Tilting The Balance (28 page)

Someone shouted, “Back to the wagons, everybody. They’re going to billet us at the college on the south edge of town.”

Yeager hadn’t thought Fort Collins big enough to boast a college. “You never can tell,” he muttered, which would have been a good handle for the whole past year. Hand in hand, he and Barbara walked back toward Ullhass and Ristin. “Careful getting up there,” he warned as she scrambled in.

She made a face at him. “For God’s sake, Sam, I’m not made out of cut glass. If you start treating me as if I were going to fall to pieces any minute now, we’ll have trouble.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve never had to worry about anybody expecting before.”

The wagon driver’s head whipped around. “You gonna have a baby? That’s great. Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” she said. As the wagon rattled forward, she shook her head wryly. Yeager knew she wasn’t as delighted as she might have been. He wasn’t, either. He couldn’t imagine a worse time to try to raise a kid. But all they could do now was give it their best shot.

Sure enough, the Colorado State College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts sat on the southern border of Fort Collins. Its red and gray brick buildings clustered along an oval drive that ran through the heart of the campus. The cafeteria wasn’t far from the south end of the drive. Women in surprisingly clean white dished out fried chicken and biscuits. That was good, but the burnt-grain brew they called coffee tried to bite off Yeager’s tongue.

“Where do we sleep tonight?” he asked as he walked out of the cafeteria.

“Girls’ dormitory,” a soldier answered, pointing northward. Grinning, he went on, “Jeez, I dreamed for years of getting into one o’ those, but it just ain’t the same this way.”

The only rooms in the dorm with doors that locked from the outside were the rest moms. Fortunately, it had three, so Sam didn’t feel guilty, about commandeering one for the Lizard prisoners to use during the night. He and Barbara had a two-coed room for themselves. Looking at the steel-framed cots, he said, “I think I’d sooner have been quartered with some nice, friendly people back in town.”

“It’ll be all right for one night,” she said. “It’s easier for them to keep track of us if we’re together here instead of scattered around Fort Collins.”

“I suppose so,” he said, unenthusiastic still. But then, as he set his rifle down, be exclaimed, “I’m going to be a father! How about that?”

“How about that?” Barbara echoed.

Only one candle lit the room. Her face was hard to read. Electricity had taken the mystery out of night, turned it bright and certain as day. Now mystery was back, with a vengeance. Yeager studied the shifting shadows. “We’ll do the best we can, that’s all,” he said, as he had when she first gave him the news.

“I know,” she answered. “What else can we do? And,” she added, “If anyone can take care of me and help me take care of a baby, I know it’s you, Sam. I do love you. You know that.”

“Yeah. I love you, too, hon.”

She sat down on one of the cots, smiled over at him. “How shall we celebrate the news?”

“No booze around. No firecrackers… I guess we’ll just have to make our own fireworks. How does that sound?”

“It sounds good to me.” Barbara took off her shoes, then stood up for a moment so she could slide out of her slacks and panties. When she sat down again, she made a face and bounced back to her feet. “That wool blanket scratches. Wait a second; let me turn down the sheet.”

Some happy time later, Sam asked, “Do you want me to put on a rubber, in case you’re wrong?”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m regular as clockwork; even getting sick doesn’t throw me off. And I haven’t been sick. The only thing that could make me this late is a bun in the oven. And since there’s one in there, we don’t need to worry about keeping the oven door closed.”

“Okay.” Sam poised himself over her. She tilted her hips up to ease his way, locked her legs and arms around him. Afterwards, he rubbed at his back; she’d clawed him pretty hard. “Maybe you should get knocked up more often,” he said.

Barbara snorted and poked him in the ribs, which almost made him fall off the narrow cot. Then she leaned over and kissed him on the tip of his nose. “I love you. You’re crazy.”

“I’m happy, is what I am.” He squeezed her against him, tight enough to make her squeak. She was all the woman he’d ever wanted and then some: pretty, bright, sensible, and, as he’d just delightedly found out again, a handful and a half in bed. And now she was going to have his baby. He stroked her hair. “I don’t know how I could be any happier.”

“That’s a sweet thing to say. I’m happy with you, too.” She took his hand, set it on her belly. “That’s ours in there. I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t quite ready for it, but” – she shrugged-”it’s here. I know you’ll make a good father.”

