Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“We still have some of the devices left,” Kirel persisted. “Maybe the Big Uglies will be more willing to submit if they see what we can do to their cities.”

Atvar threw back his head in disagreement. “We do not destroy the world toward which a settler fleet is already traveling.” That was what ancient doctrine said, doctrine based on the conquests of Rabotevs and Hallessi.

“Exalted Fleetlord, Tosev 3 appears to me to be dissimilar to our previous campaigns,” Kirel said,’ pressing his superior up to the edge of politeness. “The Tosevites have a greater capacity to resist than did the other subject races, and so seem to require harsher measures. The Deutsche in particular, Exalted Fleetlord-the cannon that wrecked the 56th Emperor Jossano was theirs, even if it was on the land of the SSSR, and the missile the Big Uglies tried to launch, and now, you tell me, they fly jet planes as well.”

“No,” Atvar said. Ancient doctrine declared that new planets were not to be spoiled by radioactivity, which was apt to linger long after the war of subjugation ended. After all, the Race would be living here in perpetuity, integrating Tosev into the fabric of the Empire… and Tosev 3 didn’t have that much land to begin with.

But it did have hideously troublesome natives. Just moments before, the fleetlord had thought how poorly ancient doctrine worked when dealing with the Big Uglies. Moving away from it frightened him as he’d never been frightened before, as if he were cut off from the Emperor’s favor, adrift and alone. Yet would he deserve the Emperor’s favor if he led the Race to more disasters?

“Wait, Shiplord-I have changed my mind,” he told Kirel, who had begun to turn away. “Go ahead and use one on-what is the name of the place?”

“Berlin, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel answered. “It shall be done.”

“Paris,” George Bagnall said wearily. “I was here on holiday a couple of years before the war started. It’s not the same.”

“Nothing’s the same as it was before the war started,” Ken Embry said. “Hell, nothing’s the same as it was before the Lizards came, and that was bare weeks ago.”

“A good thing, too, else we’d all be kriegies by now, sitting behind, barbed wire and waiting for our next Red Cross packages,” Alf Whyte said. The navigator lifted a leg and shook his tired foot, then laughed wryly. “If we were kriegies with Red Cross packages, we’d likely see better grub than we’ve had on the way up here.”

“Right on both counts,” Bagnall said. The German occupiers of northern and central France could have swept up the English fliers a dozen times over on their hike to Paris, but hadn’t bothered. Some, in fact, cheered the men they might have shot under other circumstances. French peasants shared what they had with the Englishmen, but what they had was mostly potatoes and greens. Their rations made the ones back home sybaritic by comparison, a true testimonial to how meager they were.

Ken Embry said, “Talk about the Lizards, who’d’ve dreamt he’d be sorry to hear Berlin was smashed to flinders?”

The French papers, still German-dominated, had screamed of nothing else the past few days, shrieked about the fireball that consumed the city, wailed over unbelievable devastation, wept at the hundreds of thousands reported dead. Bagnall understood most of what the sheets proclaimed; his French was better than he’d giddily claimed in the moment of relief after the Lanc got down safe. Now he said, “I’d not have shed a tear if they’d managed to toast Hitler along with everyone else.”

“Nor I,” Embry agreed. “I’d not have minded carrying one of those bloody big bombs when we flew over Cologne, either. So long as it was us or the Nazis-but the Lizards complicate everything.”

“Too right they do.” Bagnall cast a wary eye to the sky, as if to watch for a Lizard plane. Not that seeing one would do any good, if it had on board a superbomb like the one that hit Berlin. If the papers were to be believed-always a risky business in France, and all the more so after 1940-one single bomb had leveled an area miles across. You couldn’t even run from a bomb like that, let alone hide. What point in watching the skies, then?

As Bagnall brought his gaze back to earth, it settled on a faded, tattered propaganda poster from the Vichy government; though it had never held sway in the German-occupied parts of France, this was not the first such poster he’d seen. In big, tri-color letters, it proclaimed, LABOURAGE ET PTURAGE SONT LES DEUX MAMELLES DE LA FRANCE. Underneath, someone had neatly chalked a comment: Merde.

The flight engineer ignored the editorial remark. He stared in wonder and fascination at the slogan, marveling that anyone could have written it in the first place, let alone committed it to print and spread it broadcast. But there it was, in letters four inches high, all tricked out and made to look patriotic. Quite unable to help himself, he broke out in great, braying guffaws.

“What’s so bleeding funny?” asked Joe Simpkin, the Lanc’s rear gunner.

Bagnall still could not speak. He simply pointed at the Vichy poster. Their attention drawn to it, Embry and Alf Whyte started laughing, too.

Simpkin didn’t. He really had no French, though he’d picked up a few words, not all of them printable, since the bomber had to land. The edifying sentiment of the poster still remained beyond him, however. He scowled and asked, “What’s it say?”

Something like Work and farming are France’s two tits Bagnall answered between wheezes. Translating it into English set him off again, and everyone else with him. A thin Frenchman in a ragged jacket and a black beret frowned at the spectacle of seven obvious foreigners falling to pieces in the middle of the street. Because there were seven of them, he didn’t do anything more than frown.

“Tits, is it?” Simpkin said. He was from Gloucester, and spoke with a western accent. “France has better tits’n those, and legs, too.”

As if to prove him right, a pretty girl rode by on a rattling bicycle that was probably older than she was. Her skirt showed a lot of tanned leg. Bagnall could hear every click of the bicycle chain as it traveled over the sprocket. He could hear other bicycles, around the corner and out of sight. He could hear horses’ hooves, and the rattle of iron tyres on cobblestones as a horsedrawn wagon made its slow way along the street. He could hear someone working a hand-powered sewing machine, and an old woman calling her cat, whose name was Claude and who was, she said, a very naughty fellow. He felt as though he could hear the whole city.

“Paris isn’t Paris without a horde of motorcars, all trying to run you down at once,” he said.

“No, but it’s cleaner than it used to be because the cars are gone,” Embry said. “Smell how fresh the air is. We might as well still be out in the country. Last time I was here, the petrol fumes were bad as London.”

“No petrol fumes to worry about now,” Bagnall agreed. “No petrol to worry about, either-the Jerries have taken it all for their planes and tanks.”

Footsteps from around the corner told of someone approaching. The footsteps rang, as if even the fellow’s shoes were imbued with a sense of his importance. When he appeared a few seconds later, he proved better fed and much better dressed than most of the Frenchmen Bagnall had seen. Something gleamed silver on his lapel. As he drew near, Bagnall saw what it was: a little pin in the shape of a double-headed ax-the francisque, symbol of Vichy and collaboration.

The man started to walk on by, but the sight of men in unfamiliar uniforms, even ones as dirty and ragged as those of the Lanc’s crew had become, roused his curiosity. “ Pardonnez-moi, messieurs, mais-etes-vous allemands?” he asked, then switched languages: “Sind Sie deutsche?”