Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

The gathered soldiers swarmed onto the convoy vehicle like army ants-Yeager smiled as the comparison struck him. One truck after another was emptied and sped back down Navy Pier toward Chicago. Working transport of any sort was precious these days. Watching them head west, Yeager got an excellent view of the proud city skyline-and of the gaps the Lizards had torn in it.

Barbara Larssen came over and stood by him. “They just want us small fry out of the way,” she said unhappily. “They put the physicists on board first, and now the equipment they need. Afterward, if there’s any room and any time, they’ll let people like us get on.”

Given the military needs of the moment, those priorities made sense to Yeager. But Barbara wanted sympathy, not sense. He said, “You know what they say-there’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.”

She laughed, maybe a little more than the tired joke deserved. A chilly gust of wind off the lake tried to flip up her pleated skirt. she defeated it with the quick two-hand clutch women seem to learn as a tribal gesture, but shivered just the same. “Brr! I wish I were wearing pants.”

“Why don’t you?” he said. “With all the heaters to hell and gone, I bet you’d be a lot more comfortable. I wouldn’t want to freeze my-well, I wouldn’t want to freeze myself in a skirt just on account of fashion.”

If she’d noticed what he started to say, she didn’t let on. “If I find some that fit me, I think I will,” she said. “Long johns, too.”

Yeager let himself indulge in the fantasy of peeling her out of a pair of long johns until somebody bawled, “Come on, get those goddamn Lizards on board. We ain’t got all day.”

He urged Ullhass and Ristin ahead of him, then had a happy afterthought. Grabbing Barbara’s hand, he said, “Make like you’re a Lizard-keeper, too?” She caught on fast and fell into step behind him. she didn’t shake off his hand, either.

The two Lizard POWs hissed in alarm as the gangplank swayed under their weight. “It’s all right,” Barbara reassured them, playing her part to the hilt. “If humans carrying heavy equipment didn’t break this, you won’t.” Yeager had come to know Ullhass and Ristin well enough to tell how unhappy they were, but they kept walking.

They hissed again when they got up onto the deck of the Caledonia and discovered the ship was still shifting slightly to and fro. “It will fall over and put us all at the bottom of the water,” Ristin said angrily. He didn’t know nautical English, but got his meaning across.

Yeager looked around at the faded paint, the rust that streaked down from rivets, the worn woodwork, the grease-stained dungarees and old wool sweaters the crew wore. “I don’t think so,” he told the Lizards. “This boat’s done a lot more sailing in its day. I expect it’s good for some more yet.”

“I think you’re right, Sam,” Barbara said, perhaps as much to reassure herself as to console Ristin.

“Out of the way, there,” an officer in Navy uniform yelled at Yeager. “And get those damned things into the cabin we’ve set up for them.”

“Yes, sir,” Yeager said, saluting. “Uh, sir, where is this cabin? Nobody told me before I got here.”

The Navy man rolled his eyes. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He grabbed a passing sailor by the arm. “Virgil, take this guy and his pet Lizards up to cabin nine. That one can be locked from the outside-here’s the key.” He turned to Barbara. “Who are you, ma’am?” When she gave him her name, he checked a list, then said, “You can go along if you like, since you don’t seem to mind being around these things-they give me the creeps. Anyway, you’re in cabin fourteen, just up the corridor. I hope that’s all right.”

“Sure-why not?” Barbara said. The Navy man looked at her, looked back to the Lizards, rolled his eyes again. He obviously didn’t want to have anything more to do with them than duty required.

“Come on,” Virgil said. He had an engaging hillbilly twang, and seemed more curious than repelled by the Lizards. Nodding to Ristin, he said, “You speak English?”

“Yess,” Ristin answered, fixing him with a baleful stare. “You are sure this-thing-will not fall over into the water?”

“Yup.” The sailor laughed. “Hasn’t yet, anyhow.” Just then, other sailors cast off lines at stern and bow. The ship’s engine roared into life, making the deck vibrate. Ristin and Ullhass both glared at Virgil as if they’d just convicted him of perjury in their minds. Black smoke poured from the Caledonia’s twin stacks. She slowly pulled away from the Navy Pier.

Back on the pier, some of the soldiers who’d done stevedore duty waved farewells. More, though, were too worn to do anything but stand or sit at the end of the pier. Yeager wondered how many of them had any idea why the cargo they’d loaded onto the freighter was so important. A handful if any, he guessed.

He was looking back toward Chicago when he saw flames and dust and smoke spurt up from an explosion, and then from another and another. Oddly flat across a widening stretch of water, the blasts reached his ears at about the same time he heard the screaming jets of the Lizard fighter-bombers.

The antiaircraft gunners on the Navy Pier started firing for all they were worth. All that accomplished was to draw the Lizards’ attention to them. One of the planes zoomed along the length of the pier, turned loose a couple of bombs. The AA fire cut off as sharply as a chicken’s squawks when the cleaver comes down.

The Lizard plane shot over the Caledonia, so low Yeager could see the seams where pieces of its skin were joined together. He breathed a sigh of relief when it screamed out over the lake.

Along with his charges, Virgil had stopped to watch the enemy aircraft again. Now he said, “Let’s get you movin’ again.” But he kept his head cocked, as Yeager did, listening to the sound of the jet engine. Worry crossed his face. “I don’t much like that it’s-”

Before he could say comin’ back, a sharp bark rose above the scream. Yeager had been under fire often enough to make his reaction almost reflexive. “Hit the deck!” he yelled, and had the presence of mind to knock Barbara down beside him.

Cannon shells raked the Caledonia from starboard to port. Glass shattered. Metal screamed. A moment later, so did men. The Lizard pilot, happy with the strafing run, darted westward toward his base.

Something hot and wet splashed Yeager. When he touched it, his hand came away smeared with red. He looked up. There on the deck, a little in front of him, lay Virgil’s still-twitching legs. A few feet away were the soldier’s head and shoulders and arms. Nothing but that red smear was left of the parts in between.

Ullhass and Ristin stared at the ruin of what had been a man with as much horror as if they’d been men themselves. As Yeager did, Barbara Larssen looked up into carnage. She was as smeared with blood as he, from her wavy hair to her pleated skirt: and beyond-a neat line between silk-covered pink and crimson on her calf showed just how far down the skirt had gone.

She saw what was left of Virgil, stared down at the slaughterhouse survivor she’d become. “Oh God,” she said, “Oh God,” and was noisily sick on the deck in the middle of the blood. She clung to Yeager and he to her, his hands digging like claws into the firm, marvelously unbroken flesh of her back her breasts pressing against his chest as if they grew there Her head was jammed down into the hollow of his shoulder He didn’t know if she could breathe and he didn’t care. In spite of the stink of the blood and the puke he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman in all his life and from the way his hard-on rubbed her leg and she didn’t pull away but moaned and just shoved herself to him harder than ever he knew she wanted him too and of course it was crazy and of course it was shock but he didn’t care about that either, not one bit.