Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

“It’s on fire itself by now,” he answered. “The other explosion you heard was the fire station.” His questioner stared at him in horror. When he had time, he figured he would be horrified, too. What would the ghetto do for a fire engine from now on? He grunted. If they didn’t stop Skorzeny, from now on would be a phrase without meaning.

He rounded another corner, Jager and Ludmila beside him. Almost, then, he stopped dead in his tracks. The burning building housed the stable that held the heavy draft horses he’d gathered to move the bomb in case of need. Fire trapped the horses in their stalls. Their terrified screams, more dreadful than those of wounded women, dinned in his ears.

He wanted to go help the animals, and had to make himself trot past them. People who didn’t know what he did were trying to get the horses out of the stable. He looked to make sure none of the bomb guards were there. To his relief, he didn’t see any, but he knew he might well have. When that thought crossed his mind, he was suddenly certain Skorzeny hadn’t bombed the building at random. He’d tried to create a distraction, to lure the guards away from their proper posts.

“That SS pal of yours, he’s a real mamzer, isn’t he?” he said to Jager.

“A what?” the panzer man asked.

“A bastard,” Anielewicz said, substituting a German word for a Yiddish one.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Jager said. “Christ, Anielewicz, you don’t know a tenth part of it.”

“I’m finding out,” Mordechai answered. “Come on, we go round this last corner and then we’re there.” He yanked the rifle from his shoulder, flipped off the safety, and chambered the first round from the clip. Jager nodded grimly. He also had his Schmeisser ready to fire. And Ludmila had been carrying her little automatic in her hand all along. It wasn’t much, but better than nothing.

At the last corner, they held up. If they went charging around it, they were liable to be walking straight into a buzz saw. Ever so cautiously, Mordechai looked down the street toward the dead factory. He didn’t see anyone, not with a quick glance, and he knew where to look. In the end, though, whether he saw anyone didn’t matter. They had to go forward. If Skorzeny was ahead of them… With luck, he’d be busy at the bomb. Without luck-

He glanced over to Jager. “Any better idea of how many little friends Skorzeny is liable to have with him?”

The panzer colonel’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a mirthless grin. “Only one way to find out, isn’t there? I’ll go first, then you, then Ludmila. We’ll leapfrog till we get to where we’re going.”

Mordechai resented his taking over like that, even if the tactic did make good sense. “No, I’ll go first,” he said, and then, to prove to himself and Jager both that it wasn’t bravado, he added, “You’ve got the weapon with the most firepower. Cover me as I move up.”

Jager frowned, but nodded after a moment. He slapped Anielewicz lightly on the shoulder. “Go on, then.” Anielewicz dashed forward, ready to dive behind a pile of rubble if anyone started shooting from inside the factory. No one did. He hurled himself into a doorway that gave him some cover. No sooner had he done so than Jager ran past him, bent double and dodging back and forth. He might have been a panzer man, but he’d learned somewhere to fight on foot, Anielewicz scratched his head. The German was old enough to have fought in the last war. And who but he could say what all he’d done in this one?

Ludmila ran by both of them. She chose a doorway on the opposite side of the street in which to shelter. While she paused there, she shifted the pistol to her left hand so she could shoot from that position without exposing much of her body to return fire. She knew her business, too, then.

Anielewicz sprinted past her, up to within ten or twelve meters of the hole in the wall that led into the ruined factory. He peered in, trying to pierce the gloom. Was that someone lying still, not far inside? He couldn’t be certain, but it looked that way.

Behind him, booted feet thumped on the pavement. He hissed and waved; Heinrich Jager saw him and ducked into the doorway where he was standing. “What’s wrong?” the German asked, breathing hard.

Anielewicz pointed. Jager narrowed his eyes, squinting ahead.

The lines that came out when he did that said he was indeed old enough to have fought in the First World War. “That’s a body,” he said, just as Ludmila came up to crowd the narrow niche in front of the door. “I’d bet anything you care to name it isn’t Skorzeny’ s body, either.”

“No, thanks,” Mordechai said. “I don’t have much, but what I’ve got, I’ll keep.” He drew in a deep breath. That took some effort. Nerves, he thought; he hadn’t run that far. He pointed again. “If we can make it up to that wall, we go in there and then head for the bomb along the clear path that leads into the middle of the building. Once we’re at the wall, nobody can shoot at us without giving us a clear shot back at him.”

“We go, then,” Ludmila said, and ran for the wall. She made it. Muttering under his breath, Jager followed. So did Anielewicz. Ever so cautiously, he peered into the factory. Yes, that was a sentry lying there-his rifle lay beside him. His chest wasn’t moving.

Mordechai tried to take another deep breath himself. His lungs didn’t seem to want to work. Inside his chest, his heart stumbled. He turned back toward Jager and Ludmila. It had been shadowy inside the wrecked factory. He’d expected that. But here, too, on a bright, sunny day, he saw his comrades only dimly. He looked up at the sun. Staring at it didn’t hurt his eyes. He looked back to Ludmila. Her eyes were very blue, he thought, and then realized why: her pupils had contracted so much, he could barely see them at all.

He fought for another hitching breath. “Something’s-wrong,” he gasped.

Heinrich Jager had watched the day go dark around him without thinking much of it till Anielewicz spoke. Then he swore loudly and foully, while fear raced through him. He was liable to have killed himself and the woman he loved and all of Lodz out of sheer stupidity. You couldn’t see nerve gas. You couldn’t smell it. You couldn’t taste it. It would kill you just the same.

He yanked open the aid kit he’d used to bandage the wounded old Jew. He had-he thought he had-five syringes, one for himself and each man in his panzer crew. If the SS had taken those out when they’d arrested him-If they’d done that, he was dead, and he wouldn’t be the only one.

But the blackshirts hadn’t They hadn’t thought to paw through the kit and see what was inside. He blessed them for their inefficiency.

He took out the syringes. “Antidote,” he told Ludmila. “Hold still.” All at once, speaking was an effort for him, too: the nerve gas was having its way. A few more minutes and he would have quietly keeled over and died, without ever figuring out why he was dead.

Ludmila, for a wonder, didn’t argue. Maybe she was having trouble talking and breathing, too. He jabbed the syringe into the meat other thigh, as he’d been trained, and pressed down on the plunger.

He grabbed another syringe. “You,” he told Anielewicz as he yanked off its protective cap. The Jewish fighting leader nodded. Jager hurried to inject him; he was starting to turn blue. If your lungs didn’t work and your heart didn’t work, that was what happened to you.

Jager threw down the second syringe. Its glass body shattered on the pavement He heard that, but had trouble seeing it. Working as much by touch as by sight, he got out another syringe and stabbed himself in the leg.

He felt as if he’d held a live electrical wire against his flesh. It wasn’t well-being that rushed through him; instead, he was being poisoned in a different way, one that fought the action of the nerve gas. His mouth went dry. His heart pounded so loud, he had no trouble hearing it. And the street, which had gone dim and faint as the nerve gas squeezed his pupils shut, all at once seemed blindingly bright. He blinked. Tears filled his eyes.