Upsetting the Balance w-3

by Harry Turtledove

  “That’s good,” Jager said. “Think of it like this: for the Lizards over there in Oels, it’s as if the sun went off a centimeter in front of their snouts-and they’ll never see anything again.”

  More cheers rang out Gunther Grillparzer said, “You know what, sir? I have to apologize to the mucky-mucks. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

  “I tell you what, Corporal,” Jager said: “I won’t tell them. That way they won’t die of shock.” The gunner laughed loud and long. Jager added, “I thought they’d gone round the bend myself, and I’m not ashamed to say so. But it makes sense now: they let the Lizards concentrate in Oels, didn’t shell the town itself, both to hold the Lizards there and to make sure the bomb didn’t get hit by accident, and then-”

  “Yes, sir,” Grillparzer agreed enthusiastically. “And then!”

  In color and shape, the cloud rising from the explosive-metal bomb put Jager in mind of Caesar’s amanita. It was more nearly the hue of apricot flesh than the rich, bright orange of the mushroom prized for its flavor since Roman days, but that was a detail. He wondered how many kilometers into the sky the cap of the mushroom rose.

  “Well,” he said, half to himself, “I think Breslau has held.”

  Gunther Grillparzer heard him.“Jawohl!” the gunner said.

  An alarm hissed insistently. Atvar thrashed and twisted in free fall, fighting to stay asleep. Before long, he knew the fight was lost. As consciousness returned, fear came with it. You didn’t wake the fleetlord to report good news.

  One of his eye turrets swiveled toward the communications screen. Sure enough, Pshing’s face stared out of it. The adjutant’s mouth worked, but no sound emerged. He looked extraordinarily ugly that way, or perhaps Atvar was grumpy at being roused so suddenly.

  “Activate two-way voice,” he told the computer in his rest chamber, and then addressed Pshing: “Here I am. What’s the commotion?”

  “Exalted Fleetlord!” Pshing cried. “The Big Uglies-the Deutsch Big Uglies-set off a fission bomb as we were about to overrun their fortified position at the town called Breslau. We had been concentrating males and equipment in the forward area for the assault on their works immediately outside the city, and suffered large losses in the blast.”

  Atvar bared his teeth in a grimace of anguish a Tosevite who knew a little about the Race might have taken for laughter. His plan for the attack on Deutschland had allowed for the Deutsch Big Uglies’ having better weapons than the Race knew them to possess, but had not anticipated their having atomic bombs.

  Tensely, he asked, “Is this a case like that of the SSSR, where they’ve shaped a device from plutonium they stole from us?”

  “Exalted Fleetlord, results of analysis are at present both preliminary and ambiguous,” Pshing answered. “First approximation is that some of the fissile material was indeed taken from us, but that some may well have been independently produced.”

  Atvar grimaced again, if that report was accurate, it was what he’d dreaded most. The SSSR had used the one bomb, apparently of plutonium stolen from the Race, but had shown no signs of being able to produce its own. That was bad, but could be lived with. If the Deutsche knew not only how to exploit radioactives that fell into their hands but also how to produce those radioactives, the war against the Big Uglies had just taken a new and altogether revolting turn.

  “What are your orders, Exalted Fleetlord?” Pshing asked. “Shall we bomb the Deutsch positions in Breslau, and avenge ourselves in that fashion?”

  “Do you mean with our own nuclear weapons?” Atvar said. When his adjutant made the affirmative gesture, he went on, “No. What would be the point of that? It would only create more nuclear zones for our males to cross, and the fallout, given Tosev 3 weather patterns, would adversely affect forces farther east. Unfortunately, we have not succeeded in tracking down the area where the Deutsche are conducting their nuclear experiments.”

  “That is not surprising,” Pshing answered. “They so contaminated a stretch of their own territory when a pile went out of control that the radioactivity in the area could mask a successful experiment on their part”

  “Truth,” Atvar said bitterly. “Even their incompetence may work in their favor. And, after the lesson we taught the Nipponese, they must know we respond severely to nuclear development efforts on the part of Big Uglies. They will be shielding their program as well as they can.”

  “Surely you will not leave them unpunished merely because we cannot locate their nuclear reactors,” Pshing exclaimed.

