Striking the Balance

“We have an airplane,” he agreed. Maybe he was trying to overcome distrust of her as a socialist and a Russian, for he went on with a detailed explanation: “It landed here in this area when the Lizards were booting out the Germans. We don’t think anything was wrong with it except that it was out of fuel. We have fuel now, and we have a new battery which holds a charge. We have also drained the oil and the hydraulic fluid, and have replaced both.”

“This all sounds good,” Ludmila said. “What sort of airplane is it?” Her guess would have been an Me-109. She’d never before flown a hot fighter-or what had been a hot fighter till the Lizards came. She suspected it would be a merry life but a short one. The Lizards had hacked Messerschmitts and their opposite numbers from the Red Air Force out of the sky with hideous ease in the early days of their invasion.

But Ignacy answered, “It’s a Fieseler 156.” He saw that didn’t mean anything to Ludmila, so he added, “They call it aStorch- a Stork.”

The nickname didn’t help. Ludmila said, “I think it would be better if you let me see the aircraft than if you talk about it.”

“Yes,” he said, and put his hands out in front of him, as if on an imaginary keyboard. He had been a piano teacher, sure enough. “Come with me.”

The aircraft was about three kilometers from Ignacy’s encampment. Those three kilometers of rough trail, like most of the landscape hereabouts, showed how heavy the local fighting had been. The ground was cratered; chunks of metal and burned-out hulks lay everywhere; and she passed a good many hastily dug graves, most marked with crosses, some with Stars of David, and some just left alone. She pointed at one of those. “Who lies under there? A Lizard?”

“Yes,” Ignacy said again. “The priests, so far as I know, have not yet decided whether Lizards have souls.”

Ludmila didn’t know how to answer that, so she kept quiet. She didn’t think she had a soul, not in the sense Ignacy meant. The things people too ignorant to grasp the truths of dialectical materialism could find over which to worry themselves!

She wondered where the alleged Fieseler 156 was hiding. They’d passed only a couple of buildings, and those had been too battered to conceal a motorcar, let alone an airplane. Ignacy led her up a small rise. He said, “We’re right on top of it now.” His voice showed considerable pride.

“Right on top of what?” Ludmila asked as he led her down the other side of the rise. He took her around to a third side-and then realization sank in.“Bozhemoi! You built a platform with the aircraft under it.” That wasmaskirovka even the Soviets would have viewed with respect.

Ignacy heard the admiration in her voice. “So we did,” he said. “It seemed the best way of concealing it we had available.” To that she could only nod. They’d done as much work as the Red Air Force had outside Pskov, and they couldn’t even fly the airplane they were hiding. The partisan leader pulled a candle out of one of the pockets of theWehrmacht tunic he was wearing. “It will be dark in there with the earth and the timer and the nets blocking away the light.”

She sent Ignacy a suspicious look. She’d had trouble from men when they got her alone in a dark place. She touched the butt of her Tokarev. “Don’t try anything foolish,” she advised him.

“If I tried nothing foolish, would I be a partisan?” he asked. Ludmila frowned but held her peace. Stooping, Ignacy held up an edge of the camouflage netting. Ludmila crawled under it. She in turn held it up so the Polish guerrilla could follow her.

The space under the camouflaged platform was too large for a single candle to do much to illuminate it. Ignacy walked over to the aircraft hidden there. Ludmila followed him. When the faint glow showed her what the aircraft was, her eyes got wide. “Oh, one of these,” she breathed.

“You know it?” Ignacy asked. “You can fly it?”

“I know of it,” she answered. “I don’t know yet whether I can fly it. I hope I can, I will tell you so much.”

The FieselerStorch

was a high-wing monoplane, not much bigger than one of her belovedKukuruzniks, and not much faster, either. But if aKukuruznik was a cart horse, aStorch was a trained Lipizzan. It could take off and land in next to no room at all; flying into a light breeze, it could hover in one place, almost like a Lizard helicopter. Ludmila took the candle from Ignacy and walked around the plane, fascinatedly studying the huge flaps, elevators, and ailerons that let it do its tricks.

From what she’d heard, not everyStorch was armed, but this one carried two machine guns, one under the body, one in back of the pilot for an observer to fire. She set her foot in the mounting stirrup, opened the pilot-side door, and climbed up into the cockpit.