In the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  He wished he’d never left for Washington. He’d thought he was going into the worse danger himself, not leaving his wife behind to face it. Like most Americans under the age of ninety, he’d thought of war as something that happened only to unfortunate people in far-off lands. He hadn’t thought through all the implications of its coming home to roost.

  Something strange happened as he was getting to the bottom of the can of stew. A Lizard skittered into the church, peered down into the box of food the grim-faced woman had brought. The alien looked up in obvious disappointment, hissed something that could equally well have been English or its own language. Whatever it was, Larssen didn’t understand it.

  The people who’d been stuck in church longer did. “Sorry,”

  Marie said. “No crabapples in this batch.” The Lizard let out a desolate hiss and slunk away.

  “Crabapples?” Larssen asked. “What does a Lizard want with crabapples?”

  “To eat ’em,” Sal said. “You know the spiced ones in jars, the ones that go so nice with a big ham at Christmas time? The Lizards are crazy about ’em. They’d give you the shirt off their backs for a crabapple, except they mostly don’t wear shirts. But you know what I mean.”

  “I guess so,” Larssen said. “Crabapples. Isn’t that a hell of a thing?”

  “Gingersnaps, too,” Gordon put in. “I saw a couple of ’em damn near get into a fight one time over a box of gingersnaps.”

  Marie said, “They look a little like gingerbread men, don’t they? They’re not all that far from the right color, and the paint they wear could do for icing, don’t you think?”

  It was, without a doubt, the first time a Baptist church had ever resounded to the strains of “Run, run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me—I’m the gingerbread man!” Laughing and cheering one another on, the prisoners made up verses of their own. Some were funny, some were obscene, some—the best ones—were both.

  Jens flogged his muse, sang, “I’ve blown up your cities, and I’ve shot up your roads, and I can take your crabapples, too, I can!” He knew it wasn’t very good, but the chorus roared out: “Run, run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me—I’m the gingerbread man!”

  When at last they ran out of verses, Sal said, “I hope that sour old prune who brings us our food is listening. ’Course, she probably thinks having a good time is sinful, especially in church?”

  “If she had her way, the Lizards would shoot us for having a good time in here,” Mort said.

  Sal chuckled. “One thing is, the Lizards don’t pay no more attention to what she wants than we do. Other thing is, she don’t know what all goes on in here, neither.”

  “Got to make our own fun,” Aloysius agreed. “Ain’t nobody gonna do it for us. Never thought how much I liked my radio till I didn’t have it no more.”

  “That’s true; that’s a fact,” several people said together, as if they were echoing a preacher’s amens.

  The short winter day wore on. Darkness poured through the windows and seemed to puddle in the church. Rodney walked over to the box the local woman had brought. “God damn her,” he said loudly. “She was supposed to bring us more candles.”

  “Have to do without,” Marie said. “No use complaining about it. We’ll get by as long as we don’t run out of coal for the furnace.”

  “And if we do,” Aloysius said, “we’ll be frozen hard enough that we won’t start to stink till they get around to buryin’ us.”

  That cheerful thought pretty well halted conversation. Sitting huddled in his overcoat in the darkness, Larssen thought how important the discovery of fire had been, not just because it heated Neanderthal man’s caves but because it lit them as well. A man with a torch could go out at midnight unafraid, knowing it would show him any lurking danger. And electricity had all but banished night altogether. Now the age-old fears proved not dead but merely sleeping, ready to rouse whenever precious light was lost.

  He shook his head. The best way he could think of to fight the night terrors was to sleep through them. Sleep was what day-loving animals did in the dark—stay cozy and quiet so nothing dangerous could find them. He stretched out on the hard pew. It wouldn’t be easy.

  After a long spell of tossing and turning and twisting—and once almost rolling onto the floor—he managed at last to fall asleep. When he woke, he almost fell off the pew again before he remembered where he was. He looked at his wrist. The luminous dial on his watch said it was half past one.

