Upsetting the Balance

19

Leslie Groves stared down at his hands. They were big and blunt and battered, the hands of a working engineer. He didn’t bite his nails, though. He was proud of that. If he hadn’t been so proud of it, he probably would have started.

He’d led the team that made the Fat Lady. The bomb had worked exactly as advertised, maybe better than advertised. A big chunk of the North Side of Chicago would never be the same-but a whole bunch of Lizards would never be the same, either, and that was the point of the exercise.

“So I should be on Easy Street, right?” he asked the walls. In the privacy of his office, he sometimes talked to himself. One of these days, he’d do it in public. “So what?” he said, out loud again. People who didn’t like him already thought he was crazy. He didn’t care if he gave them more ammunition. He’d got the job done, crazy or not.

But he wasn’t on Easy Street. All he knew about Jens Larssen was that he’d shot two people and then headed east. The sentries at Lowry had seen him ride by, but they hadn’t stopped him. They hadn’t known he’d shot anybody. They also hadn’t known Groves had ordered him back to his quarters in the BOQ to calm down.

Groves slammed a fist onto the desk, making papers and theIN andOUT trays jump. “If I hadn’t sent him back to Lowry, would he still be all right now?” he asked. The walls didn’t give him any answers.

He wished Larssen hadn’t gone east. East was where the Lizards lived. You wouldn’t think anybody would go running off to the Lizards, but you wouldn’t think anybody would gun down a colonel and a noncom in cold blood, either. Once Larssen had done the shooting, taking refuge with the Lizards looked a lot more likely than it had before.

They hadn’t managed to catch the son of a bitch, either. One thing Larssen had proved, traveling cross-country from White Sulphur Springs to Chicago and then from Denver to Hanford and back again: he knew how to live off the land. You couldn’t count on him freezing to death in a Colorado winter or doing something dumb to give himself away. If he was heading toward the Lizards, he might well get to them.

“Next question,” Groves said in his orderly fashion: “What will he do if he does get to them? Will he spill his guts?”

By all the signs, Larssen hated the Met Lab and anybody who had anything to do with it. Sure, he’d blamed Hexham for the breakup with his wife, but that had sprung from the secrecy surrounding the project, too. So, the sixty-four dollar question was, if he got to the Lizards, would he blab about what was going on in Denver? If he did, the town would become radioactive gas and dust in short order. No less than the Americans, the Lizards were playing for keeps.

As if he needed more proof of that, he turned on the battery-powered radio he’d ordered into the office when news of the destruction of Seattle came over the wires. When the set warmed up, he caught an announcer in the middle of a word: “-veral hundred thousand believed dead, as we’ve told you before. Newly released information from the Secret White House indicates that one of them was Vice President Henry Wallace, who was visiting war workers in the stricken city to improve their morale.”

Groves whistled softly and turned off the radio. Thatwas news. The last time he’d seen FDR, a few months before, the president had looked like death warmed over. If he did drop dead, who was next in line now? The Secretary of State, assuming he was still alive-Groves didn’t know for sure. President Cordell Hull? He thought about that. He’d always figured Wallace for a custardhead, so Hull might be an improvement All the same, he hoped Roosevelt would die of old age at about a hundred and thirty-one.

He turned the radio back on. The newsman was still talking about the hideous things that had happened to Seattle. The same kinds of things had happened to Berlin and Washington and Tokyo and Munich, and to the Lizards outside Moscow and Breslau and inside Chicago. After a while, hearing them repeated numbed the brain, not so they seemed unreal but so their horrors no longer struck the mind as quite so horrific. As with anything else, acquaintance made what had once been unimaginable take on the comforting cloak of familiarity.

Men had gone through four years of trench warfare in World War I, and thought man’s inhumanity to man could sink no lower. Then, just to prove they were wrong, they’d found ways to bomb noncombatants from the air. And now more than half a dozen atomic bombs had been used, with more liable to come. How soon would those dreadful clouds come to be taken for granted-by those who survived them?

“But if it’s that or letting the Lizards conquer us?” Groves asked. Again, the walls were silent. He didn’t need their answer, not to that question. The second bomb had already gone out of Denver. When the time came, people would use it, and a Lizard force would go up in fiery ruin. And then, very likely, an American city would join that force on the pyre. Would anything be left of the country when it was over?

