Turtledove: World War

by In the Balance

  “If you like, gentlemen, we can adjourn to the shelter in the basement,” Churchill said.

  Interpreters looked hopefully at foreign ministers. Molotov checked his confreres. None of them said anything, in spite of the suggestion’s obvious good sense. Molotov took the bull by the horns. “Yes, let us do that, Comrade Prime Minister. In all candor, our lives are valuable to the nations we serve. Foolish displays of bravado gain us nothing, if we can keep safe, we should do so.”

  Almost as one, the diplomats and interpreters rose from their seats and moved toward the door. No one thanked Molotov for cutting through the façade of bourgeois manners, but he’d expected no thanks from class enemies. As the Soviet foreign minister set foot on the stairs leading down, another irony struck him. For all their advanced technology, the Lizards appeared in Marxist-Leninist terms still to be in the ancient economic organizational system, using slave labor and plunder from captive races to maintain their imperial superstructure. Next to them, even Churchill—even Ribbentrop!—was progressive. The thought amused and appalled Molotov at the same time.

  Another stick of bombs shook the Foreign Office as the diplomats descended to the cellar. Cordell Hull slipped and almost fell, catching himself at the last instant by grabbing the shoulder of the Japanese interpreter in front of him.

  “Jesus Christ!” the secretary of state exclaimed. Molotov understood that without translation, though the American pronounced Christ as if it were Chwist. Hull followed it with several more sharp-sounding remarks.

  “What is he saying?” Molotov asked his English-speaking translator.

  “Oaths,” the man answered. “Forgive me, Comrade Foreign Commissar, but I do not follow them easily. The American’s accent is different from Churchill’s, with which I am more familiar. When he speaks deliberately, I have no trouble understanding him, but the twang he gives his words when he is excited makes them difficult for me.”

  “Do your utmost,” Molotov said. He hadn’t thought about there being more than one dialect of English; to him it was all equally incomprehensible. Stalin and Mikoyan spoke Russian with an accent, of course, but that was because the one came from Georgia and the other from Armenia. The interpreter seemed to imply something else, more like the differences between the Russian of a kolkhoznik near the Polish border (the former Polish border Molotov thought) and that of a Moscow factory worker.

  The shelter proved low-roofed, crowded, and smelly. Molotov looked around scornfully: was this the best the British could protect their essential personnel? Corresponding quarters in Moscow were farther underground, surely better armored, and much more spacious.

  Clerks and officials gave the diplomats as much room as they could, which was not a great deal. Churchill said, “Shall we continue, gentlemen?”

  Molotov wondered if he had lost his mind. Resume, in front of all these people? Then he reflected that what happened here was not likely to be reported back to the Lizards; unlike the powers negotiating today, the invaders had no long-established spy network to pick up their rivals’ every word.

  But then he realized that might not matter. He said, “I make no secret”—which meant Stalin had told him to make no secret—“of the fact that I have met the enemy’s commanding officer in his ship above the Earth. As I expected, those negotiations proved fruitless, the Lizards demanding nothing less than the unconditional surrender we all find unacceptable. In the course of the meeting, however, I also learned the German foreign minister had held talks with this Atvar creature. I desire to know now whether this also holds true for Great Britain, the United States, and Japan. If so, I desire to know the status of their conversations with the Lizards. In short, are we in danger of betrayal from within?”

  Joachim von Ribbentrop spluttered something indignant in German, then switched to English. The translator murmured into Molotov’s ear: “Yes, I discussed certain matters with the Lizards. After the fire that fell on Berlin, this is surely understandable, not so? I betrayed nothing, however, and resent the imputation. As proof I offer the Reich’s continuing struggle against the invading forces.”

  “No imputation was intended,” Molotov said, though he remembered Atvar had implied Ribbentrop was more pliable than the German painted himself. Of course, it was as likely the Lizard lied for his own advantage as that Ribbentrop did so. More likely still, they both lied. Molotov resumed: “What of the rest of you?”

