Upsetting the Balance w-3 Read online

  They were only the size of kids. He’d known that intellectually; he’d even seen it for himself. But it hadn’t really registered on an emotional level. The Lizards’ technology was so good that they seemed nine feet tall. Except for size, they didn’t remind him of children. With their forward-slanting posture and scaly skins, they looked something like dinosaurs, but their helmets and armored jackets gave them a martial air-probably a better martial air than he had himself right now, he thought, glancing down at his grimy RAF uniform.

  Basil Roundbush tramped up beside him. “By Jove, we did it,” he said.

  “So we did.” Goldfarb knew he sounded surprised, but couldn’t help it. He was surprised to be alive, much less victorious. Musingly, he went on, “I wonder if one of those bulletproof waistcoats would fit me.”

  “Now there’s a thought!” Roundbush exclaimed. He appraised Goldfarb with his eyes. “You’re smaller and leaner than I am, so you stand a chance. I hope for your sake one does, because the time for research in merry old England, I fear, is past.” He kicked at a broken slide rule lying on the tarmac. “Till we throw those scaly buggers out, there’s nothing but fighting left.”

  6

  O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

  What the devil was that from?Macbeth? Hamlet? King Lear? Jens Larssen was damned if he could remember, but it was something out of Shakespeare, sure as hell. The lines came floating up into his conscious mind the moment he reached the top of Lewiston Hill.

  Looking west from the hilltop, he could certainly count himself a king of infinite space. Even in a land full of spectacular scenic vistas, this one stood out. There was the endless rolling sagebrush prairie of Washington State-desert might have been a more accurate name for it, if less kind.

  Nearer, though, were the towns of Clarkston, Washington, and, on this side of the Snake River, Lewiston, Idaho, itself nestled between the Snake and the Clearwater, with mountains pinching it off north and south so that at first glance it seemed to consist of nothing but one long street.

  Rafts of logs floated on the Snake, to head downstream to be made into who could say what to help fight the Lizards. As if the clock had turned back a generation, more and more aircraft parts were wood these days.

  But did Jens really care these days how the war against the aliens went? Having the Lizards conquer the world was a nightmare of a bad dream. But when the people who had the best chance of stopping them were also the people who’d done him the most dirt, how was he supposed to feel?

  “Like hell,” he announced to the air, and kicked his bicycle into motion to roll down into Lewiston.

  Roll down intowere the operative words; in the ten miles between Lewiston Hill and Lewiston itself, US 95 dropped two thousand feet, about a four percent average grade. Averages were tricky-it was a lot steeper than that in some places. And going downhill was the easy way; if he came back by this route, he’d have the long slog up to the summit of the hill. Just thinking about it made his thighs ache.

  Lewiston bustled in a way he hadn’t seen since he left Denver, or maybe since he left Chicago. Loggers swaggered down the street. So did sawmill workers; not all the timber cut around here headed into Washington, not by a long shot. The bulk of what had to be one of the world’s biggest lumber plants was just a mile down the Clearwater. By the smoke that poured from its chimneys, it was going flat out, too. The world was a big place, too big for the Lizards to knock out every factory in it, no matter how thoroughly destructive they were.

  The sawmill was interesting in the abstract, but it didn’t make Jens want to stop for a closer look. When he came up to a YMCA building, though, he stopped so hard he almost pitched himself over the handlebars of his bicycle. Several bikes were parked out front, with a pistol-toting guard to keep an eye on them. Larssen had seen that in Denver, and elsewhere, too. Bicycles now were what horses had been in the old days-come to that, there were also a good many horses on Lewiston’s streets.

  Jens nodded to the guard as he let down the kickstand to his bike. When he went inside, he asked the clerk at the front desk, “You have hot water?”

  “Yes, sir,” the man answered, unfazed by the sudden appearance of a grimy stranger with a knapsack and a rifle on his back. He’d probably seen a lot of such strangers, for he went on, “A hot shower is two dollars. If you want a shave, you can use a straight razor and-hmm-probably a scissors for you, too, for another fifty cents. If you’ll give me your goods there, you can have them back when you pay.”

