Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

Stalin waved Molotov to a chair, then stood up himself. Though well-proportioned, he was short, and did not like other men looming over him. What he did not like did not occur. He filled his pipe from a leather tobacco pouch, lit a match, and got the pipe going.

The harsh smell of makhorka, cheap Russian tobacco, made Molotov’s nose twitch in spite of himself. Under the iron-gray mustache, Stalin’s lip curled. “I know it’s vile, but it’s all I can find these days. What shipping we get has no room aboard for luxuries.”

That said as much as anything about the plight in which mankind found itself. When the leader of one of the three greatest nations on the planet could not get decent tobacco even for himself, the Lizards were the ones with the upper hand. Well, if he understood what was in Stalin’s mind, this meeting was to be about how to tilt the balance back the other way.

Stalin sucked in more smoke, paced back and forth. At length he said, “So the Americans and Germans are pressing ahead with their programs to make bombs of this explosive metal?”

“So I have been given to understand, Iosef Vissarionovich,” Molotov answered. “I am also told by our intelligence services that they had these programs in place before the Lizards began their invasion of the Earth.”

“We also had such a program in place,” Stalin answered placidly.

That relieved Molotov, who had heard of no such program. He wondered how far along Soviet scientists had been compared to those in the decadent capitalist and fascist countries. Faith in the strength of Marxist-Leninist precepts made him hope they might have been ahead; concern over how far the Soviet Union had had to come since the revolution made him fear they might have been behind. With hope and fear so commingled, he dared not ask Stalin which was the true state of affairs.

Stalin went on, “We now have an advantage over both the United States and the Hitlerites: in that raid against the Lizards last fall, we obtained a considerable supply of the explosive metal, as you know. I had hoped the German taking the metal back to the Hitlerites would be waylaid in Poland, and his share lost.” Stalin looked unhappy.

So did Molotov, who said, “This much I did know, and how he had to give up half his share, though not all, to the Polish Jews, who then passed it on to the Americans.”

“Yes,” Stalin said. “Hitler is a fool, do you know that?”

“You have said it many times, Iosef Vissarionovich,” Molotov answered. That was true, but it had not kept Stalin from making his nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939, or from living up to it for almost the next two years, or from being so confident Hitler would also live up to it that he’d ignored warnings of an impending Nazi attack, ignored them so completely that the Soviet state had almost crashed in ruins because of it. Since Molotov had supported Stalin in those choices, he could hardly bring them up now (if he hadn’t supported him then, he would be in no position to bring them up now).

Stalin drew on his pipe again. His cheeks, pitted from a boyhood bout of smallpox, twitched with distaste. “Not even from so close as Turkey can I get decent tobacco. But do you know why I say Hitler is a fool?”

“For wantonly attacking the peace-loving people of the Soviet Union, who had done nothing to deserve it.” Molotov gave the obvious answer, and a true one, but it left him unhappy. Stalin was looking for something else.

Sure enough, he shook his head. But, to Molotov’s relief, he was only amused, not angry. “That is not what was in my mind, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich. I say he was a fool because, when his scientists discovered the uranium atom could be split, they published their findings for all the world to see.” Stalin chuckled rheumily. “Had we made that finding here… Can you imagine such an article appearing in the Proceedings of the Akademia Nauk, the Soviet Academy of Sciences?”

“Hardly,” Molotov said, and he chuckled, too. He was normally the most mirthless of men, but when Stalin laughed, you laughed with him. Besides, this was the sort of thing he did find funny. Stalin was dead right here-Soviet secrecy would have kept such an important secret from leaking out where prying eyes could fasten on it.

“I will tell you something else that will amuse you,” Stalin said. “It takes a certain amount of explosive metal to explode, our scientists tell me. Below this amount, it will not go off no matter what you do. Do you understand? Oh, it is a lovely joke.” Stalin laughed again.

Molotov also laughed, but uncertainly. This time, he did not see the joke.

Stalin must have sensed that; his uncanny skill at scenting weakness in his subordinates was not least among the talents that had kept him in power for twenty years. Still in that jovial mood, he said, “Never fear, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich; I shall explain. I would far sooner the Germans and Americans had no explosive metal, but because the Polish Jews divided it between them, neither has enough for a bomb. Now do you see?”

“No,” Molotov confessed, but he reversed course a moment later: “Wait. Yes, perhaps I do. Do you mean that we, with an undivided share, have enough to make one of these bombs for ourselves?”

“That is exactly what I mean,” Stalin said. “See, you are a clever fellow after all. The Germans and the Americans will still have to do all the research they would have required anyhow, but we-we shall soon be ready to fight the Lizards fire against fire, so to speak.”

Just contemplating that felt good to Molotov. Like Stalin, like everyone, he had lived in dread of the day when Moscow, like Berlin and Washington, might suddenly cease to exist. To be able to retaliate in kind against the Lizards brought a glow of anticipation to his sallow features.

But his joy was not undiluted. He said, “Iosef Vissarionovich, we shall have the one bomb, with no immediate prospect for producing more, is that right? Once we have used the weapon in our hands, what is to keep the Lizards from dropping a great many such weapons on us?”

Stalin scowled. He did not care for anyone going against anything he said, even in the slightest way. Nevertheless, he thought seriously before he answered; Molotov’s question was to the point. At last he said, “First of all, our scientists will go on working to produce explosive metal for us. They will be strongly encouraged to succeed.”

Stalin’s smile reminded Molotov of that of a lion resting against a zebra carcass from which it had just finished feeding. Molotov had no trouble visualizing the sort of encouragement the Soviet nuclear physicists would get: dachas, cars, women if they wanted them, for success… and the gulag or a bullet in the back of the neck if they failed. Probably a couple of them would be purged just to focus the minds of the others on what they were doing. Stalin’s methods were ugly, but they got results.

“How long before the physicists can do this for us?” Molotov said.

“They babble about three or four years, as if this were not an emergency,” Stalin said dismissively. “I have given them eighteen months. They shall do as the Party requires of them, or else suffer the consequences.”

Molotov chose his words with care: “It might be better if they did not undergo the supreme penalty, Iosef Vissarionovich. Men of their technical training would be difficult to replace adequately.”

“Yes, yes.” Stalin sounded impatient, always a danger sign. “But they are the servants of the peasants and workers of the Soviet Union, not their masters; we must not let them get ideas above their station, or the virus of the bourgeoisie will infect us once again.”

“No, that cannot be permitted,” Molotov agreed. “Let us say that they do all they have promised. How do we protect the Soviet Union in the time between our using the bomb we have made from the Lizards’ explosive metal and that in which we begin to manufacture it for ourselves?”