What was that line doctors used?The operation was a success, but the patient died. If the Lizards finally gave up, but you presided over nothing but devastation afterwards, had you won? That had a flip side, though. If you didn’t do everything you could to stop the Lizards and they ended up conquering you, what then? You couldn’t plan revenge against them down the line, the way you could against an Earthly neighbor. If you lost now, it was forever.

“Maybe there’ll be some pieces left to pick up after all this is done,” Groves said. “Have to hope so, anyhow.”

Vyacheslav Molotov did not care for meetings that convened at two in the morning. Stalin was notorious for calling meetings at hours like that. Molotov concealed his distaste. The stony countenance he raised as a shield against rapacious capitalists and alien imperialist aggressors also helped protect him from his own superior.

Stalin seemed amiable enough at the moment, offering him vodka, a glass of tea (it was made from leaves flavored with blackberry extract, and pretty vile), cakes sweetened with honey, and cigarettes of coarse Russian tobacco.The condemned man ate a hearty meal, ran through Molotov’s mind. Stalin could be most appalling just after he’d been most polite.

Now he drank and ate and blew smoke up toward the ceiling of the little Kremlin room he used as his own. At last, quite casually, he remarked, “I have learned something interesting about the explosive-metal bombs the Germans and Americans used against the Lizards.”

“And what is that, Iosef Vissarionovich?” Molotov asked. “That they were made with metal that damned German managed to smuggle back through Poland? A pity, I know, but we couldn’t reasonably have expected him to survive.”

“Reasonably.” Stalin said it as if it were a swear word; his throaty Georgian accent made the term sound even more menacing. But then he went on, “No, we’ve known he got through for some time; nothing we can do about that now but make sure no similar mistakes happen in future.” Molotov wondered how many men had died or gone to thegulag expiating such mistakes. Stalin continued, “No, this thing I have learned has nothing to do with that. It was obtained by our diligent wireless operators monitoring Lizard frequencies.”

“This is good,” Molotov said, nodding. “We cannot place inconspicuous intelligence operatives among them, so we had better learn something by monitoring their communications.” He waited. Stalin did not go on. At last, he had to ask, “What did the diligent wireless operators learn from the Lizards?”

In the space of a heartbeat, Stalin’s face went from mild and serene to coldly furious. A film seemed to draw itself over his eyes, giving his gaze the menacing steadiness of a serpent’s. Molotov had seen the transition many times; it never failed to alarm him. When that unwinking stare appeared on the General Secretary’s countenance, dreadful things followed.

Hissing out the words, Stalin said, “Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, they learned the bombs the Hitlerites and capitalists used were made partly from the explosive metal stolen from the Lizards and partly from that which they manufactured themselves.”

“This is not surprising,” Molotov said. “Our physicists told us neither of the other parties with the explosive metal had enough for a bomb of his own-that is how we exploded ours first last summer.” He stopped in chagrin; for once, his mouth had outrun his brains. In an entirely different tone of voice, he said, “Oh. I see the difficulty, Comrade General Secretary.”

“Do you?” Stalin’s gaze was even more hooded than before.“Khorosho. Ochen khorosho. I thought I should have to draw you an illustration. The Nazis have made this explosive metal for themselves. The Americans have made this explosive metal for themselves.” His voice grew soft and deadly. “Why have we not made this explosive metal for ourselves?”

Molotov gulped. “Iosef Vissarionovich, our physicists warned from the outset that this would be a slow project, requiring well over a year, not merely a time measured in months.” They’d spoken of two or three years or even more, but he hadn’t dared tell Stalin that. “We had so much to do to bring the Soviet Union to a point where it could hope to resist the onslaughts of the fascists and capitalists that in such matters as abstract research we lagged behind them. We have made great strides in catching up, but we cannot have everything at once.”

“But this is something the Soviet Union requires,” Stalin said, as if demanding explosive metal could make it spring into being on the table next to the cakes. “If the incompetents now laboring to accomplish the task cannot succeed, we should uproot them and bring in others with great understanding of the subject.”

