Turtledove: World War Read online

  Russie stood in front of one of those holes now, a three-meter stretch where there was no wall. As he stepped into the bomb crater, the soles of his feet felt every sharp brick fragment through the rags that wrapped them. He did not care. Still holding the Holy Scriptures before him, he walked through the shallow crater and out of the ghetto.

  Turning, he said, “Jericho’s walls could not hold the Hebrews out, nor can Warsaw’s hold us in. The Lord has set us free!”

  The crowd of Jews cheered once more. He drank in the shouts of “Reb Moishe! Reb Moishe!” The more he heard them, the better they sounded in his ears. God had given, him the sign, after all.

  Someone in the crowd, though, called, “The Lord may have set us free, but has He bothered to tell the Nazis?”

  The word itself was enough to make people look this way and that in alarm, Russie among them. Even without walls, the Germans could have kept the ghetto sealed by posting machine guns in the streets around it. They hadn’t done so, which seemed to Russie another sign of divine intervention.

  He took a short, fearful breath. As if thinking of German was enough to conjure them up, here came two. The crowd behind him started to melt away. “Moishe, get back here!” his wife said urgently.

  Too late. One of the Germans, an officer by his peaked cap, pointed to Russie. “You, Jew, come here,” he said in peremptory tones. His companion, an enlisted man, had a rifle. If Russie ran, the fellow might shoot, and wasn’t likely to care whether he hit the man he was aiming for or some other fleeing Jew.

  Russie took off his hat to the officer—an army man, he saw with relief, not a member of the SS. Some army men were decent. Still, omitting the gesture of respect the Nazis demanded was too dangerous to risk. If he’d been on the sidewalk, he would have stepped down into the street. As it was, he bent his head and said, “Yessir. How can I help you, sir?” in the pure German he’d learned in medical school: he also did not care to risk angering the man by making him try to follow Yiddish or Polish.

  “What do you make of—this?” The officer—he was a major, Russie saw by his shoulder straps, which were embroidered but bore no pips—waved at the wreckage of the wall that had surrounded the ghetto.

  Russie stayed silent for some time, considering the tone of the question. Germans were like any other folk in that some wanted to hear only that which agreed with what they already thought, while others asked in hope of learning something they did not yet know—and in that, the former type outnumbered the latter by a goodly margin. Safest to say nothing, and say it in a pleasing way.

  Safest, yes, but he found all at once that he could not stomach simple safety, not any more, not with a German for once asking a question of a Jew and sounding as if the answer mattered to him. Russie held out the Bible he was carrying. “I take—this—to mean that God has not forgotten us after all.”

  Under the outthrust rim of his steel helmet, the enlisted man’s ginger-colored eyebrows drew together in anger. The major, however, nodded slowly and thoughtfully. “You may be right. In truth, you would require the aid of God to escape from our hands.”

  “That I know.” Russie did not bother to hide his bitterness. With the whole world turned topsy-turvy, somehow it did not seem wrong for the prisoner to speak his mind to his gaoler.

  The German major nodded again, as if thinking along the same lines. He said, “Do you know, Jew, the Lizards who bombed these walls are not even human beings, but creatures from some other world?”

  Russie shrugged. “How could it matter to us, trapped back in there?” He half-turned and pointed with his chin into the ghetto. “And why should it matter to you Germans, either? You named us Untermenschen—subhumans. What difference between sub-humans and creatures from some other world?” He repeated the major’s phrase without any real feeling for what it might imply.

  “What difference? I’ll tell you what. By all accounts, the Lizards are ugly enough to be Untermenschen, but they fight like Ubernenschen, like supermen.”

  “So do the Russians, by all accounts,” Russie said. Just standing on the far side of the ghetto wall was making him reckless.

  He got away with it, too. The German enlisted man’s scowl got deeper, but the major accepted the gibe. With almost British understatement, he said, “The problem with the Lizards is rather worse.”

  Good, Russie thought. If the mysterious Lizards ever showed up in person in Warsaw, the ghetto Jews would greet them with open arms. No matter how reckless he’d grown, though, he did not say that aloud. Instead, he asked, “And what, sir, do you make of this?”

