In the Balance (28 page)

Still, these particular Germans could be useful. They hadn’t beaten the Lizards, far from it, but they’d evidently made them sit up and take notice. Soviet authorities needed to learn what they knew. Ludmila returned to their language: “I will take you with me when I fly back to my base, and send you on from there. I promise nothing bad will happen to you.”

“What, if we don’t care to go?” asked the major—
Jäger
she reminded herself.

She did her best to put authority in her gaze. “If you do not go, you will at best wander on foot and alone. Maybe you will find Lizards. Maybe you
will find Russians who think you are worse than Lizards. Maybe these
kolkhozniks
are only waiting for you to fall asleep …”

The panzer major was a cool customer. He did not turn to give Kliment Pavlyuchenko a once-over, which meant he’d already formed his judgment of the chief. He did say, “Why should I trust your promises? I’ve seen the bodies of Germans you Russians caught. They ended up with their noses and ears cut off, or worse. How do I know Sergeant Schultz and I won’t wind up the same way?”

The injustice of that almost choked Ludmila. “If you Nazi swine hadn’t invaded our country, we never would have harmed a one of you. I’ve seen with my own eyes what you do to the part of the Soviet Union you took. You should have everything you get.”

She glared at Jäger. He glared back. Then Georg Schultz surprised her—and, by his expression, the major as well—by saying,
“Krieg ist Scheisse
—war is shit.” He surprised her again when he came up with two Russian words,
“Voina—gavno,”
which meant the same thing

“Da!” the
kolkhozniks
roared as one. They crowded round the sergeant slapping his back pressing cigarettes and coarse
ma khorka
tobacco into his hands and tunic pockets. All at once he was not an enemy to them, but a human being

Turning back to Jäger Ludmila pointed at the
kolkhozniks
and the gunner. “This is why we have stopped fighting Germans who do not fight us, and why I can say no harm will come to you. Germany and Soviet Union are enemies,
da
. People and Lizards are worse enemies.”

“You speak well, and as you say, we have little choice.” Jäger pointed to her faithful
Kukuruznik
. “Will that ugly little thing carry three?”

“Not with comfort, but yes,” she answered, stifling her anger at the adjective he’d chosen.

One corner of his mouth tugged upward in an expression she had trouble interpreting: a smile, she supposed, but not like any she’d seen on a Russian face, more like a dry white wine than a simple vodka. He said, “How do you know that, once we get into the air, we will not make you fly us toward German lines?”

“I do not have the petrol to reach the nearest I know of,” she said. “Also, the most you can make me do is fly into the ground and kill us. I will not fly west.”

He studied her for perhaps half a minute, that curious, ironic smile still on his face. Slowly, he nodded. “You are a soldier.”

“Yes,” she said, and found she had to return the compliment. “And you. So you must understand why we need to learn how you killed a Lizard panzer.”

“Wasn’t hard,” Schultz put in. “They have wonderful panzers to ride around in,
ja
, but they’re even worse tankmen than you Ivans.”

Had he said that in Russian, he would have forfeited the goodwill he’d won from the
kolkhoz’s
farmers. As it was, Ludmila gave him a dirty look. So did Kliment Pavlyuchenko, who seemed to have a smattering of German.

“He is right,” Jäger said, which distressed Ludmila more, for she was convinced the major’s judgment needed to be taken seriously. “You cannot deny our panzer troops have more skills than yours, Pilot”—he gave the word a feminine ending—“or we could never have advanced in our Panzer IIIs against your KVs and T-34s. The Lizards have even less skill than you Russians, but their tanks are so good, they do not need much. If we had comparable equipment, we would slaughter them.”

So here is German arrogance at first hand
Ludmila thought. Having admitted the Lizards had smashed his unit to bits, all the panzer major cared to talk about was the foe’s shortcomings. Ludmila said, “Since our equipment is unfortunately not a match for theirs, how do we go about fighting them?”

“Das ist die Frage,”
Sergeant Schultz said solemnly, for all the world like a Nazi Hamlet.

Jäger’s mouth quirked up once more. This time, he raised an eyebrow, too. Ludmila found herself smiling back, if only to show that she’d noticed the allusion and was no uncultured peasant. The German turned serious: “We must find places and situations where they cannot use to best advantage all they have.”

