In the Balance & Tilting the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  He had no idea how sick he’d become of the train, of its endless shaking, of the seat that did not conform to his backside because it made no provision for a tailstump, of the endless jabber from the Nipponese troops in the back of the car, of the odor that rose from them and grew thicker as the journey went on. He even came to miss his cell, something he had not imagined possible.

  The journey seemed to stretch endlessly, senselessly. How long could it take to traverse one small part of a planetary surface? Given fuel and maintenance for his killercraft, Teerts could have circumnavigated the whole miserable world several times in the interval he needed to crawl across this tiny portion of it.

  He finally grew fed up—and incautious—enough to say that to Major Okamoto. The Big Ugly looked at him for a moment, then asked, “And how fast could you go if someone kept dropping bombs in front of your aircraft?”

  After heading east for a day and a half, the train swung south. That puzzled Teerts, who said to his keeper, “I thought Nippon lay in this direction, across the sea.”

  “It does,” Okamoto answered, “but the port Vladivostok, which is nearest to us, belongs to the Soviet Union, not to Nippon.”

  Teerts was neither a diplomat nor a particularly imaginative male. He’d never thought about the complications that might arise from having a planet divided up among many empires. Now, being forced to stay on the train because of one of those complications, he heaped mental scorn on the Big Uglies, though he realized the Race benefited from their disunity.

  Even when the train came down close by the sea, it did not stop, but rumbled through a land Major Okamoto called Chosen. “Wakarimasen,” Teerts said, working on his villainous Nipponese: “I do not understand. Here is the ocean. Why do we not stop and get on a ship?”

  “Not so simple,” Okamoto answered. “We need a port, a place where ships can safely come into land, not be battered by storms.” He leaned across Teerts, pointed out the window at the waves crashing against the shore. Home’s lakes were surrounded by land, not the other way round; they seldom grew boisterous.

  Shipwreck was another concept that hadn’t crossed Teerts’ mind till he watched this bruising ruffian of an ocean throwing its water about with muscular abandon. It was fascinating to see—certainly more interesting than the mountains that flanked the other side of the track—at least until Teerts had a really horrid thought: “We need to go across that ocean to get to Nippon, don’t we?”

  “Yes, of course,” his captor answered blithely. “This disturbs you? Too bad.”

  Here in Chosen, farther from the fighting, damage to the railway net was less. The train made better time. It finally reached a port, a place called Fusan. Land ended there, running out into the sea. Teerts saw what Okamoto had meant by a port: ships lined up next to wooden sidewalks that ran out into the water on poles. Big Uglies and goods moved on and off.

  Teerts realized that, primitive and smoky as this port was, a lot of business got done here. He was used to air and space transportation and the weight limits they imposed; one of these big, ugly Big Ugly ships could carry enormous numbers of soldiers and machines and sacks of bland, boring rice. And the Tosevites had many, many ships.

  Back on the planets of the Empire, transportation by water was an unimportant sidelight; goods flowed along highways and railroads. All the interdiction missions Teerts had flown on Tosev 3 were against highways and railroads. Not once had he attacked shipping. But from what he saw in Fusan, the officers who gave him his targets had been missing a bet.

  “Off,” Okamoto said. Teerts obediently descended from the train, followed by the Nipponese officer and the stolid guard. After so long on the jouncing railway car, the ground seemed to sway beneath his feet.

  At his captor’s orders, he walked up a gangplank and onto one of the ships; the claws on his toes clicked against bare, cold metal. The floor (the Big Uglies had a special word for it, but he couldn’t remember what the word was) shifted under his feet. He jumped into the air in alarm. “Earthquake!” he shouted in his own language.

  That was not a word Major Okamoto knew. When Teerts explained it, the Nipponese let out a long string of the yips the Big Uglies used for laughter. Okamoto spoke to the guard in his own tongue. The guard, who had hardly said three words all the way down from Harbin through Chosen, laughed loudly, too. Teerts glared at one of them with each eye. He didn’t see the joke.

  Later, when out of sight of land the ship really started rolling and pitching, he understood why the Big Uglies had found his startlement at that first slight motion funny. He was, however, too busy wishing he was dead to be amused himself.

