In the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  She did not think her fear was idle. After all, the little devils had snatched her from her village, then from the prison camp. While she was up here in the airplane that did not land, they’d made her submit to several men (and how relieved she was not to be carrying a baby by any of them!). They could do as they pleased with her, do whatever interested them … without caring in the least what she thought about what they wanted.

  “Whatever they do, they’ll have to do it to both of us,” Bobby Fiore said stoutly. She reached out and set a hand on his arm, grateful he stood by her. She would have been more grateful had she thought his brave words bore any relation to reality. If the little devils decided to keep the two of them in separate cubicles, what could he possibly do about it?

  He said, “You ought to try and eat some more. You’ve got company in there, after all.”

  “I suppose so.” Dutifully—but also cautiously—Liu Han ate a little corn, some of the beans, and even the last mouthful of pork left in the tin. She waited for her stomach to give them back, but it stayed quiet: having emptied once, it now seemed willing to relent. She hoped it would keep on being so forbearing.

  Then, too late, she realized the little scaly devils would not have to wait until her belly bulged to learn she was pregnant. She’d grown so resigned to the moving pictures they made of her—not just when she was coupling but almost all the time—that she’d almost forgotten about them. But if the scaly devils could sort through the mix of Chinese, English, and their own language that she and Bobby Fiore spoke with each other, they’d know at once. And what would they do then?

  If they were human, they’d have known when my courses didn’t come, she thought. But the devils hadn’t noticed that. Bobby Fiore didn’t think they were devils at all, but creatures from another world. Most of the time, Liu Han remained convinced that was nonsense, but now and then she wondered. Could real devils be so ignorant of matters Earthly as her captors sometimes acted?

  In the end, what they were didn’t much matter. They had her—and Bobby Fiore—in their power either way. Liu Han wondered if any of the other women they’d brought up to the airplane that never landed were also pregnant. If they’d been used as she was, some probably were. She hoped so. She didn’t want to face the ordeal alone.

  She glanced over at Bobby Fiore. He’d been watching her; when her eyes met his, he looked away. Wondering if I’ll throw up again, Liu Han guessed. She smiled wryly. What did a man know about a woman who was with child? Not much, which was why she hoped some of the others up here shared her predicament

  Then all at once she clung to Bobby Fiore, man though he was, foreign devil though he was, as she had not clung to him since the first day when he astonished her with his kindness. He might not know much about expectant mothers, but he was a veritable Kung Fu-Tze when set alongside even the wisest of the little scaly devils.

  Smoke and a blast of heat greeted David Goldfarb when he walked into the White Horse Inn. “Shut the bloody door!” three people yelled from three different parts of the pub. Goldfarb quickly obeyed, then pushed his way through the crowd to get as close to the fireplace as he could.

  The crackling wood fire, the torches that blazed in place of electric lights dark for want of power, took the White Horse Inn a long step back toward its medieval origins. Shadows jumped and flickered like live things, and puddled in corners as if they might creep out and pounce at any moment. Goldfarb had never been afraid of the dark, but these days he better understood why his ancestors might have been.

  The reek of unwashed bodies was another step away from what had been the civilized norm. Goldfarb knew he added to it, but what could he do? Hot water was impossible to come by, and bathing in cold invited pneumonia.

  Besides, when everyone stank, no one in particular stank. After a few breaths, the nose accepted the smell as part of the background and forgot about it, just as a radar operator learned to ignore echoes from the countryside in which his set was placed.

  Had been placed, Goldfarb corrected himself. Ground-based radars had saved Britain against the Germans, but not against the Lizards. His own nervous forays in the belly of Ted Embry’s Lanc continued. He hadn’t been shot down yet, which was about as much as he could say for the project The boffins were still trying to figure out whether the aircraft-mounted radar, used as intermittently as it had to be, helped them shoot down more Lizard planes.

  Sylvia snaked her way through the crush. Smiling at Goldfarb, she asked, “What’ll it be, dearie?” In the firelight, her hair glowed like molten copper.

  “A pint of whatever you have,” he answered; the White Horse Inn had never yet run out of beer, but it never got in the same brew twice running any more.

