Worldwar_ Upsetting The Balance Part 16

"Thank you, sir." Sam didn't think of himself as pretty d.a.m.n sharp. Barbara, for instance, could run rings around him. But she didn't seem bored with him, either, so maybe he wasn't quite the near-hick he'd often felt hanging around with fast-talking big-city ballplayers.

" 'Thank you, sir.' " Just like some of those fast-talking city guys, Berkowitz had a flare for mimicry. Unlike a lot of them, he didn't spike it with malice. He said, "Believe me, Sergeant, if you were a dimbulb, you wouldn't be in Hot Springs. This and the project you came from are probably the two most important places in the United States-and you've had your hand in both of them. d.a.m.n few people can say as much."

"I never thought of it like that," Yeager said. When he did, he saw he had something to be proud of.

"Well, you should have," Berkowitz told him. "But back to business, okay? Like you said, the Lizards have a mating season. When their females smell right, they screw themselves silly. When they don't-" He snapped his fingers. "Everything shuts off, just like that. It's like they're s.e.xually neutral beings ninety percent of the time-all the time, if no lady Lizards are around."

"They think what we do is funny as h.e.l.l," Yeager said.

"Don't they just," Berkowitz agreed. "Straha tells me they have a whole big research program going, just trying to figure out what makes us tick, and they haven't come close yet. We're in the same boat with them, except we're just starting out, and they've been doing it ever since they got here."

"That's 'cause they're winning the war," Sam said. "When you're ahead, you can afford to monkey around with stuff that isn't really connected to the fighting. When you're losing like we are, you have enough other problems closer to home, so you can't worry about stuff out on the edge."

"Ain't it the truth," Berkowitz said. The colloquialism dropped from his lips without sounding put-on, though Sam was sure he knew his whos and whoms as well as Barbara did. Not sounding put-on was also part of his job. He went on, "So how do we figure out what makes a Lizard tick, way down deep inside? It isn't s.e.x, and that makes them different from us at a level we have trouble even thinking about."

"Ristin and Ullha.s.s say the other two kinds of bug-eyed monsters the Lizards have conquered work the same way they do," Yeager said.

"The Hallessi and the Rabotevs. Yes, I've heard that, too." Berkowitz leaned back in his chair. Sweat darkened the khaki of his uniform s.h.i.+rt under the arms. Sam felt his own s.h.i.+rt sticking to him all down the back, and he wasn't doing anything but sitting still. If, say, you wanted to go out and play ball... He recalled wringing out his flannels after games down here. You thought you remembered what this kind of weather was like, but when you found yourself stuck in it week in and week out, you learned your memory-maybe mercifully-had blocked the worst of it.

He ran the back of his hand across his forehead. Since one was about as wet as the other, that didn't help much. "Hot," he said inadequately.

"Sure is," Berkowitz said. "I wonder about the Rabotevs and the Hallessi, I really do. I wish we could do something for them; the Lizards have held them down for thousands of years."

"From what I've heard, they're supposed to be as loyal to the Emperor as the Lizards are themselves," Yeager answered. "They're honorary Lizards, pretty much. I guess that's what the Lizards had in mind for us, too."

"I think you're right," Berkowitz said, nodding. "You want to hear something funny, something I got out of Straha?" He waited for Sam to nod back, then went on, "About eight hundred years ago, the Lizards sent some kind of a probe to Earth. It beamed a whole bunch of pictures and I don't know what else back to the planet the Lizards call Home... and they figured we'd be a piece of cake, because we couldn't possibly have changed much in that short a time."

Sam thought that one over for a few seconds. Then his eye caught Berkowitz's. They both started to laugh. Yeager said, "You mean they thought they'd be fighting King Arthur and Richard the Lion-Hearted and, and...?" He gave up; those were the only two medieval names he could come up with.

"That's just what they thought," Berkowitz agreed. "They expected to run tanks and fighter planes up against knights on horseback. The conquest would have taken maybe twenty minutes, and the only way a Lizard would have gotten hurt was if he fell down and stubbed his toe."

"We gave 'em a little surprise, didn't we?" Sam said. "A lot's happened since"-he paused to subtract in his head-"1142 or so."

"Uh-huh. Good thing for us it has, too. But you know, here's the strange part: if they'd sent the probe in 342 and come in 1142, things wouldn't have changed that much-they'd still have had a walkover. Or if they'd sent it in"-now Berkowitz paused for subtraction-"458 B.C. and come in A.D. 342, it would have been the same story. So they might have been right when they figured things wouldn't change much, and they could take their own sweet time getting ready to squash us flat."

