Tilting The Balance (63 page)

“Even time?” Ristin asked. “No sixty seconds make a minute or an hour or whatever it is, and twenty-four minutes or hours make a day?” He sputtered like a derisive steam engine, then tacked on an emphatic cough to show he really meant it.

“Well, no,” Sam admitted. “All that stuff stays the same all over the world. It’s – tradition, that’s what it is.” He smiled happily-the Lizards lived and died by tradition.

But Ristin wasn’t buying it, not this time. He said, “In our ancient days, before we were what is the word? civilized? – yes, civilized, we had traditions like that, traditions that did harm, not good. We made them work for us or we got rid of them. This was a hundred thousand years ago. We do not miss these bad traditions.”

“A hundred thousand years ago,” Yeager echoed. He’d gotten the idea that Lizard years weren’t as long as the ones people used, but even so… “A hundred thousand years ago – fifty thousand years ago, too, come to that – people were just cavemen. Savages, I mean. Nobody knew how to read and write, nobody knew how to grow their own food. Hell, nobody knew anything to speak of.”

Ristin’s eye turrets moved just a little. Most people wouldn’t even have noticed, but Sam had spent more time around Lizards than just about anybody. He knew the alien was thinking something he didn’t want to say. He could even make a pretty fair guess about what it was: “As far as you’re concerned, we still don’t know anything to speak of.”

Ristin jerked as if Sam had stuck him with a pin. “How did you know that?”

“A little bird told me,” Yeager said, grinning.

“Tell it to the Marines,” Ristin retorted. He didn’t quite understand what a Marine was, but he had the phrase down pat and used it at the right times. Sam wanted to bust out laughing every time he heard it.

“Shall we go outside?” he asked. “It’s a nice day.”

“No, it’s not. It’s cold. It’s always cold on this miserable iceball of a world.” Ristin relented. “It’s not as cold as it was, though. You are right about that.” He gave an exaggerated shiver to show how cold it had been. “If you say we must go out, it shall be done.”

“I didn’t say we had to,” Yeager answered. “I just asked if you wanted to.”

“Not very much,” Ristin said. “Before I was a soldier, I was a male of the city. The – what do you call them? – wide open spaces are not for me. I saw enough of them on the long, long way from Chicago to this place to last me forever.”

Sam was amused to hear his own turns of phrase coming out of the mouth of a creature born under the light of another star. It made him feel as if, in some small way, he’d affected the course of history. He said, “Have it your own way, then, even though I don’t call some grass on the University of Denver the wide open spaces. Maybe it’s just as well; Ullhass ought to be back in a few minutes, and then I can take both you guys back to your rooms.”

“They do not need you to be there any more to translate?” Ristin asked.

“That’s what they say.” Yeager shrugged. “Professor Fermi hasn’t called me this session, so I guess maybe he doesn’t. Both of you speak English pretty well now.”

“If you are not needed for this, will they take you away from us?” Ristin showed his teeth. “You want me and Ullhass to forget how we speak English? Then they still need you. We do not want you to go. You have been good to us since you catch us all this time ago. We think then that you people hurt us, kill us. You showed us different. We want you to stay.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay,” Yeager said. A year before, he’d have found absurd the notion that anything a turret-eyed creature with a hissing accent said could touch him. Touched he was, though, and sometimes he had to remind himself how alien Ristin really was. He went on, “I’ve been a bench warmer before. It’s not the end of the world.”

“It may be.” From sympathetic, Ristin turned serious. “If you humans do build an atomic bomb, it may be. You will use it, and we will use it, and little will be left when all is done.”

“We weren’t the first ones to use them,” Yeager said. “What about Washington and Berlin?”

“Warning shots,” Ristin said. “We could choose to use them in a way that did little harm” – he ignored the choked noise that escaped from Sam’s throat-”because we had them and you did not. If they turn into just another weapon of war, the planet will be badly hurt.”

“But if we don’t use them, the Race is probably going to conquer us,” Yeager said.

Now Ristin made a noise that reminded Sam of a water heater in desperate need of replacement. “This is – how do you say two things that cannot be true at the same time but are anyhow?”

“A paradox?” Sam suggested after some thought; it wasn’t a word he hauled out every day.

“If that is what you say. Paradox,” Ristin repeated. “You may lose the war without these bombs, but you may lose it, too, because of them. Is this a paradox?”

