Upsetting the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  Even knowing things, sometimes, was not enough. She’d seen that, too. You also had to know how the things you knew fit together. Knowing one thing here and one there wasn’t worth much. If you could put them together, you had something.

  “How much longer?” she asked him.

  He took a watch from his pocket, looked at it, and quickly replaced it “Fifteen minutes,” he said. If you openly showed you had a watch these days, you ran the risk of being mistaken for one of the little devils’ rich running dogs, or, conversely, having the lackeys think you were a resistance leader who needed to know exactly what time it was so your raid would go as you’d planned. If you were, in fact, such a leader, you didn’t want people to know it.

  Fifteen minutes. Save for when she was in labor, Liu Han had never known time to pass so slowly. “Will we be able to hear the songs we’re listening for?” she asked, guarding her meaning in case any of the people milling around was a spy.

  “Oh, yes,” Nieh assured her. “I’m sure my friend from the Big Wine Vat will sing very loud and clear, and he is far from the only man in the chorus.” He lowered his voice, careful even though he was speaking in code. “This song will be heard all over China tonight.”

  Liu Han hugged herself, partly against the numbing cold and partly from excitement. If all went as she hoped, she would soon have the beginning of her revenge on the little scaly devils who had brought her so much grief. A boy ran past her with a bundle of strips of paper in one hand and a paste pot in the other. He found a blank stretch of wall, slapped paste onto it, and put up a couple of the strips. Then he ran to look for a spot where more might go.

  “You had a clever idea there,” Liu Han said, nodding toward the ragamuffin. “Picking boys who can’t read makes it harder for the little scaly devils to trace those messages. All the boys know is that someone gave them money to put them up.”

  “Doctrine,” Nieh said. “If you use someone for a purpose like that, the less he knows, the better.” He chuckled. “Our singers are the same way. If they knew just what sort of songs we were asking them to perform, some of them might want to do something else instead.”

  “Yes.” Liu Han thought about doctrine. Nieh often seemed to know what to do without having to consider first. The thing he called doctrine told him what he needed, almost as if it let him toss the coins for the I Ching inside his own head. That made it a valuable tool. But he also sometimes seemed unable to think outside the framework his doctrine gave him, as if it were not tool but master. The Communists in the scaly devils’ prison camp had acted the same way. She’d heard Christian missionaries gabble about a Truth they claimed to have. The Communists thought they owned truth, too. It sometimes made them uncomfortable allies, even if she could never have struck the little devils such a blow without them.

  Nieh Ho-T’ing was casually tapping the palm of his hand against a trouser leg. His mouth shaped silent words: eight, seven, six . . .

  As he said the word five, a sharp, deep bang! came from inside the walls of the Forbidden City. “Early,” Nieh said, “but not so bad.” The grin he was wearing belied even the partial criticism.

  He’d hardly finished the sentence when another bang! went off, and then another. Liu Han felt as if she were drunk on samshu, though she’d had nothing stronger than tea. “We give the Emperor a happy birthday,” she said, and added the emphatic cough for good measure.

  Two more bombs went off among the scaly devils, then one, then silence. Nieh Ho-T’ing frowned. “We had eight arranged for in all here in Peking,” he said. “Perhaps two timers failed, or perhaps they ran late and the little devils found them before they could blow up.”

  That made Liu Han remember the bombs had not got in among the little scaly devils by themselves. The Communists had promised her they’d care for the families of the beast-show men killed in the explosions, and she believed them; they had a good reputation in such things. But money did not pay for the anguish the wives and children of those men would know. She knew how hard losing a family was. It had happened to her twice now.

  Had she not had her idea, those beast-show men would still be living, working at their trade. She hung her head. Hurting the little scaly devils might justify what she’d done, but could not make her proud of it.

  The little devils’ hissing alarms started going off. Gunfire came from inside the Forbidden City. That wasn’t the raiders. That was the little scaly devils, shooting either at innocent people (there were waiters and other servants who’d also still be alive and well if she hadn’t had her idea; she remembered them, too) or at one another.