“As the partisans fight behind your lines?” Ludmila asked, hoping to flick him on a raw spot.

But he only nodded. “Exactly so. We are all partisans now, when set against the forces we aim to oppose.”

Somehow, his refusal to take offense irritated her. Brusquely, she pointed back toward her airplane. “The two of you will have to go into the front cabin side by side. Keep your machine pistols if you like; I do not try to take your arms away. But, Sergeant, I hope you will leave your rifle behind here. It will not”—she had to pantomime the word “fit”—“in a small space, and may help the
kolkhozniks
against the Lizards.”

Schultz glanced to Jäger. Ludmila eased fractionally when she saw the major give an almost invisible nod. Schultz presented the Mauser to Kliment Pavlyuchenko with a flourish. Startled at first, the collective farm chief folded him into a bear hug. When the sergeant broke free, he went through his pockets for every round of rifle ammunition he could find. Then he set a foot in the stirrup and climbed up into the U-2.

Jäger followed him a moment later. The space into which they were crammed was so tight that they ended up sitting half facing each other, each with an arm around the other’s back. “Would you care to kiss me, sir?” Schultz asked. Jäger snorted.

Ludmila had the back cabin, the one with working controls, to herself. At her shouted direction, a
kolkhoznik
spun the little biplane’s prop. The sturdy radial engine buzzed to life. The two Germans set their jaws against the noise but otherwise ignored it. She remembered they had their own intimate acquaintance with engine noise.

When she saw all the peasants were clear of her takeoff path, she released the brakes, eased the stick forward. The
Kukuruznik
needed a longer run than she’d expected before it labored into the air. A sedate performer under the best of conditions, it was positively sluggish—or, better, sluglike—with more than three times the usual crew weight aboard. But it flew. The collective farm receded behind it as it made its slow way north.

“Be alert for Big Uglies, both of you,” Krentel warned from the cupola of the landcruiser.

“It shall be done, commander,” Ussmak agreed. The driver wished the male newly in charge of the landcruiser would shut up and let the crew do their jobs.

“It shall be done,” Telerep echoed. Ussmak envied the way Jäger the gunner could keep the faintest hint of scorn from his voice. What Telerep had to say privately about Krentel would addle an egg, but he was all respect when the landcruiser commander was around.

Males of the Race learned to show respect from their smallest days, but Telerep was unusually smooth even by that high standard. Maybe, Ussmak thought, his low-voiced gibes about Krentel were a reaction to the need for public deference. Or maybe not. Telerep had never talked that way about Votal when the previous commander was alive.

Thinking about Votal made Ussmak think about the Big Uglies who had killed him, and did more to make him alert than all of Krentel’s warnings. The natives of Tosev 3 had learned in a hurry that they could not oppose the Race landcruiser against landcruiser, aircraft against aircraft. That lesson should have marked the end of conquest and the beginning of consolidation. So officers had promised the males of the invasion force when battle commenced.

The promises had not come true. The Big Uglies stopped throwing hordes of males and landcruisers and planes into the grinder to be minced up, but they hadn’t stopped fighting. Thus this landcruiser squadron kept rolling over the broad, cool steppeland of the SSSR, seeking to flush out a band of Tosevite raiders and bushwhackers who had shown up on a reconnaissance photo the day before.

A wail from the sky—“Rockets!” Telerep shrieked. Ussmak had already slammed the hatch shut over his head. A moment later, a metallic clang in the button taped to his hearing diaphragm announced that Krentel had done
the same. Ussmak twiddled his fingers in approval: previous appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the new commander, wasn’t a complete idiot.

The salvo of rockets slammed down all around the land-cruisers. Their warheads kicked up great gouts of earth, blinding one of Ussmak’s vision slits. Closed in as he suddenly was, he couldn’t hear very much, but he knew he would have heard a landcruiser going up. When he didn’t, he took it for a good sign.

Krentel, meanwhile, had been on the command circuit with base. “The range of the launcher is 2,200, bearing 42,” he reported. “Gunner, send the Big Uglies back there two rounds of high explosive. That will make them think twice about harassing the Race again.”

“Two rounds of high explosive. It shall be done,” Telerep said tonelessly. The turret spun in its ring until it faced more nearly south than west. The big gun barked twice. Two or three of the other landcruisers in the squadron also fired, though none more than once.

