Striking the Balance w-4

by Harry Turtledove

  “They’re much too good at giving them to us, too,” Bertha Fleishman said. “Before, their rockets would send over a few kilos of nerve gas at a time, with a big bursting charge to spread it around. But this… we salvaged more than a tonne from that bomb. And they were going to have us place it so it hurt us worst. The rockets could come down almost anywhere.”

  Solomon Gruver’s laugh was anything but pleasant. “I bet that Skorzeny pitched a fit when he found out he couldn’t play us for suckers the way he thought he could.”

  “He probably did,” Mordechai agreed. “But don’t think he’s done for good because we fooled him once. I never thought themamzer would live up to the nonsense Gobbels puts out on the wireless, but he does. That is a man to be taken seriously no matter what. If we don’t keep an eye on him all the time, he’ll do something dreadful to us. Even if we do, he may yet.”

  “Thank God for your friend, the other German,” Bertha said.

  Now Anielewicz laughed-uncomfortably. “I don’t think he’s my friend, exactly. I don’t think I’m his friend, either. But I let him live and I let him carry that explosive metal back to Germany, and so… I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just a stiff-necked sense of honor, and he’s paying back a debt.”

  “There can be decent Germans,” Solomon Gruver said reluctantly. That almost set Mordechai laughing again. If he had started, the laugh would have carried an edge of hysteria. He could imagine some plump, monocled Nazi functionary using that precise tone of voice to admit,There can be decent Jews.

  “I still wonder if I should have killed him,” Mordechai said. “The Nazis would have had a much harder time building their bombs without that metal, and God knows the world would be a better place without them. But the world wouldn’t be a better place with the Lizards overrunning it.”

  “And here we are, still stuck in the middle between them,” Bertha Fleishman said. “If the Lizards win, everyone loses. If the Nazis win, we lose.”

  “We’ll hurt them before we go,” Anielewicz said. “They’ve helped us do it, too. If they should come back, we won’t let them treat us the way they did before. Not now. Never again. What was the last desire of my life before the Lizards came has been fulfilled. Jewish self-defense is a fact.”

  How tenuous a fact it was came to be shown a moment later, when a Jewish fighter named Leon Zelkowitz walked into the room where they were talking and said, “There’s an Order Service district leader down at the entrance who wants to talk with you, Mordechai.”

  Anielewicz made a sour face. “Such an honor.” The Order Service in the Jewish district of Lodz still reported to Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who had been Eldest of the Jews under the Nazis and was still Eldest of the Jews under the Lizards. Most of the time, the Order Service prudently pretended the Jewish fighters did not exist. That the Lizards’ puppet police came looking for him now-he needed to find out what it meant. He got up and slung a Mauscr over his shoulder.

  The Order Service officer still wore his Nazi-issue trench coat and kepi. He wore his Nazi-issue armband, too: red and white, with a blackMagen David on it; the white triangle inside the Star of David showed his rank. He carried a billy club on his belt. Against a rifle, that was nothing much.

  “You wanted me?” Anielewicz was ten or twelve centimeters taller than the district leader, and used his height to stare coldly down at the other man.

  “I-” The Order Service man coughed. He was chunky and pale-faced, with a black mustache that looked as if a moth had landed on his upper lip. He tried again: “I’m Oskar Birkenfeld, Anielewicz. I have orders to take you to Bunim.”

  “Do you?” Anielewicz had expected a meeting with Rumkowski or some of his henchmen. To be summoned instead to meet with the chief Lizard in Lodz… something out of the ordinary was going on. He wondered if he should have this Birkenfeld seized and drop out of sight himself. He’d made plans to do that at need. Was the need here? Temporizing, he said, “Does he give me a safe-conduct pledge to and from the meeting?”

  “Yes, yes,” the Order Service man said impatiently.

  Anielewicz nodded, his face thoughtful. The Lizards were perhaps better than human beings about keeping those pledges. “All right. I’ll come.”

  Birkenfeld turned in what looked like glad relief. Maybe he’d expected Mordechai to refuse, and also expected to catch it from his own superiors. He started away with his shoulders back and a spring in his step, for all the world as if he were on a mission of his own rather than a puppet of puppets. Sad and amused at the same time, Anielewicz followed him.

