Striking the Balance (79 page)

“I have heard before these stories of defiance of authority from Tosevites,” Chook said. “They are to me very strange. We have not any like them among the Race.”

Mutt thought about that: a whole planet full of Lizards, all doing their jobs and going on about their lives for no better reason than that somebody above them told them that was what they were supposed to do. When you looked at it that way, it was like what the Reds and the Nazis wanted to do to people, only more so. But to Chook, it seemed like water to a fish. He didn’t think about the bad parts, just about how it gave his life order and meaning.

“How about you, Small-Unit Group Leader?” Daniels asked Chook. “After you Lizards pull out of the U.S. of A, what do you do next?”

“I go on being a soldier,” the Lizard answered. “After this cease-fire with your not-empire, I go on to some part of Tosev 3 where no truce is, I fight more Big Uglies, till, soon or late, the Race wins there. Then I go to a new place again and do the same. All this for years, till colonization fleet comes.”

“So you were a soldier from the git-go, then?” Mutt said. “You weren’t doin’ somethin’ else when your big bosses decided to invade Earth and just happened to scoop you up so as you could help?”

“That would be madness,” Chook exclaimed. Maybe he was taking Mutt too literally—and maybe he wasn’t. He went on, “A hundred and five tens of years ago, the 63rd Emperor Fatuz, who reigned then and now helps watch spirits of our dead, he set forth a Soldier’s Time.”

Mutt could hear the capital letters thudding into place, but didn’t know what exactly they meant. “A Soldier’s Time?” he echoed.

“Yes, a Soldier’s Time,” the Lizard said. “A time when the Race needed soldiers, at first to train the males who would go with the conquest fleet, and then, in my own age group and that just before mine, the males who would make up the fleet.”

“Wait a minute.” Mutt held up a stubby, bent forefinger. “Are you tryin’ to tell me that when it’s not a Soldier’s Time, you Lizards, you don’t have any soldiers?”

“If we are not building a conquest fleet to bring a new world into the Empire, what need do we have for soldiers?” Chook returned. “We do not fight among us. The Rabotevs and Hallessi are sensible subjects. They are not Tosevites, to revolt whenever they like. We have the data to make males into soldiers when the Emperor”—he looked down at the ground—“decides we need them. For thousands of years at a time, we do not need. Is it different with you Big Uglies? You fought your own war when we came. Did you have soldiers in a time between wars?”

He sounded as if he were asking whether they picked their noses and then wiped their hands on their pants. Mutt looked at Muldoon. Muldoon was already looking at him. “Yeah, we’ve been known to keep a soldier or two around while we’re not fightin’,” Mutt said.

“Just in case we might need ’em,” Muldoon added, his voice dry.

“This is wasteful of resources,” Chook said.

“It’s even more wasteful not to keep soldiers around,” Mutt said, “on account of if you don’t and the country next door does, they’re gonna whale the stuffing out of you, take what used to be yours, an’ use it for their own selves.”

The Lizard’s tongue flicked out, wiggled around, and flipped back into his mouth. “Ah,” he said. “Now I have understanding. You are always in possession of an enemy next door. With us of the Race, it is a thing of difference. After the Emperors”—he looked down again—“made all Home one under their rule, what need had we of soldiers? We had need only in conquest time. Then the reigning Emperor”—and again—“declared a Soldier’s Time. After the ending of the conquest, we needed soldiers no more. We pensioned them, let them die, and trained no new ones till the next time of need.”

Mutt let out a low, soft, wondering whistle. In a surprisingly good Cockney accent, Herman Muldoon sang out, “Old soldiers never die. They only fade away.” He turned to Chook, explaining, “With us, that’s just a song. I heard it Over There during the last big war. You Lizards, though, sounds like you really mean it. Ain’t that a hell of a thing?”

“We mean it on Home. We mean it on Rabotev 2. We mean it on Halless 1,” Chook said. “Here on Tosev 3, who knows what we mean? Here on Tosev 3, who knows what anything means? Maybe one day, Second Lieutenant Daniels, we fight again.”

“Not with me, you don’t,” Mutt said at once. “They let me out of the Army, they ain’t never gettin’ me back in. An’ if they do, they wouldn’t want what they got. I done had all the fightin’ that’s in me squeezed out. You want to mix it up down line, Small-Unit Group Leader Chook, you got to pick yourself a younger man.”

