In the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  “So it does,” Embry. said. “On the other band, given the choice of jobs, I’d sooner peep out through the Perspex on a scene like this—or even on the usual clouds, come to that—than be stuck in the bowels of the aircraft watching electrons chase themselves.”

  “You get no arguments from me,” Bagnall said. “None whatevet. But then, I dare say Goldfarb’s a bit of a queer bird all the way around. Fancy spending so long mooning after that barmaid Sylvia, finally getting her, and then throwing her aside bare days later.”

  The pilot laughed goatishly. “Maybe she wasn’t as good as he’d hoped.”

  “I doubt that.” Bagnall spoke from experience. “Never a dull moment there.”

  “I’d have thought as much from her looks, but one can’t always judge by looks, enjoyable as it may be to try.” Embry shrugged. “Well, it’s not my affair, in either the literal or figurative sense of the word, and just as well, too. Speaking of Goldfarb, however …” He flicked the intercom switch. “Any sign of our scaly little chums, Radarman?”

  “No, sir,” Goldfarb said. “Dead quiet here.”

  “Dead quiet,” Embry repeated. “Do you know, I quite like the ring of that?”

  “Yes, rather,” Bagnall said. “One more mission from which we have some reasonable hope of landing?” The flight engineer chuckled, “We’ve been living so long on borrowed time by now that I sometimes entertain hopes we shan’t have to repay it one day.”

  “Disabuse yourselves of those, my friend. The day they took the limit off the number of missions an aircrew could be ordered to fly, they signed our death warrants, and no mistake. The trick lies in evading the inevitable as long as one can.”

  “After you got us down safe in France, I refuse to believe anything is impossible,” Bagnall said.

  “I was at least as surprised at surviving that as you, believe me: nothing like a bit of luck, what?” Embry laughed. “But if the Lizards choose not to stir about for another couple of hours, I concede we shall have had an easy time of it today. We are occasionally entitled to one such, don’t you think?”

  The Lizards did stay quiet. At the appointed hour, Embry gratefully swung the Lanc back toward Dover. The return descent and landing were so smooth that the pilot said, “Thank you for flying BOAC today,” as the bulky bomber rolled to a stop. No commercial passengers, however, ever deplaned so rapidly as the men who flew with him.

  As Bagnall scrambled out of the cockpit and down onto the tarmac, one of the groundcrew men gave him a cheeky grin.

  “’Ere, you must’ve heard they’ve got the power on again, you’re out an’ ’eadin’ for the barracks so quick.”

  “Have they?” The flight engineer stepped up his pace from quick to double-quick. All sorts of delightful visions danced in his head: light by which to read or play cards, an electric fire, a working hotplate on which to brew tea or heat water for a proper shave, a phonograph that spun … the possibilities seemed to stretch as far as the horizon had up in the Lancaster.

  One that had entirely slipped his mind was listening to the BBC. Several weeks had gone by since the barracks last had power while the Beeb was on the air: the Lizards kept plastering the transmitter, trying to silence the human broadcast. Just hearing the newsreader made Bagnall once more feel part of a world larger than the airbase and its environs.

  It had a different effect on David Goldfarb. “By God,” he said, cocking his head toward the wireless set, “I wish I could talk like that.”

  Having a pretty fair public-school accent himself, Bagnall took the broadcaster’s smooth tones for granted. When it was pointed out to him, though, he could see how they’d rouse jealousy in the heart of one from London’s lower middle class: he was no Henry Higgins, but his ear pretty accurately placed Goldfarb.

  The BBC man said, “We now present in its entirety a recording recently received in London from underground sources in Poland. The speaker is Mr. Moishe Russie, hitherto familiar to many as an apologist for the Lizards. A translation will follow.”

  The recording began. Bagnall had a little German, but found it didn’t help much; unlike Russie’s previous propaganda broadcasts, this one was in Yiddish. The flight engineer wondered if he should ask Goldfarb what Russie was saying. Perhaps not; the Jewish radarman was humiliated at having a quisling for a cousin. Goldfarb plainly had no trouble following Russie without translation. He stared at the wireless set as if he could see his relative there. Every so often, his right fist would come down thump on his thigh.

