Tilting the Balance

“I want to jam a whole pack in my face all at once,” he said, “but I figure the first drag’ll be enough to do for me-or maybe do me in, I ain’t had one in so long.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Szabo said. “It’s been a while even for me.” Mutt gave him a sharp stare at that-had he been holding out on other finds? — but Szabo just gazed back, bland as a preacher. Mutt gave up.

Suddenly he grinned and headed off to a brick cottage a few hundred yards north of the front lines. The house had a big red cross painted inside a whitewashed circle on the roof and a red cross flag flying on a tall pole above it to show the Lizards what it was.

Before Mutt got halfway there, the grin evaporated. “She don’t even smoke,” he muttered to himself. “She said as much.” He stopped, kicking a stone in irresolution. Then he pressed on, even so. “I know what to do with ’em just the same.”

Perhaps because of the warning tokens, the house that held the aid station and several around it were more or less intact, though cattle could have grazed on their lawns. Here and there, untended zinnias and roses bloomed brightly. A medic on the front steps of the aid station nodded to Daniels. “Morning, Lieutenant.”

“Mornin’.” Mutt went on up the stairs past the tired-looking medic and into the aid station. Things had been pretty quiet the past couple of days the Lizards didn’t seem any too enthusiastic about the street fighting they’d have to do to take Chicago. Only a handful of injured men sprawled on the cots and couches packed into every available inch of floor space.

Lucille Potter bent over one of those men; changing a wound dressing. The fellow sucked in his breath to keep from crying out. When he was able to drive some of the rawness from his voice, he said carefully, “That hurt some, ma’am.”

“I know it did, Henry,” she answered, “but we have to keep the wound as clean as we can if we don’t want it to get infected.” Like a lot of nurses, she used the royal we when talking to patients. She looked up and saw Daniels. “Hello, Mutt. What brings you here?”

“Got a present for you, Miss Lucille,” Daniels said. Henry and a couple of the other guys in the aid station laughed. One of them managed a wheezing wolf whistle.

Lucille’s face froze. The look she gave Mutt said, You’re going to have to stay after school Charlie. She figured he was trying to get her into the sack with whatever his present turned out to be. As a matter of fact, he was, but he was smart enough to figure out that sometimes the indirect approach was the only one that stood a chance-if any approach stood a chance, which wasn’t nearly obvious.

He shrugged off his pack, reached into it, and pulled out one of the cigarette cartons. The wounded dogface who’d let out the wolf whistle whistled again, a single low, awed note. Mutt tossed the pack underhanded to Lucille. “Here you go. Share these out with the guys who come through here and want ’em.”

Flesh clung too close to the bony underpinnings of her face for it to soften much, but her eyes were warm as she surehandedly caught the carton of Pall Malls. “Thank you, Mutt; I’ll do that,” she said. “A lot of people will be glad you found those.”

“Don’t give me the credit for that,” he said. “Dracula found ’em.”

“I might have known,” she answered, smiling now. “But you were the one who thought to bring them here so I’ll thank you for that.”

“Me too, sir,” Henry said. “Ain’t seen a butt-uh, a cigarette-in a he-heck of a long time.”

“Got that right,” the whistler said. “Ma’am, can I have one now, please? I’ll be a good boy all the way till Christmas if I can, I promise.” He drew a bandaged hand over his chest in a crisscross pattern.

“Victor, you’re impossible,” Lucille said, but she couldn’t keep from laughing. She opened the carton, then opened a pack. The wounded men sighed as she took out a cigarette for each of them. Mutt could smell the tobacco all the way across the room. Lucille went through bet pockets. Her mouth twisted in annoyance. “Does anyone have a match?”

“I do.” Mutt produced a box. “Good for startin’ fires at night-and besides, you never can tell when you might come across somethin’.”

He handed the matches to Lucille. She lit cigarettes for her patients. The aroma of fresh tobacco had made his nose sit up and take notice. Real tobacco smoke, harsh and sweet at the same time, was almost too much to bear.

“Give the lieutenant one, too, ma’am,” Victor said. “Hadn’t’ve been for him, none of us’d have any.” The other wounded soldiers agreed loudly. A couple of them paused to cough in the middle of agreeing; after you hadn’t smoked for a while, you lost the knack.

Lucille brought the pack over to him. He took out a cigarette, tapped it against the palm of his hand to tamp down the tobacco, and stuck it in his mouth. He started to reach for the matches, too, but Lucille had already struck one. He bent down over it to get a light.