  “We are still deciding precisely what to make of it,” the major answered. “I have as yet no orders.”

  “Ah,” Russie said. In combat, a German without orders was as deadly as one who had them, for German soldiers were endlessly trained to react and seize the initiative when and as they could. In matters political, though, Germans without orders were as helpless as so many unweaned babes, fearing to take a step in any direction. A strange folk, Russie thought, and all the more dangerous for their strangeness. He asked, “Then you have no orders to keep us from coming out of the ghetto, nicht wahr?”

  “That is so,” the major admitted, in the hollow voice of a man who has had too much happen to him too quickly. “In any case, with the Lizards having established a base inside the Polish Generalgouvernement, the Wehrmacht has more to worry about at the moment than you Jews.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Russie breathed. His own sincerity startled him. After a moment, it angered him as well: why should he thank this Nazi for deigning to allow him what should have been his by right?

  And, indeed, the German tempered his own moderation: “You would likely do well to remember that the SS never has more to worry about than you Jews. Be careful.” Be very careful, the cold gray eyes of the silent enlisted man seemed to add. Be very careful . . . kike.

  “We have learned to be careful,” Russie said. “Otherwise we would all be dead by now.”

  He wondered how the major would react to that. The man merely nodded, as at any statement of obvious fact. His arm shot up and out in the German salute. “Heil Hitler!”

  Russie could not bring himself to answer with the Nazi farewell. But the officer had talked to him as man to man, not as master to slave. He said, “God keep you safe from the Lizards, Major.”

  The German nodded again, this time brusquely, did a military about-face, and strode away. The enlisted man stalked after him. They left Moishe Russie still standing in Polish Warsaw, outside the ghetto. “Moishe, are you all right?” his wife called from the other side of the fence. She had not fled, but Reuven was nowhere to be seen—a sensible precaution, for he was all they had left.

  “I am all right,” he answered, wonder in his own voice. He repeated the words, louder: “I am all right.” Simply standing in broad daylight on what had been forbidden soil was as intoxicating as Purim vodka.

  Timidly, Rivka picked her way across the bomb crater and joined him on the far side of the wall. “They spoke with you, and you took no harm.” She sounded as amazed as he had. “Maybe even they felt God working through you.”

  “Maybe they did,” Russie said as he slipped his arm around her shoulder. An hour earlier, he had scoffed at the idea that he—a medical student who ate pork if his need was desperate enough—might somehow be a prophet. Now he too began to wonder. God had not actively interfered in the affairs of His chosen people since the days of the Bible. But when since those days had His people been in such peril?

  And why, Russie thought, would God choose him? He shook his head. “Who am I, to question Him?” he said. “His will be done.”

  “It is,” Rivka, said proudly. “Through you.”

  The lights were off in the auditorium of the Mills and Petrie Memorial Center; power had been erratic ever since the Lizards’ airplanes started ranging over the Midwest. The gloomy auditorium was packed nonetheless, with youths and men from the village of Ashton and with refugees like Sam Y
eager and Mutt Daniels.

  Yeager was acutely aware that he’d been wearing the same clothes for several days, that he hadn’t washed either them or himself any time lately, that he’d done a lot of walking and running and hiding, in them. Seeing a good many men as grimy as he, and none of them taking any notice of it, was something of a relief.

  A grim-faced, middle-aged man in khaki walked across the stage, stopped in the center. Crowd noises ceased, as abruptly as if cut off by a switch. “Thank you for being here this morning,” the man said. “I want you all to stand and raise your right hands.”

  Yeager was already standing; the auditorium had more men in it than seats. He put up his right hand. The man in khaki said, “Repeat after me: ‘I’—state your name—”

  “I, Samuel William Yeager,” Yeager repeated, “a citizen of the United States, do hereby acknowledge to have voluntarily enlisted the eighth day of June, 1942, as a soldier in the Regular Army of the United States of America for the period of four years or the duration of this war under the conditions prescribed by law, unless sooner discharged by proper authority; and do also agree to accept from the United States such bounty, pay, rations, and clothing as are or may be prescribed by law. And I do solemnly swear”—the echoing chorus grew, ragged for a moment, as a few men said affirm—“that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America; that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies whatsoever; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the Rules and Articles of War.”

