Oblivious to the turmioil he’d created, Tessrek went on, “The Race needs to learn how you Big Uglies live, so we rule you better, easier. Need to understand to—how do you say?—to control, that that word I want?”
“Yeah, that’s it, all right,” Fiore said dully. Guinea pig ran through his head, again and again. He’d had that thought before, but never so strong. The Lizards didn’t care that he knew they were experimenting with him; what could he do about it? To them, he was just an animal in a cage. He wondered what guinea pigs thought of the scientists who worked on them. If it was nothing good, he couldn’t blame them.
“When will the hatchling come out?” Tessrek asked.
“I don’t know exactly,” Fiore answered. “It takes nine months, but I don’t know how long it’s been since she caught. How am I supposed to tell you? You don’t even turn off the lights in my room.”
“Nine—months?” Tessrek fiddled with something on his desk. The dirty movie disappeared from the screen behind him, to be replaced by Lizard squiggles. Those changed as he did more fiddling. He turned one of his eye turrets back toward them. “This would be one and one-half years of the Race? One year of the Race, I tell you, is half a Tosev year, more or less.”
Bobby Fiore hadn’t juggled fractions in his head since high school. The trouble he’d had with them then had helped convince him he’d be better off playing ball for a living. He needed some painful mental work before he finally nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s right, superior sir.”
“Sstrange.” Another word Tessrek turned into a hiss. “You Big Uglies take so long to give birth to your hatchlings. Why is this?”
“How the devil should I know?” Fiore answered; again he had the feeling of taking a test he hadn’t studied for. “It’s just the way we are. I’m not lying, superior sir. You can check that one with anybody.”
“Check? This means confirm? Yes, I do that.” The Lizard psychologist spoke Lizard talk into what looked like a little microphone. Different squiggles went up on the screen. Fiore wondered if it was somehow writing down what Tessrek said. Hell of a gadget if it could do that, he thought. The Lizard went on, “I do not think you lie. What is the advantage to you on this question? But I wonder why you Tosevites are so, not like Race and other species of the Empire.”
“You oughta talk to a scientist or a doctor or somebody.” Fiore scratched his head. “You say you Lizards lay eggs?”
“Of course.” By his tone, Tessrek implied that was the only thing a right-thinking creature could possibly do.
Bobby thought back to the chickens that had squawked and clucked in a little coop behind his folks’ house in Pittsburgh. Without those chickens and their eggs, he and his brothers and sisters would have gone hungry a lot more than they did, but that wasn’t why they came to mind now. He said, “An egg can’t get any bigger once you lay it. When the chick inside—or I guess the baby Lizard, too—is too big for the eggshell to hold it any more, it has to come out. But a baby inside a woman has more room to grow.”
Tessrek brought both eyes to bear on him. He’d learned a Lizard did that only when you’d managed to get its full attention (he’d also learned its full attention wasn’t always something you Wanted to have). The psychologist said, “This may be worth more study.” He made it sound like an accolade.
He leaned close to the microphone, went back into his language. Again, the screen showed fresh Lizard writing. It really was a note-taker, Fiore realized. He wondered what else it could do—besides showing movies that should never have been made.
Tessrek said, “You Big Uglies are of the kind of Tosevite creature where the female feeds the hatchling with a fluid that comes out of her body?” It wasn’t exactly a question, even though he made the interrogative noise at the end: he already knew the answer.
Bobby Fiore had to take a mental step backward and work out what the Lizard was talking about. After a second, the light bulb went on. “With milk, you mean, superior sir? Yeah, we feed babies milk.” He’d been a bottle baby himself, not nursed, but he didn’t complicate the issue. Besides, what had the bottle held?
“Milk. Yes.” Now Tessrek sounded as if Bobby had admitted humans picked their noses and fed babies on boogers, or else like a fastidious clubwoman who for some reason had to talk about syphilis. He paused, pulled himself together. “Only the females do this, am I correct? Not the males?”
“No, not the males, superior sir.” Imagining a baby nursing at his flat, hairy tit made Fiore squeamish and also made him want to laugh. And it rammed home, just when he was starting to get used to the Lizards again, how alien they were. They didn’t have a clue about what being human meant. Even though Liu Han and he had to use some Lizard words to talk with each other, they used them in a human context they both understond just because they were people, and probably used them in ways the Lizards would have found nonsensical.
That made him wonder how much Tessrek, in spite of his fluent English, truly grasped of the ideas he mouthed. Passing information back and forth was all very well; the Lizard psychologist’s grasp of the language was good enough for that. But once he had the information, how badly would he misinterpret it just because it was different from anything he was used to?
Tessrek said, “If you males do not give—milk—to hatchlings, what point to staying by them and by females?”