  The Lizards had moved into the former German administrative offices in the Bialut Market Square.Only too fitting, Anielewicz thought. Rumkowski’ s offices were in the next building over; his buggy, with its German-made placard proclaiming him Eldest of the Jews, sat in front of it. But Mordechai got only a glimpse of the buggy, for Lizard guards came forward to take charge of him. District Leader Birkenfeld hastily disappeared.

  “Your rifle,” a Lizard said to Anielewicz in hissing Polish. He handed over the weapon. The Lizard took it. “Come.”

  Bunim’s office reminded Mordechai of Zolraag’s back in Warsaw: it was full of fascinating but often incomprehensible gadgets.

  Even the ones whose purpose the Jewish fighting leader could grasp worked on incomprehensible principles. When the guard brought him into the office, for instance, a sheet of paper was silently issuing from a squarish box made of bakelite or something very much like it. The paper was covered with the squiggles of the Lizards’ written language. It had to have been printed inside the box. As he watched, a blank sheet went inside; it came out with printing on it. How, without any sound save the hum of a small electric motor?

  He was curious enough to ask the guard. “It is askelkwank machine,” the Lizard answered. “Is no word forskelkwank in this speech.” Anielewicz shrugged. Incomprehensible the machine would remain.

  Bunim turned one eye turret toward him. The regional sub-administrator-the Lizards used titles as impressively vague as any the Nazis had invented-spoke fairly fluent German. In that language, he said, “You are the Jew Anielewicz, the Jew leading Jewish fighters?”

  “I am that Jew,” Mordechai said. He wondered how angry the Lizards still were at him for helping Moishe Russie escape their clutches. If that was why Bunim had summoned him, maybe he shouldn’t have admitted his name. But the way he’d been summoned argued against it. The Lizards didn’t seem to want to seize him, but to talk with him.

  Bunim’s other eye turret twisted in its socket till the Lizard looked at him with both eyes, a sign of full attention. “I have a warning to deliver to you and to your fighters.”

  “A warning, superior sir?” Anielewicz asked.

  “We know more than you think,” Bunim said. “We know you Tosevites play ambiguous-is that the word I want? — games with us and with the Deutsche. We know you have interfered with our war efforts here in Lodz. We know these things, I tell you. Do not trouble yourself to deny them. It is of no use.”

  Mordechai did not deny them. He stood silent, waiting to see what the Lizard would say next. Bunim let out a hissing sigh, then went on, “You know also that we are stronger than you.”

  “This I cannot deny,” Anielewicz said with wry amusement.

  “Yes. Truth. We could crush you at any time. But to do this, we would have to divert resources, and resources are scarce. So. We have tolerated you as nuisances-is this the word I want? But no more. Soon we move males and machines again through Lodz. If you are interfering. If you are nuisances, you will pay. This is the warning. Do you understand it?”

  “Oh, yes, I understand it,” Anielewicz said. “Do you understand how much trouble you will have all through Poland, from Jews and Poles both. If you try to suppress us? Do you want nuisances, as you call them, all over the country?”

  “We shall take this risk. You are dismissed,” Bunim said. One eye turret swiveled to look out the window, the other toward the sheets of paper th
at had emerged from the silent printing machine.

  “You come,” the Lizard guard said in his bad Polish. Anielewicz came. When they got outside the building from which the Lizards administered Lodz, the guard returned his rifle.

  Anielewicz went, thoughtfully. By the time he got back to the fire station on Lutomierska Street, he was smiling. The Lizards were not good at reading humans’ expressions. Had they been, they would not have liked his.

  Max Kagan spoke in rapid-fire English. Vyacheslav Molotov had no idea what he was saying, but it sounded hot. Then Igor Kurchatov translated: “The American physicist is upset with the ways we have chosen to extract plutonium from the improved atomic pile he helped us design.”

