Down to Earth (75 page)

And now they had panzers that could stand against the land-cruisers the Lizards had brought from Home. That wasn’t a pretty thought.

But before Mordechai could do more than form it, it vanished from his mind. The day was typical of Polish springtime, with clouds covering the sun more often than not. All of a sudden, though, a sharp, black shadow stretched out ahead of Anielewicz, toward the west.

He whirled. There, right about where Lodz was—would have been—had been—a great apricot-and-salmon-colored cloud, utterly unlike the gray ones spawned by nature, climbed into the sky. Crying inside the gas mask, Mordechai rapidly discovered, was almost as bad as getting something in his eye in there. He blinked and blinked, trying to clear his vision.

“Yisgadal v’yiskadash shmay rabo—”
he began: the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Looking around, he saw Polish fighting men making the sign of the cross. The expression was different, but the sentiment was the same.

The repulsively beautiful cloud rose and rose. Mordechai wondered how many other explosive-metal bombs were going off in Poland. Then he wondered how many would go off above the Greater German
Reich.
And then, with horror that truly chilled him, he wondered how many people would survive between the Pyrenees and the Russian border.

He wondered if he would be one of them, too. But that thought came only later.

“We’ve got to fall back,” somebody near him bawled. “The Germans are cutting us off!”

How many times had that frightened cry rung out on battlefields throughout Europe during the last round of fighting? This was how the
Wehrmacht
worked its brutal magic: pierce the enemy line with armor, then either surround his soldiers or make him retreat. It had worked in Poland, in France, in Russia. Why wouldn’t it work again?

Anielewicz couldn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work again, not if the Nazis had broken through—and they had. “Form a rear guard!” he shouted. “We have to slow them down.”

He fired at a German infantryman, who dove for cover. But more Germans kept coming, infantrymen following the panzers into the hole the armored machines had broken in the defenders’ line. The Nazis had been doing that since 1939; they’d had more practice than any other human army in the world.

However much practice they had at it, though, not everything went their way. The Poles hated them as much as ever, and didn’t like retreating. And the Jewish fighters whom Anielewicz led hated retreating and wouldn’t be captured. They knew—those of his generation from the bitterest personal experience—the fate of Jews who fell into German hands.

German jets raced low over the battlefield, spraying it with rockets and rapid-firing cannon shells. They didn’t have it all their own way, either; the Lizards’ killercraft replied in kind, and were better in quality. But the Germans had been building like men obsessed—were men obsessed—and had more airplanes, as they had more panzers. Step by step, the defenders of Poland were forced back.

“What are we going to do?” one of Anielewicz’s fighters asked him. Seen through the lenses of his gas mask, the man’s eyes were wide with horror.

“Keep fighting,” Mordechai answered. “I don’t know what else we can do.”

“What if the Poles give way?” the Jew demanded.

“They won’t,” Anielewicz said. “They’ve fought well. They’d better be fighting well. We have to have ’em—there are a lot more of them than there are of us.” All the same, he worried, not so much that the Poles would throw in the towel as at the command structure, or lack of same, of the defenders. He commanded his Jews, the Poles led their own, and the Lizards, while theoretically in charge of everybody, were a lot more diffident than they might have been.

Whatever command problems the Germans might have had, diffidence wasn’t one of them.

Battered by superior force, the defenders fell back toward Lodz—or rather, toward what had been Lodz. Before long, they began running into refugees streaming out from the city. Some of those plainly wouldn’t last long: they were vomiting blood, and their hair fell out in clumps. They’d been far too close to the bomb; its radiation was killing them. Anielewicz had never seen burns like those in all his life. It was as if some of their faces had been melted to slag.

Some people were blind in one eye, some in both. That was a matter of luck, depending on the direction in which they’d happened to face when the bomb went off. Some were burned on one side but not the other, the shadow of their own bodies having protected them from the hideous flash of light.

And, bad off as they were, they told stories of worse horrors closer to the explosion. “Everything’s melted down flat,” an elderly Polish man said. “Just flat, with only little bits of things sticking out from what looks like glass. It’s not glass, I don’t guess. What it is is, it’s what everything got melted down into, you know what I mean?”

