Tilting the Balance

“Dammit, my wife is in one of those wagons, and I haven’t seen her since last summer,” Jens said angrily. Maybe Oscar didn’t breathe hard even in bed.

“I understand that, sir,” Oscar said patiently, “but you don’t know which one she’s in. For that matter, you don’t even know if she’s in any of the ones coming in today. Isn’t the convoy broken into several units to keep the Lizards from paying too much attention to it?”

The right way, the wrong way, and the Army way, Jens thought. This once, the Army way seemed to have something going for it. “Okay,” he said, stopping. “Maybe you’re smarter than I am.”

Oscar shook his head. “No sir. But my wife isn’t on one of those wagons, so I can still think straight.”

“Hmm.” Aware he’d lost the exchange, Larssen turned toward the wagons, the first of which had turned off University onto East Evans and was now approaching Science Hall. I’ll have the best excuse in the world for getting out of BOQ now, he thought.

He didn’t recognize the only man aboard the lead wagon: just a driver, wearing olive drab. Oscar had had a point, he reluctantly admitted to himself. A lot of these wagons would just be carrying equipment, and the only people aboard them would be soldiers. He’d have felt a proper fool if he’d pedaled up and down the whole length of the wagon train without setting eyes on Barbara.

Then he saw Leo Szilard sitting up alongside another driver. He waved like a man possessed. Szilard returned the gesture in a more restrained way: so restrained, in fact, that Jens wondered a little. The Hungarian physicist was usually as open and forthright a man as anyone ever born.

Larssen shrugged. If he was going to read that much into a wave, maybe he should have chosen psychiatry instead of physics.

A couple of more wagons pulled up in front of Science Hall before he saw more people he knew: Enrico and Laura Fermi, looking incongruous on a tarp-covered hay wagon. “Dr. Fermi!” he called. “Have you seen Barbara? Is she all right?”

Fermi and his wife exchanged glances. Finally he said, “She is not that far behind us. Soon you will see her for yourself.”

Now what the devil was that supposed to mean? “Is she all right?” Larssen repeated. “Is she hurt? Is she sick?”

The Fermis looked at each other again. “She is neither injured nor ill,” Enrico Fermi answered, and then shut up.

Jens scratched his head. Something was going on, but he didn’t know what. Well, if Barbara was just a few wagons behind the Fermis, he’d find out pretty soon. He walked up the stream of incoming wagons, then stopped dead in his tracks. Ice ran up his spine-what were two Lizards doing here attached to the Met Lab crew?

He relaxed a bit when he saw the rifle-toting corporal in the wagon with the Lizards. Prisoners might be useful; the Lizards certainly knew how to get energy out of the atomic nucleus. Then all such merely practical thoughts blew out of his head. Sitting next to the corporal was-

“Barbara!” he yelled, and sprinted toward the wagon. Oscar the guard followed more sedately.

Barbara waved and smiled, but she didn’t jump down and run to him. He noticed that, but didn’t think much of it. Just seeing her again after so long made the fine spring day ten degrees warmer.

When he fell into step beside the wagon, she did get out. “Hi, babe, I love you,” he said, and took her in his arms. Squeezing her, kissing her, made him forget about everything else.

“Jens, wait,” she said when lack of oxygen forced him to take his mouth away from hers for a moment.

“The only thing I want to wait for is to get us alone,” he said, and kissed her again.

She didn’t respond quite the way she had the first time. That distracted him enough to let him notice the corporal saying, “Ullhass, Ristin, you two just go on along. I’ll catch up with you later,” and then getting down from the wagon himself. His Army boots clumped on the pavement as he walked back toward Jens and Barbara.

Jens broke off the second kiss in annoyance that headed rapidly toward anger. Oscar had enough sense to keep his distance and let a man properly greet his wife. Why couldn’t this clodhopper do the same?

Barbara said, “Jens, this is someone you have to know. His name is Sam Yeager. Sam, this is Jens Larssen.”

Not, my husband, Jens Larssen? Jens wondered, but, trapped in the rituals of politeness, he grudgingly stuck out a hand. “Pleased to meet you,” Yeager said, though a dark blond eyebrow quirked up as he spoke. He was a handful of years older than Larssen, but considerably more weathered, as if he’d always spent a lot of time outdoors. Gary Cooper type, Jens thought, not that the corporal was anywhere near so good-looking.

“Pleased to meet you, too, pal,” he said. “Now if you’ll excuse us-” He started to steer Barbara away.