“Men help women take care of babies,” Fiore-answered, “and they can feed babies, too, once the babies start eating real food. Besides, they usually make the money to keep families going.”
“Understand what you Big Uglies do; not understand why,” Tessrek said. “Why males want to stay with females? Why you have families, not males with females at random, like the Race and other species we know?”
In an abstract way, Bobby thought males with females at random sounded like fun. He’d enjoyed himself with the women with whom the Lizards had paired him before he’d ended up with Liu Han. But he enjoyed being with her, too, in a different and maybe deeper sense.
“Answer me,” Tessrek said sharply.
“I’m sorry, superior sir. I was trying to figure out what to say. I guess part of the answer is that men fall in love with women, and the other way round, too.”
“Love.” Tessrek used the word with almost as much revulsion as he had when he said milk. “You Big Uglies talk loudly of this word. You do not ever make this a word with a meaning. You, Bobby Fiore, tell me what this love word means.”
“Uh,” Fiore said. That was a tall order for a poet, a philosopher, or even Cole Porter, let alone a minor-league second baseman. As he would have at the plate overmatched against Bob Feller, he gave it his best shot: “Love is when you care about somebody and want to take care of them and want them to be happy all the time.”
“You say what. I want why,” the Lizard psychologist said with a discontented hiss. “Is because you Big Uglies mate all the time, use mating as social bond, form families because of this mating bond?”
Fiore was anything but an introspective man. Nor had he ever spent much time contemplating the nature of the family: families were what you grew up in, and later what you started for yourself. Not only that, all the talk about sex, even with a Lizard, embarrassed him.
“I guess maybe you’re right,” he mumbled. When he thought about it, what Tessrek had to say did make some sense.
“I am right,” Tessrek told him, and added the emphatic cough. “You help me show the disgusting habits of you Big Uglies are to blame for you being so strange, so—what is word?—so anomalous. Yes, anomalous. I prove this, yes I do.” He spoke in his own language to the guards, who started marching Fiore back to his cell.
As he went, he reflected that while the Lizards were massively ignorant of humanity, they and people weren’t so different in some ways: just like a lot of people he’d known, Tessrek was using his words to prop up an idea the Lizard had already had. If he’d said just the opposite, Tessrek would have found some way to use that, too.
A Del
Rey® Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1994 by Harry Turtledove
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New
York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto.
http://www.randomhouse.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-22133
eISBN 0-345-45361-1
v1.0
WORLDWAR:
TILTING
THE
BALANCE
Harry Turtledove
A Del Rey® Book
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
(Characters with names in CAPS are historical, others fictional)
HUMANS
ANIELEWICZ, MORDECHAI
Leader of Jewish fighters in Poland
Auerbach, Rance
Captain, U.S. Army Cavalry
Bagnall, George
Flight engineer, RAF
Barisha
Tavern keeper in Split, Independent State of Croatia
Berkowicz, Stefan
Landlord in Lodz
Blair, Eric
BBC talks producer, Indian Section, London
Borcke, Martin
Wehrmacht captain and interpreter in Pskov
CHILL, KURT
Wehrmacht lieutenant general, 122nd Infantry, in Pskov
CHURCHILL, WINSTON
Prime Minister, Great Britain
COMPTON, ARTHUR
Nuclear physicist with the Metallurgical Laboratory
Cooley, Mary
Waitress in Idaho Springs, Colorado
Daniels, Peter (“Mutt”)
Seargent, U.S. Army, in Illinois; former minor-league manager
DEIBNER, KURT
Nuclear physicist, Hechingen, Germany
Donlan, Kevin
U.S. Army private in Illinois
Embry, Ken
Pilot, RAF
FERMI, ENRICO
Nuclear physicist with the Metallurgical Laboratory
FERMI, LAURA
Enrico Fermi’s wife
Fiore, Bobby
Lizard experimental subject; former baseball player
FLEROV, GEORGI
Soviet nuclear physicist
Fritzie
