Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

“From an engineering standpoint, it strikes me as the most economical solution, sir,” Groves answered. “I don’t know for a fact whether it’s the best one.”

“I don’t, either,” Hull said, “but it looks like it’s what we’re going to do. The old Romans had dictators in emergencies, and they always thought the best ones were the ones most reluctant to take over. I qualify there, no two ways about it.” He got to his feet. He wasn’t very young and he wasn’t very spry, but he did manage. Again, seeing a President not only upright but mobile in that position reminded Groves things would never be the same again.

“Good luck, sir,” he said.

“Thank you, General; I’ll take all of that I can get.” Hull started to walk toward the door, then stopped and looked back at Groves. “Do you remember what Churchill told Roosevelt when Lend-Lease was just getting rolling? ‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job.’ That’s what the United States needs from the Metallurgical Laboratory. Give us the tools.”

“You’ll have them,” Groves promised.

The white cliffs of Dover stretched a long way, and curved as they did. If one-or even two-walked along them, that one-or those two-could look down at the sea crashing against the base of those cliffs. David Goldfarb had read somewhere that. If the wave action continued with no other factor to check it, in some millions of years-he couldn’t remember how many-the British Isles would disappear and the waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic commingle.

When he said that aloud, Naomi Kaplan raised an eyebrow. “The British Isles have plenty of things to worry about before millions of years go by,” she said.

The wind from off the North Sea tried to blow her words away. It did the same for her hat. She saved that with a quick grab and set it more firmly on her head. Goldfarb didn’t know whether to be glad she’d caught it or sorry he hadn’t had the chance to be gallant and chase it down. Of course, the wind might have turned and flung it over the cliff, which wouldn’t have done his chances for gallantry much good.

Feigning astonishment, he said, “Why, what ever can you mean? Just because we’ve been bombed by the Germans and invaded by the Lizards in the past few years?” He waved airily. “Mere details. Now. If we’d had one of those atomic bombs or whatever they’re called dropped on us, the way Berlin did-”

“God forbid,” Naomi said. “You’re right; we’ve been through quite enough already.”

Her accent-upper-crust British laid over German-fascinated him (a good many things about her fascinated him, but he concentrated on the accent for the moment). It was a refined version of his own: lower-middle-class English laid over the Yiddish he’d spoken till he started grammar school.

“I hope you’re not too chilly,” he said. The weather was brisk, especially so close to the sea, but not nearly so raw as it had been earlier in the winter. You no longer needed to be a wild-eyed optimist to believe spring would get around to showing up one of these days, even if not right away.

Naomi shook her head. “No, it’s all right,” she said. As if to give the lie to her words, the wind tried to flip up the plaid wool skirt she wore. She smiled wryly as she grabbed at it to keep it straight. “Thank you for inviting me to go walking with you.”

“Thanks for coming,” he answered. A lot of the chaps who visited the White Horse Inn had invited Naomi to go walking with them; some had invited her to do things a great deal cruder than that. She’d turned everybody down-except Goldfarb. His own teeth were threatening to chatter, but he wouldn’t admit even to himself that he was cold.

“It is-pleasant-here,” Naomi said, picking the adjective with care. “Before I came to Dover, I had never seen, never imagined, cliffs like this. Mountains I knew in Germany, but never cliffs at the edge of the land, straight down for a hundred meters and more and then nothing but the sea.”

“Glad you like them,” Goldfarb said, as pleased as if he were personally responsible for Dover’s most famous natural feature. “It’s hard to find a nice place to take a girl these days-no cinema without electricity, for instance.”

“And how many girls did you take to the cinema and other nice places when there was electricity?” Naomi asked. She might have made the question sound teasing. David would have been easier about it if she had. But she sounded both curious and serious.

He couldn’t fob her off with a light, casual answer, either. If he tried that, she could get the straight goods-or a large chunk of them-from Sylvia. He hadn’t taken Sylvia to the cinema, either; he’d taken her to bed. She was friendly enough to him now when he dropped into the White Horse Inn for a pint, but he couldn’t guess what sort of character she’d give him if Naomi asked. He’d heard women could be devastatingly candid when they talked with each other about men’s shortcomings.

When be didn’t answer right away, Naomi cocked her head to one side and gave him a knowing look that made him feel about two feet high. But, instead of pounding away at him on the point, as he’d expected her to do, she said, “Sylvia tells me you did something very brave to get one of your-was it a cousin? she wasn’t sure-out of Poland.”

“Does she?” he said in glad surprise; maybe Sylvia hadn’t given him such a bad character after all. He shrugged; having been born in England, he’d taken as his own at least part of the notion of British reserve. But if Naomi already knew some of the story, telling more wouldn’t hurt. He went on, “Yes, my cousin is Moishe Russie. Remember? I told you that back at the pub.”

She nodded. “Yes, you did. The one who broadcast on the wireless for the Lizards-and then against them after he’d seen what they truly were.”

“That’s right,” Goldfarb said. “And they caught him, too, and clapped him in gaol in Lodz till they figured out what to do with him. I went over with a few other chaps and helped get him out and spirited him back here to England.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Naomi said. “Weren’t you frightened?”

That fight had been his first taste of ground combat, even if it had only been against Lizard and Polish prison guards too taken by surprise to put up all the resistance they might have. Since then, he’d got sucked into the infantry when the Lizards invaded England. That had been much worse. He couldn’t for the life of him imagine why some men presumably in their right minds chose the infantry as a career.

He realized he hadn’t answered Naomi’s question. “Frightened?” he said. “As a matter of fact, I was ruddy petrflied.”

To his relief, she nodded again; he’d been afraid his candor would put her off. “When you tell me things like this,” she said, “you remind me you are not an Englishman after all. Not many English soldiers would admit to anyone who is not one of their-what do you call them? — their mates, that is it-that they feel fear or much of anything else.”

“Yes, I’ve seen that,” Goldfarb said. “I don’t understand it, either.” He laughed. “But what do I know? I’m only a Jew whose parents got out of Poland. I won’t understand Englishmen down deep if I live to be ninety, which doesn’t strike me as likely, the way the world wags these days. Maybe my grandchildren will have the proper stiff upper lip.”

“And my parents got me out of Germany just in time,” Naomi said. Her shiver had nothing to do with the sea breeze. “It was bad there, and we escaped before the Kristallnacht. What-” She hesitated, perhaps nerving herself. After a moment, she finished the question: “What was it like in Poland?”