  An enormous grin stretched across Yeager’s face It had taken an invasion from Mars or wherever the hell the Lizards came from, but he’d made it into the service after all.

  “When do we get our guns?” somebody in the crowd shouted Yeager quivered with that same hot eagerness; he hadn’t yet been to war, unless having his train strafed counted. But he hadn’t been able to shoot back then. Beside him, Mutt Daniels stood quietly. He wasn’t eager—he’d done this before.

  Up on the stage, the dour recruiting sergeant—Schneider, his name was—raised his eyebrows to the silent heavens; “Soldier, we don’t have that many guns to give, or uniforms, or much of anything. We’ve been building an army to fight overseas since the Japs jumped us, and now all this shit lands in our own backyard—”

  “Uh-huh,” Mutt Daniels said softly. “They did the very same thing in the last war, grabbed the men ’fore there was anything for ’em to fight with.”

  “I want you to form two lines,” Sergeant Schneider said. “One line for Great War veterans, over this way, the other for everybody else over there. Move it, people, and remember you’re in the army now; lying isn’t just a joke any more.”

  Daniels went “over this way,” toward a table manned by a younger man in khaki, a corporal; along with most of the men in the auditorium, Yeager went “over there,” a longer line toward a table behind which Schneider himself sat. He suspected that Mutt and the rest of the veterans would get first crack at whatever rifles became available. That was only fair. They had the best idea of what to do with them.

  His own line moved much more slowly. He chatted with the men in front and in back of him. He’d come through the hamlet of Franklin Grove on his way to Ashton, and heard President Roosevelt’s defiant speech “from somewhere in the. United States of America.” “He sure can turn a phrase,” the fellow in front of Yeager said. “ ‘This Earth is ours, this nation is ours. No one shall take them from us, so help me God.’ ”

  “That’s just what he said,” Yeager said admiringly. “How’d you remember it right on the button like that?”

  “I’m a reporter—it’s a trick of the trade,” the man said. He was in his late twenties, with sharp foxy features, a hairline mustache, very blue eyes, and sandy hair combed down slick and close to his skull. He stuck out a hand. “Name’s Pete Thomsen. I’m with the Rockford Courier-Journal.”

  Yeager shook the proffered hand, then introduced himself. So did the fellow behind him, a bald, muscular man named Otto Chase. He said, “I was just heading to the cement works in Dixon when they blew up in front of me. That’s when I got this here.” He gingerly touched a gash on the top of his head with a blunt forefinger.

  At last Yeager stood before Sergeant Schneider. The sergeant paused to sharpen his pencil with a pocket knife, then took Yeager’s name and date of birth. “Married?” he asked.

  “No, sir. Divorced,” Yeager said, and made a sour face. Louise had finally gotten sick of his nomadic ways, and when he wouldn’t settle down—

  “Children?”

  “No, sir,” he said again.

  Schneider made a checkmark, then said, “Occupation?”

  “Ballplayer,” he answered, which made Schneider look up from the form. He went on, “I play—played, I guess—for the Decatur Commodores. That’s my manager over there.” He pointed to Mutt Daniels, who’d already gone through his line and was jawing with several other First World War veterans.

  The recruiting sergeant rubbed his chin. “What position you play? You a pitcher?”

  “No, sir. Outfield—left, mostly.”

  “Hmm. You throw pretty good, though?”

  “Yes, sir. Nothing wrong with my arm,” Yeager said without false modesty. He wasn’t fast, he wasn’t the best fielder in the world, he was a sucker for a slow curve on the outside corner (or, worse yet, just off it), but by God he could throw.

  “Okay,” Schneider said. “You’ll be able to chuck a grenade farther than most, I expect.” He scribbled a note, then pointed in Mutt’s direction himself. “You go over with those fellows. We’ve got some grenades and we’ll be bringing more in—if the Lizards don’t shoot up the trucks, anyhow. Go on, now.” The sergeant raised his voice. “Next.”