  As he spoke, Goldfarb slipped his arm around the barmaid’s waist for a moment. She didn’t pull away or slap his hand, as she would have before he started climbing up into the cold and frightening night. Instead, she leaned closer, tilted her head up to brush her lips against his, and then slid away to find out what more drinkers wanted.

  Wanting her, Goldfarb thought, had been more exciting than having her was. Or maybe he’d just expected too much. Knowing she shared her favors with a lot of men hadn’t bothered him when he was on the outside looking in. It was different now that he’d become one of those blokes himself. He hadn’t thought of himself as the jealous type—he still didn’t, not really—but he would have wanted more of her than she was willing to give.

  Not, he admitted to himself, that thinking of her bare under the covers didn’t warm him when he sucked in frigid, rubber-tasting oxygen at Angels Twenty.

  Her white blouse reappeared from out of the dark forest of RAF blue and civilian tweeds and serges. She handed Goldfarb a pint mug. “Here y’go, love. Tell me what you make of this.” She took a step back and cocked her head, awaiting his reaction. He took a cautious pull. Some of the alleged bitters he’d drunk since the Lizards came made the earlier war beer seem ambrosial by comparison. But his eyebrows went up in surprise at the rich, nutty taste that filled his mouth. “That’s bloody good!” he said, amazed. He sipped again, thoughtfully smacked his lips. “It’s nothing I’ve drunk before, but it’s bloody good. Where’d our sainted landlord come by it?”

  Sylvia brushed red wisps of hair back from her eyes. “He brewed it his own self.”

  “Go on,” Goldfarb said, in automatic disbelief.

  “He did,” Sylvia insisted indignantly. “Me and Daphne, we helped, too. It’s dead easy when you know how. Maybe after the war—if there ever is an after the war—I’ll start my own little brewery and put a pub in front I’d invite you there, if I didn’t think you’d drink up my profit.”

  Goldfarb emptied the mug with a practiced twist of the wrist. “If you do as well as this, I’d surely try. Bring me another, will you?”

  He kept staring after her once she’d disappeared among the acres of dark cloth. She was the first person he’d heard speak of what might be after the war since the Lizards came. Thinking of what to do once Jerry was beaten was one thing, but as far as he could see, the fight against the Lizards would go on forever … unless it ended in defeat.

  “Hullo, old man,” said a blurry voice at his elbow. He turned his head. By the list Jerome Jones had developed, he’d taken on several pints of ale below the waterline and would likely start sinking at any monent. The other radarman went on, “D’you know what I had with my spuds tonight? Baked beans, that’s what.” His eyes glittered in sodden triumph.

  “Anything with spuds is reason enough to shout,” Goldfarb admitted. Britain was hungry these days, not only because the island could not grow enough to feed itself, but also because Lizard bombing of the railway net kept what food there was from moving around the country.

  “So you needn’t feel so bloody smug about moving in with your bloody aircrew. Baked beans.” Jones smacked his lips, exhaled in Goldfarb’s direction. He didn’t smell like baked beans—he smelled like beer.

  “I’m not smug, Jerome,”
Goldfarb said, sighing. “It’s what I was ordered to do, so I did it.” He knew the other radarman resented not being chosen to take a seat aloft in the Lancaster; not only did he crave the duty (no one could fault Jones’ pluck) but, being stuck on the ground, he still had no luck with the White Horse Inn’s barmaids.

  At the moment, he was probably too drunk to do either of them justice even if she performed a striptease in front of him and then dragged him into the bushes. He blinked, stared at Goldfarb as if he had no idea who his friend (former friend? Goldfarb hoped not, hoped his jealousy didn’t run so deep) was. Then his pale eyes focused again. He said, “We had electricity in the barracks yesterday.”

  “Did you?” Goldfarb said, wondering where—if anyplace—the seemingly random remark would lead and wishing Sylvia would fetch him another pint so he wouldn’t have to worry about it. Power had been out at his own quarters for several days.

