Striking the Balance w-4

by Harry Turtledove

  By the look in her eye, she’d gained the backing she needed to get her motion adopted. She’d done that quietly, behind his back. Hsia Shou-Tao hadn’t got wind of it, either. “You’re good,” he said in genuine admiration. “You’re very good.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said matter-of-factly, to herself as much as to him. Then her expression softened a little. “Thank you for putting me in a place where I’ve had the chance to show I could be.”

  Shewas very good. She was even letting him down easy, making sure he didn’t stay angry at her. And she was doing it as a man would, with words, rather than using her body to win the point. He didn’t think it was because she didn’t fancy him any more; it was just another way for her to show him what she could do.

  He smiled at her. She looked back in wary surprise. “The two of us will go far if we stick together,” he said. She thought about that, then nodded. Only later did he wonder whether he would be guiding her down his track or she guiding him down hers.

  The train groaned to a stop. Ussmak had never ridden on such a hideous conveyance in all his life. Back on Home, rail transport was fast, smooth, and nearly silent; thanks to magnetic levitation, trains never actually touched the rails over which they traveled. It wasn’t like that here. He felt every crosstie, every rail joint, that jounced the train as it slowly chugged along. His landcruiser had had a smoother, more pleasant ride on the worst broken terrain than the train did in its own roadbed.

  He let out a soft, sad hissing sigh. “If I’d had my wits about me, I never would have sunk my teeth into that Lidov creature. Ah, well-that’s what ginger does to a male.”

  One of the other males jammed into the compartment with him, a riflemale named Oyyag, said, “At least you got to bite one of the stinking Big Uglies. Most of us just got squeezed dry and used up.”

  A chorus of agreement rose from the others. To them, Ussmak was a hero of sorts, precisely because he’d managed to strike a blow against the SSSR even after the local Big Uglies got him in their claws. It was an honor he could have done without. The Tosevites knew why he was on this train, too, and treated him worse because of it. As Oyyag had said, the Soviets had simply run out of questions to put to most of the captive males. Not Ussmak, though.

  Two Big Uglies carrying automatic weapons opened the door to the compartment. “Out! Out!” they bawled in the Russkis’ ugly language. That was a word Ussmak had learned. He hadn’t learned many, but some of his fellows had been captive for a long time. They translated for those who, like him, were new-caught and innocent.

  Out he went. The corridor was chilly. The Tosevites pressed back against the outer wall, making sure no males could come close and attack them. Nobody was foolhardy enough to try; no one who had any experience in the SSSR could doubt that the Big Uglies would cheerfully shoot any male who gave them the least bit of trouble.

  The outer door at the far end of the railroad car was open. Ussmak made for it. He was used to being jammed into close quarters with many of his fellow males-he’d been a landcruiser crewmale, after all-but a little open space was welcome now and then, too. “Maybe they’ll feed us better here than they did on the train,” he said hopefully.

  “Silence!” one of the weapon-toting guards bawled in the Russki language. He’d learned that command, too. He shut up.

  If the corridor had been chilly, it was downright cold outside. Ussmak rapidly swiveled his eye turrets, wondering what sort of place this would be. It was certainly different from the battered city of Moskva, where he’d been brought after yielding up his base to the males of the SSSR. He’d got to see some on that journey, but he’d been a collaborator then, not a prisoner.

  Dark green Tosevite trees grew in great profusion all around the open area where the train had halted. He opened his mouth a crack to let his tongue drink in their scent. It was tangy and spicy and almost put him in mind of ginger. He wished he had a taste-anything to take his mind off his predicament. He wouldn’t try to attack these Big Ugly guards. Well, he didn’t think he would, anyhow.

  The Big Uglies’ shouts and gestures sent him and his comrades in misery skittering through a gateway in a fence made of many strands of the fanged stuff Tosevites used in place of razor wire, and toward some rough buildings of new, raw timber not far away. Other, more weathered buildings lay farther off, separated from these by more wire with fangs. Big Uglies in stained and faded coverings stared toward him and his companions from the grounds around those old buildings.

