Tilting the Balance

Only Molotov still sat unmoved and unmoving. He waited for the hubbub to die down around him, then said, “Why should we allow this to surprise us, comrades?” He used the last word deliberately, both to remind the other dignitaries that they were in the struggle together and to irk them on account of their capitalist ideology.

Speaking through an interpreter had its advantages. Among them was getting the chance to think while the interpreter performed his office. Ribbentrop started off in German again (a mark of indiscipline, to Molotov’s mind), then switched to spluttering English: “But how are we to defeat these creatures if they throw at us endless waves of attack?”

“This is a question you Germans should have asked yourselves before you invaded the Soviet Union,” Molotov said.

Hull raised a hand. “Enough of that,” he said sharply. “Recriminations have no place at this table, else I would not be sitting here with Minister Togo.”

Molotov dipped his head slightly, acknowledging the Secretary of State’s point. He enjoyed twitting the Nazi, but enjoyment and diplomacy were two separate things.

“The depths of space between the stars are vaster than any man can comfortably imagine, and traveling them, even near the speed of light, takes time, or so the astronomers have led me to believe,” Churchill said. He turned to Togo. “How long have we before the second wave falls on us?”

The Japanese foreign minister answered, “The prisoner states that this colonization fleet will reach earth in something under forty of his kind’s years. That is less than forty of our years, but by how much he does not know.”

The interpreter leaned close to Molotov. “I am given to understand that two of the Lizards’ years are more or less equal to one of ours,” he murmured in Russian.

“Tell them,” Molotov said after a moment’s hesitation. Revealing information of any sort went against his grain, but joint planning required this.

When the interpreter finished speaking, Ribbentrop beamed. “So we have twenty years or so, then,” he said. “This is not so bad.”

Molotov was dismayed to see Hull nod at that. To them, he concluded, twenty years hence was so far distant that it might as well not exist. The Soviet Union’s Five Year Plans forced a concentration on the future, as did continued study of the ineluctable dynamics of the historical dialectic. As far as Molotov was concerned, a state that did not think about where it would be twenty years from now did not deserve to be anywhere.

He saw, intense concentration on Churchill’s face. The Englishman had no dialectic to guide him-how could he, when he represented a class destined for, the ash-heap of history? — but was himself a student of history of the reactionary sort, and thus used to contemplating broad sweeps of time. He could look ahead twenty years without being dizzied at the distance.

“I shall tell you what this means, gentlemen,” Churchill said: “It means that, even after we have defeated the Lizards even now encroaching on the green hills of Earth, we shall have to remain comrades in arms-even if not comrades in Commissar Molotov s sense-and ready ourselves and our world for another great battle.”

“I agree.” Molotov said. He was willing to let Churchill twit him without mercy if that advanced the coalition against the Lizards. Next to them even a fossilized conservative like Churchill was reminted in shiny progressive metal.

Ribbentrop said, “I agree also. I must say, however, that certain countries now preaching the gospel of cooperation would do well to practice it. Germany has noted several instances of new developments transmitted to us incompletely or only with reluctance, while others at this table have shared more equally and openhandedly.”

Churchill’s bland face remained bland. Molotov did not change expression, either-but then he rarely did. He knew Ribbentrop was talking about the Soviet Union, but declined to feel the least bit guilty. He was still sorry that Germany had succeeded in smuggling even half his share of explosive metal back to his homeland. That hadn’t been part of the Soviet plan. And Churchill couldn’t be enthusiastic about sharing British secrets with the power that had all but brought Britain to her knees.

“Minister Ribbentrop, I want to remind you that this notion of sending new ideas runs both ways,” Cordell Hull said. “You haven’t shared your fancy long-range rockets with the rest of us, I notice, nor the improved sights I hear tell about in your new tanks.”

“I will investigate this,” Ribbentrop said. “We shall not be less forthcoming than our neighbors.”

“While you are investigating, you ought to look into the techniques involved in your Polish death camps,” Molotov said. “Of course, the Lizards have publicized them so well that I doubt many secrets are left any more.”