  A rowboat took Colonel Leslie Groves across the Charles River toward the United States Navy Yard. The Charlestown Bridge, which had spanned the river and connected the yard with the rest of Boston on the southern bank, was nothing but a ruin. Engineers had repaired it a couple of times, but the Lizards, kept knocking it down.

  The ferryman pulled up under what had been the northern piers of the bridge. “Heah y’aah, friend,” he said in broad New England accents, pointing to a set of rickety wooden stairs that led up to Main Street.

  Groves scrambled out of the rowboat. The steps squeaked under his weight, though he, like most people, was a good deal lighter than he would have been had the Lizards stayed away. The fellow in the boat was backing oars, heading south across the river for his next ferry run.

  As Groves turned right onto Chelsea Street, he reflected on how natural his ear found the Boston accent, though he’d not heard much of it since his days at MIT more than twenty years before. The country had been at war then, too, but with a foe safely across the ocean, not lodged, all through the United States itself.

  Naval ratings with rifles patrolled the long, high wall that separated the Navy Yard from the town behind it. Groves wondered how useful the fence was. If you stood on Breed’s Hill (where, history books notwithstanding, the Americans and British had fought the Battle of Bunker Hill), you could look right down into the Yard. The colonel was, however, long used to security for security’s sake. As he approached, he tapped the shiny eagle on the shoulders of his overcoat. The Navy guards saluted and stood aside to let him enter.

  The Yard was not crowded with warships, as it had been before the Lizards came. The ships—those that survived—were dispersed up and down the coast, so as not to make any one target too attractive to bombardment from the air.

  Still berthed in the Navy Yard was the USS Constitution. As always, seeing “Old Ironsides” gave Groves a thrill. In his MIT days, he’d toured the ship several times, and almost banged his head on the timbers belowdecks: any sailor much above five feet tall would have knocked himself silly running to his battle station; Glancing at the tall masts that probed the sky, Groves reflected that the Lizards had made the whole Navy as obsolete as the tough old frigate. It was not a cheery thought.

  His own target lay a couple of piers beyond the Constitution. The boat tied up there was no longer than the graceful sailing ship, and much uglier: slabs of rust-stained iron could not compete against Old Ironsides’ elegant flanks. The only curves sweeter than a sailing ship’s, Groves thought, are a woman’s.

  The sentry who paced the pier wore Navy uniform, but not quite the one with which Groves was familiar. Nor was the flag that flapped from the submarine’s conning tower the Stars and Stripes, but rather the Union Jack. Groves wondered if any Royal Navy vessels had used the Boston Navy Yard since the Revolution took Massachusetts off George III’s hands.

  “Ahoy the Seanymph!” he called as he strode up to the sentry. He was close enough now to see that the man carried a Lee-Enfield rifle, not the Springfields of his American counterparts.

  “Ahoy yourself,” the sentry answered; his vowels said London, not Back Bay. Make yourself known, sir, if you’d be so kind.”

  “I am Colonel Leslie Groves, United States Army. Here are my identification documents.” He waited while the Englishman inspected them, carefully comparing
his photograph to his face. When the sentry nodded to show he was satisfied, Groves went on, “I am ordered to meet your Commander Stansfield here, to pick up the package he’s brought to the United States.”

  “Wait here, sir.” The sentry crossed the gangplank to the Seanymph’s deck, climbed the ladder to the conning tower, and disappeared below. He came out again a couple of minutes later. “You have permission to come aboard, sir. Watch your step, now.”

  The advice was not wasted; Groves did not pretend to be a sailor. As he carefully descended into the submarine, he was glad he’d lost some weight. As things were, the passage seemed alarmingly tight.

  The long steel tube in which he found himself did nothing to ease that feeling. It was like peering down a dimly lit Thermos bottle. Even with the hatch open, the air was closed and dank; it smelled of metal and sweat and hot machine oil and, faintly in the background, full heads.

