In th Balance

by neetha Napew

  "Shit," he said as he sat and stared at the dashboard lights. If he hadn't had to use garbage for fuel so much of the time, if he hadn't had to try to make his way over bombed-out roads or sometimes over no roads at all, if the damned Lizards had never come... he wouldn't have been stuck here somewhere in eastern Ohio, two whole states away from where he was supposed to be.

  He raised his eyes and looked out through the dusty, bug-splashed windshield. Up ahead, the buildings of a small town dented the skyline. Small-town mechanics had helped keep the car going more than once before.

  Maybe they could do it again. He had his doubts— the, Plymouth had never made a noise like this one before— but it was something he had to try.

  He left the key in the ignition when he got out — good luck to anybody who tried to drive the car away. Slamming the driver's side door relieved his anger a little. He took off his jacket, slung it over his shoulder, and started up the road toward the town.

  There wasn't much traffic. In fact, there wasn't any traffic. He tramped past a couple of cars that looked as if they'd been sitting on the shoulder a lot longer than his, and past a burnt-out wreck that must have been strafed from the air and then shoved over to the roadside, but no cars passed him. All he could hear was his own footfalls on asphalt.

  Just outside the outskirts of town, he came to a signboard: WELCOME TO STRASBURG,

  HOME OF GARVER BROTHERS-WORLD'S BIGGEST LITTLE STORE. Below that, in smaller letters, it said POPULATION (1930), 1,305.

  Jens blew air out between his lips to make a snuffling noise. Here was Smalltown U.S.A., all right: even though the "new" census was already two years old, the mayor or whoever hadn't got around to fixing the numbers yet. Why bother, when they probably hadn't changed by more than a couple of dozen?

  He walked on. The first gas station he came to was closed and locked. A big fat spider was sitting in a web spun between two of the gas pumps, so it had likely been closed for a while. That didn't look encouraging.

  The drugstore half a block farther on had its door open. He decided to go in and see what they had at their soda fountain. At the moment, he wouldn't have turned down

  anything cold and wet, or even warm and wet. He still had some money in his pocket; Colonel Groves had been generous down in White Sulphur Springs. Being treated as a national resource was something he'd have no trouble getting used to.

  Gloom filled the inside of the drugstore; the electricity was out. "Anybody in here?" Larssen called, peering, down the aisles.

  "Back here," a woman answered. But that wasn't the only answer he got. From much closer came startled hisses. Two Lizards walked around a display of Wildroot Creme Oil that was taller than they were. One carried a gun; the other had his arms full of flashlights and batteries.

  Larssen's first impulse was to turn around and run like hell. He hadn't known he'd blundered into enemy-held territory. He felt as if he were carrying a sign that said DANGEROUS

  HUMAN— NUCLEAR PHYSICIST in letters three feet high. Fortunately, he didn't give in to the impulse. As he realized after a moment, to the Lizards he was just another person: for all they knew, he might have lived in Strasburg.

  The Lizards skittered out of the drugstore with their loot. "They didn't pay for it!" Jens exclaimed. It was, on reflection, the stupidest thing he'd ever said in his life.

  The woman back near the pharmacy had too much sense even to notice idiocy. "They didn't shoot me, either, so I guess it's square," she said. "Now what can I do for you?"

  Confronted by such unshakable matter-of-factness, Larssen responded in kind: "My car broke down outside of town. I'm looking for somebody to fix it. And if you have a Coca-Cola or something like that, I'll buy it from you."

  "I have Pepsi-Cola," the woman said. "Five

  dollars."

  That was robbery worse than back at White Sulphur Springs, but Larssen paid without a whimper. The Pepsi-Cola, unrefrigerated and fizzy, went down like nectar of the gods. It tried to come up again, too; Jens wondered if you could explode from containing carbonation. When his eyes stopped watering, he said, "Now, about my car..."