A woman, a badly burned woman who probably wouldn’t live, had her own tale: “I came out of what was left of my house, and there was my neighbor’s wall next door. All the paint got burned off it—except where she’d been standing. I don’t know what happened to her. I never saw her again. I think she burned up instead of that stretch of the wall, and all that was left of her was her silhouette.”

“Here—drink,” Mordechai said, and gave her water from his canteen. He thanked God his own family was in Widawa. Maybe they would live. If they’d stayed in Lodz, they would surely be dead.

Because the refugees filled the roads, they made fighting and moving harder. But then, to Anielewicz’s delighted surprise, the German onslaught slowed. He and his comrades and the Lizards contained them well short of Lodz. Before long, he ran into someone with a radio who’d been listening to reports of how the wider war was going.

“Breslau,” the fellow said. The Germans had set off an explosive-metal bomb east of it in the last round of fighting. It wasn’t the Germans this time: it was the Race’s turn. “Peenemünde. Leignitz. Frankfurt on the Oder.” He tolled the roll of devastation. “Olmütz. Kreuzberg. Neustettin.”

A light went on in Anielewicz’s head. “No wonder the Germans have stalled. The Race is bombing all their cities near the border. They must be having the devil’s time getting supplies through.”

“That’s not all the Race is bombing,” the man with the radio answered. “The Lizards aren’t playing the game halfway this time.”

“Will there be anything left of the world when they’re through?” Mordechai asked.

“I don’t know about the world,” the man answered. “But I’ll tell you this: there won’t be much left of the goddamn Greater German
Reich
.”

Mordechai Anielewicz said, “Good.”

So far, the Deutsche had aimed four missiles at Cairo. The Race had knocked down two. One warhead had failed to detonate. And even the explosive-metal bomb that had gone off exploded a good distance east of the city. All things considered, it could have been much worse, and Atvar knew it.

He swung an eye turret toward Kirel. “They thought we would be meek and mild and forbearing,” he said. “Not this time. They miscalculated. In spite of all our warnings, they miscalculated. And now they are going to pay for it.”

“Indeed, Exalted Fleetlord.” Kirel pointed toward the map on the monitor in front of Atvar. “They have paid for it already.”

“Not yet,” Atvar said. “Not enough. This time, we are going to make a proper example of them.”

“By the time we are through with the
Reich,
nothing will be left of it,” Kirel said.

“Good,” Atvar said coldly. “The Deutsche have troubled us altogether too much in the past. We—I—have been far too patient. The time for patience is past. In the future, the Deutsche shall not trouble us again.”

Kirel ordered a different map up on the monitor. “They have also done us considerable damage in the present conflict.”

Atvar sighed. “That, unfortunately, was to be expected. With their orbiting weapons and with those fired from their submersible boats, the time between launch and detonation is very short. Our colonies on the island continent and on the central peninsula of the main continental mass have suffered, as have those west of here.”

“And our orbiting starships,” Kirel said.

“And our orbiting starships,” Atvar agreed. “And also Poland, very heavily, which is unfortunate.”

“We might have done better not to settle so many colonists in Poland,” Atvar admitted. “The only reason we ended up administering the subregion was that none of the Tosevite factions involved in the area would admit that any of the others had the right to control it. To reduce the chances of an outbreak, we kept it—and see what our reward was for that.”

“ ‘Reward’ is hardly the term I would use, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said.

Pshing came into Atvar’s office, which had become the command post for the Race’s war against the
Reich.
“Exalted Fleetlord, our monitors have just picked up a new broadcast from the not-emperor of the Deutsche.”

“Oh, a pestilence!” Atvar burst out. “We have expended several warheads on Nuremberg. I had hoped their command and control would be utterly disrupted by now. We shall just have to keep trying, that is all. Well, Pshing? What does the Big Ugly say?”

“His tone remains defiant, Exalted Fleetlord,” his adjutant replied. “Translation indicates he still predicts ultimate victory for his side.”

“He is as addled as an egg twenty days past hatching in the hot sun,” Atvar said.

