Striking the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  “Don’t know,” Skorzeny said. “I do know nobody asked me to worry about it, so I bloody well won’t. I have orders to blast Lodz in the next five days, so a whole raft of big-nosed kikes are going to get themselves fitted for halos along with the Lizards. We have to teach the Lizards and the people who suck up to ’em that we’re too nasty to mess with—and we will.”

  “Blowing up the Jews will teach the Lizards something?” Jäger scratched his head. “Why should the Lizards give a damn what happens to the Jews? And with whom are we at war, the Jews or the Lizards?”

  “We’re sure as hell at war with the Lizards,” Skorzeny answered, “and we’ve always been at war with the Jews, now haven’t we? You know that. You’ve pissed and moaned about it enough. So we’ll blow up a bunch of kikes and a bunch of Lizards, and the Führer will be so happy he’ll dance a little jig, the way he did when the frog-eaters gave up in 1940. So—five days maximum. You’ll be ready to roll by then?”

  “If I have my panzers back from the workshops, yes,” Jäger said. “Like I said, though, somebody will have to lean on the mechanics.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” the SS man promised with a large, evil grin. “You think they won’t hustle with me holding their toes to the fire?” Jäger wouldn’t have bet against his meaning that literally. “Other thing is, I’ll make it real plain that if they don’t make me happy, they’ll tell Himmler why. Would you rather deal with me or with the little schoolmaster in his spectacles?”

  “Good question,” Jäger said. Taken as a man, Skorzeny was a lot more frightening than Himmler. But Skorzeny was just Skorzeny. Himmler personified the organization he led, and that organization invested him with a frightfulness of a different sort.

  “The answer is, if you had your choice, you wouldn’t want to get either one of us mad at you, let alone both, right?” Skorzeny said, and Jäger had to nod. The SS Standartenführer went on, “As soon as the bomb goes off, you roll east. Who knows? The Lizards are liable to be so surprised, you may end up visiting your Russian girlfriend instead of the other way round. How’d you like that?” He rocked his hips forward and back, deliberately obscene.

  “I’ve heard ideas I liked less,” Jäger answered, his voice dry.

  Skorzeny boomed laughter. “Oh, I bet you have. I just bet you have.” Out of the blue, he found a brand-new question: “She a Jew, that Russian of yours?”

  He asked very casually, as a sergeant of police might have asked a burglary suspect where he was at eleven o’clock one night “Ludmila?” Jäger said, relieved he was able to come back with the truth: “No.”

  “Good,” the SS man said. “I didn’t think so, but I wanted to make sure. She won’t be mad at you when Lodz goes up, then, right?”

  “No reason she should be,” Jäger said.

  “That’s fine,” Skorzeny said. “Yes, that’s fine. You be good, then. Five days, remember. You’ll have your panzers, too, or somebody will be sorry he was ever born.” He headed back toward camp, whistling as he went.

  Jäger followed more slowly, doing his best not to show how thoughtful he was. The SS had taken that Polish farmer apart, knowing he was involved in passing news on to the Jews in Lodz. And now Skorzeny was asking whether Ludmila was Jewish. Skorzeny couldn’t know anything, not really, or Jäger wouldn’t still be at the head of his regiment. But suspicions were raising their heads, like plants pushing up through dead leaves.

  Jäger wondered if he could get word into Lodz by way of Mieczyslaw. He decided he didn’t dare take the chance, not now. He hoped the Jews already had the news, and that they’d found the bomb. That hope sprang partly from shame at what the Reich had already done to them and partly from fear of what the Lizards would do to Germany if an atomic bomb went off in territory they held while truce talks were going on. To say he didn’t think they’d be pleased was putting it mildly.

  From the moment Jäger first met Mordechai Anielewicz, he’d seen the Jews had themselves a fine leader in him. If he knew Skorzeny had secreted the bomb in Lodz, he’d have moved heaven and earth to come up with it. Jäger had done his damnedest to make sure the Jew knew.

  Five days from now, Skorzeny would press his button or whatever it was he did. Maybe a new sun would seem to rise, as it had outside Breslau. And maybe nothing at all would happen.