  "Charlie Tompkins runs a garage up on North Wooster, just past Garver Brothers." The woman pointed to show him where North Wooster was. "If anybody can help you, he's probably the one. Thank you for shopping at Walgreen's, sir."

  He wondered if she'd have said that to the Lizards had he not come in and interrupted her. Very likely, he thought; nothing seemed to faze her. When he handed her the empty soda bottle, she rang up NO SALE on the

  cash register, reached in, and took out a penny, which she handed to him. "Your deposit, sir."

  Bemused, he pocketed the coin. Deposits hadn't gone up with prices. Of course not, he thought— shopkeepers have to pay out deposits.

  Strasburg wasn't big enough to get lost in; he found North Wooster without difficulty. An enormous sign proclaimed the presence of the Garver Brothers store. The signboard outside of town, unlike a lot of small-town signboards, hadn't exaggerated: the store sprawled over a couple of acres. The parking lot off to one side had room for hundreds of cars. At the moment, it held none.

  That did not mean it was empty. Trucks ignored the white lines painted on concrete. They were not trucks of a sort Jens had seen

  before: they were bigger, somehow smoother of outline, quieter. When one of them rolled away, it didn't rattle or rumble or roar. No smoke belched from its exhaust.

  The Lizards were plundering Garver Brothers.

  A couple of them stood in front of the store, guns at the ready, in case the small crowd of people across the street got boisterous. In the face of that firepower, and of everything the Lizards had behind it, nobody seemed inclined toward boisterousness.

  Jens joined the crowd. Two or three people gave him sidelong looks: he was a Stranger, with a capital S. He'd grown up in a small town before he went off to college; he knew he could live here for twenty years and still be thought a stranger, though perhaps by then a lower-case one.

  "Damn shame," somebody said. Somebody

  else nodded. Larssen didn't. As someone from out of town, his opinion was, automatically less than worthless. He just stood and watched.

  The Lizards knew the kinds of goods they wanted. They came out of Garver Brothers with coils of copper wire slung over their scaly shoulders, with hand tools of all sorts, with an electric generator trundled along on a wheeled cart, with a lathe on another cart.

  Jens tried to find a pattern to their depredations. At first he saw none. Then he realized most of what the Lizards were taking was tools that would help them make things of their own rather than already finished products of Earthly manufacture.

  He scratched his head, not quite knowing what to make of that. It might have been a sign the invaders were settling in for a long stay. On the other hand, it might also have

  meant their own resources were short and they were having to eke them out with whatever they could steal. If that was so, it was encouraging.

  "They're just a bunch of damn chicken thieves, that's what they are," someone in the crowd said as another truck rolled away. Most of the rest of the people murmured agreement. This time, Larssen did let himself nod. Whatever their reasons for cleaning out Garver Brothers, the Lizards were doing a good, workmanlike job of it.

  A vehicle came up Wooster Street toward the store. It was about as far removed as possible from the smooth, silent trucks the Lizards ran: it was a horse-drawn buggy, driven by a bearded man with a broad-brimmed black hat. He pulled into the parking lot as casually as if it had been filled with Fords and De Sotos, put a feed bag on his horse's nose, and strode toward the guarded front door.

  "The Amish have been coming to Garver Brothers for years," someone observed.

  "I wish I had me a buggy like that," somebody else said. "A horse'll run on grass, but my car sure as hell won't."

  The Lizards with guns blocked the Amish farmer's path into the store. He spoke to them; since he didn't raise his voic
e and his back was turned, Larssen couldn't make out what he said. He braced himself for trouble all the same.

  Another Lizard came bounding up to the doorway. Maybe he spoke English, because the farmer started talking to him instead of to the guards. And then, to Jens' surprise, the aliens stood aside and let him go in. He emerged a few minutes later with a shovel, a pickax, and a bolt of black cloth. Nodding politely to the Lizards as he passed them he returned to his wagon climbed in and rolled

  away.