  Ussmak didn’t have much chance to look at them. Guards yelled and waved some more to show him which way to go. Some held automatic weapons, too; others controlled snarling animals with mouths full of big, sharp yellow teeth. Ussmak had seen those Tosevite beasts before. He’d had one with an explosive charge strapped to its back run under his landcruiser, blow itself up, and blow a track off the armored fighting vehicle. If the Big Uglies could train them to do that, he was sure they could train them to run over and bite males of the Race who got out of line, too.

  He didn’t get out of line, literally or figuratively. Along with the rest of the males from the train, he went into the building to which he’d been steered. He gave it the same swift, eye-swiveling inspection he’d used on the terrain surrounding it. Compared to the box in which he’d been stored in the Moskva prison, compared to the packed compartment in which he’d ridden from that prison to this place, it was spacious and luxurious. Compared to any other living quarters, even the miserable Tosevite barracks he’d had to inhabit in Besancon, it gave squalor a new synonym.

  There was a small open space in the center of this barracks, with a metal contraption in the middle of it. A guard used an iron poker to open a door on the device, then flung some black stones into the fire inside it. Only when he saw the fire did Ussmak realize the thing was supposed to be a stove.

  Surrounding it were row on row of bunks, five and six spaces high, built to a size that conformed to the dimensions of the Race, not those of the Big Uglies. As males hurried to get spaces of their own, the impression of roominess the barracks had given disappeared. They would be desperately crowded in here, too.

  A guard shouted something at Ussmak. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but he got moving, which seemed to satisfy the Big Ugly. He claimed a third-tier bunk in the second row of frames away from the stove. That was as close as he could get; he hoped it would be close enough. Having served in Siberia, he had an awed respect for the extremes Tosevite weather could produce.

  The bunk’s sleeping platform was of bare boards, with a single smelly blanket-probably woven from the hairs of some native beast, he thought with distaste-in case that joke of a stove did not put out enough warmth. That struck Ussmak as likely. Next to nothing the Tosevites did worked the way it was supposed to, except when intended to inflict suffering. Then they managed fine.

  Oyyag scrambled up into the bunk above his. “What will they do with us, superior sir?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, either,” Ussmak answered. As a former land-cruiser driver, he did outrank the riflemale. But even males of the race whose body paint was fancier than his often awarded him that honorific salute now that they were captives together. None of them had ever led a mutiny or commanded a base after overcoming legitimate authority.

  What they don’t know is how much I wish I hadn’t done it,Ussmak thought sadly,and how much more I wish I hadn’t yielded the base up to Soviet troops once it was in my claws. Wishes did as much good as they usually did.

  The barracks quickly filled with males. As soon as the last new arrivals found bunks-bunks so far away from the stove that Ussmak pitied them when night came-another male and two Big Uglies came into the doorway and stood there waiting to be noticed. As they were, the barracks slowly quieted.

  Ussmak studied the newcomers with interest. The male of the Race carried himself like someone who was someone, though his body paint had been faded and abraded till little remained by which to judge his rank. The Tosevites with him pres
ented an interesting contrast. One wore the type of cloth wrappings typical of the guards who had oppressed Ussmak ever since he went into captivity. The other, though, had the ragged accouterments of the males who had watched from the far side of the fanged-wire fence as Ussmak and his colleagues arrived. He’d also let the hair grow out on his face, which to Ussmak made him look even more scruffy than Tosevites normally did.

  The male spoke: “I am Fsseffel. Once I was an infantry combat vehicle band commander. Now I am headmale of Race Barracks One.” He paused; the Big Ugly with the fuzz on his face spoke in the Russki language to the one who wore the official-style cloth wrappings.Interpreter, Ussmak realized. He got the idea that a Big Ugly who understood his language might be a useful fellow with whom to become acquainted.