  The inside of the church was absolutely dark. It was not, however, absolutely quiet. He needed a few seconds to identify the noises floating up from a few rows behind him. When he did, he was surprised his ears didn’t glow brighter than his watch. People had no business doing that in church!

  He started to sit up and see who was screwing on the pews, but paused before he’d even leaned onto one elbow. For one thing, it was too dark for him to tell anyway. And was it any of his business? His first shock had sprung straight from the heart of his upper Midwestern Lutheran upbringing. But when he thought about it a little, he wondered how long most of these people had been cooped up together and where else they were supposed to go if they wanted to make love. He lay back down.

  But sleep would not return. The whispered gasps and moans and endearments, the small creaking of the pew itself, shouldn’t have been enough to keep him awake. They weren’t, not really, not by themselves. Listening to them, though, smote him with the realization of how long it had been since he’d slept with Barbara.

  He hadn’t even looked at another woman in his erratic journey back and forth across the eastern half of the United States. Pedaling a bicycle a good many hours a day, he thought wryly, was liable to take the edge off other physical urges. Besides, it was cold. But if just then Sal or one of the other women in here had murmured a suggestion to him, he knew he would have pulled his pants down (if not off) without a moment’s hesitation.

  Then he wondered what Barbara was doing about such matters. He’d been gone a long time, a lot longer than he’d thought when he set out in: the late, lamented Plymouth. She might think he was dead. (For that matter, she might be dead herself, but his mind refused to dwell on that).

  He’d never imagined he needed to worry about whether she’d stay faithful. But then, he’d never thought he needed to worry about whether he would, either. The middle of the night on a cold, hard pew was hardly the time or place for such thoughts. That didn’t keep him from having them.

  It did keep him from going back to sleep for a long, long lime.

  “So,” Zolraag said. Moishe Russie knew the Lizard’s accent was the main thing that stretched the word into a hiss, but the knowledge didn’t make it sound any less menacing. The governor went on, “So, Herr Russie, you will no longer for us speak on the radio? This is your measure of—what is the Deutsch word—gratitude, is that it?”

  “Gratitude is the word, yes, Excellency,” Russie said, sighing. He’d known this day was coming. Now it had arrived. “Excellency, not a Jew in Warsaw is ungrateful that the Race delivered us from the Germans. Had you not come when you did, there might be no Jews left in Warsaw. So I have said on the radio for your benefit. So much I would say again.”

  The Lizards had shown him the extermination camp at Treblinka. They’d shown him the much bigger one at Oswiecim—the Germans called it Auschwitz—which had just been starting up when they came. Both places were worse than anything he’d imagined in his worst nightmares. Pogroms, malignant neglect: those were standard tools in the anti-Semite’s kit. But murder factories … his stomach twisted whenever he thought of them.

  Zolraag said, “If you are gratitudeful, we expect you to show this in ways of usefulness to us.”

  “I thought I was your friend, not your slave,” Russie answered. “If all you want of me is to repeat the words you say, better you should find a parrot. There must be one or two left in Warsaw.”

  His defiance would have been more impressive, even to himself, if he had
n’t had to go back and explain to Zolraag what a parrot was. The Lizard governor took a while to get the whole idea. “One of these animals, then, would speak our message in your words? This could be done?” He sounded astonished; maybe Home didn’t have any animals that could learn to talk. He also sounded excited. “You Tosevites would listen to such an animal?”

  Russie was tempted to say yes: let the Lizards make laughing-stocks of themselves. Reluctantly, he decided he. had to tell the truth instead; that much he owed to the beings who had saved his people. “Excellency, human beings would listen to a parrot, but only to be amused, never to take it seriously.”

  “Ah.” Zolraag’s voice was mournful. So was the Lizard’s whole demeanor. His office was heated past what Russie found comfortable, yet he still draped himself in warm clothing. He said, “You know our studio has been repaired after the damage the Deutsch raiders caused.”

