Upsetting the Balance w-3

by Harry Turtledove

  Upsetting the Balance

  ( Worldwar - 3 )

  Harry Turtledove

  Russia, Communist China, Japan, Nazi Germany, the United States: they began World War II as mortal enemies. But suddenly their only hope for survival-never mind victory-was to unite to stop a mighty foe-one whose frightening technology appeared invincible. Far worse beings than the Nazis were loose. From Warsaw to Moscow to China's enemy-occupied Forbidden City, the nations of the world had been forced into an uneasy alliance since humanity began its struggle against overwhelming odds. In Britain and Germany, where the banshee wail of hostile jets screamed across the land, caches of once-forbidden weapons were unearthed, and unthinkable tactics were employed against the enemy. Brilliantly innovative military strategists confronted challenges unprecedented in the history of warfare.

  Harry Turtledove

  Upsetting the Balance

  (Worldwar-3)

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  (Characters with names in CAPS are historical, others fictional)

  HUMANS

  ANIELEWICZ, MORDECHAI Jewish partisan, eastern Poland

  Archie Military Hospital Orderly, Chicago

  Auerbach, Rance Captain, U.S. Cavalry, Syracuse, Kansas

  BEAVERBROOK, LORD British Minister of Supply

  Berkowitz, Benjamin Captain, U.S. Army; psychiatrist, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Beulah Receptionist, Hanford, Washington

  BLAIR, ERIC BBC newsreader and author, London

  Calhoun, Jake Cavalry trooper, U.S. Army

  CHILL, KURT Wehrmacht Lieutenant General, Pskov, USSR

  Chung, Horace Laundryman, Lewiston, Idaho

  Daniels, Peter (“Mutt”) Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Chicago

  DEIBNER, KURT Nuclear physicist, Tubingen,Germany

  Doc Physician, Chicago

  Donnelly Bomb disposal expert, U. S. Army Chicago

  Dolger Wehrmacht captain, Pskov, USSR

  Edie Whore, Lewiston, Idaho

  EINSTEIN, ALBERT Physicist, Couch, Missouri

  EISENHOWER, DWIGHT U.S. Army General, Couch, Missouri

  Embry, Ken RAF pilot, grounded in Pskov, USSR

  Eschenbach, Wolfgang Panzer loader, Rouffach, Alsace

  FERMI, ENRICO Nuclear physicist, Denver, Colorado

  Fleishman, Bertha Jew in Lodz, Poland

  Fred RAF Flight Sergeant, Watnall England

  Friedrich Partisan, Eastern Poland

  George Local resident, Hanford Washington

  GERMAN, ALEKSANDR Partisan Brigadier, Pskoc, USSR

  GODDARD, ROBERT Rocket expert, Couch, Missouri

  Goldfarb, David RAF radarman, Bruntingthorpe, England

  Gorbunova, Ludmila RAF pilot

  Grillparzer, Gunther Panzer gunner near Breslau Germany

  GROVES, LESLIE Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Denver, Colorado

