In th Balance

by neetha Napew

  The better to conceal his soldiers, Patton had also billeted them on the townsfolk. As far as Jens knew, he hadn't asked anybody for permission before he did it, either. If Patton worried about that, he didn't let on. Maybe he had a point, the Founding Fathers hadn't anticipated an invasion from outer space.

  But if you started fiddling with the Constitution and pleading military necessity, where would you stop? Jens wished he'd been in a better position to take that up with Patton. It might have made an interesting philosophical discussion if the general hadn't been steamed at him for trying to get a message to Barbara. As things were, Patton would either roar at him or ignore him, neither of which constituted an enlightened exchange of views.

  "Anybody got a cigarette?" asked one of the soldiers in civvies.

  The only answer Larssen expected to that was a hoarse laugh, and the soldier got one. Then a civilian, a leathery fellow in a hunting cap who had to be pushing seventy, looked the kid over and drawled, "Son, even if I did have one, you ain't pretty enough to give me what I'd want for it."

  The young soldier turned the color of the fire

  under the griddle. The cook solemnly sketched a hash mark in the air. Larssen whistled. The old-timer let out a dry chuckle to show he wasn't all that impressed with his own wit, then returned to his cup of what the Army called, for lack of a suitable term of opprobrium, coffee.

  High overhead, above the clouds, a Lizard jet flew by, its wail thin and fading with distance. Larssen's shiver had nothing to do with the weather. He wondered how well the aliens' sensors, whatever they were, could peer through the gray mass that shielded Oxford and the countryside around it from the sky and how well Patton had managed to hide the carefully husbanded gear here. He'd know soon enough.

  In one corner of the cafe stood a broken pinball machine, the mournful word TILT permanently on display. Since that constituted the place's entire potential for entertainment,

  Jens handed his plate and cutlery back to the cook and went out onto the street.

  The wind had picked up while he ate. He was glad for his overcoat. His nose was also relieved at the fresh air. Full of soldiers as it was and without much working plumbing, Oxford had become an odorous place. If the buildup here went on a little longer, the Lizards wouldn't need visual reconnaissance to find their human foes: their noses would do the job for them.

  Something stung Jens on the cheek. By reflex he brought up his hand, but felt only a tiny patch of moisture. Then he got stung again, this time on the wrist. He looked down, saw a fat white snowflake melting away to nothingness. More slipped and slid wildly through the air, jitterbug dancers made of ice.

  For a moment, he just watched. The start of a snowfall always took him back to his

  Minnesota childhood, to snowmen and snow angels and snowballs knocking stocking caps off heads. Then the present rose up and smote nostalgia. This snow had nothing to do with childhood's pleasures. This snow meant attack.

  19

  Yi Min felt bigger than life, felt, in fact, as if he were the personification of Ho Tei, fat little god of luck. Who would have imagined so much profit was to be made from the coming of the little scaly devils? At first, when they'd raped him away from his home village and then taken him up into the plane that didn't land, the plane where he weighed nothing and his poor stomach even less, he'd thought them the worst catastrophe the world had ever known. Now, though... He smiled oleaginously. Now life was good.

  True, he still lived in this camp, but he lived here like a warlord, almost like one of the vanished Manchu emperors. His dwelling was a hut in name only. Its wooden sides were proof against the worst winter winds. Brass braziers gave heat, soft carpets cushioned his every stride, fine pieces of jade and cloisonne delighted his eye wherever it happened to

  light. He ate duck and dog and other delicacies. When he wanted them, he enjoyed women who made Liu Han seem a diseased sow by comparison. One waited on his mattress now. He'd forgotten her name. What did it matter?

  And all from a powder the scaly devils craved!

  He laughed out loud. "What is it, man full of yaw/?" the pretty girl called from the other room. She sounded impatient for him to join her.

