Upsetting the Balance w-3

by Harry Turtledove

  Nieh slowed down but did not stop. “If I let you out, gentlemen, you will be late on your important journey. Suppose you give me four Mex fifty; I suppose, if I am stingy, my wife and children will not starve on that fare.”

  “Do you hear the gall of this man?” one of the scaly devils’ henchmen said to the other. “He talks of his wife and children, but thinks nothing of ours, who will suffer if we meet his extortionate demands. Anyone who expects to get more than three dollars Mex for such a short journey would surely steal coppers from a blind beggar.”

  “Rich men who refuse to share their bounty-something dreadful will surely happen to them in the next life if not in this one,” Nieh said. “Even four Mex twenty-five would not be altogether without virtue.”

  They finally settled on three Mex dollars seventy-five cents, by which time they’d nearly reached the Hall of Annual Prayers. Nieh scorned the running dogs as inept hagglers; anything over three dollars Mex was too much to pay for that ride. When he worked as a pedicab driver, hebecame a pedicab driver. Anything else, anything less, was dangerous.

  The two lackeys of the scaly devils paid him, alighted, and headed off toward the tall circular building with its domed triple roof of blue tiles. Nieh slowly pedaled away, every now and then jingling a brass bell to try to lure in another fare. He soon did, a worn-looking woman with a straw basket filled to overflowing with chicken feet, rooster combs, giblets, and other bits of meat no one who could afford better would want. She told him to go to a little cookshop in one of Peking’s innumerablehutungs, not to a fancy public building.

  “Your load there will make many tasty soups,” Nieh said. The woman nodded. He hardly haggled with her at all; solidarity between proletarians came ahead of desire for profit. She noticed his generosity and smiled at him. He took note of where her eatery was. The Party needed all the friends it could find, and all the hiding places, too.

  He pedaled back out onto the bigger streets, jangling his bell. He felt dispirited; those two men in Western clothes should have sent him where he wanted to go. If worse came to worst, he might have to head for theP’an T’ao Kung without anyone in his pedicab. Going to the Spiral Peach Palace with an empty pedicab was risky, though. He would be remarked upon. But how long could he wait for just the right fare?

  “Patience,” he said out loud, reminding himself. The revolution was built one small step at a time. If anyone tried to rush it, it would fail. He picked up another meaningless fare, won the haggle without effort, and took the man where he wanted to go.

  Back and forth across the city Nieh pedaled. Sweat soaked through his black cotton tunic and ran down his face from under the straw hat that shielded him from the merciless sun. That sun slid steadily across the sky. Soon it would be evening, and time for Nieh Ho-T’ing to go back to his lodging till morning came again. For a whole cadre of reasons, Nieh did not want to do that.

  “You! Driver!” a fat man shouted imperiously. Anyone fat in Peking these days surely trafficked with the little scaly devils. Nieh zoomed toward him, cutting off another fellow with a pedicab whom he might also have been calling.

  “Where to, superior sir?” he asked as the man climbed in.

  “TheP’an T’ao Kung,” the fat man answered. Springs creaked under him as his large, heavy fundament pressed down on the seat “Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes-just south of the Eastern Wicket Gate,” Nieh answered. “I can take you there for five dollars Mex.”

  “Go.” The fat man waved, disdaining even to dicker. His pudgy face puffed out farther with pride. “I am to meet with the little scaly devils in the Spiral Peach Palace, to show how my factory can work for them.”

  “Eee,you must be a very powerful man,” Nieh said, pedaling harder. “I will get you there safe, never fear.” He raised his voice: “Move, you sluggards! I have here a man who cannot waste the day.”

  Behind him, his passenger shifted smugly on the padded seat, enjoying the face he gained by having his importance publicly proclaimed. Traffic did not vanish for Nieh’s pedicab as he rolled east downHua Erh Shih — Flower Market Street. He hadn’t expected it would. Most of the people on the street would have sworn at Nieh’s passenger had they dared, and desisted only for fear he might have been important enough to get them in trouble if he wanted. Some went out of their way to obstruct Nieh’s progress. In their sandals, he would have done the same.