  “Yes we did,” Jones said. “Electricity in the barracks. We had it. Why did I want to tell you that?” As if I knew, Goldfarb felt like shouting. But Jones, though his own mental railway net had taken some bombing, got his train of thought through. “I was listening to the shortwave, that’s it. Got Warsaw in clear as day, we did.”

  “Did you?” The words were the same as before, but informed with a whole new meaning. “Was Russie on the air?”

  “Not a word from him. Not a word.” Jones repeated himself with owlish solemnity. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. He’s some sort of cousin of yours, what?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. His grandmother was my grandfather’s sister.” No one had been more astonished than Goldfarb when his cousin surfaced as the Lizards’ human spokesman. Unlike his gentile comrades, he’d believed most of what Russie said about Nazi horrors in Warsaw, though he remained unconvinced life under the Lizards was as invigorating as Russie painted it Then, a few weeks before, his cousin disappeared from the airwaves as abruptly as he’d arrived. The Lizards had blamed illness at first. Now they didn’t bother saying anything, which struck Goldfarb as ominous.

  “Bloody traitor. Maybe the sod sold them out, too, and they put paid to him for it,” Jones mumbled.

  Goldfarb drew back a fist to smash him in the face—no one, he told himself, former friend, friend, or not, talked about his relatives like that and got away with it. But Sylvia chose that moment to return. “’Ere now, David, don’t even think of it,” she said sharply. “You start the fight, you’re out of the pub for good—them’s the rules. And I won’t see you any more.”

  The first threat was trivial. The second … Goldfarb considered, opened and lowered his hand. Sylvia put a new pint mug in it. Jones just stood, swaying slightly, not knowing how close he’d come to getting his features rearranged.

  “That’s better,” Sylvia said. Goldfarb wasn’t sure it was, but finally decided smashing a helpless drunk didn’t count toward upholding the family honor. He emptied the third pint with one long pull. Sylvia surveyed him with a critical eye. “That should be about right for you, unless you want to get as lost as he is.”

  “What else have I to do?” Goldfarb’s laugh sounded thick even in his own ears as the potent brew swiftly did its work. But the question, despite its sardonic edge, was serious. Without electricity, radio and the cinema vanished as amusements and reading through long winter nights became next thing to impossible. That left getting out among one’s fellow men. And going up into the sky again and again to be shot at brought a need for the release only alcohol or sex could give. Since Sylvia was working tonight …

  She sighed; it was not, Goldfarb thought, as if he were the first lover she’d seen who also had a need to get drunk—probably not even the first tonight. Resentment flared in him, then died. If he was out for what he could get, how could he blame her for acting the same way?

  Jerome Jones nudged him. “Is she good?” he asked, as if Sylvia weren’t standing beside him. “Do you know what I mean?” His wink was probably meant to be that of a man of the world, but the beery slackness to his features made it fail of its intention.

  “Well, I like that!” Sylvia said with an indignant squeak. She swung round on Goldfarb. “Are you going to let him talk about me that way?”

  “Probably,” Goldfarb answered, which made Sylvia squeak again, louder. He waved his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture. “You stopped a fight a few minutes ago, and now you want to start one?”

  By way of reply, Sylvia stamped on his foot and then stamped off. He didn’t figure he’d see that next pint, let alone the inside of her bedroom, any time soon. Try and figure women, he thought. He was no knight in shining armor, and she was a long way from being a maiden whose virtue needed defending. But if he’d said that, he’d probably have got a knee in the family jewels, not a spike-heeled foot on the instep.

  Jones nudged him again. “Fight? What fight?” he asked, sounding more interested than he had been in how Sylvia performed.

  Suddenly the absurdity of it all was too much for Goldfarb. He forced his way out through the crowd that jammed the White Horse Inn, then stood on the sidewalk wondering where to go next. The first breath of frosty air in his lungs, the nip of night against his nose, loudly insisted leaving had been a mistake. But he couldn’t make himself go back into the pub.

  The night was clear. Stars burned in the dark sky, more stars than he ever remembered seeing in the days before the blackout. The Milky Way shone like sparkling sugar crystals spilled across a black tile floor. Before the Lizards came, the stars had been friendly, or at worst remote. Now they felt dangerous, as any enemy’s homeland would.

