Striking the Balance (15 page)

He was off to the right of the barn. He ordered out a Tiger from off to the left and a Panzer IV from right out in front That done, he spoke to the driver of his own machine: “Come on, Hans—time to earn our pay. Forward!”

“Jawoh!”
Johannes Drucker sped out into the open country. The Panzer IV fired at the Lizard panzer. Its gun wasn’t much worse than the Panther’s, but at long range its odds of doing anything useful were slim indeed.

A shell knocked down a tree behind the Panzer IV. When the Lizards missed, it was commonly because they couldn’t see well. Their panzer did move out into the open. The Tiger fired at it. The 88 scored a clean hit, but the Lizard panzer kept moving. It was unfair, how tough they were.

The cannon in that panzer spoke. The Tiger’s turret flew off, shells inside exploding as it crashed to the ground five or six meters away from the stricken panzer. The chassis burned merrily, too. All five crewmen had to be dead. An infantryman fired an antipanzer rocket at the Lizard machine. He hit it right in the glacis plate, but the Lizard panzer’s frontal armor—from what Jäger had heard, it wasn’t just steel—defeated the shaped-charge warhead. The machine gun kept searching for Germans on foot.

“Range?” Jäger said again.

“Down under five hundred meters, sir,” Gunther Grillparzer answered.

“Driver halt,” Jäger said, and then, “Fire!”

Because he was still standing up in the cupola rather than sheltered in the turret, the noise was like the end of the world. A tongue of flame spurted from the cannon’s muzzle.

Flame and smoke spurted from the Lizard panzer, too. “Hit!” everybody in Jäger’s panzer screamed together. Jäger listened to the breech clang shut on another round. The long 75mm gun bellowed again—another hit. Hatches popped open in the Lizard machine. The Panther’s hull-mounted machine gun started barking in short, precise bursts. In moments, the three Lizards who’d bailed out lay motionless on the ground, their all too humanly red blood staining the snow. Their panzer kept on burning.

Very seriously, Gunther Grillparzer said, “Sir, this is good ammunition. We can get good use from it.”

“Even if it looks funny?” Jäger teased.

“Even so.”

The west wind brought the yellow dust of the Gobi with it. The dust left a thin film over everything; you could taste it if you smacked your lips a couple of times. Nieh Ho-T’ing was used to it. It came with life in and around Peking.

Major Mon rubbed at his eyes. The dust bothered him. In fair Chinese, he asked Nieh, “So—what do you want from me now? More timers? I hear you did well with the last batch.”

“No, not this time,” Nieh answered. His first thought was that the Japanese major was a fool if he thought a trick would work against the Lizards twice running. But the eastern devil could not have been a fool, not if he’d kept his force in being this long even with the Lizards, the People’s Liberation Army, the troops loyal to the Kuomintang reactionary clique, and the Chinese peasantry all arrayed against him.

What then? Nieh’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a grin that showed scant amusement. The likeliest explanation was that Major Mori hoped he’d try the same trick twice in a row—and get smashed as a result. In Mori’s boots, Nieh would have hoped for something like that.

“Well, what
are
you after now?” Mori demanded. Although the troops he led were hardly more than a guerrilla band, he kept all the arrogance the Japanese had shown when they held the whole of northeastern China and coastal enclaves elsewhere—and could push forward as they wished, even if they couldn’t always hold the gains they’d made.

“Artillery shells would be useful about now,” Nieh said musingly.

“Maybe so, but you won’t get them from us,” Mon said. “We still have some 75mm guns in commission, though I won’t tell you where.”

Nieh Ho-T’ing knew where the Japanese were concealing those cannon. Going after them struck him as being more trouble than it was worth, since they were far more likely to be turned on the Lizards than on his own men. He said, “Soldiers can be coolies and haul 75mm guns from one place to another. As you say, they are also easy to hide. But the Japanese Army used to have heavier artillery, too. The scaly devils destroyed those big guns, or else you’ve had to abandon them. But you still should have some of the ammunition left. Do you?”

