In the Balance (78 page)

“Yes, I miss my Beatrice, too,” Patton said with a heavy sigh. He lifted his wineglass. “To snow, Dr. Larssen.”

“To snow,” Jens said. The glasses clinked together.

Moishe Russie had gone into the Lizards’ broadcasting studio a good many times before, but never at gunpoint. Zolraag stood beside the table with the microphone. “You may be doing this broadcast under duress,
Herr
Russie,” the Lizard governor said, “but you
will
do it.” He added the emphatic cough.

“You’ve brought me here, anyhow.” Russie was amazed at how little
fear he felt. Almost three years in the ghetto under German torment had been a sort of dress rehearsal for death. Now that the time had come … He murmured in Hebrew:
“Sh’ma yisroyal, adonai elohaynu adonai ekhod.”
He didn’t want to die with the prayer unspoken.

Zolraag said, “You would not have even this last chance to make yourself useful in our eyes if you had not shown you truly knew nothing about the disappearance of your mate and hatchling.”

“So you have told me, Excellency.” Russie made his voice submissive. Let the governor think he was cowed. Inside, he exulted. Though he didn’t know everything of how Rivka and Reuven had vanished, he knew enough to endanger a lot of people. His tongue twitched at the memory of the Lizards’ gas jet in action. But in spite of their drug, he’d been able to lie.

Mere human nostrums all too often did much less than what they claimed; as a onetime medical student, he had some feel for how complex the human organism was. He’d feared the Lizards had mastered it, though, especially when he went all dreamy after his dose. Somehow, though, he managed to withhold the truth. He wondered what went into the drug. Even if it didn’t work as advertised, it had promise.

No time to worry about that now. Zolraag said, “Read the script to yourself,
Herr
Russie, then read it aloud for our broadcast. You know the penalty for failure to comply.”

Russie sat down in the chair. It and the table in front of it were the only human-sized pieces of furniture in the room. One of the Lizard guards stepped up behind Russie, set the muzzle of his rifle against the back of the Jew’s head. Zolraag wasn’t playing games, not any more.

Moishe wondered who had typed—and probably written—the script. Some poor human, accommodating himself to the new masters as best he could. So many Poles, even so many Jews, had accommodated themselves to the Nazis as best they could … so why not to the Lizards as well?

The words were what he’d expected: sycophantic praise for the aliens and for everything they did, including the destruction of Washington. The Lizard studio engineer looked at a chronograph, spoke first in his own language and then in German:

“Quiet, all—we begin.
Herr
Russie, you speak.”

Russie whispered the
Sh’ma
to himself one last time, bent low over the microphone. He took a deep breath, made sure he spoke clearly: “This is Moishe Russie. Because of illness and other personal reasons, I have not broadcast in some time.” That much was on the paper in front of him. What came next was not: “I doubt I shall broadcast ever again.”

Zolraag spoke German well enough to realize he’d deviated from the script. He waited for the bullet to crash through his skull. He wouldn’t hear it; he hoped he wouldn’t feel it. It would disrupt the program, by God! But the Lizard
governor gave no sign he noticed anything wrong. The bullet did not come.

Russie went on, “I have been told to sing the praises of the Race’s destruction of Washington to point out to all mankind that the Americans had it coming because of their stubborn and foolish resistance, that they should have surrendered. All these things are lies.”

Again he waited for some reaction from Zolraag, for the bullet that would blow his head all over the studio. Zolraag just stood there listening. Russie plowed ahead, squeezing as much as he could from the Lizard’s strange forbearance: “I told the truth when I said what the Germans did in Warsaw. I am far from sorry they are gone. To us, the Jews of Warsaw, the Race came as liberators. But they seek to enslave all men. What they did in Washington proves this, for any who still need proof. Fight hard, that we may be free. Better that than subjection forever. Good-bye and good luck.”

The silence in the studio lasted more than a minute after he stopped. Then Zolraag said, “Thank you,
Herr
Russie. That will be all.”

“But …” Having prepared himself for martyrdom, Moishe felt almost cheated at failing to attain it. “What I said, what I told the world …”

“I recorded,
Herr
Russie,” the Lizard engineer said. “Go out tomorrow; your regular time.”

