Tilting the Balance

“Yes, ” she said, and then, a moment later, “Thank you. This has been hell on everybody, and on Jens especially. I know that, and I’m sorry, but I’ve done what I have to do. ” Only then did her voice change: “You didn’t hurt him, did you? ”

“No, ma’am, not like you mean. He’ll be okay in a minute http://shiftrar.ru or two. Why don’t you go on back to your place? ” Jens kept his eyes on the pavement in front of him, but he couldn’t help listening to Barbara’s receding-rapidly receding-footsteps. Oscar hauled him to his feet with the same emotionless strength he’d shown before. “Let me dust you off, sir, ” he said, and started to do just that.

Jens knocked his hands away. “Fuck you, ” he gasped with all the air he had in him. He didn’t care if he turned blue and died after that, and what with the way he still couldn’t breathe, he thought he just might.

“Yes, sir, ” Oscar said, tonelessly still. Just then, Jens’ motor finally turned over, and he managed a long, wonderful mouthful of air. Oscar nodded in approval. “There you go, sir. Not too bad. When you get on that bike, I’ll ride with you to BOQ, and tomorrow you can see about getting yourself a new guard. ”

“Won’t be soon enough, ” Jens said, louder now that his lungs were following orders again.

“If you’ll forgive me, sir, I feel the same way, ” Oscar replied.

Snarling, Jens stalked back to his bicycle, Oscar right on his heels. Jens rocketed away from the university. Oscar stuck with him; he’d already found out he couldn’t shake the guard. He wasn’t really trying-he was just doing his best to get rid of his own rage.

Gravel kicked up under his wheels as he banked his weight to the side for the right turn from University to Alameda and on to Lowry Field. Of all the places in the world, Lowry Field BOQ was the last one he wanted to go. But where else was he supposed to sleep tonight?

For a moment, he didn’t care about that, either. As the air base approached, all he wanted to do was keep on going, past the BOQ, past the endlessly cratered, endlessly repaired runways, past everything-keep on going to somewhere better than this stinking place, this stinking life.

You keep on going the direction you’re headed in, you’ll end up in Lizard country, an interior voice reminded him. That was enough, for now, to make him swing the bike up toward BOQ like a good little boy.

But even as he and Oscar parked their bicycles side by side, he was looking east again.

“Come on, you mis’able lugs-get movin’, ” Mutt Daniels growled. Rain ran off his helmet and down the back of his neck That never would’ve happened with an old limey-style tin hat, he thought resentfully. The anger put an extra snap in his voice as he added, “We ain’t on the newsreels today. ”

“We ain’t south o’ Bloomington no more, neither, ” Dracula Szabo put in.

“You are painfully, correct, Private Szabo, ” Lucille Potter said in her precise, schoohmarmish voice. She pointed ahead to the complex of low, stout buildings just coming into view through the curtains of rain. “That looks to be Pontiac State Penitentiary up there. ”

When they got a little closer, Szabo grunted. “Looks like somebody kicked the sh-uh, the tar out of it, too. ”

“Us ‘n’ the Lizards must have done fought over this stretch of ground last year, ” Mutt said. The penitentiary complex looked like any fortified area that had been a battleground a few times, which is to say, not a whole lot of it was left standing. A bullet-pocked wall here, half a building a hundred yards over that way, another wall somewhere else-the rest was rubble.

Bloomington lay thirty-five bloody miles behind Mutt now. Most of it was rubble, too, now that the Lizards had run the Army out again. That made three times the town had changed hands in the past year. Even If the lizards went home and the war ended tomorrow, Mutt thought, the U. S. A. would be years pulling itself back up on its pins. He’d never imagined his own country turning into something that looked like the worst he’d seen in France in 1918.

He did his best not to think about that. A sergeant, like a manager, had to keep his mind on what was happening now-you could lose the trees for the forest if you weren’t careful. Officers got paid to worry about forests. Mutt said, “Any place better’n this we can camp? ”

From behind him, somebody said, “It’s got good protection, Sarge. ”

“I know it does, from the ground, anyway, ” Daniels said. “But If the Lizards bomb us, we’re sittin’ ducks. ”

“There’s a park-Riverview Park, I think the name of it is, ” Lucille Potter said. “I’ve been there once or twice. The Vermilion River winds around three sides of it. Plenty of trees there, and benches, and an auditorium, too, if anything is left of it. It’s not far. ”

“You know how to get there from here? ” Mutt asked. When Lucille nodded, he said, “Okay, Riverview Park it is. ” He raised his voice: “Hey, Freddie, look alive up there. Miss Lucille’s comin’ up on point with you. She knows where a decent place for us to lay our bodies down is at. ” I hope, he added to himself.

He’d seen a lot of parks in Illinois, and knew what to expect: rolling grass, plenty of trees, places where you could start a fire for a cookout, probably a place to rent a fishing boat, too, since the park was on a river. The grass would be hay length now, most likely; he didn’t figure anybody would have mowed it since the Lizards came.

Lucille Potter found Riverview Park without any trouble. Whether it was worth finding was another question. Once, in one of those crazy magazines Sam Yeager used to read, Mutt had seen a picture of the craters of the moon. Add in mud and the occasional tree that hadn’t been blown to pieces and you’d have a pretty good idea of what the park was like.

Daniels wondered if enough trees still stood to offer his squad decent cover from Lizard air attack. The rain wouldn’t stop the scaly sons of bitches; he’d already seen that They weren’t a whole lot less accurate in bad weather than in good, either. He didn’t know how they managed that. He just wished to the dripping heavens that they weren’t able to do it.

From up ahead Freddie Laplace called, “There’s bones stickin’ up outta the ground. ”

“Yeah? So what? ’ Mutt answered. “This here place been fought over two-three times, in case you didn’t notice. ”

“I know that, Sarge, ” Laplace answered in an injured voice. “Thing of it is, some of ’em look like they’re Lizard bones. ” He sounded half intrigued, half sick.

“What’s’ that? ” Lucille Potter said sharply. “Let me see those, Frederick. ”