In the Balance (83 page)

Molotov wondered how many of those Jews would have fled to the United States had the Nazis not forced them out of Germany and its allies. The tsars and their pogroms had done the same thing in pre-Communist Russia, and the present Soviet Union was the poorer for their shortsightedness. Molotov was too convinced an atheist to take any religion seriously as far as doctrine, but Jews tended to be both clever and well educated, valuable traits in any nation that aspired to build and grow.

With a scissorslike effort of will, the foreign minister snipped off those irrelevant threads of thought and returned to the matter at hand. He said, “I need to inform the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of this development.” It wasn’t as urgent as if the Lizards had learned what Stalin was up to, but it was important news. America, after all, not Germany or Britain, was the most powerful capitalist state and so the most likely future opponent of the Soviet Union … assuming such concerns kept their meaning in a world with Lizards init.

“Arrangements will be made for you to communicate,” Hitler said. “The
telegraph through Scandinavia remains fairly reliable and fairly secure.”

“That will have to do,” Molotov said. Fairly reliable he could deal with; nothing could be expected to work perfectly. But fairly secure! The Nazis were bunglers indeed if they tolerated security that was only fair. Inside, where it did not show, the Soviet foreign minister smiled. The Germans had no idea how thoroughly agents of the USSR kept Stalin informed about everything they did.

“The nefarious Jews came close to preventing our brilliant Aryan scientists from having the amount of explosive metal with which they needed to work,” Hitler said. Molotov made a mental note of that; it meant the Americans also probably had a marginal quantity of the material—and it meant the Soviet Union had plenty. Stalin had a right to expect results from his own researchers, then.

But Hitler wasn’t thinking about that; what he had in mind was vengeance. “The Lizards must come first,” he said. “I admit this. They are the greatest present danger to mankind. But after them, we shall punish the Jewish traitors who, true to their nature, aligned themselves with the alien against the Aryan essence of true creative humanity.”

His voice rose almost to a screech in that last sentence. Now, abruptly, it turned low, conspiratorial: “And you Russians owe the Poles a little something, eh?”

“What’s that?” Molotov said, caught off guard and stalling for time. Even though he needed the interpreter to follow Hitler’s words, he could hear the control the German leader had over his tone. That made him a formidable orator—certainly more effective there than Stalin, who was not only pedantic but had never lost his Georgian accent.

“Come, come,” Hitler said impatiently. “You must have heard the Lizards’ Polish collaborators going on about the so-called massacre of their officers at Katyn, trying to discredit the Soviet Union in the same way the Jews paint the
Reich
with a big black brush.”

“I do not trouble myself with the Lizards’ propaganda broadcasts,” Molotov said, which was true; he had underlings listen to them for him. “As for Katyn, he thought, the Poles had little to fuss about. After the Soviets reannexed the eastern half of Poland (which had, after all, belonged to Russia for more than a century before the chaos of the Revolution broke it loose and let Pilsudski establish his fascist state there), what were they to do with the reactionary officers who had fallen into their hands? Turn them loose and let them foment rebellion? Not likely! By Soviet standards, getting rid of those few thousand unreliables was but a small purge.

Hitler said, “Both your government and mine have reason to be unhappy with those who dwell in the anomalous territory of Poland. We were wise to divide it between ourselves once. When the Lizards are dealt with, we can
join in punishing the inhabitants of that land to the full extent they deserve.”

“By which you mean with bombs of this explosive metal?” Molotov asked. Hitler nodded. Molotov said, “I cannot view this proposal favorably. Our scientists report the wind spreads poisons from these weapons over an area far broader than the site of the explosion itself. And since the prevailing winds are from west to east, the Soviet Union would be adversely affected by this, devastation, however much the Poles may deserve it.”

“Well, we can discuss it further at another time.” Hitler sounded casual but looked unhappy. Had he expected Molotov to cooperate in devastating his own country? Maybe he had; the Germans had even less use for Russians than they did, for Poles. But Russian scientists and engineers had already shown themselves better than the Nazis expected a great many times.