  What would Skorzeny do then?

  Walking around out in the open with Lizards in plain sight felt unnatural. Mutt Daniels found himself automatically looking around for the nearest shell hole or pile of rubble so he’d have somewhere to take cover when firing broke out again.

  But firing didn’t break out. One of the Lizards raised a scaly hand and waved at him. He waved back. He’d never been in a cease-fire quite like this one. Back in 1918, the shooting had stopped because the Boches threw in the sponge. Neither side had given up here. He knew fighting could pick up again any old time. But it hadn’t yet, and maybe it wouldn’t. He hoped it wouldn’t. By now, he’d had enough fighting to last any three men a couple of lifetimes each.

  A couple of his men were taking a bath in a little creek not far away. Their bodies weren’t quite so white and pale as they had been when the cease-fire started. Nobody’d had a chance to get clean for a long time before that. When you were in the front lines, you stayed dirty, mostly because you were liable to get shot if you exposed your body to water and air. After a while, you didn’t notice what you smelled like: everybody else smelled the same way. Now Mutt was starting to get used to not stinking again.

  From out of the north, back toward Quincy, came the sound of a human-made internal-combustion engine. Mutt turned around and looked up the road. Sure as hell, here came one of those big Dodge command cars officers had been in the habit of using till gas got too scarce for them to go gallivanting around. Seeing one again was a sure sign the brass thought the cease-fire would last a while.

  Sure as hell, a three-star banner fluttered from the aerial of the command car. The fellow who stood in back of the pintle-mounted .50 caliber machine gun had three stars painted on his helmet, too. He also had a bone-handled revolver on each hip.

  “Heads up, boys,” Mutt called. “That there’s General Patton coming to pay us a call.” Patton had a name for being a tough so-and-so, and for liking to show off, to let everybody know how tough he was. Daniels hoped he wouldn’t prove it by squeezing off a couple of belts of ammo in the Lizards’ direction.

  The command car rolled to a halt. Even before the tires had stopped turning, Patton jumped out and came up to Mutt, who happened to be standing closer to the Lizards than anybody else.

  Mutt drew himself to attention and saluted, thinking the Lizards would be crazy if they didn’t have somebody with a head drawn on this aggressive-looking newcomer. Trouble was, if they started shooting at Patton, they’d be shooting at him, too.

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” Patton said in a gravelly voice. He pointed across the lines toward a couple of Lizards who were busy doing whatever Lizards did. “So there is the enemy, face-to-face. Ugly devils, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, sir,” Mutt said. “Of course, they say that about us, too, sir—call us Big Uglies, I mean.”

  “Yes, I know. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or so they say. In my eye, Lieutenant, those are ugly sons of bitches, and if they think me ugly, well, by God, I take it for a compliment.”

  “Yes, sir,” Daniels said again. Patton didn’t seem inclined to start shooting up the landscape, for which he was duly grateful.

  “Are they adhering to the terms of the cease-fire in this area?” the general demanded—maybe he would start the war up again if the answer turned out to be no.

  But Mutt nodded. “Sure are, sir. One thing you got to give the Lizards: they make an agreement, they stick by it. More’n the Germans and the Japs and maybe the Russians ever learned.”

  “You sound like a man who speaks from experience, Lieutenant . . . ?”

  “Daniels, sir.” Mutt almost laughed. He was Patton’s age, mor
e or less. If you didn’t have experience by the time you were pushing sixty, when the devil would you? But that probably wasn’t what the general meant. “I went through the mill around Chicago, sir. Every time we dickered a truce with the Lizards for picking up wounded and such, they stuck right with it. They may be bastards, but they’re honorable bastards.”

  “Chicago.” Patton made a sour face. “That wasn’t war, Lieutenant, that was butchery, and it cost them dear, even before we used our atomic weapon against them. Their greatest advantage over us was speed and mobility, and what did they do with it? Why, they threw it away, Lieutenant, and got bogged down in endless street fighting, where a man with a tommy gun is as good as a Lizard with an automatic rifle, and a man with a Molotov cocktail can put paid to a tank that would smash a dozen Shermans in the open without breaking a sweat. The Nazis fought the same way in Russia. They were fools, too.”

