Striking the Balance w-4

by Harry Turtledove

  Mori studied him for a while before answering. The eastern devil was somewhere not far from forty, perhaps a couple of years older than Nieh. His skin was slightly darker, his features slightly sharper, than a Chinese was likely to have. That didn’t bother Nieh nearly so much as Mori’s automatic assumption of his own superiority.Barbarian, Nieh thought scornfully, secure in his knowledge that China was the one true home of culture and civilization. But even a barbarian could be useful.

  “What if we do?” Mori said. “If you want one of those shells, what will you give us for it?”

  Capitalist,Nieh thought.Imperialist. If all you care about is profit, you don’t deserve even that. Aloud, though, he answered, “I can give you the names of two men you think reliable who are in fact Kuomintang spies.”

  Mori smiled at him. It was not a pleasant smile. “Just the other day, the Kuomintang offered to sell me the names of three Communists.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Nieh said. “We have been known to give the names of Japanese sympathizers to the Kuomintang.”

  “Miserable war,” Mori said. Just for a moment, the two men understood each other completely. Then Mori asked. “And when you dicker with the little devils, whom do you sell to them?”

  “Why, the Kuomintang, of course,” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered. “When the war with you and the scaly devils is over, the reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries will still be here. We shall deal with them. They think they will deal with us, but the historical dialectic shows they are mistaken.”

  “You are mistaken if you think Japanese cannot enforce on China a government friendly to its wishes-leaving the little scaly devils out of the picture, of course,” Major Mori said.

  “Whenever your troops and ours meet in battle, yours always come off second best.”

  “And what has that got to do with the price of rice?” Nieh asked in honest bewilderment. “Eventually you will get sick of winning expensive battles and being nibbled to death inside areas you think you control, and then you will go away and leave China alone. The only reason you win now is that you started using the machines of the foreign devils”-by which he meant Europeans-“before we did. We will have our own factories one day, and then-”

  Mori threw back his head and laughed, a deliberate effort to be insulting.Go ahead, Nieh thought.Laugh now. One fine day the revolution will cross the sea to your islands, too. Japan had a large urban proletariat, exploited workers with nothing to offer but their labor, as interchangeable to a big capitalist as so many cogs and gears. They would be dry tinder for the flame of class warfare. But not yet-the Lizards remained to be beaten first.

  Nieh said, “Are we agreed on the price of one of these shells?”

  “Not yet,” the Japanese answered. “Information is useful, yes, but we need food, too. Send us rice, send us noodles, send usshoyu, send us pork or chicken. Do this and we will give you as many 150mm shells as you can use, whatever you plan to do with them.”

  They started dickering about how much food would buy Nieh how many shells, and when and how to arrange deliveries. As he had before, Nieh kept the contempt he felt from showing. On the Long March, he’d dickered with warlords’ officers and bandit chieftains over things like this. In China now, though, what survived of the once-mighty Imperial Japanese Army was reduced to bandit status; the Japanese couldn’t do much more than prey on the countryside, and they didn’t even do that well, not if they were trading munitions for food.

  Nieh resolved not to tell Liu Han any details about how he was negotiating with the Japanese. Her hatred for them was personal, as it was for the little devils. Nieh hated the Japanese and the scaly devils, too, with an ideological purity his woman could never hope to match. But she had imagination, and came up with ways to hurt the enemies of the People’s Liberation Army and the Communist Party that he would never have dreamt of. Success, especially among those who did not form large-scale policy, could make up for a lack of ideological purity-for a while, anyhow.

  Major Mon was not the best bargainer Nieh had ever faced. Two Chinese out of three could have got more supplies from him than Mori did. He gave a mental shrug. Well, that was Mori’s fault, for being a barbarous eastern devil. The Japanese made good soldiers, but not much else.

  As far as he was concerned, the same went for the little scaly devils. They could conquer, but seemed to have no idea how to hold down a rebellious land once under their control. They didn’t even use the murder and terror the Japanese had taken for granted. As far as Nieh could tell, all they did was reward collaborators, and that was not enough.

