Turtledove: World War

by In the Balance

  He stayed stuck for the next three days, biding his time and biting his nails. When he finally did get to descend into one of the small boats that was unloading the Duluth Queen, he almost wished he’d stayed stuck longer. Clambering down a cargo net with a knapsack and a rifle slung over his shoulder was not his notion of fun.

  One of the sailors lowered his Schwinn on a line. It banged against the side of the steamship a couple of times on the way down. Jens grabbed it and undid the knot. The line snaked back up to the Duluth Queen.

  The small boat had a crew of four. They all looked at the bicycle. “You’re not going anywhere far by yourself on that, are you, mister?” one of them said at last.

  “What If I am?” Larssen had ridden a bicycle across most of Ohio and Indiana. He was in the best shape of his life. He’d always look skinny, but he was stronger than most people with bulging biceps.

  “Oh, I won’t say you couldn’t do it—don’t get me wrong,” the crewman said. “It’s just that—this is Minnesota, after all.” He patted himself. He was wearing boots with fur tops, an overcoat over a jacket over a sweater, and earmuffs on top of a knitted wool cap. “You don’t want to get stuck in a snowstorm, is what I mean. You do and you won’t even start to stink till spring—and spring comes late around Duluth.”

  “I know what Minnesota’s like. I was raised here,” Jens said.

  “Then you ought to have better sense,” the sailor told him.

  He started to come back with a hot reply, hut it didn’t get past his lips. He remembered all the winter days he’d had to stay home from school when snow made the going impossible. And his grammar school had been only a couple of miles from the farm where he’d grown up, the high school less than five. If a bad storm hit while he was in the middle of nowhere, he’d be in trouble and no doubt about it.

  He said, “Things must move, or else you guys wouldn’t be out here working in the middle of winter. How do you do it?”

  “We convoy,” the sailor answered seriously. “You wait until there’s a bunch of people going the same way you are, and then you go along with ’em. Where you headin’ for, mister?”

  “Denver, eventually,” Jens said. “Any place west of Duluth now, I guess.” In a pocket of his overcoat he had a letter from General Patton that essentially ordered the entire civilized world to drop whatever it was doing and give him a hand. It had got him his cabin on the Duluth Queen . . . but the Duluth Queen was going from Chicago to Duluth anyhow. Even a sizzling letter from Patton probably couldn’t call a land convoy into being at the drop of a hat. But that sparked a thought.

  “Any trains still running?”

  “Yeah, we try to keep ’em going, best we can, anyhow. I tell you, though, it’s like, playing Russian roulette. Maybe you’ll get through, maybe you’ll get your ass bombed off. If it was me, I wouldn’t ride one, not now. The Lizards go after ’em on purpose, not for the hell of it like they do ships.”

  “I may take my chances,” Larssen said. If the trains were running right, he could be in Denver in a couple of days, not a couple of weeks or a couple of months. If they weren’t—He tried not to worry about that.

  The boat drifted to a stop at the edge of the ice. Gunnysacks made the treacherous surface easier to walk on. The crew handed Larssen his gear, wished him good luck, and headed back to the Duluth Queen.

  He headed over toward a dog-drawn sledge that didn’t have too many crates in it. “Can I get a ride?” he called, and the driver nodded. He felt like a character out of Jack London as he got in behind the man.

  The trip across the ice gave him more time to think. It also convinced him that if he was going to live in the twentieth century, he’d use its tools where he could. He’d do better even if the Lizards did bomb him while he was just partway to Denver. When at last he got into Duluth, he went looking for the train station.

  The hauler aircraft rolled to a stop. Ussmak stared out the window at the Tosevite landscape. It was different from the flat plains of the SSSR where the landcruiser driver had served before, but that didn’t make it any better, not as far as he was concerned. The plants were a dark, wet-looking green under sunlight that seemed too white, too harsh.

  Not that the star Tosev adequately heated its third world. Ussmak felt the chill as soon as he descended from the hauler onto the concrete of the runway. Here, though, at least water wasn’t falling frozen from the sky. That was something.

