Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“Jesus Christ!” the secretary of state exclaimed. Molotov understood that without translation, though the American pronounced Christ as if it were Chwist. Hull followed it with several more sharp-sounding remarks.

“What is he saying?” Molotov asked his English-speaking translator.

“Oaths,” the man answered. “Forgive me, Comrade Foreign Commissar, but I do not follow them easily. The American’s accent is different from Churchill’s, with which I am more familiar. When he speaks deliberately, I have no trouble understanding him, but the twang he gives his words when he is excited makes them difficult for me.”

“Do your utmost,” Molotov said. He hadn’t thought about there being more than one dialect of English; to him it was all equally incomprehensible. Stalin and Mikoyan spoke Russian with an accent, of course, but that was because the one came from Georgia and the other from Armenia. The interpreter seemed to imply something else, more like the differences between the Russian of a kolkhoznik near the Polish border (the former Polish border Molotov thought) and that of a Moscow factory worker.

The shelter proved low-roofed, crowded, and smelly. Molotov looked around scornfully: was this the best the British could protect their essential personnel? Corresponding quarters in Moscow were farther underground, surely better armored, and much more spacious.

Clerks and officials gave the diplomats as much room as they could, which was not a great deal. Churchill said, “Shall we continue, gentlemen?”

Molotov wondered if he had lost his mind. Resume, in front of all these people? Then he reflected that what happened here was not likely to be reported back to the Lizards; unlike the powers negotiating today, the invaders had no long-established spy network to pick up their rivals’ every word.

But then he realized that might not matter. He said, “I make no secret”-which meant Stalin had told him to make no secret-“of the fact that I have met the enemy’s commanding officer in his ship above the Earth. As I expected, those negotiations proved fruitless, the Lizards demanding nothing less than the unconditional surrender we all find unacceptable. In the course of the meeting, however, I also learned the German foreign minister had held talks with this Atvar creature. I desire to know now whether this also holds true for Great Britain, the United States, and Japan. If so, I desire to know the status of their conversations with the Lizards. In short, are we in danger of betrayal from within?”

Joachim von Ribbentrop spluttered something indignant in German, then switched to English. The translator murmured into Molotov’s ear: “Yes, I discussed certain matters with the Lizards. After the fire that fell on Berlin, this is surely understandable, not so? I betrayed nothing, however, and resent the imputation. As proof I offer the Reich’s continuing struggle against the invading forces.”

“No imputation was intended,” Molotov said, though he remembered Atvar had implied Ribbentrop was more pliable than the German painted himself. Of course, it was as likely the Lizard lied for his own advantage as that Ribbentrop did so. More likely still, they both lied. Molotov resumed: “What of the rest of you?”

Cordell Hull said, “I haven’t done any of this Buck Rogers stuff.” (“By which he means he has not traveled into space,” the interpreter glossed.) “No one from the government of the United States has. We have held lower-level talks with the Lizards on our soil regarding such matters as transportation of food and other noncombat supplies to areas they control, and we are also attempting to arrange exchanges of prisoners of war.”

Soft, Molotov thought. The handful of prisoners the Soviets had taken from the invaders were interrogated until no longer useful and then disposed of, just as if they were Germans or kulaks with important information. As for supplying food to Lizard-held areas, Moscow had enough trouble feeding the people it still ruled. Those the Lizards had overrun made useful partisans and spies, but that was all.

Shigenori Togo spoke in German; Molotov remembered he had a German wife. The Soviet foreign minister’s English-speaking interpreter also knew German. He translated for Molotov: “He says there is no excuse for treating with this enemy.”

Ribbentrop scowled at the Japanese representative. Ignoring the glare, Togo switched to his own language and went on for some time. Molotov’s other translator took over: “The Emperor Hirohito’s government has consistently refused to deal with the Lizards except on the battlefield. We see no reason to discontinue this policy. We shall continue to fight until events prove favorable for us. We understand this fight will be difficult; that is why I am here today. But Japan will fight on regardless of the course any other nation may take.”

“The same holds true for Britain,” Churchill declared. “We may talk with the foe, consistent with the usages of war, but we shall not surrender to him. Resistance is our sacred duty to our children.”

“You say this now,” Ribbentrop said. “But what will you say when the Lizards strike London or Washington or Tokyo or Moscow with the same dreadful weapon that destroyed Berlin?”

Silence reigned for the next several seconds. It was a better question than Molotov had expected from the plump, prosperous, foolish Ribbentrop. He did notice the Nazi foreign minister had put the Soviet capital last on his list. Annoyed by that, he said, “Comrade Stalin has pledged a fight to the finish, and the Soviet workers and people shall hold to the pledge, come what may. In any case, if I may use a bourgeois analogy, having continued to resist despite wholesale murder at the hands of Germany, we shall not quail at the prospect of retail murder from the Lizards.”

Ribbentrop’s protuberant blue eyes glared balefully. Shigenori Togo, whose nation had been at war with neither the Soviet Union nor Germany when the Lizards came, was in the best position to address both their representatives: “Such talk as this, gentlemen, aids no one but the invaders. Of course we remember our own quarrels, but to use them to interfere with the struggle against the Lizards is shortsighted.”

He could not have picked a better word to gain Molotov’s attention. The ineluctable nature of the historical dialectic made Marxist-Leninists long-term planners almost by instinct. The Five-Year Plans that had made the Soviet Union an industrial match for Germany were a case in point.

Molotov said, “I merely used the analogy to demonstrate that we shall not be intimidated by brute force. In fact, the Soviet Union and Germany are even now cooperating in areas where our two states can effectively bring combined resources to bear against the common enemy.” He stopped there. Another word would have been too much.

Ribbentrop nodded. “We will do what we must do to secure final victory.”

Glee danced behind Molotov’s unchanging visage. He would have bet a prewar Crimean dacha against a trip to the gulag that Ribbentrop had no idea what sort of cooperation he’d meant. He knew perfectly well that he would never have told the pompous ass anything important.

“Instead of bemoaning the dreadful weapons the Lizards have, one of the things we should be doing is discovering how to make them for ourselves,” Cordell Hull said. “I am authorized by President Roosevelt to tell you all that the United States has such a program in progress, and that we will share resources with our allies in the struggle.”

“The United States and Britain are already operating under such an arrangement,” Churchill said, adding with a touch of smugness, “nor is the sharing to which Secretary Hull referred by any means a one-way street.”