Mori studied him for a while before answering. The eastern devil was somewhere not far from forty, perhaps a couple of years older than Nieh. His skin was slightly darker, his features slightly sharper, than a Chinese was likely to have. That didn’t bother Nieh nearly so much as Mori’s automatic assumption of his own superiority.
Barbarian,
Nieh thought scornfully, secure in his knowledge that China was the one true home of culture and civilization. But even a barbarian could be useful.

“What if we do?” Mori said. “If you want one of those shells, what will you give us for it?”

Capitalist,
Nieh thought.
Imperialist. If all you care about is profit, you don’t deserve even that.
Aloud, though, he answered, “I can give you the names of two men you think reliable who are in fact Kuomintang spies.”

Mori smiled at him. It was not a pleasant smile. “Just the other day, the Kuomintang offered to sell me the names of three Communists.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Nieh said. “We have been known to give the names of Japanese sympathizers to the Kuomintang.”

“Miserable war,” Mori said. Just for a moment, the two men understood each other completely. Then Mori asked. “And when you dicker with the little devils, whom do you sell to them?”

“Why, the Kuomintang, of course,” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered. “When the war with you and the scaly devils is over, the reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries will still be here. We shall deal with them. They think they will deal with us, but the historical dialectic shows they are mistaken.”

“You are mistaken if you think Japanese cannot enforce on China a government friendly to its wishes—leaving the little scaly devils out of the picture, of course,” Major Mori said.

“Whenever your troops and ours meet in battle, yours always come off second best.”

“And what has that got to do with the price of rice?” Nieh asked in honest bewilderment. “Eventually you will get sick of winning expensive battles and being nibbled to death inside areas you think you control, and then you will go away and leave China alone. The only reason you win now is that you started using the machines of the foreign devils”—by which he meant Europeans—“before we did. We will have our own factories one day, and then—”

Mori threw back his head and laughed, a deliberate effort to be insulting.
Go ahead,
Nieh thought.
Laugh now. One fine day the revolution will cross the sea to your islands, too.
Japan had a large urban proletariat, exploited workers with nothing to offer but their labor, as interchangeable to a big capitalist as so many cogs and gears. They would be dry tinder for the flame of class warfare. But not yet—the Lizards remained to be beaten first.

Nieh said, “Are we agreed on the price of one of these shells?”

“Not yet,” the Japanese answered. “Information is useful, yes, but we need food, too. Send us rice, send us noodles, send us
shoyu,
send us pork or chicken. Do this and we will give you as many 150mm shells as you can use, whatever you plan to do with them.”

They started dickering about how much food would buy Nieh how many shells, and when and how to arrange deliveries. As he had before, Nieh kept the contempt he felt from showing. On the Long March, he’d dickered with warlords’ officers and bandit chieftains over things like this. In China now, though, what survived of the once-mighty Imperial Japanese Army was reduced to bandit status; the Japanese couldn’t do much more than prey on the countryside, and they didn’t even do that well, not if they were trading munitions for food.

Nieh resolved not to tell Liu Han any details about how he was negotiating with the Japanese. Her hatred for them was personal, as it was for the little devils. Nieh hated the Japanese and the scaly devils, too, with an ideological purity his woman could never hope to match. But she had imagination, and came up with ways to hurt the enemies of the People’s Liberation Army and the Communist Party that he would never have dreamt of. Success, especially among those who did not form large-scale policy, could make up for a lack of ideological purity—for a while, anyhow.

Major Mon was not the best bargainer Nieh had ever faced. Two Chinese out of three could have got more supplies from him than Mori did. He gave a mental shrug. Well, that was Mori’s fault, for being a barbarous eastern devil. The Japanese made good soldiers, but not much else.

As far as he was concerned, the same went for the little scaly devils. They could conquer, but seemed to have no idea how to hold down a rebellious land once under their control. They didn’t even use the murder and terror the Japanese had taken for granted. As far as Nieh could tell, all they did was reward collaborators, and that was not enough.

“Excellent!” Major Mori exclaimed when the haggling was over. He slapped his belly. “We will eat well for a time.” The military tunic he wore hung on him like a tent. He might once have been a heavyset man. No more.

“And we will have a present for the little devils one day before too long,” Nieh replied. Even if he could do what he hoped with the 150mm shells, he aimed to try to blame it on the Kuomintang. Liu Han would not approve of that; she’d want the Japanese to receive the scaly devils’ wrath. But, as Nieh had said, the Kuomintang was more dangerous in the long run.