“I guess so.” Yeager gave the Lizard a hard look.

“But if you think things are like that, how come you and Ullhass have been so much help to the Met Lab?”

“At first, we did not think you Big Uglies could know enough to make a bomb anyhow, so no harm done,” Ristin said. Sam knew he was worried, because he didn’t often slip and use the Lizard slang name for human beings. He went on, “Soon we found how wrong we were. You know enough and more, and were mostly using us to check the answers you had already. Again, because of this not much harm could come, so we went along.”

“Oh,” Yeager said. “Nice to know we surprised you.”

Ristin’s mouth opened and he wagged his head slightly: he was laughing at himself, “This whole planet has been a surprise, and not a good one. From the first time people started shooting at us with rifles and cannon, we knew everything we had believed about Tosev 3 was wrong.”

Somebody rapped on the door of the office where Yeager and Ristin were talking. “That’ll be Ullhass,” Yeager said.

But when the, door opened, Barbara came through it “You are not Ullhass,” Ristin said in accusing tones. He let his mouth hang open again to show he’d made a joke.

“You know what?” Sam said. “I’m darn glad she isn’t. Hi, hon.” He gave her a hug and a peck of a kiss. “I didn’t think they were going to let you off work till later.”

“One thing about English majors: we do learn how to type,” Barbara said. “As long as we don’t run out of ribbons, I’ll have plenty to do. Or until the baby comes – whichever happens first. They ought to give me a couple of days off for that.”

“They’d better,” Yeager said, and added the emphatic cough.

He laughed at himself. To Ristin, he said, “That’s what I get for hanging around with the likes of you.”

“What, a civilized language?” Ristin said, laughing his kind of laugh once more. He turned civilized into a long hiss.

Despite his accent, he gave as good as he got. Yeager didn’t fire back at him. Instead, he asked Barbara, “Why did they let you go early?”

“I turned green, I guess,” she answered. “I don’t know why they call it morning sickness. It gets me any old time of day it feels like.”

“You look okay now,” he said.

“I got rid of what ailed me,” Barbara said bleakly. “I’m just glad the plumbing works. If it didn’t, somebody – probably me – would have a mess to clean up.”

“You’re supposed to be eating for two, not throwing up what one has,” Sam said.

“If you know a secret way to make lunch stay down, I wish you’d tell me what it is,” Barbara answered, now with a snap in her voice. “Everybody says this is supposed to go away after I get further along. I hope to heaven that’s true.”

Another knock, this one on the frame of the open door. “Here you go, Corporal,” said a kid in dungarees with a pistol holster on his belt. “I’ve brought your pet Lizard back for you.” Ullhass walked in and exchanged sibilant greetings with Ristin. The kid, who except for the pistol looked like a college freshman, nodded to Yeager, gave Barbara a quick once-over and obviously decided she was too old for him, nodded again, and trotted off down the hall.

“I am not a pet I am a male of the Race,” Ullhass said with considerable dignity.

Yeager soothed him: “I know, pal. But haven’t you noticed that people don’t always say exactly what they mean?”

“Yes, I have seen this,” Ullhass said. “Because I am a prisoner, I will not tell you what I think of it.”

“If you ask me, you just did,” Yeager answered. “You were very polite about it, though. Now come on, boys; I’ll take you home.”

Home for the Lizards was an office converted into an apartment. Maybe cell block was a better word for it. Yeager thought: at least, he’d never seen any apartments with stout iron bars across the windows and an armed guard waiting outside the door. But Ristin and Ullhass liked it. Nobody bothered them in there, and the steam radiator let them heat the room to the bake-oven level they enjoyed.

Once they were safely ensconced, Yeager walked Barbara out onto the lawn. Unlike Ristin, she didn’t complain it was too cold. All she said was, “I wish I had some cigarettes. Maybe they’d keep me from wanting to toss my cookies.”

“Now that you haven’t smoked in a while, they’d probably just make you sicker.” Sam slipped an arm around Barbara’s waist, which was still deliciously slim. “As long as you are off early, you want to go back to the place and…?” He let his voice trail away, but squeezed her a little.