  "Nothing—just a joke I heard this morning," he answered. However full of masculine essence he was, he still had too much hard sense to make a hired mattress partner privy to his thoughts. What one set of ears heard in the afternoon, a score would know by sunrise and the whole world by the next night.

  Without false modesty (Yi Min had little

  modesty, false or otherwise), he knew he was far and away the biggest ginger dealer in the camp, probably in China, maybe in the whole world. Under him (the girl crossed his mind again, but only for a moment) were not only men who grew the spice and others who cured it with lime to make it particularly tasty to the scaly devils, but several dozen scaly devils who bought from him and sold to their fellows, either directly or through their own webs of secondary dealers. How the loot rolled in!

  "Will you come soon, Tiger of the Floating World?" the girl said, she did her best to make herself alluring, but she was too much a businesswoman— and too little an actress— to keep a strident note from her voice. What's keeping you? she meant.

  "Yes, I'll be there in a moment," he answered, but his tone suggested she wasn't worth hurrying over. Having a woman resent him for

  what he made her do fed his own excitement. He wasn't just taking pleasure that way, but also control.

  What should we do when I finally go to her? he wondered: always an enjoyable contemplation. Something she wouldn't care for— she'd annoyed him. Maybe he'd use her as if she were a boy. He snapped his fingers in delight. The very thing! Women were so proud of the slit between their legs; ignoring it in favor of the other way never failed to irritate them. Besides, it would hurt her a little too, make her remember to treat him as the person of consequence he was.

  Warmth flowed through him, tingled across his skin. He felt himself rising. He took one step toward the bedroom, then checked himself. Anticipation was also a pleasure. Besides, let her stew.

  After a minute or two, she called, "Please

  hurry! Longing eats at me." She played the game, too, but her mah-jongg hand did not have the tiles to beat his.

  When at last he judged the moment ripe, he started off to the back part of the dwelling. Before he'd gone three paces, though, a scratching noise came from the front door. He let out a long, angry hiss. That was a scaly devil. The girl's comeuppance would have to wait. No matter how thoroughly he controlled the devils who bought ginger from him, the illusion remained that he was servant and they masters.

  He opened the door. Cold nipped at his fingers and face. A little scaly devil indeed, but not one he'd seen before— he'd grown skilled at telling them, apart, even when, as now, the swaddlings they wore against winter hid their body paint. He'd also grown fluent in their speech. He bowed low, said, "Superior sir, you honor my humble hut. Enter, please, and

  warm yourself

  "I come." The little scaly devil skittered past Yi Min. He closed the door after it. He was pleased it had answered him in its own language. If he could do business in that tongue, he wouldn't have to send away the courtesan. Not only would she have longer to wait, she'd be impressed at how he dealt with the little devils on their terms.

  The devil looked around his front room, its eye turrets swiveling independent of each other. That no longer unnerved Yi Min; he was used to it. He studied the scaly devil, the strong color inside its nostrils, the way its clawed hands had a slight quiver to them. Inside, he smiled. He might not know the devil, but he knew the signs. This one needed ginger, and needed it worse every second.

  He bowed again. "Superior sir, will you tell me your name, that I may serve you better?"

  The little scaly devil hissed, as if suddenly reminded of Yi Min's presence. "Yes. I am called Drefsab. You are the Big Ugly Yi Min?"

  "Yes, superior sir, I am Yi Min." The Race's insulting ni
ckname for human beings didn't bother Yi Min. After all, he thought of its males as little scaly devils. He said, "How may I be of assistance to you, superior sir Drefsab?"

  The scaly devil swung both eyes in his direction. "You are the Big Ugly who sells to the Race the powder known as ginger?"

  "Yes, superior sir, I am that humble person. I have the honor and privilege to provide the Race with the pleasure the herb affords." Yi Min thought about asking the little scaly devil straight out whether it wanted ginger. He decided not to; though the devils were more direct about such matters than Chinese, they sometimes found direct questions rude. He did not want to offend a new customer.