  “Excellent!” Major Mori exclaimed when the haggling was over. He slapped his belly. “We will eat well for a time.” The military tunic he wore hung on him like a tent. He might once have been a heavyset man. No more.

  “And we will have a present for the little devils one day before too long,” Nieh replied. Even if he could do what he hoped with the 150mm shells, he aimed to try to blame it on the Kuomintang. Liu Han would not approve of that; she’d want the Japanese to receive the scaly devils’ wrath. But, as Nieh had said, the Kuomintang was more dangerous in the long run.

  So long as the little scaly devils did not blame the People’s Liberation Army for the attacks, talks with them could go on unimpeded. Those talks had been building in size and importance for some time now; they needed to continue. Something of greater substance might come from them than the stalled negotiations about Liu Han’s baby. Nieh hoped so, at any rate.

  He sighed. If he’d had his choice, the People’s Liberation Army would have driven the Japanese and the scaly devils out of China altogether. He didn’t have his choice, though. If he’d ever needed reminding of that, the Long March would have given it to him. You did what you had to do. After that. If you were lucky, you got the chance to do what you wanted to do.

  He bowed to Major Mori. The major returned the compliment. “Miserable war,” Nieh said again. Mori nodded.But the workers and peasants will win it, here in China and all over the world, Nieh thought. He glanced at the Japanese officer. Maybe Mori was thinking victorious thoughts, too. Well. If he was, he was wrong. Nieh had the dialectic to prove it.

  Mordechai Anielewicz stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the building on Lutomierska Street. “I can deal with my enemies,” he said. “The Nazis and Lizards are not a problem, not like that. My friends, now-” He rolled his eyes in theatrical despair.“Vay iz mir!”

  Bertha Fleishman laughed. She was a year or two older then Mordechai, and normally so colorless that the Jewish resistance of Lodz often used her to pick up information: you had trouble noticing she was there. But her laugh stood out. She had a good laugh, one that invited everybody around to share the joke.

  Now she said, “Actually, we’ve done pretty well, all things considered. The Lizards haven’t been able to get much through Lodz to throw at the Nazis.” She paused. “Of course, not everyone would say this is a good thing.”

  “I know.” Anielewicz grimaced. “I don’t say it’s a good thing myself. This is even worse than being caught between the Nazis and the Russians. Whoever wins,we lose.”

  “The Germans are living up to their promise not to attack Lodz so long as we keep the Lizards from mounting any moves from here,” Bertha said. “They haven’t thrown any of their rocket bombs at us lately, either.”

  “For which God be thanked,” Anielewicz said. Before the war, he’d been a secular man. That hadn’t mattered to the Nazis, who’d dumped him into the Warsaw ghetto all the same. What he’d seen there, what he’d seen since, had left him convinced he couldn’t live without God after all. What would have been ironic in 1938 came out sincere today.

  “We’re useful to them at the moment.” Bertha Fleishman’s mouth turned down. “Even that’s progress. Before, we were working in their factories, making all kinds of things for them, and they slaughtered us anyhow.”

  “I know.” Mordechai kicked at the paving stones. “I wonder if they tried out their po
ison gas on Jews before they started using it against the Lizards.” He didn’t want to think about that. If he let himself brood on it, he’d wonder why he was helping Hitler, Himmler, and their henchmen against the Lizards. Then he’d take a look at Bunim and the other Lizard officials in Lodz and be sure he couldn’t help them beat the Germans and, in so doing, subject all of mankind.

  “It isn’t fair,” Bertha said. “Has anyone since the world began ever been in such a predicament?”

  “We’re the Chosen People,” Anielewicz answered with a shrug. “If you think I’d be just as glad if we hadn’t been chosen for this, though, you’re right.”

  “Speaking of which, aren’t the Lizards supposed to be moving a convoy of lorries through town in about half an hour?” Bertha asked. Since she was the one who’d come up with that bit of intelligence, the question was rhetorical. She smiled. “Shall we go watch the fun?”

