Upsetting the Balance

The woman tried to thrash. Moishe didn’t blame her; he admired the way she did her best to keep gasps from turning into shrieks. He got the broken bones aligned and tied the splint tight to keep them from shifting again. When he was through, the woman whispered, “Thank you, Doctor.”

He understood that. It warmed him. When he stood up, his own knees clicked. The sky was growing light. He sighed. No point in going to bed. He had an early broadcast scheduled at the BBC Overseas Services. Yawning, he said to Rivka, “I may as well just get my script and go on in.”

“Oh, dear,” she said sympathetically, but nodded. He and his family went upstairs together. He found the manila folder with the papers inside, then realized he was wearing only a greatcoat over pyjamas. He threw on a white shirt and a pair of trousers and headed out to face the world. A stretcher party had taken away the woman with the broken leg. Moishe hoped she’d do well. He wouldn’t sleep, but he thought his wife and son might.

The building that housed the BBC Overseas Services was at 200 Oxford Street, not far west of his Soho flat and a few blocks east of Hyde Park. As he walked to work, London came to life around him. Pigeons cooed and sparrows chirped-lucky creatures, they knew nothing of war, save that it made the air sharp with smoke. Bicycles, men and women afoot, and horse-drawn wagons and even buggies taken out of sheds where they’d moldered for a generation clogged the streets. Petrol was in as desperately short supply here as in Warsaw or Lodz; only fire engines had all they needed.

Nathan Jacobi approached the building that housed the studios from the other direction at the same time as Moishe reached it. The two men waved to each other. Moishe broadcast in Yiddish and German; Jacobi translated his words into English. His Yiddish was polished and elegant. If his English came close to it-Russie wasn’t qualified to judge, but doubted the BBC would have hired him if it didn’t-he made a very effective newsreader indeed.

Now he surveyed Moishe with a sympathetic eye. “Bad for you last night? You look done in.”

“Iam done in,” Russie said. “I hope the tea in there has a jolt to it this morning. If it doesn’t, I’m apt to fall asleep in front of the microphone.”

“It’ll be hot, anyhow,” Jacobi said, which was true. “As for the jolt, you never can tell from day to day, not with these messes of leaves and roots and rose hips we get instead of the proper stuff.” He sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a cup of vintage Darjeeling-Bloody war.”

The last two words were in English. Moishe knew what they meant, but took the adjective literally. “Bloody war is right. And the worst of it is, we can’t make the Lizards out to be as black as we would otherwise, because they haven’t done much worse to us than we were already doing to ourselves.”

“You would know best about that. Anyone who was in Poland-” Jacobi shook his head. “But still, if we hadn’t been geared up to a fever pitch to fight each other, could we have put up such a battle against the Lizards?”

“I suppose not, but it’s no credit to us that we were,” Russie answered. “It’s not as if we knew they were coming. We’d have gone right on slaughtering ourselves if they hadn’t come, too. Still, I admit that’s neither here nor there at the moment. They are here, and we have to make life miserable for them.” He waved the pages of his script, then fished out his pass and showed it to the guard at the door. The guard nodded. Russie and Jacobi went in to get ready to broadcast.

3

“Forgive me, Exalted Fleetlord, but I have an emergency call for you from the206th Emperor Yower,” Atvar’s adjutant said. In the vision screen, the younger male looked as worried as he sounded.

“Very well, Pshing, patch it through,” Atvar said, setting aside for a moment the war against the Big Uglies for his private conflict with the shiplord Straha. After Straha failed to topple him from command of the conquest fleet, the shiplord should have known revenge was on its way. Atvar wondered what sort of lying nonsense Straha would come up with to justify himself.

Pshing’s face disappeared from the vision screen. It was not, however, replaced by that of Straha. Instead, Atvar’s chief security officer, a male named Diffal, turned his eye turrets toward the fleetlord. Diffal was earnest and capable. All the same, Atvar yearned for the cunning deviousness Drefsab had brought to the job. Even as a ginger taster, he’d been the best in the fleet. But now he was dead, and Atvar had to make do. “Do you have the shiplord Straha in your custody?” he demanded.