Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

Mutt had just set his hand on the doorknob when a horrible racket started outside: men shouting and cursing and bellowing, “No!” “What the hell’s goin’ on?” Mutt said. The question wasn’t rhetorical; it didn’t sound like any brawl he’d ever heard.

Through the shouts came the sound of a woman weeping as if her heart would break. “My God,” Suzie said quietly. Mutt looked back toward her. She was crossing herself. As if to explain, she went on, “That’s Rita. I didn’t think Rita would cry if you murdered whatever family she’s got right in front of her face.”

Fists pounded, not on the door but against the wall. Mutt went out into the hallway. GIs were sobbing unashamed, tears cutting winding clean tracks through the dirt on their faces. At the cash box, Rita had her head buried in her arms. “What the hell is going on?” Mutt repeated.

The madam looked up at him. Her face was ravaged, ancient. “He’s dead,” she said. “Somebody just brought news he’s dead.”

By the way she said it, she might have been talking about her own father. But if she had been, none of the dogfaces would have given a damn. All they were here for was a fast fuck, same as Mutt. “Who’s dead?” he asked.

“The President,” Rita answered, at the same time as a corporal choked out, “FDR.” Mutt felt as if he’d been kicked in the belly. He gaped for a moment, his mouth falling open like a bluegill’s out of water. Then, to his helpless horror, he started bawling like everybody else.

“Iosef Vissarionovich, there is no reason to think the change in political leadership in the United States will necessarily bring on a change in American policy or in the continuation of the war against the Lizards,” Vyacheslav Molotov said.

“Necessarily.” Iosef Stalin spoke the word in a nasty, mocking singsong voice. “This is a fancy way to say you haven’t the faintest idea what will happen next as far as the United States is concerned.”

Molotov scribbled something on the pad he held in his lap. To Stalin, it would look as if he was taking notes. Actually, he was giving himself a chance to think. The trouble was, the General Secretary was right. The man who would have succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, was dead, killed in the Lizards’ nuclear bombing of Seattle. The Foreign Commissariat was, however, quite familiar with Cordell Hull, the new President of the United States.

The foreign commissar trotted out what they did know: “As Secretary of State, Hull consistently supported Roosevelt’s fore-doomed effort to reinvigorate the oppressive structure of American monopoly capitalism, forging trade ties with Latin America and attempting financial reform. As you well know, he also strongly supported the President in his opposition to fascism and in his conduct of the war first against the Hitlerites and then against the Lizards. As I say, I think it reasonable to assume he will continue to carry out the policies his predecessor initiated.”

“If you want someone to carry out a policy, you hire a clerk,” Stalin said, his voice dripping scorn. “What I want to know is, what sort of policies will Hull set?”

“Only the event will tell us,” Molotov replied, reluctant to admit ignorance to Stalin but more afraid to make a guess that would prove wrong soon enough for the General Secretary to remember it. With his usual efficiency, he hid the resentment he felt at Stalin’s reminding him he was hardly more than a glorflied clerk himself.

Stalin paused to get his pipe going. He puffed in silence for a couple of minutes. The reek of makhorka, cheap harsh Russian tobacco, filled the little room in the basement of the Kremlin. Not even the head of the Soviet Union enjoyed anything better these days. Like everyone else, Stalin and Molotov were getting by on borscht and shchi- beet soup and cabbage soup. They filled your belly and let you preserve at least the illusion that you were being nourished. If you were lucky enough to be able to put meat in them every so often, as the leaders of the Soviet Union were, illusion became reality.

“Do you think the death of Roosevelt will affect whether the Americans send us assistance for the explosive-metal bomb project?” Stalin asked.

Molotov started scribbling again. Stalin was coming up with all sorts of dangerous questions today. They were important; Molotov couldn’t very well evade them; and he couldn’t afford to be wrong, either.

At last he said, “Comrade General Secretary, I am given to understand that the Americans had agreed to assign one of their physicists to our project. Because of the increase in Lizard attacks on shipping, however, he is coming overland, by way of Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. I do not believe he has yet entered Soviet territory, or I should have been apprised of it.”

Stalin’s pipe emitted more smoke signals. Molotov wished he could read them. Beria claimed he could tell what Stalin was thinking by the way the General Secretary laughed, but Beria claimed a lot of things that weren’t-necessarily-so. Telling the NKVD chief as much carried its own set of risks, though.

Hoping to improve Stalin’s mood, Molotov added, “The takeover of the Lizard base near Tomsk will ease our task in transporting the physicist once he does arrive on our soil.”

“If he does arrive on our soil,” Stalin said. “If he is still in North America, he is still subject to recall by the new regime.” Another puff of smoke rose from the pipe. “The tsars were fools, idiots, imbeciles to give away Alaska.”

That might or might not have been true, but Molotov couldn’t do anything about it any which way. Stalin often gave the impression that he thought people were persecuting him. Given the history of the Soviet Union, given Stalin’s own personal history, he often had reason for that assumption, but often was not always. Reminding him of that was one of the more delicate tasks presenting itself to his aides. Molotov felt like a man defusing a bomb.

Carefully, he said, “It is in the Americans’ short-term interest to help us defeat the Lizards, and when, Iosef Vissarionovich, did you ever know the capitalists to consider their long-term interest?”

He’d picked the right line. Stalin smiled. He could, when he chose, look astonishingly benevolent. This was one of those times. “Spoken like a true Marxist-Leninist, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich. We shall triumph over the Lizards, and then we shall proceed to triumph over the Americans, too.”

“The dialectic demands it,” Molotov agreed. He did not let his voice show relief, any more than he had permitted himself to reveal anger or fear.

Stalin leaned forward, his face intent. “Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, have you been reading the interrogation reports from the Lizard mutineers who gave that base to us? Do you credit them? Can the creatures be so politically naive, or is this some sort of maskirovka to deceive us?”

“I have indeed seen these reports, Comrade General Secretary.” Molotov felt relief again: at last, something upon which he could venture an opinion without the immediate risk of its blowing up in his face. “My belief is that their naivete is genuine, not assumed. Our interrogators and other experts have learned that their history has been unitary for millennia. They have had no occasion to acquire the diplomatic skills even the most inept and feckless human government-say, for example, the quasi-fascist clique formerly administering Poland-learns as a matter of course.”

“Marshal Zhukov and General Koniev also express this view,” Stalin said. “I have trouble believing it.” Stalin saw plots everywhere, whether they were there or not: 1937 had proved that. The only plot he hadn’t seen was Hitler’s in June 1941.