“No, let us discuss it now,” Molotov said. Hitler looked unhappier yet, as he had back in 1940 when Molotov demanded specifics on the workings of the German-Soviet nonaggression treaty. No wonder he’d looked unhappy then; he was already plotting the Nazi attack on the USSR. What was he plotting now? The Soviet foreign minister repeated, “Let us discuss it now. Let us assume, for example, that we manage to defeat the Lizards completely. What then will be the proper relations, what then will be the proper boundaries between the German
Reich
and the Soviet Union? Both I and General Secretary Stalin await your reply to this question with great interest.”

The interpreter stumbled a couple of times in translating that; perhaps he tried to shade its bluntness. Hitler gave Molotov a baleful stare. His German toadies did not talk to him like that (for that matter, had Molotov talked to Stalin that way, he would have vanished within days, perhaps within minutes).

“If the Lizards are completely defeated, we will then review our relations with the Soviet Union, as with all nations of the world,” the
Führer
answered. “How they are defeated will obviously have a great deal to do with the nature of that review.”

Molotov started to complain that Hitler hadn’t really said anything, but left those words unuttered. The Nazi leader had a point. Who did what to beat the Lizards would play a role in what the world looked like after they were beaten … if they were beaten.

Not a complaint
, Molotov decided—a
warning
. “You must be aware of one thing,” he told Hitler, who assumed an apprehensive expression, as if a dentist had just announced he needed more work. Molotov went on, “Your earlier remark indicated that you hoped to exploit Soviet ignorance of these explosive-metal bombs. This behavior is intolerable, and makes me understand how and why the Jews of Poland preferred the Lizards’ yoke to yours. We have need of one another now, but Comrade Stalin will never again
trust you, as he did after August 1939.”

“I never trusted your pack of Jews and Bolsheviks,” Hitler shouted. “Better to be under the hissing Lizards than the red flag.” His whole body quivered. Molotov braced himself to endure a ranting speech like those that came hissing and popping out of the world’s shortwave sets. But then, with an almost physical effort of will, Hitler made himself be calm. “Living alongside the red flag, however, may yet be possible. As you say,
Herr
Molotov, we have need of each other.”

“Da,”
Molotov said. He’d pushed Hitler hard, as Stalin had ordered, and the German still seemed to think cooperation—even if on his own terms wherever possible—a better gamble than any other.

“On one thing I think we can agree,” Hitler persisted: “when all this is done, the map of Europe need no longer be stained by what has been miscalled the nation of Poland.”

“Perhaps not. Its existence has sometimes been inconvenient for the Soviet Union as well as Germany,” Molotov said. “Where would you place the boundary between German and Soviet control? On the line our two states established in 1939?”

Hitler looked pained.
Well he might
, Molotov thought with a frosty smile. The Nazis had overrun Soviet-occupied Poland in the first days of their treacherous attack; their line ran hundreds of kilometers to the east when the Lizards came. But if they were serious about working with the USSR, they would have to pay a price.

“As I said before, precise details can be worked out come the day,” Hitler said. “For now, let me ask again if we agree in principle: first the Lizards, then the
Untemenschen
between us?”

“In principle, yes,” Molotov said, “but as with all principles, details of implementation are critical. I might also note in passing—speaking of principles—that in times past German propaganda has frequently identified the people and Communist Party of the USSR as subhuman. This produces yet another difficulty in harmonious relations between our two nations.”

“When we announce that you and I have conferred, we shall make no such statements,” Hitler assured him. “You and I both know that what one advances for purposes of propaganda is often irrelevant to one’s actual beliefs.”

“That is certainly true,” Molotov said. The example that flashed through his mind was all the pro-German material his own government had pumped out in the year and ten months before June 22, 1941. The converse also applied, but he had no doubts about where the Nazis’ sincere feelings lay.

Hitler said, “You will of course take lunch with me.”

“Thank you,” Molotov said resignedly. The meal proved as abstemious as he’d expected: beef broth, a dry breast of pheasant (Hitler did not touch his portion), and a salad. The
Führer
kept his personal life simple. That did
not, however, make him any more comfortable to deal with.”

“I haven’t ridden on a hay wagon, since I got off the farm,” Sam Yeager said as the wagon in question rolled west on U.S. 10 into the outskirts of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. “And I haven’t been through here since—was it ’27? ’28? something like that—when I was in the Northern League and we’d swing through on the way from Fargo to Duluth.”

