Striking the Balance

“Don’t waste it,” Mather advised him. “They’d waste precious little on you, and that’s the God’s truth. They’re a nasty set of foes, which only means we shall have to be nasty in return. Gas, these bombs… If we’re not to go under, we must seize what spares we can.”

That was inarguably true. Even so, Goldfarb didn’t think Mather took his point. He glanced over at the SAS man. No, Mather didn’t look to be the sort who’d appreciate argument by historical analogy or any suchpilpul- not that he’d know that word, either.

“Ask Mzepps what he’ll do when he and his scaly chums run out of spares,” Goldfarb said.

“By then, we’ll be beaten,” Mather said after the Lizard was done with his noises. “That’s still their propaganda line, in spite of the thrashing they took when they came over here.”

“Can’t expect them to go about saying they’re doomed, I suppose,” Goldfarb allowed. “But if our charming prisoner there still thinks we’re going to be trounced, why is he being so cooperative here? He’s helping grease the skids for his own people. Why not just name, rank, and pay number?”

“There’s an interesting question.” Mather made steam-engine noises at Mzepps. Goldfarb doubted he came up with many interesting questions on his own, not ones unrelated to the immediate task at hand. The Lizard prisoner replied at some length, and with some heat. Mather gave Goldfarb the essence of it: “He says we are his captors, so we have become his superiors. The Lizards obey their superiors the way Papists obey the Pope, only rather more so.”

Goldfarb didn’t know how well, or even if, Catholics obeyed the Pope. He didn’t point out his ignorance to Mather. The SAS man was liable to have other aversions, including one to Jews. If he did, he didn’t let it interfere with the way he did his job. Goldfarb was willing to settle for that. The world being as it was these days, it was more than you could count on getting.

“What sort of treatment does he get?” he asked Mather, pointing to Mzepps. “After he’s done here, where does he go? How does he spend his time?”

“We’ve brought several Lizards into Dover to work with you boffins,” Mather replied. That in itself surprised Goldfarb, who was used to thinking of people like Fred Hipple as boffins, not to having the label applied to himself. He supposed that, to a combat soldier like Mather, anyone who fought the war with slide rule and soldering iron rather than Sten gun and hand grenade counted as an intellectual sort. His bemusement made him miss part of the SAS man’s next sentence: “-billeted them at a cinema house that was worthless otherwise with so little electricity in town. They get the same rations our troops do, but-”

“Poor devils,” Goldfarb said with deep feeling. “Isn’t that against the Geneva Convention? Being purposely cruel to prisoners, I mean.”

Mather chuckled. “I shouldn’t wonder. I was going to say, they get more meat and fish than we do, which isn’t hard, I know. Signs are, they need it in their diet.”

“So do I,” Basil Roundbush said plaintively from across the room. “Oh, so do I. Can’t you see me pining away for want of sirloin?” He let out a theatrical groan.

Captain Mather rolled his eyes and tried to carry on: “The ones who want it, we give ginger. Mzepps hasn’t got that habit. They talk among themselves. Some of them have taken up cards and dice and even chess.”

“Those can’t be games anything like what they’re used to,” Goldfarb said.

“They have dice, Mzepps tell me. The others, I suppose, help fill up the time. We don’t let them have any of their own amusements. Can’t. Most of those are electric-no, you’d say electronic, what? — devices of one sort or another, and who knows but what they might build some sort of wireless from them.”

“Mm, that’s so.” Goldfarb glanced over at Mzepps. “Is he happy?”

“I’ll ask him.” Mather did, then laughed “ ‘Are you crazy?’ he says.” Mzepps spoke some more. Mather went on, “He says he’s alive and fed and not being tortured, and all that’s more than he expected when he was captured. He may not be dancing in the daisies, but he’s got no kick coming.”

“Fair enough,” Goldfarb said, and went back to work.

Sergeant Herman Muldoon peered out through a glassless second-story window of the Wood House across Quincy, Illinois, down toward the Mississippi at the base of the bluffs. “That there,” he declared, “is one hell of a river.”

“This is a hell of a place, too,” Mutt Daniels said. “Yeah, the windows are blown to smithereens, but the house itself don’t hardly look no different than the way it did last time I was in this town, back about nineteen and seven.”

“They made the joint to last, all right,” Muldoon agreed. “You set stone blocks in lead, they ain’t goin’ anyplace. Bein’ shaped like a stop sign don’t hurt, neither, I guess: more chance to deflect a shell, less chance to stop one square.” He paused. “What were you doin’ here in 1907, Lieutenant, you don’t mind my askin’?”