  Fsseffel resumed: “Males of the Race, you are here to labor for the males of the SSSR. This will henceforth be your sole function.” He paused to let that sink in, and for translation, then went on, “How well you work, how much you produce, will determine how well you are fed.”

  “That’s barbarous,” Oyyag whispered to Ussmak.

  “You expect Big Uglies to behave like civilized beings?” Ussmak whispered back. Then he waved Oyyag to silence; Fsseffel was still talking-

  “You will now choose for yourselves a headmale for this, Race Barracks Three. This male will be your interface with the Russki males of the People’s Commissariat for the Interior, the Tosevite organization responsible for administration of this camp.” He paused again to let the interpreter speak to the Big Ugly from the NKVD. “Choose wisely, I urge you.” He tacked an emphatic cough onto that. “If you do not make a selection, one will be made for you, more or less at random. Race Barracks Two had this happen. Results have been unsatisfactory. I urge against such a course.”

  Ussmak wondered what sort of unsatisfactory results Fsseffel had in mind. All sorts of nasty possibilities occurred to him: starvation, torture, executions. He hadn’t thought in terms like those before the mutiny. His frame of reference had changed since then, and not for the better.

  Oyyag startled him by shouting, “Ussmak!” A moment later, half the males in the barracks were calling his name. They wanted him for headmale, he realized with something less than delight. That would bring him into constant contact with the Big Uglies, which was the last thing he wanted. He saw no good way to escape, though.

  The Big Ugly with the hairy face said, “Let the male called Ussmak come forward and be recognized.” He was as fluent in the language of the Race as any Tosevite Ussmak had heard. When Ussmak got down from his bunk and walked over to the door, the Big Ugly said, “I greet you, Ussmak. We will be working with each other in days to come. I am David Nussboym.”

  “I greet you, David Nussboym,” Ussmak said, although he would rather not have made the Tosevite’s acquaintance.

  The breeze still brought the alien stink of Cairo to the scent receptors on Atvar’s tongue. But it was a fine mild breeze, and the fleetlord was more prepared to tolerate Tosevite stinks now that he had succeeded in dealing the Big Uglies a heavy blow.

  He called up the Florida situation map on one of the computers installed in his Tosevite lodging. “We’ve broken the Americans here,” he told Kirel, pointing to the map. “The bomb created a gap, and we’ve poured through it. Now they flee before us, as they did in the early days of the conquest. Our possession of the peninsula seems assured.”

  “Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said, but then tempered that by adding, “A pity the conquest does not proceed elsewhere as it did in the early days.”

  Atvar did not care to dwell on that unless forcibly reminded of it. After the Americans exploded their own nuclear device outside Denver, the Race’s attack there had bogged down. It had already proved more expensive than calculations predicted, as attacks against Big Ugly strongpoints had a way of doing. The bomb had broken the southern prong of the attack, and weakened the center and north as well, because the local commander had shifted forces southward to help exploit what had looked like an opening. An opening it had been-the opening of a trap.

  Kirel said, “Exalted Fleetlord, what are we to make of this latest communication from the SSSR? Its leadership is certainly arrogant enough, demanding that we quit its territory as a precondition for peace.”

  “That is-that must be-a loud bluff,” Atvar replied. “The only nuclear weapon the SSSR was able to fabricate came from plutonium stolen from us. That the not-empire has failed to produce another indicates to our technical analysts its inability to do so. Inform the Big Ugly called Molotov and his master the Great Stalin-great compared to what?” the fleetlord added with a derisive snort, “-that the SSSR is in no position to make demands of us that it cannot enforce on the battlefield.”

  “It shall be done,” Kirel said.

  Atvar warmed to the subject: “In fact, the success of our retaliatory bomb once more makes me wonder if we should not employ these weapons more widely than we have in the past.”

  “Not in the SSSR, surely, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said in some alarm. “The broad expanse of land there is vulnerable to widespread radioactive pollution, and would otherwise be highly satisfactory for agriculture and herding for our colonists.”

