In the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  “When isn’t a flight important? It’s your neck, after all.” Schultz checked the feel of the pedal with his foot. He was always checking, always making sure. Just as some men had a feel for horses, he had a feel for machines, and a gift for getting them to do what he wanted. “There. That ought to fix it.”

  “Good. This one, though, is important for more than just my neck. I’m to go on a courier mission.” She knew she should have stopped there, but how important the mission was filled her to overflowing, and she overflowed: “I am ordered to fly the foreign commissar, Comrade Molotov, to Germany for talks with your leaders. I am so proud!”

  Schultz’s eyes went wide. “Well you might be.” After a moment, he added, “I’d better go over this plane from top to bottom. Pretty soon you’re going to have to trust it to Russian mechanics again.”

  The scorn in that should have stung. In fact, it did, but less than it would have before Ludmila saw the obsessive care the German put into maintenance. She just said, “We’ll do it together.” They checked everything from the bolt that held on the propeller to the screws that attached the tailskid to the fuselage. The brief Russian winter day died while they were in the middle of the job. They worked on by the light of a paraffin lantern. Ludmila trusted the netting overhead to keep the, lantern from betraying them to the Lizards.

  Bell above the center horse—the one in shafts—jangling, a troika reached the airstrip about the time they were finishing. Ludmila listened to the team approaching the revetment. The Lizards mostly ignored horsedrawn sledges, though they shot up cars and trucks when they could. Anger filled her. More even than the Nazis, the Lizards aimed to rob mankind of the twentieth century.

  “Comrade Foreign Commissar!” she said when Molotov came in to have a look at the airplane that would fly him to Germany.

  “Comrade Pilot,” he answered with an abrupt nod. He, was shorter and paler than she’d expected, but just as determined-looking. He didn’t bat an eye at the sight of the beat-up old U-2. He gave Georg Schultz another of those the cut jerks of his head. “Comrade Mechanic.”

  “Good evening, Comrade Foreign Commissar,” Schultz said in his bad Russian.

  Molotov gave no overt reaction, but hesitated a moment before turning back to Ludmila. “A German?”

  “Da, Comrade Foreign Commissar,” she said nervously: Russans and Germans might cooperate against the Lizards, but more out of desperation than friendship. She added, “He is skilled at what he does.”

  “So.” The word hung ominously in the air. Behind his trademark glasses, Molotov’s eyes were unreadable. But at last he said, “If I can talk with them after they invaded the rodina, no reason for those who are here not to be put to good use.”

  Lucimila sagged with relief. Schultz did not seem to have followed enough of the conversation to know he’d been in danger. But then, he’d been in danger since the moment he rolled across the Soviet border. Perhaps he’d grown used to it—though Ludmila never had.

  “You have the flight plan, Comrade Pilot?” Molotov asked.

  “Yes,” Ludmila said, tapping a pocket in her leather flying suit. That made her think of something else. “Comrade Foreign Commissar, your clothing may be warm enough on the ground, but the Kukuruznik, as you see, is an airplane with open cockpits. The wind of our motion will be savage … and we will be flying north.”

  To get to Germany at all, the little U-2 would have to fly around three sides of a rectangle. The short way, across Poland, lay in the Lizards’ hands. So it would be north past Leningrad, then west through Finland, Sweden, and Denmark, and finally south into Germany. Ludmila hoped the fuel dumps promised on paper would be there in fact. The Kukuruznik’s range was only a little better than five hundred kilometers; it would have to refuel a number of times on the journey. On the other hand, if travel arrangements for the foreign commissar of the Soviet Union went awry, the nation was probably doomed.

  “Can I draw flying clothes like yours from the commandant of this base?” Molotov asked.

  “I am certain Colonel Karpov will be honored to provide you with them, Comrade Foreign Comntissar,” Ludmila said. She was just as certain the colonel would not dare refuse, even if it meant sending one of his pilots out to freeze on the fellow’s next mission.

  Molotov left the revetment. Schultz started to laugh. Ludmila turned a questioning eye on him. He said, “A year ago this time, if I’d shot that little hardnosed pigdog, the Führer would have stuck the Knight’s Cross, the Swords, and the Diamonds on me—likely kissed me on both cheeks, too. Now I’m helping him. Bloody strange world.” To that Ludmila could only nod.

