Upsetting the Balance w-3

by Harry Turtledove

  “Eee,”one of the men said, letting Mex dollars jingle through his fingers, “I used to hate the little scaly devils like everyone else, but they are making us rich.”

  The other animal trainer did not answer. He picked up the gong and started pounding on it, trying to lure more scaly devils to the next show.

  He had competition. A little way up the street, a fellow with a horn was playing old, familiar tunes. He didn’t play very well, but skill on the trumpet was not how he made his living: it was just the traditional signal a fellow who exhibited trained mice used to draw a crowd.

  And, sure enough, a crowd gathered. It had children in it, and old people with time on their hands, but also a good many little scaly devils. Because the little devils stood and watched, so did Liu Han.

  “Hello, hello, hello!” the mouse show man boomed jovially. He was wearing a square wooden box, held on by a shoulder strap. From the box rose a wooden pole two feet high, on top of which were mounted a pagoda, a wooden fish, a little hanging bucket made of tin, and a hollow wooden peach. “Do you want to see my little friends perform?”

  “Yes!” the children shouted, loud and shrill as a flock of starlings. The little scaly devils who understood Chinese added their hissing voices to the cries.

  “All right, then,” the man said. “You don’t have any cats, do you?” He looked sly. “If you do, kindly keep them in your pockets till we’re finished.”

  He waited till the children’s giggles and the silent laughter of the scaly devils subsided, then rapped three times on the side of the box. It had a latched hole in the front. He lifted the latch. Four white mice came out and climbed a little ladder of string and sticks of bamboo. They went through their paces on the apparatus, scrambling down into the bucket and swinging in it, pulling the fish up by the string that held it, running to the top of the pagoda and jumping inside, and scrambling into the peach and peering out, whiskers quivering, little red eyes aglow.

  The mouse show man said, “How’d you like to bite down and findthat inside your peach?” The children giggled once more.

  The little scaly devils, though, did not react to that with mirth. One of them said, “The Big Uglies have filthy habits-always parasites in their food.”

  “Truth,” another said. “And theyjoke about it.”

  “They are disgusting,” a third chimed in, “but they also manage to be entertaining. We don’t have beast-shows back on Home to match these. Who would have thought animals-especially Tosevite animals-could learn to do so many interesting things? I spend as much free time as I can watching them.”

  “And I,” said the scaly devil who had spoken second. A couple of others sputtered agreement.

  Liu Han watched the performing mice a minute or two more. Then she tossed the man who exhibited them a few coppers and walked down theTa Cha La, thinking hard. More little devils congregated in a vacant lot from which the wreckage of a shop had been cleared away. A trained bear was going through its run of tricks there. The scaly devils exclaimed as it wielded a heavy wooden sword with a long handle. Liu Han walked by, hardly noticing.

  Nieh Ho-T’ing was always looking for ways to get close to the little scaly devils, the better to make their lives miserable. If trained animals fascinated them so, a troupe of men with such performers might well gain access even to important males, or groups of important males. Anyone who showed Nieh a new way to do that would gain credit for it.

  Liu Han scratched her head. She was sure she had a good idea, but how could she use it to best advantage? She was no longer the naive peasant woman she’d been when the little devils carried her away from her village. Too much had happened to her since. If she could, she would take her fate back into her own hands.

  “Not to be a puppet,” she said. A man with a thin wisp of white beard turned and gave her a curious look. She didn’t care. Nieh Ho T’ing hadn’t treated her badly; he’d probably treated her better than anyone except Bobby Fiore. But one of the reasons he did treat her so was that he found her a tool to fit his hand. If she was lucky, if she was careful, maybe she could make him treat her as someone to be reckoned with.

  After the lamplit gloom of theKrom, George Bagnall had to blink and wait for his eyes to adjust to daylight. Even after the adjustment, he looked about curiously. Something about the quality of the light, the color of the sky, had changed, ever so slightly. The day was bright and warm, and yet-

  When Bagnall remarked on that, Jerome Jones nodded and said, “I noticed it, too, the other day. Somebody Up There”-the capitals were quite audible-“is telling us summer shan’t last forever.” He looked wistful. “Now that it’s beginning to go, it seems hardly to have been here at all.”

