In th Balance

by neetha Napew

  much so was proving more costly than anyone could have imagined.

  "Exalted Fleetlord, how shall we minimize the mischief the Tosevites may cause with nuclear material in their possession?" Kirel asked.

  "I shall summarize for the shiplords new orders which will soon reach them in written form," Atvar answered. "In essence, we will increase our bombardment of major urban centers in which important scientific research is likeliest to take place. Let us see how well they do at such research if, for instance, their facilities lack electrical power."

  Horrep, one of the males of Straha's faction, waggled his tailstump to ask to be recognized. When Atvar turned both eyes in his direction, he said, "I would respectfully remind the exalted fleetlord that our own stockpiles of munitions are not so high as they might be.

  We have used far more than we anticipated when we set out from Home, and our replenishment facilities have not been established here at the pace originally planned, due to both commitment of our resources to the actual fighting and unexpectedly heavy damage from Tosevite resistance."

  Several other males spoke up to support Horrep. Again Atvar had that unsettling mental image of expending his last round of ammunition, only to see one more Big Ugly landcruiser crawl out from behind a pile of rubble. "Do you say you cannot obey the forthcoming order?" he demanded.

  "No, Exalted Fleetlord— it shall be done," Horrep answered. "But I must warn you that such a program cannot be sustained indefinitely. I very much hope the results it achieves will be in proportion to the munitions it expends."

  So do I, Atvar thought. He thanked the forethoughtful spirits of Emperors past that the Race had brought far more weapons of war to Tosev 3 than would have been necessary to conquer the semisavages they'd expected to find here. If his people had done things hastily, they might have walked headlong into ignominious defeat.

  On the other hand, if the Race had been hasty and come to Tosev 3 a few hundred years sooner, the Big Uglies would have been much easier prey, because they wouldn't have had the time to develop their own technology. Did that mean haste would have been advisable here? The harder one looked at a complicated question, the more complicated it generally became.

  The fleetlord reluctantly decided to scrap for the time being another part of the order he'd intended to issue: he'd wanted to command increased efforts against the boats on which

  the Big Uglies lavished so much effort and ingenuity. Because Tosev 3 had so much water, the locals made much more use of it than any species within the Empire. Atvar had the feeling they used water transport enough to make suppressing it worthwhile for the Race... but with munitions in shorter supply than he would have liked, he'd have to preserve as much as he could for targets of the highest priority.

  He sighed. Back on Home, the aptitude tests had said he might make a successful architect as well as a soldier. The choice had been his. He'd always been an idealist, eager to serve the Emperor and the Race as fully as possible. Only when confronted with the unending morass of the conquest of Tosev 3 had he seriously started wondering whether he wouldn't have been happier putting up buildings after all.

  He sighed again. That choice was dead for

  him now. He had to do the best he could with the one he'd made. He said, "Shiplords, I know this meeting bas been imperfectly satisfying. The Big Uglies have shown a revolting knack for making everything we do appear unsatisfactory. Before I dismiss you back to your commands, has any of you anything further to note?"

  More often than not, the formal question went unanswered. This time, however, a male named Relek signaled for recognition. When Atvar acknowledged him, he said, "Exalted Fleetlord, my vessel, the 16th Emperor Osjess, is grounded in the eastern part of Tosev 3's main continental mass, in the Big Ugly empire called China. Lately a fair number of males have made themselves unfit for duty due to excessive consumption of some local herb which apparently has a stimulant and addictive effect on them."

  "My ship is based in the center of that

  continental mass, and I've had the same experience with a handful of my troopers," said another shiplord, this one called Tetter. "I thought I was the only shiplord so affected."

  "You are not," said Mozzten, a shiplord whose vessel was based in the U.S.A. portion of the smaller continental mass— Atvar took notice of that. Mozzten went on, "The Big Ugly name— a Big Ugly name, I should say— for the herb is 'ginger.' Its effects on the males in my command have been deleterious."

  "I shall issue a general order condemning this herb in no uncertain terms," Atvar declared. "To add to its effectiveness, I would have each shiplord— especially you three who have indicated a problem— issue his own order forbidding the individuals under his jurisdiction from having anything to do with this— ginger, was that the name I heard?"

  "It shall be done," the shiplords chorused.

  "Excellent," Atvar said. "There's one problem settled, at least."

  The mechanic spread his thick-fingered, greasy hands, shook his head helplessly. "I am very sorry, Comrade Pilot," he said, "but I cannot find the cause of the trouble. As best I can tell, the devil's grandmother has set up shop in your engine."

  "Move out of the way, then, and I will see for myself," Ludmila Gorbunova snapped. She wanted to kick some sense into the stupid muzhik, but both his head and his arse were probably hard enough to break her foot. She wished she still had her old mechanic; unlike this oaf, Katya Kuznetsova had actually understood engines and gone after problems instead of babbling about the devil and his stupid relatives.

  It wasn't as if the little five-cylinder Shvetsov radial was the most complicated piece of machinery ever built, either. It was about as simple as an engine could be and still work, and as reliable as anything that didn't walk on all fours.

