Striking the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  “Even chicken costs,” Basil Roundbush said. Goldfarb had been thinking the same thing, but hadn’t said it, though with his tiny pay he had more justification than the officer. But, when you were a Jew, you thought three times before you let others perceive you as cheap.

  Jerome Jones slapped himself in the hip pocket. “Money’s not the biggest worry in the world right now, not with eighteen months’ pay dropped on me all at once. More money than I thought I’d get, too. How many times have they raised our salaries while we were gone?”

  “Three or four,” Goldfarb answered. “But it’s not as much money as you think. Prices have gone up a lot faster than pay. I was just thinking that a few minutes ago.” He glanced down the bar toward Naomi, who had just set a pint pot in front of a slicker-clad fisherman. His shoulders heaved up and down in a silent sigh. It would be so good to get her out of here and live on his pay—except he could barely do that himself, and two surely couldn’t.

  He caught his fiancée’s eye. She came back over with a smile. “A round for all my friends here,” he said, digging into his pocket to see what banknotes lay crumpled there.

  By immemorial custom, everyone would buy a round after that. He’d want a radar mounted on the front of his bicycle by the time he had to go back to barracks, but he expected he’d manage. He’d have a thick head come morning, but he’d manage that, too. Beefsteak might be thin on the ground, but they’d never yet run short on aspirin tablets.

  The Tosevite negotiators rose respectfully when Atvar entered the chamber where they waited. He flicked one eye turret toward Uotat. “Give them the appropriate greetings,” he said to Uotat.

  “It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” the translator answered, and switched from the beautiful, precise language of the Race to the mushy ambiguities of the Big Ugly tongue called English.

  One after another, the Tosevites replied, Molotov of the SSSR through his own interpreter. “They say the usual things in the usual way, Exalted Fleetlord,” Uotat reported.

  “Good,” Atvar said. “I am in favor of their doing any usual thing in any usual way. On this planet, that is in and of itself unusual. And speaking of the unusual, we now return to the matter of Poland. Tell the speaker from Deutschland I am most displeased over his recent threat of renewed combat, and that the Race will take unspecified severe measures should such threats reoccur in the future.”

  Again, Uotat spoke English. Von Ribbentrop replied in the same language. “Exalted Fleetlord, he blames errors in decoding the instructions from his not-emperor for that unseemly lapse of a few days ago.”

  “Does he?” Atvar said. “After the fact, a male may blame a great many things, some of which may even have some connection to the truth. Tell him it was as well he was mistaken. Tell him his not-empire would have suffered dreadful damage had he proved correct.”

  This time, von Ribbentrop replied at some length, and apparently with some heat. “He denies that Deutschland needs to fear the Empire and the Race. He says that, as the Race has been dilatory in these negotiations, his not-empire is within its rights to resume conflict at a time and in a manner of its choosing. He does regret having misinformed you at that time and in that manner, however.”

  “Generous of him,” the fleetlord remarked. “Tell him we have not been dilatory. Point out to him that we have the essentials of agreement with the SSSR and with the U.S.A. Tell him it is the intransigent attitude of his own not-emperor over Poland that has led to this impasse.”

  Again Uotat translated. Von Ribbentrop let out several yips of Tosevite laughter before answering. “He says that any agreement with the SSSR is of less worth than the sheet of paper on which its terms are stated.”

  Even before von Ribbentrop had finished, Molotov began speaking in his own language, which to Atvar sounded different from English but no more beautiful. Molotov’s interpreter spoke to Uotat, who spoke to Atvar: “He accuses the Deutsche of violating agreements they have made, and cites examples. Do you want the full listing, Exalted Fleetlord?”

  “Never mind,” Atvar told him. “I have heard it before, and can retrieve the data whenever necessary.”

  Von Ribbentrop spoke again. “He points out, Exalted Fleetlord, that the SSSR has a long frontier with China, where conflict against the local Big Uglies continues. He also points out that one Chinese faction is ideologically akin to the faction ruling the SSSR. He asks how we can imagine the males of the SSSR will not continue to supply their fellow factionalists with munitions even after reaching agreement with the Race.”