  In the brief moment of silence that followed the end of Russie’s statement, the radarman exclaimed, “Lies! I knew it was all lies!”

  Before Bagnall could ask what was all lies, the BBC newsreader returned. “That was Mr. Moishe Russie,” he said, his voice even more mellow than usual when heard hard on the heels of Yiddish gutturals. “And now, as promised, the translation. Here is our staffer, Mr. Nathan Jacobi.”

  A brief rustle of papers, then a new voice, just as cultured as the one that had gone before: “Mr. Russie spoke as follows: ‘My last broadcast for the Lizards was, a fraud from top to bottom. I was forced to speak with a gun to my head. Even then, the Lizards had to alter my words to force them into the meaning they desired. I categorically condemn their efforts to enslave mankind, and urge all possible resistance. Some may wonder why I ever spoke on their behalf. The answer is simple: their attack on Germany aided my people, whom the Nazis were murdering. When a folk is being slaughtered, even slavery seems a preferable alternative, and an enslaver can be looked upon with gratitude. But the Lizards have proved murderers, too, not just of Jews but of mankind in its entirety. God help each and every one of us find the strength and courage to resist them.’”

  After more rustlings, the first BBC man came back on the air: “That was Mr. Nathan Jacobi, translating into English Mr. Moishe Russie’s repudiation of recent statements he has made on behalf of the Lizards. This cannot fail to embarrass the alien invaders of our world, who see even their seemingly loyalest associates turn against their vicious and aggressive policies. The prime minister, Mr. Churchill, has expressed his admiration for the courage required of Mr. Russie in making this repudiation and his hope that Mr. Russie will succeed in escaping the Lizards’ vengeance. In other news—”

  David Goldfarb sighed deeply. “Nobody here has any notion of how fine that makes me feel,” he announced to the barracks at large.

  “Oh, I think we might,” Ken Embry said. Bagnall had been about to say something along those lines himself, but decided the pilot’s understatement did the job for both of them.

  Goldfarb laughed. “The British way of speaking used to drive my father mad. He learned English quick enough after he got over here, but he never has fathomed how people can get along without screaming at each other now and again, whether they’re angry or happy.”

  “What do you think we are, a pack of bloody fishwives?” Bagnall did his best to sound deeply offended. The restrained public-school accent didn’t make it any easier.

  “I was talking about him, not me,” Goldfarb said. “I can read between the lines, you might say, and I know what you mean. You’re a grand lot of chaps, every bloody one of you.” He laughed again. “And I know that’s more than a proper Englishman ought to say, but who says I’m proper? I wish I could get some leave; it’s been too damned long since I got to go home and shout at my relations.”

  What a bizarre notion, Bagnall thought. Family ties were all very well, but the aircrew had largely replaced his relatives at the center of his life. Only after a few seconds did he think to wonder whether Goldfarb had something he lacked.

  Through his interpreter, Adolf Hitler said, “Good day, Herr Foreign Commissar. I hope you slept well? Come in, come in; we have much of which to speak.”

  “Thank you, Chancellor.” Vyacheslav Molotov followed Hitler into the small living room which had been part of the German leader’s Berchtesgaden retreat before that was incorporated into the grander Berghof surrounding it
.

  Molotov supposed being ushered into Hitler’s sanctum sanctorum was an honor if so, he would willingly have forgone it. Everything in the room screamed petit-bourgeois at him: the overstuffed furniture with its old-German look, the rubber plants, the cactus—good heavens, the place even had a brass canary cage! Stalin would laugh when he heard about that.

  Strewn here and there on the chairs and couches were embroidered pillows, most of them decorated with swastikas. Swastika-bedizened knick knacks crowded tables. Even Hitler looked embarrassed at their profusion. “I know they aren’t what you’d call lovely,” he said, waving at the display, “but the German women make them and send them to me, so I don’t like to throw them away.”

