Down to Earth

by Harry Turtledove

  “I did not, and I do not intend to,” Nussboym said. “But, with your generous permission, I do intend to continue my efforts.”

  “Yes, go ahead,” Molotov said. “I would not mind seeing Poland destabilized in a way that forces the Lizards to pay attention to it. It is a very useful buffer between us and the fascists farther west.” He wagged a finger at the Jew, a show of considerable emotion for him. “Under no circumstances, however, is Poland to be destabilized in a way that lets the Nazis intervene there.”

  “I understand that,” David Nussboym assured him. “Believe me, it is not a fate I’d wish on my worst enemies—and some of those people are.”

  “See that you don’t inflict it on them,” Molotov said, wagging that finger again: Poland genuinely concerned him. “If things go wrong, that is one of the places that can flash into nuclear war in the blink of an eye. It can—but it had better not. No debt of gratitude will excuse you there, David Aronovich.”

  Nussboym’s features were almost as impassive as Molotov’s. The Jew had probably learned in the gulag not to show what was on his mind. He’d spent several years there before being recruited to the NKVD. After a single tight, controlled nod, he said, “I won’t fail you.”

  Having got the warning across, Molotov changed the subject: “And how do you find the NKVD these days?”

  “Morale is still very low, Comrade General Secretary,” Nussboym answered. “No one can guess whether he will be next. Everyone is fearful lest colleagues prepare denunciations against him. Everyone, frankly, shivers to think that his neighbor might report him to the GRU.”

  “This is what an agency earns for attempting treason against the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union,” Molotov said harshly. Even so, he was disquieted. He did not want the GRU, the Red Army’s intelligence arm, riding roughshod over the NKVD. He wanted the two spying services competing against each other so the Party could use their rivalry to its own advantage. That, however, was not what Georgi Zhukov wanted, and Zhukov, at the moment, held the whip hand.

  “Thank you for letting me continue, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich.” Nussboym got to his feet. “I won’t take up any more of your time.” He used another sharp nod, then left Molotov’s office. Molotov almost wished he’d stayed longer. Anything seemed preferable to returning to the Five Year Plan.

  But then the intercom buzzed again, and Molotov’s secretary said, “Comrade General Secretary, your next appointment is here: the ambassador from the Race, along with his interpreter.”

  Next to confronting an irritable Lizard—and Queek was often irritable—the Five Year Plan budget suddenly looked alluring. Bozhemoi! Molotov thought. No rest for the weary. Still, his secretary never heard the tiny sigh that fought its way past his lips. “Very well, Pyotr Maksimovich,” he answered. “I will meet them in the other office, as usual.”

  The other office was identical to the one in which he did most of his work, but reserved for meetings with the Race. After he left it, he would change his clothes, down to his underwear. The Lizards were very good at planting tiny electronic eavesdropping devices. He did not want to spread those devices and let them listen to everything that went on inside the Kremlin: thus the meeting chamber that could be quarantined.

  He went in and waited for his secretary to escort the Lizard and his human stooge into the room. Queek skittered in and sat down without asking leave. So did the interpreter, a stolid, broad-faced man. After the ambassador spoke—a series of hisses and pops—the interpreter said, “His Excellency conveys the usual polite greetings.” The fellow had a rhythmic Polish accent much like David Nussboym’s.

  “Tell him I greet him and hope he is well,” Molotov replied, and the Pole popped and hissed to the male of the Race. In fact, Molotov hoped Queek and all his kind (except possibly the Lizards in Poland, who shielded the Soviet Union from the Greater German Reich) would fall over dead. But hypocrisy had always been an essential part of diplomacy, even among humans. “Ask him the reason for which he has sought this meeting.”

  He thought he knew, but the question was part of the game. Queek made another series, a longer one, of unpleasant noises. The interpreter said, “He comes to issue a strong protest concerning Russian assistance to the bandits and rebels in the part of the main continental mass known as China.”

