In the Balance w-1

by Harry Turtledove

  Ussmak was confused. “What do you mean, cost me?”

  “Just what I said.” The orderly spoke as if he were a hatchling still wet with the liquids from his egg. “You want more ginger, friend, you’re gonna have to pay me for it. I’ll take commissary scrip, voluntary electronic transfer from your account to one I have set up, Big Ugly souvenirs that I can resell, all kinds of things. I’m a flexible male; you’ll find that out”

  “But you gave me the first bit of ginger for nothing,” Ussmak said, confused more than ever and hurt now, too. “I thought you were just being kind, helping me get through one of those endless days.”

  The orderly’s mouth dropped open. “Why shouldn’t the first taste be free? It shows you what I’ve got. And you want what I’ve got, don’t you, friend?”

  Ussmak hated to be laughed at The orderly’s arrogant assumption of superiority also angered him. “Suppose I report you to the discipline-masters? We’ll see bow you laugh then, by the Emperor.”

  But the orderly retorted, “Suppose you do? Yeah, I’ll draw some more punishment, and likely worse than this, but you, friend, you’ll never taste ginger again, not from me, not from anybody else, either. If that’s how you want it, you go ahead and make that call.”

  Never taste ginger again? The idea appalled Ussmak so much, he never wondered if the orderly was telling the truth. What did he know about ethics, or lack of ethics, among ginger sellers? Quickly, he said, “How much do you want?”

  “Thought you’d be sensible.” The orderly ticked off rates on his claws. “If it’s just another taste you want, that’ll cost you half a day’s pay. But if you want a vial like the one you saw the other day, with enough ginger in it for maybe thirty tastes, that’s a tenday’s worth of pay. Cheap at the price, eh?”

  “Yes.” With little to spend his money on, Ussmak had most of it banked in the fleet’s payroll accounting system. “Let me have a vial. What’s your account code, so I can make the transfer?”

  “Transfer it to this code.” The orderly gave him the number, written down on a scrap of paper. “I’ll be able to use it, but the computer won’t pick up that it’s mine.”

  “How did you manage that?” Ussmak asked, genuinely curious. Males could be bought, perhaps, but how did you go about bribing a computer?

  The orderly let his mouth fall open again, but only a little: he wanted Ussmak to share the joke. “Let’s say there’s somebody who works in payrolls and likes ginger just as much as you do. I’m not gonna tell you any more than that, but I don’t need to tell you any more than that, do I? You’re a clever male, friend; I don’t have to draw you a circuit diagram.”

  Well, well, Ussmak thought He wondered how long this clandestine trade in ginger had been going on, how widely its corruption had spread among the Race, and whether anyone in authority had the slightest notion it was there.

  Those were all interesting questions. None, though, was as urgent to Ussmak as getting his tongue on some of the preious powdered herb. Like any compartment in a starship, his cubicle had a computer terminal. He used his own account code to access his payroll records, transferred a tenday’s salary to the code the orderly had given him. “There,” he said. “Now, when do I get my ginger?”

  “Eager, aren’t you?” the orderly said. “Let’s see what I can do.”

  Naive though he was, Ussmak belatedly realized the orderly might keep his money and give him nothing in return. If that happened, he resolved to tell the authorities about the ginger trade and take the cheater down into punishment with him. But the orderly, with the air of a stage magician producing a bracelet from someone’s snout, handed him a vial full of what he craved.

  He wanted to pop it open and start tasting it right then. Somehow, though, he didn’t feel easy about doing it in front of the orderly: he didn’t want the fast-talking male to see what a hold he had on him. He knew that was probably foolish; how could the orderly not have a good notion of how much he desired ginger? He held back even so.

  He wondered about something else. “Suppose I start running out of pay but still want more ginger? What do I do then?”

  “You could do without” The cold, callous ring in the orderly’s voice chilled Ussmak. Then the fellow said, “Or you can find friends of your own to sell it to, and use what you make to buy more for yourself.”