  When the foreign commissar returned half an hour later, he looked as if he’d suddenly gained fifteen kilos. He was bundled into a leather and sheepskin flight suit, boots, and flying helmet, and carried a pair of goggles in his left hand. “Will these fit over my spectacles?” he asked.

  “Comrade Foreign Commissar, I don’t know.” Ludmila had never heard of a Red Air Force flier who needed spectacles. “You can try them, though.”

  Molotov looked at his wristwatch. Just getting to it under the bulky flight suit was a struggle. “We are due to depart in less than two hours. I trust we shall be punctual.”

  “There should be no trouble,” Ludmila said. A lot of the mission would be flown at night to minimize the chance of interception. The only problem with that was the U-2’s aggressively basic navigational gear: compass and airspeed indicator were about it.

  As things happened, there was a problem: the little Shvetsov engine didn’t want to turn over when Georg Schultz spun the prop. In the seat in front of Ludmila’s, Molotov clenched his jaw. He said nothing, but she knew he was making mental notes. That chilled her worse than the frigid night air.

  But this problem had a solution, borrowed from the British: a Hicks starter, mounted on the front of a battered truck, revolved the propeller shaft fast enough to kick the engine into life. “God-damned sewing machine!” Schultz bawled up to Ludmila, just to see her glare. The acrid stink of the exhaust was perfume in her nostrils.

  The U-2 taxied to the end of the airstrip, bumped along the couple of hundred meters of badly smoothed ground as it built up speed—and at the end of one bump, didn’t come back to earth. Ludmila always relished the feeling of leaving the ground. The wind that blasted into her face over and around her little windscreen told her she was really flying.

  And tonight she relished taking off for another reason as well. As long as the Kukuruznik stayed in the air, she was in charge, not Molotov. That was a heady feeling, like being on the way to drunk. If she did a tight snap roll and flew upside down for a few seconds, she could check how well he’d fastened his safety belt …

  She shook her head. Foolishness, foolishness. If people had disappeared in the purges of the thirties—and they had, in great carload lots—the German invasion proved there were worse things. Some Soviet citizens had been willing (and some Soviet citizens had been eager) to collaborate with the Nazis, but the Germans showed themselves even more brutal than the NKVD.

  But now Soviets and Nazis had a common cause, a foe that threatened to crush them both, regardless, even heedless, of ideology. Life, Ludmila thought with profound unoriginality, was very strange.

  The biplane droned through the night. Snow-draped fields alternated with black pine forests below. Ludmila stayed as low as she dared: not as low as she would have during the day, for now a swell of ground could be upon her before she knew it was there. Her route swung wide around the Valdai Hills just to cut that risk.

  The farther north she flew, the longer the night became, also. It was as if she drew darkness around the aircraft … though winter nights anywhere in the Soviet Union were quite long enough.

  Her first assigned refueling stop was between Kalinin and Kashin, on the upper reaches of the Volga. She buzzed around the area where she thought the airstrip was until her fuel started getting dangerously low. She hoped she wouldn’t have to try to put the U-2
down in a field, not with the passenger she was carrying.

  Just when she thought she would have to do that—better with power than dead stick—she spied a lantern or electric torch, swung the Kukuruznik toward it. More torches came on, briefly, to mark the borders of a landing strip. She brought in the U-2 with gentleness that surprised even herself.

  Whatever Molotov thought of the landing, he kept it to himself. He rose stiffly, for which Ludmila could hardly blame him—after four and a half hours in the air, she too had cramps and kinks aplenty.

  Ignoring the officer in charge of the airstrip, the foreign commissar stumped off into the darkness. Looking for a secluded place to piss, Ludmila guessed: the most nearly human response she’d yet seen from Molotov.

  The officer—the collar tabs of his greatcoat were Air Force sky-blue and bore a winged prop and a major’s two scarlet rectangles—turned to Ludmila and said, “We are ordered to render you every assistance, Senior Lieutenant Gorbunov.”