  He didn' t want anything the Lizards needed so they let him have his stuff, Jens thought. That was smart of them. As for the farmer, he might not have seen them as being that different from anyone else who failed to share his own rigorous faith. The idea of living in a simple, orderly world with strict laws held no small appeal for Larssen: as a physicist, he thought well of order and law and predictability. But the tools he used to seek them were necessarily more complex than pick and shovel, horse and buggy.

  That reminded him why he'd come this way in the first place. "Does anybody know if Charlie Tompkins' garage is open?" he asked.

  "Not right now it isn't," said the fellow who'd called the Lizards chicken thieves, "on account of I'm Charlie Tompkins. What can I do for you, stranger?"

  "My car broke down about a mile outside of town," Larssen answered. "Any chance you can take a look at it?"

  The mechanic laughed. "Don't see why not. I'm not what you'd call real busy these days— I expect you can tell that by lookin'. What's your machine doin', anyhow?" When Jens described the symptoms, Tompkins looked grave. "That doesn't sound so good. Well, we'll go see. Come on up to my shop so as I can get some tools."

  As the woman at the drugstore had said, the garage lay just a little past the Garver Brothers store. Tompkins picked up his tool kit. It didn't look light, so Larssen said, "I'll carry it for you, if you like. We've got a ways to walk."

  "Don't worry about it. Here, come on with me." The mechanic led Larssen over to a bicycle which had a bracket welded to the head tube.

  The handle of the tool kit fit neatly over the bracket. Tompkins climbed onto the saddle, gestured to Larssen. "You ride behind me. I don't use any gas this way, a bike's got fewer parts than a car, and they're easier for somebody like me to fix if they do break."

  All that made perfect sense, but Jens hadn't ridden on one of those little flat racks since about the third grade. "Will it carry both of us?" he asked.

  Tompkins laughed. "I've put bigger men than you back there, my friend. Sure, you're tall, but you're built like a pencil. We won't have any trouble, I promise."

  They didn't have much. What there was, came because Larssen hadn't been on any bicycle at all for a good many years, and needed a little while before his body remembered how to balance. Charlie Tompkins compensated for his lurches

  without saying a word. In a way, that only made them more embarrassing: weren't you never supposed to forget how to stay on a bicycle? Jens sighed as he did his best not to maim himself while exploding the cliche.

  "Whereabouts you from, mister?" Tompkins asked as they rolled past the sign welcoming people to Strasburg.

  "Chicago," Larssen answered.

  The mechanic twisted his head. That struck Larssen as foolhardy, but he kept his mouth shut. After a moment, Tompkins turned back to watch where he was going. He spoke over his shoulder: "And you were heading back there, were you, from wherever you were coming from?"

  "That's right. What about it?"

  "Nothing, really." Tompkins pedaled along for

  a few more seconds, then went on in a sad tone, "Thing is, though, you might not want to say that to just anybody around here who asks. Chicago's still free, right? Sure it is. I'm not asking whether you would or you wouldn't, mind, but I can see where you might not want the Lizards to get wind of whatever reasons you've got for going that way."

  "How would the Lizards..." Larssen's voice trailed away. "You don't mean people would tell them?" He knew the Lizards had human collaborators: the Warsaw Jews, Chinese, Italians, Brazilians. Up till this second, though, he'd never imagined there could be such a thing as an American collaborator. He supposed that was naive of him.

  Evidently it was. Tompkins said, "Some people, they'll do anything to get in good with the boss, no matter who the boss is. Some other people have gotten hurt on account of it." He didn't seem to care for the subject,

  either. Instead of giving details, he took one hand off the handlebars and pointed. "That your car up ahead there, that Plymouth?"

  "Yes, that's it."

  "Okay, let's see what we've got." Tompkins stopped the bike with the soles of his shoes against the asphalt. He and Jens both got off. The mechanic unhooked the tool box, walked over to the deceased automobile, reached through the grill, and popped the hood latch. Once the long piece of sheet metal was up and out of the way, he bent over and peered into the engine compartment.

