Upsetting the Balance

“I wish we did,” Atvar said. “That site would no longer exist. The Americans cannot hide their program in an already radioactive area, as the Deutsche seem to be doing. They are simply careful about allowing leaks to pinpoint their atomic piles and reprocessing plants.”

“That is a problem,” Kirel said-a good-sized understatement. “If they destroy fighting males with their bombs and we only civilians with ours, do they not gain advantage from that?”

“Some, certainly, but we also destroy industrial sites, and, were this planet not industrialized, it would long since have been incorporated into the Empire,” Atvar answered. Kirel could not disagree with that Atvar went on, “We also put pressure on the Tosevites’ not-empires to accommodate themselves to us while they still have a significant civilian population.”

“None of the Tosevite empires and not-empires we have bombed has yet chosen to accommodate itself to us,” Kirel remarked, but he let it go at that. He knew better, these days, than to criticize Atvar. After a moment, he called up the map of the United States and highlighted two cities the targeting specialists had chosen. Pointing to one, he said, “Here is a centrally located target, Exalted Fleetlord, if you want one.”

Atvar read the name of the place. “Denver? No, I don’t want that one. See how relatively close our males to the east of it are. The prevailing wind will sweep radioactive waste in among them.”

“Truth,” Kirel said. “Very well, then. Your adjutant gave me to understand that you are concerned about the Big Uglies’ traffic on the water.” He brightened the light that showed the other town. “This one is a waterside city, and we have no great numbers of males nearby.”

“Seattle?” Atvar considered. “Yes, that is a good choice, for exactly the reasons you name. We shall bomb it. The Tosevites have begun this game-let us see if they have the liver to play it out to the end.”

19

Leslie Groves stared down at his hands. They were big and blunt and battered, the hands of a working engineer. He didn’t bite his nails, though. He was proud of that. If he hadn’t been so proud of it, he probably would have started.

He’d led the team that made the Fat Lady. The bomb had worked exactly as advertised, maybe better than advertised. A big chunk of the North Side of Chicago would never be the same-but a whole bunch of Lizards would never be the same, either, and that was the point of the exercise.

“So I should be on Easy Street, right?” he asked the walls. In the privacy of his office, he sometimes talked to himself. One of these days, he’d do it in public. “So what?” he said, out loud again. People who didn’t like him already thought he was crazy. He didn’t care if he gave them more ammunition. He’d got the job done, crazy or not.

But he wasn’t on Easy Street. All he knew about Jens Larssen was that he’d shot two people and then headed east. The sentries at Lowry had seen him ride by, but they hadn’t stopped him. They hadn’t known he’d shot anybody. They also hadn’t known Groves had ordered him back to his quarters in the BOQ to calm down.

Groves slammed a fist onto the desk, making papers and theIN andOUT trays jump. “If I hadn’t sent him back to Lowry, would he still be all right now?” he asked. The walls didn’t give him any answers.

He wished Larssen hadn’t gone east. East was where the Lizards lived. You wouldn’t think anybody would go running off to the Lizards, but you wouldn’t think anybody would gun down a colonel and a noncom in cold blood, either. Once Larssen had done the shooting, taking refuge with the Lizards looked a lot more likely than it had before.

They hadn’t managed to catch the son of a bitch, either. One thing Larssen had proved, traveling cross-country from White Sulphur Springs to Chicago and then from Denver to Hanford and back again: he knew how to live off the land. You couldn’t count on him freezing to death in a Colorado winter or doing something dumb to give himself away. If he was heading toward the Lizards, he might well get to them.

“Next question,” Groves said in his orderly fashion: “What will he do if he does get to them? Will he spill his guts?”

By all the signs, Larssen hated the Met Lab and anybody who had anything to do with it. Sure, he’d blamed Hexham for the breakup with his wife, but that had sprung from the secrecy surrounding the project, too. So, the sixty-four dollar question was, if he got to the Lizards, would he blab about what was going on in Denver? If he did, the town would become radioactive gas and dust in short order. No less than the Americans, the Lizards were playing for keeps.