Striking the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  Skorzeny stood swaying like a tree in the breeze. In the gloom, his eyes were enormous, and all pupil: he’d given himself a stiff dose of nerve-gas antidote. Right in the center of the ragged old shirt he wore was a spreading red stain. He brought up his Schmeisser, but for once didn’t seem sure what to do with it, whether to aim at Anielewicz or at Jäger and Ludmila.

  His foes had no such hesitation. Anielewicz’s rifle and Ludmila’s pistol cracked at the same instant in which Jäger squeezed off a burst. More red flowers blossomed on Skorzeny’s body. The breeze in which he swayed became a gale. It blew him over. The submachine gun fell from his hands. His fingers groped toward it, pulling hand and arm after them as they struggled from one rough piece of ground to the next, a centimeter and a half farther on. Jäger fired another burst. Skorzeny twitched as the bullets slammed into him, and at last lay still.

  Only then did Jäger notice the SS man had pried several planks off the big crate that held the explosive-metal bomb. Under them, the aluminum skin of the device lay exposed, like that of a surgical patient revealed by an opening in the drapes. If Skorzeny had already set the detonator in there—

  Jäger ran toward the bomb. He got there a split second ahead of Anielewicz, who was in turn a split second ahead of Ludmila. Skorzeny had removed one of the panels from the skin. Jäger peered into the hole thus exposed. With his pupils so dilated, he had no trouble seeing the hole was empty.

  Anielewicz pointed to a cylinder a few centimeters in front of his left foot “That’s the detonator,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s the one we pulled or if he brought it with him, the way you said he might. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he didn’t get to use it.”

  “We won.” Ludmila sounded dazed, as if she was fully realizing for the first time what they’d done, what they’d prevented.

  “Nobody will put the detonator in this bomb any time soon,” Anielewicz said. “Nobody will be able to get close to it and keep living, not for a while, not without the antidote, whatever that is. How long does the gas persist, Jäger? You know more about it than anyone else around here.”

  “It’s not exposed to bright sun. What’s left of the roof will keep rain off. It should last a good while. Days, certainly. Weeks, maybe,” Jäger answered. He still felt keyed up, ready to fight. Maybe that was the aftermath of battle. Maybe, too, it was the antidote driving him. Anything that made his heart thump like that probably scrambled his brains, too.

  “Can we go out of here now?” Ludmila asked. She looked frightened; the antidote might have been turning her to flight, not fight

  “We’d better get out of here, I’d say,” Anielewicz added. “God only knows how much of that gas we’re taking in every time we breathe. If there’s more of it than the antidote can handle—”

  “Yes,” Jäger said, starting toward the street. “And when we do get out, we have to burn these clothes. We have to do it ourselves, and we have to bathe and bathe and bathe. You don’t need to breathe this gas for it to kill you. If it touches your skin, that will do the job—slower than breathing it, but just about as sure. We’re dangerous to anyone around us till we decontaminate.”

  “Lovely stuff you Germans turn out,” Anielewicz said from behind him.

  “The Lizards didn’t like it,” Jäger answered. The Jewish fighting leader grunted and shut up.

  The closer Jäger got to the street, the brighter the glare became, till he squeezed his eyes almost shut and peered through a tiny crack between upper and lower lids. He wondered how long his pupils would stay dilated and then, relentlessly pragmatic, wondered where in Lodz he could come up with a pair of sunglasses.

  He strode past the outermost dead Jewish sentry, then out onto the street, which seemed to him awash in as much brilliance as if the explosive-metal bomb had gone off. The Jews probably would have to cordon off a couple of blocks around the wrecked factory on one pretext or another, just to keep people from inadvertently poisoning themselves as they walked by.

  Ludmila emerged and stood beside him. Through his half-blind squint, he saw hers. He didn’t know what was going to happen next He didn’t even know whether, as Anielewicz had suggested, they’d ended up breathing more nerve gas than their antidote could handle. If the day started going dim instead of brilliant, he still had two syringes left in his aid kit. For three people, that made two-thirds of a shot apiece. Would he need it? If he did, would it be enough?