  As soon as she got a good look at the engine, she became certain this idiot mechanic walked on all fours. She reached up, asked, "Do you think this loose spark-plug wire might have something to do with the aircraft's poor performance of late?" As she spoke, she connected the wire firmly.

  The mechanic's head bobbed up and down, as if on a string. "Da, Comrade Pilot, very likely it could."

  She wheeled on him. "Why didn't you see it, then?" she shouted shrilly. She wished she were a man; she wanted to bellow like a bull.

  "I'm sorry, Comrade Pilot." The mechanic's voice was humble, as if she were a priest who had caught him at some sordid little sin. "I am trying. I do the best I can."

  With that, Ludmila's rage evaporated. She knew the fellow was telling the truth. The trouble was, his best just wasn't good enough. The Soviet Union's pool of skilled manpower had never been big enough to meet the country's needs. The purges of the 1930s hadn't helped, either; sometimes simply knowing something was enough to make one an object of suspicion. Then the Germans came, and after them the Lizards... Ludmila supposed it was a miracle any reliable technicians were left alive, /f any were— she knew she hadn't seen one lately.

  She said, "We have here manuals for the Kukuruznik and its engine. Study them carefully, so we won't have this kind of problem any more."

  "Da. Comrade Pilot." The mechanic's head bobbed up and down again. Ludimila was dully certain they wouldn't have this kind of problem any less, either. She wondered if the mechanic could read the manuals. Before the war, he'd probably been a tinker or a blacksmith at a kolkhoz, good enough at patching a pot or hammering out a new blade for a shovel. Whatever he'd been, he was hopelessly out of his depth when it came to engines.

  "Do the best you can," she told him, and left the shelter of the U-2's enclosure. It had been cold in there. Away from the heaped banks of earth that shielded from blast, away from the roof of camouflage netting covered over with dead grass, the wind bit with full force, driving sleet into her face. She was glad for her flying clothes of fur and leather and thick cotton padding, for the oversized felt valenki that kept her feet from freezing. Now that winter

  was here, she seldom took anything off.

  The vale
nki acted almost like snowshoes, spreading her weight as she squelched along the muddy edge of the equally muddy landing strip. Only the slush-filled ruts from her plane and others distinguished the runway from any other part of the steppe. Even more than most Soviet aircraft, the Kukuruznikwas made to operate from landing fields that were fields in truth.

  Her head came up; her right hand went to the pistol she wore on her hip. Someone not part of the battered Red Air Force detachment was trudging across the airstrip, very likely without realizing it was one. A Red Army man, maybe — he had a rifle slung across his back.

  No, not a Red Army man: he wasn't dressed warmly enough, and the cut of his clothes was wrong. Ludmila needed only a moment to recognize the nature of the wrongness; she'd

  seen it enough. "Germanski!"she yelled, half to call to the fellow, half to warn the rest of the Russians on the little base.

  The German spun, grabbed for his rifle, flopped down on his belly in the mud. A combat veteran, Ludmila thought, unsurprised: most of the German soldiers still alive in the Soviet Union were the ones with reactions honed by battle. This one was also smart enough not to start blazing away before he knew what he'd walked into, even if his thick red whiskers gave him the look of a bandit.

  Ludmila frowned, she'd seen whiskers like those before. OA? the kolkhoz, that's right, she thought What had the fellow's name been. "Schultz," she murmured to herself. Then she shouted it, going on in German, "Is that you?"

  "Ja. Who are you?" the red-bearded man

  yelled back: like her, he needed a few seconds to make the connection. When he did, he exclaimed, "You're the pilot, right?" As it had back at the collective farm, the word sounded exotic with a feminine ending tacked onto it.

  She waved for him to approach. He got to his feet; though he didn't resling his rifle, he didn't point it at her, either. He was grimy and ragged and looked cold: if not quite the pathetic Winter Fritz of Soviet propaganda, still a long way from the deadly-dangerous figure he'd seemed back in the summer, she'd forgotten how tall he was. He was skinnier than he had been, too, which further exaggerated his height."

  He asked, "What are you doing here, out in the middle of nowhere?"

  "This isn't nowhere. This is an airfield," she answered.

  He looked around. There wasn't much to see. He grinned impudently. "You Ivans really know how to camouflage things."

  She let that pass; she wasn't sure whether it was a compliment or he was saying there wasn't anything here worth hiding. She said, "I didn't expect to see you again. I thought you and your major were on your way to Moscow." As she spoke, she saw out of the corner of her eye that several pilots and mechanics had come out of their shelters and were watching her talk with the German. They all carried guns. No one who had fought the Nazis was inclined to trust them, not even now when the Soviet Union and Germany both faced the same foe.

  "We were there," Schultz agreed. He saw the Russians, too. His eyes were never still, not even for a second; he scanned everything around him, all the time. He unobtrusively shifted, his feet so Ludmila stood between

  him and most of her countrymen. With a wry smile, he went on, "Your people decided they'd rather have us go out and work for a living than sit around eating their kasha and borscht. So we did— and here I am."