  Larssen passed him the Springfield and the knapsack. “Thanks, pal. I’ll take a miss on the razor; I’m used to the beard by now.”

  “A lot of men say the same thing,” the clerk answered, nodding. “If you want your clothes washed, too, Chung’s laundry down the street does a first-class job.”

  “I’m just passing through, so I don’t think I can stay for that, but thanks again,” Jens said. “But a hot shower! Hot dog!” He followed the signs back to the shower room.

  As promised, the water was hot, almost hot enough to scald. The soap took off not only the dirt but part of his top layer of hide, too. It was obviously homemade, mushy and full of lye and strong-smelling. But when he turned off the water and toweled himself dry, he was pink again, not assorted grimy shades of brown.

  Putting stale clothes over his clean body made him wrinkle his nose. He’d been rank for so long, he’d stopped noticing it. Maybe he’d stop at Chung’s after all. He combed back his hair and walked out to the front desk, whistling.

  When he gave the clerk a couple of dollar bills, he got his chattels back. He checked the knapsack to make sure nothing was missing. The clerk looked pained, but said nothing. He’d probably seen that a hundred times, too.

  Jens tossed the bike guard a dime, climbed onto his machine, and headed toward the bridge over the Snake that would lead into Washington State. A couple of blocks west of the YMCA, as the clerk had said, was Chung’s laundry, with Chinese characters below the English name of the shop. Jens was about to roll past it, however regretfully, when he saw the place simply called Mama’s next door.

  He stopped. If this Chung worked fast, maybe he could get his clothes washed while he had a leisurely lunch. “Why the hell not?” he muttered. An hour this way or that wasn’t enough to worry about.

  The laundryman-his first name, you learned inside, was Horace-spoke perfect English. He giggled when Larssen said he was going into Mama’s for lunch, but promised to have his clothes ready in an hour.

  When Jens opened the door to Mama’s place, he didn’t smell the friendly odors of home-cooked food he’d expected. Perfume hit him in the nose instead. The joint reeked like a cathouse. After a moment, he realized the jointwas a cathouse. It made sense. All those lumberjacks would want something to do besides chopping down trees all day. But no wonder Horace (lung had broken up when he said he was coming over here to eat.

  A big, blowsy woman, maybe Mama herself, came out of a back room. Jens’ rifle didn’t seem to bother her, either. “Ain’t you squeaky clean?” she said, eyeing his just-washed face and damp hair. “Bet you been over to the Y. That’s right thoughtful of you, it sure is. Now come on back with me and pick yourself out a pretty girl.”

  Jens opened his mouth to tell her he’d thought the place was a restaurant, but then he shut it again and followed her. He wasn’t going anywhere till the laundryman got done with his clothes, and this would be more fun than lunch.

  The girls weren’t particularly pretty, no matter what Mama said, and most of them looked mean. The lingerie they were wearing had seen better years. He wondered again if he really wanted to do this. But then he found himself nodding to a girl with curly, dark blond hair. She looked a little like Barbara had back when they were married, but he didn’t notice that, he just thought she was the best-looking woman there.

  She got up and stretched. As she headed for the stairs, she said, “A straight screw
is forty. Ten bucks more than that for half-and-half, another ten for French. You want anything else, find yourself a different gal.”

  That bald announcement almost made Jens turn on his heel and walk out. If Horace Chung hadn’t had his clothes, he might have done it. As it was, he went after the hooker. The linen on the bed in the little upstairs room was frayed but clean. Larssen wondered if Horace did the laundry for Mama’s place and, if so, how he got paid.

  The girl kicked off her shoes, pulled her nightgown up over her head, and stood impassively naked. “What’ll it be, buddy?”

  “Tell me your name, at least,” Jens said, unnerved by such straightforward capitalism.

  “Edie,” she answered, and didn’t bother asking his. Instead, she repeated, “What’ll it be?”

  “Half-and-half, I guess,” he said with dull embarrassment.

  “Show me the money first. You don’t pay, you don’t play.” She nodded when he tossed the bills onto the bed, then warned, “You come while I’m sucking you, you gotta pay the extra ten for full French, okay?”

