In the Balance

“Have you received any communication from the RAF or His Majesty’s government permitting us to sign such a document?” Embry asked.

“I have not,” Hocker’s said. “Formally, we are still at war. I give you my word of honor, however, that I have learned of no punishment given to any who have so signed.”

“Please be so good as to put that assurance in writing, for us to present to our superiors. If it should prove false, we shall consider ourselves at liberty to deem our paroles null and void, nor should sanctions be applied against us in the event we are captured in arms against your country.”

“Jolly good, Ken,” Bagnall whispered admiringly.

Hacker inked a pen, wrote rapidly on the back of another parole form. He handed it to the pilot. “I trust this meets with your approval, Flight Lieutenant?” He pronounced it leftenant, as a native Englishman would have.

Embry read what be had written. Before he replied, he passed it to Bagnall. Hocker’s script, unlike his speech, was distinctly Germanic; the flight engineer had to puzzle it out word by word. But it seemed to set forth what Embry had demanded. Bagnall gave it to Alf Whyte.

The German lieutenant colonel waited patiently until the whole Lancaster crew had read it. “Well, gentlemen?” he asked when Embry had it back.

The pilot glanced from one flier to the next. No one said anything. Embry sighed, turned back to Hocker. “Give me the bloody pen.” He signed his parole with a few slashing strokes. “Here.”

Hocker raised an eyebrow. “You are not pleased with this arrangement?”

“No, I’m not pleased,” Embry said. “If it weren’t for the Lizards, we’d be fighting each other. But they’re here, so what can I do?”

“Believe me, Flight Lieutenant, my feelings are the same in every particular,” the German answered. “I had a sister in Berlin, however, and two nieces. So I shall adjourn my quarrel with you for the time being. Perhaps we shall take it up again at a more auspicious moment.”

“Coventry,” Embry said.

The lieutenant colonel answered, “Beside Berlin, Englander, Coventry is as a toddler’s scraped knee.” Hocker and Embry locked eyes with each other for most of a minute.

Bagnall took the pen, wrote his name on his parole form. “One enemy at a time,” he said. The rest of the aircrew also signed theirs. But even as Hocker called for an escort to take the Englishmen to the train station, Bagnall wondered how many nieces the old Jew with the yellow star had, and how they were faring.

A squadron of devils tramped down the main street of the prison camp. Like everyone else who saw them, Liu Han bowed low. No one knew what would happen if the little scaled devils were denied all the outward trappings of respect their captives could give. No one, least of all Liu Han, wanted to find out.

When the devils were gone, a man came up to Liu Han and said something. She shook her head. “I am sorry, but I do not understand your dialect,” she said. He must not have been able to follow hers, either, for he grinned, spread his hands, and walked away.

She sighed. Hardly anyone here spoke her dialect, save the few villagers taken with her. The scaly devils threw people from all over China together in their camps; they either did not know or did not care about the differences among them. For the educated few, those who could read and write, the lack of a common dialect mattered little. They spoke together with brush and paper, since they all used the same characters.

Such was the ignorance of the demons that they had even put Japanese in the camp. No Japanese were left any more. Some had slain themselves in despair at being captured. Those whose despair was less deep died anyhow, one by one. Liu Han did not know just how they’d met their ends. So long as they were dead, and the little devils none the wiser, she was satisfied.

Two streets over from the one the devils most regularly patrolled, a market had sprung up. People landed in camp with no more than what they had on their backs, but they soon started trading that-no reason for a man with a gold ring or a woman whose purse had been full of coins to do without. Inside days, too, chickens and even piglets had made their appearance, to supplement the rice the devils doled out.

A bald man with a wispy mustache sat on the ground, his straw hat upside down in front of him. In it nestled three fine eggs. Seeing Liu Han looking at them, he nodded and spoke to her. When he saw she did not follow him, he tried another dialect, then another. Finally he reached one she could also grasp: “What you give for these?”

Sometimes even understanding did not help. “I am sorry,” she said. “I have nothing to give.”

Back in her own village, it would have been the start of a haggle with which to while away most of a morning. Here, she thought, it was nothing but truth. Her husband, her child, dead at the hands of the Japanese. Her village, devastated first by the eastern barbarians and then by the devils in their dragonfly planes-and now gone forever.