  "You have much of this herb?" Drefsab asked.

  "Yes, superior sir." Yi Min was getting tired of saying that. "As much as any valiant male could desire. If I may say so, I think I have given more males bliss with powdered ginger than all but a handful of Tosevites." He used the little devils' less offensive name for his own kind. Now he did ask: "If the superior sir Drefsab desires a sample of the wares here, I would be honored to provide him with one without expecting anything in return." This time, he added to himself.

  He thought Drefsab would leap at that; he'd hardly ever seen a scaly devil in more obvious need of his drug. But Drefsab still seemed to feel like talking. He said, "You are the Big Ugly whose machinations have turned males of the Race against their own kind, whose powders have spread corruption through the shining ships from Home?"

  Yi Min stared; no matter how well he'd come to use the devils' language, he needed a moment to understand Drefsab's words, which were the opposite, of what he'd expected to hear. But the pharmacist's reply came fast and smooth: "Superior sir, I do but try to give the valiant males of the Race what they seek." He wondered what game Drefsab was playing. If the little scaly devil thought to muscle in on his operation, he'd get a surprise. Ginger powder had bought Yi Min the adjutants to several high-ranking officers, and a couple of, the officers themselves. They would clamp down on any scaly devil who got too bold with their supplier.

  Drefsab said, "This ginger is a tumor eating at the vitality of the Race. This I know, for it has devoured me. Sometimes a tumor must be cut out."

  Yi Min again had to struggle to make sense of that; he and the scaly devils with whom he'd

  conversed hadn't had any occasion to talk about tumors. He was still trying to figure out what the word meant when Drefsab reached inside his protective clothing and pulled out a gun. It spat fire, again and again and again. Inside Yi Min's hut, the shots rang incredibly loud. As the bullets clubbed him to the carpet, he heard through the reports the girl in the bedroom starting to scream.

  At first Yi Min felt only the impacts, not the pain. Then it struck him. The world turned black, shot through with scarlet flames. He tried to scream himself, but managed only a bubbling moan through the blood that flooded into his mouth.

  Dimly— ever more dimly— he watched Drefsab take the head off the plump Buddha that sat on a low lacquer table. The stinking little devil knew just where he stowed his ginger. Drefsab took a taste, hissed in delight, and poured the rest of the powder into a clear

  bag he'd also brought along inside his coat. Then he opened the door and left.

  The courtesan kept screaming. Yi Min wanted to tell her to shut up and close the door; it was getting cold. The words would not come. He tried to crawl toward the door himself. The cold reached his heart. The scarlet flames faded, leaving only black.

  Harbin was falling. Any day now, the Race would be in the city. It would be an important victory; Harbin anchored the Nipponese line. Teerts would have been gladder of it had the town not been falling around his head.

  That was literally true. During the most recent raid on Harbin, bombs hit so close to his prison that chunks of plaster rained down from the ceiling and just missed knocking out what few brains he had left after so long in

  Tosevite captivity.

  Outside, an antiaircraft gun began to hammer. Teerts didn't hear any planes; maybe the Big Ugly was just nervous. Go ahead, waste ammunition. Teerts thought. Then you'll have less to fire off when my friends break in here, and then, dead Emperors willing, they won't have to suffer what I've gone through.

  He heard a commotion up the hall, orders barked in loud Nipponese too fast for him to follow. One of the guards came up to his cell. Teerts bowed; with this kind of Big Ugly, you couldn't go far wrong if you bowed and you could go disastrously wrong if you didn't. Better to bow, then.

  The guard didn't bow back; Teerts was a prisoner, and so deserving only of contempt. Behind the armed man came Major Okamoto. Teerts bowed more deeply to his interrogator

  and interpreter. Okamoto didn't acknowledge him, either, not with a bow. He spoke in Teerts' language as he unlocked the cell door: "You will come with me. We leave this city now."

