Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“They are prisoners, Your Excellency; they ought to be treated like any other prisoners of war.” Russie had walked out to the camp in the ruins of the Rakowiec district, just to see Germans behind the razor strips the Lizards used in place of barbed wire. He wished he hadn’t. Looking at the crowds of dirty, battered, hungry men milling around reminded him overpoweringly of looking down any street when the ghetto was packed tight.

“Not all your people so think, Herr Russie. Who is your emperor here?”

“Our ruler, you mean?”

“Your emperor-he who decides for you,” Zolraag said. He seemed to think it was very simple. Maybe it was, among the Lizards. Russie gathered that their supreme commander-the fleetlord, Zolraag called him-had chosen Zolraag governor of Warsaw, and that was that.

Things in human Warsaw, and especially inside the Jewish quarter, were less simple. The old German-backed ghetto administration still functioned after a fashion, doling out rations from the Lizards now rather than from the Nazis. Russie himself held moral authority because of the night the Lizards came. How that translated varied from day to day, sometimes from minute to minute.

And there was Mordechai Anielewicz. He’d taken a bullet through the left hand during the attack on the Germans, but it hadn’t slowed him down. If anything, the fat white bandage seemed to mark him as a hero. His men swaggered through the streets of the Jewish quarter with captured German rifles on their shoulders. They walked boldly when they went into the rest of Warsaw, too: they were men whose comrades could avenge slights, and they knew it For Jews, the feeling was rich and heady, like a fine new brandy.

The Armja Krajowa hated them. Many of the Mausers they bore had come to them from the Lizards: more arms than the new conquerors gave the Polish Home Army. Of course, the Poles had had far more guns at the start of the Warsaw rebellion than the Jews. Maybe the Lizards were working to balance the two groups in the newly conquered territory.

Maybe too, Russie admitted to himself, Zolraag and the rest of the Lizards were using the Jews and their plight under the Nazi regime as a tool against the rest of mankind. He listened to shortwave radio, just as he’d spoken on it from a studio for the Lizards. Though he’d told no more than the truth-and much less than all the truth-human broadcasters dismissed his reports as obvious propaganda. Even the dreadful pictures that came out of the ghetto brought little belief.

Because of that, Russie said, “Your Excellency, you will hurt yourself if you treat these captured Germans different from any other prisoners of war. People will only say you are cruel and ruthless.”

“This you say, Herr Russie?” Unnervingly, Zolraag looked at Moishe with one eye and down at the papers on his desk with the other. “You, a Jew, a-how do you say it? — a sufferer, no, a victim of these Germans? Not treat them as killers? Why? Killers they are.”

“You asked what I wanted done, Your Excellency,” Russie answered. “Now I’ve told you. Revenge is a meal better eaten hot than cold.” He spent the next few minutes explaining that, and reminded himself not to use figurative language with the Lizard governor again any time soon.

Zolraag turned both eyes on him. That was almost as unnerving as being examined with just one, for his stare was steadier than any man’s could be. “You are emperor for your people when you so say? You-decide?”

“This is what I say for myself,” Russie answered. He knew that if he lied, Zolraag’s backing of his policy would transmute the lie to truth. But if he started lying, where would he stop? He didn’t want to find out; he’d discovered too many horrors, in both himself and the world around him, over the past few years. After a moment, he added, “I am fairly sure I can bring my people with me.” That wasn’t a lie: more in the way of an exaggeration.

The governor studied him a while longer, then looked away in two directions at once. “Maybe you do this, Herr Russie; maybe you bring people with you. Maybe this end up by being good. Maybe we say, look at Jews, see how Germans do to them, see how Jews not want-what was word you use? — revenge, yes, revenge. Kind Jews, gentle Jews, better than Germans, yes?”

“Yes,” Russie said in a hollow voice. More clearly than ever, he saw that Zolraag cared nothing for the Jews as Jews, and little for them as victims of the Nazis. He himself remained as much a thing to the Lizards as he had been to Hans Frank. The only difference was, to Zolraag he was a useful rather than an abhorrent thing. That marked an improvement, surely; a little while longer under the German Generalgouvernement and he would have been a dead thing. All the same, the realization tasted bitter as the bitter, herbs of the Seder.

Zolraag said, “Maybe we make picture, Jew give German prisoner food. Maybe we do that, Herr Russie, yes? Make picture make men think.”

“Any Jew who let himself be used for that sort of picture would find himself hated by other Jews,” Russie answered. Despair tinged his thoughts: propaganda, that’s all they want us for. They rescued us for their own purposes, not out of any special kindness.

A moment later, the Lizard echoed his worries. “We help you then, Herr Russie. You help us now. You owe us-what is word? — debt, yes. You owe us.”

“I know, but after what we went through, this is a hard way to repay the debt.”

“What else you Jews good for, Herr Russie, now to us?”

Russie flinched, as from a blow. Never before had Zolraag been so brutally frank with him. Change the subject a little, before you get in deeper, he thought. The ploy had served him well in medical school, letting him use his strengths and minimize weakness. He said, “Your Excellency, how can Jews think of giving Germans food when we still haven’t enough for ourselves?”

“Have as much as anyone else now,” Zolraag said.

“Yes, but we were starving before. Even what we have now is none too good.” The Poles resented having their rations cut to help feed the Jews, and the Jews were angry at the Poles for not understanding-or for approving of-their plight under the Nazis. Fair rations meant everyone ate too little. Russie said, “With all your power, Your Excellency, can’t you bring in more food for everyone in Warsaw? Then we would worry less about sharing it with the Germans.”

“Where we get food, Herr Russie? No food here, not by Warsaw, no. This place where fight happen, not farming. Fight ruin farming. You tell me where food is, I get. Otherwise…” Zolraag spread clawed hands in a very human seeming gesture of frustration.

“But-” Russie stared at the Lizard in dismay. He knew only God was omnipotent, but the Lizards, aside from seeming like manifestations of His will when they drove the Germans out of Warsaw and saved the Jews from certain destruction, were able to do so many other things with so little effort that Moishe had assumed their abilities were for all practical purposes unlimited. Discovering that was not so rocked him. He faltered. “Could you not, uh, bring food in from other parts of the world where you are not fighting hard?”

Zolraag let his mouth hang open. Russie glowered at rows of little, sharp-pointed teeth and the unnerving snakelike tongue; he knew the governor was laughing at him. Zolraag said, “Can do that, when you people give up stupid fight, join Empire. Now, no. Need all we have in fight. Tosev 3-this world-big place. Need all we have.”

“I see,” Russie said slowly. Here was news he would have to pass on to Anielewicz. Maybe the combat leader would have a better feel for what it meant than he did. What it sounded like was that the Lizards were stretched thinner than they wanted to be.