  “Oh, by no means,” Atvar said. If he did nothing, the revolt Straha had led against him would be merely a small annoyance, when compared to what the shiplords and officers would do to him now. Unless he wanted Kirel holding his position, he had to respond. “Have the targeting specialist select a Deutsch city within the zone of radioactive contamination. We shall remind the Big Uglies we are not to be trifled with. Report the targeting choice to me as soon as it is made-and it had best be made soon.”

  “It shall be done.” Pshing’s face vanished from the screen.

  Atvar tried to go back to sleep. That would have been the perfect way to show this latest setback did not unduly concern him. The setbackdid concern him, though, and sleep proved as elusive as victory over the Big Uglies.So much for enhancing my reputation among the males, he thought. He laughed in self-mockery. By the time this war was done, if it ever was, he’d be lucky to have any reputation left.

  The communicator screen lit up again. “The largest Deutsch city within the contaminated zone is the one called Munchen, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing reported. A map showed Atvar where in Deutschland Munchen lay. “It is also a major manufacturing center and transport hub.”

  Atvar studied the railroad and highway networks surrounding the city. “Very well,” he said, “let Munchen be destroyed, and let it be a lesson to the Deutsche and to all the Big Uglies of Tosev 3.”

  “It shall be done,” Pshing said.

  Thegoyim had a legend of the Wandering Jew. With a knapsack on his back and a German rifle slung over his shoulder, Mordechai Anielewicz felt he’d done enough wandering to live up to the legend.

  There weren’t as many woods and forests around Lodz as there were farther east: fewer places for partisan bands to take refuge against the wrath of the Lizards. He hadn’t been able to find a band to join, not yet. Lizards had rolled past him a few times in their armored vehicles. They’d paid him no special heed. Armed men were common on Polish roads, and some of them fought for, not against, the aliens. Besides, the Lizards were heading west, toward the battle with the Nazis.

  Even from many kilometers away, Anielewicz had listened to the sullen mutter of artillery. The sound hung in the air, like distant thunder on a summer’s day. He tried to gauge the progress of the battle by whether the rumble grew louder or softer, but knew he was just guessing. Atmospherics had as much to do with how the artillery duel sounded as did advances and retreats.

  He was walking toward a farmhouse in the hope of working for his supper when the western horizon lit up. Had the sun poked through the clouds that blanketed the sky? No-the glow seemed to be coming fromin front of the clouds.

  He stared in awe at the great, glowing mushroom cloud that rose into the sky. Like Heinrich Jager, he quickly realized what it had to be. Unlike Jager, he did not know which side had touched it off. If it was Germans, he, too, knew he played a role, and no small one, in their getting at least some of the explosive metal they’d needed.

  “If itis the Nazis, do I get credit for that, or blame?” he asked aloud. Again unlike Jager, he found no sure answer.

  Teerts checked the radar in his head-up display. No sign of Deutsch aircraft anywhere nearby. The thought had hardly crossed his mind before Sserep, one of his wingmales, said, “It’s going to be easy today, superior sir.”

  “That’s what Nivvek thought, and look what happened to him,” Teerts answered. The Race hadn’t been able to rescue the other male before the Deu
tsche captured him. From some reports, the Deutsche treated prisoners better than the Nipponese did. For Nivvek’s sake, Teerts hoped those reports were true. He still had nightmares about his own captivity.

  He suspected more nightmares were heading his way. He wished-how he wished! — Elifrim had chosen a different male to lead the protection for the punishment killercraft now flying toward Munchen. Had the Deutsche known the load that killercraft carried, they would have sent up everything that would fly in an effort to knock it down. They’d used an atomic bomb against the Race, and they were going to be reminded they could not do that without paying the price.

  Tokyo had already paid that price, thanks to Teerts, and the Nipponese hadn’t even had nuclear weapons-they were just trying to acquire them. They were only Big Uglies, but Teerts felt guilty anyhow. And now he was going to have to watch a Tosevite city go up in atomic flame.

  The pilot of the punishment killercraft, a male named Jisrin, had no such qualms. Mechanical as if he were a computer himself, he said, “Target is visually obscured. I shall carry out the bombing run by radar.”