  “Gorbunova, sir,” Ludmila corrected, only a little put out: the heavy winter flight suit would have disguised any shape at all.

  “Gorbunova—pardon me,” the major said, eyebrows rising. “Did I read the despatch wrong, or was it written incorrectly? Well, no matter. If you have been chosen to fly the comrade foreign commissar, your competence cannot be questioned.” His tone of voice said he did question it, but Ludmila let that go. The major went on, more briskly now, “What do you require, Senior Lieutenant?”

  “Fuel for the aircraft, oil if necessary, and a mechanical check if you have a mechanic who can do a proper job.” Ludmila put first things first (she also wished she could have lashed Georg Schultz to the U-2’s fuselage and carried him along). Almost as an afterthought, she added, “Food and someplace warm for me to sleep through the day would be pleasant.”

  “Would be necessary,” Molotov amended as he came back to the Kukuruznik. His face remained expressionless, but his voice betrayed more animation; Ludmila wondered how hard he’d been fighting to hold it in. Her own bladder was pretty full, too. Perhaps confirming her thought, the foreign commissar continued, “Tea would also be welcome now.” Not before, ran through Ludmila’s mind—he would have exploded. She knew that feeling.

  The major said, “Comrades, if you will come with me … He led Ludmila and Molotov toward his own dwelling. As they kicked their way through the snow, he bawled orders to his groundcrew. The men ran like wraiths in the predawn darkness, easier to follow by ear than by eye.

  The major’s quarters were half-hut, half dug-out cave. A lantern on a board-and-trestle table cast a flickering light over the little chamber. A samovar stood nearby; so did a spirit stove. Atop the latter was a pot from which rose a heavenly odor.

  With every sign of pride, the major ladled out bowls of borscht, thick with cabbage, beets, and meat that might have been veal or just as easily might have been rat. Ludmila didn’t care; whatever it was, it was hot and filling. Molotov ate as if he were stoking a machine.

  The major handed them glasses of tea. It was also hot, but had an odd taste—a couple of odd tastes, in fact. “Cut with dried herbs and barks, I’m afraid,” the major said apologetically, “and sweetened with honey we found ourselves. Haven’t seen any sugar for quite a while.”

  “Given the circumstances, it is adequate,” Molotov said: not high praise, but understanding, at any rate.

  “Comrade Pilot, you may rest there,” the major said, pointing to a pile of blankets in one corner that evidently served him for a bed. “Comrade Foreign Commissar, for you the men are preparing a cot, which should be here momentarily.”

  “Not necessary,” Molotov said. “A blanket or two will also do for me.”

  “What?” The major blinked. “Well, as you say, of course. Excuse me, comrades.” He went back out into the cold, returned in a little while with more blankets. “Here you are, Comrade Foreign Commissar.”

  “Thank you. Be sure to awaken us at the scheduled time,” Molotov said.

  “Oh, yes,” the major promised.

  Yawning, Ludmila buried herself in the blankets. They smelled powerfully of their usual user. That didn’t bother her, if anything, it was reassuring. She wondered how Molotov, who was used to sleeping softer than with blankets on dirt, would manage here. She fell asleep herself before she found out.

  Some indefinite while later, she woke with a start. Was that horrible noise some new Lizard weapon? She stared wildly around the Air Force major’s quarters, then started to laugh. Who would have imagined that illustrious Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, foreign commissar of the USSR and second in the Soviet Union only to the Great Stalin, snored like a buzzsaw? Ludmila pulled the blankets up over her head, which cut the din enough to let her get back to sleep herself.

  After more borscht and vile, honey-sweetened tea, the flight resumed. The U-2 droned slowly through the night—an express train could have matched its speed—north and west. Snow-dappled evergreen forests slid by below. Ludmila hugged the ground as tightly as she dared.

  Then, without warning, the trees disappeared, to be replaced by a long stretch of unbroken whiteness. “Lake Ladoga,” Ludmila said aloud, pleased at the navigational check the lake gave her. She flew along the southern shore toward Leningrad.