  “Okay, okay.” He shook his head, horny and disgusted with himself at the same time. This wasn’t what he’d been used to getting in his happier days. It bore about as much resemblance to love as the painting on an orange crate did to the Mona Lisa. But it was all he could find right now.

  He shrugged out of his knapsack, set it and the Springfield in a corner by the bed. Then he undressed. Edie looked him over like somebody inspecting a slab of meat. As Mama had, she said, “You’re clean, anyhow. That’s something. Haven’t seen you round these parts before. You stop at the Y before you came here?”

  “Yeah, I did,” he answered, cherishing any human contact between them: it was the first thing she’d said to him that wasn’t strictly business.

  It was also the last. “Sit on the edge of the bed, will you?” she asked. When he did, she got down on her knees in front of him and went to work.

  She knew what she was doing, no doubt about that. Presently he patted the mattress with one hand. She lay down on the bed, her legs open. She didn’t respond when he caressed her, but gave him a good professional ride after he got on top. Afterwards, the first thing she did was scoop up the money.

  He was dressing again when he realized he hadn’t put on a rubber.Too bad for her, he thought coldly. If you were in her line of work, you took your chances with things like the clap.

  She said, “You want another round, half price?”

  “No, that’s all right,” he answered; what he was thinking about was going back to the YMCA for another shower. He probably had time, but he didn’t feel like explaining himself to the desk clerk-or not explaining himself, but bearing up under the guy’s fishy stare.

  “You want a drink downstairs, then?” Edie asked. “We got home-brew beer, moonshine, even a little real whiskey if you feel like payin’ for it.”

  She should have been peddling used cars instead of her ass and related amenities. “That’s all right,” Jens said again; all he wanted to do was get the hell out of there. Edie’s look saidcheapskate. He ignored it.

  When he went back into Chung’s laundry, the proprietor asked, “You have a nice lunch, sir?” and giggled louder than he had the first time. Then he called something in Chinese into the back room. A woman’s laugh floated out. Jens’ ears felt on fire. He thought seriously about abandoning his clothes and riding west as fast as he could go.

  In the end, he decided to stay. But as soon as Horace Chung handed him the hot laundry, he shoved it into his knapsack and fled without changing and getting the clothes he had on cleaned, as he’d intended to do.

  The steel suspension bridge over the Snake River was history-the Lizards hadn’t missed it, as they had the sawmill. The only way across the river was by rowboat. The oarsmen all wanted fifteen bucks for the trip, too. Jens flashed his letter that said he was on important government business. One of the boatmen said, “I’m as patriotic as the next guy, Mac, but I gotta feed my face.” Jens paid.

  Eastern Washington, as seen from US 410, reminded him of Utah: very fertile when next to a river or irrigated, otherwise pale alkali flats with not much more than sagebrush growing on them. He’d always thought of Washington as full of pines and moss and ferns, with water dripping everywhere all the time. This part of the state didn’t live up to the description.

  The roads hereabout hadn’t been badly bombed. Most of the bridges over rivers smaller than the Snake remained intact. Timber makeshifts let light traffic cross some of the spans that had been destroyed from the air. A couple of times, he had to pay his way across.

  He got his ashes hauled again in Walla Walla, on the third day after he’d crossed into Washington. Again he picked a dark blond girl; again he didn’t think anything of it. This time, he didn’t have any laundry to reclaim when he left the bordello. He knew nothing but relief that that was so.

  About thirty miles west of Walla Walla, US 140 swung north along the eastern bank of the Columbia toward its junction with the Snake. The country had been irrigated farmland once upon a time. Some of it looked to have been abandoned for quite a while; maybe the farmers hadn’t been able to pay their water bills.

  Other stretches, though, especially where the two big rivers joined, were just now fading. Irrigation ditches were nothing but muddy, weed-choked grooves in the ground. Here and there, farmers still cultivated small orchards and berry patches, but big stretches of land between them baked brown under the summer sun. Jens wondered what had gone wrong till he pedaled past the ruins of a pumping station, and then of another. If the water couldn’t reach land, the land wouldn’t bear.

