropriate to your situation. This appears to be the source of a large portion of your enmity toward us and your turning against us.”

  “It’s certainly a source of some of it,” Moishe agreed. That was the closest to understanding him the Lizards had ever come, at any rate, and vastly preferable to their equating his actions with treason, as they had been doing.

  “If a knife breaks because it is used as a pry bar, is that the fault of the knife?” Atvar resumed. “No, it is the fault of the operator. Because your service, Moishe Russie, has improved when you are properly used, I grow more willing to overlook past transgressions. When these negotiations between the Race and the Tosevites are completed, perhaps we shall establish you in the area where you were recaptured-”

  “The exalted fleetlord means Palestine,” Zolraag put in on his own. “These names you give places have caused us considerable difficulty, especially where more than one name applies to the same place.”

  Atvar resumed: “We shall establish you there, as I was saying, with your female and hatchling, and, as necessary, consult with you on Tosevite affairs. We shall do a better job of recognizing your limits henceforward, and not force you to provide information or propaganda you find distasteful. Would you accept such an arrangement?”

  They wanted to set him up in Palestine-in the Holy Land-with his family? They’d use him as an expert on humanity without coercing him or humiliating him? Cautiously, he said, “Exalted Fleetlord, my only worry is that it sounds too good to be true.”

  “It is truth,” the fleetlord answered. “Have you not seen, Moishe Russie, that when the Race makes an agreement, it abides by what it agrees?”

  “I have seen this,” Moishe admitted. “But I’ve also seen the Race ordering rather than trying to agree.”

  The fleetlord’s sigh sounded surprisingly human. “This has proved far less effective on Tosev 3 than we would have desired. We are, accordingly, trying new methods here, however distasteful innovation is for us. When the males and females of the colonization fleet arrive, they will undoubtedly have a great many sharp things to say about our practices, but we shall be able to offer them a large portion of a viable planet on which to settle. Considering what might have happened here, this strikes me as an acceptable resolution.”

  “I don’t see how I could disagree, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe said. “Sometimes not everyone can get everything he wants from a situation.”

  “This has never before happened to the Race,” Atvar said with another sigh.

  Moishe went from the world-bestriding to the personal in the space of a sentence: “When you settle me and my family in Palestine, there is one other thing I would like.”

  “And what is this?” the fleetlord asked.

  Russie wondered if he was pushing his luck too far, but pressed ahead anyhow: “You know I was studying to become a doctor before the Germans invaded Poland. I’d like to take up those studies again, not just with humans but with males of the Race. If there is peace, we’ll have so much to learn from you… ”

  “One of my principal concerns in making a peace with you Big Uglies is how much you will learn from us, and what sorts of things,” Atvar said. “You have learned too much already. But in medicine I do not suppose you will become a great danger to us. Very well, Moishe Russie, let it be as you say.”

  “Thank you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe said. Some American in a film had once used an expression that sounded so odd when dubbed literally into Polish, Moishe had never forgotten it: come up smelling like a rose. If Atvar stayed by the terms of the agreement, he’d somehow managed to do exactly that. “A rose,” he muttered. “Just like a rose.”

  “Moishe Russie?” Atvar asked, with an interrogative cough: Zolraag hadn’t been able to make sense of the words.

  “It is a bargain, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe said, and hoped the rose didn’t prove to have too many thorns.

  Straha leaned away from the microphone and took off his earphones, which didn’t fit well over his hearing diaphragms anyhow. “Another broadcast,” he said, turning an eye turret toward Sam Yeager. “I do not see the necessity for many more, not with talks between the Race and you Big Uglies progressing so well. You cannot imagine how you must have horrified stodgy old Atvar, to get him to talk with you at all.”

  “I’m glad he did, finally,” Sam said. “I’ve had a bellyful of war. This whole world has had a bellyful-two bellyfuls-of war.”

  “Half measures of any sort do not appear to succeed on Tosev 3,” Straha agreed. “Had it been I in the fleetlord’s body paint, we would have tried sooner and harder to batter you Tosevites into submission.”

  “I know that.” Yeager nodded. The refugee shiplord had never made any great secret of his preference for the stick over the carrot. Sam remembered the American atomic bomb sitting somewhere here in Hot Springs, surely no more than a few hundred yards from this stuffy little studio. He couldn’t tell Straha about the bomb, of course; General Donovan would nail his scalp to the wall if he pulled a boner like that. What he did say was, “With three not-empires making atomic bombs, you’d have had a hard time stopping all of them.”

  “Truth there, too, of course.” Straha sighed. “When peace comes-if peace comes-what becomes of me?”

  “We won’t give you back for the Race to take vengeance on you,” Sam told him. “We’ve already said as much to your people in Cairo. They didn’t much like it, but they’ve agreed.”

