Upsetting the Balance

“Yes, yes, by all means.” With his own hands, Cordell Hull pulled out a chair for Molotov, and then another for his interpreter. Molotov felt faintly scandalized; that was not proper work for a man whose rank matched his own. The American passion for showing equality of upper and lower classes even-sometimes especially-where that equality did not in truth exist always struck him as hypocritical.

But diplomacy without hypocrisy was almost a contradiction in terms. Molotov said, “Let us review the present state of our alliance and plan our future moves against the common foe.”

“Not all such planning is practicable,” Lord Beaverbrook put in. “The damned Lizards have plans of their own, as we found out to our sorrow this past summer.”

“We were invaded first by the Nazis, then by the Lizards,” Molotov said. “We know in great detail what you have experienced.”

“Russia being a large state-” Lord Halifax began.

Molotov corrected him with icy precision: “The Soviet Union being a large state-”

“Yes. Quite. Er, the Soviet Union being a large state,” Lord Halifax resumed, “you enjoyed the luxury of trading space for time, which allowed you more strategic options than were available to us.”

“Thus your immediate use of poison gas,” Molotov said. “Yes. That, like our bomb from explosive metal, does seem to have been something which found the Lizards ill-prepared.”

He watched Halifax and Beaverbrook preen, as if they’d been personally responsible for throwing mustard gas at the Lizards. Maybe Beaverbrook actually had had something to do with the decision; he’d been active in weapons development. Molotov reckoned poison gas an altogether mixed blessing. Not long after the English started using it, the Germans also did-a more lethal species, too. And the Germans had rockets to throw their gas farther than they could directly reach. Not for the first time, Molotov was glad the Lizards had landed in Poland. He would have liked their landing in Germany even better.

The Nazis’ poison gas also seemed to be on Beaverbrook’s mind, for he said, “Technical cooperation among the allies is still not all it might be. We have yet to receive from Berlin-”

“You won’t get anything from Berlin, any more than you would from Washington,” Cordell Hull said. “Or Tokyo, either, come to that.”

“From the Germans, I should say,” Lord Beaverbrook replied. “Ahem. We’ve not received from the Germans the specifics of their new suffocating gas, nor indeed any word from them on their progress toward nuclear weapons for some time.”

“We and they were enemies before; our present alliance with them is nothing more than a convenience,” Molotov said. “We should not be surprised when it creaks.” The Anglo-American-Soviet alliance against the Hitlerites had also been one of convenience, as had the Nazi-Soviet pact before that. You didn’t stay wedded to an alliance because it was there; you stayed because it was useful for you. What had Austria said, refusing to help Russia during the Crimean War after the Romanovs rescued the Hapsburg throne? “We shall astonish the world by our ingratitude”-something like that. If you were in the game, you knew it had slippery rules. The British had some clues along those lines. Molotov wondered about the Americans, though.

Because he still worried about the Germans almost as much as he did about the Lizards, Molotov said, “We have reports that the Nazis will be ready to begin using those bombs next spring.” He didn’t say he’d heard that himself, straight from Ribbentrop’s mouth. The United States and Britain endangered the future of the Soviet Union hardly less than the Nazis.

“We can match that,” Cordell Hull said placidly. “We may even beat it.”

That was more than Molotov had heard from Ribbentrop. He wondered if it was more than Ribbentrop knew. For that matter, he was always amazed when Ribbentrop knew anything. “If that is so, the war against the Lizards will take on an entirely different tone,” he observed.

“So it will,” Hull said. “You Russians should have more of these weapons coming up soon, too, shouldn’t you?”

“So we should.” Molotov let it go at that. Unfortunately, just because the Soviet Union should have had more explosive-metal bombs coming into production didn’t mean itwould have them. He wondered how long the physicists would have before Stalin started liquidating them out of frustration. The Great Stalin’s virtues were multifarious-he would tell you as much himself. Patience, however, was not among them.

Lord Halifax said, “If we show the Lizards we are their match in destructive power, my hope is that we shall then be able to negotiate a just and equitable peace with them.”