  Cordell Hull said, “I haven’t done any of this Buck Rogers stuff.” (“By which he means he has not traveled into space,” the interpreter glossed.) “No one from the government of the United States has. We have held lower-level talks with the Lizards on our soil regarding such matters as transportation of food and other noncombat supplies to areas they control, and we are also attempting to arrange exchanges of prisoners of war.”

  Soft, Molotov thought. The handful of prisoners the Soviets had taken from the invaders were interrogated until no longer useful and then disposed of, just as if they were Germans or kulaks with important information. As for supplying food to Lizard-held areas, Moscow had enough trouble feeding the people it still ruled. Those the Lizards had overrun made useful partisans and spies, but that was all.

  Shigenori Togo spoke in German; Molotov remembered he had a German wife. The Soviet foreign minister’s English-speaking interpreter also knew German. He translated for Molotov: “He says there is no excuse for treating with this enemy.”

  Ribbentrop scowled at the Japanese representative. Ignoring the glare, Togo switched to his own language and went on for some time. Molotov’s other translator took over: “The Emperor Hirohito’s government has consistently refused to deal with the Lizards except on the battlefield. We see no reason to discontinue this policy. We shall continue to fight until events prove favorable for us. We understand this fight will be difficult; that is why I am here today. But Japan will fight on regardless of the course any other nation may take.”

  “The same holds true for Britain,” Churchill declared. “We may talk with the foe, consistent with the usages of war, but we shall not surrender to him. Resistance is our sacred duty to our children.”

  “You say this now,” Ribbentrop said. “But what will you say when the Lizards strike London or Washington or Tokyo or Moscow with the same dreadful weapon that destroyed Berlin?”

  Silence reigned for the next several seconds. It was a better question than Molotov had expected from the plump, prosperous, foolish Ribbentrop. He did notice the Nazi foreign minister had put the Soviet capital last on his list. Annoyed by that, he said, “Comrade Stalin has pledged a fight to the finish, and the Soviet workers and people shall hold to the pledge, come what may. In any case, if I may use a bourgeois analogy, having continued to resist despite wholesale murder at the hands of Germany, we shall not quail at the prospect of retail murder from the Lizards.”

  Ribbentrop’s protuberant blue eyes glared balefully. Shigenori Togo, whose nation had been at war with neither the Soviet Union nor Germany when the Lizards came, was in the best position to address both their representatives: “Such talk as this, gentlemen, aids no one but the invaders. Of course we remember our own quarrels, but to use them to interfere with the struggle against the Lizards is shortsighted.”

  He could not have picked a better word to gain Molotov’s attention. The ineluctable nature of the historical dialectic made Marxist-Leninists long-term planners almost by instinct. The Five-Year Plans that had made the Soviet Union an industrial match for Germany were a case in point.

  Molotov said, “I merely used the analogy to demonstrate that we shall not be intimidated by brute force. In fact, the Soviet Union and Germany are even now cooperating in areas where our two states can effectively bring combined resources to bear against the common enemy.” He stopped there. Another word would have been too much.

  Ribbentrop nodded. “We will do what we must do to secure final victory.”

  Glee danced behind Molotov’s unchanging visage. He would have bet a prewar Cri
mean dacha against a trip to the gulag that Ribbentrop had no idea what sort of cooperation he’d meant. He knew perfectly well that he would never have told the pompous ass anything important.

  “Instead of bemoaning the dreadful weapons the Lizards have, one of the things we should be doing is discovering how to make them for ourselves,” Cordell Hull said. “I am authorized by President Roosevelt to tell you all that the United States has such a program in progress, and that we will share resources with our allies in the struggle.”

  “The United States and Britain are already operating under such an arrangement,” Churchill said, adding with a touch of smugness, “nor is the sharing to which Secretary Hull referred by any means a one-way street.”

  Now Molotov’s stony façade trapped amazement. Had he been as indiscreet as Hull, he’d have earned—and deserved—a bullet in the back of the head. Yet the American secretary of state spoke at his president’s orders. Astonishing! Molotov more easily understood the Lizards than the United States. Combining the technical expertise implicit in Hull’s words with such unbelievable naïveté . . . Incredible—and dangerous.