  “Yes.” Russie also knew the raiders had been Jews, not Nazi. He was glad the Lizards had never figured that out.

  Zolraag went on “You know you are now in good health.”

  “Yes,” Moishe repeated. Suddenly the governor reminded him of a rabbi laying out a case for his interpretation of a Talmudic passage: this was so, and that was so, and therefore … He didn’t like the therefore he saw ahead. He said, “I will not go on the radio and thank the Race for destroying Washington.”

  The irrevocable words, the ones he’d tried so long to evade, were spoken at last. A large lump of ice seemed to grow in his belly in spite of the overheated room. He had always been at the Lizards’ mercy, just as before he and all the Warsaw Jews were at the mercy of the Germans. A quick gesture from the governor and Rivka would be a widow.

  Zolraag did not make the gesture—not yet, anyhow. He said, “I do not understand your trouble. Surely you did not object to the identical bombing of Berlin, which helped us take this city from the Deutsche. How does the one differ from the other?”

  It was so obvious—but not to the Lizards. Looked at dispassionately, the distinction wasn’t easy to draw. How many Germans incinerated in Berlin had been women children old men people who hated everything for which the regime centered there stood? Thousands upon thousands surely. Their undeserved deaths were as appalling as anything Washington had suffered.

  But that regime itself was so monstrous that no one—least of all Moishe Russie—could look at it dispassionately. He said, “You know the kinds of things the Germans did. They wanted to enslave or kill all their neighbors.” Rather like you Lizards he thought. Saying that out loud, however, seemed less than expedient. He went on, “The United States, though, has always been a country where people could be freer than they are anywhere else.”

  “What is this freedom?” Zolraag asked. “Why do you esteem it so?”

  A quotation from a scripture not his own ran through Russie’s mind: Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? Unlike the Roman, Zolraag seemed to want a serious answer. That only made Russie the sadder for him; he suspected he would be explaining music to a deaf man.

  Nonetheless, he had to try. “When we are free, we may think as we like, believe as we like, and do as we like so long as what we do does not harm any of our neighbors.”

  “All this you would enjoy under the beneficent rule of the Race.” No, Zolraag heard no music.

  “But we did not—do not—choose to come under the rule of the Race, beneficent or not,” Russie said. “Another side of freedom is being able to choose our own leaders, our own rulers, rather than having them forced upon us.”

  “If you enjoy the other freedom, how could this one possibly matter?” Zolraag sounded all at sea. Though he and Moishe both used a hodgepodge of Lizard and German words, they did not speak the same language.

  “If we cannot choose our own leaders, we keep the other freedoms only on sufferance, not because they are truly ours,” Russie replied. “We Jews, we know all about having freedom taken away from us at a ruler’s whim.”

  “You still have not answered my very first question,” the Lizard governor insisted. “How can you condone our bombing of Berlin while you condemn the bombing of Washington?”

  “Because, Excellency, of all the countries on this world, Germany had the least freedom of either kind and, when you came, was busy trying to take away whatever freedom its neighbors possessed. That’s why most of the countries—empires, you would say, though most of them aren’t—had banded together to try to defeat it. The United States, now, the United States gives its citizens more freedom than any other country. In hurting Berlin, you were helping freedom; in hurting Washington, you were taking it away.” Russie spread his hands. “Do you understand what I am trying to say, Excellency?”

  Zolraag made a noise like a leaky samovar coming to a boil. “Since you Tosevites cannot come close to agreeing among yourselves in matters political, I hardly see how I am to be expected to grasp your incomprehensible feuds. But have I not heard that the Deutsche chose their—what is his name?—their Hitler for themselves in the senseless manner you extol so highly? How do you square this with your talk of freedom?”

  “Excellency, I cannot.” Russie looked down at the floor. He wished the Lizard had not known about how the Nazis came to power. “I do not claim any system of government will always work well, only that more folk are likely to be made content and fewer harmed with freedom than under any other arrangement.”