  “I-see.” Ussmak wondered about that. It might work for a while, but before too long, it seemed to him, every male in the invasion fleet would be selling ginger to every other male. He started to ask the orderly about that-the fellow certainly acted as if he had all the answers-but the male, having made his profit, left the healing cubicle without so much as a farewell.

  Ussmak opened the plastic vial, poured a little ginger onto his palm as he’d seen the orderly do. His tongue flicked the precious powder into his mouth. And again-for a while-he felt powerful, clever, capable. As the wonderful sensation faded, he realized he’d do whatever he had to do to keep on having it as often as he could. Against that stark need, the careful planning that had been a hallmark of the Race for millennia suddenly was of small import. If getting more ginger for himself meant peddling it to his friends… he hesitated. After the disasters that had befallen his landcruisers, few friends were left alive. But if he had to, he’d make more friends and then sell ginger to them.

  He nodded to himself, pleased. He could still plan after all. Deliberately or not, he turned both eyes away from the shape of his plan.

  Liu Han looked down at her belly. It did not bulge, not yet, but it would. Her homage to the moon had failed. Her breasts would never be large, but they felt tight and full; a new tracery of veins showed just below the skin. Her appetite was off. She knew the signs. She was with child.

  she didn’t think Bobby Fiore had noticed the absence of her monthly courses. She wondered if telling him she was pregnant was a good idea. She had no doubt the baby was his-given the way she was caged here, how could she? But she remembered how even her true husband had lost interest in her while she was carrying their child. If a Chinese treated her so, how would a round-eyed foreign devil react? She was afraid to have to find out.

  Not too long after she began to worry, the door to her bare cubicle hissed open. Little scaly devils with guns escorted Bobby Fiore into the room. After so many trips where nothing untoward happened, she thought human guards would have fallen under the spell of routine. The scaly devils still acted as if they expected him-or her-to pull a gun out of the air and start shooting. They carefully backed out of the room, weapons at the ready all the time.

  Liu Han got up from her mat, walked up to embrace Bobby Fiore while the door was still sliding shut. she’d long since resigned herself to the little devils’ watching, knowing everything she did. Besides, she was starved for even the simplest contact with another human being.

  His arms closed round her back. He kissed her. One hand slid down to cup a buttock. His manhood stirred against her hipbone. She smiled a little. Knowing he still wanted her was always reassuring. His mouth might lie, or even his hand, but not that part of him.

  The kiss went on. He pulled her tightly to him. When at last he had to breathe, he asked her, “Shall we now?”

  “Yes, why not?” she answered. If she did decide to tell him, what better time than when he was lazy and happy after love? And besides, what else was there to do in here?

  They lay down together. His hands and mouth roamed her body. He was, she thought as she closed her eyes and let herself enjoy what he was doing, a much better lover than he had been when the scaly devils first put the two of them in the same cubicle and made them couple. she’d found ways to show him some of what she wanted without hurting his pride while some he’d picked up on his own. All at once she gasped and quivered. Yes, he’d learned quite nicely… and the hair of his beard and mustache added a little to what his tongue could do, something she hadn’t imagined when she’d known only smooth-faced men.

  He sat back on his haunches. “Again?” he a
sked her.

  “No not right now,” she said after considenng for a few seconds.

  “Well then,” he said with a smile. “My turn” she didn’t mind taking him in her mouth. He kept himself as clean as he could with only warm water for washing, and she could tell how much pleasure she gave him. A sudden thought flashed through her mind: he’d been teaching her while she was teaching him. she’d never noticed till now.

  His breath caught as she pulled back his foreskin. He was hot in her hand. But almost as soon as her lips and tongue touched him, she started to gag and had to pull away.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, surprised. “What’s the matter?”

  Liu Han knew what the matter was. Just another proof she was pregnant, she thought. She hadn’t been able to please her husband that way, either, not until she gave birth. Maybe that was one reason he’d ignored her so much.