  Rather hesitantly, Yeager walked over to the knot of men with Daniels. He was a rookie on this team; these men, many of them plump or balding or gray, had seen and done things he hadn’t. Suddenly what they knew was in demand again. His own taste of combat had been solely on the receiving end, running away from death in the sky like the hordes of bombed-out refugees in Europe.

  Mutt helped some by introducing him around. One of the plump gray men there, a fellow named Fred Walters, turned out, to have played a few weeks of Class D ball back around 1912. “I couldn’t cut the mustard, and they turned me loose,” he said. “You been makin’ a living at it seventeen years? That s pretty fine.” His admiration also helped make Sam feel more at ease.

  And, of course, they all had the war—or rather the wars—to talk about. “With the Lizards here are we still fighting the Germans and the Japs?” Yeager asked, adding, “But for Roosevelt’s speech, I haven’t heard much in the way of news till I got here yesterday.”

  “Me neither.” Mutt Daniels ran a hand over his ragged pants and filthy jacket. “We been on the move the last few days, you might say.”

  That got him a few wry chuckles. Several of the men standing there were a lot more bedraggled than he was. Fred Walters, by contrast, was clean and well-creased; he lived in Ashton. He said, “Fact of it is, nobody really knows what the hell is going on. I did hear tell, though, that a Jap fleet heading for Hawaii hightailed it back to the Land of the Rising Sun when the Lizards bombed Tokyo.”

  “They hit Tokyo,” Yeager said. “First good thing I heard about ’em.”

  “They hit Berlin, too,” Walters said, “and a lot of other places besides.”

  “One thing this does,” said somebody whose name Yeager hadn’t caught, “is shoot Lend-Lease right in the head. With the damned Lizards right here in the middle of the United States, we don’t have enough for ourselves, let alone for anybody else.”

  “Gonna be hard on the Limies and the Russians,” Daniels observed.

  “We gotta worry about ourselves first,” the other man said. Heads bobbed up and down, Yeager’s among them. The fellow went on, “Plain fact is, we’re short, too. If we wer
en’t, we wouldn’t be going through this folderol of separating out the ones who know how to fight to make sure they get guns first.”

  “Sergeant Schneider over there as much as told me we don’t have enough guns for all the men who’re joining up here,” Yeager said.

  “Plain fact is, gentlemen, we got trouble,” Daniels said. “That’s what the plain fact is, and nothing else but.” Heads bobbed up and down again.

  Something moving swiftly through the air—Alarm coursed through David Goldfarb as he caught the motion. He whipped his binoculars up to his eyes, took a longer look, relaxed. “Only a sea gull,” he said, relief in his voice.

  “Which kind?” Jerome Jones asked with interest. The events of the past few days had turned him into an avid bird-watcher.

  “One of the black-headed ones,” Goldfarb answered indifferently; his interest in birds began and ended with poultry.

  He sat in a rickety folding chair of canvas and wood a few feet from the edge of the cliffs of Dover, where England dropped straight down into the sea. An observer might have sat thus a quarter of a century before, with the self-same binoculars, maybe even in the self-same folding chair, peering toward Europe in hope of spotting zeppelins. Only the field telephone by the chair was of a model impossible in 1917.

  Jerome Jones laughed when he said that aloud. “Likely is the same folding chair; the forms for a new one won’t have got to the proper office yet.” He laughed again, this time mirthlessly. “Like the bloody Pixie Reports.”

  “I told you the flaw wasn’t in the radar,” Goldfarb said.

  “That you did—and if you keep up with ‘I told you so,’ you’ll make some nice girl very unhappy one day,” Jones retorted. “Besides, don’t you wish you’d been wrong?”

  Having taken two solid hits in as many sentences, Goldfarb answered only with a grunt. His eyes traveled back to what had been the radar station that had superseded observers armed with nothing better than field glasses. Nothing there now but rubble and a faint stench, as of meat gone bad. The only reason Goldfarb could sit out here looking at those ruins was that he’d been off duty when the Lizard rockets struck home.