  “Weren’t you the blighter who swore to us Pskov had a mild climate by Russian standards?” Ken Embry demanded with mock fierceness. “This, as I recall, while we were flying above endless snow and a frozen lake.”

  “By Russian standards, Pskovdoes have a mild climate,” Jones protested. “Set alongside Moscow, it’s very pleasant. Set along Arkhangelsk, it’s like Havana or New Delhi.”

  “Set alongside Arkhangelsk, by all accounts, the bloody South Pole looks like a holiday resort,” Embry said. “I knew Russian standards in matters of weather were elastic before we got here; I simply hadn’t realized how much stretch the elastic had to it: rather like a fat man’s underclothes, I’d say.”

  “That may end up working to our advantage,” Bagnall said. “The Lizards like Russian winter even less than we do. We should be able to push them farther south of the city.”

  “A consummation devoutly to be wished.” Ken Embry leered at him. “In aid of which, when will they be posting the banns for you and that little Russian flier?”

  “Oh, give over such nonsense.” Bagnall kicked a clod of dirt down the street. “Nothing is going on between us.”

  The other two Englishmen snorted, either disbelieving or affecting disbelief. Then Jerome Jones sighed. “I wish I thought you were lying. That might make Tatiana stop throwing her fair white body in your direction. We’ve had rows about it, once or twice.” He kicked moodily at the dirt.

  “And?” Embry asked. “Leaving us in suspense that way is bad form.”

  “And nothing,” Jones answered. “Tatiana does what she bloody well pleases. If one were mad enough to try stopping her, she’d blow off his head.”

  Neither of the other Englishmen thought that was in any way figurative language. Bagnall said, “Whoever came up with ‘The female of the species is more deadly than the male’ must have had your fair Russian sniper in mind.”

  “Too true.” Jones sighed again. He glanced sidelong at Bagnall. “That’s why she’s keen on you, you know: she thinks you’re better at killing than I am-I’m just a radarman, after all. The idea makes her motor go.”

  Bagnall sent him a sympathetic look “Old chap, I don’t mean to give offense, but have you never wondered if you’d be better off without her company?”

  “Oh, many a time,” Jones said feelingly.

  “Well, then?” Bagnall asked when the radarman failed to draw the obvious conclusion.

  Now Jones looked shamefaced. “For one thing, if I give her the boot, she’s liable to give me something out of the barrel of that sniper’s rifle of hers.” He touched a forefinger to a spot just above the bridge of his nose, as if to say the bullet would go in there.

  “Something to that, I expect,” Ken Embry said. “But a ‘for one thing’ generally implies a ‘for another,’ what? Rather like amen implying ade, if you’ve read your Greek like a good fellow.”

  “Nai, malista,”Jones said, which made all three Englishmen laugh. Bagnall had trouble imagining anything further removed from the classical world than Pskov during wartime. They walked on for another few steps. Slowly, reluctantly, Jerome Jones continued, “Yes, there’s a ‘for another.’ The other reason I don’t send her packing is that-that-I seem to have fallen in love with her.” He waited for his companions to mock him.


  Now it was Bagnall’s turn to sigh. He set a sympathetic hand on Jones’ shoulder. The radarman quivered under his touch like a restive horse. Bagnall said, “Steady, there. If we’re being classical, let’s be downright Socratic and define our terms, shall we? Are you truly in love with her, or is it just that she pleases you in the kip?”

  Jerome Jones turned a vermilion not commonly seen this side of a sunset.How young he is, Bagnall thought from his superior altitude of three or four years. “How does one tell the difference?” the radarman asked plaintively.

  “Always a good question,” Embry said with a cynical chuckle.

  “Let’s try answering it, then,” Bagnall said, for Jones looked not only very young but very lost: he’d meant the question with every fiber of his being. Bagnall went on, “Socratics we are, having another go at theSymposium.”

  That pleased Jones. Embry chuckled again and said, “Fair young Alcibiades is right out.”

  “Fair young Tatiana is quite enough trouble all on her own,” Jones said. “She and Alcibiades, they’d deserve each other.”