  “I deny giving any such assistance,” Molotov said blandly. He’d been denying it for as long as the Lizards occupied China, first as Stalin’s foreign commissar and then on his own behalf. That didn’t mean it wasn’t true—only that the Race had never quite managed to prove it.

  Now Queek pointed a clawed forefinger at him. “No more evasions,” he said through the interpreter, who looked to enjoy twitting the head of the USSR. “No more lies. Too many weapons of your manufacture are being captured from those in rebellion against the rule of the Race. China is ours. You have no business meddling there.”

  Had Molotov been given to display rather than concealment, he would have laughed. He would, in fact, have chortled. What he said was, “Do you take us for fools? Would we send Soviet arms to China, betraying ourselves? If we aided the Chinese people in their struggle against the imperialism of the Race, we would aid them with German or American weapons, to keep from being blamed. Whoever gives them Soviet weapons seeks to get us in trouble for things we haven’t done.”

  “Is that so?” Queek said, and Molotov nodded, his face as much a mask as ever. But then, to his surprise and dismay, Queek continued, “We are also capturing a good many American weapons. Do you admit, then, that you have provided these to the rebels, in violation of agreements stating that the subregion known as China rightfully belongs to the Race?”

  Damnation, Molotov thought. So the Americans did succeed in getting a shipload of arms through to the People’s Liberation Army. Mao hadn’t told him that before launching the uprising. But then, Mao had given even Stalin headaches. The interpreter grinned offensively. Yes, he enjoyed making Molotov sweat, imperialist lackey and running dog that he was.

  But Molotov was made of stern stuff. “I admit nothing,” he said stonily. “I have no reason to admit anything. The Soviet Union has firmly adhered to the terms of all agreements into which it has entered.” And you cannot prove otherwise . . . I hope.

  For a bad moment, he wondered if Queek would pull out photographs showing caravans of weapons crossing the long, porous border between the USSR and China. The Lizards’ satellite reconnaissance was far ahead of anything the independent human powers could do. But the ambassador only made noises like a samovar with the flame under it turned up too high. “Do not imagine that your effrontery will go unpunished,” Queek said. “After we have put down the Chinese rebels once and for all, we will take a long, hard look at your role in this affair.”

  That threat left Molotov unmoved. The Japanese hadn’t been able to put down Chinese rebels, either Communists or Nationalists, and the Lizards were having no easy time of it, either. They could hold the cities—except when rebellion burned hot, as it did now—and the roads between them, but lacked the soldiers to subdue the countryside, which was vast and heavily populated. Guerrillas were able to move about at will, almost under their snouts.

  “Do not imagine that your colonialism will go unpunished,” Molotov answered. “The logic of the historical dialectic proves your empire, like all others based on the oppression of workers and peasants, will end up lying on the ash heap of history.”

  Marxist terminology did not translate well into the language of the Race. Molotov had seen that before, and enjoyed watching the interpreter have trouble. He waited for Queek to explode, as Lizards commonly did when he brought up the dialectic and its lessons. But Queek said only, “You think so, do you?”

  “Yes,” Molotov answered, on the whole sincerely. “The triumph of progressive mankind is inevitable.”

  Then Queek startled him by saying, “Comrade General Secretary, it is possible that what you tell me is truth.” The Lizard startled his interpreter, too; the
Pole turned toward him with surprise on his face, plainly wondering whether he’d really heard what he thought he had. With a gesture that looked impatient, the Lizard ambassador continued, “It is possible—in fact, it is likely—that, if it is truth, you will regret its being truth.”

  Careful, Molotov thought. He is telling me something new and important here. Aloud, he said, “Please explain what you mean.”

  “It shall be done,” Queek said, a phrase Molotov understood before the interpreter translated It. “At present, you Tosevites are a nuisance and a menace to the Race only here on Tosev 3. Yet your technology is advancing rapidly—witness the Americans’ Lewis and Clark. If it should appear to us that you may become a risk to the Race throughout the Empire, what is our logical course under those circumstances?”

