Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

Maybe, he thought too, late, he shouldn’t have shown just how hungry he was. He didn’t like the way the Nipponese officer stretched out his lips and showed his teeth.

Vyacheslav Molotov glanced around the room. Here was a sight that would have been impossible to imagine a few months before: diplomats from Allies and Axis, imperialists and progressives, fascists and Communists and capitalists, all gathered together to seek a common strategy against a common foe.

Had Molotov been a different man, he might have smiled. As it was, his expression never wavered. He had been in a place more unimaginable than this when he floated feather-light in the Lizard leader’s bake-oven of a chamber hundreds of kilometers above the Earth. But this London room was remarkable enough.

The room might have been anywhere in the world It was in London because Great Britain lay relatively close to all the powers here save only Japan because the Lizards hadn’t invaded the islands, and because their attacks on shipping were haphazard enough to have given everyone a reasonable chance of arriving safely. And, indeed, everyone had arrived safely, though the conference was starting late because the Japanese foreign minister had been delayed zigzagging around the Lizard-held areas of North America.

The only disadvantage Molotov could see to meeting in London was that it gave Winston Churchill the right to preside. Molotov had nothing personal against Churchill-though imperialist, he was a staunch anti-fascist, and without him Britain might well have folded up and come to terms with the Hitlerites in 1940. That would have left the Soviet Union in a bad way when the Nazis turned east the next year.

No, it wasn’t personal animosity. But Churchill did have a habit of going on and on. He was by all accounts a master orator in English. Molotov, unfortunately, spoke no English; even masterful oratory, when understood only through the murmurs of an interpreter, soon palled.

That didn’t bother Churchill. Round and plump and ruddy-faced, waving a long cigar, he looked the very picture of a capitalist oppressor. But his words were defiant: “We cannot yield another inch of ground to these creatures. It would mean slavery for the human race forevermore.”

“If we didn’t all agree in this, we would not be here today,” Cordell Hull said. The U.S. secretary of state raised a wry eyebrow. “Count Ciano isn’t, for instance.”

Molotov appreciated the dig at the Italians, who had given up even pretending to fight the Lizards a couple of weeks before. The Italians had named fascism, and now they showed its bankruptcy by yielding essentially at the first blow. The Germans at least had the courage of their convictions; Mussolini seemed to lack, both.

Translators murmured to their principals. Joachim von Ribbentrop spoke fluent English, so the five leaders got along with three languages and thus only two interpreters per man. That made the talks cumbersome, but not unmanageably so.

Shigenori Togo said, “I feel our primary goal here is not so much to affirm the fight against the Lizards, with which we all agree, but to ensure that we do not allow the hostilities previously existing among ourselves adversely to affect our struggle.”

“That is a good point,” Molotov said. The Soviet Union and Japan had been neutral, which allowed each of them to devote its full energies to foes it reckoned more important (though Japan’s foes were the USSR’s allies in its battle against Germany, Japan’s Axis partner-diplomacy could be a strange business).

“Yes, it is,” Cordell Hull said. “We have come a long way in that direction, Mr. Togo-a short while ago, you’d not have been welcome in London, and even less welcome traveling across the United States to get here.” Togo bowed in his seat, politely acknowledging the American’s reply.

Churchill said, “Another point we must address is the trouble we have rendering aid to one another. As matters now stand, we must sneak about on our own world like so many mice fearing the cat. It is intolerable; it shall not stand.”

“Bravely spoken as usual, Comrade Prime Minister,” Molotov said. “You set forth an important and inspiring principle, but unfortunately offer no means of putting it into effect.”

“To find such a means is the reason we have agreed to meet in spite of past differences,” Ribbentrop said.

Molotov did not dignify that with a reply. If Churchill’s gift was for inspiration, the Nazi foreign minister’s was for stating the obvious. Molotov wondered why the pompous, posturing fool couldn’t have been in Berlin, when it disappeared from the face of the earth. Hitler might have had to replace him with a capable diplomat.

Air-raid sirens began to wail. Lizard jets shrieked by on low-level attack runs. Antiaircraft guns pounded-not as many as warded Moscow, Molotov thought, but a goodly number. None of the diplomats at the table moved. Everyone looked at everyone, else for signs of fear and tried not to give any of his own. They had all come under air attack before.

“Times like these make me wish I were back in the wine business,” Ribbentrop said, lightly. He had animal courage, if nothing else; he’d been decorated for bravery during the First World War.

“I want those God-damned planes shot down,” Churchill said, as if giving someone unseen an order. If only it were that easy, Molotov thought. If Stalin could have done it by giving-an order, the Lizards would long since have ceased to trouble us-as would the Hitlerites Some things unfortunately yielded to no man’s orders. Maybe that was why foolish people imagined gods into being: to have someone whose orders were sure to be obeyed.

A stick of bombs crashed down not far from the Foreign Office building. The noise was cataclysmic. Windows rattled. One broke and fell in tinkling shards to the floor. The interpreters were less obliged to show sangfroid than the men they served. Several of them muttered; one of Ribbentrop’s aides crossed himself and began fingering a rosary.

More bombs fell. Another window broke, or rather blew inward. A fragment of glass flew past Molotov’s head and shattered against the wall. The translator who’d been praying cried out and clapped a hand to his cheek. Blood leaked between his fingers. So much for your imaginary God, Molotov thought. As usual, though, his face revealed nothing of what went on in his mind.

“If you like, gentlemen, we can adjourn to the shelter in the basement,” Churchill said.

Interpreters looked hopefully at foreign ministers. Molotov checked his confreres. None of them said anything, in spite of the suggestion’s obvious good sense. Molotov took the bull by the horns. “Yes, let us do that, Comrade Prime Minister. In all candor, our lives are valuable to the nations we serve. Foolish displays of bravado gain us nothing, if we can keep safe, we should do so.”

Almost as one, the diplomats and interpreters rose from their seats and moved toward the door. No one thanked Molotov for cutting through the facade of bourgeois manners, but he’d expected no thanks from class enemies. As the Soviet foreign minister set foot on the stairs leading down, another irony struck him. For all their advanced technology, the Lizards appeared in Marxist-Leninist terms still to be in the ancient economic organizational system, using slave labor and plunder from captive races to maintain their imperial superstructure. Next to them, even Churchill-even Ribbentrop! — was progressive. The thought amused and appalled Molotov at the same time.

Another stick of bombs shook the Foreign Office as the diplomats descended to the cellar. Cordell Hull slipped and almost fell, catching himself at the last instant by grabbing the shoulder of the Japanese interpreter in front of him.