Читаем Striking the Balance полностью

“I understand, and I agree,” Atvar said. “In this case, though, as you note, the Big Uglies’ irksome proclivities work with us, not against us as they do on most occasions. My opinion is that we may reasonably expect control over major areas of the not-empire of the United States to fall away from its unsnoutcounted leader, and that we may even be able to use the rebels who arise for our own purposes. Cooperating with the Big Uglies galls me, but the potential profit in this case seems worthwhile.”

“Considering the use the Big Uglies have got out of Straha, using their leaders against them strikes me as fitting revenge,” Kirel said.

Atvar wished Kirel hadn’t mentioned Straha; every time he thought of the shiplord who’d escaped his just punishment by fleeing to the American Tosevites, it was as if he got an itch down under his scales where he couldn’t scratch it Despite that, though, he had to admit the comparison was fair.

“At last,” he said, “we shall find where the limits of Tosevite resilience lie. Surely no agglomeration of Big Uglies lacking the stability of the imperial form can pass from one rule to another in the midst of the stress of warfare. Why, we would be hard-pressed ourselves if, during such a crisis, the Emperor happened to die and a less experienced male took the throne.” He cast down his eyes, then asked, “Truth?”

“Truth,” Kirel said.

Leslie Groves sprang to his feet and forced his bulky body into as stiff a brace as he could take. “Mr. President!” he said. “It’s a great honor and privilege to meet you, sir.”

“Sit down, General,” Cordell Hull said. He sat down himself, across from Groves in the latter’s office. Just seeing a President of the United States walk into that office jolted Groves. So did Hull’s accent: a slightly lisping Tennessee drawl rather than the patrician tones of FDR. The new chief executive did share one thing with his predecessor, though: he looked desperately tired. After Groves was seated, Hull went on, “I never expected to be President, not even after Vice President Wallace was killed and I knew I was next in line. All I ever wanted to do was go on doing my own job the best way I knew how.”

“Yes, sir,” Groves said. If he’d been playing poker with Hull, he would have said the new President was sandbagging. He’d been Secretary of State since Roosevelt became President, and had been Roosevelt’s strong right arm in resisting first the human enemies of the United States and then the invading aliens.

“All right, then,” Hull said. “Let’s get down to brass tacks.”

That didn’t strike Groves as sounding very presidential; to him, Hull looked more like an aging small-town lawyer than a President, too: gray-haired, bald on top with wisps combed over to try to hide it, jowly, dressed in a baggy dark blue suit he’d plainly been wearing for a good many years. Regardless of whether he looked like a President or sounded like one, though, he had the job. That meant he was Groves’ boss, and a soldier did what his boss said.

“Whatever you need to know, sir,” Groves said now.

“The obvious first,” Hull answered. “How soon can we have another bomb, and then the one after that, and then one more? You have to understand, General, that I didn’t know a thing, not one single solitary thing, about this project until our first atomic bomb went off in Chicago.”

“Security isn’t as tight now as it used to be, either,” Groves answered. “Before the Lizards came, we didn’t want the Germans or the Japs to have a clue that we thought atomic bombs were even possible. The Lizards know that much.”

“Yes, you might say so,” Hull agreed, his voice dry. “If I hadn’t happened to be out of Washington one fine day, you’d be having this conversation with someone else right now.”

“Yes, sir,” Groves said. “We don’t have to conceal from the Lizards that we’re working on the project, just where we’re doing it, which is easier.”

“I see that,” the President said. “As may be, though; President Roosevelt chose not to let me know till the Lizards came.” He sighed. “I don’t blame him, or anything of the sort. He had more important things to worry about, and he worried about them-until it killed him. He was a very great man. Christ”-he pronounced itChwist — “only knows how I’ll fill his shoes. In peacetime, he would have lived longer. With the weight of the country-by God, General, with the weight of the world-on his shoulders, moving from place to place like a hunted animal, he just wore out, that’s all there is to it.”

“That was the impression I had when he came here last year,” Groves said, nodding. “The strain was more than his mechanism could take, but he took it anyhow, for as long as he could.”

“You’ve hit the nail on the head,” Hull said. “But, speaking of nails, we’ve forgotten about the brass tacks. The bombs, General Groves-when?”