  “What’s the matter?” Bobby Fiore said again.

  she didn’t know how to answer. If she told him and he turned cold to her… she didn’t think she could stand that. But he’d find out before too long, anyway. She remembered how good having the initiative with Yi Min had felt, even if only for a little while (she also wondered, for a very little while, what the scoundrel was up to-something to his own advantage, she had no doubt). That memory helped make up her mind.

  she didn’t know how to say “baby” in English or the little devils’ speech; she knew Bobby Fiore wouldn’t understand it in Chinese. She sat up, used her hand to sketch the shape her belly would take in a few months. He frowned-he didn’t get it. She pantomimed cradling a newborn in her arms. If that didn’t put the idea across, she didn’t know what she’d do.

  His eyes widened. “Baby?” he said in English, giving her the word. He pointed to her, to himself, made the cradling motion.

  “Yes, ba-bee.” Liu Han repeated the word so she’d remember it. “Baby.” she’d need to use it a lot in the months-in the years-to come. “You, me, baby.” Then she waited to see how he would react.

  At first, he didn’t seem sure what to do, what to say. He muttered something in English-“Goddamn, who woulda thought my first kid would be half Chink?”-she didn’t completely follow, but she thought he was talking more to himself than to her. Then he reached out and laid the palm of his hand on her still-flat belly. “Really?”

  “Really,” she said. She had no doubts. If she’d had any before (and she hadn’t, not in truth), choking on him blew them away.

  “How about that?” he said, a phrase he used when he was thinking things over. His hand slid lower, down between her legs. “Will you still want to…?” Instead of finishing the question with words, he rubbed gently.

  She wondered if he cared for her only because she gave him her body, but the worry that raised was more than balanced by relief that he did still want her. The other she could think, about later. For now, she let her thighs fall open. “Yes,” she said, and did her best to prove it when he climbed on top of her.

  They separated quickly after he’d spent himself; the little scaly devils kept the chamber too hot for them to lie entwined when they weren’t actually joined. Bobby Fiore kept staring at her navel, as if trying to peer inside her. “A baby,” he said. “How about that?”

  She nodded. “Yes, a baby. Not surprising, when we do”-she twitched her hips-“so much.”

  “I suppose not, not when you think about it like that, but it sure surprised me.” Behind the hair that half masked him, his face was thoughtful. She wondered what was going on in his mind to make his eyebrows lower and come together, the slight furrows on his forehead deepen. At last he said, “I wish I could do more-hell, I wish I could do anything-to take care of you and the kid.”

  When he’d gone through the usual backing and filling to make her understand, Liu Han looked down at the smooth gray mat on which she was sitting. she didn’t want him to see the tears that stung her eyes. Her husband had been a good enough man, but she wondered if he would have said as much. For a foreign devil to think that way… she’d known next to nothing about foreign devils before she was snatched up into this airplane that never, landed, and Bobby Fiore was making her see that most of what she’d thought she knew was wrong.

  “What is it?” he asked her. “What’s the matter now?”

  she didn’t know how to answer him. “We both have to find a way to take care of-” As he had done before, she set her hand in the space between her navel and the small patch of short black hair that covered her secret place.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Ain’t that a hell of a thing? How are we gonna be able to do anything at all for Junior, cooped up here like we are?”

  As if to underscore his words, the door to the cubicle opened. A little scaly devil set down opened cans of food, then backed away from Liu Han and Bobby Fiore. She wondered if he thought it unsafe to turn around in their presence. She found that ludicrous, the more so as she knew herself to be so completely in the little devils’ power. But the presence of armed devils in the doorway covering their comrade argued that they feared her kind, too. She thought that foolish, but the little devils always did it.

  The food, as usual, was not much to her taste: some sort of salty pork in a square, dark blue tin, flavorless green beans, the little yellow lumps Bobby Fiore called “corn,” and canned fruit in a cloyingly sweet syrup. She missed rice, vegetables briefly steamed or stir-fried, all the flavorings she’d grown up with: soy sauce, ginger, different kinds of peppers. She missed tea even more.

