In the Balance

“Thank you, those are the kinds of Big Uglies I had in mind, yes,” Atvar said. “And our assistance to them should not be grudging, either. If they give us a secure zone from which we may with impunity assail both Deutschland and the SSSR, we shall derive great benefits therefrom. We can promise them whatever they want. Once Tosev 3 is fully under our control… well, it’s not as if they belong to the Race.”

“Or even the Rabotevs or Hallessi,” the intelligence officer said.

“Quite so. They remain wild, and thus we have no obligations toward them save those which we choose to assume.” Atvar studied the male. “You are perceptive. Remind me of your name, that I may record your diligence.”

“I am Drefsab, Exalted Fleetlord,” the officer said. “Drefsab. I shall not forget.”

Georg Schultz raised up on his elbows to peer at the ripening fields of wheat and oats and barley, made a sour face. “The crop at this kolkhoz is going to be shitty this year,” he said with the certainty of a man who had grown up on a farm.

“That, at the moment, is the least of our worries,” Heinrich Jager answered. He hefted the Schmeisser that had belonged to Dieter Schmidt. Schmidt himself had lain under the black soil of the Ukraine for the past two days. Jager hoped he and Schultz had heaped on enough to keep the wild dogs from tearing up the body, but he wasn’t sure. He and his gunner had been in a hurry.

Schultz’s chuckle had a bitter edge to it. “Ja, we’re a pair out of a jumble sale, aren’t we?”

“You can say that again,” Jager answered. Both men wore scavenged infantry helmets and infantry tunics of field gray rather than tanker’s black; Schultz, carried an infantry rifle as well. Jager’s new, bristly beard itched all the time. Schultz complained about his, too. It was coming in carroty red, though his hair was light brown. Any inspector who saw them would have locked them in the guardhouse and thrown away the key.

Tankmen are usually neat to the point of fussiness. A tank without things stowed just so, and with working parts dirty and poorly maintained, is a tank waiting for breakdown or blowup. But Jager had jettisoned spit and polish when he bailed out of his killed Panzer III. His Schmeisser was clean. So was his pistol. Past that, he’d stopped worrying. He was alive, and for a German on the south Russian steppe, that remained no small achievement.

As if to remind him he was still alive, his stomach growled. The last time he’d been full was the night he got a bellyful of kasha, the night before the Lizards came. He knew what he had in the way of rations: nothing. He knew what Schultz had: the same.

“We have to get something from that collective farm,” he said. “Take it by force, sneak, up in the night, or go up and beg-I don’t much care which any more. But we have to eat.”

“I’m damned if I want to be a chicken thief,” Schultz said. Then, more pragmatically, he added, “Shouldn’t be too hard, just going on in. Most of the men, they’ll be off at the front.”

“That’s true,” Jager said; almost all the figures he saw working in the field wore babushkas. “But this is Russia, remember. Even the women carry rifles. I’d sooner get something peaceably than by robbery. With the Lizards all around, we may need help from the Ivans.”

“You’re the officer,” Schultz said, shrugging.

Jager knew what he meant: you’re the one who gets paid to think. Trouble was, he didn’t know what to think. The Lizards were at war with Russia no less than with the Reich, which meant he and these kolkhozniks shared a common foe. On the other hand, he hadn’t heard anything to let him know Germany and the Soviet Union weren’t still fighting each other (for that matter, he hadn’t heard anything at all since his panzer died).

He got to his feet. The south Russian steppe had seemed overpoweringly vast when he traversed it in a tank. Now that he was on foot, he felt he could tramp the gently rolling country forever without coming to its end.

Georg Schultz stood up beside him, though the gunner muttered, “Might as well be a bug walking across a plate.” That was the other side of Russia’s immensity: if one could see a long way, one could be seen just as far.

The peasants spotted the two Germans almost instantly; Jager saw their movements turn jerky even before they swung his way. He kept his submachine gun lowered as he strode toward the cluster of thatch-roofed wooden buildings that formed the heart of the kolkhoz. “Let’s keep this peaceful, if we can.”

“Yes, sir,” Schultz said. “If we can’t, no matter what we take from the Ivans now, they’re liable to stalk us through the grass and kill us.”

“Just what I’m thinking,” Jager agreed.