  He did know what wouldn’t happen next. Lodz wouldn’t go up in a fireball like a new sun. The Lizards wouldn’t aim their concentrated wrath at Germany—not on account of that, anyhow. He wouldn’t go back to the Wehrmacht, nor Ludmila to the Red Air Force. Whatever future they had, whether hours or decades, was here.

  He smiled at her. Her eyes were almost closed, but she saw him and smiled back. He saw that, very clearly.

  Atvar had heard the buzzing racket of Tosevite aircraft a great many times through sound recordings, but only rarely in person. He turned one eye turret toward the window of his suite. Sure enough, he could see the clumsy, yellow-painted machine climbing slowly into the sky. “That is the last of them, is it not?” he said.

  “Yes, Exalted Fleetlord, that one bears away Marshall, the negotiator from the not-empire of the United States,” Zolraag replied.

  “The talks are complete,” Atvar said, sounding disbelieving even to himself. “We are at peace with large portions of Tosev 3.” No wonder I sound disbelieving, he thought. We have peace here, but peace without conquest. Who would have imagined that when we set out from Home?

  “Now we await the arrival of the colonization fleet, Exalted Fleetlord,” Zolraag said. “With its coming, with the permanent establishment of the Race on Tosev 3, begins the incorporation of this whole world into the Empire. It will be slower and more difficult than we anticipated before we came here, but it shall be done.”

  “That is also my view, and why I agreed to halt large-scale hostilities for the time being,” Atvar said. He turned one eye turret toward Moishe Russie, who still stood watching the Big Ugly aircraft shrink in the distance. To Zolraag, he went on, “Translate for him what you just said, and ask his opinion on the matter.”

  “It shall be done,” Zolraag said before shifting from the language of the Race to the ugly, guttural grunts he used when speaking to the Tosevite.

  Russie made more grunts by way of reply. Zolraag turned them into words a person could understand: “His answer is not altogether germane, Exalted Fleetlord. He expresses relief that the negotiator from Deutschland departed without embroiling the Race and the Tosevites in fresh warfare.”

  “I confess to a certain amount of relief on this score myself,” Atvar said. “After that pompous pronouncement the Big Ugly issued which proved to be either a bluff or a spectacular example of Deutsch incompetence—our analysis there is still incomplete—I did indeed anticipate renewed combat. But the Tosevites apparently decided to be rational instead.”

  Zolraag translated for Russie, whose reply made his mouth fall open in amusement. “He says expecting the Deutsche to be rational is like expecting good weather in the middle of winter: you may get it, yes, for a day or two, but most of the time you will be disappointed.”

  “Expect anything from either Tosevites or Tosevite weather and most of the time you will be disappointed—though you need not translate that,” the fleetlord answered. Russie was looking at him with what he thought was alertness; he remembered the Big Ugly did know some of the language of the Race. Atvar shrugged mentally; Russie already had a good notion of his opinion of Tosevites. He said, “Tell him that, sooner or later, his people will be subjects of the Emperor.”

  Zolraag dutifully told him. Russie did not answer, not directly. Instead, he went back to the window and stared out once more. Atvar felt only annoyance: the Tosevite aircraft was long gone by now. But Russie still kept looking out through the glass without saying anything.

  “What is he doing?” Atvar snapped at last, patience deserting h
im.

  Zolraag put the question. Through him, Moishe Russie replied, “I am looking across the Nile at the Pyramids.”

  “Why?” Atvar said, irritated still. “What do you care about these—what were they?—these large funerary monuments, is that it? They are massive, yes, but barbarous even by Tosevite standards.”

  “My ancestors were slaves in this country three, maybe four thousand years ago,” Russie told him. “Maybe they helped build the Pyramids. That’s what our legends say, though I don’t know if it’s true. Who cares about the ancient Egyptians now? They were mighty, but they are gone. We Jews were slaves, but we’re still here. How can you know what will happen from what is now?”

