Striking the Balance

Pe

“My name’s Hayward Smithson-” The doctor paused. Rance gave his own name and rank. After a minute, Pe

“Yes, sir,” Auerbach said. His voice was still weak and thin and raspy as all get out, as if he’d smoked about fifty packs of Camels in the last hour and a half. “I got ’em day before yesterday.”

“They came in a week ago,” Pe

Auerbach waited for Smithson to make a crack about Pe

“Yes, sir,” Auerbach said. “They’ve done their best by me, the Lizards and the people they’ve got helping them. Sometimes I’ve felt kind of like a guinea pig, but I’m here and on my pins-well, on one pin, anyway-instead of taking up space in the graveyard back of town.”

“More power to you, Captain,” Smithson said. He pulled a spiral-bound notebook and a fountain pen out of his pocket and scribbled a note to himself. “I have to say, I’ve been favorably impressed with what I’ve seen of the Lizards’ facilities. They’ve done what they could for the men they’ve captured.”

“They’ve treated me okay,” Auerbach said. “Firsthand, that’s all I can tell you. I got outside this tent yesterday for the very first time.”

“What about you, Miss, uh, Summers?” Major Smithson asked. “Captain Auerbach’s not the only patient you’ve nursed back to health, I expect.”

Auerbach devoutly hoped he was the only patient Pe

“That’s also the impression I’ve had,” Smithson said, nodding. “They do their best-but I think they’re overwhelmed.” He sighed wearily. “I think the whole world is overwhelmed.”

“Are therethat many wounded, sir?” Auerbach asked. “Like I said, I haven’t seen much outside of this tent except through the doorflap since they put me here, and nobody’s told me there’s all that many wounded POWs here in Karval.” He sent Pe

But Smithson said, “It’s not just wounded soldiers, Captain. It’s-” He shook his head and didn’t try to explain. Instead, he went on, “You’ve been upright a good while now. Why don’t you come outside and have a look for yourself? You’ll have a doctor at your elbow, and who knows what Miss Summers will do for you or to you or with you after that?”

Pe

Hayward Smithson and Pe

“Come along,” Smithson said, positioning himself to Auerbach’s left. Pe

Maybe there weren’tthat many wounded men, but it still made for a pretty fair tent city. Every so often, Auerbach heard a man moaning inside one of those domes of the bright orange slick stuff the Lizards used. Once, a doctor and nurse hurried into one a good ways away on the dead run. That didn’t look good, not even slightly. Smithson clicked his tongue between his teeth.

The way he’d been talking, though, half of Denver might have been here, and that didn’t look to be so. Auerbach was puzzled till he came to the intersection of his lane with one that ran perpendicular to it. He hadn’t come so far before. When you looked down that crossroad in one direction, you saw what was left of the tiny town of Karval: in two words, not much. When you looked the other way, you got a different picture.

He couldn’t guess how many refugees inhabited the shantytown out beyond the Lizards’ neat rows of tents. “It’s like a brand-new Hooverville,” he said, staring in disbelief.

“It’s worse than a Hooverville,” Smithson said grimly. “Most Hoovervilles, they had boxes and boards and sheet metal and what have you to build shacks with. Not much of that kind of stuff here in the middle of nowhere. But people have come anyhow, from miles and miles around.”

“I’ve watched that happen,” Pe

“Lord,” Auerbach said in his ruined voice. “It’s a wonder they haven’t tried coming into the tents and stealing what the Lizards wouldn’t give ’em.”

“Remember that gunfire the other night?” Pe

“Sneaking up on the Lizards isn’t easy anyhow,” Dr. Smithson said.

Auerbach looked down at himself, at the much-battered excuse for a carcass he’d be dragging around for the rest of his life.

“Matter of fact, I found out about that. Sneaking away from ’em’s not so easy, either.”

“They have Lizard doctors in Denver, looking out for their people that we caught?” Pe

“Yes-it’s all part of the cease-fire,” Smithson answered. “I almost wish I could have stayed in town to watch them work, too. If we don’t keep fighting them, they’re going to push our medicine forward a hundred years in the next ten or fifteen, we have so much to learn.” He sighed. “But this is important work, too. We may even be able to set up a large-scale prisoner exchange, wounded men for wounded Lizards.”

“That would be good,” Auerbach said. Then he looked over at Pe

“I don’t know,” the doctor answered. “I can understand why you’d want to find out, though. If this comes off-and there are no guarantees-I’ll see what I can do for you. How’s that?”

“Thank you, sir,” Auerbach said, and Pe