  A low, mournful whistle floated up. "Mister, I hate to tell you, but you got yourself a cracked block." Another whistle, not much later. "Your valves are shot to shit, too, pardon my French. What the hell you been burnin' in this machine, anyhow?"

  "Whatever I could get my hands on that would burn," Larssen answered honestly.

  "Well, I know how that goes, what with the way things are, but Jesus, even if times were good I couldn't fix this poor bastard by my lonesome. What with the way things are, I don't think I can fix her at all. Hate to have to tell you that, but I'm not gonna lie to you, either."

  "How am I supposed to get back to Chicago, then?" Larssen wasn't really asking Tompkins; it was more a cry to the unhearing gods. When he'd come east through Ohio, the Lizards hadn't been anywhere near this far north. When he'd come east through Ohio, his car had been in reasonably good shape, too.

  "Wouldn't take you forever to walk there," Tompkins said. "What is it, maybe three, four hundred miles? Could be done."

  Jens stared at the mechanic in dismay. At least two weeks on shank's mare, more likely a month? Dodging in and out of the Lizards' territory? Dodging bandits, too, likely enough (one more thing he'd never expected in America, at least outside the vanished Wild West)? Winter was on the way, too; already the sky had lost the perfect, transparent blue of summer. Barbara would think he was dead by the time he got back— if he got back.

  His eye fell on Tompkins' bicycle. He pointed. "Tell you what— I'll trade you my set of wheels for yours. You can use the parts that are still good to keep other cars running." Before the Lizards came, swapping a two-year-old Plymouth for an elderly bicycle would have been insane. Before the Lizards came, of course, his car could have been fixed if it broke down. Before the Lizards came, his car wouldn't have broken down because he wouldn't have had to abuse it so.

  Now— Now Charlie Tompkins looked from the bike to the Plymouth, slowly shook his head. "What's the point to that, mister? You take off for Chicago, you gonna carry your car on your back? I'll get to scavenge it whether I give you my bike or not."

  "Why, you—" Larssen wanted to murder the mechanic. The force of the feeling frightened him, left him almost sick. He wondered how many killings had sprung from the chaos the Lizards spread across the United States, across the world. Times grew ever more desperate, the risk of getting caught shrank... so why not kill, if you needed to?

  To fight the temptation, he jammed his hands deep into his trouser pockets. Amidst keys and small change, the fingers of his right hand closed round his cigarette lighter. The Zippo, unlike the Plymouth, would work forever, or at least as long as he could keep coming up with flints. It would also burn

  moonshine a lot better than the car had.

  He yanked out the buffed steel case, flipped open the top. His thumb went to the lighter's wheel. "You don't trade me your bike, Charlie, I'll burn the goddamn car. Let's see how you like that."

  The mechanic started to grab for a wrench from his tool kit. Larssen's mouth went dry— maybe he hadn't been the only one thinking of murder. Then Tompkins' hand stopped sudd
enly. His high-pitched laugh sounded unnatural, but it was a laugh. "Godawful times," he said, to which Jens could only nod. "All right, Larssen, take the bike. I expect I'll be able to come up with another one from somewheres."

  Larssen relaxed, but not very far. His Zippo might torch the Plymouth, but it didn't stack up very well against a monkey wrench. He walked over to the rear end of the car, opened

  the trunk. He took out the smaller of the two suitcases there and a ball of twine, slammed the trunk shut. He did the best job he could of tying the suitcase to the rack on which he'd ridden, then pulled the trunk key off the ring and tossed it to Charlie Tompkins.

  He swung his right leg over the bicycle saddle, as if he were mounting a horse. If he'd wobbled as a passenger, he was even more unsteady up there by himself. But he managed to stay upright and keep the bike rolling forward. After a couple of hundred yards, he took a chance and looked back over his shoulder. Tompkins was already going through the suitcase he'd had to leave behind. He scowled and kept pedaling.