  Along with the artificial flowers that gave it its name, Flower Market Street also boasted a number of shops that sold cheap costume jewelry. Hsia Shou-Tao probably would have loved the area, for a great many pretty women frequented it. Nieh Ho-T’ing frowned. Hsia was politically progressive, but he remained socially exploitive. The two should not have coexisted in the same man.

  Nieh Ho-T’ing turned north offHua Erh Shih toward the Spiral Peach Palace. It was not a prepossessing building, having only two small rooms, but it was the headquarters of the little scaly devils in charge of turning the output of human factories to their own advantage.

  Nieh steered the pedicab right up to the entranceway of the Spiral Peach Palace. A scaly devil stood guard outside it. Nieh’s passenger dropped five silver Mex dollars into his hand, got down from the pedicab, and strutted over to the guard. He showed him a card and gained entrance to the palace.

  After reaching down to the frame of the pedicab, as if to adjust the chain, Nieh also went over to the guard. “You watch my cab, hey?” he said in slow Chinese. He pointed across the street to a couple of men selling noodles and pork and fish from two big pots. “I go over, get some food, come back, all right?”

  “All right, you go,” the guard said. “You come back fast.”

  “Oh yes, of course I will, superior sir,” Nieh answered, speaking faster now that he saw the guard understood him.

  Several people crowded round the noodle-sellers for late lunch, early supper, or afternoon snack. As soon as he got into the crowd, Nieh let his hat fall onto the back of his neck; the string under his chin held it in place there. Even that small change in his appearance should have been plenty to confuse the guard about exactly who he was. He asked the noodle-sellers their prices, exclaimed in horror at the answer he got, and departed.

  He did not go back to reclaim the pedicab. Instead, he ducked into the first narrow littlehutung he came upon. He took the first chance he got to doff the straw hat and throw it away. All the while, he rapidly walked south and east, turning corners every chance he got. The more distance he put between himself and the Spiral Peach Palace-

  Blam!Even though he’d gone better than a half ali, the blast was plenty to stagger him. Men shouted. Women shrieked in alarm. Nieh looked back over his shoulder. A very satisfactorily thick cloud of smoke and dust was rising from the direction of the Spiral Peach Palace. He and his comrades had loaded more than fifty kilos of high explosive and a timer under the seat of the pedicab and in the steel tubing of the frame. The blast had surely killed the sentry. With luck, it had knocked down the palace and disposed of the little scaly devils who exploited mankind for their own advantage. The little devils needed to remember not every man could be made into a running dog or a traitor.

  He came out on a street big enough to have pedicabs on it, and hailed one for the journey back to his lodging house in the western part of the city. He haggled with the driver for form’s sake, but yielded sooner than he might have had his heart been in the dicker. He knew just how hard the gaunt fellow was working for his coins.

  11

  Teerts sat, worn and depressed, in the debriefing room at the Race’s air base in southern France. He spoke into a recorder: “On this mission, I shelled and bombed targets on the island known by the Big Ugly name of Britain. I returned to base with minimal damage to my aircraft, and inflicted substantial damage on Tosevite males and materiel.”

  Elifrim, the base commandant, asked, “Did you encounter any Tosevite aircraft during your support mission over Britain?”

  “Superior sir, we did,” Teerts
answered. “Our radar identified several Big Ugly killercraft circling at what is for them extreme high altitude. As they were limited to visual search, they spotted neither us nor our missiles, and were shot down without even having the opportunity to take evasive action. Later, at lower altitude, we met more skilled Tosevite raiders. Because we had exhausted our missiles, we had to engage them with cannon fire. Pilot Vemmen in my flight did have his killercraft badly damaged, while I am told two other males in different flights were shot down.”

  Elifrim sighed heavily. “These Tosevite aircraft at high altitudes… They were merely circling? They did not seek to dive on you?”

  “No, superior sir,” Teerts said. “As I say, we knocked them down before they knew we were in the vicinity. I admit it did strike me as a little odd. Most British pilots are more alert. The ones who attacked us at low altitude certainly were. We had to fly slowly then, to enhance the accuracy of weapons delivery, and were only a little faster than their machines, and, frankly, not as maneuverable. That was a difficult encounter.”

