Striking the Balance

“First priority, as you say, is the Lizards.” Molotov stuck strictly to the business at hand. He had not let Stalin see his fear at the threat he’d received, though the General Secretary surely knew it was there. He did not show his relief, either. Again, sham or not, Stalin could hardly be ignorant of it. He played his subordinates’ emotions as if they were violin strings, and set one man against another like an orchestra conductor developing and exploiting opposing themes.

Now Stalin said, “In remembering the first priority, we must also remember it is not the only one. After the Lizards make peace with therodina-” He stopped and puffed meditatively on the pipe.

Molotov was used to listening for subtle nuances in the General Secretary’s speech. “After the Lizards make peace, Iosef Vissarionovich? Not, after the Lizards are defeated or exterminated or driven from this world?”

“Comrade Foreign Commissar, for your ears only, I do not think this within our power,” Stalin said. “We shall use the bomb-if the scientists deign to give it to us. We shall destroy whatever concentration of Lizards we can with it. They, in turn, will destroy one of our cities: this is the exchange they make. We cannot win at this rate. Our goal now must be to convince the aliens they cannot win, either, but face only ruin if the war goes on.”

“Under these circumstances, what terms do you intend to seek?” Molotov asked.How long do you intend to honor them? also came to mind, but he did not have the nerve to put that question to Stalin. The General Secretary was ruthlessly pragmatic; he’d wrung every bit of advantage he could from his pact with Hitler. The one thing he hadn’t expected there was Hitler’s outdoing him in ruthlessness and striking first. Any peace with the Lizards was liable to be similarly temporary.

“I want them out of the USSR,” Stalin said, “beyond the frontiers of 22 June 1941. Past that, everything is negotiable. Let the fascists and capitalists dicker for their own countries. If they fail, I shall not lift a finger to help them. They would not help me, as you know.”

Molotov nodded, first in agreement to that and then in slow consideration of the General Secretary’s reasoning. It fit with what Stalin had done in the past. Rather than trying to foment world revolution, as the Trotskyites urged, Stalin had concentrated on building socialism in one country. Now he would take the same approach toward building independent human power.

“The Lizards are imperialists,” Molotov said. “Can they be made to accept something less than their full, planned scope of conquest? This is my principal concern, Iosef Vissarionovich.”

“We can make the Soviet Union not worth their having.” By Stalin’s tone, he was prepared to do exactly what he said. Molotov did not think the General Secretary was bluffing. He had the will to do such a thing if he was given the ability. The physicists were giving him that ability. Could the Lizard fleetlord match the General Secretary’s driving will? The only humans Molotov had met who came up to that standard were Lenin, Churchill, and Hitler. Could Atvar come up to it? Stalin was betting the fate of his country that the alien could not.

Molotov would have been more confident had Stalin not so disastrously misjudged Hitler. He-and the USSR-had come close to perishing from that mistake. If he made a similar one against a foe with explosive-metal bombs, neither he, the Soviet Union, nor Marxism-Leninism would survive.

How to tell Stalin of his misgivings? Molotov drained the second glass of vodka. He could find no way.

XI

Out to the front again. If it hadn’t been for the honor of the thing, Brigadier General Leslie Groves would have greatly preferred to stay back at the University of Denver and tend to his knitting: which is to say, making sure atomic bombs got made and the Lizards weren’t any the wiser.

But when the general commanding the front ordered you to get your fanny out there, that was what you did. Omar Bradley, in a new-style pot helmet with three gold stars painted on it, pointed from his observation post out toward the fighting line and said, “General, we’re hurting them, there’s no two ways about that. They’re paying for every inch of ground they take-paying more than they can afford. If our Intelligence estimates are even close to being right. We’re hurting them, as I said, but they keep taking inches, and we can’t afford that at all. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, sir,” Groves answered. “We are going to have to use a nuclear device to stop them.”

“Or two, or three, or as many as we have, or as many as it takes,” Bradley said. “They must not break into Denver. That, right now, is our sine qua non.”

“Yes, sir,” Groves repeated. At the moment, he had one, count it, one atomic bomb ready for use. He would not have any more for several weeks. Bradley was supposed to know as much. In case he didn’t, Groves proceeded to spell it out in large red letters.