Upsetting the Balance

If you were commanding a battle group, you didn’t have much hope of calling for reinforcements: battle groups got formed from the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel. Jager’s men were right-if the Lizards got behind them, they were in big trouble. That made the requisite order easy, no matter how distasteful it was.

“Retreat,” Jager said on the all-panzers circuit “We’ll fall back to the first line of defenses around Breslau.”

Three belts of fortifications ringed the city on the Oder. If they were penetrated, Breslau itself could hold for a long time, perhaps even in the way Chicago was holding in the United States. Though Jager had distant relatives on the other side of the Atlantic, nothing he’d seen in the First World War or heard in this one till the Lizards came left him thinking much of Americans as soldiers. Chicago made him wonder if he’d been wrong.

But Chicago was far away. Breslau was close, and getting closer all the time as the driver retreated westward. The town had lots of bridges. If you managed to blow them all, Jager thought, the Lizards would have a rough time crossing the Oder. When that occurred to him, he realized he didn’t really believe theWehrmacht could make a stand at Breslau. But if they couldn’t hold the Lizards there, where could they?

“So you see, General Groves-” Jens Larssen began.

Before he could go on, Groves was glaring at him again, like a fat old bulldog getting ready to growl at a stranger across the street. “What I see, Professor, is somebody who won’t listen when I tell him no,” he said. “We aren’t packing up and moving to Hanford, and that’s all there is to it. I’m sick of your whining. Soldier, shut up and soldier. Do you understand me?”

“Oh, I understand you, all right, you-” Larssen clamped his jaw down hard on the scarlet rage that welled up in his mind.You goddamn pigheaded son of a bitch. He got more creative from there. He’d never seen an atomic bomb go off, but the explosion inside his head felt like one.

“They aren’t paying you to love me,” Groves said. “They’re paying you to do what I tell you. Get on back to work.” The boss of the Metallurgical Laboratory crew held up a hand. “No, take the rest of the day off. Go back to your quarters and think it over. Come tomorrow morning, I expect you to throw everything you have into this project You got it?”

“I’ve got it,” Jens said through clenched teeth.

He left the office and went downstairs. He’d leaned the Springfield he always carried against the wall down there. Now he slung it back over his shoulder. Oscar the guard said, “You don’t really need to tote that thing, sir. Not like you’re in the Army.” His companion, a jug-eared yahoo named Pete, laughed. His big, pointy Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

Jens didn’t answer. He went out to the row of parked bicycles, lifted the kickstand to his with the side of his shoe, and started to head off north on the road back to Lowry Field, as Groves had ordered.

Oscar’s voice pursued him: “Where are you going, sir? The piles are that way.” He pointed down toward the athletic field.

The piles are on your miserable, snooping ass.With no tone at all in his voice, Larssen said, “General Groves wants me to take the day off and think about things in my quarters, so I’m not going back to the piles.”

“Oh. Okay.” But instead of letting it go at that, Oscar spoke quietly to Pete for a moment, then said, “I guess I’ll come with you then, sir, make sure you get there all right.”

Make sure you do what you’re told.Oscar didn’t trust him. Nobody here trusted him. Between the Met Lab and Colonel Hexham, they’d all got together to screw up his life eight ways from Sunday, and now they didn’t trust him. Wasn’t that a hell of a thing? “Do whatever you damn well please,” Larssen said, and started pedaling.

Sure as shit, Oscar climbed aboard his own bicycle and rolled after him. Up University Boulevard to Alameda, then east on Alameda to the air base and the delightful confines of BOQ. Jens didn’t think much of the place as somewhere to do any serious contemplating, but he’d take the day off and see what sprang from it. Maybe he’d be able to look at things differently afterwards.

The day was cold but clear. Jens’ long winter shadow raced along beside him, undulating over snowdrifts by the side of the road. Oscar’s lumpier shadow stayed right with it, just as Oscar clung to Jens like a leech.

For a long while, they had the road to themselves. Oscar knew better than to try any casual conversation. Larssen despised him quite enough when he was keeping his mouth shut.

About halfway between the turn onto Alameda and the entrance to Lowry Field, they met another bicycle rider coming west. The fellow wasn’t making any great speed, just tooling along as if out for a constitutional. Jens’ jaw tightened when he recognized Colonel Hexham.