“Duluss I know, for we get off horrible boat thing there,” said Ristin, who huddled in the wagon beside him, “but what is—Fargo?” The Lizard POW made the name sound like a Bronx cheer.

“Medium-sized town, maybe fifty miles west of where we are,” Yeager answered.

Barbara Larssen rode in the wagon, too, though she sat as far away from him as she could. Still, her voice was casual as she asked, “Is there any place in the United States you haven’t been, one time or another?”

“I haven’t been up through the Northeast much—New York, New England. The towns there, they either belong to the International League or the bigs, and I never made it there.” Yeager spoke without bitterness, simply stating a fact.

Barbara nodded. Yeager cautiously watched her. After those frenzied couple of minutes in her cabin on the
Caledonia
, he hadn’t touched her, not even to help her in or out of a wagon. She hadn’t spoken to him at all the first three days they were on the ship, and only in monosyllables the fourth. But since they’d unloaded at Duluth and started the slow plod west, she’d traveled in the same part of the wagon convoy as he did, and the last couple of days in the same wagon. Yesterday she’d talked more with Ullhass and Ristin than with him, but today everything seemed—well, not quite all right, but at least not too bad.

He looked around. The low, rolling hills were white with snow; it also covered the ice that sealed northern Minnesota’s countless lakes. “It’s not like this in summer,” he said. “Everything’s smooth and green, and the lakes sparkle like diamonds when the sun hits them at the right angle. The fishing is good around these parts—walleyes, pike, pickerel. I hear they fish here in the wintertime, too, cut holes in the ice and drop a line down. I don’t see much sport in going out and freezing when you don’t have to, myself.”

“So much water,” Ullhass said, turning one eye turret to the left and the other to the right. “It seems not natural.”

“It seems not natural to me, too,” Barbara said, “I’m from California, and the idea of fresh water just lying around all over the place strikes me as very strange. The ocean is all right, but fresh water? Forget it.”

“Ocean is not natural, too,” Ullhass insisted. “Have seen pictures of
Tosev 3—this world—from—what do you say—outer space, yes? Looks all water, sometimes. Looks wrong.” He emphasized the last word with the emphatic cough.

“Seeing Earth from space,” Yeager said dreamily. How long would it have been before men managed that? In his lifetime? Maybe.

On the north shore of Detroit Lake, a little south of the actual town of Detroit Lakes, stood a tourist camp with cabins and picnic benches and a couple of bigger resort hotels, all looking much forlorn half a year out of the season for which they were built. “This place just buzzes in July,” Yeager said. “They have themselves a summer carnival that won’t quit, with floats and swimming and diving, races for canoes, races for speedboats, bathing beauties—”

“Yes, you’d like that,” Barbara murmured.

Sam’s ears got hot, but he gamely went on with what he’d been about to say: “—and all the beer a man could drink, even though it was still Prohibition when I went through here. I don’t know if they brought it down from Canada or brewed it themselves, but the whole team got blitzed—’course, we didn’t call it that back then. Good thing the road back to Fargo ran straight and flat, or the bus driver would’ve killed us all, I expect.”

Though the cabins were intended for summer use, several of them were open now, with wagons pulled up alongside. Barbara pointed. “Some of those aren’t from our convoy; they’re in the group that came by way of Highway 34.”

“Good to see they’ve made it here,” Yeager said. The refugees from the Met Lab hadn’t traveled west across Minnesota all together, for fear such a large wagon train would bring Lizard aircraft down on them. In some places, though, the roads came together. Detroit Lakes was a scheduled layover point.

The wagon driver looked back from his team of plodding horses and said, “Look at all the firewood the people round about here got chopped for us. It’s like, if they’d known we were coming, they’d’ve baked a cake.”

When he got down from the wagon, Yeager discovered the locals
had
baked a cake. In fact, they’d baked a lot of cakes—though some, he noted, were made from potato flour, and none had any frosting. But such details were soon lost in a great profusion of eggs and turkey, steaks and fried chickens, legs of lamb … he lost track of what he was eating as he stuffed himself. “After so long living out of tin cans in Chicago, I almost forgot they made spreads like this,” he said to a Detroit Lakes man who carried around yet another platter of drumsticks.