  “Your reports of losses in it are correct,” Elifrim said. “It was made more difficult by the fact that you had expended your antiaircraft missiles, was it not?”

  “Yes, certainly,” Teerts said. “But-”

  The commandant overrode him. “But nothing, Flight Leader Teerts. Over the past several days, our forces on the ground in Britain have recovered wreckage from some of these high-altitude circlers. It is their opinion that these aircraft were never piloted, that some sort of automatic device flew them to altitude and set them circling as diversionary targets, with the deliberate intent of inciting our males to expend missiles without bagging skilled Tosevite pilots in exchange.”

  Teerts stared at him. “That’s-one of the most underhanded things I’ve ever heard,” he said slowly. “Superior sir, we cannot afford to ignore aircraft circling above us. If they are not bluffs such as the one you describe, they dive on us and have the potential to hurt us badly.”

  “I am painfully aware of this,” Elifrim said, “and I have no good solution to offer. The British have concluded-and it is a conclusion that strikes me as reasonable-that one of their aircraft, if not piloted, is worth exchanging for one of our missiles. They can produce aircraft faster and more cheaply than we can manufacture missiles. And, by making us use missiles early and on the wrong targets, they improve their pilots’ chances of survival in subsequent encounters.”

  “Truth.” Teerts also sighed. “After my experiences, no Tosevite perfidy should much surprise me.”

  “No Tosevite perfidy should surprise any of us,” the commandant agreed. “I am given to understand that no more missions will be flown in support of the northern pocket in Britain.”

  “I see,” Teerts said slowly. He did, too, and didn’t like what he saw. The Race had lost that battle. Before long, he feared, no flights would be going into the southern pocket of Britain, either. That one wasn’t shrinking, but it wasn’t getting any bigger, either. Resupply by air let it hold its own, but the cost there was high, not just in the males on the ground but in the irreplaceable males and aircraft without which the infantry and armor could not long function.

  “Dismissed, Flight Leader Teerts,” the commandant said.

  Teerts left the debriefing room. Another worn-looking pilot, his body paint smudged, went in to take his place. Teerts headed for the door that led outside. After his interrogations at the hands of the Nipponese, debriefing by an officer of his own kind was so mild as to be hardly worth noticing. Elifrim hadn’t kicked him or slapped him or threatened him with hot things or sharp and pointed things or things that were hot and sharp and pointed or even screamed that he was a liar and would suffer for his lies. What kind of questioning was that supposed to be?

  Tosev shone down brightly on this part of its third world. The weather struck Teerts as about halfway between crisp and mild-better than it was most of the time over most of the planet. Tosev 3 might not have been such a bad place… if it weren’t for the Tosevites.

  Thanks to them, though, the Race was fighting not just for victory here but for survival. Thanks to them, most of the males who’d flown into Britain with such high hopes of knocking a foe out of the war would fly out wounded or wrapped in plastic for final disposal-or would never fly out at all.

  With a deliberate effort of will, Teerts made himself not think about the fiasco Britain had become. But when his eye turrets swiveled in his head to let him look over the air base, he found nothing to cheer him here, either.

  When the Race first came to Tosev 3, it had let its aircraft rest openly on their strips, confident the Big Uglies could not reach them. Now Teerts’ killercraft, like those of his comrades-by the Emperor, like those of the Big Uglies! — huddled in earthen revetments. Antiaircraft-missile emplacements still ringed the base, but they were short of missiles.A good thing the Big Uglies don’t know how short we are, Teerts thought. Sooner or later, though, they’d find out. They had a knack for that. They’d spent so much time and effort spying on one another that, low technology or not, they found ways to figure out what the Race was doing.

  To try to make up for the missile shortage, technicians had slaved Francais antiaircraft cannon to radars provided by the Race. That made the guns far more accurate than they’d been before, but still left them without either the range or the killing power the missiles had had. And the Big Uglies would eventually notice the cannons, and, worse, figure out why they were emplaced. When they did, the revetments would start paying for themselves.