"I hadn't thought about it like that," Yeager admitted. He didn't care to think about it like that, either. Something else occurred to him. "They sure came loaded for bear if they expected to be taking on knights in s.h.i.+ning armor."

"Didn't they just?" Berkowitz ruefully shook his head. "I asked Straha about that. He kind of reared back, the way they do when they think you're being stupid, you know what I mean? Then he said, 'You do not go to a war without enough tools to win it. This is what we thought we had.' "

"He may still be right," Sam said.

"So he may." Berkowitz looked at his watch. "And I've got to run and interview a Lizard tank officer about armor-piercing sh.e.l.ls. I enjoy chewing the fat with you, Sergeant-you've got the right kind of mind to deal with the Lizards. People who start out too sure of themselves end up, you should pardon the expression, nuts."

Laughing, Yeager went up to the fourth floor. He found Ullha.s.s and Ristin in a state of high excitement. "Look, Exalted Sergeant Sam," Ristin said, holding up a set of what looked like bottles of nail polish. "The grand and magnificent s.h.i.+plord Straha brought with him a great store of body paints. He will share them with us. Now we no longer need be naked."

"That's nice," Sam agreed equably. "Does each of you paint himself, or do you paint each other?"

"We paint each other." Ullha.s.s let out a mournful, hissing sigh. "But we really should not paint our old rank patterns on our bodies. We hold those ranks no longer. We are only prisoners."

"Then paint yourselves to show that," Yeager said.

"There are markings to show one is a prisoner," Ristin said, "but a prisoner who has done something wrong and is being punished. We did nothing wrong; you Big Uglies captured us and made us prisoners. We have no markings for that."

Probably didn't think it would ever happen when you set out from Home, Yeager thought. He said, "If you don't have those markings, why not invent some?" Yeager thought. He said, "If you don't have those markings, why not invent some?"

Ristin and Ullha.s.s looked at each other. Obviously, that idea hadn't occurred to them, and wouldn't have, either. "Such markings would not be official," Ullha.s.s said, as if that doomed the notion in and of itself.

But Sam said, "Sure they would. They'd be official U.S. Lizard POW at Hot Springs marks. If you're our prisoners, you should use our marks, right?"

The two Lizards looked at each other again. They took suggestions from superior authority very seriously indeed. "What are these U.S. Lizard POW at Hot Springs marks?" Ristin asked.

Yeager was about to tell him to make up his own when he had a better idea-much more than most people, Lizards liked doing as they were told. He said, "You should paint yourselves with red and white stripes and blue stars. That way you'll look like you're wearing American flags."

Ristin and Ullha.s.s talked back and forth in their own language. Sam was getting fluent enough now to follow them pretty well. He hid a smile as he listened to their enthusiasm grow. Before long, Ristin said, "It shall be done."

When they were through, Yeager thought they looked gaudy as all get out, but n.o.body'd hired him for base art critic, so he kept his big mouth shut. Ullha.s.s and Ristin were delighted, which was the point of the exercise. In the next few days, several other formerly paintless Lizards started sporting stars and stripes. Sam's highly unofficial suggestion looked as if it might turn official after all.

Then one day, as Sam was coming out of the room he shared with Barbara, a peremptory hiss stopped him in his tracks. "You are the Tosevite who devised these-these unpleasant prisoner color combinations?" Straha demanded.

"That's right, s.h.i.+plord," Sam answered. "Is something wrong with them?"

"Yes, something is wrong." Straha used an emphatic cough to show how wrong the something was. Past that, he looked angry enough to be twitching; he reminded Yeager of nothing so much as a tent-show revival preacher testifying against the evils of demon rum and loose women. "This you have done with the paint, this is wrong. This is a mark the Race does not use. It must be cleansed at once from the scales of the males. It is an-" Yeager hadn't heard the next word before, but if it didn't mean something like abomination, abomination, he'd eat his hat. he'd eat his hat.

"Why is that, s.h.i.+plord?" he asked, as innocently as he could.

"Because it destroys all order and discipline," Straha replied, as if to an idiot child. "Body paint shows rank and a.s.signment and seniority; it is not to be used for frivolous purposes of decoration."

"s.h.i.+plord, it does show a.s.signment: it shows that the males who wear it are prisoners of the United States," Sam said. "If you want it to show seniority, too, the males who have been prisoners longer can wear more stars than the others. Would that be all right?"

