Upsetting the Balance (40 page)

“Why, so it does,” Barbara said. At first he thought that was hearty agreement. Then, when he listened to it again in his mind, he suspected she would have agreed had the meadow been a dismal swamp. She was ready to stop walking, and she was ready to have him stop toting that basket.

The meadow wasn’t so closely trimmed as it might have been had the federal government not had more urgent things to worry about. Long grass didn’t bother Yeager; he’d played in outfields where it wasn’t a whole lot shorter. He set down the basket, flipped open the lid, pulled out a blanket, and spread it on the ground. As soon as Barbara sat down on it, he did, too.

Now that the hauling was done, the picnic basket became her responsibility. She reached in and got out ham sandwiches wrapped in cloth napkins from the hospital—waxed paper was a thing of the past. The bread was homemade and sliced by hand; the ham came from a Hot Springs razorback; the mustard had never seen the inside of a factory. It might have been the best sandwich Sam had ever eaten. After it came hard-boiled eggs and a peach pie that gave the ham sandwich a run for its money.

The only rough spot in the road was the beer. Several people in Hot Springs were brewing, but what they turned out didn’t stack up too well against store-bought brands. It wasn’t cold, either. But Sam could drink it, and he did.

When he was through, he lay back on the blanket with a sigh of contentment. “I wish I had me a cigarette,” he said. “Otherwise, the world looks like a pretty fine place right now.” Barbara didn’t answer. He glanced over to her. She hadn’t done justice to either that magnificent sandwich or the peach pie. “Come on,” he told her. “You’re eating for two.”

“I know,” she said. “Sometimes I still have trouble keeping down food for one, though.” She looked a trifle green. Defensively, she added, “It’s better than it was a couple of months ago. Then I thought having a baby meant starving to death—or rather, eating something and then tossing it up right away. Thank heaven I’m not doing that any more.”

“You said it,” he answered. “Well, I’m not going to agitate you about it, not now. It’s too nice a day—now that that picnic basket’s sitting here on the blanket.” He consoled himself: “It’s downhill on the way back—and the basket’ll be lighter, too.”

A lazy breeze drifted through the pines, filling the meadow with their spicy scent. High overhead, a hawk circled. Blue larkspur and violets, great blue sage and purple cone splashed the rainbow here and there across the green grass. Bees buzzed from one flower to another. Flies snacked on the remains of the feast, and on the picnickers.

Barbara let out a squeak. Sam jumped; he’d been lulled by the peaceful surroundings—the most peace he’d known in quite a while. “What’s the matter?” he asked. He reached into the pocket of his chinos. If peace dissolved, as it had a way of doing, he was armed with nothing better than a pocketknife.

But Barbara pointed to the blanket and said, “A little green lizard just ran across there. I didn’t see it till it jumped out of the grass. Now it’s gone again.”

“I know the ones you mean,” Sam said, relaxing. “They can change colors—sometimes they’re brown instead of green. People around here call ’em chameleons on account of that, but I don’t think they are, not really. They don’t have the funny eyes real chameleons do, the ones that go every which way like Lizards’ eye turrets.”

Barbara sniffed. “I was looking for sympathy, not herpetology,” she said, but she was laughing while she said it. Then everything but concentration drained from her face. Her face was turned toward Sam, but she was looking inward. “The baby’s moving,” she murmured. Her eyes got wide. “Moving, heck—he’s kicking like nobody’s business. Come here, Sam. You should be able to feel this.”

He slid across the blanket toward her. She pulled the shirttail of her thin white cotton blouse out from the waistband of her pleated skirt. He set his hand on her belly, just below her navel. When she had clothes on, you couldn’t see she was pregnant, or not, and be sure, but you could feel the mound that had begun to rise there. Her flesh was warm and beaded with sweat from the sticky day.

“He’s stopped,” Barbara said, disappointed. “No, wait—did you feel that?”

“I sure did,” Yeager said. Something had—fluttered—under his palm. He’d felt it a few times before, but it never failed to awe him. He closed his hand into a fist, tapped gently on her belly. “Hello? Anybody home?”

Barbara made her voice high and squeaky: “I’m sorry, I’m not ready to come out yet.”