  An officer with three gold stripes on the sleeves of his jacket came forward. “Colonel Groves? I’m Roger Stansfield, commanding the Seanymph. May I see your bona fides, please?” He examined Groves’ papers with the same care the sentry had given them. Returning them, he said, “I hope you will forgive me, but it has been made quite clear that security is of the essence in this matter.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Commander,” Groves said easily. “The same point has been impressed upon me, I assure you.”

  “I don’t even precisely know what it is I’ve ferried over to you Yanks,” Stansfield said. “All I know is that I’ve been ordered to treat the stuff with the utmost respect, and have obeyed to the best of my ability.”

  “Good.” Groves still wondered how he’d gotten roped into this atomic explosives project himself. Maybe the talk he’d had with the physicist—Larssen? was that the name?—had linked him and uranium in General Marshall’s mind. Or maybe he’d complained once too often about fighting the war from behind a desk. He wasn’t behind a desk any more, and wouldn’t be for God only knew how long.

  Stansfield said, “Having turned this—material—over to you, Colonel Groves, is there any way, in which I can be of further assistance?”

  “You’d have made my life a hell of a lot easier, Commander, if you could have sailed your Seanymph to Denver instead of Boston,” Groves answered dryly.

  “This is the port to which I was ordered to bring my boat,” the Englishman said in a puzzled voice. “Had you wanted the material delivered elsewhere, your chaps upstairs should have told the Admiralty as much; I’m sure we would have done our best to oblige.”

  Groves shook his head. “I’m pulling your leg, I’m afraid.” No reason for a Royal Navy man to be familiar with an American town that, to put it mildly, was not a port. “Colorado is a landlocked state.”

  “Oh. Quite.” To Groves’ relief, Stansfield didn’t get mad. His grin showed pointed teeth that went well with his sharp, foxy features and hair that was somewhere between sandy and red. “They do say the new class of submarines was to have been capable of nearly everything, but that might have challenged it even had the advent of the Lizards not scuttled its development.”

  “Too bad,” Groves said sincerely. “Now I have to transport the stuff myself.”

  “Perhaps we can make matters a bit easier,” Stansfield said. One of the Seanymph’s ratings fetched up a canvas knapsack, which he presented to Groves with a flourish. Stansfield went on, “This arrangement should make rather easier transporting the saddlebag contained inside, which is, if you’ll forgive the, vulgarity, bloody heavy. I’d not be surprised to learn it was lined with lead, though I’ve been studiously encouraged not to enquire.”

  “Probably just as well.” Groves knew the saddlebag was lined with lead. He didn’t know how well the lead would shield him from the radioactive material inside; that was one of the things he’d have to find out the hard way. If this mission took years off his life but helped defeat the Lizards, the government had concluded that was a worthwhile price to pay. Having served that government his entire adult life, Groves accepted the estimation with as much equanimity as he could muster.

  He shrugged on the knapsack. His shoulders and back did indeed feel the weight. If he had to haul it around for a while, he might even end up somewhere close. to svelte. He hadn’t been anything but portly—or worried about it—since his West Point days.

  “I assume you have plans on how to reach, ah, Denver with your burden there,” Stansfield said. “I do apologize, for my limited ability to help you in that regard, but we are. only a submarine, not a subterrene.” He grinned again; he seemed taken with the idea of sailing to Colorado.

  “Can’t talk about that, I’m afraid,” Groves said. “By rights, I shouldn’t even have told you where I’m going.”

  Commander Stansfield nodded in understanding sympathy. He would have been even more sympathetic, Groves thought, had he known just how sketchy the American’s plans were. He’d been ordered not to fly toward Denver; a plane was too likely to get knocked down. Not many trains were running, and even fewer cars. That left shank’s mare, horseback, and luck—and as an engineer, Groves didn’t take much stock in luck.

  Complicating matters further was the stranglehold the Lizards had on the Midwest. Here on the coast, they were just raiders. But the farther inland you went, the more they seemed to have settled down to stay.

  Groves wondered why the aliens didn’t pay more attention to the ocean and to the land that lay alongside it. They hit land and air transportation all over the world, but ships still had a decent chance of getting through. Maybe that said something about the planet they came from. Groves shook his head. He had more immediate things to worry about.