He tried to sound quiet and reasonable. All the same, he expected Straha to blow up like a pressure cooker with its safety valve stuck. But the s.h.i.+plord surprised him: "The trouble with dealing with Tosevites is that one forgets how perspective s.h.i.+fts. Do you understand this?"

"I don't think I do, s.h.i.+plord," Sam answered. "I'm sorry."

Straha made an exasperated noise, rather like a water heater with a slow leak. "I explain further, then. With the Race, all is as it has been. We do not casually invent body paint designs. They all fit into a system we have been refining for more than a hundred thousand years." Yeager knew enough to divide that by two to convert it into Earthly years, but it was still a h.e.l.l of a long time. Straha went on, "You Big Uglies, though, you just casually invent. You care nothing for large-scale system; all that matters to you is short-term results."

"We're at war, s.h.i.+plord. We were at war before the Race got here," Yeager said. "Whatever it takes to win, we'll do. We change all the time."

"This we have noticed, to our sorrow," Straha said. "The weapons with which you fight us now are better than the ones you used when we first came. Ours are still the same. This is what I meant about looking at you from a different perspective. If something suits you for the moment, you will seize upon it, not caring a bit how it accords with what you formerly did. You invent a body-paint pattern on the spur of the moment." The s.h.i.+plord hissed again. "I suppose I should be used to that sort of thing, but every now and again it still shocks me. This was one of those times."

Yeager thought of all the pulp science-fiction stories he'd read where an inventor had an idea one day, built it the next, and ma.s.s-produced it the day after that, generally just in time to save the world from the Martians. He'd always taken those with a grain of salt about the size of the Great Salt Flats outside Salt Lake City. Real life didn't work that way.

To the Lizards, though, Earth must have seemed the embodiment of pulp science fiction run amok. In not a whole lot more than a year, human beings had rolled out long-range rockets, bazookas, and jet planes, to say nothing of the atomic bomb. That didn't count improvements to already existing items like tanks, either. And by all accounts, poison gas, which dated back to World War I, was new and nasty to the Lizards.

"So you'll forgive the other prisoners here for using American-style body paint, then?" Sam asked.

"I am not a prisoner; I am a refugee," Straha said with dignity. "But yes, I forgive it. I was hasty when I condemned it out of hand, but haste, for the Race, is to be actively discouraged. The captive males may wear any sort of marking Tosevite authorities suggest."

"Thank you, s.h.i.+plord," Yeager said. As Lizards went, Straha seemed like a pretty adaptable guy. If you actively discouraged haste, though, you didn't make life any easier for yourself, not on Earth, you didn't.

Teerts sometimes felt guilty about what happened to Tokyo. Millions of intelligent beings dead, and all because he'd warned of what the Nipponese Tosevites were attempting.

The guilt never lasted long, though. For one thing, the Big Uglies would have blown up a similar number of males of the Race without a qualm. For another, the way the Nipponese had treated him deserved revenge.

He wasn't flying in the eastern region of the main continental ma.s.s any more. His commanders realized his life would end quickly-or perhaps slowly-if the Nipponese captured him again. Now he undertook missions for the Race from an airfield almost halfway round Tosev 3 from Nippon. France, the local Big Uglies called the place.

"These are the toughest Big Uglies you'll face in the air," Elifrim, the base commander, told him. "Our friends across the ocean who fight the Americans might argue, but take no notice of them. The Deutsche fly jets more dangerous than any others the Tosevites use, and the British had airborne radar before we invaded their island."

"I don't mind facing them in the air, superior sir," Teerts answered. "I can shoot back at them now." He remembered too well lying in Tosevite hands, unable to strike his Nipponese captors. He'd never known or imagined such loneliness, such helplessness.

"Shoot first," Elifrim urged. "That's what I mean: you could take your time with the Big Uglies before, but not so much now. The other thing is, you'll want to use your cannon more and your missiles less."

"Why, superior sir?" Teerts asked. "I can kill with my missiles from much greater range. If the Big Uglies' weapons systems are better than they were before the Nipponese captured me, I ought to be more cautious about closing with them, not more eager to do it."

"Under normal circ.u.mstances, you would be right," the base commander answered. "When it comes to Tosev 3, though, precious little is normal, as you'll have discovered for yourself. The problem, Flight Leader, is that stocks of air-to-air missiles are dwindling planetwide, and we haven't found a way to manufacture more. We have plenty of sh.e.l.ls for the cannons, though, from our own factory s.h.i.+ps and from Tosevite plants here in France and in Italia and the U.S.A. That's why we prefer you to use the guns."

"I-see," Teerts said slowly. "How good is this Tosevite ammunition we're using? I hate trusting my life to something the Big Uglies turn out."