  The town nearest the Snake River bridge (not that Jens expected to find it standing) was called Burbank. Just before he got into it, he pulled off the highway to contribute his own bit of irrigation to the roadside plants. No sooner had he started to piss than he stopped again with a snarl of pain. Now he knew without having to think about it what that burning meant.

  “Anotherdose of clap?” he howled to the sky, though that was not where he’d got it. The next week or two, till things calmed down in there, were going to be anything but fun.

  Then, half to his own surprise, he started to laugh. From everything he’d heard, the clap didn’t usually make a woman as sore as it did a man, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have it. And this time, there was every chance he’d given as good-or as bad-as he’d got.

  When Nikifor Sholudenko poked his head unannounced into the underground chamber where Ludmila Gorbunova slept and rested between missions, her first thought was that the NKVD man hoped to catch her half dressed. But Sholudenko said, “Comrade Pilot, you are ordered to report to Colonel Karpov’s office at once.”

  That was different. That was business. Ludmila jumped to her feet. “Thank you, Comrade. Take me to him at once, please.”

  Colonel Feofan Karpov was not a big man, but in his square solidity reminded Ludmila of a bear nonetheless. The stubble on his chin and the decrepit state of his uniform only added to the impression. So did the candles flickering in the underground office; they gave the place the look of a lair.

  “Good day, Comrade Pilot,” Karpov said after returning Ludmila’s salute. His voice, which was on the reedy side, did not sound particularly ursine, not even when he growled, “That will be all, Comrade,” at Sholudenko. But the NKVD man disappeared even so.

  “Good day, Comrade Colonel,” Ludmila said. “I report to you as ordered.”

  “At ease, Ludmila Vadimovna-you’re not in trouble, certainly not from me,” Karpov said. Ludmila did not ease; the colonel was a stickler for military formality, and not in the habit of addressing her by name and patronymic. The first reason she came up with for his changing his tune was that he was going to make advances at her. If he did, she decided, she’d scream.

  But instead of coming around the desk to lay a “comradely” hand on her shoulder or any such thing, he said, “I have orders for you to report to Moscow immediately. Well,
not quite immediately.” He made a wry face. “A wagon is waiting above ground to transport you. It brought a replacement pilot and a replacement mechanic.”

  “A replacement mechanic, Comrade Colonel?” Ludmila asked, puzzled.

  “Da.”Karpov scowled an angry bear’s scowl. “They are robbing me not only of one of my best pilots in you, but also of that German-Schultz-you roped into this unit. Whatever bungler they’ve sent me, he won’t measure up to the German; engines don’t care if you’re a fascist.”

  The prospect of riding in to Moscow with Georg Schultz was less than appealing; the prospect of being paired with him on whatever mission followed the trip to Moscow was downright appalling. Hoping she might find out why the two of them had been ordered to the capital, she asked, “Where and to whom are we to report, Comrade Colonel?”

  “To the Kremlin, or whatever may be left of the Kremlin after the Lizards have done their worst.” Karpov looked down at a scrap of paper on his desk. “The order is signed by a certain Colonel Boris Lidov of the People’s Commissariat for the Interior.” He saw Ludmila stiffen. “You know this man?”

  “Yes, I know him, Comrade Colonel,” Ludmila said in a small voice. She glanced around out through the doorway to see if anyone was loitering in the hall.

  Karpov’s gaze followed hers. “An NKVD bastard, eh?” he said roughly-but he didn’t raise his voice, either. “I thought as much, just from the way the order was framed. No help for it that I can see. Go gather your belongings and get into the wagon-you’ll see it when you come out of the tunnels here. Wear something civilian, if you can; it will make you less likely to be shot at from the air. And good luck to you, Ludmila Vadimovna.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Colonel,” Ludmila saluted again, then walked back down the hall to her chamber. Mechanically, she packed up her flight suit, coveralls, and pistol. She had no civilian blouses, but at the bottom of her duffel bag she did find a flowered skirt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn it.