Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

From the cupola of the Panther, Jager stared after him. With his unit on full battle alert, how the devil was he supposed to get away and get word to Mieczyslaw so he could pass it on to Anielewicz by whatever roundabout route he used? The answer was simple, and stared Jager in the face: he couldn’t. But if he didn’t, he worried not just about thousands of Jews going up in a toadstool-shaped cloud of dust, but also about Germany. What would the Lizards visit on the Vaterland for touching off an atomic bomb during a truce? Jager didn’t know. He didn’t want to find out, either.

From down in the turret of the Panther, Gunther Grillparzer said, “No show today after all, Colonel?”

“Doesn’t look that way,” Jager answered, and then took a chance by adding, “Can’t say I’m sorry, either.”

To his surprise, Grillparzer said, “Amen!” The gunner seemed to think some kind of explanation was needed there, for he went on, “I hold no brief for kikes, mind you, sir, but it ain’t like they’re our number-one worry right now, you know what I mean? It’s the Lizards I really want to boot in the arse, not them. They’re all going to hell anyway, so I don’t hardly have to worry about ’em.”

“Corporal, as far as I’m concerned, they can sew red stripes on your trousers and put you on the General Staff,” Jager told him. “I think you’ve got better strategic sense than most of our top planners, and that’s a fact.”

“If I do, then God help Germany,” Grillparzer said, and laughed.

“God help Germany,” Jager agreed, and didn’t.

The rest of the day passed in lethargic anticlimax. Jager and his crew climbed out of their Panther with nothing but relief: you rolled the dice every time you went up against the Lizards, and sooner or later snake eyes stared back at you. Sometime during the afternoon, Otto Skorzeny disappeared. Jager pictured him slouching toward Lodz, a pack on his back, and very likely makeup over the famous scar. Could he hide that devilish gleam in his eye with makeup, too? Jager had his doubts.

Johannes Drucker disappeared for a while, too, but he came back in triumph, with enough kielbasa for everybody’s supper that night. “Give that man a Knight’s Cross!” Gunther Grillparzer exclaimed. Turning to Jager, he said with a grin, “If you’re going to put me on the General Staff, sir, I might as well enjoy myself, nicht wahr?”

“Warum denn nicht?” Jager said. “Why not?”

As twilight deepened, they got a fire going and stuck a pot over it to boil the sausage. The savory steam rising from the pot made Jager’s mouth water. When he heard approaching footsteps, he expected them to come from the crew of another panzer, drawn by the smell and hoping to get their share of meat.

But the men coming up to the cookfire weren’t in panzer black, they were in SS black. So Maxi and his friends aren’t above scrounging, Jager thought, amused. Then Maxi drew a Walther from his holster and pointed it at Jager’s midsection. The SS men with him also took out their pistols, covering the rest of the startled panzer crewmen.

“You will come with me immediately, Colonel, or I will shoot you down on the spot,” Maxi said. “You are under arrest for treason against the Reich.”

“Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe Russie said. He was getting used to these sessions with Atvar. He was even coming to look forward to them. The more useful Atvar thought him now, the less likely he and his family were to have to pay for his earlier strokes against the Lizards. And guessing with the diplomats of the great powers was a game that made chess look puerile. He was, apparently, a better guesser than most of the Lizards. That kept the questions coming, and let him find out how the negotiations fared, which had a fascination of its own: he was privy to knowledge only a handful of humans possessed.

Atvar spoke in his own language. Zolraag turned these words into the usual mix of German and Polish: “You are of course familiar with the Tosevite not-emperor Hitler, and hold no good opinion of him-I take it this remains correct?”

“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord.” Moishe added an emphatic cough.

“Good,” Atvar said. “I judge you more likely, then, to give me an honest opinion of his actions than you would those of, say, Churchill: solidarity with your fellow Big Uglies will be less of an issue in Hitler’s case. Is this also correct?”

“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe repeated. Thinking of Hitler as his fellow human being did not fill him with delight. Whatever you had to say against them, the Lizards had shown themselves to be far better people than Adolf Hitler.

“Very well,” Atvar said through Zolraag. “Here is my question: how do you judge the conduct of Hitler and von Ribbentrop when the latter summoned me to announce the detonation of an atomic bomb and the resumption of warfare by Deutschland against the Race, when in fact no such detonation and no such warfare-barring a few more cease-fire violations than usual-in fact took place?”

Moishe stared. “This really happened, Exalted Fleetlord?”

“Truth,” Atvar said, a word Russie understood in the Lizards’ language.

He scratched his head as he thought. For all he knew, that might have made him uncouth in Atvar’s eyes. But then, he was a Big Ugly, so was he not uncouth in Atvar’s eyes by assumption? Slowly, he said, “I have trouble believing von Ribbentrop would make such a claim knowing it to be untrue and knowing you could easily learn it was untrue.”

“That is perceptive of you,” the fleetlord said. “When the spokesmale for Hitler did make the claim, I immediately investigated it and, finding it false, returned to inform him of the fact. The unanimous opinion of our psychologists is that my statement took him by surprise. Here: observe him for yourself.”

At Atvar’s gesture, Zolraag activated one of the little screens in the chamber. Sure enough, there stood von Ribbentrop, looking somewhere between arrogant and afraid. A Lizard the screen did not show spoke to him in hissing English. The German foreign minister’s eyes widened, his mouth dropped open, a hand groped for the edge of the table.

“Exalted Fleetlord, that is a surprised man,” Moishe declared.

“So we thought,” Atvar agreed. “This raises the following question: is the delivery of false information part of some devious scheme on Hitler’s part, or was the information intended to be true? In either case, of course, von Ribbentrop would have believed it accurate as he delivered it.”

“Yes.” Moishe scratched his head again, trying to figure out what possible benefit Hitler might have derived by deliberately deceiving his foreign minister into threatening the Lizards. For the life of him, he couldn’t come up with any. “I have to believe the Germans intended to attack you.”

“This is the conclusion we have also drawn, although we warned them they would suffer severely if they made any such attacks,” Atvar said. “It is unsettling, distinctly so: somewhere on our frontier with Hitler’s forces, or perhaps beyond that frontier, there is probably a nuclear weapon that for whatever reason has failed of ignition. We have searched for such a weapon, but have not discovered it After El Iskandariya, it is by no means certain we would discover it Now: will Hitler be willing to accept failure and resume talks, or will he seek to detonate the bomb after all?”

Being asked to peer inside Hitler’s brain was rather like being asked to debride gangrenous tissue: revolting but necessary. “If the Germans find any way to detonate the bomb, my guess is that they will,” Moishe said. “I have to say, though, that’s only a guess.”

“It accords with the predictions our researchers have made,” Atvar said. “Whether this makes it accurate, only time will show, but I believe you are giving me your best and most reasoned judgment here.”