  “Landcruiser crew replacements!” a male bawled. Ussmak and three or four others who had just deplaned tramped over to him. The male took their names and identity numbers, then waved them into the back of an armored transporter.

  “Where are we?” Ussmak asked as the machine jounced into life. “Whom are we fighting?” That was a better question; the names the Big Uglies gave to pieces of Tosev 3 meant little to him.

  “This place is called France,” a gunner named Forssis answered. “I served here for a while shortly after we landed, before the commander decided it was largely pacified and transferred my unit to the SSSR.”

  All the males let their mouths fall open in derisive laughter at that. Everything had seemed so easy in the days right after the landing. Ussmak remembered being part of a drive that had smashed Soviet landcruisers as if they were made of cardboard.

  Even then, though, he should have had a clue. A sniper had picked off his commander when Votal, like any good landcruiser leader, stuck his head out the cupola to get a decent view of what was going on. And Krentel, the commander who replaced him, did not deserve the body paint that proclaimed his rank.

  Well, Krentel was dead, too, and Telerep the gunner with him. A guerrilla—Ussmak did not know whether he was Russki or Deutsch—had blown the turret right off the landcruiser while they were trying to protect the crews cleaning up nuclear material scattered when the Big Uglies had managed to wreck the starship that carried the bulk of the Race’s atomic weapons.

  From his driver’s position, Ussmak had bailed out of the landcruiser when it was stricken—out of the landcruiser and into radioactive mud. He’d been in a hospital ship ever since . . . till now.

  “So whom are we fighting?” he repeated. “The Français?”

  “No, the Deutsche, mostly,” Forssis answered. “They were ruling here when we arrived. I hear the weapons we’ll be facing are better than the ones they threw at us the last time I was here.”

  Silence settled over the transporter’s passenger compartment. Fighting the Big Uglies, Ussmak thought, was like poisoning pests: the survivors kept getting more resistant to what you were trying to do to them. And, like any other pests, the Big Uglies changed faster than you could alter your methods of coping with them.

  The heated compartment, the smooth ride over a paved highway, and the soft purr of the hydrogen-burning engine helped most of the males doze off before long: veterans, they knew the value of snatching sleep while they had the chance. Ussmak tried to rest, too, but couldn’t. The longing for ginger gnawed at him and would not let go.

  An orderly had sold him some of the precious herb in the hospital ship. He’d started tasting as much out of boredom as for any other reason. When he was full of ginger, he felt wise and brave and invulnerable. When he wasn’t—that was when he discovered the trap into which he’d fallen. Without ginger, he seemed stupid and fearful and soft-skinned as a Big Ugly, a contrast just made worse because he so vividly remembered how wonderful he knew himself to be when he tasted the powdered herb.

  He didn’t care how much he gave the orderly for his ginger: he had pay saved up and nothing he’d rather spend it on. The orderly had an ingenious arrangement whereby he got Ussmak’s funds even though they didn’t go directly into his computer account.

  In the end, it hadn’t saved him. One day, a new orderly came in to police up Ussmak’s chamber. Discreet questioning (Ussmak could afford to be discreet then, with several tastes hidden away) showed that the only thing he knew about ginger was the fleetlord’s general order prohibiting its use. Us
smak had stretched out the intervals between tastes as long as he could. But finally the last one was gone. He’d been gingerless—and melancholy—ever since.

  The road climbed up through rugged mountains. Ussmak got only glimpses out the transporter’s firing ports. After the monotonous flatlands of the SSSR and the even more boring sameness of the hospital ship cubicle, a jagged horizon was welcome, but it didn’t much remind Ussmak of the mountains of Home.

  For one thing, these mountains were covered with frozen water of one sort or another, a measure of how miserably cold Tosev 3 was. For another, the dark conical trees that peeked out through the mantling of white were even more alien to his eye than the Big Uglies.

  Those trees also concealed Tosevites, as Ussmak discovered a short while later. Somewhere up there in the woods, a machine gun began to chatter. Bullets spanged off the transporter’s armor. Its own light cannon returned fire, filling the passenger compartment with thunder.

