Upsetting the Balance w-3 Read online

  She set the sleeping little girl in the scrapwood cradle she’d readied. As Ho Ma had said, it did look like a proper Chinese baby, for which she was glad. If she ever escaped the camp, she could raise it properly, too, with no awkward questions to answer.

  If she ever escaped the camp-Her laugh rang bitter. What chance of that, with or without the baby? Then all thought, no matter how bitter, dissolved in an enormous yawn. Liu Han lay down on top of thek’ang- the raised, heated platform in the middle of the hut-and fell deeply asleep. The baby woke her a few minutes later. She had groggy memories of her first child doing that, too.

  The next two days passed in a blur of fatigue. Ho Ma came back with food, and the little scaly devils with their cameras. Then on the third day the midwife brought incense, paper images of the gods and paper goods to sacrifice to them, and a basin to be filled with water and a spicy mixture of ground locust branch and catnip leaves.

  Ho Ma prayed to the family kitchen god, the goddess of smallpox, the goddess of playmates, the goddess of breast milk, the six minor household gods, the god of heaven and the god of earth, and the god and goddess of the bed, and burned offerings to each. She set out round cakes in a row before their images.

  Msseff said to Ttomalss, “Superior sir, if all this is necessary for survival, then I am an addled egg.” Ttomalss’ mouth fell open.

  The midwife bathed the baby, dried her, and sprinkled alum on her here and there. Then she laid the child on her back and set slices of ginger by the blackened stump of the umbilical cord. She put a little smoldering ball of catnip leaves on the ginger, and another at the baby’s head. A couple of the scaly devils let out hisses of longing for the ginger. Ttomalss took no notice of those, perhaps not recognizing what they signified.

  Other ritual objects made their appearance: the small weight that portended a big future, the padlock to ward off impropriety, the tap of the onion punningly used to impart wisdom (both were pronouncedts’ung), and the comb for the child’s hair. The onion would be tossed on the roof of the hut, to predict the sex of Liu Han’s next child by the way it landed.

  Ho Ma extinguished the burning balls of catnip and lit the paper images of the gods, who, having done their duty, were thus urged to depart the scene. The hut filled with smoke. Coughing a little, the midwife took her leave. The onion thumped up onto the roof. “The root points to the eaves,” Ho Ma called. “Your next baby will be a boy.”

  Liu Han couldn’t remember what the onion had foretold after the birth of her first child. She wondered how many fortune-tellers made a good living by counting on their bad predictions’ being forgotten. A lot of them, she suspected, but how could you tell which ones till after the fact?

  As if Ho Ma’s leaving the hut had been a signal, several little scaly devils came in. They were not carrying cameras; they were carrying guns. Alarm flared in Liu Han. She snatched up the baby and held it tight.

  Ttomalss said, “That will do you no good. We now go to the next step of the experiment-we of the Race will raise this hatchling apart from you Tosevites, to learn how well it can acquire duty and obedience.” He turned to the males and spoke in his own language: “Take the hatchling.”

  Liu Han screamed and fought with all she had in her. It did no good. Individually, the scaly devils were little, but several of them together were much stronger than she. The threat of their guns drove back the people who came out to see why she was screaming. Even the sight of a wailing infant in their arms was not enough to make men brave those terrible guns.

  Liu Han lay on the ground in the hut and moaned. Then, slowly, she rose and made her painful way through the staring, chattering people and into the marketplace. Eventually, she came to the stall of the poultry seller. The little scaly devils might think they were through with her, but she was not through with them.

  Half past two in the morning. Vyacheslav Molotov wished he were home and asleep in bed. Stalin, however, had not asked his opinion, merely summoned him. Stalin was not in the habit of asking anyone’s opinion. He expected to be obeyed. If he kept late hours, everyone else would, too.

  The doorman nodded politely to Molotov, who nodded back. Normally he would have ignored such a flunky, but the doorman, along-time crony of Stalin’s, knew as many secrets as half the members of the Politburo-and he had his master’s ear. Slighting him was dangerous.