"We had some quality control problems at first," Elifrim said; Teerts wondered how many males had ended up dead as a result of such an innocuous-sounding thing. The commandant went on, "Those are for the most part corrected now. Several Tosevite aircraft have been brought down using sh.e.l.ls of Tosevite manufacture."

"That's something, anyhow," Teerts said, somewhat rea.s.sured.

Elifrim reached into a desk drawer and drew out two sh.e.l.l casings. Teerts had no trouble figuring out which chunk of machined bra.s.s had traveled from Home and which was made locally: one was gleaming, mirror-finished, while the other had a matte coating, with several scratches marring its metal.

"It looks primitive, but it works," Elifrim said, pointing to the duller casing. "Dimensionally, it matches ours, and that's what really counts."

"As you say, superior sir." Teerts was less than enthusiastic about using those sh.e.l.l casings in his killercraft, but if the Race had plenty of them and a dwindling supply of both proper sh.e.l.ls and missiles, he didn't see that he had much choice. "Are the armorers satisfied with them?" Armorers were even fussier about guns than pilots.

"On the whole, yes," Elifrim answered, though for a moment his eyes looked to the side walls of the office, a sign he wasn't telling everything he knew. When he spoke again, he attempted briskness: "Any further questions, Flight Leader? No? Very well, dismissed."

Teerts was glad to leave the office, lit only by a weak electric bulb left over from the days when the Tosevites had controlled the air base, and to go out into the sunlight that bathed the place. He found the weather a trifle cool, but pleasant enough. He walked over to his killercraft to see how the technicians were coming along in readying it for the next mission.

He found a senior armorer loading sh.e.l.ls into the aircraft's magazine. "Good day, Flight Leader," the male said respectfully-Teerts outranked him. But he was an important male, too, and everything in his demeanor said he knew it.

"Good day, Innoss," Teerts answered. He saw that some of the sh.e.l.ls the armorer was using were s.h.i.+ny ones of the Race's manufacture, others with the duller finish that marked Big Ugly products. "What do you think of the munitions the Tosevites are making for us?"

"Since you ask, superior sir, the answer is 'not much,' " Innoss said. He lifted a Tosevite sh.e.l.l out of the crate in which it had come. "All the specifications are the same as they are for our own ammunition, but some of these don't feel quite right." He hefted the sh.e.l.l. "The weight is fine, but the balance is off somehow."

"Are all the ones the Tosevites produce like that?" Teerts asked.

"No," the armorer answered. "Only a few. With their primitive manufacturing techniques, I suppose I should not be surprised. The miracle is that we get any usable sh.e.l.ls at all."

Suspicion flared in Teerts. "If it is not a universal trait, these sh.e.l.ls with the odd balance will be somehow flawed," he predicted. "Believe me when I say this, Innoss. I know the Big Uglies and their tricks better than I ever dreamt I would. Sure as I had an eggtooth to help me break out of my sh.e.l.l, some ingenious Tosevite has found a way to diddle us."

"I don't see how," Innoss said doubtfully. "The weight is proper, after all. More likely some flaw in the process. I have seen video of what they call factories." Derision filled his hiss.

"Their weapons may be outdated next to ours, but they are well made of their kind," Teerts said. "I'll bet you a day's pay, Innoss, that close enough examination of that misbalanced sh.e.l.l will turn up something wrong with it."

The armorer sent him a thoughtful look. "Very well, Flight Leader, I accept that wager. Let us see what this sh.e.l.l has to say to us." He carried it away toward his own shack by the ammunition storage area.

Teerts thought about how he would spend his winnings. Reaching a conclusion didn't take long: I'll buy more ginger. I'll buy more ginger. Amazing how easy the stuff was to get. Every other Big Ugly who swept up or brought food onto the air base seemed to have his own supply. Every so often, Elifrim caught a user and made an example of him, but he missed tens for every one he found. Amazing how easy the stuff was to get. Every other Big Ugly who swept up or brought food onto the air base seemed to have his own supply. Every so often, Elifrim caught a user and made an example of him, but he missed tens for every one he found.

Teerts was still busy inspecting his aircraft when Innoss returned. The armorer drew himself up in stiff formality. "Superior sir, I owe you a day's pay," he said. "I have already requested a file transfer between our accounts." He spoke more respectfully than he ever had before; till now, Teerts had been just another officer as far as he was concerned.

"What did the Big Uglies do?" Teerts asked, doing his best not to show the relief he felt. He'd gained prestige by being right; only now did he think about how much he'd have lost had he been wrong.