  Petit-bourgeois sentimentality, too, Molotov thought scornfully. Stalin would also find that funny. The only sentiment Stalin had in him was a healthy regard for his own aggrandizement and that of the Soviet Union.

  But the twisted romantic streak made Hitler more dangerous, not less, because it meant he acted in ways that could not be rationally calculated. His invasion of the USSR had sent Stalin into several days of shock before he began rallying Soviet resistance. Compared to German imperialism, that of the British and French was downright genteel.

  Now, though, the whole world faced imperialism from aliens whose ancient economic and political systems were joined with a technology more than modern. Molotov had repeatedly gone through the words of Marx and Engels to try to grasp how such an anomaly could be, but without success. What was clear was that advanced capitalist (even fascist) and socialist societies had to do everything in their power to resist being thrown catastrophically backward in their development.

  Hitler said, “You may thank General Secretary Stalin for sharing with Germany the possible explosive materials which were obtained by the combined German-Soviet fighting team.”

  “I shall do so.” Molotov inclined his head in a precise nod. As well he had long schooled his features to reveal nothing, for they did not show Hitler the consternation he felt. So that damned German tankman had got through after all! That was very bad. Stalin had intended proffering the image of cooperation, not its substance. He would not be pleased.

  Hitler went on, “The government of the Soviet Union is to be commended for thinking this explosive too valuable to be flown to Germany and letting it come by the overland route where even you, Herr Foreign Commissar, traveled here by air.”

  The sarcasm there was enough to raise welts, not least because Molotov loathed flying of any sort and had been ordered by Stalin into the horrible little biplane that brought him to Germany. Pretending everything was serene, Molotov said, “Comrade Stalin solicited the advice of military experts and then followed it. He is of course delighted that your consignment reached you safely by the plan he devised.” A thumping lie, but how was Hitler supposed to call him on it, especially since the courier had somehow beaten the, odds of the journey?

  But Hitler found a way: “Please tell Herr Stalin also that he would have done better to fly it here, as then we should not have had half of it hijacked by Jews.”

  “What’s that?” Molotov said.

  “Hijacked by Jews,” Hitler repeated, as if to a backward child. Molotov concealed his irritation in the same way he concealed everything not immediately relevant to the business at hand. Hitler gestured violently; his voice rose to an angry shout. “As the good German major was traversing Poland, he was halted at gunpoint by Jewish bandits who forced him to divest himself of half the precious treasure he was bringing to German science.”

  This was news, and unsettling news, to Molotov. He could not resist a barb in return: “Had you not so tormented the Jews in the states your armies overcame, no doubt they would have been less eager to interfere with the courier.”

  “But the Jews are parasites on the body of mankind,” Hitler said earnestly. “They have no culture of their own; the foundations of their situation of living are always taken from those around them. They completely lack the idealistic attitude, the will to contribute to the development of others. Look how they, more than anyone else, have cozied up to the Lizards’ backsides.”

  “Look why they have,” Molotov returned. His wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, was of Jewish blood, though he did not think Hitler knew that. “Anyone drowning will grab for a spar, no matter where he finds it.” So the British joined us in the fight against you, he thought. Aloud, he went on, “Besides, has not the Lizards’ former chief spokesman among the Polish Jews repudiated them and gone into hiding?”

  Hitler waved that aside. “Aliens themselves in Europe, they find their fit place toadying to the worse aliens who now torment us.”

  “What do you mean?” Molotov asked sharply. “Have they turned over to the Lizards the explosive metal they took from the courier? If so, I demand that you allow me to communicate with my government immediately.” Stalin would have to know at once that the Lizards knew for certain human beings were working to duplicate their much greater weapons so he could apply yet another layer of secrecy to his project.

  “No, not even they were so depraved as that,” Hitler admitted; he sounded reluctant to make any concession, no matter how small.

  “Well, what then? Did they keep it for themselves?” Molotov wondered what the Polish Jews would do if they had kept the explosive metal. Would they make a bomb and use it against the Lizards, or would they make one and use it against the Reich? That question would have been going through Hitler’s mind, too.

