Tilting the Balance

Larssen set the flask on a bookshelf and slithered out of the crowded office. His eyes filled with tears which he knew came out of the whiskey bottle but which humiliated him all the same. A week before, he’d picked up a floozy in Denver. He’d been drunk then, not two drinks tiddly but plastered. He wasn’t able to get it up. The girl had been kind about it, which only made things worse. He wondered when he’d have the nerve to try that again. Failure once was bad enough. Failure twice? Why go on living?

With that cheerful thought echoing in his head, he went downstairs to reclaim his bicycle. Oscar the guard stood by the newly built wooden bike rack to make sure none of the machines walked with Jesus. He nodded when he saw Jens. “Back to BOQ, sir?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Jens said through clenched teeth. He hated his Army cot, he hated the base, he hated having to go to the base and sleep on the cot, and he hated Colonel Hexham with a deep and abiding loathing that matured like a fine burgundy as the days went by. He wished he could have used Hexham as a control rod in the nuclear pile. If only the man had a neutron capture cross-section like cadmium’s…

And then, to make his day complete, Barbara came strolling up the walk toward the apartment she and Sam Yeager were using. Sometimes she just ignored him; that his own behavior might have had something to do with that hadn’t crossed his mind. But Barbara wasn’t the sort to be rude in public. She nodded to him and slowed down a little.

He walked over to her. Oscar was good at sticking with him-all the physicists had bodyguards these days-but knew better than to follow real close this time. A small voice inside Jens warned him he’d only end up bruising himself, but two nips of Szilard’s good hooch made him selectively deaf.

“Hello, dear,” he said.

“Hello,” Barbara answered-the lack of a return endearment set a fire under his temper. “How are you today?”

“About the same as usual,” he said: “not so good. I want you back.”

“Jens, we’ve been over this a hundred times,” she said, her voice tired. “It wouldn’t work. Even if it might have right after I got to Denver, it wouldn’t any more. It’s too late.”

“What the devil is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

Her eyes narrowed; she took half a step back from him. Instead of answering, she said, “You’ve been drinking.”

He didn’t explain that they were drinks of triumph. “What if I have?” he said. “You going to tell me Mr. Sam Walk-on-Water Yeager never takes a drink?”

He knew the words were a mistake as soon as he said them. That, of course, did him no good. Barbara’s face froze. “Goodbye,” she said. “I’ll see you some other time.” She started walking again.

He reached out and grabbed her arm. “Barbara, you’ve got to listen to me-”

“Let me go!” she said angrily! She tried to twist away. He held on.

As if by malign magic, Oscar appeared. He stepped between Jens and Barbara. “Sir, the lady asked you to let go,” he said, quietly as usual, and detached Larssen’s hand from Barbara’s forearm. He wasn’t what you’d call gentle, but Jens got the feeling he could have been a lot rougher if he felt like it.

Sober he never would have swung on Oscar. With two whiskeys in him, he didn’t give a damn any more. He’d seen some action himself, by God-and, by God, Barbara was his wife… wasn’t she?

Oscar knocked his fist aside and hit him in the pit of the stomach. Jens folded up like a fan, trying to breathe and not having much luck, trying not to puke and doing a little better with that. Even as he went down on his knees, he was pretty sure Oscar had pulled that punch, too; with arms like those, Oscar could have ruptured his spleen if he really got annoyed.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” Oscar asked Barbara.

“Yes,” she said, and then, a moment later, “Thank you. This has been hell on everybody, and on Jens especially. I know that, and I’m sorry, but I’ve done what I have to do.” Only then did her voice change: “You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

“No, ma’am, not like you mean. He’ll be okay in a minute or two. Why don’t you go on back to your place?” Jens kept his eyes on the pavement in front of him, but he couldn’t help listening to Barbara’s receding-rapidly receding-footsteps. Oscar hauled him to his feet with the same emotionless strength he’d shown before. “Let me dust you off, sir,” he said, and started to do just that.

Jens knocked his hands away. “Fuck you,” he gasped with all the air he had in him. He didn’t care if he turned blue and died after that, and what with the way he still couldn’t breathe, he thought he just might.

“Yes, sir,” Oscar said, tonelessly still. Just then, Jens’ motor finally turned over, and he managed a long, wonderful mouthful of air. Oscar nodded in approval. “There you go, sir. Not too bad. When you get on that bike, I’ll ride with you to BOQ, and tomorrow you can see about getting yourself a new guard.”

“Won’t be soon enough,” Jens said, louder now that his lungs were following orders again.