  “Here’s one fast clue to your feelings, for starters,” Bagnall said: “If you only want to have anything to do with your possibly beloved when the two of you are naked between the sheets, that should tell you something about your state of mind.”

  “So it should.” The radarman looked thoughtful. “Not as simple as that, I’m afraid; I wish to heaven it were. But I like being around her, whether we’re”-he coughed-“or not. It’s rather like setting up a tent next to a tiger’s lair: you never know what will happen next, but it’s apt to be something exciting.”

  “And you’re liable to end up as thehors d’oeuvres,” Embry put in.

  Bagnall waved the pilot to silence. “How do you think she feels about you, Jones?” he asked.

  Jerome Jones’ face furrowed with thought. “I am of the opinion her fidelity leaves something to be desired,” he said, to which Bagnall could but nod. Jones went on, “She set her cap for me, not the other way round. This bloody country-I’d be afraid to chat up a girl, because next thing you know, you’d be talking to the NKVD instead.” He shivered. “Some of my university chums, they weren’t just pink, they were red. If any of them had actually seen Russia, that wouldn’t have lasted long, and there’s the God’s truth.”

  “You’re certain to be right about that,” Bagnall said. “The same thing has occurred to me, oh, once or twice during our delightful sojourn here. But it’s not to the point now. That centers on the fair Tatiana.”

  “I know.” Jones walked on for several paces without continuing.

  Bagnall waited for him to say something, anything, that would clarify what he felt, what Tatiana felt, and might even help all of them get out of their present complications without falling into new ones that were worse. He realized that was asking a lot, but he’d never wanted Tatiana to set her sights on him.

  After a bit, the radarman said, “I chased a lot of skirt back in England; I don’t think there was a barmaid in any pub I went into whom I didn’t try to chat up. But we all know there’s a deal of difference between chasing it and catching it, don’t we?” He chuckled wryly. “And so, when we got here and I had this gorgeous creature chasing me, it made me feel about ten feet high. And, of course-” He didn’t go on, but his expression was eloquent.

  Ken Embry put that expression into words: “When you’re sleeping with a pretty woman, there is a certain natural disinclination to do anything which will result in your not sleeping with her in future.”

  “Well, yes,” Jones said, coloring a little. “In her own bloodthirsty way, I think, Tatiana is fond enough of me, too. Speaking a bit of Russian does me no harm there. But she keeps complaining I’m too soft to quite suit her, that she’d like me better if I stuck a knife between my teeth and crawled about through the bushes slitting Lizards’ throats.”

  Bagnall nodded. His own rugged masculine charm (if any) hadn’t been what drew Tatiana to him. He knew that perfectly well. Tatiana wanted him because she thought he was good at hurting the Lizards. She hadn’t made any bones about it, either.

  Embry said, “With that cast of mind, it’s a miracle she didn’t throw in her lot with a Jerry.”

  “If she hadn’t been trying to pot them before the Lizards came, she would have done just that, my guess is,” Jones said. “But she hates them worse than any other Russian I’ve ever seen, and she thinks her own menfolk are a pack of swine. Which left-me. Except nowadays I’m not good enough, either.”

  “Maybe I should make a play for Senior Lieutenant Gorbunova,” Bagnall said meditatively. “It’s the easiest way I can think of to get Tatiana out of my hair for good.”

  “Except that if she really is out to have you come hell or high water, losing you to Ludmila is liable to endanger that young lady,” Ken Embry said.

  “There I have my doubts,” Bagnall said. “Ludmila is not as outwardly ferocious as Tatiana, that I grant you, but she can take care of herself.”

  “I should hope so,” Jerome Jones burst out. “How many combat missions has she flown in that rickety little biplane of hers? More than I like to think about, that’s certain. You wouldn’t get me up in the air in one of those things, especially not where people are trying to shoot me down.”

  “Amen to that,” Bagnall said. “She doesn’t go any too high in the air, either-leaves herself a target for any bloke on the ground with a rifle.” He knew she would have been a target for worse things than rifle fire had she strayed high enough for radar to pick her up, but the idea of being vulnerable to simple infantry weapons chilled him to the marrow.