  “Yes, sir.” Daniels felt like one of the kids he’d managed listening to him going on about the best time to put on the hit-and-run. Patton knew war the way he knew baseball.

  The general was warming to his theme, too: “And the Lizards don’t learn from their mistakes. If they hadn’t come, and if the Germans had broken through to the Volga, do you suppose they would have been stupid enough to try and take Stalingrad house by house? Do you, Lieutenant?”

  “Have to doubt it, sir,” said Mutt, who’d never heard of Stalingrad in his life.

  “Of course they wouldn’t! The Germans are sensible soldiers; they learn from their mistakes. But after we drove the Lizards back from Chicago winter before last, what did they do? They slogged straight on ahead again, right back into the meat grinder. And they paid. That’s why. If these talks go the way they look to be going, they’re going to have to evacuate the whole U.S.A.”

  “That’d be wonderful, sir. If it happens,” Mutt said.

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Patton said. “Wonderful would be killing every one of them or driving them off our world here altogether.” One thing you had to give him, Mutt realized: he didn’t think small. He went on, “Since we can’t do that, worse luck, we’re going to have to learn to live with them henceforward.” He pointed across to the Lizards. “Has fraternization after the cease-fire been peaceful in this area, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir,” Daniels said. “Sometimes they come over and—I guess you’d call it talk shop, sir. And sometimes they want ginger. I reckon you know about that.”

  “Oh, yes,” Patton said with a chuckle. “I know about that. It was good to find out we weren’t the only ones with vices. For a while there, I did wonder. And when they get their ginger, what do they use to pay for it?”

  “Uh,” Mutt said. You couldn’t tell a lieutenant general uh, though, so he continued, “This and that, sir. Souvenirs, sometimes: stuff that doesn’t mean anything to them, like us trading beads to the Indians. Medical-kit supplies sometimes, too. They got self-stick bandages that beat our kind all hollow.”

  Patton’s pale eyes glittered. “They ever trade—liquor for their ginger, Lieutenant? Has that ever happened?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s happened,” Mutt allowed cautiously, wondering if the sky would fall on him in the next moment.

  Patton’s nod was slow. His eyes still held Daniels. “Good. If you’d told me anything different, I’d know you were a liar. The Lizards don’t like whiskey—I told you they were fools. They’ll drink rum. They’ll even drink gin. But scotch, bourbon, rye? They won’t touch ’em. So if they can forage up something they don’t want and trade it for something they do, they think they’re getting the good half of the deal.”

  “We haven’t had any trouble with drunk and rowdy, sir,” Mutt said, which was close enough to true to let him come out with it straight-faced. “I ain’t tried to stop ’em from takin’ a nip when they come off duty, not since the cease-fire, but they got to be ready to fight all the time.”

  “You look like a man who’s seen a thing or two,” Patton said. “I won’t complain about the way you’re handling your men so long as they’re combat-ready, as you say. The Army isn’t in the business of producing Boy Scouts, is it, Lieutenant Daniels?”

  “No, sir,” Mutt said quickly.

  “That’s right,” Patton growled. “It’s not. Which is not to say—which is not to say for a moment—that neatness and cleanliness aren’t of importance for the sake of discipline and morale. I’m glad to see your uniform so tidy and in such good repair, Lieutenant, and even gladder to see those men over there bathing.” He pointed to the soldiers in the creek. “Too often, men at the front lines think Army regulations no longer apply to them. They are mistaken, and sometimes need reminding of it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Daniels said, knowing how filthy he and his uniform had been till he finally took the time to spruce up a couple of days earlier. He was glad Herman Muldoon wasn’t anywhere around—one look at Muldoon and Patton (whose chin was neatly shaved, whose uniform was not only clean but showed creases, and whose spit-shined shoes gave off dazzling reflections) would have flung him in the brig.