“Oh,” Moishe said in a hollow voice. Of course the broadcast would not go out tomorrow. Once the Lizards listened to it carefully, really understood it, they’d hear the sabotage he’d tried to commit. The shadow of death had not lifted from him. He would just have to wear it a little longer.

In a way, it might have been better had the Lizards shot him now. That would have been quick. Given time to reflect, they might come up with a more ingenious end for him. He shivered. He’d overcome fear once, to say what he’d said. He hoped he could nerve himself to do it again, but feared the second time would be harder.

“Take him away,” Zobaag said in his own language. The Lizard guards led Moishe out to one of their vehicles parked outside the studio. As they always did, they hissed and complained about the few meters of frigid cold they had to traverse between the bake ovens they thought comfortable.

Back in his flat, Russie puttered around, read the Bible and the apocryphal tale of the Maccabees, cooked himself supper with bachelor inefficiency. He, did his best to sleep and eventually succeeded. In the morning he heated up some of the potatoes he hadn’t finished the night before. It wasn’t much of a last meal for a condemned man, but he lacked the energy to fix anything finer.

A few minutes in front of the appointed hour he turned on the shortwave set. He’d never listened to himself before; all his previous broadcasts had gone
out live. He wondered why the Lizards chose to alter the pattern this time.

Music—a martial fanfare. Then a recorded tag: “Here is free Radio Warsaw!” He’d liked that, back when the city was freshly out from under the Nazis’ bootheels. Now it seemed sadly ironic.

“This is Moishe Russie. Because of illness and other personal reasons, I have not broadcast in some time.” Was that voice really his? He supposed it was, but he didn’t sound the way he did when he listened to himself from inside, so to speak.

He dropped that thought as he listened to himself go on: “I sing the praises of the Race’s destruction of Washington. I point out to all mankind that the Americans had it coming because of their stubborn and foolish resistance. They should have surrendered. For any who still need proof, better subjection forever than to fight hard, that we may be free. What the Race did to Washington proves this. Good-bye and good luck.”

Russie stared in blank dismay at the speaker of the shortwave radio. In his mind’s eye, he saw Zolraag’s mouth falling open in a hearty Lizard guffaw. Zolraag had tricked him. He’d been ready to give up his life, but not to live on to be used to another’s purpose. Suddenly he understood why rape was called a fate worse than death. Had his words not been raped, employed in a way he would have died to prevent?

Distantly, abstractly, he wondered how the Lizards had managed their perversion of what he’d said. Whatever recording and editing technology they’d used was far ahead of anything men could boast. And so they’d threatened him with what seemed a sure and grisly end, let him make his defiant cry for liberty, and then not only smothered that cry but held up the surgically altered corpse to the world and pretended it had life. As far as the rest of mankind could tell, he was a worse collaborator now than ever before.

Rage ripped through him. He was not used to feeling anything so raw; it left him giddy and light-headed, as if he’d drunk too much plum brandy at Purim. The shortwave set brayed on—more propaganda, this time in Polish. Had the fellow talking really said these words in this order? Who could tell?

Moishe lifted the radio over his head. It fit in the palm of one hand and weighed hardly anything—it was of Lizard make, a gift from Zolraag. But even had it been a heavy, bulky human-made set, fury would have fueled his strength and let him treat it the same way. He smashed it to the floor as hard as, he could.

“The lies the Pole was squawking died in midsyllable. Bits of metal and glass and stuff that looked like Bakeite but wasn’t flew in every direction. Russie trampled the carcass of the radio, ground it into the carpet, turned it into a forlorn puddle of fragments that bore no resemblance to what it had
been a moment before.

“Not half what the
mamzrim
did to me,” he muttered.

He threw on his long black coat, stormed out of his flat, slammed the door behind him. Three people along the corridor poked their heads out their doorways to see who’d just had a fight with his wife.
“Reb
Moishe!” a woman exclaimed. He stomped past without even looking her way.

Lizard guards still stood at the entrance to the block of flats. Moishe stomped past them, too, though he wanted to snatch one of their rifles and drop them both bleeding to the sidewalk. He knew just what the muzzle of a Lizard rifle felt like, jammed against the curly hair at the back of his head. What would it be like to hold one in his arms, have it buck as he squeezed the trigger? He didn’t know, but he wanted to find out.

