Tilting the Balance

“They’re okay, but if you can find some news, that would be even better.” Jens poured in cream. The Duluth Queen had plenty of that, but no sugar.

“Let’s see what I can do. I wish this was a shortwave set.” Vernon worked the knob again, more slowly now, pausing to listen to every faint station he brought in. After three or four tries, he grunted in satisfaction. “Here you go.” He turned up the volume.

Larssen bent his head toward the radio. Even through the waterfall of static, he recognized the newscaster’s deep, slow voice: “-three days of rioting reported from Italy, where people went into the streets to protest the government’s cooperation with the Lizards. Pope Pius XII’s radio appeal for calm, monitored in London, seems to have had little effect. Rioters are calling for the return of Benito Mussolini, who was spirited to Germany after being placed under arrest by the Lizards-”

Hank Vernon shook his head in bemusement. “Isn’t it a hell of a thing? A year ago, Mussolini was the enemy with a capital E because he was buddies with Hitler. Now he’s a hero because the krauts got him away from the Lizards. And Hitler’s not such a bad guy any more, since the Germans are still fighting hard. Just because you’re fighting the Lizards doesn’t make you a good guy in my book. Was Joe Stalin a good guy just on account of he was fighting the Nazis? People say so, yeah, but they can’t make me believe it. What do you think?”

“You’re probably right,” Larssen answered. He agreed with most of what the engineer had said, but wished Vernon hadn’t chosen just then to say it-his loud, nasal tones drowned out Edward R. Murrow, to whom Jens was trying to listen.

Vernon, however, kept right on talking, so Jens got the news in disco

“Is that against the English or the Lizards?” he asked.

“If it’s all the way over in India, what the devil difference does it make?” the engineer said. On a cosmic scale, Larssen supposed he had a point, but for someone who was trying to catch up with what was going on in the world, losing any facts felt frustrating.

From the radio, Murrow said, “And for those who think the Lizard devoid of humor, consider this: outside of Los Angeles, the Army Air Force recently had occasion to build a dummy airport, complete with dummy planes. Two Lizard aircraft are said to have attacked it-with dummy bombs. This is Edward R. Murrow, somewhere in the United States.”

“Nobody on the radio admits where they are any more, you notice that?” Vernon said. “From FDR on down, it’s ‘somewhere in the United States.’ It’s like if anybody knows where you are, you can’t be a bigshot, ’cause if you were a bigshot and the Lizards knew where you are, they’d go after you. Am I right or am I right?”

“You’re probably right,” Jens said again. “You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?” Now that he didn’t get the chance to drink coffee often, one cup kicked the way three or four had in the good old days. The same was even more true of tobacco.

“Wish to hell. I did,” ‘Vernon answered. “I smoked cigars myself, but I wouldn’t turn down anything these days. I used to work on the rivers in Virginia, North Carolina, and we’d go right past the tobacco farms, never even think a thing about ’em. But when it can’t get from where they grow it to where you want to smoke it-”

“Yeah,” Larssen said. It was true of more than tobacco. That was why the Lizards didn’t have to conquer the whole country to make the United States stop working. It was why the Duluth Queen sat off the ice and unloaded: anything to keep the wheels turning.

He stayed stuck for the next three days, biding his time and biting his nails. When he finally did get to descend into one of the small boats that was unloading the Duluth Queen, he almost wished he’d stayed stuck longer. Clambering down a cargo net with a knapsack and a rifle slung over his shoulder was not his notion of fun.

One of the sailors lowered his Schwi

The small boat had a crew of four. They all looked at the bicycle. “You’re not going anywhere far by yourself on that, are you, mister?” one of them said at last.

“What If I am?” Larssen had ridden a bicycle across most of Ohio and Indiana. He was in the best shape of his life. He’d always look ski

“Oh, I won’t say you couldn’t do it-don’t get me wrong,” the crewman said. “It’s just that-this is Mi

“I know what Mi

“Then you ought to have better sense,” the sailor told him.

He started to come back with a hot reply, hut it didn’t get past his lips. He remembered all the winter days he’d had to stay home from school when snow made the going impossible. And his grammar school had been only a couple of miles from the farm where he’d grown up, the high school less than five. If a bad storm hit while he was in the middle of nowhere, he’d be in trouble and no doubt about it.

He said, “Things must move, or else you guys wouldn’t be out here working in the middle of winter. How do you do it?”

“We convoy,” the sailor answered seriously. “You wait until there’s a bunch of people going the same way you are, and then you go along with ’em. Where you headin’ for, mister?”

“Denver, eventually,” Jens said. “Any place west of Duluth now, I guess.” In a pocket of his overcoat he had a letter from General Patton that essentially ordered the entire civilized world to drop whatever it was doing and give him a hand. It had got him his cabin on the Duluth Queen … but the Duluth Queen was going from Chicago to Duluth anyhow. Even a sizzling letter from Patton probably couldn’t call a land convoy into being at the drop of a hat. But that sparked a thought.

“Any trains still ru

“Yeah, we try to keep ’em going, best we can, anyhow. I tell you, though, it’s like, playing Russian roulette. Maybe you’ll get through, maybe you’ll get your ass bombed off. If it was me, I wouldn’t ride one, not now. The Lizards go after ’em on purpose, not for the hell of it like they do ships.”

“I may take my chances,” Larssen said. If the trains were ru

The boat drifted to a stop at the edge of the ice. Gu

He headed over toward a dog-drawn sledge that didn’t have too many crates in it. “Can I get a ride?” he called, and the driver nodded. He felt like a character out of Jack London as he got in behind the man.

The trip across the ice gave him more time to think. It also convinced him that if he was going to live in the twentieth century, he’d use its tools where he could. He’d do better even if the Lizards did bomb him while he was just partway to Denver. When at last he got into Duluth, he went looking for the train station.

The hauler aircraft rolled to a stop. Ussmak stared out the window at the Tosevite landscape. It was different from the flat plains of the SSSR where the landcruiser driver had served before, but that didn’t make it any better, not as far as he was concerned. The plants were a dark, wet-looking green under sunlight that seemed too white, too harsh.