  “Acknowledged,” Teerts said. He spoke to Sserep and his other wingmale, a relatively inexperienced flier named Hossad: “We’ll want to swing wide of the punishment killercraft after it releases its bomb. From everything I’ve heard and reviewed in the training scenarios, blast effects and winds can do dreadful things to aircraft handling if we’re too close to the site of the explosion. You’ll follow my lead.”

  “It shall be done,” Sserep and Hossad said together.

  In his flight-leader’s circuit, Teerts listened to his opposite number on the other side of the punishment killercraft giving his wingmales almost identical instructions. Then Jisrin said, “I am releasing the weapon on the mark… Mark. Ignition will delay until proper altimeter reading. Meanwhile, I suggest we depart.” He hit his afterburner and streaked away from the doomed city.

  Teerts swung his killercraft through a wide turn that would bring him back on course for the air base in southern France. His wing-males followed. Up till now, everything had run as smoothly as if it were a training mission. That relieved him-such things didn’t happen very often on Tosev 3-and alarmed him, too: what would go wrong now?

  Nothing. Not this time. A great ball of fire burned through the clouds below and behind him, flinging them aside, scattering them, vaporizing them. The glare was terrifying, overwhelming; Teerts’ nictitating membranes flicked across his eyes to protect them, as if the piercing light were a grain of sand or grit that could be physically pushed aside.

  Moments later, the blast wave caught up with the fleeing killercraft and flicked it through the air. It was stronger and sharper than Teerts had expected. The airframe groaned under the sudden strain, but held. Together, Teerts and the killercraft’s computer rewon control.

  “By the Emperor,” Hossad said softly as he, too, mastered his killercraft. “We take for granted what the atom can do. It gives us electric power, it electrolyzes hydrogen and oxygen for our vehicles, it powers our ships between the stars. But when you let it loose-” He didn’t go on. He didn’t need to go on. Teerts wished he had a taste of ginger.

  Jisrin, still matter-of-fact, put the capper on the mission: “The target is destroyed. Returning to base.”

  Atvar listened to the bestial howls of rage that came over the crackling shortwave frequencies from Deutschland. One thing the atomic bomb that had smote Munchen had not done: it had not got rid of Hitler, the not-emperor of the Deutsche. Even without understanding a single word of the Deutsch language, Atvar also gathered that it had not persuaded Hitler to yield.

  He turned away from the incomprehensible rantings of the Deutsch not-emperor to a translation: “We shall have vengeance!” Hitler was saying; the translator added an emphatic cough to show the stress the Big Ugly put on the words. “Our strength lies not in defense but in attack. Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles. We shall once more make the heroic decision to resist Our idea-our people-is right, and so is invincible; every persecution will lead to our inner strengthening. This war is one of the elemental conflicts which will usher in a new world era. At its end, Deutschland will either be a world power or will not be at all! If the Deutsch people despair now, they will deserve no better than they get. If they despair, I will not be sorry for them if God lets them down.”

  The translator added, “Speaking in my own voice for a moment, I should note that all of these not particularly rational utterances are accompanied by vehement and prolonged applause from the Big Uglies in the audience. Rational or not, Hitler has a strong hold on the Tosevites of his not-empire.”

  When he resumed, the febrile tone he assumed showed he was once more passing on Hitler’s words: “We shall have vengeance, I say again! For every bomb the Lizards use against us, we shall use six, eight, ten, a hundred bombs against them. We shall destroy them so completely, it shall be as if they never were. They have dared test themselves against the master race, and they shall fail!” The translator added another emphatic cough, then said, “This preposterous and vain pronouncement was greeted with more applause.”

  Atvar turned off the Tosevite’s speech. “Well, what do you think of that?” he asked Kirel.

  “Destroying Munchen has failed to intimidate the Deutsche,” Kirel answered. “I find this most unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate, yes,” Atvar said, with an emphatic cough of his own. Kirel’s restrained pattern of speech could sometimes be most effective. Atvar went on, “What do you make of this Hitler’s threat, to respond bomb against bomb?”