Cowboy in Chugwater, Wyoming
Fukuoka, Yoshi
Japanese soldier in China
GERMAN, ALEKSANDR
Commander of Second Partisan Brigade in Pskov
Goldfarb, David
Radarman, RAF
Gorbunova, Ludmila
Pilot, Red Air Force
GROVES, LESLIE
Engineer; U.S. Army colonel
Harvey
Civilian guard in Idaho Springs, Colorado
HEISENBERG, WERNER
Nuclear physicist in Hechingen, Germany
Henry
Wounded U.S. soldier in Chicago
Hexam
U.S. Army Colonel in Denver
Hicks, Chester
U.S. Army lieutenant in Chicago
Higuchi
Japanese scientist
Hipple, Fred
RAF group captain in Bruntingthorpe
HO-T’ING, NIEH
Chinese Communist guerilla officer
Horton, Leo
RAF radarman in Bruntingthorpe
HULL, CORDELL
U.S. Secretary of State
Isaac
Jew in Leczna, Poland
Jacobi, Nathan
BBC broadcaster in London
Jäger, Heinrich
Wehrmacht panzer colonel
Jones, Jerome
RAF radarman
Karpov, Feofan
Red Air Force colonel
Kennan, Maurice
RAF flight lieutenant on Bruntingthorpe
Klein, Sid
U.S. Army captain in Chicago
Klopotowski, Roman
Townsman in Leczna, Poland
Klopotowski, Zofia
Daughter of Roman Klopotowski
KONIEV, IVAN
Red Army general
KURCHATOV, IGOR
Soviet nuclear physicist
Laplace, Freddie
U.S. Army private in Illinois
Larssen, Barbara
see Yeager, Barbara
Larssen, Jens
Nuclear physicist with the Metallurgical Laboratory
Leon
Jewish fighter in Lodz
Lidov, Boris
NKVD lieutenant-colonel in Moskow
Liu Han
Chinese peasant woman; Lizard experimental subject
Lo
Communist Chinese partisan
Maczek
U.S. Army Captain in Illinois
Meinecke, Klaus
Sergeant; gunner on Heinrich Jäger’s panzer
MOLOTOV, VYACHESLAV
Foreign Commisar, USSR
Morozkin, Sergei
Red Army interpreter in Pskov
MURROW, EDWARD R.
Radio news broadcaster
Nakayama
Japanese scientist
NISHINA, YOSHIO
Japanese nuclear physicist
Okamoto
Japanese Army major; interpreter and tranaslator
Olson, Louise
Inhabitant of New Salem, North Dakota
Olson, Thorkil
Inhabitant of New Salem, North Dakota
Oscar
U.S. Army bodyguard in Denver
Peary, Julian
RAF wing commander in Bruntingthorpe
Petrovic, Marko
Captain, Independent State of Croatia
Potter, Lucille
Nurse in Illinois
RIBBENTROP, JOACHIM VON
German foreign minister
ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN D.
President of the United States
Roundbush, Basil
RAF flight officer in Bruntingthorpe
RUMKOWSKI, MORDECHAI CHAIM
Eldest of the Jews in the Lodz ghetto
Russie, Moishe
Former medical student; leader among Polish Jews; fugitive
Russie, Reuven
Son of Moishe and Rivka Russie
Russie, Rivka
Moishe Russie’s wife
Sawatski, Emilia
Wife of Wladyslaw Sawatski
Sawatski, Ewa
Daughter of Wladyslaw and Emilia Sawatski
Sawatski, Jozef
Son of Wladyslaw and Emilia Sawatski
Sawatski, Maria
Daughter of Wladyslaw and Emilia Sawatski
Sawatski, Wladyslaw
Polish farmer
Schultz, Georg
Former Wehrmacht panzer gunner; Red Air Force mechanic
Sharp, Hiram
Physician in Ogden, Utah
Shmuel
Jewish fighter in Lodz
Sholudenko, Nikifor
NKVD man in the Ukraine
Shura
Whore in Shanghai
SKORZENY, OTTO
SS colonel
Sobieski, Tadeusz
Grocer in Leczna, Poland
STALIN, IOSEF
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Sumner, Joshua (“Hoot”)
Justice of the peace in Chugwater, Wyoming
Szabo, Bela (“Dracula”)
U.S. Army private in Illinois
SZILARD, LEO
Nuclear physicist with the Metallurgical Laboratory
Tatiana
Sniper and companion of Jerome Jones in Pskov
TOGO, SHIGENORI
Japanese foreign minister
Tolya
Groundscrew man, Red Air Force
Tsuye
Japanese scientist
&nb
sp; Ussishkin, Judah
Doctor in Leczna, Poland
Ussishkin, Sarah
Wife of Judah Ussishkin; midwife in Leczna, Poland
van Alen, Jacob
U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant in Oswego, New York
VASILIEV, NIKOLAI
Commander, First Partisan Brigade in Pskov
Vernon, Hank
Ship’s engineer in the Duluth Queen
Victor
Wounded U.S. soldier in Chicago
Whyte, Alf
RAF navigator
Wittman, Rolf
Driver in Heinrich Jäger’s panzer
Yeager, Barbara
Former graduate student in medieval literature; Sam Yeager’s wife
Yeager, Sam
U.S. Army corporal; liason with lizard POWs;
ZHUKOV, GEORGI
Marshal of the Soviet Union
THE RACE
Atvar
Fleetlord, conquest fleet of the Race
Bunim
Official in Lodz
Dresfab
Intelligence agent and ginger addict
Turtledove: World War Page 68