  Suddenly Liu Han and Nieh Ho-T’ing stood almost alone, not far from the walls of the Forbidden City. People in Peking had seen a lot of war. They knew that, when explosions went off anyplace nearby, going elsewhere was one of the best ideas you could have. She started drifting away with the crowd, and tugged at Nieh’s sleeve when he didn’t move fast enough to suit her.

  “You’re right,” he said sheepishly, once she’d finally got his attention. They’d just ducked back into a hutung out of sight of the wall when a little scaly devil up there started shooting with his automatic rifle. A moment later, others up and down the wall poured fire at the humans out and about in the night. What had been a withdrawal became a stampede, some people screaming in panic, others because they were hit.

  “Hurry!” Liu Han cried. “We have to get away. If they send their males out of the Forbidden City, they’ll slaughter everyone they can find.” Nieh hurried but, to her surprise, wore a big, fierce grin on his usually solemn face. “What’s funny?” Liu Han demanded indignantly. “They’re killing us.”

  “That is what’s funny,” he answered, which made no sense to her till he explained: “They play into our hands. If they kill people who had nothing to do with setting off the bombs among them, they do nothing to help themselves and only make people hate them. Even some of their lackeys will think twice about backing them now, and may come over to us or give us useful information. The scaly devils would have been wiser to do nothing till they found out who had bombed them, then to strike hard at us. That way, they could have claimed they were punishing the guilty. Do you understand?”

  He’d taken that tone—almost as if he were a village schoolmaster—with her before when he was instructing her in matters of doctrine. She thought as she fled. Nieh looked at the world cold-bloodedly, more so than anyone else she’d ever known. But he was a war leader. Such men could not afford to be anything but cold-blooded.

  She said, “We’ll have to stay in the shadows for a while, till the little devils stop hounding us.”

  Nieh Ho-T’ing shook his head. “No. Now we hit them harder than ever, harass them in every way we can, so we keep them too busy to launch a proper campaign against us. If we can keep them off balance, they will be foolish.”

  Liu Han thought about that as they trotted along through the hutungs. They went arm in arm to keep from being swept apart by the crowds surging away from the Forbidden City. She decided it made sense. If you were in a fight with someone, you didn’t hit him once and then stand back to see what he’d do next. You hit him again and again, as often as you could, to make sure he gave up or at least didn’t have the chance to hit you back.

  The landlord of their roominghouse screamed at them to close the door and stop letting out the heat. “What’s all the commotion outside?” he added.

  “I don’t know,” Nieh and Liu Han said together, and then laughed. She’d picked up a good deal of doctrine listening to him. If she showed undue knowledge, the landlord might wonder how she came by it.

  Hsia Shou-Tao sat at a table in the eating room. With him was a pretty young woman in a brocaded silk dress with so many slits in it that Liu Han wondered how she kept from freezing to death. A jar of samshu sat between them. By the foolish expression on Hsia’s face, it was not the first one that had been there.

  “Is all well?” he called to Nieh Ho-T’ing.

  “I think so,�
�� Nieh answered, with a pointed glance toward Hsia’s companion. She glared at him like a cat with ruffled fur. If she wasn’t a security risk, Liu Han had never seen one. Could Hsia keep his mouth shut after he took her upstairs to see her body? Liu Han hoped so, but hope wasn’t enough in a game of this importance.

  “Join us?” Hsia Shou-Tao asked.

  “No, thank you,” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered, rather coldly. The pretty girl muttered something through her painted lips; Liu Han had no doubt it wasn’t a compliment. She was pleased at Nieh’s answer. She didn’t want to sit at the same table with Hsia, even if he had another woman to distract him from her.

  She and Nieh Ho-T’ing went to the stairway together. She saw Hsia smirking at the two of them, which only made her more angry with him. The stairwell was cold and dark. She stumbled. Nieh caught her elbow before she could fall. “Thank you,” she said.

  “My pleasure,” he answered, and then laughed at himself. “I sound like a perfect member of the bourgeoisie, don’t I? But it is my pleasure. This was your idea, Comrade. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself just as it begins to unfold. You deserve the credit.”