  Ribbentrop said, “We are prepared to cooperate with any nation against the Lizards.”

  “As are we,” Togo said.

  Everyone looked at Molotov. Seeing silence would not serve here, he said, “I have already stated that the Soviet Union is currently working with Germany on projects of benefit to both nations. We have no objection in principle to pursuing similar collaborative efforts with other states actively resisting the Lizards.”

  He glanced round the tight circle of diplomats. Ribbentrop actually smiled at him. Churchill, Hull, and Togo remained expressionless, save that one of Churchill’s eyebrows rose a little. Unlike the Nazi buffoon, they’d noticed he hadn’t really promised anything. A wide gap lay between “no objection in principle” and genuine cooperation. Well, too bad. If they wanted to keep fighting the Lizards, they were in no position to call him on it.

  Cordell Hull said, “Another area of concern for all of us is dealing with nations which have, for whatever reasons, made devil’s bargains with the Lizards.” He ran a hand through the strands of gray hair he’d combed over the top of a mostly bald skull. The Americas had a lot of nations like that.

  “Many of them will have done so only under compulsion, and may well remain willing to carry on the fight and to work with us even while nominally under the invaders’ yoke,” Churchill said.

  “That may be true in some cases,” Molotov agreed. His own judgment was that Churchill kept the cockeyed optimism which he’d demonstrated in defying Hitler after British forces were booted out of Europe in 1940. That kind of optimism often led to disaster, but sometimes it saved nations. Bourgeois military “experts” hadn’t given the Red Army six weeks of life against the Wehrmacht—but the Soviets were still fighting almost a year later when the Lizards came to complicate the situation yet again.

  Molotov went on, “Partisan movements against both the invaders and the governments collaborating with them should also be organized and armed as expeditiously as possible. Leaders who favor submission must be removed by whatever means prove necessary.” He said the last with a hard look at Joachim von Ribbentrop.

  The German foreign minister was dense, but not too dense to miss that message. “The Führer still feels a personal fondness for Mussolini,” he said, sounding more than a little embarrassed.

  “No accounting for taste,” Churchill rumbled. “Still, Minister Molotov is correct: we are past the stage where personal likes and dislikes ought to influence policy. The sooner Mussolini is dead and buried, the better for all of us. Some German forces remain in Italy. They might well be the ones to give him the boot, or rather take him from it for good.”

  The interpreter stumbled over the idioms in the last sentence, but Molotov got the gist. He added, “Having the Pope join Mussolini in the grave would also be a progressive development. Since the Lizards do not interfere with his bleating preachments, he fawns on them like a cur.”

  “But would a successor prove any better?” Shigenori Togo asked. “Along with this, we must also ask ourselves whether making the Pope into a martyr would in the long run prove harmful by generating hatred for our cause among Catholics all over the world.”

  “This may perhaps need to be considered,” Molotov admitted at last. His own instinct was to strike at organized religion wherever and however he could. But the Japanese foreign minister had a point—the political repercussions might be severe. The Pope had no divisions, but many more followed him than had backed Leon Trotsky, now dead with an ice ax in his brain. Not one to yield ground lightly, Molotov added, “Perhaps the Pope could be eliminated in a way which makes the Lizards appear responsible.”

  Cordell Hull screwed up his face. “This talk of assassination is repugnant to me.”

  Soft, Molotov thought again. The United States, large, rich, powerful, and shielded by broad oceans east and west, had long enjoyed the historical luxury of softness. Not even two world wars had made Americans feel in their guts how dangerous a place the world was. But if they could not awake to reality with the Lizards in their own back yard, they would never have another chance.

  “In war, one does what one must,” Churchill said, as if gently reproving the secretary of state. The British prime minister could see past his button of a nose.

  The all-clear sirens began to wail. Molotov listened to the long sigh of relief that came from the Foreign Office workers all around. They’d got through to the far side of another raid. None of them thought that only meant they’d have the dubious privilege of facing another soon.

