In the Balance (88 page)

“Too bad,” Groves said sincerely. “Now I have to transport the stuff myself.”

“Perhaps we can make matters a bit easier,” Stansfield said. One of the
Seanymph’s
ratings fetched up a canvas knapsack, which he presented to Groves with a flourish. Stansfield went on, “This arrangement should make rather easier transporting the saddlebag contained inside, which is, if you’ll forgive the, vulgarity, bloody heavy. I’d not be surprised to learn it was lined with lead, though I’ve been studiously encouraged not to enquire.”

“Probably just as well.” Groves knew the saddlebag was lined with lead. He didn’t know how well the lead would shield him from the radioactive material inside; that was one of the things he’d have to find out the hard way. If this mission took years off his life but helped defeat the Lizards, the government had concluded that was a worthwhile price to pay. Having served that government his entire adult life, Groves accepted the estimation with as much equanimity as he could muster.

He shrugged on the knapsack. His shoulders and back did indeed feel the weight. If he had to haul it around for a while, he might even end up somewhere close to svelte. He hadn’t been anything but portly—or worried
about it—since his West Point days.

“I assume you have plans on how to reach, ah, Denver with your burden there,” Stansfield said. “I do apologize, for my limited ability to help you in that regard, but we are only a submarine, not a subterrene.” He grinned again; he seemed taken with the idea of sailing to Colorado.

“Can’t talk about that, I’m afraid,” Groves said. “By rights, I shouldn’t even have told you where I’m going.”

Commander Stansfield nodded in understanding sympathy. He would have been even more sympathetic, Groves thought, had he known just how sketchy the American’s plans were. He’d been ordered not to fly toward Denver; a plane was too likely to get knocked down. Not many trains were running, and even fewer cars. That left shank’s mare, horseback, and luck—and as an engineer, Groves didn’t take much stock in luck.

Complicating matters further was the stranglehold the Lizards had on the Midwest. Here on the coast, they were just raiders. But the farther inland you went, the more they seemed to have settled down to stay.

Groves wondered why the aliens didn’t pay more attention to the ocean and to the land that lay alongside it. They hit land and air transportation all over the world, but ships still had a decent chance of getting through. Maybe that said something about the planet they came from. Groves shook his head. He had more immediate things to worry about.

Not least of them was the battle breaking out right around halfway between here and Denver. If that went wrong, not only would Chicago surely fall, but the United States would be hard pressed to put up more than guerrilla resistance to, the Lizards anywhere outside the East Coast. For that matter, getting to Denver might not matter if the battle went wrong, though Groves knew he’d keep going until he was either dead or ordered to turn aside.

He must have looked grim, for Commander Stansfield said, “Colonel, I’ve heard it said that your Navy bans alcohol aboard its vessels. Fortunately, the Royal Navy observes no such tiresome custom. Would you care for a tot of rum to fortify you for the journey ahead?”

“Commander, I’d be delighted, by God,” Groves said. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure—I thought it might do you some good. Wait here, if you please; I’ll be back directly.”

Stansfield hurried down the steel tube of the hull toward the rear of the submarine—aft, Groves supposed it was called in proper naval jargon. He watched the British officer lean into a little chamber off to the side of the main tube.
His cabin
, Groves realized. Stansfield didn’t need to lean very far; the cabin had to be tiny. Bunks were stacked three deep, with bare inches between them. All things considered, the
Seanymph
was a claustrophobe’s nightmare brought to clattering life.

The squat brown glass jug in Commander Stansfield’s hand gurgled
encouragingly. “Jamaican, than which there is none finer,” he said, puffing the cork. Groves could almost taste the thick, heavy aroma that rose from it. Stansfield poured two healthy tots, handed one glass to Groves.

“Thanks.” Groves took it with appropriate reverence. He raised it high—and almost barked his knuckles on a pipe that ran along the low ceiling. “His Majesty, the King!” he said gravely.

“His Majesty the King,” Stansfield echoed. “Didn’t think you Yanks knew to make that one.”

“I read it somewhere.” Groves knocked back the rum at a gulp. It was so smooth, his throat hardly knew he swallowed it, but it exploded in his stomach like a mortar round, throwing warmth in all directions. He looked at the empty glass with genuine respect. “That, Commander, is the straight goods.”