  Not least of them was the battle breaking out right around halfway between here and Denver. If that went wrong, not only would Chicago surely fall, but the United States would be hard pressed to put up more than guerrilla resistance to, the Lizards anywhere outside the East Coast. For that matter, getting to Denver might not matter if the battle went wrong, though Groves knew he’d keep going until he was either dead or ordered to turn aside.

  He must have looked grim, for Commander Stansfield said, “Colonel, I’ve heard it said that your Navy bans alcohol aboard its vessels. Fortunately, the Royal Navy observes no such tiresome custom. Would you care for a tot of rum to fortify you for the journey ahead?”

  “Commander, I’d be delighted, by God,” Groves said. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure—I thought it might do you some good. Wait here, if you please; I’ll be back directly.”

  Stansfield hurried down the steel tube of the hull toward the rear of the submarine—aft, Groves supposed it was called in proper naval jargon. He watched the British officer lean into a little chamber off to the side of the main tube. His cabin, Groves realized. Stansfield didn’t need to lean very far; the cabin had to be tiny. Bunks were stacked three deep, with bare inches between them. All things considered, the Seanymph was a claustrophobe’s nightmare brought to clattering life.

  The squat brown glass jug in Commander Stansfield’s hand gurgled encouragingly. “Jamaican, than which there is none finer,” he said, puffing the cork. Groves could almost taste the thick, heavy aroma that rose from it. Stansfield poured two healthy tots, handed one glass to Groves.

  “Thanks.” Groves took it with appropriate reverence. He raised it high—and almost barked his knuckles on a pipe that ran along the low ceiling. “His Majesty, the King!” he said gravely.

  “His Majesty the King,” Stansfield echoed Didn’t think you Yanks knew to make that one.”

  “I read it somewhere.” Groves knocked back the rum at a gulp. It was so smooth, his throat hardly knew he swallowed it, but it exploded in his stomach like a mortar round, throwing warmth in all directions. He looked at the empty glass with genuine respect. “That, Commander, is the straight goods.”

  “So it is.” Stansfield sipped more sedately. He proffered the bottle once more. “Another?”

  Groves shook his head. �
��One of those is medicinal. Two and I’d want to go to sleep. I appreciate the offer, though.”

  “You have a clear notion of what’s best for you. I admire that.” Stansfield turned so he faced west. The motion was quite deliberate; Groves imagined—as he was supposed to imagine—the Royal Navy man peering out through the sub’s hull and across two thousand miles of dangerous country to the promised land of Denver, high in the Rockies. After a moment, Stansfield added, “I must say I don’t envy you, Colonel.”

  Groves shrugged. With the heavy canvas knapsack on his shoulders, he felt like Atlas, trying to support the whole world. “The job has to be done,. and I’m going to do it.”

  Rivka Russie scratched a match against the sole of her shoe. It flared into life. She used it to light, first one shabbas candle, then the other. Bowing her head over them, she murmured the Sabbath blessing.

  The puff of sulfurous smoke from the matchhead filled the little underground room and made Moishe Russie cough. The fat white candles were a sign he and his family had survived another week without the Lizards’ finding them. They also helped light the bunker where the Russies sheltered.

  Rivka lifted the ceremonial cloth cover from a braided loaf of challah. “I want some of that bread, Mama!” Reuven exclaiuied.

  “Let me slice it first, if you please,” Rivka told her son. “Look: we even have some honey to spread on it.”

  All the comforts of home. The irony of the phrase echoed in Moishe’s mind. Instead of their flat, they sheltered in this secret chamber buried under another Warsaw apartment block. In further irony, the bunker had been built to shelter Jews not from the Lizards but from the Nazis, yet here he used it to save himself from the creatures who had saved him from the Germans.

  And yet the words were not entirely ironic. The vast majority of Warsaw’s Jews lived far better under the Lizards than they had when Hitler’s henchmen ruled the city. The wheat-flour challah, rich with eggs and dusted with poppy seeds, would have been unimaginable in the starving Warsaw ghetto—Russie remembered too well the chunk of fatty, sour pork for which he’d given a silver candlestick the night the Lizards came to Earth.