  "Here you are," she said, nodding. "Where is the major?"

  "He was alive last I saw him," Schultz answered. "We got separated; it was part of the operation. I hope he's all right."

  "Yes," Ludmila said. She still kept the letter Ja'ger had sent her. she'd thought about answering, but hadn't done it. Not only did she have no idea how to address a reply, but writing to a German would make another suspicious mark go down in her dossier, she'd never seen that dossier— she never would, unless charges were brought against her— but it felt as real as the sheepskin collar of her flying jacket.

  Schultz said, "Anything to eat here? After what I've been stealing lately, even kasha and borscht would seem mighty fine."

  "We haven't much for ourselves," Ludmila answered, she didn't mind feeding Schultz once or twice, but she didn't want to turn him into a parasite, either. Then she had a new thought. "How good a mechanic are you?"

  "Pretty good," he said, not arrogant but confident enough. "I had to help keep my panzer running, after all."

  "Do you think you could work on an aircraft engine?"

  He pursed his lips. "I don't know. I never tried. Do you have the manuals for it?"

  "Yes. They're in Russian, though." Ludmila switched to her own language: "You didn't know any back at the kolkhoz. Do you

  understand it better now?"

  "Da, a little," Schultz answered in Russian, his accent not too scurrilous. But he dropped back into German with every sign of relief: "I still can't read it worth a damn, though. But numbers don't change, and I can make sense out of pictures. Let me see what you have."

  "All right." Ludmila led him back toward the U-2 she'd just left. Members of the ground crew watched with hard, mistrustful stares as she approached. Some of that mistrust was aimed at Ludmila, for having anything to do with a German. She thought about her dossier again. But she said, "I think he can help us. He knows engines."

  "Ah," everyone said, almost in unison. Ludmila didn't care for that much more than she liked the mistrustful stares. Along with hating and fearing Germans, too many Russians were in the habit of attributing

  nearly magical abilities to them just because they came from the west. She hoped she knew better. They were good soldiers, yes, but they weren't supermen.

  When Georg Schultz saw the Kukuruznik, he rocked back on his heels and started to laugh. "You're still flying these little bastards, are you?"

  "What about it?" Ludmila said hotly. He'd have done better to insult her family than her beloved U-2.

  But the panzer man answered, "We hated these stupid things. Every time I had to go out and take a dump, I figured one of 'em would fly by and shoot my ass off. I swear they could stand on tiptoe and peek in through a window, and I bet the Lizards don't like 'em one bit better'n we did."

  Ludmila translated that into Russian. As if by

  magic, the ground crew's hostility melted. Hands fell away from weapons. Somebody dug out a pouch of makhorka and passed it to Schultz. He had some old newspaper in an inside pocket that hadn't got wet. When he'd rolled himself a cigarette, a Russian gave him a light.

  He shielded it with one hand from the drips that splattered down off the camouflage netting, walked around so he could get a good look at the engine and two-bladed wooden prop on the nose of the Wheatcutter. When he turned around, he wore a disbelieving grin. "It really flies?"

  "It really flies," Ludmila agreed gravely, hiding her own smile. She said it again in her own language. A couple of the mechanics laughed out loud. She returned to German: "Do you think you can help keep it flying?"

  "Why not?" he said. "It doesn't look near as

  bad as keeping a panzer going. And if that engine were any simpler, you'd run it off a rubber band like a kid's toy."

  "Hmm," Ludmila said, not sure she cared for the comparison. The little Shvetsov was made to be rugged as a mule, but surely that was something to be proud of, not to scorn. She pointed to Schultz. "Turn your back."

  "Jawohl!" He clicked his heels as if she were a field marshal in red-striped trousers, and performed a smart about-turn.

  She gestured for a couple of Russians to stand behind him so he couldn't see what she was doing, then loosened the sparkplug wire she'd noticed and her alleged mechanic hadn't. "You can turn back now. Find out what's wrong with the machine."

  Schultz walked over to the U-2, inspected the engine for perhaps fifteen seconds, and fixed

  the wire Ludmila had tampered with. His smile seemed to say, Why don't you ask me a hard one next time? The mechanic who had failed to find the same defect glared at the German as if suspecting the devil's grandmother had somehow migrated from the Shvetsov to him.

  "This man will be us
eful on this base," Ludmila said. Her eyes dared the ground crew to argue with her. None of the men said anything, though several looked ready to burst with what they weren't saying.

  The German panzer sergeant seemed at least as bemused as his Soviet counterparts. "First I fight alongside a bunch of Jewish partisans, and now I'm joining the Red Air Force," he said, maybe more to himself than to Ludmila. "I hope to God none of this ever shows up in my file."

  So the Nazis worried about dossiers, too. The

  thought gave Ludmila something in common with Schultz, though it wasn't one she'd be able to share with him. Somehow that didn't matter, either. They both knew what was safe to talk about and what wasn't.