Striking the Balance

“Chto?”the guard said: “What? You gofree?” He paused to suck more smoke and to blow it out in a harsh white cloud. Then he paused again, this time to make the barking noises Big Uglies used for laughter. “Free? You?Gavno!” Ussmak knew that meant some sort of bodily waste, but not how it applied to his question. The guard proceeded to make it perfectly, brutally, clear: “You go free?

Nyet! Never!” He laughed louder, the Tosevite equivalent of laughing wider. As if to reject the very idea, he leveled his submachine gun at Ussmak. “Now work!”

Ussmak worked. When at last the guards suffered the males of the Race to return to their barracks, he trudged back with dragging stride: half exhaustion, half despair. He knew that was dangerous. He’d already seen males who’d lost hope give up and die in short order. But knowing something was dangerous was different from being able to keep from doing it.

They had made their work norm for the day. The ration of bread and salted sea creature the Big Uglies doled out was not enough to keep them going through another day of grinding toil, but it was what they got.

Ussmak toppled into his hard, comfortless bunk as soon as he had eaten. Sleep dropped over him like a thick, smothering black curtain. He knew he would not be fully recovered when the males were routed out come morning. Tomorrow would be just the same as today had been, maybe a little worse, not likely to be any better.

So would the day after that, and the day after that, and the day afterthat. Free? Once more, the guard’s barking laughter seemed to reverberate from his heating diaphragms. As sleep overcame him, he thought how sweet never waking up would be.

Ludmila Gorbunova looked to the west, not in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the evening star (in any case, Venus was lost in the skirts of the sun) but longingly nonetheless.

From right beside her elbow, a voice said, “You would fly another mission into theWehrmacht lines in a moment, wouldn’t you?”

She jumped; she hadn’t heard Ignacy come up. She also felt no small anger and embarrassment. Wearing her heart on her sleeve was the last thing she wanted to do, especially when it was given to a Nazi panzer colonel.A Germanpanzer colonel, she thought, correcting herself. That sounded better to her-and besides, could any man who called a medal he’d won “Hitler’s fried egg” be a dedicated fascist? She doubted it, though she knew her objectivity was suspect.

“You do not answer me,” Ignacy said.

She wanted to pretend the guerrilla leader hadn’t spoken, but she couldn’t very well do that. Besides, since his Russian was better than anyone else’s hereabouts, ignoring him would cut her off from the person to whom she could most readily speak. So she replied with something that was true but not responsive: “What I want does not much matter. With the cease-fire in place between the Germans and the Lizards, I will have no occasion to fly over there, will I? If the Germans have any sense, they will not do anything to make the Lizards lose patience with them and start fighting again.”

“If the Germans had any sense, would they be Germans?” Ignacy returned. Ludmila would not have cared to take piano lessons from such a cynical man; perhaps the war had revealed to him his true calling. After pausing a moment to let the jab sink in, he went on, ‘The Germans will, I think, encourage unrest in the parts of Poland they do not control.”

“Do you really?” Ludmila embarrassed herself all over again by how eager she sounded.

Ignacy smiled. It was not altogether pleasant, that curl of lips, not in a plump face in a land full of thin ones, not when it didn’t quite light up his eyes. She hadn’t told him anything of her meeting with Jager; as far as she was concerned, that was her business and nobody else’s. But whether she’d told him or not, he seemed to have drawn his own conclusions, most of them disconcertingly accurate. He said, “As a matter of fact, I am trying to arrange-ever so discreetly, of course-to get my hands on some German antitank rockets. Would you be interested in transporting those if I succeed?”

“I will do whatever is required to bring victory to the workers and peasants of Poland against the alien imperialists,” Ludmila answered. Sometimes taking refuge in the rhetoric she’d learned from childhood was comforting. Using it also gave her more chance to think. She said, “Are you certain flying those rockets in would be the best way to get them? Moving them along back roads and paths might be easier and safer.”