  “Thank you,” she said again. Her room was a couple of floors higher than Nieh’s, but she didn’t mind when he walked up past his floor with her. She wondered why she didn’t. Maybe she’d decided to pay Hsia Shou-Tao back for that smirk, maybe she felt filled with the triumph of finally paying back the scaly devils for all they’d done to her. Her mouth twisted. Maybe, after so long, she just wanted a man. Her hand was all right in its way—it knew exactly what she liked—but it couldn’t hold her and hug her afterwards. Of course, not all men did that, either, but the hope was always there.

  She’d told Nieh she didn’t want to lie with him. That hadn’t been long ago, either. Neither of them mentioned it now. Liu Han opened the door to her room. A lamp still flickered in there. She used the flame to light the little brazier that gave the place such heat as it had—not much.

  Even after she’d shut the door behind them, Nieh Ho-T’ing still hesitated. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s better than all right, in fact.”

  That made him smile. He didn’t smile often. When he did, his whole face changed. It wasn’t hard and watchful—committed—any more. Not only did he seem happy, he seemed surprised at being happy, as if he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react.

  “No k’ang to lie on up here,” Liu Han said sadly. “Even with blankets”—she pointed to the mound under which she burrowed—“it won’t be warm.”

  “We’ll have to make it warm, then,” he said, and smiled that uncertain smile once more. It grew broader when she smiled back at him. He glanced toward the little brass lamp. “Shall I blow that out?”

  “I don’t think it matters,” she answered. “We’re going to be covered up anyhow.”

  “True.” But Nieh did blow out the lamp, plunging the room into blackness. Liu Han got out of her layers of clothes as fast as she could and dove beneath the covers. Nieh almost stepped on the bedding—and her—when he walked over in the dark after undressing himself.

  She shivered when he ran his hands up and down her body, partly from excitement and partly because they were cold. But he was warm elsewhere; his erection rubbed against her thigh. When she took him in her hand for a moment, he shivered, too, probably for both the reasons she had.

  He kissed her. She stroked his cheek. It was almost as smooth as her own, not furry with beard or rough with the nubs of scraped-off whisker as Bobby Fiore’s had been. Nieh’s chest was smooth and hairless, too, with nothing like the black jungle the American had had growing there. When she’d first been forced to couple with Bobby Fiore, she’d thought that mat of hair disgusting. Then she’d got used to it. Now smoothness felt strange.

  His mouth was warm, too. It came down on her left breast. His tongue teased her nipple. She sighed and rested a hand on the back of his head. But although the caresses felt good, they also reminded her of the baby—even if it was only a daughter—who should have been nursing there.

  His mouth moved to her other breast. His hand took its place, squeezing her hard enough to be pleasurable and not quite enough to hurt. She sighed again. His other hand was busy between her legs, not yet stroking her most secret places but teasing all around them till she—almost—forgot how cold the room was. He understood patience in a way she’d had to teach to Bobby Fiore.

  After a while, he grew too patient to suit her. She closed her fingers around him, gently tugging back his foreskin. He gasped and scrambled onto her. She spread her legs and arched her back to make his entry easy.

  The darkness was so complete, she could not see his face above hers. It didn’t matter. She knew that, when their lips weren’t joined, it had to bear the same intent, inward, searching expression as her own. His hips bucked steadily, driving him in and out of her.

  Her breath came in short gasps, as if she’d run a long way. Nieh grunted and shuddered, but kept moving inside her until, a moment later, she also quivered in release. Then, still thoughtful, he rolled off beside her so his weight, which suddenly seemed much heavier, wouldn’t flatten her.

  He touched her cheek. “You are everything I thought you’d be, and more besides,” he said.

  The words warmed her and left her wary at the same time. “I am not going to be your toy or your—what do you say?—your lackey, that’s it, because of what we just did,” she said. Her voice came out sharper than she’d intended, but that was all right, too. He needed to know he couldn’t take advantage of her, in bed or out, because she’d lain with him once. The Communists preached of better days for women. As she’d seen from Hsia Shou-Tao, not all of them meant what they said. She thought Nieh was different. Now she’d find out

  “Fair enough,” he said. He sounded wintry, too, as he went on, “And just because you’ve lain down with me, don’t think I will press for your schemes unless they have merit.” Then he softened that by leaning up on an elbow and kissing her. “The one tonight certainly did.”