  But the German leader shook his head. “They did not keep it, either. They are going to try to smuggle it to the fellow Jews in the United States.” Hitler’s little toothbrush mustache—quivered, as if he’d just smelled something rotten.

  Molotov wondered how many of those Jews would have fled to the United States had the Nazis not forced them out of Germany and its allies. The tsars and their pogroms had done the same thing in pre-Communist Russia, and the present Soviet Union was the poorer for their shortsightedness. Molotov was too convinced an atheist to take any religion seriously as far as doctrine, but Jews tended to be both clever and well educated, valuable traits in any nation that aspired to build and grow.

  With a scissorslike effort of will, the foreign minister snipped off those irrelevant threads of thought and returned to the matter at hand. He said, “I need to inform the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of this development.” It wasn’t as urgent as if the Lizards had learned what Stalin was up to, but it was important news. America, after all, not Germany or Britain, was the most powerful capitalist state and so the most likely future opponent of the Soviet Union … assuming such concerns kept their meaning in a world with Lizards init.

  “Arrangements will be made for you to communicate,” Hitler said. “The telegraph through Scandinavia remains fairly reliable and fairly secure.”

  “That will have to do,” Molotov said. Fairly reliable he could deal with; nothing could be expected to work perfectly. But fairly secure! The Nazis were bunglers indeed if they tolerated security that was only fair. Inside, where it did not show, the Soviet foreign minister smiled. The Germans had no idea how thoroughly agents of the USSR kept Stalin informed about everything they did.

  “The nefarious Jews came close to preventing our brilliant Aryan scientists from having the amount of explosive metal with which they needed to work,” Hitler said. Molotov made a mental note of that; it meant the Americans also probably had a marginal quantity of the material—and it meant the Soviet Union had plenty. Stalin had a right to expect results from his own researchers, then.

  But Hitler wasn’t thinking about that; what he had in mind was vengeance. “The Lizards must come first,” he said. “I admit this. They are the greatest present danger to mankind. But after them, we shall punish the Jewish traitors who, true to their nature, aligned themselves with the alien against the Aryan essence of true creative humanity.”

  His voice rose almost to a screech in that last sentence. Now, abruptly,
it turned low, conspiratorial: “And you Russians owe the Poles a little something, eh?”

  “What’s that?” Molotov said, caught off guard and stalling for time. Even though he needed the interpreter to follow Hitler’s words, he could hear the control the German leader had over his tone. That made him a formidable orator—certainly more effective there than Stalin, who was not only pedantic but had never lost his Georgian accent.

  “Come, come,” Hitler said impatiently. “You must have heard the Lizards’ Polish collaborators going on about the so-called massacre of their officers at Katyn, trying to discredit the Soviet Union in the same way the Jews paint the Reich with a big black brush.”

  “I do not trouble myself with the Lizards’ propaganda broadcasts,” Molotov said, which was true; he had underlings listen to them for him. “As for Katyn, he thought, the Poles had little to fuss about. After the Soviets reannexed the eastern half of Poland (which had, after all, belonged to Russia for more than a century before the chaos of the Revolution broke it loose and let Pilsudski establish his fascist state there), what were they to do with the reactionary officers who had fallen into their hands? Turn them loose and let them foment rebellion? Not likely! By Soviet standards, getting rid of those few thousand unreliables was but a small purge.

  Hitler said, “Both your government and mine have reason to be unhappy with those who dwell in the anomalous territory of Poland. We were wise to divide it between ourselves once. When the Lizards are dealt with, we can join in punishing the inhabitants of that land to the full extent they deserve.”

  “By which you mean with bombs of this explosive metal?” Molotov asked. Hitler nodded. Molotov said, “I cannot view this proposal favorably. Our scientists report the wind spreads poisons from these weapons over an area far broader than the site of the explosion itself. And since the prevailing winds are from west to east, the Soviet Union would be adversely affected by this, devastation, however much the Poles may deserve it.”