  “That is an interesting question,” Atvar said. “Ask Molotov to answer.”

  Molotov did, and took a while doing it. Though Atvar could not understand his language any more than he could English, he noted a difference in style between the representatives of Deutschland and the SSSR. Von Ribbentrop was histrionic, dramatic, fond of making little points into big ones. Molotov took the opposite approach: the fleetlord did not know what he was saying, but it sounded soporific. His face was almost as still as that of a male of the Race, which, for a Big Ugly, was most unusual.

  Uotat reported, “The male Molotov states that a large number of Soviet weapons and munitions are already in China; they were sent there to aid the Chinese, or one faction of them, in their struggle against Nippon prior to our arrival here. He further states that, because of this, the SSSR cannot be held liable if such weapons and munitions are discovered in China.”

  “Wait,” Atvar said. “The SSSR and Nippon were not at war with each other when we came to this miserable mudball. Yet Molotov admits to aiding a Chinese faction against the Nipponese?”

  “He does, Exalted Fleetlord,” the translator replied.

  “Then ask him why we should not expect the SSSR to supply the Chinese with arms against us, with whom his not-empire also would not be at war.”

  Uotat spoke. Molotov answered. His interpreter relayed his words to Uotat, and Uotat to Atvar. “He says that, unlike the Nipponese, the Race would have both the power and the interest to punish any such violations.”

  Such breathtaking cynicism made the fleetlord let out a sharp hiss. Nevertheless, the approach was realistic enough to make dealing possible. “Tell him violations will be punished,” he said, and added an emphatic cough.

  “He acknowledges your concern,” Uotat said after Atvar had spoken.

  “How good of him to do so,” Atvar said. “And now, back to the matter of Poland, which appears to be the principal concern remaining before us here.” As he spoke, he wondered if that would be true in the long run. China had a much larger area and many more Big Uglies living in it than Poland did. It also had a long frontier with the SSSR that even the Race’s technology would have a hard time sealing. Sooner or later, the males of the SSSR would try to cheat and then deny they’d done it. He could feel that coming.

  The male from Britain spoke up: “A moment, please.” He was polite; he waited for Uotat to gesture for him to continue before going on, “I must reiterate that His Majesty’s government, while acknowledging the Race’s conquest of large portions of our empire, cannot consider any sort of formal recognition of these conquests without in return obtaining a cease-fire identical in formality and dignity to the ones to which you have agreed with the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany.”

  “So long as the conquest is real, whether you recognize it does not matter,” Atvar replied.

  “A great deal of history contradicts you,” Eden said.

  As far as Atvar was concerned,Tosev3 did not have a great deal of history. He did not say that; it only nettled the Big Uglies. What he did say was, “You must know why Britain is not in the same class as the not-empires you named.”

  “We have no atomic weapons,” the British male answered. “And you must know that is not necessarily a permanent condition.”

  For a moment, Atvar was tempted to grant the British the formal cease-fire they craved on the spot. If for no other reason than to inhibit their nuclear resear
ch program. But he held silent with three Tosevite not-empires already in possession of atomic weapons, what did one more matter, even if the British could make good on the warning? “Poland,” he said.

  “Is and must be ours,” von Ribbentrop declared.

  “Nyet.” Atvar understood that word without any help from the interpreters; Molotov used it so much, it had become unmistakable.

  “The Race shall, for the time being, retain possession of those parts of Poland it now holds,” the fleetlord said. “We shall continue discussion with Deutschland, with the SSSR, and even with the Poles and Jews, in an effort to find a solution satisfactory to all parties.”

  “General Secretary Stalin has instructed me to acquiesce in this,” Molotov said.

  “The Führer does not, will not, and cannot agree,” von Ribbentrop said.

  “I warn you and the Führer once more: if you resume your war against the Race, and especially if you resume it with nuclear weapons, your not-empire will suffer the most severe consequences imaginable,” Atvar said.

  Von Ribbentrop did not answer, not to bellow defiance, not even to acknowledge he’d heard. The only thing that worried Atvar worse than a blustering, defiant Big Ugly was a silent one.

