Atvar said, “We have here at last an opportunity to use some Big Uglies as gloves, with our hands inside. Despite their losses, the leading empires refuse to yield to us. Italia is wavering, but-”
“But Italia has too many Deutsch soldiers in it to be fully a free agent. Yes,” the male said.
He was not only submissive but keen, Atvar thought happily, forgiving him the interruption because he had been right. “Exactly so. Perhaps we shall presently help them as we shall go to the aid of the, the-”
“The Polska and the Yehudim,” the male supplied.
“Thank you, those are the kinds of Big Uglies I had in mind, yes,” Atvar said. “And our assistance to them should not be grudging, either. If they give us a secure zone from which we may with impunity assail both Deutschland and the SSSR, we shall derive great benefits therefrom. We can promise them whatever they want. Once Tosev 3 is fully under our control… well, it’s not as if they belong to the Race.”
“Or even the Rabotevs or Hallessi,” the intelligence officer said.
“Quite so. They remain wild, and thus we have no obligations toward them save those which we choose to assume.” Atvar studied the male. “You are perceptive. Remind me of your name, that I may record your diligence.”
“I am Drefsab, Exalted Fleetlord,” the officer said. “Drefsab. I shall not forget.”
Georg Schultz raised up on his elbows to peer at the ripening fields of wheat and oats and barley, made a sour face. “The crop at this kolkhoz is going to be shitty this year,” he said with the certainty of a man who had grown up on a farm.
“That, at the moment, is the least of our worries,” Heinrich Jager answered. He hefted the Schmeisser that had belonged to Dieter Schmidt. Schmidt himself had lain under the black soil of the Ukraine for the past two days. Jager hoped he and Schultz had heaped on enough to keep the wild dogs from tearing up the body, but he wasn’t sure. He and his gunner had been in a hurry.
Schultz’s chuckle had a bitter edge to it. “Ja, we’re a pair out of a jumble sale, aren’t we?”
“You can say that again,” Jager answered. Both men wore scavenged infantry helmets and infantry tunics of field gray rather than tanker’s black; Schultz, carried an infantry rifle as well. Jager’s new, bristly beard itched all the time. Schultz complained about his, too. It was coming in carroty red, though his hair was light brown. Any inspector who saw them would have locked them in the guardhouse and thrown away the key.
Tankmen are usually neat to the point of fussiness. A tank without things stowed just so, and with working parts dirty and poorly maintained, is a tank waiting for breakdown or blowup. But Jager had jettisoned spit and polish when he bailed out of his killed Panzer III. His Schmeisser was clean. So was his pistol. Past that, he’d stopped worrying. He was alive, and for a German on the south Russian steppe, that remained no small achievement.
As if to remind him he was still alive, his stomach growled. The last time he’d been full was the night he got a bellyful of kasha, the night before the Lizards came. He knew what he had in the way of rations: nothing. He knew what Schultz had: the same.
“We have to get something from that collective farm,” he said. “Take it by force, sneak, up in the night, or go up and beg-I don’t much care which any more. But we have to eat.”
“I’m damned if I want to be a chicken thief,” Schultz said. Then, more pragmatically, he added, “Shouldn’t be too hard, just going on in. Most of the men, they’ll be off at the front.”
“That’s true,” Jager said; almost all the figures he saw working in the field wore babushkas. “But this is Russia, remember. Even the women carry rifles. I’d sooner get something peaceably than by robbery. With the Lizards all around, we may need help from the Ivans.”
“You’re the officer,” Schultz said, shrugging.
Jager knew what he meant: you’re the one who gets paid to think. Trouble was, he didn’t know what to think. The Lizards were at war with Russia no less than with the Reich, which meant he and these kolkhozniks shared a common foe. On the other hand, he hadn’t heard anything to let him know Germany and the Soviet Union weren’t still fighting each other (for that matter, he hadn’t heard anything at all since his panzer died).
He got to his feet. The south Russian steppe had seemed overpoweringly vast when he traversed it in a tank. Now that he was on foot, he felt he could tramp the gently rolling country forever without coming to its end.
Georg Schultz stood up beside him, though the gunner muttered, “Might as well be a bug walking across a plate.” That was the other side of Russia’s immensity: if one could see a long way, one could be seen just as far.
The peasants spotted the two Germans almost instantly; Jager saw their movements turn jerky even before they swung his way. He kept his submachine gun lowered as he strode toward the cluster of thatch-roofed wooden buildings that formed the heart of the kolkhoz. “Let’s keep this peaceful, if we can.”
“Yes, sir,” Schultz said. “If we can’t, no matter what we take from the Ivans now, they’re liable to stalk us through the grass and kill us.”
“Just what I’m thinking,” Jager agreed.
The workers in the fields converged on the Germans. None of them put down their hoes and spades and other tools. Several, young women and old men, carried firearms-pistols stuck in belts, a couple of rifles slung over shoulders. Some of the men would have seen action in the previous war. Jager thought he and Schultz could have taken the lot of them even so, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way.
He turned to the gunner. “Do you speak any Russian?”
“Ruki verkh! — hands up! That’s about it. How about you, sir?”
“A little more. Not much.”
A short, swag-bellied fellow marched importantly up to Jager. It really was a march, with head thrown back, arms pumping, legs snapping forward one after the other. The kolkhoz chairman, Jager realized. He rattled off a couple of sentences that might have been in Tibetan for all the good they did the major.
Jager did know one word that might come in handy here. He used it: “Khleb-bread.” He rubbed his belly with the hand that, wasn’t holding the Schmeisser.
All the kolkhozniks started talking at once. The word “Fritz” came up in the gabble, again and again; it was almost the only word Jager understood. It made him smile-the exact Russian equivalent of the German slang “Ivan.”
“Khleb, da,” the chairman said, a broad grin of relief on his wide, sweaty face. He spoke another word of Russian, one Jager didn’t know. The German shrugged, kept his features blank. The chairman tried again, this time in halting German: “Milk?”
“Spasebo,” Jager said. “Thank you. Da.”
“Milk?” Schultz made a face. “Me, I’d rather drink vodka-there, that’s another Russian word I know.”
“Vodka?” The kolkhoz chief grinned and pointed back toward one of the buildings behind him. He said something too rapid and complicated for Jager to follow, but his gestures left no doubt that if the Germans wanted vodka, the collective farm could supply it.
Jager shook his head. “Nyet, nyet,” he said. “Milk.” To his gunner, he added, “I don’t want us getting drunk here, not even a little bit. They’re liable to wait until we go to sleep and then cut our throats.”
“Likely you’re right, sir,” Schultz said. “But still-milk? I’ll feel like I’m six years old again.”
“Stick to water, then. We’ve been drinking it for a while now, and we haven’t come down with a flux yet.” Jager was thankful for that. He’d been cut off from the medical service ever since the battle-skirmish, he supposed, was really a better word for it-that cost his company its last panzers. If he and Schultz hadn’t stayed healthy, their only chance was to lie down and hope they got better.