“Two younger men,” Sergeant Muldoon agreed.

“I wish to both of you good fortune,” Chook said. “We fighted each other. Now we do not fight and we are not enemies. Let it stay so.” He turned and skittered out of the circle of yellow light the campfire threw.

“Ain’t that somethin’?” Muldoon said in wondering tones. “I mean, ain’t that just somethin’?”

“Yeah,” Mutt answered, understanding exactly what he was talking about. “If they ain’t got a war goin’ on, they don’t have any soldiers, neither. Wish we could be like that, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for Muldoon’s nod, which came as automatically as breathing. Instead, he went on, voice dreamy, “No soldiers a-tall, not for hundreds—shitfire, maybe thousands, all I know—of years at a time.” He let out a long sigh, wishing for a cigarette.

“Almost makes you wish they won the war, don’t it?” Muldoon said.

“Yeah,” Mutt said. “Almost.”

Whatever Mordechai Anielewicz was lying on, it wasn’t a feather bed. He pulled himself to his feet. Something wet was running down his cheek. When he put his hand against it, the palm came away red.

Bertha Fleishman sprawled in the street, in amongst the tumbled bricks from which he had just arisen. She had a cut on her leg and another one, a nasty one, on the side of her head that left her scalp matted with blood. She moaned: not words, just sound. Her eyes didn’t quite track.

Fear running through him, Mordechai stooped and hauled her upright. His head was filled with a hissing roar, as if a giant high-pressure air hose had sprung a leak right between his ears. Through that roar, he heard not only Bertha’s moan but the screams and cries and groans of dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of injured people.

If he’d walked another fifty meters closer to the fire station, he wouldn’t have been injured. He would have been dead. The realization oozed slowly through his stunned brain. “If I hadn’t stopped to chat with you—” he told Bertha.

She nodded, though her expression was still faraway. “What happened?” Her lips shaped the words, but they had no breath behind them—or maybe Anielewicz was even deafer than he thought.

“Some kind of explosion,” he said. Then, later than he should have, he figured out what kind of explosion: “A bomb.” Again, he seemed to be thinking with mud rather than brains, because he needed several more seconds before he burst out, “Skorzeny!”

The name reached Bertha Fleishman, where nothing had before it
“Gottenyu!”
she said, loud enough for Anielewicz to hear and understand. “We have to stop him!”

That was true. They had to stop him—if they could. The Lizards had never managed it. Anielewicz wondered if anyone could. One way or the other, he was going to find out.

He looked around. There in the chaos, using a bandage from the aid kit he wore on his belt, squatted Heinrich Jäger. The old Jew who held out a mangled hand to him didn’t know he’d been a
Wehrmacht
panzer colonel, or care. And Jäger, by the practiced, careful way he worked, didn’t worry about the religion of the man he was helping. Beside him, his Russian girlfriend—another story about which Anielewicz knew less than he would have liked—was tying what looked like an old wool sock around a little boy’s bloody knee.

Anielewicz tapped Jäger on the shoulder. The German whirled around, snatching for the submachine gun he’d set down on the pavement so he could help the old man. “You’re alive,” he said, relaxing a little when he realized who Mordechai was.

“I think so, anyhow.” Anielewicz waved at the hurly-burly all around. “Your friend plays rough.”

“This is what I told you,” the German answered. He looked around, too, but only for a moment. “This is probably a diversion—probably not the only one, either. Wherever the bomb is, you’d better believe Skorzeny’s somewhere close by.”

As if on cue, another explosion rocked Lodz. This one came from the east; gauging the sound, Anielewicz thought it had gone off not far from the ruined factory sheltering the stolen weapon. He hadn’t told Jäger where that factory was, not quite trusting him. Now he had no more choice. If Skorzeny was around there, he’d need all the help he could get.

“Let’s go,” he said. Jäger nodded, quickly finished the bandaging job, and grabbed the Schmeisser. The Russian girl—the Russian pilot—Ludmila—drew her pistol. Anielewicz nodded. They started off. Mordechai looked back toward Bertha, but she’d slumped down onto the pavement again. He wished he had her along, too, but she didn’t look able to keep up, and he didn’t dare wait. The next blast wouldn’t be a fire station. It wouldn’t be whatever building had gone up in the latest explosion. It would be Lodz.

