Upsetting the Balance

The card went into his bag with the papers. Moishe went through the rest of the pouches, looking for more clues to Ekretkan the individual, as opposed to Ekretkan the soldier. Even Nazis had parents, wives, children, dogs, and often carried pictures of them. Not Ekretkan. He had a couple of pictures Moishe thought were of himself, one with him astride a contraption that looked like a four-wheeled motorcycle, another with him wearing a somewhat simpler version of the body paint in which he’d died.

Ekretkan also had a couple of photos of a flat, empty of other Lizards but filled with gadgets that did things incomprehensible to Russie.Home sweet home, he thought. And the Lizard carried a photo of a street scene that looked like the New York Moishe had seen in the cinema, only more so: tall, thrusting buildings of steel and glass, streets crowded with vehicles, sidewalks full of Lizards who looked as if they were in a hurry.His home town? Russie wondered.

He set the meager handful of photographs on the ground in a row and stared at them, trying to draw meaning from them. If Ekretkan was a typical male, what did that say about how the Race lived? Could a male’s life be as barren as the pictures made it look? Most of the males Moishe had known in Warsaw had seemed happy enough, and no crazier than human beings filling similar social roles.

“And so?” he muttered. The Race had mating seasons, not families; he’d learned that back in Warsaw, too. The Lizards thought human mating customs just as strange and revolting as most humans found theirs. Russie examined the pictures again, searching for clues like a Talmudic scholar contemplating a difficult text.

The most important difference he saw between Lizards and people was that Lizards didn’t have families. That meant-what? That they were alone a lot, especially when they weren’t working. They probably liked it that way, too. Ekretkan’s pictures showed either himself or his empty flat, which argued in favor of Moishe’s line of reasoning.

What about the street scene, then? Moishe picked that one up, set it aside from the others, and thought about families some more. No Lizard families. That didn’t mean lonely Lizards, even if the Lizards were often alone. But it did mean the family wouldn’t get in the way of whatever loyalty the Lizards gave to any entity bigger than the individual.

He nodded, pleased with himself. That fit. He didn’t know whether it was true, but it fit. All the loyalty each Lizard didn’t reserve for himself went straight to the Race. Moishe had seen that; the Race and the Emperor were as important to each male, if in a less vicious way, as theVolk and theFuhrer were to a Nazi.

Moishe gathered up the pictures and put them in his black bag along with the rest of the luckless Ekretkan’s effects. He got out of the shell hole and headed back toward regimental headquarters. Other people needed to evaluate what he’d found.

He wondered how his conclusions would stack up against those of a real Lizard expert.

“You know, Sergeant,” Ben Berkowitz said, clasping his hand behind his head and leaning back in his chair, “the Lizards are plenty to drive a psychiatristmeshuggeh. I ought to know; I am one.” He paused. “You know whatmeshuggeh means? No offense, but you don’t sound like you’re from New York.”

Sam Yeager chuckled. “I better not-I’m from Nebraska. But yeah-uh, yes, sir-I know what it means. Something like crazy, right? I’ve played ball with a few Jewish guys; it’s one of the things they’d say. But why do the Lizards drive you nuts? Except because they’re Lizards, I mean.”

“How much do you know about psychiatry?” Berkowitz asked.

“Not much,” Yeager admitted.Astounding had run some great articles about the physical sciences, and even about weird things like linguistics for time travelers, but zilch about psychiatry.

“Okay,” Berkowitz said equably. “One of the basic principles of Freudian analysis is that a big part of why people do what they do comes from their sex drive and the conflicts that revolve around it.”

“No offense, sir, but it doesn’t seem to me like you have to be a psychiatrist to figure that one out.” Yeager chuckled in fond reminiscence. “I think about some of the crazy things I used to do to get myself laid-”

“Yeah, me, too, except I’m still doing ’em.” Berkowitz’s hand was bare of wedding ring. That didn’t have to signify, not with a man, but evidently it did. “But like you say, if it was that simple, anybody could see it. It’s not. Freud relates sex to all sorts of things that don’t look like they have anything to do with it at first glance: the competitive drive, the urge to create, the way you relate to people the same sex as you.” He hastily held up that ringless hand. “Don’t get me wrong-I don’t mean you in particular and I’m not calling you queer.”