“A father. I don’t feel like a father right now.” He let his hand slide lower, through her little nest of hair to the softness it concealed. His fingertip traced small, slow circles.

“What do you feel like?” she whispered. The candle burned out about then. They didn’t need it.

The next morning, Yeager woke still a little worn. Feels like I played a doubleheader yesterday. He grinned. I did.

The cot squeaked when he sat up. The noise woke Barbara. Her cot squeaked, too. He wondered how much racket they’d made the night before. At the time, he hadn’t noticed.

Barbara rubbed her eyes, yawned, stretched, looked over at him and started to laugh. “What’s so funny?” he asked. He didn’t sound as grumpy as he would have a few months before; he’d finally got used – or resigned – to facing the day without coffee.

She said, “You have a large male leer pasted all over your face. That’s what’s funny.”

“Oh.” Now that he thought about it, that was funny. “Okay.” He put his corporal’s uniform back on. The last time it had been washed was in Cheyenne. He’d got used – or resigned – to dirty clothes, too. Just about everybody’s clothes were dirty these days; it wasn’t as if Corporal Sam Yeager stood out as a special slob. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and said, “I’m going downstairs to turn Ristin and Ullhass loose. They’ll be glad to see the light of day, I expect.”

“Probably. It seems mean to keep them locked up all night long.” Barbara laughed again, this time at herself. “I’ve been with them so long now that I think of them as people, not as Lizards.”

“I know what you mean. I do the same thing myself.” Yeager considered, then said, “Come on,

you get dressed, too. Then we can go over to the cafeteria with them and we’ll have breakfast.”

Breakfast was bacon and eggs. The bacon came in great thick slices and was obviously home-cured; it took Yeager back to the smokehouse on the Nebraska farm where he’d grown up. The stuff that came in packages of cardboard and waxed paper just didn’t have the same flavor.

The Lizard POWs wouldn’t touch eggs, maybe because they were hatched themselves. But they loved bacon. Ristin ran his long, lizardy tongue around the edges of his mouth to get rid of grease. “That is so good,” he said, adding the emphatic cough. “It reminds me of aasson back on Home.”

“Not salty enough for aasson” Ullhass said. He reached for the salt shaker, poured some onto the bacon, took another bite. “Ah – better.” Ristin held out his hand for the salt shaker. He, too, hissed with pleasure after he’d sprinkled the bacon.

Sam and Barbara exchanged glances: the bacon had salt enough, for any human palate. In the manner of an Astounding reader, Yeager tried to figure out why the Lizards wanted it with even more. They’d said Home was hotter than Earth, and its seas smaller. Maybe that meant they were saltier, too, the way Salt Lake was. When he got to Denver, he’d have to ask somebody about that.

Back to the wagons. Ullhass and Ristin scrambled aboard theirs, then all but disappeared under the straw and blankets they used to fight the cold. Yeager was about to help Barbara up – no matter what she said, he wanted to make sure she took extra care of herself – when a fellow on horseback came trotting up the oval drive toward them. He was dressed in olive drab and wore a helmet instead of a cavalryman’s hat, but he put Yeager in mind of the Old West just the same.

Most of the Met Lab wagons were untenanted. Some didn’t even have their teams hitched to them yet: a lot of people were still eating breakfast. The rider reined in when he saw Yeager and Barbara. He called to her, “Ma’am, you wouldn’t by any chance know where to find Barbara Larssen, would you?”

“I am – I was – I am Barbara Larssen,” she said. “What do you want?”

“Right the first time,” the cavalryman exclaimed happily. “Talk about your luck.” He swung down from his horse, walked over to Barbara. Maybe it’s his boots that make him look that way. Yeager thought. They were tall and black and shiny and looked as if they’d hurt like hell if he had to walk more than a few feet in them. He reached inside his coat, pulled out an envelope, handed it to Barbara and said, “This here is for you, ma’am.” Then he stumped back to his horse, remounted, and rode off, trappings jingling, without a backward glance.

Yeager watched him go before he turned back to Barbara. “What do you suppose that’s all about?”

he said.

She didn’t answer right away. She was staring down at the envelope. Sam took a look at it, too. It didn’t have a stamp or a return address, just Barbara’s name scrawled hastily across it. Her face was dead pale when she lifted it to him. “That’s Jens’ handwriting,” she whispered.