  Teerts bowed again. "It shall be done, superior sir." He had no idea how it would be done, or if it could be done, but wondering about such things was not his responsibility. As a prisoner, as had been true in the days before he was captured, his duty was but to obey. Unlike his superiors of the Race, though, the Nipponese owed him no loyalty in return.

  Major Okamoto threw at him a pair of black trousers and a baggy blue coat that could have held two males his size. Then Okamoto put a conical straw hat on his head and tied it under his jaws with a scratchy piece of cord. "Good," the Nipponese said in satisfaction. "Now if your people see you from the sky, they

  think you just another Tosevite."

  They would, too, Teerts realized dismally. A gun camera, maybe even a satellite photo, might have picked him out from among the swarming masses of Big Uglies around him. Bundled up like this, though, he would be just one more grain of rice (a food he had come to loathe) among a million.

  He thought about throwing off the clothes if one of the Race's aircraft came overhead. Reluctantly, he decided he'd better not. Major Okamoto would make his life not worth living if he tried it, and the Nipponese could spirit him away before his own folk, who were none too hasty, arranged a rescue effort.

  Besides, Harbin was cold. The hat helped keep his head warm, and if he threw aside the coat, he was liable to turn into a lump of ice before either the Nipponese or the Race could do anything about it. Okamoto's hat and coat

  were made from the fur of Tosevite creatures. He understood why the beasts needed insulation from their truly beastly climate, and wondered why the Big Uglies themselves had so little hair that they needed to steal it from animals.

  Outside the building in which Teerts had been confined, he saw more rubble than he ever had before. Some of the craters looked like meteor strikes on an airless moon. Teerts didn't get much of a chance to examine them; Major Okarnoto hustled him onto a two-wheeled conveyance with a Big Ugly between the shafts instead of a beast of burden. Okamoto spoke to the puller in a language that wasn't Nipponese. The fellow seized the shafts, grunted, and started forward. The guard strode stolidly along beside the conveyance.

  Tosevites streamed out of Harbin toward the east, fleeing the expected fall of the city.

  Disciplined columns of Nipponese soldiers contrasted with the squealing, squalling civilians all around them. Some of those, females hardly larger than Teerts, bore on their backs bundles of belongings almost as big as they were. Others carried burdens hung from poles balanced on one shoulder. It struck Teerts as a scene from out of the Race's prehistoric past, vanished a thousand centuries.

  Before long, the guard got in front of the manhandled conveyance and started shouting to clear a path for it. When that failed, he laid about him with the butt end of his rifle. Squeals and squalls turned to screams. Teerts couldn't see that the brutality made much difference in how fast they went.

  Eventually they reached the train station, which was noisier but less chaotic than the surrounding city. The Race had repeatedly bombed the station. It was more debris than

  building, but somehow still functioned. Machine-gun nests and tangles of wir
e with teeth kept everyone but soldiers away from the trains.

  When a sentry challenged him, Major Okamoto flipped up Teerts' hat and said something in Nipponese. The sentry bowed low, answered apologetically. Okamoto turned to Teerts. "From here on, we walk. No one but Nipponese— and you— permitted in the station."

  Teerts walked, Okamoto on one side of him and the guard on the other. For a little while, a surviving stretch of roof and wall protected them from the biting wind. Then they were picking their way through stone and bricks again, with snow sliding down from a gray, dreary sky.

  Out past the station in the railroad yard, troops were filing onto a train. Again a sentry

  challenged Okamoto on his approach, again he used Teerts as his talisman to pass. He secured half a car for himself, the guard, and his prisoner. "You are more important than soldiers," he smugly told Teerts.

  With a long, mournful blast from its whistle, the train jerked into motion. Teerts had shot up Tosevite trains when he was still free. The long plumes of black smoke they spat made them easy to pick out, and they could not flee, save on the rails they used for travel. They'd been easy, enjoyable targets. He hoped none of his fellow males would think the one he was riding a tempting target.