  Kurchatov’s tone was dry. Molotov got the idea he enjoyed delivering the American’s complaints. Translating for Kagan let him be insubordinate while avoiding responsibility for that insubordination. At the moment, Kagan and Kurchatov were both necessary-indeed, indispensable-to the war effort. Molotov had a long memory, though. One day-

  Not today. He said, “If there is a quicker way to get the plutonium out of the rods than to use prisoners in that extraction process, let him acquaint me with it, and we shall use it. If not, not.”

  Kurchatov spoke in English. So did Kagan, again volubly. Kurchatov turned to Molotov. “He says he never would have designed it that way had he known we would be using prisoners to remove the rods so we could reprocess them for plutonium. He accuses you of several bloodthirsty practices I shall not bother to translate.”

  You enjoy hearing of them, though.Kurchatov was not as good as he should have been at concealing what he thought. “Have him answer my question,” Molotov said. “Is there a quicker way?”

  After more back-and-forth between the two physicists, Kurchatov said, “He says the United States uses machines and remote-control arms for these processes.”

  “Remind him we have no machines or remote-control arms.”

  Kurchatov spoke. Kagan replied. Kurchatov translated: “He says to remind you the prisoners are dying from the radiation in which they work.”

  “Nichevo,”Molotov answered indifferently. “We have plenty to replace them as needed. The project will not run short, of that I assure him.”

  By the way Kagan’s swarthy face grew darker yet, that was not the assurance he’d wanted. “He demands to know why the prisoners are not at least provided with clothing to help protect them from the radiation,” Kurchatov said.

  “We have little of such clothing, as you know perfectly well, Igor Ivanovich,” Molotov said. “We have no time to produce it in the quantities we need. We have no time for anything save manufacturing this bomb. For that, the Great Stalin would throw half the state into the fire-though you need not tell Kagan as much. How long now till we have enough of this plutonium for the bomb?”

  “Three weeks, Comrade Foreign Commissar, perhaps four,” Kurchatov said. “Thanks to the American’s expertise, results have improved dramatically.”

  A good thing, too,Molotov thought. Aloud, he said, “Make it three; less time if you can. And results are what counts here, not method. If Kagan cannot grasp this, he is a fool.”

  When Kurchatov had translated that for Kagan, the American sprang to attention, clicked his heels, and stuck out his right arm in a salute Hitler would have been proud to get. “Comrade Foreign Commissar, I do not think he is convinced,” Kurchatov said dryly.

  “Whether he is convinced or not I do not care,” Molotov answered. Inside, though, where it didn’t show, he added an entry to the list he was compiling against Kagan. Maybe, when the war was over, the sardonic physicist would not find it so easy to go home again. But that was for later contemplation. For now, Molotov said, “What matters is that he continue to cooperate. Do you see any risk his squeamishness will imperil his usefulness?”

  “No, Comrade Foreign Commissar. He is outspoken”-Kurchatov coughed behind his hand; Kagan was a lot more, a lot worse, than outspoken-“but he is also dedicated. He will continue to work with us.”

  “Very well. I rely on you to see that he does.”Your head will go on the block if he doesn’t, Molotov meant, and Kurchatov, unlike Kagan, was not so naive as to be able to misunderstand. The foreign commissar continued, “This center holds the future of the USSR in its hands. If we can detonate one of these bombs soon and then produce more in short order, we shall demonstrate to the alien imperialist aggressors that we can match their weapons and deal them such blows as would in the long run prove deadly to them.”

  “Certainly they can deliver such blows to us,” Kurchatov replied. “Our only hope for preservation is to be able to match them, as you say.”

  “This is the Great Stalin’s policy,” Molotov agreed, which also meant it was how things were going to be. “He is certain that, once we have shown the Lizards our capacity; they will become more amenable to negotiations designed to facilitate their withdrawal from therodina.”

  The foreign commissar and the Soviet physicist looked at each other, while Max Kagan stared at the two of them in frustrated incomprehension. Molotov saw one thought behind Kurchatov’s eyes, and suspected the physicist saw the same one behind his, despite his reputation for wearing a mask of stone. It was not the sort of thing even Molotov could say.The Great Stalin had better be right.

  Ttomalss’ hiss carried a curious mixture of annoyance and enjoyment. The air in this Canton place was decently warm, at least during Tosev 3’s long summers, but so moist that the researcher felt as if he were swimming in it. “How do you keep fungus from forming in the cracks between your scales?” he asked his guide, a junior psychological researcher named Saltta.