  Stalin was writing at his desk when Molotov came in. Molotov wondered if he’d become dominant simply because he needed less sleep than most men. No doubt that wasn’t the whole answer, but it must have played its part.

  “Take some tea, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” Stalin said, pointing to a samovar in a corner of the cramped room.

  “Thank you, Iosef Vissarionovich,” Molotov answered. When Stalin told you to take tea, you took tea, even if it was the vile mix that passed for the genuine article these days-much worse than the coarsemakhorka everyone, even Stalin, had to smoke. Molotov poured a glassful, sugared it-as long as the Soviet Union had beets, it would have sugar-and drank. He had to work to keep from betraying surprise. “This is-excellent.”

  “The real leaf,” Stalin said smugly. “Brought in from India, thanks to the lull in the fighting with the Lizards after we showed we could match them bomb for bomb.”So there, his eyes added. He’d gone against Molotov’s advice and not only got away with it but prospered. Not only was that bad in itself, it meant he would pay less attention to Molotov the next time.

  The Foreign Commissar sipped his tea, savoring its warmth and its rich flavor. When he was through, he set the glass down with real regret. “What do you need, Iosef Vissarionovich?” he asked.

  “The lull is slowly dying away,” Stalin answered. “The Lizards begin to suspect we have no more bombs than that first one.” He sounded as if that were Molotov’s fault.

  “As I have noted, Comrade General Secretary, they are aware we used their metal to produce that bomb,” Molotov said cautiously; telling StalinI told you so was as dangerous as defusing any other pyrotechnic device. Molotov tried to put the best face on it he could: “They cannot know, however, whether we have enough of that metal to use it for more bombs.”

  “We should,” Stalin said. “Sharing with the Germans was a mistake.” His mouth twisted in annoyance at the irrevocability of the past.“Nichevo.” Try as he might, Stalin could not utterit can’t be helped with the fatalism a native Russian put in the word. His throaty Georgian accent gave it a flavor of,but someone ought to be able to do something about it.

  Molotov said, “Creating the impression that wedo have more bombs available will be a cornerstone of our policy against the Lizards for some time to come. They suspect our weakness now. If they become certain of it, the strategic situation reverts to what it was before we used the bomb, and that was not altogether to our advantage.”

  He stood up and got himself another glass of tea, both because he hadn’t had any real tea in a long time and because he was all too aware of how large an understatement he’d just loosed. If the Soviet Union hadn’t set off that bomb, the Lizards surely would have been in Moscow by now. If Stalin and he had escaped the fall of the city, they’d be trying to run the country from Kuibyshev, in the heart of the Urals. Would the workers and peasants-more to the point, would the soldiers-of the Soviet Union have continued to obey orders from a defeated government that had had to abandon the national capital?

  Maybe. Neither Molotov nor Stalin had been anxious to attempt the experiment.

  Stalin said, “Kurchatov and his team must accelerate their efforts.”

  “Yes, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said dutifully. Igor Kurchatov, Georgi Flerov, and the rest of the Soviet nuclear physicists were doing everything they could to isolate uranium 235 and to produce the equally explosive element 94. Unfortunately, before the war nuclear physics in the Soviet Union had lagged several years behind its course in the capitalist and fascist nations. The mere search for abstract knowledge had not seemed vitally urgent then. Now it did, but, with thei
r limited expertise and limited cadre, the physicists were still years away from producing homegrown nuclear material.

  “The fascists in Germany are not idle,” Stalin said. “In spite of their setback, espionage confirms that their explosive-metal project goes forward. I believe the same is true in the United States and Britain, though communications with them both are not everything we might wish.” He slammed a fist down on the top of the desk. “And the Japanese?who knows what the Japanese are doing? I don’t trust them. I never trust them.”

  The only man Stalin had ever trusted was Hitler, and that trust almost destroyed the Soviet Union. But here Molotov agreed with him. He said, “If Zhukov hadn’t treated them roughly in Mongolia in 39, they would have joined with the Nazis two years later, and that might have been very difficult for us.”

