Striking the Balance

The wireless operator spoke groups of seemingly meaningless letters over the air. Molotov sincerely hoped they were meaningless to the Lizards. “What else do the mutineers want?” he asked.

“A pledge that under no circumstances will we return them to the Lizards, not even if an end to hostilities is agreed to between the peace-loving workers and peasants of the Soviet Union and the alien imperialist aggressors from whose camp they are trying to defect.”

“Again, we can agree to this,” Molotov said. It was another promise that could be broken at need, although Molotov did not see the need as being likely to arise. By the time peace between the USSR and the Lizards came along, he guessed the mutineers would be long forgotten. “What else?”

“They demand our promise to supply them with unlimited amounts of ginger, Comrade Foreign Commissar,” the technician replied, again after checking his notes.

As usual, Molotov’s pale, blunt-featured face revealed nothing of what was in his mind. In their own way, the Lizards were as degenerate as the capitalists and fascists against whom the glorious peasants and workers of the USSR had demonstrated new standards of virtue. Despite their high technology, though, the Lizards were in social terms far more primitive than capitalist societies. They were a bastion of the ancient economic system: they were masters, seeking human beings as slaves-so the dialecticians had decreed. Well, the upper classes of ancient Rome had been degenerates, too.

And, through degeneracy, the exploiters could be exploited. “We shall certainly make this concession,” Molotov said. “If they want to drug themselves, we will gladly provide them with the means to do so.” He waited for more code groups to go out over the air, then asked again, “What else?”

“They insist on driving the tanks away from the base themselves, on retaining their personal weapons, and on remaining together as a group,” the wireless operator answered.

“Theyare gaining in sophistication,” Molotov said. “This I shall have to consider.” After a couple of minutes, he said, “They may drive their vehicles away from their base, but not to one of ours: the local commandant is to point out to them that trust between the two sides has not been fully established. He is to tell them they will be divided into several smaller groups for efficiency of interrogation. He may add that. If they are so divided, we shall let them retain their weapons, otherwise not.”

“Let me make sure I have that, Comrade, before I transmit it,” the technician said, and repeated back Molotov’s statement. When the foreign commissar nodded, the man sent out the appropriate code groups.

“Anything more?” Molotov asked. The wireless operator shook his head. Molotov got up and left the room somewhere deep under the Kremlin. The guard outside saluted. Molotov ignored him, as he had not bothered giving the man at the wireless a farewell. Superfluities of any sort were alien to his nature.

That being so, he did not chortle when he went upstairs. By his face, no one could have guessed whether the Lizard mutineers had agreed to give up or were instead demanding that he present himself for immediate liquidation. But insideFools,he thought.They are fools. No matter that they’d become more sophisticated than before: the Lizards were still naive enough to make even Americans seem worldly by comparison. He’d seen that before, even among their chiefs. They had no notion of how to play the political games human diplomates took for granted. Their ruling assumption had plainly been that they would need no such talents, that their conquest of Earth would be quick and easy. Now that that hadn’t happened, they were out of their depth.

Soldiers snapped to attention as he strode through the halls of the Kremlin. Civilian functionaries muted their conversations and gave him respectful nods. He did not acknowledge them. He barely noticed them. Had he failed to receive them, though, he would have made sharp note of that.

The devil’s cousin or some other malicious wretch had dumped a stack of papers on his desk while he went down to bring himself up to date on the talks with the mutinous Lizards. He had high hopes for those talks. The Soviet Union already had a good many Lizard prisoners of war, and had learned some useful things from them. Once Lizards surrendered, they seemed to place humans in the positions of trust and authority their own superiors had formerly occupied for them.

And to lay hold of an entire base full of the equipment the alien aggressors from the stars manufactured! Unless Soviet intelligence was badly mistaken, that would be a coup neither the Germans nor the Americans could match. The British had a lot of Lizard gear, but the imperialist creatures had done their best to wreck it after their invasion of England failed.