  “Not so,” Zolraag said. “Under the Empire, the Race and its subject species have prospered for thousands upon thousands of years without ever worrying about choosing their own rulers and the other nonsense of which you babble.”

  “To this I say two things,” Moishe answered: “first; that you have not been trying to govern human beings—”

  “To which I say, on short experience, that I am heartily glad,” Zolraag broke in.

  “Humanity would be glad if you still weren’t,” Russie said. He did not stress that, though; as he’d already admtted, he and his people would have been exterminated had the Lizards not come. He tried another tack: “How would these subject races of yours feel about what you say?”

  “They would agree with me, I believe,” Zolraag said, “They can scarcely deny their lives are better under our rule than they were in their barbarous days of what you, I suppose, would call freedom.”

  “If they like you so well, why haven’t you brought any of them with you to Earth?” Russie was trying to make the governor out to be a liar. The Germans had had no trouble recruiting security forces from among the peoples they’d conquered. If the Lizards had done the same, why weren’t they using their subjects to help conquer or at least police this world?

  But Zolraag answered, “The Empire’s soldiers and administrators come only from the ranks of the Race. This is partly tradition, dating from the epoch when the Race was the only species in the Empire … but then, you Tosevites care nothing for tradition.”

  Russie wanted to bristle at that, belonging as he did to a tradition that stretched back more than three thousand years. But he’d gotten the idea that, to Zolraag, three thousand years was about the equivalent of summer before last—hardly worth mentioning if you wanted to talk about a long time ago.

  The Lizard governor went on, “That the security of the Race’s rule is another consideration, I will not deny. You should be honored that you are allowed to aid us in our efforts to pacify Tosev 3. Such a privilege would not be afforded to a Hallessi or a Rabotev, I assure you, though the members of subject races may freely pursue careers in areas not affecting the government and safety of the Empire.”

  “We do not use the word freely in the same way,” Russie said. “If I weren’t useful to you, I’m sure you wouldn’t grant me this privilege.” He packed all the irony he could into that last word. Zolraag had as much as said that if the Lizards brought Earth into their Empire, humans would be reduced to hewers of wood and drawers of water, with no voice in their own fate forevermore.

  Zolraag answered, “You are undoubtedl
y correct, Herr Russie. I suggest you bear that in mind, make the most of the opportunity you are presented, and cease your foolish complaints against our dominion.” Using irony against him was about as futile as German antitank guns firing on Lizard panzers.

  Russie said, “I cannot do as you ask of me, not only for the sake of my own self-respect but also because no human who heard me praise you for destroying Washington could ever take my words seriously again.”

  “You have been useful to us up until this time, so I have given you many chances to change your mind: more than I should have, very likely. But after this you will have no more chances. Do you understand what I say to you?”

  “Yes. Do what you want to me. I cannot speak as you wish.” Russie licked dry lips. As he had when the Nazis ruled the ghetto, he hoped he could endure whatever the Lizards inflicted on him.

  Zolraag said, “We will not do anything to you, Herr Russie. Direct intimidation has shown itself to be less valuable on this world than we might have wished.” Russie stared at him, hardly believing his own ears. But the governor was not finished: “Research has suggested another tactic which may prove more effective. As I said, you will not suffer personally for this refusal. But we shall exact reprisals upon the female with whom you are mated and upon your hatchling. I hope this may suggest a possible change in your view.”

  Moishe stared at him, not so much in disbelief as in dreadful disappointment. “And here I thought I’d helped drive the Nazis out of Warsaw,” he said at last.

  “The Deutsche are indeed well and truly driven from this city, and with your help,” Zolraag said, missing the point completely. “We seek your continued assistance in persuading your fellow Tosevites of the justice of our cause.”

  The governor spoke without apparent irony. Russie concluded he’d noticed none. But even a Nazi might have hesitated to threaten a woman and child in one breath and proclaim the justice of his cause in the next Alien, Russie thought. Not till now had he had his nose rubbed in the meaning of the word.