“So it is.” Stansfield sipped more sedately. He proffered the bottle once more. “Another?”

Groves shook his head. “One of those is medicinal. Two and I’d want to go to sleep. I appreciate the offer, though.”

“You have a clear notion of what’s best for you. I admire that.” Stansfield turned so he faced west. The motion was quite deliberate; Groves imagined—as he was supposed to imagine—the Royal Navy man peering out through the sub’s hull and across two thousand miles of dangerous country to the promised land of Denver, high in the Rockies. After a moment, Stansfield added, “I must say I don’t envy you, Colonel.”

Groves shrugged. With the heavy canvas knapsack on his shoulders, he felt like Atlas, trying to support the whole world. “The job has to be done, and I’m going to do it.”

Rivka Russie scratched a match against the sole of her shoe. It flared into life. She used it to light, first one
shabbas
candle, then the other. Bowing her head over them, she murmured the Sabbath blessing.

The puff of sulfurous smoke from the matchhead filled the little underground room and made Moishe Russie cough. The fat white candles were a sign he and his family had survived another week without the Lizards’ finding them. They also helped light the bunker where the Russies sheltered.

Rivka lifted the ceremonial cloth cover from a braided loaf of
challah
. “I want some of that bread, Mama!” Reuven exclaimed.

“Let me slice it first, if you please,” Rivka told her son. “Look: we even have some honey to spread on it.”

All the comforts of home
. The irony of the phrase echoed in Moishe’s mind. Instead of their flat, they sheltered in this secret chamber buried under another Warsaw apartment block. In further irony, the bunker had
been built to shelter Jews not from the Lizards but from the Nazis, yet here he used it to save himself from the creatures who had saved him from the Germans.

And yet the words were not entirely ironic. The vast majority of Warsaw’s Jews lived far better under the Lizards than they had when Hitler’s henchmen ruled the city. The wheat-flour
challah
, rich with eggs and dusted with poppy seeds, would have been unimaginable in the starving Warsaw ghetto—Russie remembered too well the chunk of fatty, sour pork for which he’d given a silver candlestick the night the Lizards came to Earth.

“When will I get to go out and play again?” Reuven asked. He looked from Rivka to Moishe and back again, hoping one of them would give him the answer he wanted.

They looked at each other, too. Moishe felt himself sag. “I don’t know exactly,” he told his son; he could not bring himself to lie to the boy. “I hope it will be soon, but more likely the day won’t come for quite some time.”

“Too bad,” Reuven said.

“Don’t you think we could—?” Rivka broke off, tried again: “I mean, who would betray a little boy to the Lizards?”

Moishe usually let his wife run their household, not least because she was better at it than he was. But now he said, “No,” so sharply that Rivka stared at him in surprise. He went on, “We dare not let him go up above ground. Remember how many Jews were willing to betray their brethren to the Nazis for a crust of bread regardless of what the Nazis were doing to us? People have cause to
like
the Lizards, at least compared to the Germans. He wouldn’t be safe where anybody could see him.”

“All right,” Rivka said.
“If
you think he’d be in danger up there, here he’ll stay.” Reuven let out a disappointed howl, but she ignored him.

“Anyone who has anything to do with me is in danger,” Moishe answered bitterly. “Why do you think we never get to talk to the fighters who bring our supplies?” The door to the bunker was concealed by a sliding plasterboard panel; with the panel closed, the entranceway looked like a blank wall from the other side.

Russie wondered if the anonymous men who kept his family in food and candles even knew whom they were helping. He could easily imagine Mordechai Anielewicz ordering them to take their—boxes down and leave them in the basement without telling them whom the things were for. Why not? What the men didn’t know, they couldn’t tell the Lizards.

He made a sour face: he was learning to think like a soldier. All he’d wanted to do was heal people and then, after the Lizards came like a sign from heaven, set people free. And the result? Here he was in hiding and
thinking like a killer, not a healer.

Not too long after supper, Reuven yawned and went to bed without his usual fuss. In the dark, closed bunker, night and day no longer had much meaning for the little boy. Had the fighters not furnished the place with a clock, Moishe would have had no idea of the hour, either. One day he’d forget to wind it and slip into timelessness himself.

