In the Balance

Zolraag went on “You know you are now in good health.”

“Yes,” Moishe repeated. Suddenly the governor reminded him of a rabbi laying out a case for his interpretation of a Talmudic passage: this was so, and that was so, and therefore… He didn’t like the therefore he saw ahead. He said, “I will not go on the radio and thank the Race for destroying Washington.”

The irrevocable words, the ones he’d tried so long to evade, were spoken at last. A large lump of ice seemed to grow in his belly in spite of the overheated room He had always been at the Lizards’ mercy, just as before he and all the Warsaw Jews were at the mercy of the Germans. A quick gesture from the governor and Rivka would be a widow.

Zolraag did not make the gesture-not yet, anyhow. He said, “I do not understand your trouble. Surely you did not object to the identical bombing of Berlin, which helped us take this city from the Deutsche. How does the one differ from the other?”

It was so obvious-but not to the Lizards. Looked at dispassionately, the distinction wasn’t easy to draw. How many Germans incinerated in Berlin had been women children old men people who hated everything for which the regime centered there stood? Thousands upon thousands surely. Their undeserved deaths were as appalling as anything Washington had suffered.

But that regime itself was so monstrous that no one-least of all Moishe Russie-could look at it dispassionately. He said, “You know the kinds of things the Germans did. They wanted to enslave or kill all their neighbors.” Rather like you Lizards he thought. Saying that out loud, however, seemed less than expedient. He went on, “The United States, though, has always been a country where people could be freer than they are anywhere else.”

“What is this freedom?” Zolraag asked. “Why do you esteem it so?”

A quotation from a scripture not his own ran through Russie’s mind: Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?

Unlike the Roman, Zolraag seemed to want a serious answer. That only made Russie the sadder for him; he suspected he would be explaining music to a deaf man.

Nonetheless, he had to try. “When we are free, we may think as we like, believe as we like, and do as we like so long as what we do does not harm any of our neighbors.”

“All this you would enjoy under the beneficent rule of the Race.” No, Zolraag heard no music.

“But we did not-do not-choose to come under the rule of the Race, beneficent or not,” Russie said. “Another side of freedom is being able to choose our own leaders, our own rulers, rather than having them forced upon us.”

“If you enjoy the other freedom, how could this one possibly matter?” Zolraag sounded all at sea. Though he and Moishe both used a hodgepodge of Lizard and German words, they did not speak the same language.

“If we cannot choose our own leaders, we keep the other freedoms only on sufferance, not because they are truly ours,” Russie replied. “We Jews, we know all about having freedom taken away from us at a ruler’s whim.”

“You still have not answered my very first question,” the Lizard governor insisted. “How can you condone our bombing of Berlin while you condemn the bombing of Washington?”

“Because, Excellency, of all the countries on this world, Germany had the least freedom of either kind and, when you came, was busy trying to take away whatever freedom its neighbors possessed. That’s why most of the countries-empires, you would say, though most of them aren’t-had banded together to try to defeat it. The United States, now, the United States gives its citizens more freedom than any other country. In hurting Berlin, you were helping freedom; in hurting Washington, you were taking it away.” Russie spread his hands. “Do you understand what I am trying to say, Excellency?”

Zolraag made a noise like a leaky samovar coming to a boil. “Since you Tosevites cannot come close to agreeing among yourselves in matters political, I hardly see how I am to be expected to grasp your incomprehensible feuds. But have I not heard that the Deutsche chose their-what is his name? — their Hitler for themselves in the senseless manner you extol so highly? How do you square this with your talk of freedom?”

“Excellency, I cannot” Russie looked down at the floor. He wished the Lizard had not known about how the Nazis came to power. “I do not claim any system of government will always work well, only that more folk are likely to be made content and fewer harmed with freedom than under any other arrangement.”

“Not so,” Zolraag said. “Under the Empire, the Race and its subject species have prospered for thousands upon thousands of years without ever worrying about choosing their own rulers and the other nonsense of which you babble.”

“To this I say two things,” Moishe answered: “first, that you have not been trying to govern human beings-”

“To which I say, on short experience, that I am heartily glad,” Zolraag broke in.