Her answering smile was wan. “I’d love to go back to the place, but if you don’t mind, all I want to do is lie down, maybe take a nap. I’m tired all the time, and my stomach isn’t what you call happy right now, either. Is it okay?” She sounded anxious.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” Yeager answered. “Fifteen years ago, I probably would have fussed and sulked, but I’m a grown-up now. I can wait till tomorrow.” My dick doesn’t think for me the way it used to, he thought, but that wasn’t something he could say to a new-wed wife.

Barbara let her hand rest on his. “Thanks, hon.”

“First time I ever got thanked for getting old,” he said.

She made a face at him. “You can’t have it both ways. Are you a grown-up and saying it’s okay because it really is, or are you just getting old and saying it’s okay because you’re all feeble and tired?”

“Ooh.” He mimed a wound. When she wanted to, she could get him chasing his tail like nobody’s business. He didn’t think of himself as dumb (but then, who does?), but he hadn’t had formal training in logic and in fencing with words. Trading barbs with ballplayers in his dugout and the ones on the other side of the field wasn’t the same thing.

Barbara let out a loud, theatrical groan as she got to the top of the stairs. “That’s going to be even less fun when I’m further along,” she said. “Maybe we should have looked for a place on the ground floor. Too late to worry about it now, I suppose.”

She groaned again, this time with pleasure, when she flopped onto the sofa in the front room. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable on the bed?” Yeager asked.

“Actually, no. I can put my feet up this way.” The overstuffed sofa had equally overstuffed arms, so maybe that really was comfortable. Sam shrugged. If Barbara was happy, he was happy, too.

Somebody knocked on the door. “Who’s that?” Sam and Barbara said in the same breath. Why doesn’t he go away? lay beneath the words.

Whoever it was didn’t go away, but kept on knocking. Yeager strode over and threw open the door, intending to give a pushy Fuller Brush man a piece of his mind. But it wasn’t a Fuller Brush man, it was Jens Larssen. He looked at Sam like a man finding a cockroach in his salad. “I want to talk to my wife,” he said.

“She’s not your wife any more. We’ve been through this;” Yeager said tiredly, but his hands bunched into fists at his sides. “What do you want to say to her?”

“It’s none of your damn business,” Jens said, which almost started the fight then and there. But before Yeager quite decided to knock his block off, he added, “But I came to tell her goodbye.”

“Where are you going, Jens?” In her stocking feet, Barbara came up behind Sam so quietly that he hadn’t heard her.

“Washington State,” Larssen answered. “I shouldn’t even tell you that much, but I figured you ought to know, in case I don’t come back.”

“That sounds as if I shouldn’t ask when you’re going,” Barbara said, and Larssen nodded to show she was right. Coolly, she told him, “Good luck, Jens.”

He turned red. Because he was so fair, the process was easy to watch. He said, “For all you care, I could be going off to desert to the Lizards.”

“I don’t think you’d do that,” she said, but Larssen was right: she didn’t sound as if she much cared. Yeager had all he could do to keep from breaking into a happy grin. Barbara went on, “I told you good luck and I meant it. I don’t know what more you want that I can give you.”

“You know good and well what I want,” Jens said, and Yeager gathered himself again. If Larssen wanted that fight bad enough, he’d get it.

“That I can’t give you, I said,” Barbara answered.

Jens Larssen glared at her, at Sam, at her again, as if he couldn’t decide which of them he wanted to belt more. With a snarl of curses, some in English, others in throaty Norwegian, he stomped off. His furious footfalls thundered on the stairs. He slammed the front door of the apartment building hard enough to rattle windows.

“I wish that hadn’t happened,” Barbara said. “I wish – oh, what difference does it make what I wish now? If he’s going away for a while, that may be the best thing that could happen. We’ll get some peace and quiet, and maybe by the time he gets back he’ll have figured out he can’t do anything about this.”

“God, I hope so,” Yeager said. “What he’s put you through ever since we got here isn’t right.” He’d been riding the roller coaster himself, but he kept quiet about that. Barbara was the one who’d had the tough time, because she’d been in love with Jens – right up to the minute she found out he was still alive. Sam thought. Since then, since she’d chosen to stay Barbara Yeager instead of going back to being Barbara Larssen, Jens had done his best to act about as unlovable as a human being could.

Barbara’s sigh showed a weariness that had nothing to do with her being pregnant. “Very strange to think that a year ago he and I were happy together. I don’t think he’s the same person any more. He never used to be bitter – but then, he never used to have much to be bitter about, either. I guess you can’t really tell about someone till you see him when the chips are down.”