  The convoy was supposed to head north up Franciszkanska Street, to bring reinforcements to the Lizards who were trying to cut the base off one of the German prongs advancing to either side of Lodz. The Lizards had not had much luck with their counter-movements. What they would do when they figured out why would be interesting-and likely unpleasant.

  Jews and Poles stood on the corner of Inflancka and Franciszkanska and in the streets themselves, chatting, chaffering, and carrying on their business as they would have on any other day. It was a scene that might almost have come from the time before the war, save that so many of the men-and a few of the women-had rifles on their backs or in their hands. Cheating, these days, was liable to meet with swift and summary punishment.

  About fifteen minutes before the convoy was due to come through, human policemen, some Jews, some Poles, began trying to clear the street. Anielewicz watched them-especially the Jews-with undisguised loathing. The Jewish police-thugs would have been a better word for them-owed allegiance to Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who had been Eldest of the Jews when the Lodz ghetto was in Nazi hands and still ran it for the Lizards. They still wore the long coats, shiny-brimmed caps, and red-white-and-black rank armbands the Germans had given them, too. Maybe it made them feel important. It made everyone else despise them.

  They didn’t have much luck with their street clearing, either. They were armed with nothing better than truncheons. That had been intimidating back in the days when the Nazis held Lodz. It did not do much, though, to shift men with rifles. Anielewicz knew the Jewish police had been screaming at the Lizards for guns of their own. What had been in place before the Lizards arrived, though, seemed to be like the Torah to them: not to be changed or interfered with by mere mortals. The police remained without firearms.

  An old Jewish man driving a horse-drawn wagon that carried tables stacked four and five high tried to cross Franciszkanska on Inflancka just as a Polish lorry-driver rumbled down Franciszkanska with a load of empty tin milk cans. The Pole tried to slow down, but seemed to be having trouble with his brakes. His lorry crashed into the old Jew’s wagon.

  The racket that immediately followed the collision was louder than the crash itself. The rear gate of the lorry hadn’t been well secured, so milk cans clattered down onto the pavement and started rolling away. As best Mordechai could see, the load of tables hadn’t been secured at all. They landed in the street, too. Some of them broke, some didn’t.

  By what looked like a miracle, the wagon driver hadn’t been hurt. Surprisingly agile for an old man, he jumped down from his beast and ran up to the driver’s side of the lorry, screaming abuse in Yiddish.

  “Shut up, you damned kike!” the Pole answered in his own language. “Stinking old Christ-killer, you’ve got your nerve, yelling at me.”

  “I’d yell at your father, except even your mother doesn’t know who he is,” the Jew retorted.

  The Polish lorry-driver jumped out of the cab and grabbed the Jew. In a moment, they were wrestling on the ground. Jews and Poles both ran toward the altercation. Here and there, some of them bumped into one another and started fresh trouble.

  Policemen-Jews and Poles-blew furiously on whistles and waded into the crowd, trying to clear it. Some of them got drawn into fistfights, too. Mordechai Anielewicz and Bertha Fleishman watched the unfolding chaos with eyebrows raised high.

  Into the chaos came the Lizards’ motor convoy. Some of their lorries were of their own manufacture, others human products they’d appropriated. A Lizard lorry horn made a noise that reminded Mordechai of what you’d get if you dropped a bucket of water onto a red-hot iron plate. When you added in the klaxons from the Opels and other human-made lorries, the din became truly dreadful.

  No one in the street paid the least attention to it. As far as the Jews and Poles were concerned, the impatient Lizards might have been back on the far side of the moon, or wherever it was they came from. “What a pity,” Mordechai said. “It looks like the Lizards are going to be delayed.”

  “That’s terrible,” Bertha said in the same solemn tones he’d used. Without warning, both of them started to laugh. In a low voice, Bertha went on, “This worked out even better than we thought it would.”

  “So it did,” Anielewicz agreed. “Yitzkhak and Boleslaw both deserve those statues the Americans give their best cinema actors every year.”

  Bertha Fleishman’s brown eyes twinkled. “No, they couldn’t have played that much better if they’d rehearsed it for years, could they? The rest of our people-and also theArmija Krajowamen,” she admitted, “are doing nicely, too.”

