Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

Clip-clop, clip-cop . Riding alongside the wagon was a squadron of horse cavalry, an antique arm Groves had long wished would vanish from the Army forever. The horsemen were useless against the Lizards, as they had been for years against any Earthly mechanized force. But they did a first-class job of overawing the brigands, bandits, and robbers who infested the roads in these chaotic times.

“Captain, will we reach the Coast Guard station by sunset?” Groves called to the commander of the cavalry unit.

Captain Rance Auerbach glanced westward, gauged the sun through curdled clouds. “Yes, sir, I believe so. Only a couple more miles to the Jake shore.” His Texas drawl drew looks here in upstate New York. Groves thought he should be wearing Confederate gray and maybe a plume in his hat, too; he was too flamboyant for olive drab. That he called his horse Jeb Stuart did nothing to weaken that freewheeling image.

The wagon rolled past a wooden ballpark with a sign that read, OTIS FIELD, HOME OF THE OSWEGO NETHERLANDS, CANADIAN-AMERICAN LEAGUE. “Netherlands,” Groves said with a snort. “Hell of a name for a baseball team.”

Captain Auerbach pointed to a billboard across the street. In faded, tattered letters it proclaimed the virtues of the Netherland Ice Cream and Milk Company. “Bet you anything you care to stake they ran the team, sir,” he said.

“No thank you, Captain,” Groves said. “I won’t touch that one.”

Otis Field didn’t look as if it had seen much use lately. Planks were missing from the outer fence; they’d no doubt helped Oswegians stay warm during the long, miserable winter. The gaps showed the rickety grandstand and the dugouts where in happier-and warmer-times the opposing teams had sheltered. Stands and dugout roofs also had the missing-tooth effect from vanished lumber. If the Netherlands ever returned to life, they’d need somewhere new to play.

From long experience, Groves reckoned Oswego a town, of twenty or twenty-five thousand. The few people out on the streets looked poor and cold and hungry. Most people looked that way these days. The town didn’t seem to have suffered directly in the war, though the Lizards were in Buffalo and on the outskirts of Rochester. Groves guessed Oswego wasn’t big enough for them to have bothered pulverizing it. He hoped they’d pay for the omission.

On the east side of the Oswego River stood the U.S. Military Reservation, with the earthworks of Fort Ontario. The fort dated back even further than the French and Indian War. Holding enemies at bay now, unfortunately, wasn’t as simple as it had been a couple of centuries before.

The Coast Guard station was a two-story white frame building at the foot of East Second Street, down by the cold, choppy gray waters of Lake Ontario. The cutter Forward was tied up at a pier out in the lake. A seaman policing up outside the station spied the wagon and its escort approaching. He ducked into the building, calling loudly, “The U.S. Cavalry just rode into town, sir!”

Groves smiled at that, in amusement and relief. An officer came out of the station. He wore a U.S. Navy uniform; in time of war, the Coast Guard was subsumed into the Navy. Saluting, he said, “Colonel Groves?”

“Right here.” Groves ponderously descended from the wagon. Even with wartime privation, he carried well over two hundred pounds. He returned the salute and said, “I’m afraid I wasn’t given your name”-the Coast Guardsman had two broad stripes on his cuffs and shoulder blades-“Lieutenant, ah…?”

“I’m Jacob van Alen, sir,” the Coast Guardsman said.

“Well, Lieutenant van Alen, I gather the messenger got here ahead of us.”

“From what Smitty yelled, you mean? Yes, sir, he did.” Van Alen had an engaging grin. He was a tall, skinny fellow some where close to thirty, very blond, with an almost invisible little mustache. He went on, “Our orders are to give you whatever you want, not to ask a whole lot of questions, and never, ever put your name on the radio. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what they boil down to.”

“It sounds right,” Groves agreed. “You’d be better off forgetting we even exist once we’re gone. Impress that on your sailors, too; if they start blabbing and any word of us gets out, they’ll be arrested and tried as traitors to the United States. That comes straight from President Roosevelt, not from me. Make sure your people understand it.”

“Yes, sir.” Van Alen’s eyes sparkled. “If they hadn’t told me to keep my big mouth shut, I’d have at least a million questions for you; you’d best believe that.”

“Lieutenant, believe me-you don’t want to know.” Groves had seen the slagged ruin a single Lizard bomb had made of Washington, D.C. If the Lizards had that power, the United States had to have it, too, to survive. But the idea of a uranium bomb chilled him. Start throwing those things around and you were liable to end up with an abattoir instead of a world.

“What you say has already been made very clear to me, Colonel,” van Alen said. “Suppose you tell me what it is you want me to do for you.”

“If the Lizards weren’t in Buffalo, I’d have you sail me all the way to Duluth,” Groves answered. “As it is, you’re going to take me across to the Canadian side so I can continue on the overland route.”

“To wherever you’re going.” Van Alen raised a hand. “I’m not asking, I’m just talking. One thing I do need to know, though: whereabouts on the Canadian side am I taking you? It’s a biggish country, you know.”

“I have heard rumors to that effect, yes,” Groves said dryly. “Sail us across to Oshawa. They should be expecting me there; if a messenger got through to you, no reason to think one didn’t make it to them.”

“You’re right about that. The Lizards haven’t hit Canada as hard as they’ve hit us.”

“By all I’ve heard, they don’t care for cold weather.” Now Groves held up a broad-palmed hand. “I know, I know-if they don’t care for cold weather, what are they doing in Buffalo?”

“You beat me to it,” the Coast Guardsman said. “Of course, they did get there in summertime. I hope they had themselves a hell of a surprise along around November.”

“I expect they did,” Groves said. “Now then, Lieutenant, much as I’d like to stand around shooting the breeze”-something he loathed-“I have a package to deliver. Shall we get moving?”

“Yes, sir,” van Alen answered. He glanced toward the wagon from which Groves had got down. “You won’t be bringing that aboard the Forward, will you? Or the horses?”

“What are we supposed to do for mounts without ’em?” Captain Auerbach demanded indignantly.

“Captain, I want you to take a good look at that cutter,” Jacob van Alen said. “It carries me and a crew of sixteen. Now there’s what, maybe thirty of you folks? Okay, we can squeeze you onto the Forward, especially just for one fast run across the lake, but where the hell would we stow those animals even if we could get ’em on board?”

Groves looked from the Forward to the cavalry detachment and back again. As an engineer, he was trained in using space efficiently. He turned to Auerbach. “Rance, I’m sorry, but I think Lieutenant van Alen knows what he’s talking about. What is that, Lieutenant, about an eighty-foot boat?”

“You have a good eye, Colonel. She’s a seventy-eight-footer, forty-three tons displacement.”

Groves grunted. Thirty-odd horses weighed maybe twenty tons all by themselves. They’d have to stay behind, no doubt about it. He watched Captain Auerbach unhappily making the same calculation and coming up with the same result. “Cheer up, Captain,” he said. “I’m sure the Canadians will furnish us with new mounts. They don’t know what we’re carrying, but they know how important it is.”