Halfway down the block he stopped in his tracks
“Gevalt!”
he exclaimed, deeply shocked. “Am I turning into a soldier?”

The prospect was anything but appetizing. As a medical student, he knew too well how easy a human being was to damage, how hard to repair. In the German siege of Warsaw and since, he’d seen that proved too many times, too many horrible ways. And now he wanted to become a destroyer himself?

He did.

His feet figured it out before the rest of him knew. He found himself on the way to the headquarters of Mordechai Anielewicz before he consciously realized where he was going.

A light snowfall swirled through the air. Not many people were on the streets. Every so often, one of them would nod to him from beneath a black felt fedora like his own or a Russian-style fur cap. He braced himself for shouts of hatred, but none came. If only the rest of the world paid as little attention to his broadcast as the Jews of Warsaw!

Here came someone striding briskly toward him. Who? His spectacles didn’t help enough to let him be sure. His eyes had grown weaker lately; what had suited them in 1939 wasn’t good enough any more. He scowled. He’d been shortsighted a lot of different ways.

Whoever it was, the fellow waved vigorously at him. He recognized the motion if not the man. Fear flooded through him. While he’d gone looking for Mordechai Anielewicz, Anielewicz was looking for him too. Which meant Amelewicz if no one else hereabouts, had heard him on the radio. Which meant the fighting leader without a doubt had blood in his eye.

Which he did.
“Reb
Moishe, are you
meshuggeh?”
he yelled. “I thought you weren’t going to turn into the Lizards’
tukhus-lekher.”

The Lizards’
tukhus-lekher
. That was what it had come to. Mortification almost gagged Moishe. “I haven’t. As God is my witness, I haven’t,” he choked out.

“What do you mean, you haven’t?” Anielewicz said, still loudly. “With
my own ears I heard you.” He looked to right and left, lowered his voice. “Was it for this we made your wife and little boy disappear? So you could say what the Lizards wanted you to say?”

“But I didn’t!” Russie wailed. Anielewicz’s face was full of flinty disbelief. Stammering, almost sobbing, Russie told how he had gone into the Lizards’ broadcast studio expecting to die, how he’d hoped and intended to give one last
cri de coeur
before he did, and how Zolraag and the Lizards’ engineers cheated him out of a death that had meaning. “Do you think I want to be alive, to have my friends call me filthy names on the street?” He took a clumsy, unpracticed swing at Anielewicz.

The Jewish fighting leader easily blocked the blow. He caught Russie’s arm, twisted a little. Russie’s shoulder creaked like a dead branch about to fall off a tree; fire shot through the joint. He bit back a gasp.

“Sorry.” Anielewicz let go at once. “Didn’t mean to jerk it quite so hard there. Force of habit. You all right?”

Russie gingerly tested the injured member. “For that, yes. Otherwise—”

“And I’m sorry about that, too,” Anielewicz said quickly. “But I heard you with my own ears—how could I not trust my ears? Of course I believe you,
Reb
Moishe; don’t even think you need to ask me. You couldn’t have guessed the Lizards would do things to a recording. They outfoxed you; it happens. The next question is, how do we get our revenge?”

“Revenge.” Moishe tasted the word. Yes, it was right. He hadn’t found a name for it himself. “That’s what I want.”

“I’ll tell you something.” Mordechai Anielewicz laid a finger alongside his nose. “It may just be taken care of. You haven’t played a direct part, but all us Jews owe you a lot of what freedom we have. And if we hadn’t been free to move through Poland, none of what I’m talking about would have happened.”

“What
are
you talking about?” Russie demanded. “You haven’t really said anything.”

“No, and I don’t intend to, either,” Anielewicz answered. “What you don’t know, you can’t tell, and the Lizards may find better—more painful—ways of asking questions than that
verkakte
drug of theirs. But one fine day before too long, the Lizards may have cause to notice something for which you’ll be partly responsible. And if they do, you’ll have your revenge, I promise you.”

That all sounded very good, and Anielewicz was not in the habit of talking about what he couldn’t deliver. Nonetheless … “I want more,” Russie said. “I want to hurt the Lizards myself.”

“Reb
Moishe, a soldier you’re not,” Anielewicz said, not unkindly but very firmly.