Nothing was left of the fire station. Petrol flames leaped high through the wreckage—the fire engine was burning. Mordechai kicked a quarter of a brick as hard as he could, sending it spinning away. Solomon Gruver had been in there. Later on—if he lived—he’d grieve.

The Mauser thumped against his shoulder as he trotted along. It didn’t bother him; he noticed it only at odd moments. What did bother him was how little ammunition jingled in his pockets. The rifle bore a full five-round clip, but he didn’t have enough cartridges to refill that clip more than once or twice. He hadn’t expected to fight today.

“How are you fixed for ammunition?” he asked Jäger.

“Full magazine in the weapon, one more full one here.” The German pointed to his belt. “Sixty rounds altogether.”

That was better, but it wasn’t as good as Mordechai had hoped.

You could go through the magazine of a submachine gun in a matter of seconds. He reminded himself Jäger was a panzer colonel. If a German soldier—a German officer, no less—didn’t maintain fire discipline, who would?

Maybe nobody. When bullets started cracking past your head, maintaining discipline of any sort came hard.

“And I, I have only the rounds in my pistol,” Ludmila said. Anielewicz nodded. She was coming along. Jäger seemed to think she had every right to come along, but Jäger was sleeping with her, too, so how much was his opinion worth? Enough that Anielewicz didn’t feel like bucking it, not when anybody who wouldn’t run away at the sound of a gunshot was an asset. She’d been in the Red Air Force and she’d been a partisan here in Poland, so maybe she’d be useful after all. His own fighters had shown him some women could do the job—and some men couldn’t.

He passed a good many of his own fighters as he hurried with Jäger and Ludmila toward the ruined factory. Several shouted questions at him. He gave only vague answers, and did not ask any of the men or women to join. None of them was privy to the secret of the explosive-metal bomb, and he wanted to keep the circle of those who were as small as possible. If he stopped Skorzeny, he didn’t want to have to risk playing a game of Samson in the temple with the Lizards afterwards. Besides, troops who didn’t know what they were getting into were liable to cause more problems than they solved.

A couple of Order Service policemen also recognized him and asked him where he was going. Them he ignored. He was used to ignoring the Order Service. They were used to being ignored, too. Men who carried truncheons were polite to men with rifles and submachine guns: either they were polite, or their loved ones (assuming Order Service police had any loved ones, a dubious proposition) said
Kaddish
over new graves in the cemetery.

Jäger was starting to pant “How far is it?” he asked on the exhale. Sweat streamed down his face and darkened his shirt at the back and under the arms.

Anielewicz was
shvitzing,
too. The day was hot and bright and clear, pleasant if you were just lounging around but not for running through the streets of Lodz.
This couldn’t have happened, say, in fall?
he thought. Aloud, though, he answered, “Not much farther. Nothing in the ghetto is very far from anything else. You Nazis didn’t leave us much room here, you know.”

Jäger’s mouth tightened. “Can’t you leave that alone when you talk to me? If I hadn’t got through to you, you’d have been dead twice by now.”

“That’s true,” Mordechai admitted. “But it only goes so far. How many thousands of Jews died here before anyone said anything?” He gave Jäger credit. The German visibly chewed on that for a few strides before nodding.

A cloud of smoke was rising. As Mordechai had thought from the sound, it was close to the place where the bomb lay concealed. Somebody shouted to him, “Where’s the fire engine?”

“It’s on fire itself by now,” he answered. “The other explosion you heard was the fire station.” His questioner stared at him in horror. When he had time, he figured he would be horrified, too. What would the ghetto do for a fire engine from now on? He grunted. If they didn’t stop Skorzeny,
from now on
would be a phrase without meaning.

He rounded another corner, Jäger and Ludmila beside him. Almost, then, he stopped dead in his tracks. The burning building housed the stable that held the heavy draft horses he’d gathered to move the bomb in case of need. Fire trapped the horses in their stalls. Their terrified screams, more dreadful than those of wounded women, dinned in his ears.

He wanted to go help the animals, and had to make himself trot past them. People who didn’t know what he did were trying to get the horses out of the stable. He looked to make sure none of the bomb guards were there. To his relief, he didn’t see any, but he knew he might well have. When that thought crossed his mind, he was suddenly certain Skorzeny hadn’t bombed the building at random. He’d tried to create a distraction, to lure the guards away from their proper posts.