The
shabbas
candles were still burning. By their light, Moishe helped Rivka wash the supper dishes (though without electricity, the bunker had running water). She. smiled at him. “The time you lived by yourself taught you some things. You’re much better at that than you used to be.”

“What you have to do, you learn to do,” he answered philosophically. “Hand me that towel, would you?”

He’d just slid the last dish into its stack when he heard noise in the cellar next to the hidden bunker: men moving about in heavy shoes. He and Rivka froze. Her face was frightened; he was sure his was, too. Had their secret been betrayed? The Lizards wouldn’t shout
“Juden heraus!”
but he didn’t want to be caught by them any more than by the Nazis.

He wished he had a weapon. He wasn’t altogether a soldier yet, or he’d have had the sense to ask for one before he sealed himself away here. Too late to worry about it now.

The footsteps came closer. Russie strained his ears, trying to pick out the skitters and clicks that would have meant Lizards were walking with the humans. He thought he did. Fear rose up in him like a smothering cloud.

The people—and aliens?—stopped just on the other side of the plasterboard barrier. Moishe’s eyes flicked to the candlesticks that held the Sabbath lights. These were of pottery, not silver like the one he’d given up for food. But they were heavy, and of a length to serve as bludgeons.
I won’t go down without a fight
, he promised himself.

Someone rapped on the barrier. Russie grabbed for a candlestick, then caught himself: two knocks a pause, then another knock was the signal Anielewicz’s men used when they brought him supplies. But they’d just done that a couple of days before, and the bunker still held plenty. They seemed to have a schedule of sorts, and even though the signal was right, the timing wasn’t.

Rivka knew that, too. “What do we do?” she mouthed silently.

“I don’t know,” Moishe mouthed back. What he did know, though he didn’t want to dishearten his wife by saying so, was that if the Lizards were out there, they were going to take him. But the footsteps receded. Had he really heard skitterings after all?

Rivka raised her voice to a whisper. “Are they gone?”

“I don’t know,” Russie said again. After a moment, he added, “Let’s find out.” If the Lizards knew he was here, they didn’t need to wait for him to
come out.

He picked up a candlestick, lit candle still inside (the cellar was as dark as the bunker would have been without light), unbarred the door, took half a step forward so he could slide aside the plasterboard panel. No box of food sat in front of it … but an envelope lay on the cement floor. He scooped it up, replaced the concealing panel, and went back into his hidey-hole.

“What is it?” Rivka asked when he was back inside.

“A note or letter of some sort,” he answered, holding up the envelope. He tore it open, pulled out the folded sheet of paper inside, and held it close to the candlestick so he could see what it said. The one great curse of this underground life was never having either sunlight or electric light by which to read.

The candle sufficed for something short, though. He unfolded the paper. On it was a neatly typed paragraph in Polish. He read the words aloud for Rivka’s benefit: “Just so you know, your latest message has been received elsewhere and widely circulated. Reaction is very much as we had hoped. Sympathy for us outside the area has increased, and certain parties would have red faces under other circumstances. They still would like to congratulate you for your wit. Suggest you let them continue to lavish their praises from a distance.”

“That’s all?” Rivka asked when he was through. “No signature or anything?”

“No,” he answered. “I can make a pretty good guess about who sent it, though, and I expect you can, too.”

“Anielewicz,” she said.

“That’s what I think,” Moishe agreed. The note had all the hallmarks of the Jewish fighting leader. No wonder it was in Polish: he’d been thoroughly secular before the war. Being typewritten made it harder to trace if it fell into the wrong hands. So did its elliptical phrasing: someone who didn’t know for whom it was intended would have trouble figuring out what it was supposed to mean. Anielewicz was careful every way he could think of. Moishe was sure he wouldn’t know how the note had got down to the bunker.

Rivka said, “So the recording got abroad. Thank God for that. I wouldn’t want you known as the Lizards’ puppet.”

“No; thank God I’m not.” Moishe started to laugh. “I’d like to see Zolraag with his face all red.” After what the Lizard governor had done to him, he wanted Zolraag both embarrassed and furious. From what the note said, he was getting his wish.