Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Ludmila said. “Not about the SS, but about the NKVD, I mean.” She smiled happily. If two people thought the same thing at the same time, that had to mean they were well matched. But for herself, Jager was all she had left in the world; not believing the two of them were well matched would have left her desolately lonesome. Her eyes slipped to the bed. Her smile changed, ever so slightly. They were well matched there, that was certain.

Then Jager said, “Well, not surprising. We haven’t got much else to think about here, have we? There’s us-and Skorzeny.”

“Da,” Ludmila said, disappointed out of the German she’d mostly been speaking and back into Russian. What she’d taken as a good sign was to Jager merely a commonplace. How sad that made her showed how giddy she was feeling.

On the table lay a chunk of black bread. Jager went into the kitchen, came back with a bone-handled knife, and cut the chunk in two. He handed Ludmila half of it. Without the slightest trace of irony, he said, “German service at its finest.”

Was he joking? Did he expect her to take him literally? She wondered as she ate her breakfast. That she didn’t know and couldn’t guess with any real confidence of being right bothered her. It reminded her how little she truly knew of the man she’d helped rescue and whose fate she’d linked with her own. She didn’t want to be reminded of that-very much the contrary.

When she’d flown away with him, he’d come straight out of the hands of the SS. He hadn’t had a weapon then, of course. Anielewicz had given him a Schmeisser after he got to Lodz, a sign the Jewish fighting leader trusted him perhaps further than he was willing to admit to himself. Jager had spent a lot of time since with oil and brushes and cloth, getting the submachine gun into what he reckoned proper fighting condition.

Now he started to check it yet again. Watching how intent his face grew as he worked made Ludmila snort, half in annoyance, half in fascination. When he didn’t look up, she snorted again, louder. That distracted him enough to make him remember she was there. She said, “Sometimes I think you Germans ought to marry machines, not people. Schultz, your sergeant-you act the same way he did.”

“If you take care of your tools, as you should, they take proper care of you when you need them.” Jager spoke as automatically as if he were reciting the multiplication table. “If what you need them for is keeping yourself alive, you’d better take care of them, or you’ll be too dead to kick yourself for not doing it.”

“It’s not that you do it. It’s how you do it, like there is nothing in the world but you and the machine, whatever it is, and you are listening to it. I have never seen Russians do this,” Ludmila said. “Schultz was the same way. He thought well of you. Perhaps he was trying to be like you.”

That seemed to amuse Jager, who checked the action of the cocking handle, nodded to himself, and slung the Schmeisser over his shoulder. “Didn’t you tell me he’d found a Russian lady, too?”

“Yes. I don’t think they got on as well as we do, but yes.” Ludmila hadn’t told him how much time Schultz had spent trying to get her trousers down as well as Tatiana’s. She didn’t intend to tell him that. Schultz hadn’t done it, and she hadn’t-quite-had to smash him across the face with the barrel of her pistol to get him to take his hands off her.

Jager said, “Let’s go to the fire station ourselves. I want to tell Anielewicz something. It’s not just whorehouses-Skorzeny might be taking shelter in a church, too. He’s an Austrian, so he’s a Catholic-or he was probably raised as one, anyhow; he’s about the least godly man I know. But that’s one more place, or set of places, to look for him.”

“You have all sorts of ideas.” Ludmila would not have thought of anything that had to do with religion. Here, though, that outmoded notion proved strategically relevant. “It is worth checking, I think, yes. The part of Lodz that is not Jewish is Catholic.”

“Yes.” Jager headed for the door. Ludmila followed. They walked downstairs hand in hand. The fire station was only a few blocks away-go down the street, turn onto Lutomierska, and you were there.

They went down the street. They were about to turn onto Lutomierska when a great thunderclap, a noise like the end of the world, smote the air. For a dreadful moment, Ludmila thought Skorzeny had touched off his bomb in spite of everything they’d done to stop him.

But then, as glass blew out of windows that had held it, she realized she was wrong. This explosion had been close by. She’d seen an explosive-metal bomb go off. Had she been so near one of those blasts, she would have been dead before she realized anything had happened.

People were screaming. Some ran away from the place where the bomb had gone off, others toward it to help the wounded. She and Jager were among the latter, pushing past men and women trying to flee.

Through stunned ears, she caught snatches of horrified comments in Yiddish and Polish: “-horsecart in front-” “-just stopped there-” “-man went away-” “-blew up in front of-”

By then, she’d come close enough to see the building in front of which the bomb had blown up. The fire station on Lutomierska Street was a pile of rubble, through which flames were beginning to creep. “Bozhemoi,” she said softly.

Jager was looking at the dazed and bleeding victims, grim purpose on his face. “Where’s Anielewicz?” he demanded, as if willing the Jewish fighting leader to emerge from the wreckage. Then he spoke another word: “Skorzeny.”

The Lizard named Oyyag dipped his head in a gesture of submission he’d learned from the NKVD. “It shall be done, superior sir,” he said. “We shall meet all norms required of us.”

“That is good, headmale,” David Nussboym answered in the language of the Race. “If you do, your rations will be restored to the normal daily allotment.” After Ussmak died, the Lizards of Alien Prisoner Barracks Three had fallen far below their required labor quotas, and had gone hungry-or rather, hungrier-on account of it. Now, at last, the new headmale, though he’d had no great status before his capture, was starting to whip them back into shape.

Oyyag, Nussboym thought, would make a better headmale for the barracks than Ussmak had. The other Lizard, perhaps because he’d been a mutineer, had tried to make waves in camp, too. If Colonel Skriabin hadn’t found a way to break the hunger strike he’d started, no telling how much mischief and disruption in routine he might have caused.

Oyyag swiveled his eye turrets rapidly in all directions, making sure none of the other males in the barracks was paying undue attention to his conversation with Nussboym. He lowered his voice and spoke such Russian as he had: “This other thing, I do. I do it, you do like you say.”

“Da,” Nussboym said, wishing he were as sure he could deliver on his promise as he sounded.

Only one way to find out whether he could or not. He left the barracks hall and headed for the camp headquarters. Luck was with him. When he approached Colonel Skriabin’s office, the commandant’s secretary was not guarding the way in. Nussboym stood in the doorway and waited to be noticed.

Eventually, Skriabin looked up from the report he’d been writing. Trains were reaching the camp more reliably now that the cease-fire was in place. With paper no longer in short supply, Skriabin was busy catching up on all the bureaucratic minutiae he’d had to delay simply because he couldn’t record the relevant information.

“Come in, Nussboym,” he said in Polish, putting down his pen. The smudges of ink on his fingers told how busy he’d been. He seemed glad of the chance for a break. Nussboym nodded to himself. He’d hoped to catch the colonel in a receptive mood, and here his hope was coming true. Skriabin pointed to the hard chair in front of his desk. “Sit down. You have come to see me for a reason, of course?” You’d better not be wasting my time, was what he meant.