  The office staff formed a neat queue to leave the shelter and get back to work. Molotov had seen endless queues in the Soviet Union, but this one seemed somehow different. He needed a few seconds to put his finger on why Soviet citizens queued up with a mixture of anger and resignation, because they had no other way to get what they needed. (and because they suspected even queuing up often did no good). The English were more polite about it, as if they’d silently decided it was the one proper thing to do.

  Their revolution is coming, too, Molotov thought, to sweep away such bourgeois affectations. Meanwhile, affected bourgeois though they were, they seemed likely to stay in the fight against the Lizards. So did the other three powers, though Molotov still had his doubts about Germany: any nation that let a nonentity like Ribbentrop become foreign minister had something inherently wrong with it. But the chief capitalist states were not giving up yet, even if Italy had stabbed them in the back. That was what he’d needed to learn, and that was the word he would take back to Stalin.

  Sam Yeager shepherded two Lizards down the corridor of the Zoology Building of the Hull Biological Laboratories. He still carried his rifle and wore a tin hat, but that was more because he’d grown used to them than because he thought he’d need them. The Lizards made docile prisoners—more docile than he’d have been if they’d caught him, he thought.

  He stopped in front of room 227A. The Lizards stopped, too. “In here, Samyeager?” one of them asked in hissing English. All the Lizard POWs pronounced his own name as if it were one word; what their mouths did to Sam Finkelstein was purely a caution.

  Yeager got the idea his command of their tongue was as villainous as their English. He was doing his best with it, though, and answered, “Yes, in here, Ullhass, Ristin, brave males.” He opened the door with the frosted-glass window, gestured with the barrel of the rifle for them to precede him.

  In the outer office, a girl was clattering away on a noisy old Underwood. She stopped when the door opened. Her smile of greeting froze when she saw the two Lizards. “It’s all right, ma’m,” Yeager said quickly. “They’re here to see Dr. Burkett. You must be new, or else you’d know about them.”

  “Yes, it’s my first day on the job,” answered the girl—actually, Yeager saw with a second look, she was probably in her late twenties, maybe even early thirties. His eyes flicked auto
matically to the third finger of her left hand. It had a ring. Too bad.

  Dr. Burkett came out of his sanctum. He greeted Ullhass and Ristin in their own language; he was more fluent than Yeager, though he hadn’t been learning for nearly as long. That’s why he’s a fancy-pants professor and I’m a bush-league outfielder, Yeager thought without much resentment. Besides, the Lizards liked him better than they did Burkett; they said so every time they went back to their own quarters.

  Now, though, Burkett waved them into his office, shut the door behind them. “Isn’t that dangerous?” the girl asked nervously.

  “Shouldn’t be,” Yeager answered. “The Lizards aren’t troublemakers. Besides, Burkett’s window, is barred, so they can’t get away. And besides one more time”—he pulled out a chair—“I sit here until they come out, and I go in and get ’em if they don’t come out inside of a couple of hours.” He reached into his shirt pocket, drew out a pack of Chesterfields (not his brand, but you took what you could get these days) and a Zippo. “Would you like a cigarette, uh—?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m Barbara Larssen. Yes, I’d love one, thanks.” She tapped it against the desk, put it in her mouth, leaned forward to let him light it. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked in smoke. She held it, then blew a long plume at the ceiling. “Oh, that’s nice. I haven’t had one in a couple of days.” She took another long drag.

  Yeager introduced himself before he lit his own smoke. “Don’t let me get in your way if you’re busy,” he said. “Just pretend I’m part of the furniture.”

  “I’ve been typing nonstop since half past seven this morning, so I could use a break,” Barbara said, smiling again.

  “Okay,” Yeager said agreeably. He leaned back in his chair, watched her. She was worth watching: not a movie-star beauty or anything like that, but pretty all the same, with a round, smiling face, green eyes, and dark blond hair that was growing out straight though its ends still showed permanent waves. To make conversation, he said, “Your husband off fighting?”