Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

So did hers, unbuckling his belt, opening his trouser button, and, with several delicious pauses, lowering his zipper. He yanked down his pants and jockey shorts, just far enough. They were both laughing by then. Laughing still, he plunged into her, leaving behind for a little while the terror outside the blacked-out apartment.

“I should have taken off my shirt,” he said when they were through. “Now it’s all sweaty.”

“It? What about me?” Barbara brought both hands up to his chest, made as if to push him vertically away from her. He raised up on his elbows and knees-and this time did catch the back of his head on the bottom of the kitchen table, hard enough to see stars. He swore, first in English, then in the fragments of Norwegian he’d picked up from his grandfather.

Barbara, whose maiden name was Baker and who had a couple of several-times-great-grandfathers who’d fought in the Revolution, always thought that was the funniest thing in the world. “You’re in no position to laugh now, wench,” he said, and tickled her conveniently bare ribs. The linoleum made moist squelching noises under her backside as she tried to wriggle away. That set him laughing, too. He grabbed her. They might have begun again, but the telephone chose that moment to ring.

Larssen jerked up in surprise-he hadn’t thought the phone was working-and, gave himself another crack in the head. This time he started out swearing in Norwegian. Trousers flopping around his ankles, he hobbled into the bedroom. “Hello?” he growled, annoyed as if it were the caller’s fault he’d knocked his brains loose.

“That is you, Jens? You are all right, you and Barbara?”

The accented voice on the other end of the line threw ice water on his steam. “Yes, Dr. Fermi,” he said, and made a hasty grab for his pants. Of course Fermi could not see him, but he was embarrassed even to be talking to the Italian physicist, a dignified man if ever there was one, with trousers at half-mast. “We came through safe again, thank you.”

“Safe?” Fermi echoed bitterly. “This is a word without meaning in the world today. I thought it had one when Laura and I came here four years ago, but I am wrong. But never mind that. Here is the reason I call: Szilard says-and he, is right-we must all meet tomorrow, and tomorrow early. Seven o’clock. He would say six if he could.”

“I’ll be there,” Larssen promised. “What’s up?”

“The Lizards, they are moving toward Chicago.”

The words seemed to hang on the wire. “But they can’t,” Jens said, though he knew perfectly well they could. What the devil was there to stop them?

Fermi understood what be meant. “You are right-they must not. If they come here, everything we do since we begin is lost. Too much time lost, time we have not to waste even against Germany, to say nothing of these creatures.”

“Germany.” Larssen kept his voice flat. He’d been relieved past all measure when the atomic bomb that exploded above Chicago proved not to have a swastika painted on its casing. He once more had no idea how far along the Nazis were on their own bomb program. It would be a hell of a note, though, for humanity to have to depend on them alone for a weapon with which to do the Lizards some real damage. He wondered if he would sooner see Earth conquered than Adolf Hitler its savior. Just maybe, he thought. On the line, Fermi cleared his throat. That brought Larssen back to the here-and-now. “I’ll be there,” he said again.

“Good,” Fermi said. “I go, then-many others to call while phones are working. I see you in the morning.” He hung up without saying good-bye. Larssen sat down on the bed, thinking hard. His pants slid back down to his ankles. He didn’t notice.

His wife walked into the bedroom. She carried a candle to light her way. Outside, fire-engine sirens rang through the night as their crews fought to douse the fires the Lizards had started. “What’s up?” Barbara asked. She tossed her blouse and underwear into the wickerwork laundry hamper.

“Big meeting tomorrow,” he answered, then repeated Fermi’s grim news.

“That’s not good,” she said. She had no real notion of what he was working on under Stagg Field; she’d been studying medieval English literature when they met at Berkeley. But she knew the project was important. She asked, “How are we going to stop them?”

“You come up with the answer to that one and you win the sixty-four dollars.”

She smiled at that, then set the candle in a silver stick-a wedding present Larssen had never thought they’d use-on top of the dresser. With both hands, she took off her skirt and threw it at the hamper. She glanced over to him. “You still haven’t pulled up your pants.”

“I did so,” he said, then had to add lamely, “They must have fallen down again.”

“Well, shall I put on a nightgown now, or not?”

He considered. The meeting in the morning was early, but if he poured down enough coffee, he’d get through it okay… and Barbara, naked in the candlelight, made him want to forget tomorrow anyhow. “Not,” he said.

“Good. This time, take your shirt off, too.”

Nothing was running the next morning when Larssen headed for the University of Chicago, not the buses, not the elevated, nothing. Only a few cars crawled cautiously along the street, inhibited not only by the gas shortage but also now by the risk of rubble.

A rifle-toting air-raid warden in a British-style tin hat and a Civil Defense armband nodded to Jens as he walked past. The wardens had flowered like weeds after a drought in the panicky weeks following Pearl Harbor, then disappeared almost as quickly when their services proved unnecessary. But these days, they really were needed. This one looked as though he hadn’t slept in a month. His face was covered with graying stubble; an unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. But he was going on as best he could, like everyone else.

An hour’s brisk walk got Larssen onto the university campus. While he supposed that was good for him, he also gave some serious thought to trying to get his hands on a bicycle. The sooner the better, he decided, before everyone got the same idea and the price went sky-high. He didn’t have two hours to spare every day going back and forth to work.

Eckhart Hall stood on the southeast corner of the Quadrangle. It was a new building, having opened in 1930. New or not, however, it didn’t boast air conditioning; the windows to the commons room were open, allowing fresh warm muggy air to replace the stale warm muggy air already inside. In deference to the hour, someone had put out a big pot of coffee and a tray of sweet rolls on a table set under those windows.

Larssen made a beeline for that table, poured himself a paper cup of coffee, gulped it down hot and black, then grabbed a roll and got a second cup. With the caffeine jolt kicking in, he drank this one more slowly.

But as he carried the coffee and sweet roll to a chair, he wondered how long such things would continue to exist in Chicago. The coffee was imported, of course, and so were some of the ingredients in the roll-the cinnamon, certainly. How long could commerce continue at even its wartime level with Lizard bases scattered over the United States like growing tumors?

He nodded to Enrico Fermi, one of the two or three men who had beaten him to the meeting. The Italian physicist was wiping his mouth on a paper napkin (the pulp from which it was made was yet another import, Larssen thought). “We’d best enjoy life while we can,” the younger man said, and explained his reasoning.

Fermi nodded. His receding hairline and oval face made him the literal embodiment of the word egghead, and also made him look older than his forty-one years. His smile now was sweet and rather sad. “My world has already turned upside down once of late. Another time seems somehow less distressing-and I doubt the Lizards concern themselves over my wife’s religion.”