  “From the look of things, Lieutenant, you have a first-rate outfit here. Keep ’em alert. If our talks with the Lizards go as the civilian authorities hope, we’ll be moving forward to reclaim the occupied areas of the United States. And if they don’t, we’ll grab the Lizards by the snouts and kick ’em in the tail.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mutt said again. Patton sent a final steely-eyed glare over toward the Lizards, then jumped back into the command car. The driver started the motor. Acrid exhaust belched from the pipe. The big, clunky Dodge rolled away.

  Mutt let out a sigh of relief. He’d survived a lot of contact with the Lizards, and now he’d survived contact with his own top brass, too. As any front-line soldier would attest, your own generals could be at least as dangerous to you as the enemy.

  Liu Han listened with more than a little annoyance to the men of the central committee discussing how they would bring over to the side of the People’s Liberation Army the large number of peasants who flooded into Peking to work for the little scaly devils in the factories they kept open.

  The annoyance must have been visible; Hsia Shou-Tao stopped in the middle of his presentation on a new propaganda leaflet to remark, “I am sorry we seem to be boring you.”

  He didn’t sound sorry, except perhaps sorry she was there at all. He hadn’t displayed that kind of scornful arrogance since before he’d tried to rape her. Maybe the lesson he’d got then, like most lessons, wore off if it wasn’t repeated till it stuck.

  “Everything I have heard is very interesting to me,” Liu Han replied, “but do you think it really would catch the interest of a peasant with nothing more in his mind than filling his belly and the bellies of his children?”

  “This leaflet has been prepared by propaganda specialists,” Hsia said in condescending tones. “How do you presume to claim you know more than they?”

  “Because I was a peasant, not a propaganda specialist,” Liu Han retorted angrily. “If someone came up to me and started preaching like a Christian missionary about the dictatorship of the proletariat and the necessity of seizing the means of production, I wouldn’t have known what he was talking about, and I wouldn’t have wanted to learn, either. I think your propaganda specialists are members of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, out of touch with the true aspirations of the workers and especially of the peasants.”

  Hsia Shou-Tao stared at her. He had never taken her seriously, or he would not have tried to force himself upon her. He hadn’t noticed how well she’d picked up the jargon of the Communist Party; she relished turning that complex, artificial set of terms against those who had devised it.

  From across the table, Nieh Ho-T’ing asked her, “And how would you seek to make his propaganda more effective?” Liu Han weighed with great care the way her lover—who was also her instructor in Communist Party lore—spoke. Nieh was Hsia’s longtime comrade. Was he being sarcastic to her, supporting his friend?

&n
bsp; She decided he wasn’t, that the question was sincerely meant. She answered it on that assumption: “Don’t instruct new-come peasants in ideology. Most of them will not comprehend enough of what you are saying. Tell them instead that working for the little devils will hurt people. Tell them the things they help the scaly devils make will be used against their relatives who are still back in the villages. Tell them that if they do work for the scaly devils, they and their relatives will be liable to repisals. These are things they can understand. And when we firebomb a factory or murder workers coming out of one, they will see we speak the truth.”

  “They will not, however, be indoctrinated,” Hsia pointed out, so vehemently that Liu Han got the idea he’d written most of the leaflet she was criticizing.

  She looked across the table at him. “Yes? And so what? Most important is keeping the peasants from working for the little devils. If it is easier to keep them from doing that without indoctrinating them, then we shouldn’t bother trying. We do not have the resources to waste, do we?”

  Hsia stared at her, half in anger, half in amazement. Liu Han might have been an ignorant peasant a year before, but she wasn’t any more. Could others be quickly brought up to her level of political consciousness, though? She doubted that. She had seen the revolutionary movement from the inside, an opportunity most would never enjoy.

  Nieh said, “We can waste nothing. We are settling in for a long struggle, one that may last generations. The little scaly devils wish to reduce us all to the level of ignorant peasants. This we cannot permit, so we must make the peasantry ideologically aware at some point in our program. Whether that point is the one under discussion, I admit, is a different question.”

  Hsia Shou-Tao looked as if he’d been stabbed. If even his old friend did not fully support him—“We shall revise as necessary,” he mumbled.

  “Good,” Liu Han said. “Very good, in fact. Thank you.” Once you’d won, you could afford to be gracious. But not too gracious: “When you have made the changes, please let me see them before they go to the printer.”