Tilting the Balance

Barbara looked at her hands. Her hair tumbled over her face and down past her shoulders. He wasn’t used to it so long and straight; it made her look different. Well, a lot of things had suddenly turned different.

“I thought you were dead, ” she said quietly. “You went off across country, you never wrote, you never telegraphed, you never called-not that the phones or anything else worked very well. I tried and tried not to believe it, but in the end-what was I supposed to think, Jens? ”

“They wouldn’t let me get hold of you. ” His voice shook with fury ready to burst free, like a U-235 nucleus waiting for a neutron. “First off, General Patton wouldn’t let me send a message into Chicago because he was afraid it would foul up his attack on the Lizards. Then they wouldn’t let me do anything to draw attention to the Met Lab. I went along. I thought it made sense; if we don’t make ourselves an atomic bomb, our goose is probably cooked. But, Jesus-”

“I know, ” she said. She still would not look at him.

“What about Yeager? ” he demanded.

More rage came out in his voice. Another mistake: now Barbara did look up, angrily. If he attacked the bum, she was going to defend him. Why shouldn’t she? Larssen asked himself bitterly. If she hadn’t had a feel for him, she wouldn’t have married him (God), wouldn’t have let him get her pregnant (God oh God).

“After you-went away, I got a job typing for a psychology professor at the http://bookstravel.ru university, ” Barbara said. “He was studying Lizard prisoners, trying to figure out what makes them tick. Sam would bring them around-he helped capture them, and he’s sort of their keeper, I guess you’d say. He’s very good with them. ”

“So you got friendly, ” Jens said.

“So we got friendly, ” Barbara agreed.

“How did you get-more than friendly? ” With an effort, Larssen kept his voice steady, neutral.

She looked down at her hands again. “A Lizard plane strafed the ship that was taking us out of Chicago. ” She gulped. “A sailor got killed-horribly killed-right in front of us. I guess we were both so glad just to be alive that-that-one thing led to another. ”

Jens nodded heavily. Things like that could happen. Why do they have to happen to me, God? he asked, and got no answer. As if twisting the knife in his own flesh, he asked, “And when did you get married to him? ”

“Not even three weeks ago, up in Wyoming, ” Barbara answered. “I needed to be as sure as I could that that was something I really wanted to do. I figured out I was expecting the evening we got into Fort Collins. ” Her face twisted. “A soldier on horseback brought your letter the next morning. ”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, ” Jens groaned.

“What’s the matter? ” Barbara asked, worry in her voice.

“Nothing anybody can help now, ” he said, though he wanted to twist a knife, not in his own flesh, but in Colonel Hexham’s. If the miserable blunder-brained, brass-bound, regulation- and security-crazy son of a bitch had let him write a letter when he first asked, most of this mess never would have happened.

Yeah, she and Yeager still would have had their fling, but he could deal with that-she’d thought he was dead, and so had Yeager. She wouldn’t have married the guy, or got pregnant by him. Life would have been a hell of a lot simpler.

Jens asked himself a new and unsettling question: how would things go between Barbara and him if she decided to give Yeager the brush and come back to him forever? How would he handle her giving birth to the other man’s kid and then raising it? It wouldn’t be easy; he could see that much.

He sighed. So did Barbara, at almost the same moment. She smiled. Jens stayed stony-faced. He asked, “Have the two of you been sleeping together since you found out? ”

“In the same bed, you mean? ” she said. “Of course we have. We traveled all the way across the Great Plains like that-and it still gets cold at night. ”

Though he habitually worked with abstractions, he wasn’t deaf to what people said, and he sure as hell knew evasion when he heard it. “That’s not what I meant, ” he told her.

“Do you’really want to know? ” Her chin went up defiantly. Pushing her made her angry, all right; he’d been afraid it would, and he was right. Before he could answer what might have been a rhetorical question, she went on, “As a matter of fact, we did, night before last. And so? ”

Jens didn’t know and so. Everything he’d looked forward to-everything except work, anyhow-had crumbled to pieces inside the last half hour. He didn’t know whether he wanted to pick up those pieces and try to put them together again. But if he didn’t, what did he have left? The answer to that was painfully obvious: nothing.

Barbara was still waiting for her answer. He said, “I wish to God it had been me instead. ”

“I know, ” she said, which was not the same as I wish it had, too. But something-maybe the naked longing in his voice-seemed to soften her. She continued, “It’s not that I don’t love you, Jens-don’t ever think that. But when I thought you were gone forever, I told myself life went on, and I had to go on with it. I can’t turn off what I feel about Sam as if it were a light switch. ”

“Obviously, ” he said, which made her angry again. “I’m sorry, ” he added quickly, though he wasn’t sure he meant it. “The whole thing is just fubar. ”

“Fubar? What’s that? ” Barbara’s eyes lit up. She lived for words. When she found one she didn’t know, she pounced.

“I picked it up from the Army guys I was with for a while, ” he answered. “It stands for ‘fouled’-but that’s not what they usually say-‘up beyond all recognition. ’ ”

“Oh, like snafu, ” she said, neatly cataloging it.

After that, silence stretched between them. Jens wanted to ask the one question he hadn’t put to her-“Will you come back to me? ”-but he didn’t. Part of him was afraid she’d say no. A different part was just as much afraid she’d say yes.

When he didn’t say anything, Barbara said: “What are we going to do? ”