  “Of this much I am already aware,” Straha answered. “So I shall live out my life among you, the Tosevites of the U.S.A. And how am I to pass my time while I am doing this?”

  “Oh.” Sam started to see what the refugee was driving at. “Some males of the Race fit in fine wit
h us. Vesstil’s taught us an amazing lot about rocket engineering, and Ristin-”

  “Has for all practical purposes turned into a Big Ugly,” Straha said with acid in his voice.

  “When you think about where he is, what’s he supposed to do?” Sam asked.

  “He is a male of the Race. He should have the dignity to remember that fact,” Straha replied.

  After a second, Sam figured out what the Lizard reminded him of: a snobby Englishman looking down his nose at a countryman who’d “gone native” in Tanganyika or Burma or somewhere like that. He’d seen enough jungle movies with that as part of the story. Only trouble was, he couldn’t say as much to Straha, not without insulting him further. Instead, he said, “Maybe if we get a peace, we’ll get a”-he had to fumble around to get across the idea he wanted, but finally did-“an amnesty along with it”

  “For the likes of Ristin, there will surely be an amnesty,” Straha said. “He shall have it, though he does not require it to enjoy his life. For the likes of Vesstil, there also may be an amnesty. Vesstil has taught you much-this is truth, Sam Yeager, as you say. But he came among you Tosevites at my order. He was my shuttlecraft pilot: when I ordered, his duty was to obey, and obey he did. Despite the aid he has furnished you, he may be forgiven. But for me, Sam Yeager, of amnesty there shall be none. I tried to remove the fleetlord Atvar, to keep him from losing the war to you Tosevites. I failed-and so did he, for is the war won? Do you think he will let me enter any land the Race holds after peace comes-if peace comes? It would but remind him I was right to doubt him, and that the conquest failed. No. If I am to live, it must be among you Big Uglies.”

  Sam slowly nodded. Traitors didn’t get to go home again: that looked to be the same among Lizards as it was with people. If Rudolf Hess flew back to Germany from England, would Hitler welcome him with open arms? Not likely. But Hess, in England, was at least among his fellow human beings. Here in Hot Springs, Straha was as trapped among aliens as a human tool of the Lizards who spent the rest of his days with them-or, more accurately still, spent the rest of his days on Home.

  “We’ll do everything we can to make you comfortable,” Yeager promised.

  “So your leaders and you have assured me from the start,” Straha replied. “And, so far as is in your power, so you have done. I cannot complain of your intentions. But intentions go only so far, Sam Yeager. If peace comes, I shall remain here, remain an analyst of the Race and propagandist for this not-empire. Is this not the high-probability outcome?”

  “Truth,” Sam said. “You’ve always earned your place here. Don’t you want to go on doing that?”

  “I shall-it is the best I can do. But you fail to understand,” Straha said. “I shall stay here, among you Tosevites. Some other males, surely, will also stay. And we shall build our tiny community, for we shall be all of the Race we have. And we shall have to turn our eye turrets toward what the rest of the Race is doing here on Tosev 3, and study it for the leaders of this not-empire, and never, ever be a part of it. How to live with that loneliness? Can it be done? I shall have to learn.”

  “I apologize,” Yeager said. “I did not see all of it.” Back before the Germans conquered France, every once in a while you used to read stories in the papers about the doings of Russian emigres in Paris. If any of them were left alive these days, they would have sympathized with Straha: there they were, on the outside looking in, while the great bulk of their countrymen went about building something new. If that wasn’t hell, it had to be a pretty fair training ground.

  Straha sighed. “Before long, too, in the scale of things the Race commonly uses, the colonization fleet will reach this world. Egg clutches will be incubated. Will any be mine? It is to laugh.” His mouth fell open.

  Some of the Russian emigres had Russian wives, others sweethearts. The ones who didn’t could look for willing Frenchwomen. Straha didn’t miss lady Lizards the way a man missed women: out of sight (or rather, out of scent) really was out of mind for him. But, again, he’d be watching the Race as a whole move along, and he wouldn’t be a part of it.

  “Shiplord, that’s hard,” Sam said.

  “Truth,” Straha said. “But when I came down to this not empire, I did not ask that life be easy, only that it continue. Continue it has. Continue it will, in the circumstances I chose for myself. I shall likely have a long time to contemplate whether I made the correct decision.”

  Sam wanted to find the right thing to say, but for the life of him could not come up with anything.

  Mordechai Anielewicz walked casually past the factory that, up until a few months before, had housed workers turning out winter coats for the Lizards. Then one of the Nazis’ rocket bombs had scored a direct hit on the place. It looked like any other building that had taken a one-tonne bomb hit: like the devil. The only good thing was that the rocket had come down during the night shift, when fewer people were working.