  “Good thing most of the people at this corner really do belong to us or the Polish Home Army,” Mordechai said. “Otherwise we’d have a real riot on our hands, not a scripted one.”

  “I am glad no one’s decided to pull a rifle off his back and use it,” Bertha said. “Not everybody here knows we’re playing a game.”

  “That’s true,” Anielewicz said. “The police don’t, and the Lizard lorry drivers don’t, either.” He pointed back to the rear of the long, stalled column of motor vehicles. “Oh, look. Some of them look like they’re trying to turn around and use a different route to get out of town.”

  Bertha shaded her eyes so she could see better. “So they are. But they seem to be having some trouble, too. I wonder who started an argument way down there. Whoever it was, he certainly managed to pull a lot of people into the street in a hurry.”

  “He certainly did.” Mordechai grinned at her. She was grinning back. Maybe she wasn’t beautiful, but he certainly liked the way she looked when she was happy like this. “I don’t think those poor Lizard lorries will be able to go anywhere for quite a while.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.” Bertha sighed theatrically. “Isn’t it a pity?” She and Mordechai laughed again.

  Lizards weren’t what you’d call big to begin with. Even as Lizards went, Straha was on the shortish side; a husky nine-year-old would have overtopped him. With Lizards as with people, though, size had little to do with force of personality. Whenever Sam Yeager got to talking with the former shiplord of the206th Emperor Yower, he needed only a couple of minutes to forget that Straha was hardly more than half his size.

  “By not falling at once, you Big Uglies presented Atvar the brain-addled fleetlord with a problem he will not be able to solve,” Straha declared. “At the time, I urged him to strike a series of blows against you so strong that you would have no choice but to yield to the Race. Did he heed me? He did not!” Straha’s emphatic cough was a masterpiece of rudeness.

  “Why didn’t he?” Yeager asked. “I’ve always wondered about that. The Race never seemed to want to turn up the pressure more than one notch at a time. That let us-how would I say it? — I guessadapt is the word I want.”

  “Truth,” Straha said, with another emphatic cough. “One thing we did not realize until far later than we should have was how adaptable you Tosevites are. Fool that he is, Atvar always intended to come as close as he could to the campaign we would have fought had you been the preindustrial savages we expected you to be
. Even his eye turrets are not entirely locked in place, and he did conclude a greater effort would be called for, but he always did his best to keep the increases to a minimum, so as to have the least possible distortion in the plan with which we came to Tosev 3.”

  “Most of you Lizards are like that, aren’t you?” Sam used mankind’s disparaging name for the Race as casually as Straha used the Race’s handle for humanity. “You don’t much care for change, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Straha said-and, for a Lizard, he was a radical. “If you are in a good situation where you are, why. If you have any sense, would you want to alter it? It would be only too likely to get worse. Change must be most carefully controlled, or it can devastate an entire society.”

  Sam grinned at him. “How do you account for us, then?”

  “Our scholars will spend thousands of years attempting to account for you,” Straha answered. “It could be that, had we not arrived, you would have destroyed yourselves in relatively short order. You were, after all, already working to develop your own atomic weapons, and with those you would have had no trouble rendering this planet uninhabitable. Almost a pity you failed to do so.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Yeager said. “We really love you Lizards a whole bunch, too.” He added an emphatic cough to that, even though he wasn’t sure whether the Race used them for sardonic effect. Straha’s mouth dropped open in amusement, so maybe they did-or maybe the ex-shiplord was laughing at the way Sam mangled his language.

  Straha said, “Like most males of the Race, Atvar is a minimalist.You Big Uglies, now, you are maximalists. In the long term, as I pointed out, this will probably prove disastrous for your species. I cannot imagine you Tosevites building an empire stable for a hundred thousand years. Can you?”

  “Nope,” Sam admitted. The years Straha used were only about half as long as their earthly equivalents, but still-Fifty thousand years ago, people had been living in caves and worrying about mammoths and saber-tooth tigers. Yeager couldn’t begin to imagine what things would be like in another fifty years, let alone fifty thousand.