  Now Atvar’s mouth fell open. “Tosevite pretensions to antiquity always make me laugh,” he said to Zolraag. “Hear how the Big Ugly speaks of three or four thousand years—six or eight thousand of ours—as if it were a long time in historic terms. We had already absorbed both the Rabotevs and the Hallessi by then, and some of us were beginning to think about the planets of the star Tosev: day before yesterday, in the history of the Race.”

  “Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Zolraag said.

  “Of course it is truth,” Atvar said, “and it is why in the end we shall triumph, our setbacks because of the Big Uglies’ unexpected technological sophistication notwithstanding. We are content to progress one small step at a time. There are whole Tosevite civilizations, as Russie just said, which moved forward at the usual Big Ugly breakneck clip—and then failed utterly. We do not have this difficulty, nor shall we ever. We are established, even if on only part of the world. With the arrival of the colonization fleet, our presence shall become unassailably permanent. We then have only to wait for another Tosevite cultural collapse, extend our influence over the area where it occurs, and repeat the process until no section of the planet remains outside the Empire’s control.”

  “Truth,” Zolraag repeated. “Because of Tosevite surprises, the conquest fleet might not have accomplished quite everything the plan back on Home called for.” Kirel could not have been more cautious and diplomatic than that. Zolraag continued, “The conquest, however, does go on, just as you said. What, in the end, does it matter if it takes generations rather than days?”

  “In the end, it matters not at all,” Atvar replied. “History is on our side.”

  Vyacheslav Molotov coughed. The last T-34 had rumbled through Red Square a good while before, but the air was still thick with diesel fumes. If Stalin noticed them, he gave no sign. He chuckled in high good humor. “Well, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, it wasn’t quite a victory parade, not the sort I would have wanted after we’d finished crushing the Hitlerites, for instance, but it will do, it will do.”

  “Indeed, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said. Stalin, for once, had been guilty of understatement. Molotov had gone to Cairo expecting to have nothing but trouble because of the intransigent stand Stalin required him to take. But if Stalin had disastrously misread Hitler’s intentions, he’d gauged the Lizards aright.

  “The Lizards have adhered in every particular to the agreement you forged with them,” Stalin said: displays of martial might such as the one just past made him happy as a boy playing with lead soldiers. “They have everywhere removed themselves from Soviet soil: with the exception of the formerly Polish territory they elected to retain. And there, Comrade Foreign Commissar, I have no fault to find with you.”

  “For which I thank you, Iosef Vissarionovich,” Molotov answered. “Better to have borders with those who keep agreements than with those who break them.”

  “Exactly so,” Stalin said. “And our mopping up of German remnants on Soviet soil continues most satisfactorily. Some areas in the southern Ukraine and near the Finnish border remain troublesome, but, on the whole, the Hitlerite invasion, like that of the Lizards, can be reckoned a thing of the past. We move forward once more, toward true socialism.”

  He dug in a trouser pocket and took out his pipe, a box of matches, and a leather tobacco pouch. Opening the pouch, he filled the pipe from it, then lighted a match and held it to the bowl of the pipe. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked in breath to get the pipe going. Smoke rose from the bowl; more leaked from his nostrils and one corner of his mouth.

  Molotov’s nose twitched. He’d expected the acrid reek of makhorka, which, as far as he was concerned, was to good tobacco what diesel fumes were to good air. What Stalin was smoking, though, had an aroma rich and flavorful enough to slice and serve on a plate for supper.

  “A Turkish blend?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, no,” Stalin answered. “An American one: a gift from President Hull. Milder than I quite care for, but good of its kind. And there will be Turkish again, in short order. Once we have the northern coast of the Black Sea fully under our control, sea traffic will resume, and we can also begin rail shipments by way of Armenia and Georgia.” As he usually did when he mentioned his homeland, he gave Molotov a sly look, as if daring him to make something of his ancestry. Never one for foolhardy action, Molotov knew much better than that. Stalin took another puff, then went on, “And we shall have to work out arrangements for trade with the Lizards, too, of course.”

