“By the schedule, it’s not time to feed him yet,” Barbara answered. “But do you know what? As far as I’m concerned, the schedule can go to the devil. I can’t stand listening to him yell until the clock says it’s okay for him to eat. If nursing makes him happy enough to keep still for a while, that suits me fine.” She wriggled her right arm out of the sleeve of the dark blue wool dress she was wearing, tugged the dress down to bare that breast. “Here, give him to me.”
Yeager did. The baby’s mouth fastened onto her nipple. Jonathan sucked avidly. Yeager could hear him gulping down the milk. He’d felt funny at first, having to share Barbara’s breasts with his son. But you couldn’t bottle-feed these days-no formula, no easy way to keep things as clean as they needed to be. And after you got used to breast-feeding, it didn’t seem like such a big thing any more, anyhow.
“I think he may be going to sleep,” Barbara said. The radio newsman who’d announced Jimmy Doolittle’s bomber raid over Tokyo hadn’t sounded more excited about a victory. She went on, “He’s going to want to nurse on the other side too, though. Help me out of that sleeve, would you, Sam? I can’t get it down by myself, not while I’m holding him.”
“Sure thing.” He hurried over to her, stretched the sleeve out, and helped her get her arm back through past the elbow. After that, she managed on her own. The dress fell limply to her waist. A couple of minutes went by before she shifted Jonathan to her left breast.
“He’d better fall asleep pretty soon,” Barbara said. “I’m cold.”
“He looks as if he’s going to,” Sam answered. He draped a folded towel over her left shoulder, not so much to help warm her as to keep the baby from drooling or spitting up on her when she burped him.
One of her eyebrows rose. “ ‘As if he’s going to’?” she echoed.
He knew what she meant. He wouldn’t have said it that way when they first met; he’d made it through high school, then gone off to play ball. “Must be the company I keep,” he replied with a smile, and then went on more seriously: “I like learning things from the people I’m around-from the Lizards, too, it’s turned out. Is it any wonder I’ve picked things up from you?”
“Oh, in a way it’s a wonder,” Barbara said. “A lot of people seem to hate the idea of ever learning anything new. I’m glad you’re not like that; it would make life boring.” She glanced down at Jonathan. “Yes, he is falling asleep. Good.”
Sure enough, before long her nipple slipped out of the baby’s mouth. She held him a little longer, then gently raised him to her shoulder and patted his back. He burped without waking up, and didn’t spit up, either. She slid him back down to the crook of her elbow, waited a few minutes more, and got up to put him in the wooden crib that took up a large part of the small room. Jonathan sighed as she laid him down. She stood there for a moment, afraid he would wake. But when his breathing steadied, she straightened and reached down to fix her dress.
Before she could, Sam stepped up behind her and cupped a breast in each hand. She turned her head and smiled at him over her shoulder, but it wasn’t a smile of invitation, even though they had started making love again a couple of weeks before.
“Do you mind too much if I just lie down for a while?” she said. “By myself, I mean. It’s not that I don’t love you, Sam-it’s just that I’m so tired, I can’t see straight.”
“Okay, I understand that,” he said, and let go. The soft, warm memory of her flesh remained printed on his palms. He kicked at the linoleum floor, once.
Barbara quickly pulled her dress up to where it belonged, then turned around and put her hands on his shoulders. “Thank you,” she said. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you, either.”
“Takes some getting used to, that’s all,” he said. “Being in the middle of the war when we got married didn’t help a whole lot, and then you were expecting right away-” As best they could tell, that had happened on their wedding night. He chuckled. “Of course. If it hadn’t been for the war, we never would have met. What do they say about clouds and silver linings?”
Barbara hugged him. “I’m very happy with you, and with our baby, and with everything.” She corrected herself, yawning: “With almost everything. I could do with a lot more sleep.”
“I’m happy with just about everything, too,” he said, his arms tightening around her back. As he’d said. If it hadn’t been for the war, they wouldn’t have met. If they had met, she wouldn’t have looked at him; she’d been married to a nuclear physicist in Chicago. But Jens Larssen had been away from the Met Lab project, away for so long they’d both figured he was dead, and they’d become first friends, then lovers, and finally husband and wife. And then Barbara had got pregnant-and then they’d found out Jens was alive after all.
Sam squeezed Barbara one more time, then let her go and walked over to the side of the crib to look down at their sleeping son. He reached out a hand and ruffled Jonathan’s fine, thin head of almost snow-white hair.
“That’s sweet,” Barbara said.
“He’s a pretty good little guy,” Yeager answered.And if you hadn’t been carrying him, odds are ten bucks against a wooden nickel you’d have dropped me and gone back to Larssen. He smiled at the baby.Kid, I owe you a big one for that. One of these days, I’ll see if I can figure out how to pay you back.
Barbara kissed him on the lips, a brief, friendly peck, and then walked over to the bed. “Iam going to get some rest,” she said.
“Okay.” Sam headed for the door. “I guess I’ll find me some Lizards and chin with them for a while. Do me some good now, and maybe even after the war, too. If there ever is an ‘after the war.’ Whatever happens, people and Lizards are going to have to deal with each other from here on out. The more I know, the better off I’ll be.”
“I think you’ll be just fine any which way,” Barbara answered as she lay down. “Why don’t you come back in an hour or so? If Jonathan’s still asleep, who knows what might happen?”
“We’ll find out.” Yeager opened the door, then glanced back at his son. “Sleep tight, kiddo.”
The man who wore earphones glanced over at Vyacheslav Molotov. “Comrade Foreign Commissar, we are getting new reports that theYashcheritsi at the base east of Tomsk are showing interest in surrendering to us.” When Molotov didn’t answer, the technician made so bold as to add, “You remember, Comrade: the ones who mutinied against their superiors.”
“I assure you, Comrade, I am aware of the situation and need no reminding,” Molotov said in a voice colder than Moscow winter-colder than Siberian winter, too. The technician gulped and dipped his head to show he understood. You were lucky to get away with one slip around Molotov; you wouldn’t get away with two. The foreign commissar went on, “Have they any definite terms this time?”
“Da,Comrade Foreign Commissar.” The fellow at the wireless set looked down at the notes he’d scribbled. His pencil was barely as long as his thumb; everything was at a premium these days. “They want pledges not only of safe conduct but also of good treatment after going over to us.”
“We can give them those,” Molotov said at once. “I would think even the local military commander would have the wit to see as much for himself.” The local military commander should also have had the wit to see that such pledges could be ignored the instant they became inconvenient.
On the other hand, it was probably just as well that the local military commander displayed no excessive initiative, but referred his questions back to Moscow and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for answers. Commanders who usurped Party control in one area were only too likely to try to throw it off in others.
The wireless operator spoke groups of seemingly meaningless letters over the air. Molotov sincerely hoped they were meaningless to the Lizards. “What else do the mutineers want?” he asked.
“A pledge that under no circumstances will we return them to the Lizards, not even if an end to hostilities is agreed to between the peace-loving workers and peasants of the Soviet Union and the alien imperialist aggressors from whose camp they are trying to defect.”