  Anielewicz looked around. Not many people were on the street. He tugged at his trousers, as if adjusting them. Then he ducked behind one of the factory’s shattered walls; any man might have done the same to get some privacy in which to ease himself.

  From deeper in the ruins, a voice spoke in Yiddish: “Ah, it’s you. We don’t like people coming in here, you know.”

  “And why is that, Mendel?” Mordechai asked dryly.

  “Because we’re sitting on an egg we hope we don’t ever have to hatch,” the guard answered, his own tone less collected than he probably would have liked.

  “As long as it’s in our nest and not the one the Germans laid for it,” Anielewicz answered. Getting it out of the ghetto field had been an epic in itself, and not one Mordechai ever wanted to repeat. The bomb had not been buried deep, or he and his comrades never would have budged it. As things were, the gaping hole in the ground that marked its presence had remained for the Lizards to spot when morning came. Fortunately, the cover story-that the corpses in that grave were suspected to have died of cholera, and so had to be exhumed and burned-had held up. Like most Lizards, Bunim was squeamish about human diseases.

  Mordechai peered out from the gloom inside the ruined factory. None of the people who had been on the street was looking back. Nobody seemed to have taken any notice that he hadn’t come out after going in there for privacy’s sake. He walked farther into the bowels of the building. The way back twisted and went around piles of brick and tumbledown interior walls, but, once out of sight of the street, was free of rubble.

  There, sitting in its oversized crate on a reinforced wagon, rested the bomb the Nazis had buried in the ghetto field. It had taken an eight-horse team to get it here; they’d need another eight horses to get it out, it they ever had to. One of the reasons Mordechai had chosen to hide the bomb here was the livery stable round the corner. Eight of the sturdiest draft horses the Jewish underground could find waited there, ready to be quickly brought over here in case of emergency.

  As if by magic, a couple of Schmeisser-toting guards appeared from out of the shadows. They nodded to Anielewicz. He set his hand on the wagon. “When we have the chance, I want to get this damned thing out of Lodz altogether, take it someplace where there aren’t so many Lizards around.”

  “That would be good,” said one of the guards, a skinny, walleyed fellow named Chaim. “Put it somewhere without so many people around, too. Everybody who isn’t one of us could be one of-them.”

  He didn’t specify whothey were. Likely he didn’t know. Mordechai didn’t know, either, but he had the same worries Chaim did. The enemy of your enemy wasn’t your friend here-he was just an enemy of a different flavor. Anybody who found out the bomb was here-Lizards, Poles, Nazis, even the Jews who followed Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski(and wasn’t that an odd juxtaposition of names? Anielewicz thought)-would try to take it away and take advantage of it.

  Anielewicz rapped gently on the crate again. “If we have to, we can play Samson in the temple,” he said.

  Chaim and the other guard both nodded. That other f
ellow said, “You’re sure the Nazis can’t set it off by wireless?”

  “Positive, Saul,” Anielewicz answered. “We made certain of that. But we have the manual detonator not far away.” Both guards nodded; they knew where it was. “God forbid we have to use it, that’s all.”

  “Omayn,”Chaim and Saul said together.

  “See anything unusual around here?” Mordechai asked, as he did every time he came to check on the bomb. As they always did, the guards shook their heads. The job of guarding the crate was turning into routine for them; neither was a man of much imagination. Anielewicz knew he had more than was good for him.

  He made his way out toward the street, pausing to ask Mendel the question he’d just put to Saul and Chaim. Mendel affirmed that he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, either. Anielewicz told himself he was worrying over nothing: nobody but the Jewish underground (and the Nazis, of course) knew the bomb had come into Lodz, and nobody but his own people knew where it was now. The Nazis wouldn’t have tried to set it off, not with their cease-fire with the Lizards still holding.

  He’d told himself that a great many times. He still had trouble believing it. After almost five years of war, first against the Germans and then sometimes against the Germans and Lizards both, he had trouble believing any counsel of safety.

  As he emerged onto the street, he fumbled at his trousers to show why he had gone back behind the wall, then looked up and down to see if anyone was taking any special notice either of him or of the wrecked factory building. He didn’t spot anyone like that, so he started up the street.

  There maybe fifteen meters ahead of him, striding along briskly, was a tall, broad-shouldered man with light brown hair. The fellow turned a corner. Anielewicz followed, not thinking much of him except that his black coat was too short: it flapped halfway down his calves instead of at his ankles as it should have. Not many men in Lodz were so big, which no doubt explained why the fellow couldn’t find a coat to fit him. He lacked only six or eight centimeters of two meters’ height.