  It would have been altogether disastrous, but Molotov didn’t have the nerve to tell that to Stalin. No one had the nerve to tell Stalin such things. The Moskva Hotel had two wings that spectacularly didn’t match. The architects had chosen to show Stalin their plans, expecting him to pick one design or the other. He’d just nodded and said, “Yes, do it that way,” and no one dared do anything else.

  The doorman tapped on the door. Stalin and Molotov looked at each other in surprise; they weren’t supposed to be interrupted. Then the doorman did something even more surprising: he stuck his head in and said, “Iosef Vissarionovich, the officer here bears an urgent message. May he deliver it?”

  After a moment, Stalin said,“Da,” with clear overtones ofit had better be.

  The officer wore the three red squares of a senior lieutenant and the green backing on his collar tabs that meant he was from the NKVD. Saluting, he said, “Comrade General Secretary, Lizard propaganda broadcasts report-and Japanese radio confirms-that the Lizards have detonated an explosive-metal bomb over Tokyo. They say this was because the Japanese were engaged in nuclear research there. Casualties are said to be very heavy.”

  Molotov waited to see how Stalin would react, intending to match his own response to his leader’s. Stalin said, “The Germans were inept, and blew themselves up. The Japanese were careless, and let the Lizards get wind of what they were about. We can afford neither mistake. We already knew that, but now we are, mm, strongly reminded once more.”

  “Truth, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said. Stalin did have an eye for the essential. Not for nothing had he dominated the Soviet Union these past twenty years. Molotov wondered where-or if-the USSR would be in another twenty.

  5

  The engineer in the room next to the broadcast studio gave theyou’re on signal through the large window the two rooms shared. Nodding, Moishe Russie began reading from his Yiddish script: “Good day. This is Moishe Russie, coming to you by way of the BBC’s Overseas Services. Another great world capital has fallen to the malice of the Lizards.”

  He sighed. The sigh was part of the script, but also heartfelt. “When the Lizards destroyed Berlin last year, I confess that I was not altogether brokenhearted. The Germans had done dreadful things to the Jews under their control. I thought the Lizards, who helped the Jews of Poland escape the Nazi yoke, were our benefactors.

  “I was wrong. The Lizards used us, too. They were willing to let us live, yes, but only as their slaves. And that holds not just for us but also for all mankind. When the Lizards destroyed Washington, they made that plain for anyone with eyes to see. When they destroyed Washington, they showed they were fighting freedom.

  “And now Tokyo. The Lizards no longer even try to pretend. They come straight out and tell us they dropped one of their hellish bombs on it because the Japanese were seeking to build weapons there that could meet them on even terms. That some hundreds of thousands of human beings, most of them civilians, died in the bombing is to the Lizards of no consequence.

  “Mankind has employed one of these bombs, against a purely military target. The Lizards have now incinerated three historic cities, seeking to terrify humanity into surrender. London, from which I am broadcasting, has already been bombarded by both Hitler and the Lizards, yet still endures. Even if, in their madness, the Lizards treat it as they did Tokyo, the British Isles and the British Empire will continue not only to endure but also to resist. We hope and expect that all of you who are unfortunate enough to live in territory overrun by the aliens, yet can hear my voice, will continue to resist, too. In the end, we shall prevail.”

  He came to the end of the script just as the engineer drew a finger across his throat. Beaming at the good timing, Nathan Jacobi took over, in English rather than Yiddish: “I shall translate Moishe Russie’s remarks momentarily. First, though, I should like to note that no one is better qualified to judge the perfidy in the Lizards’ promises than Mr. Russie, for he watched them turn what he’d thought to be liberation into the enslavement and wholesale murder they bring to the entire world. As he said…”

  Moishe listened to the introduction with half an ear. He was picking up more English day by day, but remained far from fluent: by the time he figured out what most of one sentence meant, two others would go by.

  Jacobi went through an English version of Russie’s speech for Eastern European listeners who had no Yiddish. Since Moishe already knew what he’d said, he did better at following that than he had with the introduction. When the engineer signaled that they were off the air, he leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh.

  Switching from English to Yiddish for Moishe’s benefit, the newsreader said, “I do wonder at times whether any of this does the least bit of good.”