  “If she can take care of herself, you really should make a play for her,” Embry said. “That would get you out of harm’s way, and might even reconcile Tatiana to Jones here. See what a Leonora Eyles I’m getting to be?” he added, naming the advice columnist forWomen’s Own magazine.

  “This ointment does have one fly in it,” Jerome Jones said, “namely, the Jerry who flew into Pskov with our intrepid pilot: Schultz, that’s what he’s called. Have you never seen him casting sheep’s eyes at her?”

  “I’ve seen that, yes,” Bagnall said, “but I’ve never seen Ludmila casting any back his way. He’s a rugged specimen, but I’m not afraid of him.” He rubbed his chin. “I’d not care to put us in a bad odor with the Germans, either, though. If we’re not seen to be honest brokers between the Nazis and the Reds, everything we’ve accomplished goes up in smoke-and so, very likely, does Pskov.”

  “Bloody hell of a thing,” Ken Embry remarked, “when you can’t even make a play for a pretty girl for fear of causing an international incident.”

  “International incidents be damned,” Bagnall said. “I don’t care about that aspect of it at all. But if making a play for a pretty girl will get me killed and this town blown up around my ears, that does make me thoughtful, I admit.”

  “Nice to know something can,” Embry said with a grin.

  South of Pskov, antiaircraft guns began to hammer. A moment later, cannon inside the city started throwing shells into the air. With training instilled when theLuftwaffe had been pounding England, the three RAF men leaped into the nearest hole in the ground: a large bomb crater.

  The crater was muddy at the bottom, but Bagnall didn’t care about that, not when a couple of Lizard jets were screaming overhead, low enough that their banshee wail all but deafened him. As he buried his face in the cool, wet dirt, he tried to remember what sort of targets were nearby. In a mechanized war, such matters determined who lived and who died.

  Bombs raining down made the ground shake. Bagnall had never experienced an earthquake, but was of the opinion that being bombed made a satisfactory substitute.

  Still pursued by shells, the Lizard fighter-bombers streaked away to the north. Every so often, the antiaircraft gunners got lucky and brought down a Lizard plane. They expended a great whacking lot of shells between kills, though.

  Shrapnel pattered down like hot, j
agged hailstones. Bagnall wished for a tin hat. Shrapnel wouldn’t tear you into gory rags the way bomb fragments did; it wasn’t going fast enough. But a big chunk could fracture your skull or do other unpleasant things to the one and only wonderful and precious body you ever got.

  When the AA guns fell silent and the rain of machined brass and steel stopped, Ken Embry got to his feet and began brushing dirt and muck from his clothes. The other two Englishmen followed rather more slowly.

  “All in a day’s work,” Embry said. “Shall we brew up some of the Russians’ alleged tea when we get back to our digs?”

  “Why not?” Bagnall answered. His heart was still pounding in animal response to the bombing, but his mind remained untroubled and collected. As Embry had said, it was all in a day’s work-and that struck Bagnall as the most damning indictment of all.

  12

  Rance Auerbach hated everything about Lamar, Colorado. It reminded him all too vividly of the medium-small west Texas town where he’d grown up, and which he’d left as soon as he could. That would have been bad enough all by itself. But just being in Lamar also reminded him the Lizards had thrown him and his men out of Lakin, Kansas.

  That being so, he sneered at everything pertaining to Lamar. The town was dirtier than it had been when he and his force sallied against Lakin. It smelled of horse manure. Normally, that smell bothered him not in the least: he was a cavalryman, after all. There wasn’t a town in the United States that didn’t smell of horse manure nowadays, either. Auerbach was determined not to let facts get between him and his anger.

  One thing Lamar did boast was a goodly number of watering holes. What they served these days was moonshine, liquor so raw it would have made better disinfectant than booze. No one who drank it complained, not with nothing better available.

  Auerbach would not have imagined a small town like Lamar could hold surprises, but he was proved wrong about that. Coming out of one of the local watering holes was a cavalry trooper who filled a uniform in ways the Quartermaster General’s Office never would have imagined before the Lizards landed.