Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

Molotov’s interpreter murmured the Russian translation for him. Big Five conferences got along on three languages: America and Britain shared English, while Ribbentrop, a former German ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, was also fluent in that tongue. That left Molotov and Togo linguistically isolated, but Molotov, at least, was used to isolation-serving as foreign commissar for the only Marxist-Leninist state in a capitalist world was good pariah training.

The envoys delivered their replies. When Molotov’s turn came, he said, “The peasants and workers of the Soviet Union express through me their solidarity with the peasants and workers of worldwide humanity against our common foe.”

Ribbentrop gave him a dirty look. Getting the Nazi’s goat, though, was no great accomplishment; Molotov thought of him as nothing more than a champagne salesman jumped up beyond his position and his abilities. Churchill’s round pink face, on the contrary, remained utterly imperturbable. For the British Prime Minister, Molotov had a grudging respect. No doubt he was a class enemy, but he was an able and resolute man. Without him, England might have yielded to the Nazis in 1940, and he had unhesitatingly gone to the support of the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded a year later. Had he thrown his weight behind Hitler then in the crusade against Bolshevism he’d once preached, the USSR might have fallen.

Cordell Hull said, “It’s a good idea that we get together when we can so we can plan together the best way of ridding ourselves of the damned Lizards.” As he had been at previous meetings, Molotov’s interpreter was a little slower in translating for Hull than he had been for Churchill: the American’s dialect differed from the British English he’d learned.

“Ridding ourselves of the Lizards now is not our only concern,” Shigenori Togo said.

“What could possibly be of greater concern to us?” Ribbentrop demanded. He might have been a posturing, popeyed fool, but for once Molotov could not disagree with his question.

But Togo said, “We also have now a future concern. Surely you all hold captives from among the Lizards. Have you not observed they are all males?”

“Of what other gender could warriors properly be?” Churchill said.

Molotov lacked the Englishman’s Victorian preconceptions on that score: female pilots and snipers had gone into battle-and done well-against both the Germans and the Lizards. But even Molotov reckoned that a tactic of desperation. “What are you implying?” he asked of the Japanese foreign minister.

“Under interrogation, a captive Lizard pilot has informed us that this enormous invasion force is but the precursor to a still larger fleet now traveling toward our planet,” Togo replied. “The second fleet is termed, if we understand correctly, the colonization fleet. The Lizards intend not merely conquest but also occupation.”

He could have created no greater consternation if he’d thrown a live grenade onto the gleaming mahogany surface of the table in front of him. Ribbentrop shouted in German; Cordell Hull slammed the palm of his hand down onto the tabletop and shook his head so that the fringe of hair he combed over his bald crown flailed wildly; Churchill choked on his cigar and coughed harshly.

Only Molotov still sat unmoved and unmoving. He waited for the hubbub to die down around him, then said, “Why should we allow this to surprise us, comrades?” He used the last word deliberately, both to remind the other dignitaries that they were in the struggle together and to irk them on account of their capitalist ideology.

Speaking through an interpreter had its advantages. Among them was getting the chance to think while the interpreter performed his office. Ribbentrop started off in German again (a mark of indiscipline, to Molotov’s mind), then switched to spluttering English: “But how are we to defeat these creatures if they throw at us endless waves of attack?”

“This is a question you Germans should have asked yourselves before you invaded the Soviet Union,” Molotov said.

Hull raised a hand. “Enough of that,” he said sharply. “Recriminations have no place at this table, else I would not be sitting here with Minister Togo.”

Molotov dipped his head slightly, acknowledging the Secretary of State’s point. He enjoyed twitting the Nazi, but enjoyment and diplomacy were two separate things.

“The depths of space between the stars are vaster than any man can comfortably imagine, and traveling them, even near the speed of light, takes time, or so the astronomers have led me to believe,” Churchill said. He turned to Togo. “How long have we before the second wave falls on us?”

The Japanese foreign minister answered, “The prisoner states that this colonization fleet will reach earth in something under forty of his kind’s years. That is less than forty of our years, but by how much he does not know.”

The interpreter leaned close to Molotov. “I am given to understand that two of the Lizards’ years are more or less equal to one of ours,” he murmured in Russian.

“Tell them,” Molotov said after a moment’s hesitation. Revealing information of any sort went against his grain, but joint planning required this.

When the interpreter finished speaking, Ribbentrop beamed. “So we have twenty years or so, then,” he said. “This is not so bad.”

Molotov was dismayed to see Hull nod at that. To them, he concluded, twenty years hence was so far distant that it might as well not exist. The Soviet Union’s Five Year Plans forced a concentration on the future, as did continued study of the ineluctable dynamics of the historical dialectic. As far as Molotov was concerned, a state that did not think about where it would be twenty years from now did not deserve to be anywhere.

He saw, intense concentration on Churchill’s face. The Englishman had no dialectic to guide him-how could he, when he represented a class destined for, the ash-heap of history? — but was himself a student of history of the reactionary sort, and thus used to contemplating broad sweeps of time. He could look ahead twenty years without being dizzied at the distance.

“I shall tell you what this means, gentlemen,” Churchill said: “It means that, even after we have defeated the Lizards even now encroaching on the green hills of Earth, we shall have to remain comrades in arms-even if not comrades in Commissar Molotov s sense-and ready ourselves and our world for another great battle.”

“I agree.” Molotov said. He was willing to let Churchill twit him without mercy if that advanced the coalition against the Lizards. Next to them even a fossilized conservative like Churchill was reminted in shiny progressive metal.

Ribbentrop said, “I agree also. I must say, however, that certain countries now preaching the gospel of cooperation would do well to practice it. Germany has noted several instances of new developments transmitted to us incompletely or only with reluctance, while others at this table have shared more equally and openhandedly.”

Churchill’s bland face remained bland. Molotov did not change expression, either-but then he rarely did. He knew Ribbentrop was talking about the Soviet Union, but declined to feel the least bit guilty. He was still sorry that Germany had succeeded in smuggling even half his share of explosive metal back to his homeland. That hadn’t been part of the Soviet plan. And Churchill couldn’t be enthusiastic about sharing British secrets with the power that had all but brought Britain to her knees.

“Minister Ribbentrop, I want to remind you that this notion of sending new ideas runs both ways,” Cordell Hull said. “You haven’t shared your fancy long-range rockets with the rest of us, I notice, nor the improved sights I hear tell about in your new tanks.”