Worldwar_ Upsetting The Balance Part 30

Muldoon didn't answer. He was looking out through the hole in the wall. Mutt got up on one knee and peered through the window. The strafing run from the Piper Cub had taken the wind right out of the sails of the Lizards' pounding of his position. That made him think he could maybe do a little pounding of his own.

"Stay here and give us some coverin' fire," he told Muldoon. "I'm gonna see if we can head south for a change, 'stead o' north."

At Muldoon's acknowledging nod, Daniels crawled through the trench to the ruins of the house next door. The men who had dug it had broken both gas and water mains, but, since neither had worked for months, that didn't matter. A soldier he didn't recognize gave him a hand up out of the trench.

He pointed southward. "They're hurting there. Let's go take us back some houses before they remember which end is up."

The young soldiers cheered with an intensity that made him proud and frightened at the same time. They'd do whatever they thought it took, the same way a young outfielder would chase a fly ball right into a fence. Sometimes the fence would be wood, and give a little. Sometimes it would be concrete. Then they'd cart the kid off on a stretcher.

They'd cart a lot of these kids off on stretchers before the fight was through. Mutt tried not to think about that. They'd carted him off on a stretcher once already. Now he was back. He hoped he'd stay in there this time.

"Come on, we can't waste time here," he said. He told some men to move forward with him, others to stay back and give covering fire. The ones he told to stay back squawked and pouted like spoiled children deprived of a lollipop. He held up a hand: "Don't get in a swivet, boys. This here'll be fire and move. Soon as we find cover up ahead, we'll hunker down and start shootin' so you-all can move on up ahead of us. You'll get your share, I promise." Your share of shattered skulls and splintered bones and belly wounds. Your share of shattered skulls and splintered bones and belly wounds. Exploiting such eagerness filled Mutt with guilt. He'd never again feel it himself. Exploiting such eagerness filled Mutt with guilt. He'd never again feel it himself.

Yelling like fiends, his men moved forward, some shooting from the hip to add to the Americans' firepower and make the Lizards keep their heads down. Mutt dove behind the burnt-out hulk of somebody's old Packard. Sheet metal wouldn't keep bullets from biting him, not the way a good pile of concrete or dirt would. But if the Lizards couldn't see him, they wouldn't send as many bullets toward him.

A couple of men were down, one twisting, one ominously limp and still. The Lizards weren't sending out the wall of lead they had before, though. Daniels waved for the troops who had been covering to move forward past and through the detachment that had accompanied him. Those men, in turn, laid down covering fire for their buddies. They did a better job than Mutt had thought they had in them. Maybe he would be able to push the Lizards out of their forward positions.

One Lizard had other ideas. He'd pop up in a window like a jack-in-the-box, squeeze off a few rounds, and duck back down before anybody could nail him. He was a good shot, too. Somebody brave and stubborn and lucky like that, whether human or twisty-eyed alien critter, could derail an advance.

Mutt gauged the distance from himself to the house in which the Lizard sheltered: maybe forty yards. The window the Lizard was using wasn't a very big one, which wasn't surprising-being a twisty-eyed alien critter didn't make you stupid. The Lizard let loose with another burst. Off to Mutt's right, a human voice started screaming.

He grimaced, shook his head, and took a grenade from his belt. His arm had got him to the majors, even if that was a long time ago-and even if his lousy bat hadn't let him stay there. Almost without conscious thought, he went into a catcher's crouch in back of, not the plate, but the trunk of the Packard.

He yanked the pin out of the grenade, popped up (knocking off his helmet with the back of one wrist, as if it had been a catcher's mask), and let fly. He went down behind the car before the grenade sailed through the window. It went off with a bang! bang! different from those of the rifles and submachine guns and Lizard automatic weapons all around. different from those of the rifles and submachine guns and Lizard automatic weapons all around.

