Striking the Balance

“You want beefsteak, sir, you may have to kill,” Goldfarb said. “A man who has a cow stands watch over it with a rifle these days, and it seems rifles are easy to come by for bandits, too. Everybody got a rifle when the Lizards came, and not all of them were turned back in, not by a long chalk. You’ll hear about gunfights over food in the papers or on the wireless.”

Sylvia nodded emphatic agreement to that. “Might as well be the Wild West, all the shooting that goes on these days. Chicken, now, we might come up with, and there’s fish about, seeing as we’re by the ocean. But beef? No.”

“Even chicken costs,” Basil Roundbush said. Goldfarb had been thinking the same thing, but hadn’t said it, though with his tiny pay he had more justification than the officer. But, when you were a Jew, you thought three times before you let others perceive you as cheap.

Jerome Jones slapped himself in the hip pocket. “Money’s not the biggest worry in the world right now, not with eighteen months’ pay dropped on me all at once. More money than I thought I’d get, too. How many times have they raised our salaries while we were gone?”

“Three or four,” Goldfarb answered. “But it’s not as much money as you think. Prices have gone up a lot faster than pay. I was just thinking that a few minutes ago.” He glanced down the bar toward Naomi, who had just set a pint pot in front of a slicker-clad fisherman. His shoulders heaved up and down in a silent sigh. It would be so good to get her out of here and live on his pay-except he could barely do that himself, and two surely couldn’t.

He caught his fiancee’s eye. She came back over with a smile. “A round for all my friends here,” he said, digging into his pocket to see what banknotes lay crumpled there.

By immemorial custom, everyone would buy a round after that. He’d want a radar mounted on the front of his bicycle by the time he had to go back to barracks, but he expected he’d manage. He’d have a thick head come morning, but he’d manage that, too. Beefsteak might be thin on the ground, but they’d never yet run short on aspirin tablets.

The Tosevite negotiators rose respectfully when Atvar entered the chamber where they waited. He flicked one eye turret toward Uotat. “Give them the appropriate greetings,” he said to Uotat.

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” the translator answered, and switched from the beautiful, precise language of the Race to the mushy ambiguities of the Big Ugly tongue called English.

One after another, the Tosevites replied, Molotov of the SSSR through his own interpreter. “They say the usual things in the usual way, Exalted Fleetlord,” Uotat reported.

“Good,” Atvar said. “I am in favor of their doing any usual thing in any usual way. On this planet, that is in and of itself unusual. And speaking of the unusual, we now return to the matter of Poland. Tell the speaker from Deutschland I am most displeased over his recent threat of renewed combat, and that the Race will take unspecified severe measures should such threats reoccur in the future.”

Again, Uotat spoke English. Von Ribbentrop replied in the same language. “Exalted Fleetlord, he blames errors in decoding the instructions from his not-emperor for that unseemly lapse of a few days ago.”

“Does he?” Atvar said. “After the fact, a male may blame a great many things, some of which may even have some connection to the truth. Tell him it was as well he was mistaken. Tell him his not-empire would have suffered dreadful damage had he proved correct.”

This time, von Ribbentrop replied at some length, and apparently with some heat. “He denies that Deutschland needs to fear the Empire and the Race. He says that, as the Race has been dilatory in these negotiations, his not-empire is within its rights to resume conflict at a time and in a manner of its choosing. He does regret having misinformed you at that time and in that manner, however.”

“Generous of him,” the fleetlord remarked. “Tell him we have not been dilatory. Point out to him that we have the essentials of agreement with the SSSR and with the U.S.A. Tell him it is the intransigent attitude of his own not-emperor over Poland that has led to this impasse.”

Again Uotat translated. Von Ribbentrop let out several yips of Tosevite laughter before answering. “He says that any agreement with the SSSR is of less worth than the sheet of paper on which its terms are stated.”

Even before von Ribbentrop had finished, Molotov began speaking in his own language, which to Atvar sounded different from English but no more beautiful. Molotov’s interpreter spoke to Uotat, who spoke to Atvar: “He accuses the Deutsche of violating agreements they have made, and cites examples. Do you want the full listing, Exalted Fleetlord?”

“Never mind,” Atvar told him. “I have heard it before, and can retrieve the data whenever necessary.”