In the Balance

The only virtue he could find to the meal was that he didn’t have to pay for it. Patton had taken over the handful of eateries in town and incorporated them into his commissary department. Larssen supposed that was fair, without the supplies they drew from the Army, they’d long since have closed down.

The better to conceal his soldiers, Patton had also billeted them on the townsfolk. As far as Jens knew, he hadn’t asked anybody for permission before he did it, either. If Patton worried about that, he didn’t let on. Maybe he had a point, the Founding Fathers hadn’t anticipated an invasion from outer space.

But if you started fiddling with the Constitution and pleading military necessity, where would you stop? Jens wished he’d been in a better position to take that up with Patton. It might have made an interesting philosophical discussion if the general hadn’t been steamed at him for trying to get a message to Barbara. As things were, Patton would either roar at him or ignore him, neither of which constituted an enlightened exchange of views.

“Anybody got a cigarette?” asked one of the soldiers in civvies.

The only answer Larssen expected to that was a hoarse laugh, and the soldier got one. Then a civilian, a leathery fellow in a hunting cap who had to be pushing seventy, looked the kid over and drawled, “Son, even if I did have one, you ain’t pretty enough to give me what I’d want for it.”

The young soldier turned the color of the fire under the griddle. The cook solemnly sketched a hash mark in the air. Larssen whistled. The old-timer let out a dry chuckle to show he wasn’t all that impressed with his own wit, then returned to his cup of what the Army called, for lack of a suitable term of opprobrium, coffee.

High overhead, above the clouds, a Lizard jet flew by, its wail thin and fading with distance. Larssen’s shiver had nothing to do with the weather. He wondered how well the aliens’ sensors, whatever they were, could peer through the gray mass that shielded Oxford and the countryside around it from the sky and how well Patton had managed to hide the carefully husbanded gear here. He’d know soon enough.

In one corner of the cafe stood a broken pinball machine, the mournful word TILT permanently on display. Since that constituted the place’s entire potential for entertaimnent, Jens handed his plate and cutlery back to the cook and went out onto the street.

The wind had picked up while he ate. He was glad for his overcoat. His nose was also relieved at the fresh air. Full of soldiers as it was and without much working plumbing, Oxford had become an odorous place. If the buildup here went on a little longer, the Lizards wouldn’t need visual reconnaissance to find their human foes: their noses would do the job for them.

Something stung Jens on the cheek. By reflex he brought up his hand, but felt only a tiny patch of moisture. Then he got stung again, this time on the wrist. He looked down, saw a fat white snowflake melting away to nothingness. More slipped and slid wildly through the air, jitterbug dancers made of ice.

For a moment, he just watched. The start of a snowfall always took him back to his Minnesota childhood, to snowmen and snow angels and snowballs knocking stocking caps off heads. Then the present rose up and smote nostalgia. This snow had nothing to do with childhood’s pleasures. This snow meant attack.

19

Yi Min felt bigger than life, felt, in fact, as if he were the personification of Ho Tei, fat little god of luck. Who would have imagined so much profit was to be made from the coming of the little scaly devils? At first, when they’d raped him away from his home village and then taken him up into the plane that didn’t land, the plane where he weighed nothing and his poor stomach even less, he’d thought them the worst catastrophe the world had ever known. Now, though… He smiled oleaginously. Now life was good.

True, he still lived in this camp, but he lived here like a warlord, almost like one of the vanished Manchu emperors. His dwelling was a hut in name only. Its wooden sides were proof against the worst winter winds. Brass braziers gave heat, soft carpets cushioned his every stride, fine pieces of jade and cloisonne delighted his eye wherever it happened to light. He ate duck and dog and other delicacies. When he wanted them, he enjoyed women who made Liu Han seem a diseased sow by comparison. One waited on his mattress now. He’d forgotten her name. What did it matter?

And all from a powder the scaly devils craved!

He laughed out loud. “What is it, man full of yang?” the pretty girl called from the other room. She sounded impatient for him to join her.

“Nothing-just a joke I heard this morning,” he answered. However full of masculine essence he was, he still had too much hard sense to make a hired mattress partner privy to his thoughts. What one set of ears heard in the afternoon, a score would know by sunrise and the whole world by the next night.