For a couple of seconds, it didn’t mean anything to Yeager. Then it did. “Oh, Jesus,” he muttered. He felt as if a Lizard shell had just landed next to where he was standing. Through stunned numbness, he heard himself say, “You’d better open it.”

Barbara nodded jerkily. She almost tore the letter along with the envelope. Her hands shook as she unfolded the sheet of paper. The note inside was in the same handwriting as her name had been. Yeager read over her shoulder:

Dear Barbara, I had to twist arms to get them to let me write this and send it to you, but I finally managed to do it. As you’ll gather. I’m already in the town you’re going toward. I had some interesting (!!) times getting back to the town from which we both left, but came through them all right. I hope you’re OK, too. I’m so glad you’ll be here soon – I miss you more than I can say. With all the love there is. Jens. There was a row of X’s under the signature.

Barbara looked at the letter, then at Yeager, then at the letter again. She held it in her right hand. Her left hand, which didn’t seem to know what her right was doing, pressed at her belly through the ratty wool sweater she was wearing.

“Oh my God,” she said, maybe to herself, maybe to Yeager, and maybe to God, “what am I supposed to do now?”

“What are we supposed to do now?” Yeager echoed.

She stared at him, as if consciously reminded of his presence for the first time. Then she noticed her hand, fingers spread fan-fashion, stretched over her belly. She jerked it away.

He flinched as if she’d hit him. Her face twisted when she saw that. “Oh, Sam, I’m sorry,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t mean-” She started to cry. “I don’t know what I meant. Everything’s just turned upside down.”

“Yeah,” he said laconically. He startled himself by laughing.

Barbara glared through tears. “What could possibly be funny about this, this-” She gave up in the middle of the sentence. Yeager didn’t blame her. No words were strong enough to fit the mess they’d just landed in.

He said, “Last night I found out I was going to be a father, and now I don’t even know if I’m a husband any more. If that isn’t funny, what is?”

He wondered if it would be too risque for Hollywood to touch. Probably. Too bad. He could all but see Katharine Hepburn and Gary Grant and somebody else – Robert Young, maybe – to play the guy who didn’t get her, all of them going through their antics bigger than life up on the screen. It would be a great way to kill a couple of hours, and you’d come out of the theater, holding your sides.

But it wasn’t the same when it really happened to you, not when you were wondering whether you had the Gary Grant part or the Robert Young one… and when you were afraid you knew the answer.

Barbara’s small smile was the sun coming out from behind rain clouds. “That is funny. Like something out of a silly movie-”

“I just thought the very same thing,” he said eagerly. Any sign that they were on the same wavelength felt doubly welcome.

The clouds covered the sun again. Barbara said, “Somebody’s going to get hurt, Sam; I’m going to have to hurt somebody I love. That’s the last thing in the world I want, but I don’t see how I can help it.”

“I don’t, either,” Yeager said. He did his best not to show his worry, his fear. It wouldn’t help, any more than it would have at the tryout for his first pro team half a lifetime ago. Would he make it or wouldn’t he?

Show them or not, the worry and fear were there. How could Barbara pick him? She’d been married to Jens for years and years, while she’d only known him a matter of months, and they hadn’t even been lovers for most of that time. And besides, with a choice between a nuclear physicist and a minor league outfielder with an ankle that told him when it was gonna rain, whom would she take?

But she was carrying his kid. That had to count for something. Didn’t it? Lord, if this was any kind of normal time, lawyers would be coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches. Maybe cops, too. Bigamy, adultery… Maybe the chaos the Lizard invasion had brought wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

He sucked in a deep breath. “Honey?”

“What is it?” Barbara asked warily. She’d been reading the letter again. He couldn’t blame her for that, either, but just the same he wished she hadn’t been.

He took her hands in his. She let him do it, but she didn’t grab hold of him back the way she usually did. The edge of the sheet of paper scraped against the side of his palm. He made himself ignore it, concentrated on what he had to do as if he were trying to pick up the spin of a curveball right out of the pitcher’s hand.

“Honey,” he said again, and then paused to feel for the perfect words even though Barbara knew a thousand times more about words than he’d learn if he lived to be a hundred. He went on, one tough phrase at a time, “Honey, the most important thing in the whole world for me – is for you to be happy. So you – go ahead and do – whatever it is you’ve got to do – and that’ll be all right with me. Because I love you and – like I said – I want you to be happy.”