Page 29 of Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar 3)

“Okay, okay.” He shook his head, horny and disgusted with himself at the same time. This wasn’t what he’d been used to getting in his happier days. It bore about as much resemblance to love as the painting on an orange crate did to the Mona Lisa. But it was all he could find right now.

He shrugged out of his knapsack, set it and the Springfield in a corner by the bed. Then he undressed. Edie looked him over like somebody inspecting a slab of meat. As Mama had, she said, “You’re clean, anyhow. That’s something. Haven’t seen you round these parts before. You stop at the Y before you came here?”

“Yeah, I did,” he answered, cherishing any human contact between them: it was the first thing she’d said to him that wasn’t strictly business.

It was also the last. “Sit on the edge of the bed, will you?” she asked. When he did, she got down on her knees in front of him and went to work.

She knew what she was doing, no doubt about that. Presently he patted the mattress with one hand. She lay down on the bed, her legs open. She didn’t respond when he caressed her, but gave him a good professional ride after he got on top. Afterwards, the first thing she did was scoop up the money.

He was dressing again when he realized he hadn’t put on a rubber.Too bad for her, he thought coldly. If you were in her line of work, you took your chances with things like the clap.

She said, “You want another round, half price?”

“No, that’s all right,” he answered; what he was thinking about was going back to the YMCA for another shower. He probably had time, but he didn’t feel like explaining himself to the desk clerk-or not explaining himself, but bearing up under the guy’s fishy stare.

“You want a drink downstairs, then?” Edie asked. “We got home-brew beer, moonshine, even a little real whiskey if you feel like payin’ for it.”

She should have been peddling used cars instead of her ass and related amenities. “That’s all right,” Jens said again; all he wanted to do was get the hell out of there. Edie’s look saidcheapskate. He ignored it.

When he went back into Chung’s laundry, the proprietor asked, “You have a nice lunch, sir?” and giggled louder than he had the first time. Then he called something in Chinese into the back room. A woman’s laugh floated out. Jens’ ears felt on fire. He thought seriously about abandoning his clothes and riding west as fast as he could go.

In the end, he decided to stay. But as soon as Horace Chung handed him the hot laundry, he shoved it into his knapsack and fled without changing and getting the clothes he had on cleaned, as he’d intended to do.

The steel suspension bridge over the Snake River was history-the Lizards hadn’t missed it, as they had the sawmill. The only way across the river was by rowboat. The oarsmen all wanted fifteen bucks for the trip, too. Jens flashed his letter that said he was on important government business. One of the boatmen said, “I’m as patriotic as the next guy, Mac, but I gotta feed my face.” Jens paid.

Eastern Washington, as seen from US 410, reminded him of Utah: very fertile when next to a river or irrigated, otherwise pale alkali flats with not much more than sagebrush growing on them. He’d always thought of Washington as full of pines and moss and ferns, with water dripping everywhere all the time. This part of the state didn’t live up to the description.

The roads hereabout hadn’t been badly bombed. Most of the bridges over rivers smaller than the Snake remained intact. Timber makeshifts let light traffic cross some of the spans that had been destroyed from the air. A couple of times, he had to pay his way across.

He got his ashes hauled again in Walla Walla, on the third day after he’d crossed into Washington. Again he picked a dark blond girl; again he didn’t think anything of it. This time, he didn’t have any laundry to reclaim when he left the bordello. He knew nothing but relief that that was so.

About thirty miles west of Walla Walla, US 140 swung north along the eastern bank of the Columbia toward its junction with the Snake. The country had been irrigated farmland once upon a time. Some of it looked to have been abandoned for quite a while; maybe the farmers hadn’t been able to pay their water bills.

Other stretches, though, especially where the two big rivers joined, were just now fading. Irrigation ditches were nothing but muddy, weed-choked grooves in the ground. Here and there, farmers still cultivated small orchards and berry patches, but big stretches of land between them baked brown under the summer sun. Jens wondered what had gone wrong till he pedaled past the ruins of a pumping station, and then of another. If the water couldn’t reach land, the land wouldn’t bear.