  Well before she got to the city, she skimmed low over the lunar landscape of the German and Soviet lines around it. The Lizards had pounded both impartially. Before they came, though, the heroism and dreadful privations of the defenders of Leningrad, home and heart of the October Revolution, had rung through the Soviet Union. How many thousands, how many hundreds of thousands, starved to death inside the German ring? No one would ever know.

  And now she was flying Molotov to confer with the Germans who had subjected Leningrad to such a cruel siege. Intellectually, Ludmila understood the need for that. Emotionally, it remained hard to stomach.

  Yet the Kukuruznik she flew had been efficiently maintained by a German, and, from what Georg Schultz had said, he and Major Jäger had fought alongside Russians to do something important: either he didn’t understand exactly what or he was keeping his mouth shut about that or both. So it could be done. It would have to be done, in fact. But Ludmila did not like it.

  As the shore of Lake Ladoga had before, now the Gulf of Finland gave her something to steer by. She began to peer ahead, looking for landing lights: the next field was supposed to be not far from Vyborg.

  When Ludmila finally spotted the lights, she bounced the biplane in a good deal more roughly than she had at the last airstrip. The officer who greeted her spoke Russian with an odd accent. That was not unusual in the polyglot Soviet Union, but then she noticed that several of his men wore coalscuttle helmets. “Are you Germans?” she asked, first in Russian and then auf Deutsch.

  “Nein,” he answered, though his German sounded better than hers. “We are Finns. Welcome to Viipuri.” His smile was not altogether pleasant; the town had passed from Finnish to Soviet hands in the Winter War of 1939-40, but the Finns took it back when they joined the Nazis against the USSR in 1941.

  “Can one of your mechanics handle this type of aircraft?” she asked.

  With an ironic glint in his eye, he scanned the Kukuruznik from one end to the other. “Meaning no disrespect, but I think any twelve-year-old who is handy with tools could work on one of these,” he answered. Since he was probably right, Ludmila kept her annoyance to herself.

  The Finnish base had better food than Ludmila had tasted in some time. It also seemed cleaner than the ones from which she’d been fighting. She wondered whether that was because the Finns hadn’t seen as much action against the Lizards as the Soviets had.

  “Partly,” the officer who’d greeted her said when she asked. His greatcoat, she noticed once they were inside, was gray, not khaki; it had three narrow bars on the cuffs. She wondered what rank that made him. “And partly, again meaning no disrespect, you may see that other people are often just generally neater about things than you Russians. But never
mind that. Would you care to use our sauna?” When he saw she didn’t understand the Finnish word, he turned it into German: “Steam-bath.”

  “Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. Not only was it a chance to get clean, it was a chance to get warm. The Finns didn’t even leer at her when she went in alone, as Russians would have done. She wondered how manly they were.

  Flying over Finland and then over Sweden, she thought about what the Finnish officer had said. Just looking down at countryside that war had not ravaged was new and different; flying past towns that weren’t burned-out ruins took her thoughts back to better days she’d almost forgotten in the midst of combat’s urgency.

  Even under snow, though, she could see the orderly patterns of fields and fences. Everything was on a smaller scale than in the Soviet Union, and almost toylike in its tiny perfection. She wondered if the Scandinavians were neater than Russians simply because they had so much less land and had to use it more efficiently.

  That impression grew stronger in Denmark, where even forest had all but vanished and every square centimeter seemed put to some useful purpose. And then, past Denmark, she flew into Germany.

  Germany, she saw at once, had been at war. Though her flight path took her a couple of hundred kilometers west of murdered Berlin, she saw devastation that matched anything she’d come across in the Soviet Union. In fact, first the British and then the Lizards had given Gennany a more concentrated beating from the air than the Soviet Union as a whole had received. Town after town had factories, train stations, and residential blocks pounded to ruins.

  For that matter, the Lizards were still pounding Germany. When Ludmila heard the roar of their jets, she flew doubly low and slow, as if her U-2 were a tiny gnat buzzing by the floor, too small to be worth noticing.

  The Germans were still fighting back, too. Tracers spiderwebbed across the night sky like fireworks. Searchlights stabbed, trying to pin Lizard raiders with their beams. Once or twice, off in the distance, Ludmila heard piston engines racing. So, she thought, the Luftwaffe still has fighters in the air too.