  “Superior sir, sometimes you can’t,” Saltta answered. “If it’s one of our fungi, the usual creams and aerosols do well enough in knocking it down. But, just as we can consume Tosevite foods, some Tosevite fungi can consume us. The Big Uglies are too ignorant to have any fungicides worthy of the name, and our medications have not proved completely effective. Some of the afflicted males had to be transported-in quarantine conditions, of course-to hospital ships for further treatment.”

  Ttomalss’ tongue flicked out and wiggled in a gesture of disgust. A great deal of Tosev 3 disgusted him. He almost wished he could have been an infantrymale so he could have slaughtered Big Uglies instead of studying them. He didn’t like traveling through Tosevite cities on foot. He felt lost and tiny in the crowd of Tosevites who surged through the streets all around him. No matter how much the Race learned about these noisy, obnoxious creatures, would they ever be able to civilize them and integrate them into the structure of the Empire, as they’d succeeded in doing with the Rabotevs and Hallessi? He had his doubts.

  If the Race was going to succeed, though, they’d have to start with new-hatched Tosevites, ones that weren’t set in their ways, to learn the means by which Big Uglies might be controlled. That was what he’d been doing with the hatching that had come out of the female Liu Han’s body… until Ppevel shortsightedly made him return it to her.

  He hoped Ppevel would come down with an incurable Tosevite fungus infection. So much time wasted! So much data that would not be gathered. Now he was going to have to start all over with a new hatching. It would be years before he learned anything worth having, and for much of the first part of this experiment, he would merely be repeating work he’d already done.

  He would also be repeating a pattern of sleep deprivation he would just as soon have avoided. Big Ugly hatchlings emerged from the bodies of females in such a wretchedly undeveloped state that they hadn’t the slightest idea about the difference between day and night, and made a horrendous racket whenever they felt like it. Why that trait hadn’t caused the species to become extinct in short order was beyond him.

  “Here,” Saltta said as they turned a corner. “We are coming to one of the main market squares of Canton.”

  If the streets of the city were noisy, the market was cacophony compounded. Chinese Tosevites screamed out the virtues of their war
es at hideous volume. Others, potential customers, screamed just as loud or maybe louder, ridiculing the quality of the merchants’ stock in trade. When they weren’t screaming, and sometimes when they were, they entertained themselves by belching, spitting, picking their teeth, picking their snouts, and digging fingers into the flesh-flapped holes that served them for hearing diaphragms.

  “You want?” one of them yelled in the language of the Race, almost poking Ttomalss in an eye turret with a length of leafy green vegetable.

  “No!” Ttomalss said with an angry emphatic cough. “Go away!” Not in the least abashed, the vegetable seller let out a series of the yipping barks the Big Uglies used for laughter.

  Along with vegetables, the merchants in the market sold all sorts of Tosevite life forms for food. Because refrigeration hereabouts ranged from rudimentary to nonexistent, some of the creatures were still alive in jugs or glass jars full of seawater. Ttomalss stared at gelatinous things with a great many sucker-covered legs. The creatures stared back out of oddly wise-looking eyes. Other Tosevite life forms had jointed shells and clawed legs; Ttomalss had eaten those, and found them tasty. And still others looked a lot like the swimming creatures in Home’s small seas.

  One fellow had a box containing a great many legless, scaly creatures that reminded Ttomalss of the animals of his native world far more than did the hairy, thin-skinned life forms that dominated Tosev 3. After the usual loud haggling, a Big Ugly bought one of those creatures. The seller seized it with a pair of tongs and lifted it out, then used a cleaver to chop off its head. While the body was still writhing, the merchant slit open the animal’s belly and scooped out the offal inside. Then he cut the body into finger-long lengths, dripped fat into a conical iron pan that sat above a charcoal-burning brazier, and began frying the meat for the customer.

  All the while, instead of watching what he was doing, he kept his eyes on the two males of the Race. Nervously, Ttomalss said to Saltta, “He would sooner be doing that to us than to the animal that shares some of our attributes.”