Tilting the Balance

The gilded dome of the three-story granite State Capitol on Colfax dominated the city skyline. On the west lawn of the capitol building stood a Union soldier in bronze, flanked by two Civil War brass cannon.

Yeager pointed to the statue. He said, “Going up against the Lizards, sometimes I felt the way he would if he had to fight today’s Germans or Japs with his muzzleloader and those guns.”

“There’s an unpleasant thought,” Barbara said. They pedaled along; on the east lawn of the capitol stood an Indian, also in bronze. She nodded to that statue. “I suppose he felt the same way when he had to fight the white man’s guns with nothing better than a bow and arrow.”

“Yeah, he probably did at that,” said Sam, who’d never thought to look at it from the Indian’s perspective. “He got guns of his own, though, and he hit us some pretty good licks, too-at least, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in General Custer’s boots.”

“You’re right.” But instead of cheering up, Barbara looked glum. “Even though the Indians hit us some good licks, they lost-look at the United States now, or the way it was before the Lizards came, anyway. Does that mean we’ll lose to the Lizards, even if we do hurt them in the fight?”

“I don’t know.” Sam chewed on that for the next block or so. “Not necessarily,” he said at last. “The Indians never did figure out how to make their own guns and gunpowder; they always had to get ’em from white men.” He looked around to make sure nobody was paying undue attention to their conversation before he went on, “But we’re well on our way to making bombs to match the ones the Lizards have.”

“That’s true.” Barbara did cheer up, but only for a moment. She said, “I wonder if there’ll be anything left of the world by the time we’re done fighting the Lizards.”

The science-fiction pulps had printed plenty of stones about worlds ruined one way or another, but Sam hadn’t really thought about living (or more likely dying) in one. Slowly, he said, “If the choice is wrecking the Earth or living under the Lizards, I’d vote for wrecking it. From what Ullhass and Ristin say, the Race has kept two other sets of aliens under their thumbs for thousands of years. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”

“No, neither would I,” Barbara said. “But we sure do remind me of a couple of little kids quarreling over a toy: ‘If I can’t have it, you can’t either!’-and smash! If we end up smashing a whole world… but what else can we do?”

“I don’t know,” Yeager answered. He did his best to think about something else. The end of the world wasn’t something he wanted to talk about with the woman he loved.

They turned right off Colfax onto University Boulevard. Traffic there was thinner and moved faster than it had in the center of town. Yeager looked around, enjoying the scenery. He’d been up at altitude now, in Wyoming and Colorado, that he could pedal along as readily as he had at sea, level.

Just past Exposition Avenue, he saw a couple of cyclists speeding north up University: a skinny blond fellow in civvies followed closely by a burly man in uniform with a Springfleld on his back The skinny guy saw Sam and Barbara, too. He scowled as he whizzed by.

“Oh, dear,” Barbara said. “That was Jens.” She shook her head back and forth, hard enough to make her bike wobble. “He hates me now, I think.” Her voice had tears in it.

“He’s a fool if he does,” Sam said. “You had to choose somebody, honey. I wouldn’t have hated you if you’d gone back to him. I just thank God every day that you decided to pick me.” That she had still surprised and delighted him.

“I’m going to have your baby, Sam,” she said. “That changes everything. If it weren’t for the baby-oh, I don’t know what I’d do. But with things the way they are, I didn’t see that I had any other choice.”

They rode along in silence for a while. If I hadn’t knocked her up, she’d have gone back to Larssen, Sam thought. It made sense to him: she’d known Jens a lot longer, and he was, on paper, more her type. She was a brain and, while Yeager didn’t think of himself as stupid, he knew damn well he’d never make an intellectual.

Not quite out of the blue, Barbara said, “Both of you always treated me well-till now. If I’d chosen Jens, I don’t think you’d act the way he is.”

“I just said that,” he answered. “The thing of it is, I’ve had enough things go wrong in my life that I’ve sort of learned to roll with the punches. That one would have been a Joe Louis right, but I would’ve gotten back on my feet and gone on the best I could.” He paused again; speaking ill of Larssen was liable to make Barbara spring to his defense. Picking his words carefully, he went on, “I’m not sure Jens ever had anything really tough happen to him before.”