Harry Turtledove - Upsetting the Balance

A personnel carrier whizzed by the artistically arranged crate without stopping. So did three lorries in quick succession. Anielewicz’s heart sank. If his ambush went for nothing, he’d lose prestige in the band. He might have been the leader of Poland’s Jewish fighters, but the partisans here didn’t know that. As far as they were concerned, he was just a new fish showing what he could do.

The last lorry in the convoy pulled to a stop. So did the troop carrier riding shotgun for it. Mordechai didn’t raise his head. He strained to catch the noises from the highway. A door on the lorry slammed. His heart thumped. One of the Lizards was going over to investigate the crate.

His biggest worry was that the Lizards wouldn’t touch it because they were afraid it was rigged to a land mine or a grenade. Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea, but Mordechai was ambitious. He wanted to bag more Lizards than he could with such a ploy.

He knew the exact instant when the Lizard realized the ginger was there: the excited, disbelieving hiss needed no translation. He wanted to hiss himself, with relief. Not all Lizards were ginger tasters, by any means, but a lot of them were. He’d counted on there being at least one taster among those who investigated the spilled crate.

That hiss brought another male out of the lorry. Maybe the Lizard who’d made it had a radio with him, for a moment later hatches on the troop carrier came down, too. Anielewicz’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin. Just what he’d hoped for!

Easy, easy… patient. He willed his comrades to hold their fire until they could do the most damage. With a whole lot of luck, the fighting vehicle’s crew would get down along with the infantry they transported. If they were smart, they wouldn’t, but ginger tasters were more apt to be greedy than smart. Would they be foolish enough to forget about the heavy weapons the troop carrier bore?

One of the partisans couldn’t stand to wait any more. As soon as one man opened up, everybody started shooting, intent on doing the most damage to the Lizards in the shortest time possible.

Anielewicz threw his rifle to his shoulder and, still prone, started squeezing off shots in the direction of the crate. You couldn’t use aimed fire at night, not unless you had gadgets like those of the Lizards, but if you had put enough bullets in the air, that didn’t matter too much.

Hisses turned to screeches on the roadway. A couple of Lizards started firing back at the partisans. Their muzzle flashes gave the humans hidden in the woods better targets at which to aim. But then the turret-mounted machine gun and light cannon in the troop carrier opened up. Anielewicz swore, first in Polish, then in Yiddish. The Lizards hadn’t been altogether asleep at the switch after all.

With that kind of fire raking the trees and bushes, there was only one thing to do. “Let’s get out of here,” Mordechai yelled, and he rolled away from the road. The Lizards weren’t the only ones screeching now; screams from the darkness and Polish cries for the Virgin said some of those sprayed bullets and shells had found targets.

The advantage of opening fire from close to the highway was that you were right on top of the enemy. The disadvantage was that you took a long time to get away from his guns. Not until Anielewicz scrambled behind an oak tree whose trunk was thicker than his own did he begin to feel safe.

Firing from the road died away. Anielewicz didn’t think the partisans had hurt the Lizards so badly they’d call in air strikes. This sort of warfare walked a fine line, if you did too little, you didn’t harm the enemy. If you did too much, you were liable to provoke him into squashing you like a bug. The Lizards could do that almost anywhere in the world, if they wanted to badly enough. Keeping them too busy in a lot of places to concentrate on any one worked fairly well.

Mordechai was walking a line himself, but not a fine one. It involved fetching up against a tree with his nose, stepping into a hole and twisting his ankle (by luck alone, not too badly), and splashing through a tiny rill he discovered by the simple expedient of getting his feet wet. Some people moved through the woods at night silent as a lynx. He sounded more like a drunken wisent. He thanked God the Lizards were even less woodswise.

“That you, Shmuel?” somebody hissed-Jerzy.

“Yes, it’s me,” Anielewicz answered in Polish. He had no idea the other partisan was within a kilometer till he spoke. Well, that was why Jerzy walked point while he shlepped along well back in the line.

But the Pole didn’t sound angry at him. “That was a good scheme you had there. The Lizards really like sticking their snouts into that stuff, don’t they?”

“That they do,” Mordechai said. “The ones who get hooked good, they’ll do just about anything for a taste of ginger, and a lot of them are hooked-quite a lot of them, if what happened back there is any clue.”

“Might as well be pussy, eh?” Friedrich stepped out from behind a tree. He was twice Jerzy’s size, but just about as light on his feet-and it didn’t do to think him stupid, either. He’d understood Polish and answered in the same language.

None of which made Mordechai feel easy around him. “I don’t think they keep their brains in their pricks, unlike some people I could name,” he said. He tried to keep his tone light, but wasn’t sure how well he succeeded; having to deal with Wehrmacht men made his hackles rise.

“If men keep brains in their pricks, why do you Jews make yourselves stupider by cutting some off?” Friedrich retorted. Was that just raillery, or did the German mean something more by it? Who could tell what a German had been up to in Poland before the Lizards came? Anielewicz gave it up. They were-supposed to be-on the same side now.

Jerzy said, “Come on-we go this way now.” Mordechai was damned if he knew how Jerzy could tell which way to go, or, for that matter, which way this way was. But the Pole was rarely wrong-and Mordechai had no idea which way he was supposed to be going. He followed. So did Friedrich.

The point man’s skill or instinct or whatever it was led them back to the partisans’ camp deep in the forest. No one risked a fire even with thick tree cover overhead; the Lizards had too many eyes in the air. They just found blankets, rolled themselves in them, and tried to go to sleep.

For Anielewicz, that proved impossible. For one thing, adrenaline still sang through him from the fight. For another, he wasn’t used to sleeping in a blanket on the hard ground. And for a third, men-and a few women-not lucky enough to have been guided by Jerzy kept stumbling into camp all night long. Some of them moaned with wounds.

Some of them couldn’t sleep, either. He joined one of the little knots of fighters sitting in the darkness and trying to figure out how well they’d done. One fellow claimed four Lizards downed, another twice that many. It was hard to figure out the partisans’ losses, but at least two men were known dead, and four or five wounded. What morning would prove remained to be seen.

Mordechai said, “If we hit them this hard every time, we’ll make them know we’re there. We can afford to trade one for one longer than they can.” That produced thoughtful silence, then grunts he took as agreement.

Sirens screaming, airplanes roaring overhead, bombs crashing down, antiaircraft guns pounding maniacally-Moishe Russie had been through that in Warsaw in 1939, when the Luftwaffe methodically pounded the Polish capital to pieces. But this was London almost four years later, with the Lizards trying to finish the job the Germans had started here, too.

“Make it stop!” his son Reuven cried, one more wail lost in the many that filled the Soho shelter.