  Gruver, Solomon Jewish fireman in Lodz, Poland

  Gus Private, U.S. Army, Chicago

  Hagerman, Max Cavalry trooper, U.S. Army

  HALIFAX, LORD British ambassador to the United States

  Henry RAF man, Nottingham England

  Henry, Marjorie Physician, Hanford Idaho

  Hexham Colonel, U.S. Army, Denver Colorado

  Hines, Rachel Escapee from Lakin, Kansas

  Hipple, Fred R AF Group Captain, Bruntingthorpe, England

  Ho Ma Midwife, refugee camp west of Shanghai

  Horton, Leo RAF Radarman, Bruntingthorpe, England

  Hou Yi Dung-beetle show man, Peking

  Howard Cavalry trooper, eastern Colorado

  Hsia Shou-Tao People’s Libreation Army officer, China

  HULL, CORDELL U.S. Secretary of State

  Jacobi, Nathan BBC newsreader, London

  Jacobs Private, U.S. Army, Chicago

  “Jacques” French farmer near Ambialet

  Jager, Heinrich Panzer colonel, Rouffach, Alsace

  Jerzy Partisan, eastern Poland

  Jimmy Stretcher-bearer, Chicago

  Johannes Panzer driver near Breslau, Germany

  Jones, Jerome RAF radarman in Pskov, USSR

  Karpov, Feofan RAF colonel south of Moscow

  Kennan, Maurice RAF Flight Lieutenant, Bruntingthorpe, England

  Kipnis, Jakub Interpreter, Lizard POW camp in Poland

  Larssen, Jens Nuclear physicist with the Mettalurgical Laboratory

  Lidov, Boris Colonel, NKVD

  Liu Han Peasant woman in refugee camp south of Shanghai

  Magruder, Bill Lieutenant, U.S. Cavalry, Syracuse, Kansas

  Mather, Donald Captain, Special Air Service, Dover, England

  Mavrogordato, Panagiotis Captain of tramp freighterNaxos

  Maxwell Cavalry trooper, eastern Colorado

  Meinecke, Klaus Panzer gunner, Rouffach, Alsace

  MOLOTOV, VYACHESLAV Foreign commissar, of the USSR

  Muldoon, Herman First sergeant, U.S. Army Chicago

  MUSSOLINI, BENITO Italian Fascist leader, Couch, Missouri

  NIEHHO-T’ING People’s Liberation Army officer, China

  Nigel RAF corporal, Watnall, England

  Nordenskold, Morton Colonel, U.S. Army, Lamar, Colorado

  Norma BBC worker, London

  Nussboym, David Jew in Lodz, Poland

  O’Neill, Red Cavalry trooper, U.S. Army

  Okamoto Major, Japanese Army

  Oscar Sergeant, U.S. Army, Denver, Colorado

  Pete U.S. Army sentry, Denver, Colorado

  Pirogova, Tatiana Red Army sniper, Pskov, USSR

  Porlock Supply officer, Minneapolis

  RIBBENTROP, JOACHIM VON German Foreign Minister

  Roundbush, Basil RAF Flight Officer, Bruntingthorpe, England

  Russie, Moishe Jewish refugee and broadcaster, London

  Russie, Reuven Son of Moishe and Rivka Russie

  Russie, Rivka Moishe Russie’s wife

  Schultz, Georg German soldier working as RAF mechanic

  Sholudenko, Nikifor NKVD officer

  Silberman, Pinchas Jew in Lodz, Poland

  SKORZENY, OTTO SSStandartenfurher

  Smithers British Army major

  Smitty Cavalry trooper, eastern Colorado

  STALIN, IOSEF General Secretary, Communist Party of the USSR

  Stanegate, Fred British soldier

  Stansfield, Roger Royal Naval Commander; captain HMSSeanymph

  Stella Barmaid, Bruntingthorpe, England

  Summers, Penny Escapee from Lakin, Kansas

  Summers, Wendell Escapee from Lakin, Kansas; Penny’s father

  Szabo, Bela (“Dracula”) Private, U.S. Army, Chicago

  SZILARD, LEO Nuclear physicist, Denver, Colorado

  Szymanski, Stan Captain, U.S. Army, Chicago

  Terence Storekeeper, Couch Missouri

  Tompkins Major, U.S. Army, Hot Springs, Arkansas

  VASILIEV, NIKOLAI Partisan brigadier, Pskov, USSR

  Wiggs, Ralph RAF meteorologist, Bruntingthorpe, England

  Yeager, Barbara Sam Yeager’s wife

  Yeager, Jonathan Son of Sam and Barbara Yeager

  Yeager, Sam Sergeant, U.S. Army, Denver, Colorado

  “Yetta” Telephone operator, Lodz, Poland

  York, Hank Radioman, U.S. Army, Chicago

  THE RACE

  Atvar Fleetlord, conquest fleet of the Race

  Diffal Security officer

  Ekretkan Casualty, St. Alban’s, England

  Elifrim Airbase commander, southern France

  Hisslef Base commandant, Siberia

  Hossad Killercraft pilot

  Innoss Airbase armorer, southern France

  Jisrin Killrcraft pilot

  Kirel Shiplord,127th Emperor Hetto

 
Msseff Reasercher in China

  Nejas Landcruiser commander, Alsace

  Nivvek Killercraft pilot

  Pshing Adjutant to Atvar

  Ristin Prisoner of war, Denver, Colorado

  Rokois Assistant to Pshing

  Skoob Landcruiser gunner, Alsace

  Sserep Killercraft pilot

  Straha Shiplord,206th Emperor Yower

  Teerts Flight leader, prisoner of war, Tokyo

  Tessrek Researcher in human psychology

  Ttomalss Researcher in human psychology

  Ullhass Prisoner of war, Denver, Colorado

  Ussmak Landcruiser driver, Alsace

  Vesstil Shuttlecraft pilot for Straha

  Wuppah Smallgroup commander, Chicago

  1

  The fleetlord Atvar had convened a great many meetings of his shiplords since the Race’s conquest fleet came to Tosev 3. Quite a few of those meetings had been imperfectly happy; the Tosevites were far more numerous and far more technically advanced than the Race had imagined when the conquest fleet set out from Home. But Atvar had never imagined calling a meeting like this.