They both laughed. Somewhere back in the forest, a wood thrush trilled. But for the droning of the bees, that was the only sound. The two of them might have had the national park to themselves. Lazily, Sam slid his hand up under the blouse to cup her left breast through the fabric of her brassiere—gently, because she was still often sensitive.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Barbara said. She looked around to see who might be watching. No one was. No one, probably, was within a mile of them.

“I think—I hope—I’m getting ready to make love to my wife,” he answered. “How about that?” He pulled the blouse all the way out of her skirt, then bent down to kiss the spot where his hand had rested to feel the baby move.

“How about that?” she said softly. She reached around to the back of her neck. Through endless practice, women learn to work buttons behind them as smoothly as men do those they can see. She pulled the blouse up and over her head.

Sam unhooked her bra and tossed it on the blanket. Her breasts were fuller than they had been, her nipples larger and darker. He lowered his head to one of them. Barbara sighed. Her head lolled back; her breasts were sensitive to more than pain these days.

Presently he got out of his own clothes. In weather like this, bare skin felt best anyhow. Barbara was still wearing her skirt. He slid his hand under it, peeled down her panties, and tossed them on top of the bra Then his hand returned. When he kissed her at the same time, she set one hand on the back of his head and pulled him to her. Her other hand toyed with him.

After a couple of minutes of that, he couldn’t stand to wait any more. He started to hike up her skirt, but she said, “No. Take it off me,” in such urgent tones that he quickly did as she asked. Sometimes being smart didn’t amount to anything more than knowing when not to ask questions.

They both glistened with sweat when they were through; their skins slid greasily across each other. Barbara dressed in what seemed like no time flat. “Hurry up!” she hissed to Sam when she saw he wasn’t in quite such a rush.

He looked down at his still-bare self and shrugged. “Okay,” he said, and sped up. As he buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his trousers, he went on, “I guess I’ve spent so much time in the buff in locker rooms and things, I don’t much worry about getting caught that way.”

“All well and good,” Barbara answered, “but getting caught naked with me is different from getting caught naked with a bunch of baseball players—or at least I hope it is.”

“You better believe it,” he said, and got a chuckle out of her. He folded up the blanket and stowed it inside the picnic basket. The napkins that had wrapped the sandwiches went in there, too. So did the empty bottles of beer, and even their cork-sealed lids. You couldn’t afford to waste anything, not with the war going the way it was. Even so, the picnic basket had been a good deal heavier on the way up the trail.

They were almost out of Hot Springs National Park when Barbara said in a small voice, “I’m sorry I barked at you back there.” Sam raised a questioning eyebrow. Looking down at the ground, Barbara went on, “I mean about hiking up my skirt. I remembered a time when—” She didn’t go on.

Yeager kicked at the dirt. What she probably meant was that she remembered a time when Jens Larssen had hiked up her skirt. If she hadn’t thought Jens was dead, she never would have ended up with him. He knew that damn well. After a few seconds—maybe a couple of seconds too long—he said, “Don’t worry about it. Nobody here but the two of us now. That’s what counts.” With a laugh, he set his hand on her belly again. “Nobody here but the three of us, I mean.”

Barbara nodded. They walked on.
That’s what
really
counts,
Sam thought. If she hadn’t been pregnant, dollars to doughnuts she would have gone back to Larssen when she found out he was alive. Yeager still marveled that she hadn’t. You play half your life in the minor league—and most of that in the low minors, to boot—you get used to winding up on the short end of the stick. Winning a big one like having the woman you’ve fallen in love with pick you instead of the other guy—that was pretty special.

When they rounded the last corner and came into sight of the Army and Navy General Hospital, Barbara slipped her hand into his. He squeezed it gratefully. Every once in a while, he wondered whether she regretted the choice she’d made. That was another question he was smart enough never, ever to ask.

A horse-drawn wagon pulled up in front of the two towers of the hospital building just as he and Barbara got to the entrance. A GI—even if the fellow was in civvies, Yeager knew one when he saw one—took a gadget, a Lizardy-looking gadget, from the bed of the wagon and started to carry it in.

“What the devil you got there?” Yeager asked him. The thing, whatever it was, was cylindrical, maybe a foot long and three or four inches wide, with a glittering lens at one end and some wires trailing off the other.