A GI dashed for that window. The Lizard didn't pop up to shoot him. The young dogface leaned in (suicidally stupid, had the Lizard been playing possum), and fired a long burst from his tommy gun. "h.e.l.l of a peg, Lieutenant!" he yelled. "Little b.a.s.t.a.r.d's raw meat now." Cheers rang amid the shooting.

Move and fire, move and fire... and then the Lizards were moving and firing, too, in retreat. Mutt ran to a corner of the house where the tough Lizard had holed up, fired at its buddies as they pulled back. For the time being, a block of ruined North Side Chicago was back in American hands.

By the hideous standards of fighting in the city, that counted for a victory. He owed the kids a mental apology. They'd done great.

Ttomalss wondered again how any Tosevite ever lived to grow up. The hatchling he was hand-rearing was more than half a year old; it had also had a year and a half of growth inside the female who bore it. It was still helpless. It still had no control over its messy bodily functions; the chamber in which it lived-in which Ttomalss perforce did most of his living, too-smelled unpleasantly of stale Tosevite waste.

Several times a day, Ttomalss wished he had left the Big Ugly hatchling with the female from whose body it had so disgustingly emerged. She'd fought like a wild thing to keep the little squalling creature. If she had had it all this time, Ttomalss was confident she would have been willing to hand it over to him decorated with whatever the Big Uglies used to signify a gift.

It was lying on the soft mat where it slept-when it slept. Lately, Ttomalss had had to install wire mesh around the mat, because the hatchling had-finally-developed enough neuromuscular control to roll over. At this stage of their lives, hatchlings of the Race were aggressive little predators: keeping them from hurting themselves and others counted for more than anything else in raising them. The only way the Tosevite could hurt itself would be to roll off a high place and fall down. No hatchling of the Race would have been so foolish.

The little Big Ugly looked up at Ttomalss out of its dark, narrow eyes. Its elastic face twisted into the grimace Tosevites used to show amiability. It kicked its arms and legs, as if that added to the effect of the facial grimace. Most of the time, it seemed sublimely unaware of its limbs, though it was beginning to suspect it had hands.

It let out a long sequence of meaningless noises. That still unnerved Ttomalss every time he heard it. Hatchlings of the Race were silent little things, which made sense in evolutionary terms: if you were small and quiet, you were less likely to get eaten than if you were small and raucous.

Ttomalss said to it, "You are the most preposterous specimen of a preposterous planet."

The hatchling made more burbling noises. It liked him to talk to it. Its arms and legs kicked more. Then it started to whimper. He knew what that meant: it wanted to be picked up.

"Come here," he said, bending over and lifting it off the mat. Its head didn't flop around so loosely that it had to be supported, as had been true at the onset. Now it could hold that big, ungainly head up and look around. It liked being held against his warm skin. When its mouth fell onto his shoulder, it started sucking, as if he secreted nutrient fluid. He found the wet, slimy touch most unpleasant. It would suck on anything its mouth could reach; it would even suck when it was asleep.

"What am I going to do with you?" he asked it, as if it could understand. Males of the Race often embarked on lifetime research projects, but raising a Tosevite up to what pa.s.sed for adulthood in the species? He'd had something like that in mind when he took the work the job involved. If it kept on being so much work for years to come...

"I'll fall over dead," he told the hatchling. It wiggled at the sound of his voice. It was a social little thing. "I'll fall over dead," he repeated. It seemed to recognize the repet.i.tion, and to like it. It made a noise which, after a moment, he recognized as a hatchling-sized version of the vocalization Big Uglies used for laughter.

"I'll fall over dead," he said, again and again. The hatchling found that funnier and funnier for several repet.i.tions, laughing and squealing and kicking its feet against his chest. Then, for whatever reason, the joke wore thin. The hatchling started to fuss.

He gave it a bottle of nutrient fluid, and it gulped avidly. He knew what that meant: it was sucking in air along with liquid. When it did that, the air had to be got out of the hatchling's stomach; it commonly returned along with slightly digested fluid, which stank even worse than the stuff that came out the other end.

