Tilting the Balance

“All the males I’ve ever seen are about the same size, ” Mordechai answered. The Pole scratched his head again. Anielewicz had worked with the Lizards almost every day; he knew them as well as any man could. Here in Leczna, Lizards were hardly more than a rumor. The locals might have seen them when they ran the Nazis out of town, or when they went to Lublin to buy and sell. Other than that, the aliens were a mystery here.

“They are as nasty as people say? ” the Pole asked.

How was he supposed to answer that? Slowly, he said, “They aren’t as vicious as the Germans, and they aren’t as smart, either-or maybe it’s just that they don’t understand people any better than we understand them, and that makes them seem dumber than they are. But they can do more with machines than the Germans ever dreamed of, and that makes them dangerous. ”

“you’reason like a priest, ” the farmworker said. It wasn’t quite a compliment, for he went on, “Ask a simple question and you get back, ‘Well, sort of this but sort of that, too, because of these things. And on the other hand-’ ” He snorted. “I just wanted a yes or a no. ”

“But some questions don’t have simple yes-or-no answers, ” Anielewicz said. Though he’d been a secular man, his ancestry had generations of Talmudic scholars in it-and just being a Jew was plenty to teach you things were rarely as simple as they looked at first glance.

The Pole didn’t believe that; Anielewicz could see as much. The fellow took a flask of vodka off his hip, swigged, and offered it to Anielewicz. Mordechai took a nip. Vodka helped you get through the day.

After a while, the Pole said, “So what did you do to get yourself run out of Warsaw and show up in a little town like this? ”

“I shot the last man who asked me a question like that, ” Anielewicz replied, deadpan.

The farmworker stared at him, then let out a hoarse guffaw. “Oh, you’re a funny one, you are. We got to watch you every minute, hey? ” He leered at Mordechai. “Some of the girls are watching you already, you know that? ”

Anielewicz grunted. He did know that. He didn’t quite know what to do about it. As leader of the Jewish fighters, he hadn’t had time for women, and they might have endangered security. Now he was just an exile. His training in underground work insisted he still ought to hold himself aloof. But he was a man in his mid-twenties, and emphatically not a monk.

Grinning, the Pole said, “You go out to the backhouses at night, you have to be careful not to look toward the haystacks or under the wagons. Never can tell when you’re liable to see something you’re not supposed to. ”

“Is that a fact? ” Mordechai said, though he knew it was. The Poles were not only less straitlaced than the Jews who lived among them, they also used vodka or brandy to give themselves an excuse for acting that way. Anielewicz added, “I don’t see how anyone is up to doing anything except sleep after a day in the fields. ”

“You think this is work, wait till harvest comes, ” the Pole said, which made Anielewicz groan. The local laughed, then went on more soberly: “All the old-timers, the ones left alive, they’re sneering at us, on account of we’re having to make do without tractors and such, so I shouldn’t give you a hard time, friend. You pull your weight, and every pair of hands we can find is welcome. We want to keep ourselves fed through winter, we better work now. ” He stooped, tore out a weed, moved ahead.

He probably didn’t care what happened two kilometers outside Leczna, but he’d put his finger on a worldwide truth there. With so much farm machinery out of commission or out of fuel, people everywhere were having to do all they could just to stay alive. That meant they were able to do less to fight the Lizards, too.

Anielewicz wondered if the aliens had planned it that way. Maybe not; some of the things Zolraag had said suggested they hadn’t expected people to have machines, let alone readapt to doing without them. But if the Lizards reduced all of mankind to nothing more than peasants grubbing a bare living from the soil, would people ever be able to get free of them? He shook his head like a horse bedeviled by gnats. He couldn’t see it.

Then rational thought went away for a while as the ancient rhythm of the fields took over. The next time he looked up from the furrows, the sun hung low in the west, sinking into the mist that rose from the flat, moist land as it cooled with approaching evening.

“Where does the time go? ” he said, startled.

He’d spoken more to himself than to anyone else, but the Polish farmworker was still close enough to hear him. The Pole laughed, loud and long. “Got away from you, did it? That happens sometimes. You wonder what the devil you’ve been doing all day, till you look back and see what you’ve done. ”

Mordechai looked back. Sure enough, he’d done a lot. He was an educated man, a city man. No matter how necessary farmwork was, he’d been sure it would drive him mad with boredom. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed that that hadn’t happened. Relief seemed natural, but if someone like him could sink down to the level of a farmer with no thought past his fields, what did that say about the rest of humanity? If the Lizards pressed the yoke of serfdom down on their necks, would they wear it?

He shook his head again. If he was going to start thinking, he would have preferred to start with something more cheerful. The mist rose; the sun sank until he could stare straight at its blood-red disk without hurting his eyes. The Pole said, “Hell with it. We’re not going to get any more done today. Let’s go back to town. ”