  “In purely military terms, this would be a much more highly satisfactory campaign if we could ignore the requirements of the colonization fleet,” Atvar answered resentfully. He sighed. “Unfortunately, we cannot. Were it not for the colonization fleet, this conquest fleet would have no point. The analysts agree with you: large-scale nuclear bombing of the SSSR, however tempting it would be to rid this planet of the Emperor-murdering clique now governing that not-empire, would create more long-term damage than the military advantage we would gain could offset.”

  “I have also studied these analyses,” Kirel said, which raised Atvar’s suspicions: was Kirel trying to prepare himself to wear a fleetlord’s body paint? But he hadn’t done anything about which Atvar could take exception, so the fleetlord waited for him to go on. He did: “They state that there are certain areas where nuclear weapons may successfully be employed in an offensive role without undue damage to the planet.”

  Atvar’s suspicion diminished, not least because Kirel had agreed with him. He said, “If we do employ nuclear weapons on our own behalf rather than as retaliation for Tosevite outrages, we will also make ourselves appear less predictable and more dangerous to the Big Uglies. This may have a political effect out of proportion to the actual military power we employ.”

  “Again, Exalted Fleetlord, this is truth,” Kirel said. “Letting the Big Uglies know we, too, can be unpredictable may prove, as you say, a matter of considerable importance for us.”

  “That is a vital point,” Atvar agreed. “We cannot predict the actions of the Big Uglies even with all the electronics at our disposal, while they, limited as they are in such matters, often anticipate what we intend to do, with results all too frequently embarrassing for us.”

  Finding Kirel in accord with him, Atvar blanked the map of Florida and summoned another from the computer to take its place. “This large island-or perhaps it is a small continent, but let the planetologists have the final say there-lying to the southeast of the main continental mass had huge tracts of land ideally suited for settlement by the Race and little used by the Big Uglies, most of whose habitations cling to the damper eastern coast. Yet from those bases they continually stage annoying raids on us. All conventional efforts to suppress these raids have proved useless. This might prove the ideal site for nuclear intervention.”

  “Well said, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel answered. “If we do strike those areas with nuclear weapons, most of the radioactive fallout they produce will be blown out to sea, and seas the size of those here on Tosev 3 undoubtedly can accommodate such with far less damage than the land.”

  “This planet has altogether too much sea in proportion to its land area,” Atvar agreed. “The planetologists will spend centuries accounting for what makes it so different fr
om Home and the worlds of the Rabotevs and Hallessi.”

  “Let them worry about such things,” Kirel said. “Our job is to make certain they have the opportunityto worry.”

  “Now you have spoken well, Shiplord,” Atvar said, and Kirel stretched out from the rather nervous posture he usually assumed around the fleetlord. Atvar realized he had not given his chief subordinate much in the way of praise lately. That was an error on his part: if they did not work well together, the progress of the conquest would be impeded-and too many things had already impeded the progress of the conquest. Atvar hissed out a sigh. “Had I any conception of the magnitude of the task involved in suppressing resistance on an industrialized world without destroying it in the process, I would have thought long and hard before accepting command.”

  Kirel didn’t answer right away. Had Atvar declined the position, he most likely would have been appointed fleetlord. How much did he want to taste the job? Atvar had never been certain of that, which made his dealings with the shiplord of the conquest fleet’s bannership edgier than they might have been. Kirel had never shown himself to be disloyal, but-

  When the shiplord did speak, he dealt with the tactical situation under discussion, not with Atvar’s latest remark: “Exalted fleetlord, shall we then prepare to use nuclear weapons against these major Tosevite settlements on the island or continent or whatever it may be?” He leaned forward to read the toponyms on the map so as to avoid any possible mistakes. “Against Sydney and Melbourne, I mean?”

  Atvar leaned forward, too, to check the sites for himself. “Yes, those are the ones. Begin preparations as expeditiously as possible.”

  “Exalted Fleetlord, it shall be done.”