He was glad the hatchling seemed healthy, such revolting characteristics aside. The Race's knowledge of Tosevite biochemistry and pathogens still left a great deal to be desired, while the Big Uglies were as ignorant about that as they were about everything else save military hardware. Some of their not-empires knew how to immunize against some of their common diseases, and had begun to get the idea that there might be such things as antibiotics. Past that, their knowledge stopped.

Ttomalss wondered if he should give the hatchling such immunizations as the Big Uglies had developed. The little Tosevite would eventually encounter others of its own kind. The Big Uglies had a concept called "childhood diseases": illnesses that were mild if a hatchling contracted them but could be serious if caught in adulthood. The notion made Ttomalss, who had never suffered from any such misfortunes, queasy, but research showed the Race had shared it in the earliest days of recorded history.

The hatchling started to wail. Ttomalss had heard that particular cry many times before, and knew it meant genuine distress. He knew what kind of distress, too: the air it had sucked in was distending its stomach. He resignedly picked up one of the cloths used for containing bodily wastes and draped it over his shoulder.

"Come on, get the air out," he told the hatchling as he patted its back. It twisted and writhed, desperately unhappy at what it had done to itself. Not for the first time, the Big Uglies' feeding arrangements for their young struck him as being inefficient as well as revolting.

The hatchling made a noise astonishingly loud and deep for something its size. It stopped thrashing, a sign its distress was eased. The sour odor that reached Ttomalss' chemoreceptors said it had indeed spit up some of the nutrient fluid he'd given it. He was glad he'd draped himself with the cloth; not only did the fluid smell bad, it also dissolved his body paint.

He was about to lay the hatchling back on the mat when it made another noise with which he was intimately familiar: a throaty grunt. He felt sudden warmth against the arm under the hatchling's hindquarters. With a weary, hissing sigh, he carried it over to the cabinet, undid the fastenings that held the cloth round the hatchling's middle closed, and tossed that cloth into a sealed bin along with several others he'd put there that day.

Before he could put another cloth under the hatchling, it dribbled out a fair quant.i.ty of liquid waste to accompany the solid (or at least semisolid) waste it had just pa.s.sed. He mopped that off the hatchling and off the cabinet top, reminding himself to disinfect the latter. While he was cleaning up, the hatchling almost rolled off the cabinet.

He caught it with a desperate lunge. "You are the most troublesome thing!" he exclaimed. The hatchling squealed and made Tosevite laughing noises. It thought his displays of temper were very funny.

He noticed the skin around its a.n.u.s and genitals looked red and slightly inflamed. That had happened before; luckily, one of the Race's topical medications eased the problem. He marveled at an organism whose wastes were toxic to its own integument. His scaly hide certainly never had any such difficulties.

"But then," he told the hatchling, "I don't make a habit of smearing waste all over my skin." The hatchling laughed its loud Tosevite laugh. Fed, deflated, and cleaned, it was happy as could be. Tired, bedraggled Ttomalss wished he could say the same.

Clouds rolled across the sky, more and more of them in bigger and bigger ma.s.ses as the day wore on. The sun peeked through in ever-shorter blinks. Ludmila Gorbunova cast a wary eye upwards. At any moment the autumn rain would start falling, not only on Pskov but all over the western Soviet Union. With the rains would come mud-the fall rasput.i.tsa. rasput.i.tsa. When the mud came, fighting would bog down for a while. When the mud came, fighting would bog down for a while.

And Pskov still remained in human hands. She knew a certain amount of pride in that, even if some of those hands were German. She'd done her part in the battle to hold up the Lizards, and the alien imperialist aggressors were not pushing attacks with the elan they'd shown the year before. Maybe, when snow replaced rain and mud, the human forces in Pskov (yes, even the fascist beasts) would show them the proper meaning of the word.