  Vyacheslav Molotov started to lick his lips. He stopped, of course, but his beginning the gesture told how shaken he was. Now he hoped he hadn’t heard what he thought he had. Countering one question with another, he asked, “What do you believe your logical course would be?”

  Queek spelled it out: “One option under serious consideration is the complete destruction of all independent Tosevite not-empires.”

  “You know this would result in the immediate destruction of your own colonies here on Earth,” Molotov said. “If you attack us, we shall assuredly take vengeance—not only the peace-loving peasants and workers of the Soviet Union, but also the United States and the Reich. You need have no doubts about the Reich.” For once, he was able to use the Germans’ ferocity to his advantage.

  Or so he thought, till Queek replied, “I understand this, yes, but sometimes a mangled limb must be amputated to preserve the body of which it is only one part.”

  “This bluff will not intimidate us,” Molotov said. But the Lizards, as he knew only too well, were not nearly so likely to bluff as were their human opposite numbers.

  Again, their ambassador echoed his unhappy thoughts, saying, “If you think of this as a bluff, you will be making a serious mistake. It is a warning. You and your Tosevite counterparts—who are also receiving it—had better take it as such.”

  “I shall be the one who decides how to take it,” Molotov replied. He concealed his fear. For him, that was easy. Making it go away was something else again.

  3

  Up until now, the only time since the Japanese overran her village just before the little scaly devils came that Liu Han had lived in a liberated city was during her visit with her daughter to the United States. Now . . . Now, in exultation, she turned to Liu Mei and said, “Peking remains free!”

  “I never thought we would be able to drive out the scaly devils’ garrison.” Liu Mei’s eyes glowed, though the rest of her long face remained almost expressionless. The scaly devils had taken her from Liu Han just after she was born, and for more than a year set about raising her as if she were one of theirs. They had not smiled—they could not smile—back at her when she began to smile as a baby. Without response, her ability to smile had withered on the stalk. That was one reason, and not the least of reasons, Liu Han hated the little scaly devils.

  “Shanghai is still free, too,” Liu Han went on. “So is Kaifeng.”

  “They are still free of the little devils, yes, but they aren’t in the hands of the People’s Liberation Army, the way Peking is,” Liu Mei said. Her revolutionary fervor burned hotter than her mother’s. “We share them with Kuomintang reactionaries, the way we share Harbin and Mukden up in Manchuria with pro-Japanese reactionaries. But Peking is ours.”

  “Next to the little scaly devils, the fighters from the Kuomintang aren’t reactionaries. They’re fellow travelers,” Liu Han answered. “Next to the scaly devils, even the jackals who want to turn Manchuria back into Manchukuo and make it a Japanese puppet again are fellow travelers. If we don’t have a common front together against the little devils, we are bound to lose this struggle.”

  “The logic of the dialectic will destroy them in their turn,” Liu Mei said confidently.

  Liu Han was confident that would happen, too, but not so confident about when. Had she replied just then, Liu Mei wouldn’t have been able to hear her; killercraft piloted by scaly devils screamed low above their rooming house in the western part of Peking’s Chinese City. Cannons roared. Bombs burst close by with harsh roars—crump! crump! Window frames rattled. The floor beneath Liu Han’s feet quivered, as if at an earthquake.

  Down on the ground, machine guns rattled and barked as the men—and a few women—of the People’s Liberation Army tried to bring down the scaly devils’ airplanes. By the way the jet engines of the killercraft faded in the distance, Liu Han knew the machine guns had failed again.

  Her mouth twisted in vexation. “We need more antiaircraft weapons,” she said. “We need better antiaircraft weapons, too.”

  “We only got a few guided antiaircraft rockets from the American, and we’ve used most of those,” Liu Mei answered. “With the fighting the way it is, how can they send us any more?”

  “I would take them from anyone, even the Japanese,” Liu Han said. “We need them. Without them, the little scaly devils can pound us and pound us from the sky, and we can’t hit back. I wish we had more mortars, too, and more mines we could use against their tanks.” While you’re at it, why not wish for the moon? she thought—not a Chinese phrase, but one she’d picked up in Los Angeles.