  The debriefing room lay not far from the edge of the air base. Teerts watched a couple of Tosevites shambling along the road that passed by the base. Even by the low standards the Big Uglies set for themselves, these were travel-worn specimens, their clothes (even they needed protection against their home planet’s wretched weather) dirty and stained, their hides grimy. One of them, the bigger one, must have seen war or other misfortune somewhere, for a long scar furrowed one side of his face.

  In Teerts’ mind, that just made the Big Ugly uglier. Plastic surgery techniques on Tosev 3 were as backwards as the other arts on the planet, which struck Teerts as a shame, since Tosev 3 offered the unwary so many chances to maim and disfigure themselves. The Race was used to machines and systems that always worked and never hurt anybody. The Big Uglies just wanted results, and didn’t much care how they got them.

  Teerts understood that better than he would have before he came to Tosev 3, or, to be specific, before the Nipponese captured him. He felt the same restless craving for ginger as the Big Uglies did for everything in their lives. He wanted a taste, he wanted it now, and, as long as he got it, nothing else mattered to him.

  Getting it wasn’t hard, either. Many of the groundcrew males had been here since the Race seized the air base. They’d had plenty of time to make connections with Tosevites who could supply what they needed. Teerts had feared only the Nipponese knew about the herb to which they’d addicted him, but it seemed almost weed-common all over Tosev 3.

  And, to the Big Uglies, it was nothing more than a condiment. Teerts’ mouth fell open. What irony! The Tosevites were biologically incapable of appreciating far and away the best thing their miserable planet produced.

  He spied a fuel specialist and stepped out into the male’s path. “How may I help you, superior sir?” the specialist asked. His words were all they should have been, but his tone was knowing, cynical.

  “My engines could use a cleaning additive, I think,” Teerts answered. The code was clumsy, but worked well enough that, by all accounts, no one here had got in trouble for using ginger. There were horror stories of whole bases closed down and personnel sent to punishment. When ginger-users got caught, those who caught them were disinclined to mercy.

  “Think you’ve got some contaminants in your hydrogen line, do you, superior sir?” the specialist asked. “Well, computer analysis should be able to tell whether you’re right or wrong. Come with me; we’ll check it out.”
>
  The terminal to which the fuel specialist led Teerts was networked to all the others at the air base, and to a mainframe in one of the starships that had landed in southern France. The code the specialist punched into it had nothing to do with fuel analysis. It went somewhere into the accounting section of the mainframe.

  “How far out of spec are your engines performing?” the male asked.

  “At least thirty percent,” Teerts answered. He keyed the figure into the computer. It unobtrusively arranged for him to transfer thirty percent of his last pay period’s income to the fuel specialist’s account. No one had ever asked questions about such transactions, not at this air base. Teerts suspected that meant a real live male in the accounting department was suppressing fund transfer data to make sure no one asked questions. He wondered whether the male got paid off in money or in ginger. He knew which he would rather have had.

  “There you are, superior sir. See? Analysis shows your problem’s not too serious,” the fuel specialist said, continuing the charade. “But here’s your additive, just in case.” He shut down the terminal, reached into a pouch on his belt, and passed Teerts several small plastic vials filled with brownish powder.

  “Ah. Thank you very much.” Teerts stowed them in one of his own pouches. As soon as he got some privacy, this cold, wet mudball of a planet would have the chance to redeem itself.

  Walking with Friedrich through the streets of Lodz made Mordechai Anielewicz feel he was walking alongside a beast of prey that had developed a taste for human flesh and might turn on him at any moment The comparison wasn’t altogether accurate, but it wasn’t altogether wrong, either. He didn’t know what Friedrich had done in the war, or in the time between the German conquest of Poland and the invasion of the Lizards.

  Whatever he’d done, Friedrich had sense enough to keep his mouth shut now, even with Jews swarming all about him. The Lodz ghetto wasn’t as large as Warsaw’s, but it was just as crowded and just as hungry. Next to what the ghettos had endured in Nazi times, what they had now was abundance; next to abundance, what they had now wasn’t much.