  Ludmila Gorbunova pressed the self-starter of the Fieseler Storch. The Argus engine came to life at once. She was not surprised. German machinery worked well.

  Ignacy waved to her. She nodded back as she built up revolutions. She would have had to push the Storch hard to get it airborne before it rammed the trees ahead. Her old U-2 could never have taken off in so short a space.

  She nodded again. More partisans bent to remove the blocks of wood in front of the light plane’s wheels. At the same time, Ludmila released the brake. The Storch bounded forward. When she pulled back on the stick, its nose came up and it sprang into the air. She could see the trees through the cockpit glasshouse: dark shapes down there, almost close enough to reach out and touch. The Poles whose candles had marked the edge of the forest for her now blew them out

  She buzzed along steadily, not wanting to gain much altitude.

  As long as she was on the Lizard side of the line, she might be shot down as an enemy. Ironic that she’d have to make it to German-held territory to feel safe.

  Safe wasn’t all she hoped she’d feel. By the coordinates, she was returning to the same landing strip she’d used before. With luck, Heinrich Jäger would be there waiting for her.

  Off to the right, muzzle flashes blazed in the darkness. Something hit the side of the fuselage, once, with a sound like a stone clattering off a tin roof. Ludmila gave the Storch more throttle, getting out of there as fast as she could.

  That complicated her navigation. If she was going faster, she needed to fly for less time. How much less? She worked the answer out in her head, decided she didn’t like it, and worked it out again. By the time she discovered where she’d gone wrong the first time, a glance at her watch warned her it was time to start looking around for the landing strip.

  She hoped she wouldn’t have to do a search spiral. The Germans were liable to start shooting at her if she buzzed around for too long, and the spiral might take her back over Lizard-held territory if it got too big.

  There! As usual, the lanterns marking the landing strip were small and dim, but she spotted them. Lowering the enormous flaps on the Storch killed airspeed almost as if she were stepping on the brakes on the highway. The light plane jounced to a stop well within the area the lanterns marked off.

  Ludmila flipped up the cockpit door. She climbed out onto the wing, then jumped down to the ground. Men came trotting up toward the Storch. In the darkness, she couldn’t be sure if any of them was Jäger.

  They recognized her before she could make out who they were. “There—you see, Gunther?” one of them said. “It is the lady pilot.” He gave the word the feminine ending, as Jäger sometimes did, as she had so often heard Georg Schultz do (she wondered what might have happened to Schultz and Tatiana, but only for a moment: as far as she was concerned, they deserved each other).

  “Ja, you were right, Johannes,” another German answered. “Only goes to show nobody can be wrong all the time.” A couple of snorts floated out of the night

  Gunther, Johannes—“You are the men from Colonel Jäger’s panzer, not so?” Ludmila called quietly. “Is he—is he here, too?” No point pretending she didn’t care; they couldn’t help knowing about her and Jäger.

  The panzer crewmen stopped in their tracks, almost as if they’d run into an invisible wall. “No, he’s not here,” one of them—Gunther, she thought—answered. He spoke hardly above a whisper, as if he didn’t want his words to go beyond the span of the Storch’s wings.

  Ice ran down Ludmila’s back. “Tell me!” she said. “Is he hurt? Is he dead? Did it happen before the cease-fire started? Tell me!”

  “He’s not dead—yet,” Gunther said, even more softly than before. “He’s not even hurt—yet. And no, it didn’t happen in the fighting with the Lizards. It happened three days ago, as a matter of fact.”

  “What happened?” Ludmila demanded.

  Maddeningly, Gunther fell silent. After a moment when Ludmila felt like yanking out her pistol and extorting answers at gunpoint. If need be, the crewman named Johannes said, “Miss, the SS arrested him.”

  “Bozhemoi,” Ludmila whispered. “Why? What could he have done? Was it on account of me?”

  “Damned if we know,” Johannes said. “This weedy little SS pigdog came up, pointed a gun at him, and marched him away. Stinking blackshirt bastard—who does he think he is, arresting the best commander we’ve ever had?”

