Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

She found the Baltic coast and followed it south toward Riga. The sea had frozen some kilometers out from the shore. The sight made her shiver. Even for a Russian, that was a lot of ice. Smoke rose from Riga harbor. The Lizards had been pummeling harbors lately. When Ludmila approached the docks, she started drawing rifle fire. Shaking her fists at the idiots who took her biplane for a Lizard aircraft, she swung away and looked around for someplace to land the Kukuruznik.

Not far from what looked like the main boulevard, she spied a park full of bare-branched trees. It had enough empty space-snow and dead, yellow-brown grass-and to spare for the biplane. No sooner had she slid to a jerky stop than German troops in field-gray and white came running up to her.

They saw the red stars on the Kukuruznik’s wings and fuselage. “Who are you, you damned Russian, and what are you doing here?” one of them shouted.

A typically arrogant German, he assumed she spoke his language. As it happened, he was right this time. “Senior Lieutenant Ludmila Gorbunova, Red Air Force,” Ludmila answered in German. “I have with me a despatch for General Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt from General Chill in Pskov. Will you be so kind as to take me to him? And will you camouflage this aircraft so the Lizards cannot spot it?”

The Hitlerite soldiers drew back in surprise to hear her voice. She was sitting in the cockpit, and her leather flying helmet and thick winter gear had effectively disguised her sex. The German who’d spoken before leered now and said, “We’ve heard of pilots who call themselves Stalin’s Hawks. Are you one of Stalin’s Sparrows?”

Now he used du rather than Sie. Ludmila wasn’t sure whether he intended the familiar intimacy or insult. Either way, she didn’t care for it. “Perhaps,” she answered in a voice colder than the weather, “but only if you’re one of Hitler’s Jackasses.”

She waited to see whether that would amuse or anger the German. She was in luck; not only did he laugh, he threw back his head and brayed like a donkey. “You have to be a jackass to end up in a godforsaken place like this,” he said. “All right, Kamerad-no, Kameradin- Senior Lieutenant, I’ll take you to headquarters. Why don’t you just come along with me?”

Several Germans ended up escorting her, maybe as guards, maybe because they didn’t want to leave her alone with the first one, maybe for the novelty of walking along with a woman while on duty. She did her best to ignore them; Riga interested her more.

Even after being battered by years of war, it didn’t look like a godforsaken place to her. The main street-Brivibas Street, it was called (her eyes and brain needed a little while to adjust to the Latin alphabet)-had more shops, and smarter-looking ones, than she’d seen in Kiev. The clothes civilians wore on the street were shabby and none too clean, but of better fabric and finer cut than would have been usual in Russia or the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Some of the people recognized her gear. In spite of her German escort, they yelled at her in accented Russian and in Latvian. She knew the Russian was insulting, and the Latvian sounded less than complimentary. To rub in the point, one of the Germans said, “They love you here in Riga.”

“There are plenty of places where they love Germans even more,” she said, which made the Nazi shut up with a snap. Had it been a chess game, she would have won the exchange.

The Rathaus where the German commandant had his headquarters was near the corner of Brivibas and Kaleiyu Streets. To Ludmila, the German-style building looked old as time. Like the Krom in Pskov, it had no sentries on the outside to give away its location to the Lizards. Once inside the ornately carved doors, though, Ludmila found herself inspected by two new and hostile Germans in cleaner, fresher uniforms than she was used to seeing.

“What do you have here?” one of them asked her escort.

“Russian flier. She says she has a despatch from Pskov for the commanding general,” the talky soldier answered. “I figured we’d bring her here and let you headquarters types sort things out.”

“She?” The sentry looked Ludmila over in a different way. “By God, it is a woman, isn’t it? Under all that junk she’s wearing, I couldn’t tell.”

He plainly assumed she spoke only Russian. She did her best to look down her nose at him, which wasn’t easy, since he was probably thirty centimeters the taller. In her best German, she said, “It will never matter to you one way or the other, I promise you that.”

The sentry stared at her. Her escorts, who’d been chatting with her enough to see her more or less as a human being-and who, like any real fighting men, had no great use for headquarters troops-suppressed their snickers not quite well enough. That made the sentry look even less happy. In a voice full of winter, he said, “Come with me. I will take you to the commandant’s adjutant.”

The adjutant was a beefy, red-faced fellow with a captain’s two pips on his shoulder straps. He said, “Give me this despatch, young lady. Generalleutnant Graf Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt is a busy man. I shall convey to him your message as soon as it is convenient.”

Maybe he thought the titles and double-barreled name would impress her. If so, he forgot he was dealing with a socialist. Ludmila stuck out her chin and looked stubborn. “Nein,” she said. “I was told by General Chill to give the message to your commandant, not to anyone else. I am a soldier, I follow orders.”

Red-Face turned redder. “One moment,” he said, and got up from his desk. He went through a door behind it. When he came out again, he might have been chewing on a lemon. “The commandant will see you.”

“Good.” Ludmila headed for that door herself. Had the adjutant not hastily got out of her way, she would have walked right over him.

She’d expected an overbred aristocrat with pinched features, a haughty expression, and a monocle. Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt had pinched features, all right, but plainly for no other reason than that he was a sick man. His skin looked like yellow parchment drawn tight over bones. When he was younger and healthier, he’d probably been handsome. Now he was just someone carrying on as best he could despite illness.

He did get up and bow to her, which took her by surprise. His cadaverous smile said he’d noticed, too. Then he surprised her again, saying in Russian, “Welcome to Riga, Senior Lieutenant. So-what news do you bring me from Lieutenant General Chill?”

“Sir, I don’t know.” Ludmila took out the envelope and handed it to him. “Here is the message.”

Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt started to open it, then paused and got up from his chair again. He hurriedly left the office by a side door. When he came back, his face was even paler than it had been. “I beg your pardon,” he said, finishing the job of opening the envelope. “I seem to have come down with a touch of dysentery.”

He had a lot more than a touch; by the look of him, he’d fall over dead one fine day before too long. Intellectually, Ludmila had known the Nazis clung to their posts with as much courage and dedication-or fanaticism, one-as anyone else. Seeing that truth demonstrated, though, sometimes left her wondering how decent men could follow such a system.

That made her think of Heinrich Jager and, a moment later, start to blush. General Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt was studying General Chill’s note. To her relief, he didn’t notice her turning pink. He grunted a couple of times, softly, unhappily. At last, he looked up from the paper and said, “I am very sorry, Senior Lieutenant, but I cannot do as the German commandant of Pskov requests.”