  Bobby Fiore ate methodically and without complaint. This meal, like most they’d received, came from supplies canned by his people. Liu Han wondered if the foreign devils ever ate anything fresh.

  Then another, more urgent, concern suddenly replaced that idle curiosity: she wondered if the pork and the rest were going to stay down. She hadn’t been sick during her first pregnancy, but village gossip said every one was different. Saliva flooded into her mouth. She gulped. The tremor subsided.

  “You okay?” Bobby Fiore asked. “You looked a little green there for a minute.” Liu Han puzzled at the idiom, but he explained it a moment later “You coming down with-what do they call it? — morning sickness?”

  “I don’t know,” Liu Han answered faintly. “Please don’t talk about it.” While discovering that foreign devil women suffered from the same infirmity as Chinese was interesting, she didn’t want to think about morning sickness. Thinking about it might make her-

  She got to the plumbing hole just in time. Bobby Fiore rinsed out the can the fruit had come in, filled it with water, and gave it to her so she could rinse her mouth. He put an arm around her shoulders. “I’ve got two married sisters. This happened to both of ’em when they were expecting. I don’t know if you want to hear that or not, but they say misery loves company.”

  Liu Han did not understand all of what he said, which was perhaps just as well. she did appreciate the water, after she’d rinsed and spat a couple of times to take away the horrid taste, she felt much better. It wasn’t like throwing up when she was ill: now that her body had done what it needed to do, it seemed willing to let her alone for a while.

  “I wish the Lizards had a priest up here,” Bobby Fiore said. “I want the kid to get brought up Catholic. I know I’m not the best Christian there ever was, but I try to do what’s right”

  Liu Han hadn’t thought much of the Christian missionaries she’d seen in China. How to raise the baby was, however, the least of her worries at the moment She said, “I wonder what the little scaly devils will do to me when they find out I am with child.”

  she did not think her fear was idle. After all, the little devils had snatched her from her village, then from the prison camp. While she was up here in the airplane that did not land, they’d made her submit to several men (and how relieved she was not to be carrying a baby by any of them!). They could do as they pleased with her, do whatever interested them… without caring in the least what she thought about what they wanted.

/>   “Whatever they do, they’ll have to do it to both of us,” Bobby Fiore said stoutly. She reached out and set a hand on his arm, grateful he stood by her. She would have been more grateful had she thought his brave words bore any relation to reality. If the little devils decided to keep the two of them in separate cubicles, what could he possibly do about it?

  He said, “You ought to try and eat some more. You’ve got company in there, after all.”

  “I suppose so.” Dutifully-but also cautiously-Liu Han ate a little corn, some of the beans, and even the last mouthful of pork left in the tin. She waited for her stomach to give them back, but it stayed quiet: having emptied once, it now seemed willing to relent. She hoped it would keep on being so forbearing.

  Then, too late, she realized the little scaly devils would not have to wait until her belly bulged to learn she was pregnant. she’d grown so resigned to the moving pictures they made of her-not just when she was coupling but almost all the time-that she’d almost forgotten about them. But if the scaly devils could sort through the mix of Chinese, English, and their own language that she and Bobby Fiore spoke with each other, they’d know at once. And what would they do then?

  If they were human, they’d have known when my courses didn’t come, she thought. But the devils hadn’t noticed that. Bobby Fiore didn’t think they were devils at all, but creatures from another world. Most of the time, Liu Han remained convinced that was nonsense, but now and then she wondered. Could real devils be so ignorant of matters Earthly as her captors sometimes acted?

  In the end, what they were didn’t much matter. They had her-and Bobby Fiore-in their power either way. Liu Han wondered if any of the other women they’d brought up to the airplane that never landed were also pregnant. If they’d been used as she was, some probably were. She hoped so. she didn’t want to face the ordeal alone.

  She glanced over at Bobby Fiore. He’d been watching her; when her eyes met his, he looked away. Wondering if I’ll throw up again, Liu Han guessed. She smiled wryly. What did a man know about a woman who was with child? Not much, which was why she hoped some of the others up here shared her predicament.