Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“Charlie Tompkins runs a garage up on North Wooster, just past Garver Brothers.” The woman pointed to show him where North Wooster was. “If anybody can help you, he’s probably the one. Thank you for shopping at Walgreen’s, sir.”

He wondered if she’d have said that to the Lizards had he not come in and interrupted her. Very likely, he thought; nothing seemed to faze her. When he handed her the empty soda bottle, she rang up NO SALE on the cash register, reached in, and took out a penny, which she handed to him. “Your deposit, sir.”

Bemused, he pocketed the coin. Deposits hadn’t gone up with prices. Of course not, he thought -shopkeepers have to pay out deposits.

Strasburg wasn’t big enough to get lost in; he found North Wooster without difficulty. An enormous sign proclaimed the presence of the Garver Brothers store. The signboard outside of town, unlike a lot of small-town signboards, hadn’t exaggerated: the store sprawled over a couple of acres. The parking lot off to one side had room for hundreds of cars. At the moment, it held none.

That did not mean it was empty. Trucks ignored the white lines painted on concrete. They were not trucks of a sort Jens had seen before: they were bigger, somehow smoother of outline, quieter. When one of them rolled away, it didn’t rattle or rumble or roar. No smoke belched from its exhaust.

The Lizards were plundering Garver Brothers.

A couple of them stood in front of the store, guns at the ready, in case the small crowd of people across the street got boisterous. In the face of that firepower, and of everything the Lizards had behind it, nobody seemed inclined toward boisterousness.

Jens joined the crowd. Two or three people gave him sidelong looks: he was a Stranger, with a capital S . He’d grown up in a small town before he went off to college; he knew he could live here for twenty years and still be thought a stranger, though perhaps by then a lower-case one.

“Damn shame,” somebody said. Somebody else nodded. Larssen didn’t. As someone from out of town, his opinion was, automatically less than worthless. He just stood and watched.

The Lizards knew the kinds of goods they wanted. They came out of Garver Brothers with coils of copper wire slung over their scaly shoulders, with hand tools of all sorts, with an electric generator trundled along on a wheeled cart, with a lathe on another cart.

Jens tried to find a pattern to their depredations. At first he saw none. Then he realized most of what the Lizards were taking was tools that would help them make things of their own rather than already finished products of Earthly manufacture.

He scratched his head, not quite knowing what to make of that. It might have been a sign the invaders were settling in for a long stay. On the other hand, it might also have meant their own resources were short and they were having to eke them out with whatever they could steal. If that was so, it was encouraging.

“They’re just a bunch of damn chicken thieves, that’s what they are,” someone in the crowd said as another truck rolled away. Most of the rest of the people murmured agreement. This time, Larssen did let himself nod. Whatever their reasons for cleaning out Garver Brothers, the Lizards were doing a good, workmanlike job of it.

A vehicle came up Wooster Street toward the store. It was about as far removed as possible from the smooth, silent trucks the Lizards ran: it was a horse-drawn buggy, driven by a bearded man with a broad-brimmed black hat. He pulled into the parking lot as casually as if it had been filled with Fords and De Sotos, put a feed bag on his horse’s nose, and strode toward the guarded front door.

“The Amish have been coming to Garver Brothers for years,” someone observed.

“I wish I had me a buggy like that,” somebody else said. “A horse’ll run on grass, but my car sure as hell won’t.”

The Lizards with guns blocked the Amish farmer’s path into the store. He spoke to them; since he didn’t raise his voice and his back was turned, Larssen couldn’t make out what he said. He braced himself for trouble all the same.

Another Lizard came bounding up to the doorway. Maybe he spoke English, because the farmer started talking to him instead of to the guards. And then, to Jens’ surprise, the aliens stood aside and let him go in. He emerged a few minutes later with a shovel, a pickax, and a bolt of black cloth. Nodding politely to the Lizards as he passed them he returned to his wagon climbed in and rolled away.

He didn’ t want anything the Lizards needed so they let him have his stuff, Jens thought. That was smart of them. As for the farmer, he might not have seen them as being that different from anyone else who failed to share his own rigorous faith. The idea of living in a simple, orderly world with strict laws held no small appeal for Larssen: as a physicist, he thought well of order and law and predictability. But the tools he used to seek them were necessarily more complex than pick and shovel, horse and buggy.

That reminded him why he’d come this way in the first place. “Does anybody know if Charlie Tompkins’ garage is open?” he asked.

“Not right now it isn’t,” said the fellow who’d called the Lizards chicken thieves, “on account of I’m Charlie Tompkins. What can I do for you, stranger?”

“My car broke down about a mile outside of town,” Larssen answered. “Any chance you can take a look at it?”

The mechanic laughed. “Don’t see why not. I’m not what you’d call real busy these days-I expect you can tell that by lookin’. What’s your machine doin’, anyhow?” When Jens described the symptoms, Tompkins looked grave. “That doesn’t sound so good. Well, we’ll go see. Come on up to my shop so as I can get some tools.”

As the woman at the drugstore had said, the garage lay just a little past the Garver Brothers store. Tompkins picked up his tool kit. It didn’t look light, so Larssen said, “I’ll carry it for you, if you like. We’ve got a ways to walk.”

“Don’t worry about it. Here, come on with me.” The mechanic led Larssen over to a bicycle which had a bracket welded to the head tube. The handle of the tool kit fit neatly over the bracket. Tompkins climbed onto the saddle, gestured to Larssen. “You ride behind me. I don’t use any gas this way, a bike’s got fewer parts than a car, and they’re easier for somebody like me to fix if they do break.”

All that made perfect sense, but Jens hadn’t ridden on one of those little flat racks since about the third grade. “Will it carry both of us?” he asked.

Tompkins laughed. “I’ve put bigger men than you back there, my friend. Sure, you’re tall, but you’re built like a pencil. We won’t have any trouble, I promise.”

They didn’t have much. What there was, came because Larssen hadn’t been on any bicycle at all for a good many years, and needed a little while before his body remembered how to balance. Charlie Tompkins compensated for his lurches without saying a word. In a way, that only made them more embarrassing: weren’t you never supposed to forget how to stay on a bicycle? Jens sighed as he did his best not to maim himself while exploding the cliche.

“Whereabouts you from, mister?” Tompkins asked as they rolled past the sign welcoming people to Strasburg.

“Chicago,” Larssen answered.

The mechanic twisted his head. That struck Larssen as foolhardy, but he kept his mouth shut. After a moment, Tompkins turned back to watch where he was going. He spoke over his shoulder: “And you were heading back there, were you, from wherever you were coming from?”

“That’s right. What about it?”

“Nothing, really.” Tompkins pedaled along for a few more seconds, then went on in a sad tone, “Thing is, though, you might not want to say that to just anybody around here who asks. Chicago’s still free, right? Sure it is. I’m not asking whether you would or you wouldn’t, mind, but I can see where you might not want the Lizards to get wind of whatever reasons you’ve got for going that way.”