The Lizards didn't like winter. The whole world had seen that the year before. She hoped this winter would bring a repet.i.tion of the pattern. She'd already proved a Kukuruznik Kukuruznik would fly through almost anything. Its radial engine was air-cooled; she didn't have to fret about coolant turning to ice, as happened in liquid-cooled engines forced to endure Russian winter. As long as she had fuel and oil, she could fly. would fly through almost anything. Its radial engine was air-cooled; she didn't have to fret about coolant turning to ice, as happened in liquid-cooled engines forced to endure Russian winter. As long as she had fuel and oil, she could fly.

With Georg Schultz as her mechanic, she sometimes wondered, not quite jokingly, whether she might not be able to fly even without fuel and oil. The more he worked his magic on the little U-2, the more she wondered how the planes she'd flown had kept from falling apart before they enjoyed his ministrations.

She opened and closed her hands. She had black dirt and grease under her nails and ground into the folds of skin on her knuckles; not even a steam bath could sweat the dirt out of her. She did a lot of work on her own aircraft, too, and knew she made a better mechanic than most Russian groundcrew men. But Schultz had an artist's touch with spanner and pliers, to say nothing of an instinct for where trouble lay, that made Ludmila wonder if he was part biplane on his mother's side.

Houses thinned as she walked toward the airstrip just east of Pskov. It lay between the city and the great forest where partisans had sheltered until they and the Germans made uneasy common cause against the Lizards.

If you didn't know where the airstrip was, you'd walk right past it. The Russian pa.s.sion for maskirovka maskirovka made sure of that. The Lizards had repeatedly bombed a dummy strip a couple of kilometers away, but they'd left the real one alone. The made sure of that. The Lizards had repeatedly bombed a dummy strip a couple of kilometers away, but they'd left the real one alone. The Kukuruzniks Kukuruzniks all rested in shelters covered by netting with real sod laid over them. More sod replaced ruts in the gra.s.s the aircraft made on takeoff and landing. No sentries paced nearby, though several marched at the dummy airstrip. all rested in shelters covered by netting with real sod laid over them. More sod replaced ruts in the gra.s.s the aircraft made on takeoff and landing. No sentries paced nearby, though several marched at the dummy airstrip.

Ludmila reached into her pocket and pulled out a compa.s.s. She didn't trust the one on her instrument panel, and wondered if some idiot groundcrew man had somehow got near it with a magnet. Whether or not that was so, now she'd have one against which to check it.

She had to look sharp to find the first mat that concealed a U-2. When she did, she started counting; her aircraft was fifth in line. She paused outside the trench in which it rested, bent down, leaned her head toward the mat. Yes, someone was down in there; she could hear soft, m.u.f.fled noises.

"Bozhemoi," she whispered silently. The better to preserve the she whispered silently. The better to preserve the maskirovka, maskirovka, no one, not even groundcrew, hung around the airplanes when they weren't heading out to a mission or coming back from one. Had the Lizards managed to find a human being who would do sabotage for them here? Ludmila hadn't imagined such a thing was possible, but then, she hadn't imagined how many Soviet citizens would go over to the Germans, either. no one, not even groundcrew, hung around the airplanes when they weren't heading out to a mission or coming back from one. Had the Lizards managed to find a human being who would do sabotage for them here? Ludmila hadn't imagined such a thing was possible, but then, she hadn't imagined how many Soviet citizens would go over to the Germans, either.

As quietly as she could, she drew her pistol out of its holster. Then she tiptoed around to the deep end of the trench, where her arrival would be least expected. Before she lifted up a corner of the mat, she paused to listen again. The noises seemed fainter here. She nodded in grim satisfaction. She'd give the wrecker in there something to remember as long as he lived, which wouldn't be long.

She slid under the mat and dropped down to the dirt beneath. The bottom of the trench was almost three meters below ground level. She landed hard, but didn't try to stay on her feet. If by some mischance the wrecker had a gun, too, a p.r.o.ne figure made a smaller target than an upright one.

