Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“It shall be done,” the pilots chorused again.

Mordechai Anielewicz walked along Nowolipie Street between closed armaments plants, listening to Nathan Brodsky. The Jewish fighting leader had long since grown used to taking promenades through Warsaw to listen to things he didn’t want to take the chance of having the Lizards overhear. This was one of those things: Brodsky, who worked as a laborer at the airport, had picked up a lot of the Lizards’ language.

“No doubt about it,” Brodsky was saying. The hem of his coat flapped around his ankles as be walked beside Anielewicz. “Their destination is Ploesti; they were talking about knocking out all the Nazis’ oil. Nu, I know that’s important, so I told the Lizard boss I was sick and came straight to you.”

“Nu, nu,” Anielewicz answered. “You’re not wrong; it is important. Now I have to figure out what to do about it.” He stopped. “Let’s head back toward my headquarters.”

Brodsky obediently turned. Now Anielewicz walked with his head down, hands jammed into his pockets against the cold. He was thinking very hard indeed. Cooperating with the Germans in any way still left the worst of bad tastes in his mouth. He kept having second thoughts about letting that damned panzer major through with even half his saddlebag of explosive metal.

And now again. If the Lizards wrecked Ploesti, the Nazi war machine was liable to grind to a halt; the Germans, without oil of their own, desperately needed what they got from Romania. The Nazis were still fighting hard against the Lizards; and even hurting them now and again: no one could deny they turned out capable soldiers and clever engineers.

Suppose in the end the Germans won. Would they rest content inside their own borders? Anielewicz snorted. Not bloody likely! But suppose the Germans-suppose mankind-lost. Would the Lizards ever use human beings as anything but hewers of wood and drawers of water? That wasn’t bloody likely, either.

The Jewish fighting leader came around the last corner before the office building his men occupied. Among many others, his bicycle stood out in front of it. Seeing it there helped him make up his mind. He slapped Brodsky on the back. “Thank you for letting me know, Nathan. I’ll take care of it.”

“What will you do?” Brodsky asked.

Anielewicz didn’t answer; unlike Brodsky, he’d come to appreciate the need for tight security. What the other Jew didn’t know, he couldn’t tell. Anielewicz hopped on his bicycle, rode rapidly to a house outside the ghetto. He knocked on the door. A Polish woman opened it. “May I use your telephone?” he said. “I’m sorry; I’m afraid it’s quite urgent.”

Her eyes went wide: few people who are part of contingency plans ever expect the contingencies to arrive. But after a moment she nodded. “Yes, of course. Come in. It’s in the parlor.”

Anielewicz knew where the phone was; his men had installed it. He cranked it, waited for an operator to answer. When she did, he said, “Give me Operator Three-Two-Seven, please.”

“One moment.” He heard clicks from the switchboard, then: “Three-Two-Seven speaking.”

“Yes. This is Yitzhak Bauer. I need to place a call to my uncle Michael in Satu Mare, please. It’s urgent.”

The operator was one of his people. The false name was one for which she was supposed to be alert. And she was. Without a second’s hesitation, she said, “I will try to put you through. It may take some time.”

“As fast as you can, please.” At full stretch from where he stood, Anielewicz could just reach a chair. He snagged it, sank into it. Polish long-distance phone service had been bad before the war started. It was worse now. He kept the receiver pressed to his ear. What he mostly heard was silence. Every so often, there would be more switchboard clicks or operators’ voices at the very limit of hearing.

Time crawled by. The Polish woman brought him a cup of coffee, or rather the burnt-kasha brew that substituted for it. He’d long since grown used to the ersatz, and besides, it was warm. But if the call didn’t get through pretty soon, he wouldn’t have needed to bother making it: the Lizards would have bombed Ploesti and headed back.

How long to finish arming their planes? he wondered. That was the biggest variable; the flight from here to a little north of Bucharest wouldn’t take long, especially not at the speeds the Lizards’ aircraft used.

More clicks, more distant chatter, and then, sounding almost as clear as if she were sitting in his lap, Operator Three-Two-Seven said, “I am through to Sate Mare, sir.” He heard another operator’s voice, more distant, speaking oddly accented German rather than Polish or Yiddish:. “Go ahead, Warsaw. To whom do you wish to speak?”

“My uncle Michael-Michael Spiegel, that is,” Anielewicz said. “Tell him it’s his nephew Yitzhak.” Lieutenant Colonel Michael Spiegel, he was given to understand, commanded the Nazi garrison at Sate Mare, the northernmost Romanian town still in German hands.

“I will connect you. Please wait,” the distant operator said.

Anielewicz listened to still more clicks, and then at last a ringing phone. Someone picked it up; he heard a brisk male voice say, “Bitte?” The operator explained who he claimed to be. A long pause followed, and then, “Yitzhak? Is that you? I hadn’t expected to hear from you.”

I hadn’t expected to call, either, you Nazi bastard Anielewicz thought; Spiegel’s clear German set his teeth on edge by conditioned reflex. But he made himself say, “Yes, it’s me, Uncle Michael. I thought you ought to know that our friends will want some cooking grease from your family-as much as you can spare.”

He felt how crude the improvised code was. Spiegel, fortunately, proved quick on the uptake. Hardly missing a beat, the German said, “We’ll have to get it ready for them. Do you know when they’re coming?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if they’d already left,” Anielewicz answered. “I’m sorry, but I just found out they felt like getting it myself.”

“Such is life. We’ll do what we can. Hei -Good-bye.” The line went dead.

He started to say Heil Hitler, Anielewicz thought. Damn good thing he caught himself in case the Lizards are listening in.

As soon as he replaced the receiver, the Polish woman stuck her head into the parlor. “Is everything all right?” she asked anxiously.

“I-hope so,” he answered, but felt he had to add, “If you have relatives you can stay with, that might be a good idea.”

Her pale blue eyes went wide. She nodded. “I’ll arrange to have someone get word to my husband,” she said. “Now you’d better go.”

Anielewicz left in a hurry. He felt bad about endangering a noncombatant family, and even worse about endangering them to benefit the Nazis. I hope I did the right thing, he thought as he climbed onto his bicycle. I wonder if I’ll ever be sure.

Blips appeared on the head-up display that reflected into Gefron’s eyes from the inside of the killercraft’s windscreen. “Some of the Big Uglies on the ground must have spotted us,” the flight leader said. “They’re sending aircraft up to try to keep us away from Ploesti.” His mouth fell open in amusement at the absurdity of the idea.

The other two pilots in the flight confirmed that their electronics saw the Tosevite aircraft, too. Xarol observed, “They’re sending up a lot of aircraft.”

“This fuel is important to them,” Gefron answered. “They know they have to try to protect it. What they don’t know is that they can’t. We’ll have to show them.”

He studied the velocity vectors of the planes the Big Uglies were flying. A couple were the new jets the Deutsche had started throwing into the air. They were fast enough to have been troublesome if they were equipped with radar. As it was, he knew they were there while they still groped for him.