"I X-rayed three sh.e.l.ls: one of ours, one of theirs with proper balance, and one of theirs with improper balance," Innoss said. "The first two were virtually identical; as you said, superior sir, they can do good enough work when they care to. But the third-" He paused, as if still not believing it.

"What did the Big Uglies do?" Teerts repeated. By Innoss' tone, he guessed it was something perfidious even for them.

"They left out the bursting charge that goes behind the penetrating head," the armorer answered indignantly. "If they'd just done that, the sh.e.l.ls would have been light, and quality control would have found them easily. But to make up for the empty s.p.a.ce within the sh.e.l.ls, they thickened the metal of the head just enough to match the missing weight of powder. I wonder how many sh.e.l.ls have done far less damage to the enemy than they should because of that."

"Have you any way to trace down which Tosevite plant turned out the sabotaged sh.e.l.ls?" Teerts asked.

"Oh, yes." Innoss opened his mouth not in a laugh but to show off all his teeth in a threat display that made it clear the distant ancestors of the Race had been fierce carnivores. "Vengeance shall fall on them."

"Good," Teerts said. This wasn't like vengeance on the Nipponese, where thousands who had done nothing to him had died simply because they lived near where the Big Uglies had chosen to undertake nuclear research. The Tosevites who suffered now would have earned what they got, each and every one of them.

"The Race is in your debt," Innoss said. "I telephoned the base commandant and told him what you had led me to discover. You shall be recognized as you deserve; your body paint will get fancier."

"That was generous of you," Teerts said. A promotion, or even a commendation, would mean more pay, which would mean more ginger. After so many horrors, life was good.

Like Shanghai, Peking had seen better days. The former capital's fall to the j.a.panese had been relatively gentle-Chiang's corrupt clique simply cut and ran, Nieh Ho-T'ing thought disparagingly. But the j.a.panese had fought like madmen before the little scaly devils drove them out of Peking. Whole districts lay in ruins, and many of the palaces formerly enjoyed by the emperors of China and their consorts and courtiers were only rubble through which scavengers picked for bits of wood. Nieh Ho-T'ing thought disparagingly. But the j.a.panese had fought like madmen before the little scaly devils drove them out of Peking. Whole districts lay in ruins, and many of the palaces formerly enjoyed by the emperors of China and their consorts and courtiers were only rubble through which scavengers picked for bits of wood.

"So what?" Hsia Shou-Tao growled when Nieh spoke of that aloud. "They were nothing but symbols of oppression of the ma.s.ses. The city-the world-is better off without them."

"It could be so," Nieh said. "Were it up to me, though, they would have been preserved as symbols of that oppression." He laughed. "Here we are, arguing over what should be done with them when, first, they are already destroyed and, second, we have not yet the power to say what any building's fate will be."

"A journey of a thousand li li begins with but a single step," Hsia answered. The proverb made him grimace. "More than a thousand begins with but a single step," Hsia answered. The proverb made him grimace. "More than a thousand li li from Shanghai to here, and my poor feet feel every stinking step I took." from Shanghai to here, and my poor feet feel every stinking step I took."

"Ah, but here we are in the hibiscus-flower garden," Nieh Ho T'ing said with an expansive wave. "Surely you can take your ease."

"Hibiscus-flower night soil," Hsia said coa.r.s.ely; he reveled in a peasant's crudity. "It's just another dive."

The Jung Yuan (which meant hibiscus-flower garden) had been a fine restaurant once. It looked to have been looted a couple of times; soot running up one wall said someone had tried to torch the place. Those efforts were all too likely to succeed; Nieh wondered why this one had failed.

He sipped tea from a severely plain earthenware cup. "The food is still good," he said.

Hsia grunted, unwilling to admit anything. But, like Nieh, he'd demolished the lu-wei-p'in-p'an lu-wei-p'in-p'an-ham, minced pork, pigs' tripes and tongue, and bamboo shoots-all in a thick gravy-that was one of Jung Yuan's specialties. Pork and poultry were the only meat you saw these days; pigs and chickens ate anything, and so were eaten themselves.

A serving girl came up and asked, "More rice?" When Nieh nodded, she hurried away and returned with a large bowlful. Hsia used the lacquerware spoon to fill his own eating bowl, then held it up to his mouth and shoveled in rice with his chopsticks. He slurped from a bowl of kao liang, kao liang, a potent wine brewed from millet, and belched enormously to show his approval. a potent wine brewed from millet, and belched enormously to show his approval.