It was dim and dark under the matting. Even so, she had no trouble picking out the pale body-no, bodies: there were two of them, something she hadn't thought of-under one wing of the Kukuruznik. Kukuruznik. They both lay on the ground, too. Had she alerted them when she jumped down into the trench? They both lay on the ground, too. Had she alerted them when she jumped down into the trench?

"Stop what you're doing!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, swinging the muzzle of the Tokarev automatic toward them.

Only then did she realize the two bodies seemed so pale and white because she was seeing skin, not clothes. "Gott in Himmel, is that you, Ludmila Vadimovna?" Georg Schultz demanded. "You don't want me, and now you want to kill me for finding somebody else? Are you crazy?" is that you, Ludmila Vadimovna?" Georg Schultz demanded. "You don't want me, and now you want to kill me for finding somebody else? Are you crazy?"

"Bozhemoi," Ludmila repeated, this time quite loudly. She started to giggle. The giggles turned to guffaws. "I thought you were sabotaging the Ludmila repeated, this time quite loudly. She started to giggle. The giggles turned to guffaws. "I thought you were sabotaging the Kukuruznik, Kukuruznik, not-not-" Laughter swallowed speech. not-not-" Laughter swallowed speech.

"Not funny," Schultz muttered. He was on his feet now, getting into his clothes as fast as he could. So was his partner. Ludmila's eyes were more used to the gloom now. They widened as she recognized Tatiana Pirogova.

"I am am sorry," Ludmila said, speaking very quietly and taking only tiny breaths to hold mirth in check. "The only reason I came here was to mount a spare compa.s.s on the aircraft, and-" She thought too much about the use of the word sorry," Ludmila said, speaking very quietly and taking only tiny breaths to hold mirth in check. "The only reason I came here was to mount a spare compa.s.s on the aircraft, and-" She thought too much about the use of the word mount mount in another context, and couldn't go on. Tears filled her eyes as she sputtered and coughed. in another context, and couldn't go on. Tears filled her eyes as she sputtered and coughed.

Tatiana Pirogova strode up to her. The blond sniper was several centimeters taller than Ludmila, and glared down at her. "If ever you speak a word of this to anyone-to anyone, anyone, do you understand me?-I will kill you," she hissed. Even in the dimness under the matting, her blue eyes glittered dangerously. do you understand me?-I will kill you," she hissed. Even in the dimness under the matting, her blue eyes glittered dangerously.

"Your top tunic b.u.t.ton is still undone, dear," Ludmila answered. Tatiana's fingers flew to it of themselves Ludmila went on, "I'm not in the habit of gossiping, but if you threaten me, you are making a big mistake." Tatiana turned her back. Ludmila looked over to Georg Schultz, switching to German as she did so: "Will you please make her believe I'm just as glad to have you with someone else so you're not pestering me any more? Just thinking of that is more likely to keep me quiet than her bl.u.s.ter."

"It's not bl.u.s.ter," he answered, also in German.

That was probably-no, certainly-true. Tatiana with a scope-mounted rifle in her hand was as deadly a soldier as any. And Ludmila had also seen that Schultz was a viciously effective combat soldier even without his panzer wrapped around him. She wondered if that shared delight in war was what had drawn him and Tatiana together. But she'd been in enough combat herself to keep Tatiana or Georg Schultz from intimidating her.

Schultz spoke to Tatiana in the same sort of mixture of German and Russian he used to talk with Ludmila. Tatiana angrily brushed aside his rea.s.surances. "Oh, go away," she snapped. Instead, she went away herself, slithering out from under the netting at the shallow end of the trench that hid the Kukuruznik. Kukuruznik. Even in her fury, she carefully smoothed out the net after she got free of it, so as not to damage the Even in her fury, she carefully smoothed out the net after she got free of it, so as not to damage the maskirovka. maskirovka.