  His crewmen muttered profane agreement. It would have been loud profane agreement, except they were all veterans, and wary of letting anyone outside their circle know their thoughts.

  One of them said, “Come on, boys, we’re supposed to be loading ammo into this miserable little plane.”

  “It has to be because of me,” Ludmila said. She’d always worried the NKVD would descend on her because of Jäger; now, instead, his nation’s security forces had seized him on account of her. That struck her as frightful and dreadfully unfair. “Is there any way to get him free?”

  “From the SS?” said the crewman who’d just urged getting the 7.92mm rounds aboard the Storch. He sounded incredulous; evidently the Nazis invested their watchdogs with the same fearsome, almost supernatural powers the Russian people attributed to the NKVD.

  But the tankman called Gunther said, “Christ crucified, why not? You think Skorzeny would sit around on his can and let anything happen to Colonel Jäger, no matter who’d grabbed him? My left nut he would! He’s an SS man, yes, but he’s a real soldier, too, not just a damned traffic cop in a black shirt. Shit. If we can’t break the colonel out, we don’t deserve to be panzer troopers. Come on!” He was aflame with the idea.

  That cautious crewman spoke up again: “All right, what if we do break him out? Where does he go after that?”

  No one answered him for a couple of seconds. Then Johannes let out a noise that would have been a guffaw if he hadn’t put a silencer on it. He pointed to the Fieseler Storch. “We’ll break him out, we’ll stick him on the plane, and the lady pilot can fly him the hell out of here. If the SS has its hooks in him, he won’t want to stick around anyhow, that’s for damn sure.”

  The other panzer crewmen crowded around him, pumping his hand and pounding him on the back. So did Ludmila. Then she said, “Can you do this without danger to yourselves?”

  “Just watch us,” Johannes said. He started away from the Storch, calling, “The pilot’s got engine troubles. We’re going to get a mechanic.” And off they went, tramping through the night with sudden purpose in their stride.

  Ludmila, left by herself, thought about loading some of the German ammunition into the Storch herself. In the end, she decided not to. She might want every gram of power the light plane had, and extra weight aboard would take some away.

  A cricket chirped, s
omewhere out in the darkness. Waiting stretched. Her hand went to the butt of the Tokarev she wore on her hip. If shooting broke out, she’d run toward it. But, except for insects, the night stayed silent.

  One of the Wehrmacht men who marked out the landing strip with lanterns called to her: “Alles gut, Fräulein?”

  “Ja,” she answered. “Alles gut.” How much of a liar was she?

  Booted feet trotting on dirt, coming closer fast . . . Ludmila stiffened. All she could see, out there in the grass-scented night, were moving shapes. She couldn’t even tell how many till they got close. One, two, three, four . . . five!

  “Ludmila?” Was it? It was! Jäger’s voice.

  “Da!” she answered, forgetting her German.

  Something glittered. One of the panzer men with Jäger plunged a knife into the dirt again and again—to clean it, maybe—before he set it back in the sheath on his belt. When he spoke, he proved to have Gunther’s voice: “Get the colonel out of here, lady pilot We didn’t leave any eyes to see who we were”—his hand caressed the hilt of the knife again, just for a moment—“and everybody here is part of the regiment. Nobody’ll rat on us—we did what needed doing, that’s all.”

  “You’re every one of you crazy, that’s all,” Jäger said, warm affection in his voice. His crewman crowded round him, pressing his hand, hugging him, wishing him well. That would have told Ludmila everything she needed to know about him as an officer, but she’d already formed her own conclusions there.

  She pointed to the dim shapes of the ammunition crates. “You’ll have to get rid of those,” she reminded the tankmen. “They were supposed to come with me.”

  “We’ll take care of it, lady pilot,” Gunther promised. “We’ll take care of everything. Don’t you worry about it. We may be criminals, ja, but by Jesus we’re not half-assed criminals.” The other tankers rumbled low-voiced agreement.

  Ludmila was willing to believe German efficiency extended to crime. She tapped Jäger on the shoulder to separate him from his comrades, then pointed to the open door of the Fieseler Storch. “Get in,” she said. “Take the rear seat, the one with the machine gun.”