The town nearest the Snake River bridge (not that Jens expected to find it standing) was called Burbank. Just before he got into it, he pulled off the highway to contribute his own bit of irrigation to the roadside plants. No sooner had he started to piss than he stopped again with a snarl of pain. Now he knew without having to think about it what that burning meant.

“Anotherdose of clap?” he howled to the sky, though that was not where he’d got it. The next week or two, till things calmed down in there, were going to be anything but fun.

Then, half to his own surprise, he started to laugh. From everything he’d heard, the clap didn’t usually make a woman as sore as it did a man, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have it. And this time, there was every chance he’d given as good-or as bad-as he’d got.

When Nikifor Sholudenko poked his head unannounced into the underground chamber where Ludmila Gorbunova slept and rested between missions, her first thought was that the NKVD man hoped to catch her half dressed. But Sholudenko said, “Comrade Pilot, you are ordered to report to Colonel Karpov’s office at once.”

That was different. That was business. Ludmila jumped to her feet. “Thank you, Comrade. Take me to him at once, please.”

Colonel Feofan Karpov was not a big man, but in his square solidity reminded Ludmila of a bear nonetheless. The stubble on his chin and the decrepit state of his uniform only added to the impression. So did the candles flickering in the underground office; they gave the place the look of a lair.

“Good day, Comrade Pilot,” Karpov said after returning Ludmila’s salute. His voice, which was on the reedy side, did not sound particularly ursine, not even when he growled, “That will be all, Comrade,” at Sholudenko. But the NKVD man disappeared even so.

“Good day, Comrade Colonel,” Ludmila said. “I report to you as ordered.”

“At ease, Ludmila Vadimovna-you’re not in trouble, certainly not from me,” Karpov said. Ludmila did not ease; the colonel was a stickler for military formality, and not in the habit of addressing her by name and patronymic. The first reason she came up with for his changing his tune was that he was going to make advances at her. If he did, she decided, she’d scream.

But instead of coming around the desk to lay a “comradely” hand on her shoulder or any such thing, he said, “I have orders for you to report to Moscow immediately. Well,

not quite immediately.” He made a wry face. “A wagon is waiting above ground to transport you. It brought a replacement pilot and a replacement mechanic.”

“A replacement mechanic, Comrade Colonel?” Ludmila asked, puzzled.

“Da.”Karpov scowled an angry bear’s scowl. “They are robbing me not only of one of my best pilots in you, but also of that German-Schultz-you roped into this unit. Whatever bungler they’ve sent me, he won’t measure up to the German; engines don’t care if you’re a fascist.”

The prospect of riding in to Moscow with Georg Schultz was less than appealing; the prospect of being paired with him on whatever mission followed the trip to Moscow was downright appalling. Hoping she might find out why the two of them had been ordered to the capital, she asked, “Where and to whom are we to report, Comrade Colonel?”

“To the Kremlin, or whatever may be left of the Kremlin after the Lizards have done their worst.” Karpov looked down at a scrap of paper on his desk. “The order is signed by a certain Colonel Boris Lidov of the People’s Commissariat for the Interior.” He saw Ludmila stiffen. “You know this man?”

“Yes, I know him, Comrade Colonel,” Ludmila said in a small voice. She glanced around out through the doorway to see if anyone was loitering in the hall.

Karpov’s gaze followed hers. “An NKVD bastard, eh?” he said roughly-but he didn’t raise his voice, either. “I thought as much, just from the way the order was framed. No help for it that I can see. Go gather your belongings and get into the wagon-you’ll see it when you come out of the tunnels here. Wear something civilian, if you can; it will make you less likely to be shot at from the air. And good luck to you, Ludmila Vadimovna.”

“Thank you, Comrade Colonel,” Ludmila saluted again, then walked back down the hall to her chamber. Mechanically, she packed up her flight suit, coveralls, and pistol. She had no civilian blouses, but at the bottom of her duffel bag she did find a flowered skirt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn it.

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