  “It does,” Moishe assured him. “When the Lizards had me locked up in Lodz, it wasn’t just my English cousin who helped me get out, but plenty of Jewish fighters from Poland. They need encouragement, and to be reminded they’re not the only people left in the whole world who want to stand up to the Lizards.”

  “No doubt you’re right,” Jacobi said. “You would know better than I, having been on the spot. I just seem to have spent almost all of the last four years broadcasting messages of hope into occupied Europe-first Nazi-occupied Europe, now Lizard-occupied Europe-with what looks like very little return for the effort. I do want to feel I’m actually contributing to the war effort.”

  “The Lizards don’t like truth any better than the Germans did,” Russie answered. “Next to what the Nazis were doing in Poland, they looked good for a moment, but that was all. They may not be out to exterminate anyone, but they are aiming to enslave everyone all over the world, and the more people realize that, the harder they’ll fight back.”

  “All over the world,” Jacobi repeated. “That takes thinking about. We called it a world war before the Lizards came, but the Americans, Africa, India, much of the Near East-they were hardly touched. Now the whole world really is in play. Rather hard to imagine.”

  Moishe nodded. It was harder for him than for the British Jew. Jacobi had grown up in London, the center of the greatest empire the world had ever known and also closely linked to the United States. Thinking of the world as a whole had to come easy for him. Moishe’s mental horizons hadn’t really reached beyond Poland-indeed, seldom beyond Warsaw-until the day von Ribbentrop and Molotov signed the Nazi-Soviet friendship pact and guaranteed that war would not only come but would be disastrous when it came.

  Through the glass, the engineer motioned Russie and Jacobi out of the studio. They got up quickly; another broadcaster or team would soon be taking over the facility.

  Sure enough, out in the hall stood a tall, skinny, craggy-faced man with a thick shock of dark hair just beginning to go gray. He was looking at his wristwatch and holding a sheaf of typewritten pages like the ones Jacobi carried. “Good morning, Mr. Blair,” Russie said, trotting out his halting English.

  “Good morning, Russie,” Eric Blair answered. He slid off his dark herringbone jacket. “Warm work closed up in the coffin there. I’d sooner be in my shirtsleeves.”

  “Yes, warm,” Moishe said, responding to the part he’d und
erstood. Blair broadcast for the Indian Section of the BBC. He’d lived in Burma for a time, and had also fought and been badly wounded fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Somewhere there, or perhaps back in England, he’d picked up a wet cough that was probably tubercular.

  He pulled out a handkerchief to stifle it, then said, “Excuse me, gentlemen, I’m going to take some tea to get the scaling out of the pipes.”

  “He’s astonishing,” Jacobi murmured in Yiddish as Blair walked away. “I’ve known him to bring up bloody phlegm after a broadcast, but you’d never imagine anything was the matter if you listened to him over the air.”

  Blair returned in a moment with a thick, white china cup. He gulped down the not-quite-tea, made a wry face, and hurried into the studio. No sooner had he gone inside than the air-raid sirens began to wail. Russie blinked in surprise; he heard no Lizard jets screaming overhead. “Shall we go down to the shelter in the cellar?” he asked.

  To his surprise, Jacobi said, “No. Wait-listen.”

  Moishe obediently listened. Along with the howling sirens came another sound-a brazen clangor he needed a moment to identify. “Why are the church bells ringing?” he asked. “They’ve never done that before.”

  “In 1940, that was going to be a signal,” Jacobi answered. “Thank God, it was one we never had to use.”

  “What do you mean?” Russie asked. “What was it for?”

  “After theLuftwaffe began to bomb us, they silenced all the bells,” Jacobi said. “If they ever started ringing again, it meant-invasion.”

  The church bells rang and rang and rang, a wild carillon that raised the hair on Moishe’s arms and at the back of his neck. “The Germans aren’t going to invade now,” he said. However much it grated on him, relations between England and German-occupied northern France and the Low Countries had been correct, even sometimes approaching cordial, since the Lizards landed. The Lizards-”Oy!”