“Unfortunately, Exalted Fleetlord, he is not so addled as to have failed to take shelter against our attacks, at least not yet,” Kirel said. “We kept getting reports that the Deutsche were constructing elaborate subterranean shelters. Those reports, if anything, appear to have been understatements.”

“So they do,” Atvar said. “And the Deutsche appear to have continued all the ruthlessness they displayed in the earlier fighting. You will recall that we hoped some of their subject allies would desert them?”

“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. “And one of those not-empires—the one called Romania, wasn’t it?—did attempt to do so.”

“Yes, that not-empire attempted to do so,” Atvar said, “whereupon the Deutsche detonated an explosive-metal bomb above its largest city. That not-empire, or what is left of it, now loudly proclaims its loyalty to the
Reich
, and the other subject allies are too terrified to do anything but obey.”

“How much more harm can the Deutsche do us, Exalted Fleetlord?” Pshing asked.

“Their armies in Poland are already faltering for lack of supplies and reinforcements,” Atvar replied. “Most of their facilities in space have been destroyed, as have as many of their ground-based launch sites as we could hunt down. Those submersible boats of theirs are our greatest problem now. Every so often, they will surface, throw more missiles, and then disappear again. And, once submerged, the miserable things are almost impossible to detect or destroy.”

“In short,” Kirel said, “they can go on hurting us for a while. They have no hope—none whatsoever—of defeating us.”

Atvar made the affirmative gesture. “That is the truth at the yolk of the egg. Bit by bit, they are being smashed. They have harmed us, but they will be in no condition to keep on harming us much longer.”

“And that is as it should be,” Pshing said. An alert light appeared on the monitor. “I will answer your telephone in the antechamber,” Pshing told the fleetlord, and hurried away. A moment later, he came back. “Exalted Fleetlord, it is the ambassador from the not-empire of the United States. He requests an immediate audience.”

“Find out what he wants,” Atvar said.

Pshing disappeared again. When he came back, he said, “He seeks terms for a cease-fire between the Race and the
Reich
.”

“Is the
Reich
seeking to surrender and to yield itself to us?” Atvar asked. “Is he coming at the request of the Deutsch government?”

“I shall inquire.” Pshing duly did so, then reported, “No, Exalted Fleetlord. His mover is his own not-emperor, seeking to end the war.”

“Tell him I will not see him under those circumstances,” Atvar replied. “If the Deutsche want to end the war, they can ask us for terms. No one else may do so. Tell him just that.”

“It shall be done,” Pshing said. When he came back this time, though, he sounded worried: “The ambassador says the American not-emperor will take a very dim view of our refusal to discuss terms with his representative.”

“Does he?” Atvar let out an unhappy hiss. If the United States got angry enough to join the fighting, especially without much warning, victory looked much less secure, and the Race would suffer much more damage. The fleetlord changed his mind. “Very well, then. He may come. Pick some reasonably short amount of time from now and tell him to arrive then.”

“It shall be done,” Pshing said, and made the arrangement.

Henry Cabot Lodge entered the fleetlord’s office at precisely the appointed time. Even for a Tosevite, he was unusually tall and unusually erect. He spoke the language of the Race with a heavy accent, but was fluent enough. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” he said, and bent into the posture of respect.

“I greet you, and I greet your not-emperor through you,” Atvar replied. “What message does he wish to convey through you?”

“That you have punished the Deutsche enough,” the American Big Ugly replied. “They cannot take Poland, their facilities in space are badly damaged, and their homeland is a shambles. President Warren strongly feels any more attacks against them would be superfluous.”

“If your not-emperor sat in my chair, he would have a different opinion.” Atvar stressed that with an emphatic cough, to show how sure he was. “He would aim to be certain the Deutsche could never menace him again, which is what we aim to do now.”

“How was the
Hermann Göring
menacing you?” Henry Cabot Lodge asked. “In no way anyone could see, and yet you destroyed it.”

“We do not know what the Deutsch spacecraft was doing or would be doing,” Atvar replied. “We were not interested in taking a chance and finding out, either.” He turned both eye turrets toward the Big Ugly. “We do not know what the
Lewis and Clark
is doing, either,” he added pointedly.