Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“Why should we do any favors for a German?” Yossel said. Jager heard snarls from behind him. Here indeed was pointless cruelty coming home to roost.

But Jager had an answer. “Because I fought alongside Russian partisans, most of them Jews, to get what I’m carrying away from the Lizards and bring it back toward Germany.” There. It was done. If these were truly the Lizards’ creatures, he’d just done himself in. But he was done in anyhow, the instant the Lizards found what his saddlebags held. And if his captors were men…

Yossel spat. “You’re a fast liar, I give you that much. Where was this, on the road to Treblinka?” Seeing that that meant nothing to Jager, he spoke a word of pure German: “Vernichtungslager.” Extermination camp.

“I don’t know anything of extermination camps,” Jager insisted. The men behind him growled. He wondered if they would shoot him before he could go on. He spoke quickly: “I never heard of this Treblinka. But one of the Jews in the partisan band came back alive from a place called Babi Yar, outside Kiev. He and I worked together for this common good.”

Something changed in Yossel’s face. “So you know of Babi Yar, do you, Nazi? Tell me what you think of it.”

“It sickens me,” Jager answered at once. “I went to war against the Red Army, not-not-” He shook his head. “I am a soldier, not a murderer.”

“As if a Nazi could tell the difference,” Yossel said scornfully. But he did not raise his rifle. He and the other-well, what were they? soldiers? partisans? merely bandits? — talked back and forth, partly in Yiddish, which Jager could follow, and partly in Polish, which he couldn’t. Had the Jew in front of him looked less alert, Jager might have made a break. As it was, he waited for his captors to figure out what to do with him.

After a couple of minutes, one of the men behind him said, “All right, off the horse.” Jager dismounted. His back itched uncontrollably. He was ready to whirl and start shooting at the least untoward sound; they would not find a passive victim, if that was what they wanted. But then the fellow he could not see said, “You can sling that rifle, if you care to.”

Jager hesitated. The invitation could have been a ruse to relax him for easier disposal. But the Jews already had him at their mercy, and no fighting man with even a gram of sense left an enemy armed. Maybe they’d decided he wasn’t altogether an enemy, then. He slid the sling strap over his shoulder, asked, “What do you intend to do with me?”

“We haven’t decided yet,” Yossel said. “For now, you’ll come with us. We’ll take you to someone who can help us figure it out.” Jager’s face must have said something, for Yossel added, “No, not a Lizard, one of us.”

“All right,”, Jager said, “but bring the horse, too; what he has in those saddlebags is more important than I am, and your officer will need to know of it.”

“Gold?” asked the fellow who’d told Jager to get off the horse.

He didn’t want the Jews to think he was just someone to be robbed. “No, not gold. If the NKVD doesn’t miss its guess, I have there some of the same kind of stuff as the Lizards used to bomb Berlin and Washington.”

That got a reaction, all right, “Wait a minute,” Yossel said slowly. “The Russians are letting you take this-this stuff to Germany? How does that happen?”

Why don’t they keep it all themselves? he meant. “If they could have kept it all, they would have, I’m sure,” Jager answered, smiling. “But as I said, it was a joint German-Soviet combat group that won this material, and however much reason the Russians have to dislike us Germans, they know also our scientists are not to be despised. And so…” He slapped a saddlebag.

Further colloquy, now almost entirely in Polish, among the Jews. Fmally Yossel said, “All right, German; if nothing else, you’ve confused us. Come along, you and your horse and whatever he’s carrying.”

“You have to keep me out of the Lizards’ sight,” Jager insisted.

Yossel laughed. “No, no, we just have to keep you from being noticed. It’s not the same thing at all. Get moving, we’ve already wasted too much time here on jabber.”

The Jew proved to know what he was talking about. Over the next few days, Jager saw more Lizards at closer range than he ever had before. Not one even looked at him; they all assumed he was just another militiaman, and so to be tolerated.

Encounters with armed Poles were more alarming. Although he’d grown a gray-streaked beard, Jager was ironically aware he looked not the least bit Jewish. “Don’t worry about it,” Yossel told him when he said as much. “They’ll think you’re just another traitor.”

That stung. Jager said, “You mean the way the rest of the world thinks of you Polish Jews?” He’d been with the band long enough now to speak his mind without fearing someone would shoot him for it.

“Yes, about like that,” Yossel answered calmly; he was hard to rile. “Of course, what the rest of the world still doesn’t believe is that we had good reason to like the Lizards better than you Nazis. If you know about Babi Yar, you know about that.”

Since he did know about that, and didn’t like what he knew, Jager changed the subject. “Some of those Poles looked like they’d just as soon start shooting at us as not.”

“They probably would. They don’t like Jews, either.” Yossel’s voice was matter-of-fact. “But they don’t dare, because the Lizards have given us enough in the way of weapons to hurt them bad if they play their old games with us.”

Jager chewed on that for a while. The Jew frankly admitted his kind depended on the Lizards. Yet he’d had endless chances to betray Jager to them and hadn’t done it. lager admitted to himself that he didn’t understand what was going on. With luck, he’d find out.

That evening, they came to a town bigger than most of the others through which they’d passed. “What’s the name of this place?” Jager asked.

At first he thought Yossel sneezed. Then the Jew repeated himself: “Hrubieszow.” The town boasted cobblestone streets, three-story buildings with cast-iron awnings, and a central boulevard that had a median strip planted with trees, perhaps to achieve a Parisian effect. Having seen the real Paris, Jager found the imitation laughable, but kept that to himself.

Yossel went up to one of the three-story buildings, spoke in Yiddish to the man who answered-his knock. He turned to Jager. “You go in here. Take your saddlebags with you. We’ll get your horse out of town-a strange animal that stays around is plenty to make people start asking questions.”

Jager went in. The gray-haired Jew who stood aside to let him pass said, “Hello, friend. I’m Lejb. What shall I call you while you’re here?”

“Ich heisse Heinrich Jager” Jager answered. He’d grown resigned to the looks of horror he got for speaking German, but it was his only fluent language-and, for better or worse, he was a German. He could hardly deny it. Stiffly, he said, “I hope my presence will not disturb you too much, sir.”

“A Nazi-in my house. They want to put a Nazi-in my house?” Lejb was not talking to Jager. The German didn’t think he was talking to himself, either. Whom did that leave? God, maybe.

As if wound into motion by a key, Lejb bustled over and shut the door. “Even a Nazi should not freeze-especially if I would freeze with him.” With what seemed a large effort of will, he made himself look at Jager. “Will you drink tea? And there’s potato soup in the pot if you want it.”

“Yes, please. Thank you very much.” The tea was hot, the potato soup both hot and filling. Lejb insisted on giving Jager seconds; the Jew apparently could not force himself to be a poor host. But he would not eat with Jager; he waited until the German finished before feeding himself.