  To the south, the gray stone pile of Dover Castle concealed some of those stars from view. The Saxons had had a fort there. When Louis VIII failed to take the place in 1216, it likely staved off a French invasion of England. Henry VIII had added to it, and more brickwork had gone up against another feared French invader, Napoleon. Later in the nineteenth century, a turret with a sixteen-inch gun was added to ward the port from attack by sea.

  But the turret designers never foresaw attack by air. Goldfarb’s own radar masts had done more to defend Dover, to defend all of England, from Hitler’s wrath than all the stone and brickwork put together. Against the Lizards, even the wizardry of radar seemed, if not futile, then surely inadequate.

  A little red dot, fainter than a summer glowworm, came floating down St James Street toward him. His hand twitched; he hadn’t had a cigarette in it for a long time. With imports even of food cut first by German submarines and then by Lizard aircraft, tobacco had all but disappeared.

  During the Depression, people had scooped cigarette butts out of the gutter to smoke. Goldfarb was never reduced to that, though the scorn he’d felt the first time he saw it had dwindled first to pity and then to acceptance. But that scavenging sprang from a shortage of money, not a shortage of cigarettes.

  Now Goldfarb called to whoever hid behind that seductively burning coal, “Here, friend, have you got another fag you can sell me?”

  The smoker stopped. The lit end of the cigarette glowed brighter for a moment, then moved as its owner shifted it to the side of his mouth. “Sorry, chum, I’m down to my last three, and I won’t sell ’em: I couldn’t use the money on anything I’d sooner have. But you can take a drag off this one, if you like.”

  Goldfarb hesitated; in a way, that struck him as worse than nipping up fag-ends. But the unseen smoker sounded kindly. Even if he wouldn’t give up what he had, he’d share a little. “Thanks,” Goldfarb said, and stepped quickly forward.

  He held the single lungful of smoke as long as he could, let it out with real regret. The owner of the cigarette puffed again. In the faint crimson glow, his face was rapt with pleasure. “Bloody war,” he said on the exhale.

  “Too right,” Goldfarb said. He coughed; however much he liked it, his body was out of the habit of smoking. “I wonder what we’ll run short of next. Tea, maybe.”

  “There’s a horrible thought. You’re likely right, th
ough. Don’t raise a lot of bloody tea in the fields of Kent, eh?”

  “No,” Goldfarb said morosely. He wondered what he’d do when his morning cuppa ran out. He’d do without, was what he’d do. “What did we do before there was tea?”

  “Drank beer, I expect.” The smoker carefully extinguished the cigarette. “That’s what I’m about to do now. Don’t want to go in there with this lit, though. I’ve heard of men knocked over the head for a pipe’s ’orth of tobacco, and I don’t fancy it happening to me.”

  “Clever,” Goldfarb said, nodding. “There’s enough smoke inside already that no one will smell it on you.”

  “My very thought.” Now the other man was just a voice in the darkness. He went on, “I might want to try and get close to that redheaded barmaid they have here, too—what’s her name?”

  “Sylvia,” Goldfarb said dully.

  “Sylvia, that’s right. Have you seen her?” Without waiting for an answer, the smoker added, “I’d spend a cigarette on her, I would.” He found the door to the White Horse Inn by ear, slipped inside.

  Goldfarb stood out in the cold a few seconds longer, then started the long hike back to his quarters. He didn’t think Sylvia could be bought for a fag, but what did it matter? She wasn’t his now, and she’d never really been his. Slaking your lust was all very well—was, when you got down to it, better than all very well—but you had to be sensible about it. If that was all you were doing with a woman, stopping oughtn’t to be the end of the world.

  Far away, like distant screams, he heard the shriek of Lizard aircraft engines. His shiver had nothing to do with the cold. He wondered who was up in the night sky with a balky radar, and whether the chap would make it back to the ground again.

  Antiaircraft guns began their almost surely futile pounding. Goldfarb shivered again. Losing Sylvia was not the end of the world. Off in the distance, he could hear the sound the end of the world made.