Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

She hadn’t imagined a German could put that so delicately. Even if he was a Hitlerite, he was kulturny. “What does General Chill request, sir?” she asked, then added a hasty amendment: “if it’s not too secret for me to know.”

“By no means,” he answered-he spoke Russian like an aristocrat. “He wanted me to help resupply him with munitions-” He paused and coughed.

“So he would not have to depend on Soviet equipment, you mean,” Ludmila said.

“Just so,” Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt agreed. “You saw the smoke in the harbor, though?” He courteously waited for her nod before continuing, “That is still coming from the freighters the Lizards caught there, the freighters that were full of arms and ammunition of all sorts. We shall be short here because of that, and have none to spare for our neighbors.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ludmila said, and found she was not altogether lying for the sake of politeness. She didn’t want the Germans in Pskov strengthened in respect to Soviet forces there, but she didn’t want them weakened in respect to the Lizards, either. Finding a balance that would let her be happy on both those counts would not be easy. She went on, “Do you have a written reply for me to take back to Lieutenant General Chill?”

“I shall draft one for you,” Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt said. “But first-Beck!” He raised his voice. The adjutant came bounding into the room. “Fetch the senior lieutenant here something from the mess,” Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt told him. “She has come a long way on a sleeveless errand, and she could no doubt do with something hot.”

“Jawohl, Herr Generalleutnant!” Beck said. He turned to Ludmila. “If you would be so kind as to wait one moment, please, Senior Lieutenant Gorbunova.” He dipped his head, almost as if he were a maitre d’ in some fancy, decadent capitalist restaurant, then hurried away. If his commander accepted Ludmila, he accepted her, too.

When Captain Beck came back, he carried on a tray a large, steaming bowl. “Maizes zupe ar putukrejumu, a Latvian dish,” he said. “It’s corn soup with whipped cream.”

“Thank you,” Ludmila said, and dug in. The soup was hot and thick and filling, and didn’t taste that alien. Russian-style cooking used a lot of cream, too, though sour as often as sweet.

While Ludmila ate, Beck went out to his own office, then came back a couple of minutes later to lay a sheet of paper on General Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt’s desk. The German commander at Riga studied the message and glanced over at Ludmila, but kept silent until, with a sigh, she set down the bowl. Then he said, “I have a favor to ask of you. If you don’t mind.”

“That depends on what sort of favor it is,” she answered cautiously.

Graf Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt’s smile made him look like a skeleton that had just heard a good joke. “I assure you, Senior Lieutenant, I have no improper designs upon your undoubtedly fair body. This is a purely military matter, one where you can help us.”

“I didn’t think you had designs on me, sir,” Ludmila said.

“No?” The German general smiled again. “How disappointing.” While Ludmila was trying to figure out how to take that, Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt went on, “We are in contact with a number of partisan bands in Poland.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in. “I suppose I should note, this is partisan warfare against the Lizards, not against the Reich. The bands have in them Germans, Poles, Jews-even a few Russians, I have heard. This particular one, down near Hrubieszow, has informed us they could particularly use some antipanzer mines. You could fly those mines to them faster than we could get them there any other way. What say you?”

“I don’t know,” Ludmila answered. “I am not under your command. Have you no aircraft of your own?”

“Aircraft, yes, a few, but none like that Flying Sewing Machine in which you arrived,” Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt said. Ludmila had heard that German nickname for the U-2 before; it never failed to fill her with wry pride. The general went on, “My last Fieseler Storch liaison plane could have done the job, but it was hit a couple of weeks ago. You know what the Lizards do to larger, more conspicuous machines. Hrubieszow is about five hundred kilometers south and a little west of here. Can you do the job? I might add that the panzers you help disable will probably benefit Soviet forces as much as those of the Wehrmacht.”

Since the Germans had driven organized Soviet forces-as opposed to partisans-deep into Russia, Ludmila had her doubts about that. Still, the situation had grown extremely fluid since the Lizards arrived, and a senior lieutenant in the Red Air Force did not know all there was to know about deployments, either. Ludmila said, “Will you be able to get word to Lieutenant General Chill without my flying back to give it to him?”

“I think we can manage that,” Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt answered. “If it’s all that stands in the way of your flying this mission, I’m sure we can manage it.”

Ludmila considered. “You’ll have to give me petrol to get there,” she said at last. “As a matter of fact, the partisans will have to give me petrol to let me get back. Have they got any?”

“They should be able to lay their hands on some,” the German general said. “After all, it hasn’t been used much in Poland since the Lizards came. And, of course, when you return here, we will give you fuel for your return flight to Pskov.”

She hadn’t even asked about that yet. In spite of that forbidding name and those titles, Generalleutnant Graf Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt was indeed a gentleman of the old school. That helped Ludmila make up her mind to nod in agreement to him. Later, she would decide she should have picked better reasons for making up her mind.

Richard Peterson was a decent technician but, as far as Brigadier General Leslie Groves was concerned, a hopeless stick-in-the-mud. He sat in the hard chair in Groves’ office in the Science Building of the University of Denver and said, “This containment scheme you have in mind, sir, it’s going to be hard to maintain it and increase plutonium production at the same time.”

Groves slammed a big, meaty fist down on the desk. He was a big, meaty man, with short-cropped, gingery hair, a thin mustache, and the blunt features of a mastiff. He had a mastiff’s implacable aggressiveness, too. “So what are you telling me, Peterson?” he rumbled ominously. “Are you saying we’re going to start leaking radioactives into the river so the Lizards can figure out where they are? You’d better not be saying that, because you know what’ll happen if you are.”

“Of course I know.” Peterson’s voice went high and shrill. “The Lizards will blow us to kingdom come.”

“That’s just exactly right,” Groves said. “I’m damn lucky I wasn’t in Washington, D.C., when they dropped their bomb there.” He snorted. “All they got rid of in Washington was some Congresscritters-odds are, they helped the war effort. But if they land one on Denver, we can’t make any more nuclear bombs of our own. And if we can’t do that, we lose the war.”

“I know that, too,” Peterson answered. “But the reprocessing plant can only do so much. If you get more plutonium out of it, you put more byproducts into the filters-and if they make it through the filters, they go into the South Platte.”

“We have to have more plutonium,” Groves said flatly. “If that means putting in more filters or doing more scrubbing of the ones we have, then take care of it. That’s what you’re for. You tell me you can’t do it, I’ll find somebody who can, I promise you that. You’ve got top priority for getting materials, not just from Denver but from all over the country. Use it or find another job.”