Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

“I’ll listen to him.” Anielewicz glanced at Ludmila. “Who’s your friend?”

She answered for herself, with manifest pride: “Ludmila Vadimovna Gorbunova, Senior Lieutenant, Red Air Force.”

“Red Air Force?” Anielewicz’s lips silently shaped the words. “You have the oddest friends, Jager-her and me, for instance. What would Hitler say if he knew?”

“He’d say I was dead meat,” Jager answered. “Of course, since I was already under arrest for treason, he’s already said that, or his bully boys have. Right now, I want to keep him from blowing up Lodz, and maybe keep the Lizards from blowing up Germany to pay him back. For better or worse, it still is my fatherland. Skorzeny doesn’t care what happens next. He’ll touch that thing off for no better reason than because someone told him to.”

“You were right,” the woman beside Anielewicz said. “You did see him, then. I thought you were worrying over every little thing.”

“I wish I had been, Bertha,” he replied, worry and affection warring in his voice. He turned his attention back to Jager. “I didn’t think… anybody”-he’d probably been about to say something like even you damned Nazis , but forbore-“would explode the bomb in the middle of truce talks. Shows what I know, doesn’t it?” His gaze sharpened. “You were arrested for treason, you say? Gevalt! They found you were passing things to us?”

“They found out I was, yes,” Jager answered with a weary nod. Since his rescue, things had happened too fast for him to take them all in at once. For now, he was trying to roll with each one as it hit. Later, if there was a later and it wasn’t frantic, he’d do his best to figure out what everything meant. “Karol is dead.” One more memory he wished he didn’t have. “They didn’t really have any idea how much I was passing on to you. If they’d known a tenth part of it, I’d have been in pieces on the floor when my boys came to break me out-and if my boys knew a tenth part of it, they never would have come.”

Anielewicz studied him. Quietly, the younger man said, “If it hadn’t been for you, we wouldn’t have known about the bomb, it would have gone off, and God only knows what would have happened next.” He offered the words as in consolation for Jager’s having been rescued by his men when they didn’t know what he’d truly done; he understood, with a good officer’s instinctive grasp, how hard that was to accept.

“You say you saw Skorzeny?” Jager asked, and Anielewicz nodded. Jager grimaced. “You must have found the bomb, too. He said it was in a graveyard. Did you move it after you found it?”

“Yes, and that wasn’t easy, either,” Anielewicz said, wiping his forehead with a sleeve to show how hard it was. “We pulled the detonator, too-not just the wireless switch, but the manual device-so Skorzeny can’t set it off even if he finds it and even if he gets to it.”

Jager held up a warning hand. “Don’t bet your life on that. He may come up with the detonator you yanked, or he may have one of his own. You never want to underestimate what he can do. Don’t forget: I’ve helped him do it”

“If he has only a detonator for use by the hand,” Ludmila said in her slow German, “would he not be blowing himself up along with everything else? If he had to, would he do that?”

“Good question.” Anielewicz looked from her to Jager. “You know him best.” He made that an accusation. “Nu? Would he?”

“I know two things,” Jager answered. “First one is, he’s liable to have some sort of scheme for setting it off by hand and escaping anyhow-no, I have no idea what, but he may. Second one is, you didn’t just make him angry, you made him furious when his nerve-gas bomb didn’t go off. He owes you one for that. And he has his orders. And, whatever else you can say about him, he’s a brave man. If the only way he can set it off is to blow himself up with it, he’s liable to be willing to do that.”

Mordechai Anielewicz nodded, looking unhappy. “I was afraid you were going to say that. People who will martyr themselves for their cause are much harder to deal with than the ones who just want to live for it.” His chuckle held little humor. “The Lizards complain too many people are willing to become martyrs. Now I know how they feel.”

“What will you do with us now that we are here?” Ludmila asked.

“That is another good question,” said the woman-Bertha-sitting by Anielewicz. She turned to him, fondly; Jager wondered if they were married. She wore no ring, whatever that meant. “What shall we do with them?”

“Jager is a soldier, and a good one, and he knows Skorzeny and the way his mind works,” the Jewish fighting leader said. “If he had not been reliable before, he would not be here now. Him we will give a weapon and let him help us guard the bomb.”

“And what of me?” Ludmila demanded indignantly; Jager could have guessed she was going to do that. Her hand came to rest on the butt of her automatic pistol. “I am a soldier. Ask Heinrich. Ask the Nazis. Ask the Lizards.”

Anielewicz held up a placatory hand. “I believe all this,” he answered, “but first things first.” Yes, he was a good officer, not that Jager found that news. He knew how to set priorities. He also knew how to laugh, which he did now. “And you will probably shoot me if I try to separate you from Colonel Jager here. So. All right Wehrmacht, Red Air Force, a bunch of crazy Jews-we are all in this together, right?”

“Together,” Jager agreed. “Together we save Lodz, or together we go up in smoke. That’s about how it is.”

A male shook Ussmak. “Get up, headmale! You must get up,” Oyyag said urgently, adding an emphatic cough. “That is the signal for rousing. If you do not present yourself, you will be punished. The whole barracks will be punished because of your failing.”

Ever so slowly, Ussmak began to move. Among the Race, superiors were supposed to be responsible for inferiors and to look out for their interests. So it had been for millennia uncounted. So, on Home, it no doubt continued to be. Here on Tosev 3, Ussmak was an outlaw. That weakened his bonds of cohesion to the group, though some of them were mutineers, too. Even more to the point, he was a starved, exhausted outlaw. When you were less than convinced your own life would long continue-when you were less than convinced you wanted it to continue-group solidarity came hard.

He managed to drag himself to his feet and lurch outside for the morning inspection. The Tosevite guards, who probably could not have stated their correct number of thumbs twice running without luck on their side, had to count the males of the Race four times before they were satisfied no one had grown wings and flown away during the night. Then they let them go in to breakfast.

It was meager, even by the miserable standards of the prison camp. Ussmak did not finish even his own small portion. “Eat,” Oyyag urged him. “How can you get through another day’s work if you do not eat?”

Ussmak had his own counterquestion. “How can I get through another day’s work even if I do eat? Anyhow, I am not hungry.”

That set the other male hissing in alarm. “Headmale, you must report to the Big Ugly physicians. Perhaps they can give you something to improve your appetite, to improve your condition.”

Ussmak’s mouth fell open. “A new body, perhaps? A new spirit?”

“You cannot eat?” Oyyag said. Ussmak’s weary gesture showed he could not. His companion in misery, who was every bit as thin as he was, hesitated, but not for long. “May I consume your portion, then?” When Ussmak did not at once say no, the other male gulped down the food.

As if in a dream, Ussmak shambled out to the forest with his work gang. He drew an axe and went slowly to work hacking down a tree with pale bark. He chopped at it with all his strength, but made little progress. “Work harder, you,” the Tosevite guard watching him snapped in the Russki language.