“Bomb guider,” the man answered, which left Sam unenlightened. The fellow went on, “We took it from a Lizard dude up in Chicago, figured we’d bring it down here to get the straight skinny on what it does and how it does it. We’ve got several up there, and we can’t make ’em work worth a damn.” He pointed at Yeager. “You talk Lizard talk?”

“Matter of fact, I do, not too bad,” Yeager answered.

“Okay. I figured a lot of guys down here would,” the GI said. “You know what
skelkwank
means? That’s what the Lizard POWs say when they talk about this stupid thing, and nobody up north can make it make sense.”

“Skelkwank?”
Yeager echoed. “Yeah, that’s a word I’ve run into.” He was damn glad it was, too. Saying you were an expert and then showing you weren’t got old fast. “It’s something to do with light—I’m not sure exactly what, and I’m not sure anybody else human is, either. I’ve heard Lizards say
skelkwank
when they’re talking about rangefinders, things like that.”

“That helps some,” the fellow said, nodding. “How’s
skelkwank
light different than any other kind, though?”

“There you’ve got me,” Sam admitted. “Tell you what—bring that thing inside and we’ll round up a Lizard or two and ask ’em some questions. They’re pretty good about giving straight answers. As soon as they get captured, they figure we’re their superiors now, and they have to obey us. They’re not as ornery as people, you know what I mean?”

“Once they’re caught, they’re not, maybe,” the man with the
skelkwank
device said. “Long as they’re still carrying guns, they’re no fun at all.”

Sam gave an emphatic cough to show he agreed with that. The other fellow understood and nodded. Barbara said, “Here, Sam, you’re working again. Give me the picnic basket. I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay, honey.” Sam held the door open for her and for the soldier with the Lizard gadget, then followed them into the lobby of the hospital building. He spotted Ristin there, talking with one of the human doctors. Ristin waved to him, a human gesture he’d picked up. Sam waved back, and then waved him over.

Ristin came up, gaudy in his American-flag style “official” POW body paint. “Hello, superior sir,” he said in his hissing English. “You need me?”

“Sure do, pal” Yeager pointed to the device the other man held. “Tell me about that thing, will you?”

Ristin turned one eye turret toward it. “That? That is a
skelkwank
sight, I think maybe from a bomb. Artillery shells use a smaller model.
Skelkwank
in your language is  . . . is—” He paused and fluttered his lingers, a Lizardy way of showing frustration. “I think your language has not this word. Yep, that is what! think.”

The fellow with the
skelkwank
sight snorted in amusement. “First time I ever heard a Lizard go, ‘Yep.’ ”

Yeager kicked at the carpet. “He got that from me,” he said, mildly embarrassed. “I’m the guy he learned English from, and I say it. Made me laugh, too, first time I heard it from him” He turned back to Ristin. “Okay, we don’t have a word for it.
Skelkwank
has to do with light, right? What makes
skelkwank
light special?”

“Why, it comes from a
ftaskelkwank,
of course,” Ristin said. Tacking
fta-
onto the front of a word in Lizard talk was about like tacking
-er
onto the back of one in English. A
ftaskelkwank
was something that turned light
skelkwank
a
skelkwanker,
in other words. The only trouble was, that didn’t help much with
skelkwank
still undefined.

“Of course,” Yeager said with a sigh. “What does the
ftaskelkwank
do with the light to change it from regular to
skelkwank?”

“It makes the light—” Ristin used another Lizard word.

Sam turned to the fellow with the gadget. “I’ve heard that term before, too. It means something like ‘coherent.’ I don’t know what that means here, though.”

“Coherent, yep.” Ristin liked learning new English words. “Most light, ordinary light, is of waves of all different lengths, photons—is right word?—of all different energies. Coherent light has only one length of wave, only one energy. Is all exact same color, you could say.”

“So if I put red cellophane on top of my flashlight lens, I’d have coherent light?” Sam asked, trying to figure out what the Lizard meant.

“Nep. I mean, nope.” Ristin’s mouth fell open: he was laughing at himself. “Not all photons of exact same energy, only close. Not all going in exact same direction. This is what coherent means.”

The GI with the Lizard
skelkwank
device said, “Okay, how
do
you get this, uh, coherent light?”