Cordell Hull said, “I haven’t done any of this Buck Rogers stuff.” (“By which he means he has not traveled into space,” the interpreter glossed.) “No one from the government of the United States has. We have held lower-level talks with the Lizards on our soil regarding such matters as transportation of food and other noncombat supplies to areas they control, and we are also attempting to arrange exchanges of prisoners of war.”
Soft, Molotov thought. The handful of prisoners the Soviets had taken from the invaders were interrogated until no longer useful and then disposed of, just as if they were Germans or kulaks with important information. As for supplying food to Lizard-held areas, Moscow had enough trouble feeding the people it still ruled. Those the Lizards had overrun made useful partisans and spies, but that was all.
Shigenori Togo spoke in German; Molotov remembered he had a German wife. The Soviet foreign minister’s English-speaking interpreter also knew German. He translated for Molotov: “He says there is no excuse for treating with this enemy.”
Ribbentrop scowled at the Japanese representative. Ignoring the glare, Togo switched to his own language and went on for some time. Molotov’s other translator took over: “The Emperor Hirohito’s government has consistently refused to deal with the Lizards except on the battlefield. We see no reason to discontinue this policy. We shall continue to fight until events prove favorable for us. We understand this fight will be difficult; that is why I am here today. But Japan will fight on regardless of the course any other nation may take.”
“The same holds true for Britain,” Churchill declared. “We may talk with the foe, consistent with the usages of war, but we shall not surrender to him. Resistance is our sacred duty to our children.”
“You say this now,” Ribbentrop said. “But what will you say when the Lizards strike London or Washington or Tokyo or Moscow with the same dreadful weapon that destroyed Berlin?”
Silence reigned for the next several seconds. It was a better question than Molotov had expected from the plump, prosperous, foolish Ribbentrop. He did notice the Nazi foreign minister had put the Soviet capital last on his list. Annoyed by that, he said, “Comrade Stalin has pledged a fight to the finish, and the Soviet workers and people shall hold to the pledge, come what may. In any case, if I may use a bourgeois analogy, having continued to resist despite wholesale murder at the hands of Germany, we shall not quail at the prospect of retail murder from the Lizards.”
Ribbentrop’s protuberant blue eyes glared balefully. Shigenori Togo, whose nation had been at war with neither the Soviet Union nor Germany when the Lizards came, was in the best position to address both their representatives: “Such talk as this, gentlemen, aids no one but the invaders. Of course we remember our own quarrels, but to use them to interfere with the struggle against the Lizards is shortsighted.”
He could not have picked a better word to gain Molotov’s attention. The ineluctable nature of the historical dialectic made Marxist-Leninists long-term planners almost by instinct. The Five-Year Plans that had made the Soviet Union an industrial match for Germany were a case in point.
Molotov said, “I merely used the analogy to demonstrate that we shall not be intimidated by brute force. In fact, the Soviet Union and Germany are even now cooperating in areas where our two states can effectively bring combined resources to bear against the common enemy.” He stopped there. Another word would have been too much.
Ribbentrop nodded. “We will do what we must do to secure final victory.”
Glee danced behind Molotov’s unchanging visage. He would have bet a prewar Crimean dacha against a trip to the gulag that Ribbentrop had no idea what sort of cooperation he’d meant. He knew perfectly well that he would never have told the pompous ass anything important.
“Instead of bemoaning the dreadful weapons the Lizards have, one of the things we should be doing is discovering how to make them for ourselves,” Cordell Hull said. “I am authorized by President Roosevelt to tell you all that the United States has such a program in progress, and that we will share resources with our allies in the struggle.”
“The United States and Britain are already operating under such an arrangement,” Churchill said, adding with a touch of smugness, “nor is the sharing to which Secretary Hull referred by any means a one-way street.”
Now Molotov’s stony facade trapped amazement. Had he been as indiscreet as Hull, he’d have earned-and deserved-a bullet in the back of the head. Yet the American secretary of state spoke at his president’s orders. Astonishing! Molotov more easily understood the Lizards than the United States. Combining the technical expertise implicit in Hull’s words with such unbelievable naivete… Incredible-and dangerous.
Ribbentrop said, “We are prepared to cooperate with any nation against the Lizards.”
“As are we,” Togo said.
Everyone looked at Molotov. Seeing silence would not serve here, he said, “I have already stated that the Soviet Union is currently working with Germany on projects of benefit to both nations. We have no objection in principle to pursuing similar collaborative efforts with other states actively resisting the Lizards.”
He glanced round the tight circle of diplomats. Ribbentrop actually smiled at him. Churchill, Hull, and Togo remained expressionless, save that one of Churchill’s eyebrows rose a little. Unlike the Nazi buffoon, they’d noticed he hadn’t really promised anything. A wide gap lay between “no objection in principle” and genuine cooperation. Well, too bad. If they wanted to keep fighting the Lizards, they were in no position to call him on it.
Cordell Hull said, “Another area of concern for all of us is dealing with nations which have, for whatever reasons, made devil’s bargains with the Lizards.” He ran a hand through the strands of gray hair he’d combed over the top of a mostly bald skull. The Americas had a lot of nations like that.
“Many of them will have done so only under compulsion, and may well remain willing to carry on the fight and to work with us even while nominally under the invaders’ yoke,” Churchill said.
“That may be true in some cases,” Molotov agreed. His own judgment was that Churchill kept the cockeyed optimism which he’d demonstrated in defying Hitler after British forces were booted out of Europe in 1940. That kind of optimism often led to disaster, but sometimes it saved nations. Bourgeois military “experts” hadn’t given the Red Army six weeks of life against the Wehrmacht-but the Soviets were still fighting almost a year later when the Lizards came to complicate the situation yet again.
Molotov went on, “Partisan movements against both the invaders and the governments collaborating with them should also be organized and armed as expeditiously as possible. Leaders who favor submission must be removed by whatever means prove necessary.” He said the last with a hard look at Joachim von Ribbentrop.
The German foreign minister was dense, but not too dense to miss that message. “The Fuhrer still feels a personal fondness for Mussolini,” he said, sounding more than a little embarrassed.
“No accounting for taste,” Churchill rumbled. “Still, Minister Molotov is correct: we are past the stage where personal likes and dislikes ought to influence policy. The sooner Mussolini is dead and buried, the better for all of us. Some German forces remain in Italy. They might well be the ones to give him the boot, or rather take him from it for good.”
The interpreter stumbled over the idioms in the last sentence, but Molotov got the gist. He added, “Having the Pope join Mussolini in the grave would also be a progressive development. Since the Lizards do not interfere with his bleating preachments, he fawns on them like a cur.”
“But would a successor prove any better?” Shigenori Togo asked. “Along with this, we must also ask ourselves whether making the Pope into a martyr would in the long run prove harmful by generating hatred for our cause among Catholics all over the world.”