  The males who had been dozing were jerked rudely back to awareness. They tumbled for the firing ports to see what was happening, Ussmak among them. He couldn’t see anything, not even muzzle flashes.

  “Scary,” Forssis observed. “I’m used to sitting inside a landcruiser where the armor shields you from anything. I can’t help thinking that if the Tosevites had a real gun up there, we’d be cooked.”

  Ussmak knew only too well that not even landcruiser armor guaranteed protection against the Big Uglies. But before he could say as much, the transporter driver came on the intercom: “Sorry about the racket, my males, but we haven’t rooted out all the guerrillas yet. They’re just a nuisance as long as we don’t run over any mines.”

  The driver sounded downright cheery; Ussmak wondered if he was tasting ginger. “I wonder how often they do run over mines,” Forssis said darkly.

  “This male hasn’t, or he wouldn’t still be driving us,” Ussmak said. A couple of the other landcruiser crewmales opened their mouths at him.

  After a while, the mountains gave way to wide, gently rolling valleys. Forssis pointed to neat rows of gnarled plants that clung to stakes on south-facing slopes. He said, “I saw those when I was in this France place before. The Tosevites ferment alcoholic brews from them.” He ran his tongue over his lips. “Some have a very interesting flavor.”

  The passenger compartment had no view straight forward. The driver had to make an announcement for the males he was hauling: “We are coming into the Big Ugly town of Besançon, our forward base for combat against the Deutsche. You will be assigned to crews here.”

  All Ussmak had seen of Tosevite architecture was the wooden farming villages of the SSSR. Besançon was certainly different from those. He didn’t quite know what to make of it. Compared to the tall, blocklike structures of steel and glass that formed the cities of Home, its buildings seemed toys. Yet they were very ornate toys, with columns and elaborate stone and brickwork and steep roofs so the frozen water that fell from the sky hereabouts would slide off.

  The Race’s headquarters in Besançon was on a bluff in the southeastern part of the town. Not only was the place on high ground, Ussmak discovered on alighting from the transporter that a river flowed around two sides of it. “Well sited for defense,” he remarked.

  “Interesting you should say that,” the driver answered. “This used to be a Big Ugly fortress.” He pointed to a long, low, gloomy-looking building. “Go in there. They’ll process you and assign you to a crew.”

  “It shall be done.” Ussmak hurried toward the doorway; the cold was nipping at his fingers and eye turrets.

  Inside, the building was heated to the point of comfort for civilized beings—Ussmak hissed gratefully. Otherwise, though, the local males were mostly using the furnishings they’d found. A planet was a big place, and the Race hadn’t brought enough of everything to supply all its garrisons. And so a personnel officer seemed half swallowed by the fancy red velvet chair in which he sat, a chair designed to fit a Big Ugly. The male had to stretch to reach the computer on the heavy, dark wood table in front of him; the table was higher off the ground than any the Race would have built.

  The personnel officer turned one eye toward Ussmak. “Name, specialization, and number,” he said in a bored voice.

  “Superior sir, I am Ussmak, landcruiser driver,” Ussmak answered, and gave the number by which he was recorded, paid, and would be interred if he got unlucky.

  The personnel officer entered the information, used his free eye to read Ussmak’s data as they came up. “You were serving in the SSSR against the Soviets, is that correct, until your landcruiser was destroyed and you were exposed to excess radiation?”

  “Yes, superior sir, that is correct.”

  “Then you’ve not had combat experience against the Deutsche?”

  “Superior sir, I am told the guerrilla team that wrecked my vehicle was part Deutsch, part Soviet. If you are asking whether I’ve faced their landcruisers, the answer is no.”

  “That is what I meant,” the personnel officer said. “You will need to maintain a higher level of alertness hereabouts than was your habit in the SSSR, landcruiser driver. Tactically, the Deutsche are more often clever than perhaps any other Tosevite group. Their newest landcruisers have heavier guns than you will have seen, too. Combine these factors with their superior knowledge of the local terrain and they become opponents not to be despised.”