  “Comrade General Secretary?” Molotov said. Stalin’s leaps of thought often left logic far behind. Sometimes that brought great benefits to the Soviet state: his relentless industrialization, much of it beyond the range of Nazi bombers, might have saved the USSR when the Germans invaded. Of course, the invasion, when it came, would have been better handled had Stalin’s intuition not convinced him that everyone who warned him of it was lying. You couldn’t tell in advance what the intuition was worth. You had to sit back and await results. When the Soviet state was on the line, that grew nerve-racking.

  “Trade with the Lizards,” Stalin repeated, as if to a backwards child. “The regions they occupy will not produce everything they need. We shall supply them with raw materials they may lack. Being socialists, we shall not be good capitalists, and we shall lose greatly on the exchanges—so long as we obtain their manufactured goods in return.”

  “Ah.” Molotov began to see. This time, he thought, Stalin’s intuition was working well. “You want us to begin copying their methods and adapting them for our own purposes.”

  “That is right,” Stalin said. “We had to do the same thing with the West after the Revolution. We had a generation in which to catch up, or they would destroy us. The Nazis struck us a hard blow, but we held. Now, with the Lizards, we have—mankind has—paid half the world in exchange for most of another generation.”

  “Until the colonization fleet comes,” Molotov said. Yes, logic backed intuition to give Stalin solid reasons for trading with the Lizards.

  “Until the colonization fleet comes,” Stalin agreed. “We need more bombs of our own, we need rockets of our own, we need calculating machines that almost think, we need ships that fly in space so they cannot look down upon us without our looking down upon them as well. The Lizards have these things. The capitalists and fascists are on their way to them. If we are left behind, they will bury us.”

  “Iosef Vissarionovich, I think you are right,” Molotov said. He would have said it whether he thought Stalin right or wrong. Had he actually thought him wrong, he would have started looking for ways and means to ensure that the latest pronunciamento was diluted before it took effect. That was dangerous, but sometimes necessary: where would the Soviet Union be now had Stalin liquidated everyone in the country who knew anything about nuclear physics? Under the Lizards’ thumb, Molotov thought.

  Stalin accepted Molotov’s agreement as no more than his due. “Of course I am,” he said complacently. “I do not see how we can keep the colonization fleet from landing, but the thing we must remember—this above all else, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich—is that it will bring the Lizards fresh numbers, but nothing fundamentally new.”

  “True enough, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said cautiously. Again, Stalin had got ahead of him on t
he page.

  This time, though, intuition had nothing to do with it While Molotov was dickering with the Lizards, Stalin must have been working through the implications of their social and economic development. He said, “It is inevitable that they would have nothing fundamentally new. Marxist analysis shows this must be so. They are, despite their machines, representatives of the ancient economic model, relying on slaves—with them partly mechanical, partly the other races they have subjugated—to produce for a dependent upper class. Such a society is without exception highly conservative and resistant to innovation of any sort. Thus we can overcome them.”

  “That is nicely argued, Iosef Vissarionovich,” Molotov said, his admiration unfeigned. “Mikhail Andreyevich could not reason more trenchantly.”

  “Suslov?” Stalin shrugged. “He made some small contributions to this line of thought, but the main thrust of it, of course, is mine.”

  “Of course,” Molotov agreed, straight-faced as usual. He wondered what the young Party ideologist would say to that, but had no intention of asking. In any case, it did not matter. No matter who had formulated the idea, it supported what Molotov had believed all along. “As the dialectic demonstrates, Comrade General Secretary, history is on our side.”

  Sam Yeager strolled down Central Avenue in Hot Springs, savoring the summer weather. One of the things he savored about it was being able to escape it every now and then. The sign painted on the front window of the Southern Grill said, OUR REFRIDGERATED AIR-CONDITIONING IS WORKING AGAIN. The wheeze and hum of the machinery and fan backed up the claim.

  He turned to Barbara. “Want to stop here for some lunch?”

  She looked at the sign, then took one hand off the grip of Jonathan’s baby carnage. “Twist my arm,” she said. Sam gave it a token twist “Oh, mercy!” she cried, but not very loud, because Jonathan was asleep.

  Sam held the door open for her. “Best mercy I know of.” He followed her into the restaurant