  “My opinion, Exalted Fleetlord, is that he will do so if he has the ability,” Kirel said. “And, since analysis confirms that this latest bomb was made partly from nuclear material not stolen from us…” His voice trailed away.

  “-He either does have the ability or will have it soon,” Atvar finished unhappily. “That is my conclusion also. My other conclusion is that this war has just grown a great deal worse. Spirits of departed Emperors willing, I shall not have to say that so often in future.”

  Mutt Daniels opened his canteen and poured from it into his cup. The liquid that went from one to the other was a deep amber color. He lifted the cup in salute before he drank. “Mud in your eye, Miss Willard,” he said, and gulped the whiskey down.

  “Ain’t this a hell of a thing, Lieutenant?” said Sergeant Muldoon, who had his own canteen full of whiskey. “Havin’ a drink in the Frances E. Willard Home, I mean.” He drank, too. “All the little old ladies from the WCTU must be spinning in their graves, I figure.”

  “I seen plenty o’ the Women’s Christian Temperance Union down home in Mississippi when I was growing up,” Mutt answered. “I figured anything those sour old prunes were against had to be good enough for me to want to be for it. And you know what? Put it all together, I reckon I was right”

  “Damn straight you were,” Muldoon said, taking another drink.

  “But that ain’t why I chose this here house for us,” Daniels said.

  Herman Muldoon laughed. “I know why you chose it: it’s standing up.”

  “You ain’t just joking.” Even here in Evanston, north of the Chicago city line, devastation was heavy. The Northwestern University campus had been pounded hard. The water filtration plant close by was just a ruin. Maybe it was the whiskey-though he’d had only the one swig-and maybe just frustration boiling up in him, but he burst out, “God damn it to hell, we don’t need to be in Evanston. We should be takin’ the fight to the Lizards down in Chicago.”

  “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know, Lieutenant,” Muldoon said. “But as long as we’re here, we got ourselves a nice fire goin’, an’ we can get snug as a couple of bugs in a rug.”

  The fireplace in the sitting room of the Willard House still worked fine, and there was anything but a shortage of wood to feed it. A plaque on the wall of the room said it was dedicated to Miss Anna Gordon, Frances Willard’s lifelong companion and a world president of the WCTU
in her own right. Mutt wondered exactly whatlifelong companion meant. Lucille Potter, who was dead now, had shown him that even if it meant what he suspected it did, it wasn’t necessarily as shocking and sinful as he’d been brought up to believe.

  “You know what?” he said, almost plaintively, to Muldoon. “You get stuck in a war, you don’t just set your body on the line. Everything you knew or thought you knew goes up into the front lines with you, and some of it ends up dead even if you don’t.”

  “That’s over my head, Lieutenant,” Muldoon said. “I’m a dumb noncom, nothin’ else but I leave the thinking to officers like you.” He laughed to show Mutt wasn’t supposed to take him all that seriously. “What I think is, sounds like you could use another drink.”

  “I’d like to, don’t you doubt it for a minute,” Daniels answered. “But if I’m gonna keep track of this platoon full of wild men, I can’t afford to get me lit up.”

  Later, he wondered if God had been listening to him. A brilliant yellow-white light blazed through the south-facing window of the sitting roam, printing his shadow against the far wall, the one with the plaque on it. It reminded him of the way a flashbulb could do the same thing. But a flashbulb was there and then it was gone, while this light was not only brighter than any flashbulb but went on for several seconds, though it got fainter and redder as time went on.

  The ground jerked under Daniels’ feet. As he exclaimed in surprise and alarm, he heard a report that reminded him of a big artillery piece being fired maybe a hundred yards away. The few shards of glass that remained in the sitting-room window blew out. By luck, none of them pierced him or Muldoon.

  “What thehell was that?” the sergeant burst out. “Biggest darn boom I’ve ever been through, and I’ve been through some doozies. Somebody’s ammunition dump going up, maybe. Hope to Jesus it was theirs and not ours.”

  “Yeah.” Mutt went to the window to see what he could see. Muldoon joined him a moment later. For perhaps half a minute, they stared south together. Then, very softly and not in the least irreverently, Mutt whispered, “Goddamn.” Muldoon’s head bobbed up and down. He seemed to have lost the power of speech.