"You might have waited another minute or two before you jumped down in here," Schultz said petulantly. He hadn't finished, then. That set Ludmila laughing yet again. "It isn't funny," he growled. It occurred to her then that the two of them were alone under the netting. Had she not had the Tokarev, she would have worried. As things were, she knew she could take care of herself.

"Yes, it is," she said, the weight of the pistol rea.s.suring in her hand. "Look, if you want to come down here again, move one of the rocks that holds down the netting so it's just off the edge instead of just on. I had no idea anyone was down with the aircraft, and when I did hear noise, I thought it was wreckers, not-not lovers."

Somewhat mollified, Schultz nodded. "I'll do that," he said, adding gloomily, "if there is a next time."

"There probably will be." Ludmila surprised herself at how cynical she sounded. She asked, "Why was Tatiana so upset at the idea of anyone finding out she's with you? She didn't care who knew she was sleeping with the Englishman-Jones, his name is."

"Ja," Schultz said. "But he's an Englishman. That's all right. Me, I'm a German. You may have noticed." Schultz said. "But he's an Englishman. That's all right. Me, I'm a German. You may have noticed."

"Ah," Ludmila said. It did make sense. The fair Tatiana used her sniping talents against the Lizards these days, but she'd honed them against the n.a.z.is. She made no secret of her continued loathing for Germans in general-but not, evidently, for one German in particular. If word got out, she would be compromised in a whole unpleasant variety of ways. "If she hates Germans so much, what does she see in you?"

"She says we're both killers." Georg Schultz shuffled his feet, as if unsure whether he liked the sound of that or not.

As far as Ludmila was concerned, it not only had a lot of truth in it, it also confirmed her earlier guess, which made her feel clever. She said, "Well, Gospodin Gospodin Killer-you, a German, would be angry if I called you Killer-you, a German, would be angry if I called you Tovarishch Tovarishch Killer, Comrade instead of Mister-I think we had both better go now." Killer, Comrade instead of Mister-I think we had both better go now."

She was nervous as she got out from under the netting. If Schultz wanted to try anything, that was the moment he'd do it. But he just emerged, too, and looked back toward the place where the U-2 was hidden. "d.a.m.nation," he said. "I thought sure n.o.body would ever bother us there."

"You never can tell," Ludmila said, which would do as a maxim for life in general, not just trying to fornicate with an attractive woman.

"Ja." Georg Schultz grunted laughter. After the fact, he'd evidently decided what had happened was funny, too. He hadn't thought so at the time. Nor had Tatiana. Ludmila didn't think she would find it funny, not if she lived another seventy-five years. Georg Schultz grunted laughter. After the fact, he'd evidently decided what had happened was funny, too. He hadn't thought so at the time. Nor had Tatiana. Ludmila didn't think she would find it funny, not if she lived another seventy-five years.

Ludmila glanced over at Schultz out of the corner of her eye. She chuckled softly to herself. Though she'd never say it out loud, her opinion was that he and Tatiana deserved each other.

David Goldfarb sat up in the hay wagon that was taking him north through the English Midlands toward Nottingham. To either side, a couple of other men in tattered, dirty uniforms of RAF blue sprawled in the hay. They were all blissfully asleep, some of them snoring enough to give a creditable impression of a Merlin fighter engine.

Goldfarb wished he could lie back and start sawing wood, too. He'd tried, but sleep eluded him. Besides, looking at countryside that hadn't been pounded to bits was a pleasant novelty. He hadn't seen much of that sort, not lately.

The only thing he had in common with his companions was the grubby uniforms they all wore. When the Lizards invaded England, n.o.body had thought past fighting them by whatever means came to hand. After Bruntingthorpe got smashed up, he'd been made into a foot soldier, and he'd done his best without a word of complaint.