  “I am glad you think so,” she said. Had she been wondering if she could use her body to influence Nieh and advance her own position among the revolutionaries who fought the scaly devils? She had to admit to herself that it had crossed her mind. In a man’s world, a woman’s body was sometimes the only weapon she had—and she did want to rise to where all her ideas were taken seriously, the better to avenge herself against the little devils. What Nieh said marked a better way, though. “Comrade, we have a bargain.”

  As if by accident, his hands strayed along her body toward the joining of her legs. “How shall we seal it?” he asked slyly.

  She hesitated, feeling him stir against her side and start to rise. She wouldn’t have minded another round, but—“Not like that,” she said, and took his hand away. “Didn’t you listen to what I told you?”

  To her relief, he didn’t sound angry when he answered, “I listened, but sometimes—often—people do nothing but mouth empty phrases. The Kuomintang, for instance, calls itself a revolutionary party.” His contemptuous snort showed what he thought of that. “But you, Liu Han, you mean what you say. This is something I need to know.”

  “Good enough,” Liu Han said after a moment “We seal it like this, then.” Now she kissed him. “It is enough for now.”

  The Emperor’s holographic image beamed down on the shiplords’ celebration aboard the 127th Emperor Hetto. On three worlds of the Empire, billions from the Race, the Rabotevs, and the Hallessi were celebrating their sovereign’s hatching day at just this moment. Knowing that made Atvar feel part of the great community the Race had built, not the embattled outsider into which he sometimes seemed transformed by the pestilential war on Tosev 3.

  Some of the shiplords were behaving so boisterously, he wondered whether they’d illicitly tasted ginger before their shuttlecraft brought them here to the bannership. He didn’t like to think high-ranking commanders could fall victim to the insidious Tosevite herb, but on Tosev 3 wh
at he liked and the truth were often—too often—far apart.

  There over to one side floated Kirel, his usual standoffishness forgotten, talking animatedly with a couple of males who had been of Straha’s faction back in the days when Straha was around to have a faction. Atvar was glad to see his chief subordinate happier than usual, less glad to see the company with which he chose to enjoy himself. On the other fork of the tongue, a considerable majority of males had voted for Atvar’s ouster after the SSSR set off its nuclear bomb, so for Kirel to ignore all of them would have left him on good terms with only a few shiplords.

  And there was poor, hardworking Pshing. He had in his hand a squeezebulb filled with the fermented juices of certain Tosevite fruits. The Big Uglies, being unable to enjoy the intoxicating effects of ginger, made do with ethanol and various flavorings. Males of the Race found some of those vile—why anyone, even a Big Ugly, would drink whiskey, was beyond Atvar—but others might be worth exporting to Home after the conquest was complete.

  Atvar drifted over to Pshing, checked himself by snagging a grab ring with the claws of one toe. “How does it feel not to be waking me up to report some disaster?” he asked.

  Pshing’s eyes didn’t quite track. He’d probably had several bulbs full of red wine already. “Exalted Fleetlord, it feels wonderful!” he exclaimed, tacking on an emphatic cough that threatened to become a coughing fit “Stinking Big Uglies are quiet for a change.”

  “Indeed,” Atvar said. “Now if only they remain so.” He floated toward the console that dispensed bulbs of potations brought from Home, and toward the local drinks kept in bins with lids alongside it. He didn’t want to celebrate the Emperor’s hatching day with a product of Tosev 3. The Emperor represented Home and all it stood for. Far better to drink hudipar-berry brandy, then, than wine.

  The male who came into the chamber was conspicuous not only for his subdued body paint but also for the purposeful way he went about looking for Atvar. The fleetlord’s momentary good spirits flickered and blew out Rokois was Pshing’s subordinate, taking the duty for the adjutant so he could enjoy himself. If Rokois was here, instead of waiting in front of a communicator, something had gone wrong—again.