So long as the little scaly devils did not blame the People’s Liberation Army for the attacks, talks with them could go on unimpeded. Those talks had been building in size and importance for some time now; they needed to continue. Something of greater substance might come from them than the stalled negotiations about Liu Han’s baby. Nieh hoped so, at any rate.

He sighed. If he’d had his choice, the People’s Liberation Army would have driven the Japanese and the scaly devils out of China altogether. He didn’t have his choice, though. If he’d ever needed reminding of that, the Long March would have given it to him. You did what you had to do. After that. If you were lucky, you got the chance to do what you wanted to do.

He bowed to Major Mori. The major returned the compliment. “Miserable war,” Nieh said again. Mori nodded.
But the workers and peasants will win it, here in China and all over the world,
Nieh thought. He glanced at the Japanese officer. Maybe Mori was thinking victorious thoughts, too. Well. If he was, he was wrong. Nieh had the dialectic to prove it.

Mordechai Anielewicz stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the building on Lutomierska Street. “I can deal with my enemies,” he said. “The Nazis and Lizards are not a problem, not like that. My friends, now—” He rolled his eyes in theatrical despair.
“Vay iz mir!”

Bertha Fleishman laughed. She was a year or two older then Mordechai, and normally so colorless that the Jewish resistance of Lodz often used her to pick up information: you had trouble noticing she was there. But her laugh stood out. She had a good laugh, one that invited everybody around to share the joke.

Now she said, “Actually, we’ve done pretty well, all things considered. The Lizards haven’t been able to get much through Lodz to throw at the Nazis.” She paused. “Of course, not everyone would say this is a good thing.”

“I know.” Anielewicz grimaced. “I don’t say it’s a good thing myself. This is even worse than being caught between the Nazis and the Russians. Whoever wins,
we
lose.”

“The Germans are living up to their promise not to attack Lodz so long as we keep the Lizards from mounting any moves from here,” Bertha said. “They haven’t thrown any of their rocket bombs at us lately, either.”

“For which God be thanked,” Anielewicz said. Before the war, he’d been a secular man. That hadn’t mattered to the Nazis, who’d dumped him into the Warsaw ghetto all the same. What he’d seen there, what he’d seen since, had left him convinced he couldn’t live without God after all. What would have been ironic in 1938 came out sincere today.

“We’re useful to them at the moment.” Bertha Fleishman’s mouth turned down. “Even that’s progress. Before, we were working in their factories, making all kinds of things for them, and they slaughtered us anyhow.”

“I know.” Mordechai kicked at the paving stones. “I wonder if they tried out their poison gas on Jews before they started using it against the Lizards.” He didn’t want to think about that. If he let himself brood on it, he’d wonder why he was helping Hitler, Himmler, and their henchmen against the Lizards. Then he’d take a look at Bunim and the other Lizard officials in Lodz and be sure he couldn’t help them beat the Germans and, in so doing, subject all of mankind.

“It isn’t fair,” Bertha said. “Has anyone since the world began ever been in such a predicament?”

“We’re the Chosen People,” Anielewicz answered with a shrug. “If you think I’d be just as glad if we hadn’t been chosen for this, though, you’re right.”

“Speaking of which, aren’t the Lizards supposed to be moving a convoy of lorries through town in about half an hour?” Bertha asked. Since she was the one who’d come up with that bit of intelligence, the question was rhetorical. She smiled. “Shall we go watch the fun?”

The convoy was supposed to head north up Franciszkanska Street, to bring reinforcements to the Lizards who were trying to cut the base off one of the German prongs advancing to either side of Lodz. The Lizards had not had much luck with their counter-movements. What they would do when they figured out why would be interesting—and likely unpleasant.

Jews and Poles stood on the corner of Inflancka and Franciszkanska and in the streets themselves, chatting, chaffering, and carrying on their business as they would have on any other day. It was a scene that might almost have come from the time before the war, save that so many of the men—and a few of the women—had rifles on their backs or in their hands. Cheating, these days, was liable to meet with swift and summary punishment.