Now that the northern pocket was empty of aliens and the southern one shrinking, though, the Powers That Be were once more beginning to think in terms longer than those of the moment. Whenever officers spied an RAF man who'd been dragooned into the army, they pulled him out and sent him off for rea.s.signment. Thus Goldfarb's present situation.

Night was coming. As summer pa.s.sed into autumn, the hours of daylight shrank with dizzying speed. Even Double Summer Time couldn't disguise that. In the fields, women and old men labored with horses, donkeys, and oxen to bring in the harvest, as they might have during the wars against Napoleon, or against William the Conqueror, or against the Emperor Claudius. People would be hungry now, too, as they had been then.

The wagon rattled past a burnt-out farmhouse, the ground around it cratered with bombs. The war had not ignored the lands north of Leicester, it merely had not been all-consuming here. For a moment, a pile of wreckage made the landscape seem familiar to Goldfarb. He angrily shook his head when he realized that. Finding a landscape familiar because the Lizards had bombed it was like finding a husband familiar because he beat you. Some women were supposed to be downtrodden enough to do just that. He thought it madness himself.

"How long till we get to Watnall?" he called to the driver: softly, so he wouldn't wake his comrades.

"Sometime tonight, Ah reckon," the fellow answered. He was a little old wizened chap who worked his jaws even when he wasn't talking. Goldfarb had seen that before. Usually it meant the chap who did it was used to chewing tobacco and couldn't stop chewing even when tobacco was no longer to be had.

Goldfarb's stomach rumbled. "Will you stop off to feed us any time before then?" he asked.

"Nay, no more'n Ah will to feed mahself," the driver said. When he put it that way, Goldfarb didn't have the crust to argue further.

He rummaged in his pockets and came up with half a scone he'd forgotten he had. It was so stale, he worried about breaking teeth on it; he devoured it more by abrasion than mastication. It was just enough to make his stomach growl all the more fiercely but not nearly enough to satisfy him, not even after he licked the crumbs from his fingers.

He pointed to a cow grazing in a field. "Why don't you stop for a bit so we can shoot that one and worry off some steaks?"

"Think you're a funny bloke, do you?" the driver said. "You try lookin' at that cow too long and some old man like me back there in the bushes, he'll blow your head off for you, mark mah words. He hasn't kept his cow so long bein' sweet and dainty, Ah tell you that."

Since the driver was very likely right, Goldfarb shut up.

Night fell with an almost audible thud. It got cold fast. He started to bury himself in the hay with his mates, then had a second thought and asked the driver, "Besides the Fighter Command Group HQ, wot'n 'ell's in Watnall?" By sounding like a c.o.c.kney for three words, he made a fair pun of it.

If the driver noticed, he wasn't impressed. "There's n.o.bbut the group headquarters there," he answered, and spat into the roadway. " 'Twasn't even a village before the war."

"How extremely depressing," Goldfarb said, going from one accent to another: for a moment there, he sounded like a Cambridge undergraduate. He wondered how Jerome Jones was faring these days, and then whether his fellow radarman was still alive.

"Watnall's not far from Nottingham," the driver said, the first time since he'd stepped up onto his raised seat that he'd actually volunteered anything. "n.o.bbut a few miles."

The consolation Goldfarb had felt at the first sentence-Nottingham was a good-sized city, with the promise of pubs, cinemas when the power was on, and people of the female persuasion-was tempered by the second. If he couldn't lay hands on a bicycle, a few miles in wartime with winter approaching might as well have been the far side of the moon.

He vanished into the hay like a dormouse curling up in its nest to hibernate. One of his traveling companions, still sleeping, promptly stuck an elbow in his ribs. He didn't care. He huddled closer to the other RAF man, who, however fractious he might have been in his sleep, was also warm. He fell asleep himself a few minutes later, even as he was telling himself he wouldn't.

When he woke again, something had changed. In his muzziness, he needed a moment to figure out what: they weren't moving. He sat up, brushing straw from his hair. "What's happened?" he asked.