Ussmak thought all those commanders fools, and Krentel a double fool. He doubted the Big Uglies who had fired the salvo were anywhere near their launcher any more; if they had any sense, they’d have touched it off with a long electric wire. That’s what he would have done in their place, certainly. And they made better guerrilas than stand-up soldiers.

Krentel told him, “Shift to bearing 42, driver. I want to finish off that clutch of bandits. They shall not flourish within the bounds of territory controlled by the Race.”

“Bearing 42. It shall be done,” Ussmak said. He swung the landcruiser almost in a half circle, drove back in a direction close to the one from which the squadron had advanced. This time, he admitted to himself, Krentel had a point.

“Watch the ground carefully,” the commander added. “We must not risk driving over a mine. Our landcruiser, like every other, is precious to the Race and its expansion. Exert unusual caution.”

“It shall be done,” Ussmak repeated. He wished Krentel would stop jumping around like a female waiting for her first pair of eggs. How was he supposed to get a good look at the ground while driving buttoned up? He didn’t want to open his hatch, not yet. The Big Uglies had a habit of lobbing a second rocket salvo just about when males were taking a deep breath after the first one.

Even if his head was out in the open, he didn’t think he’d spot a buried mine. The Tosevites were extraordinarily good at concealing them under leaves or stones or chunks of the rubble that littered the area from previous battles. He took comfort in remembering the Tosevite mines were designed to disable the weak and clumsy landcruisers the Big Uglies built. Even if
one exploded right under his own machine, it might not wreck it. Looking at it with the other eye turret, though, it might.

Sure enough, more rockets rained down on the squadron. Krentel must have reopened the hatch at the top of his cupola, for Ussmak heard him slam it again in a hurry. The driver opened his jaws in amusement. No, the new commander wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. With luck, he’d learn.

A clump of low Tosevite trees, their colors duller than the ones of Home, stood by the landcruisers’ path about halfway to the place from which the natives had touched off their rockets. Ussmak thought about warning Telerep to fix his machine gun on those trees, but decided not to. Telerep knew his business perfectly well. And besides—

“Watch those trees, gunner.” Before Ussmak could finish thinking Krentel would give the unnecessary order, Krentel gave it.

“It shall be done, commander.” Again Telerep’s subordination was perfect.

Ussmak watched the trees, too. Just because the order was unnecessary didn’t make it stupid. If he were a Big Ugly bandit, he’d post males in those trees to see what he could do about the Race’s landcruisers. In fact …

If Krentel had been reading his mind before, now Telerep was. The gunner fired a burst into the little stretch of wood. With luck, he’d kill a Big Ugly or two and flush out some more. Ussmak wouldn’t have wanted to crouch in hiding while bullets snarled through the trees searching for him.

And sure enough, he spied motion at the edge of the trees. So did Telerep. Tracers walked the machine gun toward it. Then Ussmak shouted, “Hold fire!” The stream of bullets had already stopped: Telerep did know his business.

Krentel didn’t. “Why are you holding?” he demanded angrily.

“It’s not a Big Ugly, commander, just one of the animals they keep for pets,” the gunner answered in soothing tones. “Be a waste of ammunition to kill it. Besides, for a creature covered with fuzz, it’s not even that homely.”

“Yes it is,” Krentel said. Ussmak sided with Telerep. He’d seen several of these animals now, and thought them far more handsome than their masters. They were lean and graceful, obviously descended from hunting beasts. They were also friendly; he’d heard that a couple of males from another squadron had used raw meat to tame one and get a pet of their own.

“I still think we ought to kill it,” Krentel said.

“Oh, please, no, commander,” Ussmak and Telerep said in the same breath. The gunner added, “See how nice a creature it is? It’s coming straight toward us, even though we’re in a big noisy landcruiser.”

“That doesn’t make it nice,” Krentel said. “That makes it stupid, if you ask me.” But he did not order Telerep to kill the Tosevite animal.

Taking the commander’s silence as consent, Ussmak slowed the landcruiser to let the animal approach. That seemed to please it; it opened its mouth, almost as if it were a male of the Race, laughing. Ussmak knew it was making sharp yelping noises, even if he couldn’t hear them through the landcruiser’s armor. The animal ran right for the machine.