Tilting the Balance

Just as he’d never imagined he’d have been relieved to see the Lizards erect their rocket battery in his own back yard, so to speak, he found equally surprising his halfhearted wish that they’d come back.

A disheveled soldier shouted frantically in Russian. When George Bagnall didn’t understand fast enough to suit him, he started to point his submachine gun at the grounded aviator.

By then, Bagnall had had a bellyful of frantic Russians. He’d even had a bellyful of frantic Germans, a species that did not exist in stereotype but proved quite common under the stress of combat. He got to his feet, knocked the gun barrel aside with a contemptuous swipe, and growled, “Why don’t you shove that thing up your arse-or would you rather I did it for you? ”

He spoke in English, but the tone got across. So did his manner. The Red Army man stopped treating him like a servant and started treating him like an officer. The old saw about the Hun being either at your throat or at your feet seemed to apply even more to Russians than it did to Germans. If you gave in to them, they rode roughshod over you, but if you showed a little bulge, they figured you had to be the boss and started tugging at their forelocks.

Bagnall turned to Jerome Jones. “What’s this bloody goon babbling about? I have more Russian than I did when we got stuck here-not hard, that, since I had none-but I can’t make head nor tail of it when he goes on so blinking fast. ”

“I’ll see if I can find out, sir, ” Jones answered. The radar man had spoken a little Russian before he landed in Pskov; after several months-and no doubt a good deal of intimate practice with the fair Tatiana, Bagnall thought enviously-he was pretty fluent. He said something to the Russian soldier, who shouted and pointed to the map on the wall.

“The usual? ” Bagnall asked.

“The usual, ” Jones agreed tiredly: “wanting to know if his unit should conform to General Chill’s orders and pull back from the second line to the third one. ” He switched back to Russian, calmed down the soldier, and sent him on his way. “They’ll obey, even if he is a Nazi. They probably should have obeyed two hours ago, before Ivan there came looking for us, but, God willing, they won’t have taken too many extra casualties for being stubborn. ”

Bagnall sighed. “When I proposed this scheme, I thought we’d get only the serious business. ” He made a face. “I was young and naive-I admit it. ”

“You’d damned well better, ” said Ken Embry, who was pouring himself a glass of herb-and-root tea from a battered samovar on the opposite side of the gloomy room in the Pskov Krom. “You must have thought being tsar came with the droit de seigneur attached. ”

“Only for Jones here, ” Bagnall retorted, which made the radarman stammer and cough. “At the time, I remember thinking two things. First was to keep the Nazis and Bolshies from bashing each other so the Lizards wouldn’t have themselves a walkover here. ”

“We’ve managed that, for the moment, anyhow, ” Embry said. “If the Lizards committed more tanks to this front, we’d have a dry time of it, but they seem to have decided they need them elsewhere. They get no complaints from me on that score, I assure you. ”

“Nor from me, ” Bagnall said. “They’re quite enough trouble as is. ”

“There’s fighting on the outskirts of Kaluga, the wireless reports, ” Jerome Jones said. “That’s not far southwest of Moscow, and there’s damn all between it and Red Square. Doesn’t sound what you’d call good. ”

“No, that’s bad, ” Embry agreed. “Makes me glad so many of the fighters here are partisans-locals-and not regular army types recruited from God knows where. If you’re fighting for your own particular home you’re less likely to want to pack it in if Moscow falls. ”

“I hadn’t thought of that, but I dare say you’re right, ” Bagnall answered, “even if it is a most unsocialist thing to say. ”

“What, that you’re gladder to fight for your own property? Well, I’m a Tory from a long line of Tories, and I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it, ” Embry said. “All right, George, you didn’t want the Russians and the Jerries to go at each other. What was the other notion in what passes for your mind as to why we needed this particular headache? ”

“After that raid on the Lizards outpost, I had a serious disinclination toward infantry combat, if you must know, ” Bagnall said. “What of you? ”

“Well, I must admit that, given the choice between another stint of it and ending up in the kip with that barmaid in Dover we all knew, I’d be likely to choose Sylvia, ” Embry said judiciously. “I do believe, however, that we perform a useful function here. If we didn’t, I’d feel worse about not shouldering my trusty rifle and going out to do or die for Holy Mother Russia. ”

“Oh, quite, ” Bagnall agreed. “Keeping the Germans and the Soviets from each other’s throats isn’t the least contribution we could make to the war effort in Pskov. ”

Lizard planes roared low overhead. Antiaircraft guns, mostly German, threw shells into the air at them, adding to the racket that pierced the Krom’s thick stone walls. None of the antiaircraft guns was stationed very close to Pskov’s old citadel. The ack-ack wasn’t good enough to keep the Lizards from hitting just about anything they wanted to hit, and drew their notice to whatever it tried to protect. Bagnall. approved of not having their notice drawn to the Krom: being buried under tons of rock was not the way of shuffling off this mortal coil he had in mind.

Lieutenant General Kurt Chill stalked into the room, followed by Brigadier Aleksandr German, one of the chiefs of what had been the partisan Forest Republic until the Lizards came. Both men looked furious. They had even more basic reasons than most in Pskov for disliking and distrusting each other: it wasn’t just Wehrmacht against Red Army with them, it was Nazi against Jew.

“Well, gentlemen, what seems to be the bone of contention now? ” Bagnall asked, as if the disagreements in Pskov were over the teams to pick for a football pool rather than moves that would get men killed. Sometimes that detached tone helped calm the excited men who came for arbitration.