  Before Liu Mei could answer, a new cry pierced the shouts and screams that mingled with the gunfire outside. The cry was raw and urgent and came from the throats of both men and women: “Fire!”

  Liu Han rushed to the window of the room she shared with her daughter. Sure enough, a column of black smoke rose from a building only a block or so away. Flames leapt up, red and angry. Turning to Liu Mei, she said, “We’d better go downstairs. That’s a big fire, and it will spread fast. We don’t want to get stuck in here.”

  Liu Mei didn’t waste time answering. She just hurried for the door. Liu Han followed. They went down the dark, rickety stairs together. Other people in the rooming house, some of them also prominent Communists, were scurrying to the ground floor, too.

  When Liu Han got down there, she ran out into the hutung—the cramped alleyway—onto which the rooming house opened. Peking was a city of hutungs; between its broad thoroughfares, alleys ran every which way, packed with shops and eateries and shacks and rooming houses and taverns and everything else under the sun. Hutungs were commonly packed with people, too; in a country as crowded as China, Liu Han hadn’t particularly noticed that till she went to the USA—before then, she’d taken it for granted. Now, every so often, she didn’t.

  This hutung, at the moment, was so packed, people had a hard time running. The wind—as usual, from out of the northwest, from the Mongolian desert—blew smoke through the alley in a choking cloud. Eyes streaming, Liu Han reached out for Liu Mei’s hand. By what was literally blind luck, she seized it. If she hadn’t, they would have been swept apart, two different ships adrift on the Hwang Ho River. As things were, they drifted together.

  “No one will be able to get through to fight the fire.” Liu Mei had to scream to make herself heard in the din, though her mother’s ear was only a couple of feet from her mouth.

  “I know,” Liu Han said. “It will burn till it stops, that’s all.” Peking had seen a lot of fires since the uprising against the little scaly devils began. A lot of them had ended that way, too. Fire trucks were all very well for blazes on the larger streets, but hadn’t a prayer of pushing their way into the hutungs, and bucket brigades weren’t much good against the massive fires combat caused. Even a bucket brigade would have had a hard time breasting this tide of fleeing humanity.

  More smoke billowed over Liu Han and Liu Mei. They both coughed horribly, like women dying of consumption. Behind them, people shrieked in panic. Above the shrieks came the crackle of flames. “The fire is moving faster than we are,” Liu Mei said, fear in her voice if not on her impassive face.

  “I know,” L
iu Han answered grimly. She had a knife in a hidden sheath strapped to her ankle; she didn’t go anywhere unarmed these days. If she took it out and started slashing at the people ahead of her, would it clear a path so she and Liu Mei could outrun the flames? The only thing that kept her from doing it was the cold judgment that it wouldn’t help.

  And then, without warning, the pressure eased. Like melon seeds squeezed between the fingers, she and Liu Mei popped out onto a wider street, one with cobblestones rather than just dirt. She hadn’t even known it was close by, for she couldn’t see over the backs of the people ahead. Liu Mei hadn’t seen it either, though she was a couple of inches taller than her mother—Bobby Fiore, her American father, had been a big man by Chinese standards.

  Now people could move faster. Liu Han and Liu Mei fled the fire, and gained on it. “Gods and spirits be praised,” Liu Han gasped, even though, as a good Marxist-Leninist, she wasn’t supposed to believe in gods or spirits. “I think we’ll get away.”

  Liu Mei looked back over her shoulder. She could do that now without so much fear of getting trampled after a misstep. “The rooming house must be burning,” she said in a stricken voice.

  “Yes, I think so,” Liu Han said. “We are alive. We will stay alive, and find another place to live. The Party will help us, if we need help. Things are not important. We didn’t have many things to lose, anyhow.” Having grown up in a peasant village, she needed few things to keep her going.

  But tears streamed down Liu Mei’s expressionless, soot-streaked (and, yes, rather big-nosed) face. “The photographs we got in the United States,” she said in a broken voice. “The photographs of my father and his ancestors.”