  “I understand, superior sir,” Ussmak said. “Will my landcruiser commander be experienced?” I hope.

  The personnel officer punched at the computer again, waited for a response to appear on the screen. “You’re going to be assigned to Landcruiser Commander Hessef’s machine; his driver was wounded in a bandit attack here in Besançon a few days ago. Hessef compiled an excellent record in Espafia, south and west of here, as we expanded out of our landing zone. He’s relatively new to the northern sector.”

  Ussmak hadn’t known Espafia from France until the moment the personnel officer named them. And no matter what that officer said about the superior skills of the Deutsche, to Ussmak one band of Big Uglies seemed pretty much like another. “I’m glad to hear that he has fought, superior sir. Where do I report to him?”

  “The hall we are using as a barracks is out the door through which you entered and to your left. If you do not find Hessef and your gunner—whose name is Tvenkel—there, try the vehicle park down past the antiaircraft missile launcher.”

  Ussmak tried the vehicle park first, on the theory that any commander worth his body paint took better care of his landcruiser than he did of himself. Seeing the big machines lined up in their sandbagged revetments made him eager to get back to the work for which he’d been trained, and also eager for the tight-knit fellowship that flowered among the males of a good landcruiser crew.

  Crewmales working on their landcruisers directed him to the one Hessef commanded. But when he walked into its stall, he found it buttoned up tight. That presumably meant Hessef and Tvenkel were back at the barracks. Not a good sign, Ussmak thought as he began to retrace his steps.

  He longed to feel a part of something larger than himself. That was what the Race was all about: obedience from below, obligation from above, all working together for the common good. He’d known that feeling with Votal, his first commander, but after Votal died, Krentel proved such an incompetent that Ussmak could not bond to him as subordinate was supposed to bond to superior.

  Then Krentel had got himself killed, too, and Ussmak’s original gunner with him. That worsened the driver’s feeling of separation, almost of exclusion, from the rest of the Race. The long stay in the hospital ship and his discovery of ginger had pushed him even further out of the niche he’d been intended to fit. If he couldn’t have ginger any more, crew solidarity would have been a good second best. But how could he really feel part of a crew that didn’t have the simple sense to treat their landcruiser as if their lives depended on it?

  As he walked back past the missile launcher, bells began to ring down in the t
own of Besançon. He turned to one of the males. “I’m new here. Are those alarms? Where should I go? What should I do?”

  “Nothing—take no notice of them,” the fellow answered. “The Big Uglies just have a lot of mechanical clocks that chime to divide up the day and night. They startled me at first, too. After a while here, you won’t even notice them. One is spectacular for something without electronics. It must have seventy dials, and these figures all worked by gears and pulleys come out and prance around and then disappear back into the machine. When you get some slack time, you ought to go see it: it’s worth turning both eye turrets that way.”

  “Thanks. Maybe I will.” Relieved, Ussmak kept on toward the barracks building. Just as he pushed the door open, the sweet metallic clangor ceased. Even the cots the males were using had formerly belonged to the Big Uglies. The thin mattresses looked lumpy, the blankets scratchy. They were undoubtedly woven from the hair of some native beast or other, an idea that made Ussmak itch all by itself. A few males lounged around doing nothing in particular.

  “I seek the landcruiser commander Hessef,” Ussmak said as some of those males turned an eye or two toward him.

  “I am Hessef,” one of them said, coming forward. “By your paint, you must be my new driver.”

  “Yes, superior sir.” Ussmak put more respect into his voice than he truly felt. Hessef was a jittery-looking male, his body paint sloppily applied. Ussmak’s own paint was none too neat, but he thought commanders should adhere to a higher standard.

  Another male came up to stand beside Hessef. “Ussmak, I introduce you to Tvenkel, our gunner,” the landcruiser commander said.

  “Be good to have a whole crew again, go out and fight,” Tvenkel said. Like Hessef, he couldn’t quite hold still. His body paint was, if possible, in even worse shape than the landcruiser commander’s—smeared, blotched, daubed on in a hurry. Ussmak wondered what he’d done to deserve becoming part of this substandard crew.