Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

“Not against you,” Mordechai answered. “I know better. Do you want to try another game? I can do better than that.”

“Your turn for white,” Judah said. As they rearranged the pieces on the board, he added, “Not everyone would keep coming back after a string of losses.”

“I’m learning from you,” Anielewicz said. “And maybe my game is coming back a little. When I’m playing as well as I can, I might be able to put you to some trouble, anyhow.” He pushed his queen’s pawn to open.

They were in the middle of a hard-fought game with no great advantage for either side-Mordechai was proud of avoiding a trap a few moves before-when more pounding on the door made them both jump. Isaac shouted, “Doctor, Sarah wants you to come. Right away, she says.”

“Oy,” Judah said, cultivated manner for once forgotten. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “The game will have to keep, I’m afraid.” He moved a pawn. “Think about that while I’m gone.” He snatched up his bag and hurried out to the anxious Isaac.

Anielewicz studied the board. The pawn move didn’t look particularly menacing. Maybe Judah was trying to make him think too much… or maybe he really was missing something.

He looked at the board again, shrugged, and started to get ready to go to sleep.

He hadn’t even pulled his shirt off over his head when the thrum of aircraft engines, overhead made him freeze. They were human-made planes; he’d heard and hated that heavy drone for most of a month on end in 1939, when the Luftwaffe systematically pounded a Warsaw that could hardly defend itself. These aircraft, though, were coming out of the east. Red Air Force? Anielewicz wondered; the Russians had flown occasional bombing raids after Hitler invaded them. Or are the Nazis still in business over there, too? He knew German ground forces had kept fighting inside the Soviet Union even after the Lizards came; was the Luftwaffe still a going concern, too?

He went outside. If the bombers unloaded on Leczna, that was the worst place to be, but he didn’t think the little town was anybody’s primary target-and it had been a while since humans tried an air raid on Lizard-held territory.

Several other people stood in the street, too, their heads craning this way and that as they tried to spot the planes. Cloud cover was thick; there wasn’t anything to see. The pilots probably hoped the bad weather would help shield them. Then, off to the south, a streak of fire rose into the sky, and another and another. “Lizard rockets,” somebody close by said in Polish-Zofia Klopotowski.

The rockets vanished into the clouds. A moment later, an enormous explosion rattled windows. “A whole plane, bombs and all,” Anielewicz said sadly.

A streak of fire came out of the clouds-falling, not rising. “He’s not going to make it,” Zofia said, her tone echoing Mordechai’s. Sure enough, the stricken bomber smashed into the ground a few kilometers south of Leczna. Another peal of man-made thunder split the air.

The rest of the planes in the flight droned on toward their goal. Had Anielewicz been up there and watched his comrades hacked from the sky, he would have reversed course and run for home. It might not have done him any good. More missiles rose. More aircraft blew up in midair or tumbled in ruins to the ground. Those that survived kept stubbornly heading west.

As the engines faded out of hearing, most people headed for their homes. A few lingered. Zofia said, “I wonder if I should be glad the Lizards are shooting down the Russians or Germans or whoever was in those planes. We live better now than we did under the Reds or the Nazis.”

Mordechai stared at her. “But they’re making slaves of us,” he exclaimed.

“So were the Reds and the Nazis,” she replied. “And you Jews were quick enough to hop in bed with the Lizards when they pushed this way.”

Her choice of language made him cough, but he said, “The Nazis weren’t just making slaves of us, they were killing us in carload lots. We had nothing to lose-and we didn’t see at the start, that the Lizards wanted only servants, not partners. They want to do to the whole world what the Germans and Russians did to Poland. That’s not right, is it?”

“Maybe not,” Zofia said. “But if the Lizards lose and the Germans and Russians come back here, Poland still won’t be free, and we’ll all be worse off.”

Anielewicz thought about the revenge Stalin or Hitler would exact against people who had supported-the dictators would say “collaborated with”-the Lizards. He shuddered. Still, he answered, “But if the Lizards win, there won’t be any free people at all left on Earth, not, here, not in England, not in America-and they’ll be able to do whatever they want with the whole world, not just with one country.”

Zofia looked thoughtful, or Mordechai thought she did-the night was too dark for him to be sure. She said, “That’s true. I have trouble worrying about anything outside Leczna. This is the only place I’ve ever known. But you, you’ve been lots of places, and you can hold the world in your mind.” She sounded wistful, or perhaps even jealous.

He wanted to laugh. He’d done some traveling in Poland, but hardly enough to make him a cosmopolitan. In an important way, though, she was right: books and school had taken his mind places his body had never gone, and left him with a wider view of things than she had. And having a pretty girl look up to him, for whatever reason, was a long way from the worst thing that had ever happened.

He glanced around and realized with some surprise that he and Zofia were the last two people left on the street. Everyone else was snug inside, and probably snug in bed, too. He waited for Zofia to notice the lull in their talk, say good night, and go back to her father’s house. When she didn’t, but kept standing quietly by him, he reached out and, quite in the spirit of experiment, let his hand rest on her shoulder.

She didn’t shrug him off. She stepped closer, so that his arm went around her. “I wondered how long that would take you,” she said with a small laugh.

Miffed, he almost said something sharp, but luckily had a better idea: he bent his face down to hers. Her lips were upturned and waiting. For some time, neither of them said anything. Then he whispered, “Where can we go?”

“The doctor didn’t take his car, did he?” she whispered back. Ussishkin owned an ancient Fiat, one of the handful of automobiles in town. She answered her own question: “No, of course he didn’t. No one has any petrol these days. So it’s right in back of his house. If we’re quiet.”

The Fiat’s back door squeaked alarmingly when Anielewicz opened it for Zofia, who let out an almost soundless giggle. He slid in beside her. They were cramped, but managed to loosen and eventually pull off each other’s clothes all the same. His hand strayed down from her breasts to her thighs and the warm, moist softness between them.

She gripped him, too. When she did, she paused a moment in surprise, then giggled again, deep down in her throat. “That’s right,” she said, as if reminding herself. “You’re a Jew. It’s different.”

He hadn’t really thought he was her first, but the remark jolted him a little just the same. He made a wordless questioning noise.

“My fiance-his name was Czeslaw-went to fight the Germans,” she said. “He never came back.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” He wished he’d ignored her. Hoping he hadn’t ruined the mood, he kissed her again. Evidently he hadn’t; she sighed and lay back as well as she could on the narrow seat of the car. He poised himself above her. “Zofia,” he said as they joined. She wrapped her arms around his back.