  He used one eye turret to watch his leading officers as they gathered in the great hall of his bannership, the127th Emperor Hetto. The other eye turret swiveled down to review the images and documents he would be presenting to those officers.

  Kirel, shiplord of the127th Emperor Hetto and a staunch ally, stood beside him on the podium. To him, Atvar murmured, “Giving a good odor to what happened in the SSSR won’t be easy.”

  One of Kirel’s eye turrets swung toward a hologram of the tall cloud rising from the nuclear explosion that had halted-worse, had vaporized-the Race’s drive on Moskva. “Exalted Fleetlord, the odor is anything but good,” he said. “We knew the Big Uglies were engaged in nuclear research, yes, but we did not expect any of their little empires and not-empires-especially the SSSR-to develop and deploy a bomb so soon.”

  “Especially the SSSR,” Atvar agreed heavily. TheSoyuz Sovietskikh Sotsialesticheskikh Respublik sent a frisson of horror through any right-thinking male of the Race. A short span of years before, its people had not only overthrown their emperor but killed him and all his family. Such a crime was literally unimaginable back on Home, where emperors had ruled the Race for a hundred thousand years. Among the Big Uglies, though, impericide seemed stunningly common.

  The gas-tight doors to the great hall hissed closed. That meant all the shiplords were here. Atvar knew it, but was still less than eager to begin the meeting. At last, Kirel had to prompt him: “Exalted Fleetlord-”

  “Yes, yes,” Atvar said with a hissing sigh. He turned on the podium microphones, spoke to the males waiting impatiently in their seats: “Assembled shiplords, you are already aware, I am certain, of the reason for which I have summoned you here today.”

  He touched a button. Two images sprang into being behind him, the first of a brilliant point of light northeast of the Soviet city of Kaluga captured by an observation satellite, then that ground-level shot of the cloud created by the SSSR’s atomic bomb.

  The shiplords, no doubt, had already seen the images tens of times. All the same, hisses of dismay and fury rose from every throat. The tailstumps of several males quivered so hard with rage that they could not stay in their seats, but had to stand until their tempers eased.

  “Assembled shiplords, we have taken a heavy blow,” Atvar said. “Not only did this explosion take with it many brave males and a large quantity of irreplaceable landcruisers and other combat equipment, it also moved our war against the Big Uglies into a new phase, one whose outcomes are not easily foreseen.”

  To the Race, few words could have been more ominous. Careful planning, leaving nothing to chance, was not only inherent in the temperament of most males but inculcated in all from hatchlinghood. The Race had sent a probe to Tosev 3 sixteen hundred years before (only half so many of this planet’s slow revolution around its star), decided it was worth having, and methodically begun to prepare. But for those preparations, little in the Race’s three-world empire had changed in that time.

  The Big Uglies, meanwhile, had gone from riding animals and swinging swords to riding jet aircraft, launching short-range missiles, using radio… and now to atomic weapons. The Race’s savants would be millennia investigating and explaining how a species could move forward so fast. Neither the Race itself nor its subjects, the Hallessi and the Rabotevs, had ever shown such a pattern. To them, change came in slow, tiny, meticulously considered steps.

  Atvar, unfortunately, did not have millennia to investigate the way the Big Uglies worked. Circumstances forced him to act on their time scale, and with too large a measure of their do-it-now, worry-later philosophy. He said, “In this entire sorry episode, I take comfort in but one thing.”

  “Permission to speak, Exalted Fleetlord?” a male called from near the front of the hall: Straha, shiplord of the206th Emperor Yower, next senior in the fleet after Kirel-and no ally of Atvar’s. To Atvar’s way of thinking, he was so rash and impetuous, he might as well have been a Big Ugly himself.

  But at a meeting of this sort, all views needed hearing. “Speak,” Atvar said resignedly.

  “Exalted Fleetlord-” Straha used the proper deferential title, but sounded anything but properly deferential. “Exalted Fleetlord, how can any part of this fiasco cause you comfort?”

  Some of the shiplords muttered in alarm at the harsh language Straha used; males of the Race, even those of highest rank, were expected to show-and to feel-respect for their superiors at all times. But a disquieting number of officers-and not just those of his faction-seemed to agree with Straha.

  Atvar said, “Here is the comfort, Shiplord.” He used Straha’s title, high but not supreme in the conquest fleet, to remind him of his place, then went on, “Analysis shows the plutonium the SSSR used in its weapon to have come from stocks stolen from us in a raid during Tosev 3’s past autumn. The Big Uglies may be able to make a bomb if they get nuclear material, but we have no evidence they can manufacture it on their own.”

  “Cold comfort to the thousands of males dead because you didn’t think the Tosevites could do even so much,” Straha jeered.

  “Shiplord, you forget yourself,” Kirel said from beside Atvar; sometimes a near-equal could call attention to a breach of decorum a superior might feel he had to ignore.

  “By the Emperor, Shiplord, I do not,” Straha shouted back. At the mention of his sovereign, he cast down both eye turrets so he looked at the floor for a moment. So did every other male in the chamber, Atvar included. The murmurs among the shiplords grew; as Kirel had said, Straha’s conduct was most out of place in a staid officers’ meeting.

  But Straha himself was anything but staid. “Who, Exalted Fleetlord, led the raid in which we lost this nuclear material?” he demanded.

  Atvar’s gut knotted. Now he knew the direction from which Straha would attack, but knowing brought no comfort. He tried to head off the shiplord: “That is not relevant to the matter before us now.”

  Many males, probably even most, would have yielded to his authority. Straha, though, refused to be headed off. “It most certainlyis relevant, Exalted Fleetlord,” he howled. “Wasn’t the chief Big Ugly male the one named Skorzeny?”

  With its hisses, the name might almost have belonged to a male of the Race. That, however, was not why it drew a sharp reaction from the assembled shiplords. The male called Skorzeny had given the Race grief ever since the conquest fleet landed on Tosev 3. And-

  Straha continued as Atvar had known he would: “Exalted Fleetlord, along with promising us the capture of Moskva at our previous meeting, did you not also promise us the imminent destruction of Skorzeny? Have we achieved either of these goals?”

  His sarcasm made the murmurs in the great hall rise to a din. Males shouted angrily at one another. Through the uproar, Atvar answered steadily, “Shiplord, you know we have not. I assure you, I find that at least as unfortunate as you do.”

  The sard
onic reply did nothing to calm the shiplords. It certainly did not calm Straha, who said, “Instead of Moskva captured, we have a major force ruined. Instead of Skorzeny dead, we have the city of Split lost, Croatia more firmly in the Deutsch camp than ever, and Skorzeny boasting of what he did over every frequency on which the Deutsche broadcast. Assembled shiplords, I submit to you that these plans were not adequately developed.”

  He couldn’t have been much more provocative if he’d suggested that Atvar was in the Big Uglies’ pay. Accusing a male of the Race of bad planning was as harsh a condemnation as you could make. Atvar had trouble replying, too, for the plan on which he’d relied in Split had come from the mind of an operative named Drefsab, who, despite being perhaps the best intelligence officer the Race possessed, was-or rather, had been-addicted to the Tosevite herb ginger, which could easily have clouded his judgment.

  The fleetlord did say, “Experience on Tosev 3 has been that plans cannot always be as immutable as we conceived them to be back on Home. Any male who does not see this is a fool.”

  “Your pardon, Exalted Fleetlord, but you are the one who has failed to adapt to the conditions pertaining to this world,” Straha said. “I have come to this conclusion reluctantly, I assure you; subordination to properly constituted authority has served the Race well for tens of thousands of years. But the SSSR’s atomic explosion and our ignominious failure at Split, each in its own way, have shown beyond any possible doubt that our conduct of the campaign to conquer Tosev 3 has been dreadfully mishandled.”

  “What would you have us do?” Atvar said angrily. “Throw our own atomic weapons about with reckless abandon? For one thing, we do not have that many to throw. For another, we do not know how many bombs the SSSR constructed from the nuclear material it got from us. For a third, we also do not know how close the SSSR-and several other Tosevite empires-are to producing nuclear materials and weapons on their own. And for a fourth, we cannot devastate large areas of this planet, not with the colonization fleet already on its way here from Home.”

  That should have made Straha shut up. Similar arguments had, many times before. Now, though, the shiplord’s eye turrets twisted to let him glance toward males throughout the great hall.Gauging his strength, Atvar thought. For the first time, alarm prickled through him. Could Straha…?