Molotov had been dreading that pronouncement since Igor Kurchatov told him they would for the time being have no more than one bomb. He saw nothing but disaster in dismantling the team Kurchatov had assembled: for all practical purposes, everyone in the Soviet Union who knew anything about nuclear physics was gathered at the carefully disguised farm outside Moscow. If that set of physicists was liquidated, only charlatans would be left to try to build an explosive-metal bomb. The Soviet Union could not afford that.

Cautiously, as if he were walking through a minefield, he said, “They need more time to do what they said they would. Displacing them, I think, might have a disruptive effect on our progress.” Displacing them would wreck the project as effectively as if an explosive-metal bomb had gone off on that disguised farm, but he couldn’t tell Stalin that. Disagreeing with the Soviet ruler, even indirectly, made his heart thud and sweat spring out on his high forehead.

Stalin looked petulant. “They have shown themselves to be bunglers, and you want to give them more time to prove it?”

“They are not altogether bunglers, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov answered, sweating harder. “Had it not been for the bomb they did succeed in detonating, Moscow would now be overrun.” He wondered if they could have carried on the fight against the Lizards from Kuibishev. He might yet be faced with the prospect of finding out.

“That was one bomb,” Stalin said. “We need more. The Hitlerites will have more, which means therodina will be endangered even leaving the Lizards out of the account.”

“Hitler will not use the bombs against us while the Lizards lie between Germany and the Soviet Union,” Molotov said. “We shall have our own by the time they are cleared from Poland.” He briefly contemplated the irony of a Georgian talking about the Russian motherland, but did not come close to having the nerve to remark on it.

Stalin said, “The devil’s uncle take Poland.” He used Russian expressions, all right, sometimes with a sardonic twist that showed he knew how strange they could sound in his mouth, others, as now, as if he really felt himself to be a Russian. “How, without more bombs, are we going to clear the Lizards from our own land?”

“Winter is our ally,” Molotov insisted. “We have gained a good many kilometers south of Moscow, and our forces are also advancing in the Ukraine. And in the west and north, the Lizards have reduced the forces opposing us to concentrate on the Germans.”

“Which means only that they hold us in contempt,” Stalin snapped. “The Nazis, they think, are more dangerous to them. But us? They can deal with us at any time. And why do they think this? Because the Nazis can make these bombs on their own and we, it seems, cannot. It all comes down to these bombs.”

Molotov thought about pointing out that the Lizards had reduced their forces in the north and west of Russia to attack Germany before they knew the Nazis had explosive-metal bombs, and that the one the Germans set off came as a complete and most unpleasant surprise to them.

He kept quiet, though. This once, it wasn’t because he feared what would happen if he contradicted Stalin-although that would be bad. In the end, though, the General Secretary was right. It did all come down to those bombs. If the Soviet Union could make more, it might survive. If it couldn’t, it would go under, if not to the Lizards, then to the Germans and Americans.

Kurchatov and his crewcould make more bombs; Molotov was certain of that. He was just as certain nobody else in the Soviet Union could in any conceivably useful amount of time.

Stalin glared at Molotov, in lieu of glaring at the entire world. “These bunglers you have gathered together, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, have six months. If they have not made an explosive-metal bomb by then, they shall suffer the consequences-and so shall you.”

Molotov licked his lips. Stalin did not forget threats like that. Molotov took a deep breath. “Comrade General Secretary, if that is how you feel, call the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs and have them deal with me now. The Kurchatov group cannot make us a bomb within six months. No one else you can find will do better.”

He hated taking such a risk. Stalin might very well ring up the NKVD, in which case the Soviet Union would have a new foreign commissar in short order. But defusing Stalin now would also defuse the threat half a year away.

Stalin kept staring at him, now musingly. Molotov did not talk back to him; that was like a law of nature. Molotov went hot and cold at the same time; his legs felt like jelly. Facing Churchill, even facing Hitler, was one thing, facing Stalin quite another. He was in Stalin’s power, and he knew it.

At last, the General Secretary said, “Well, we shall see.” Molotov almost spilled out of his chair and onto the floor in relief-he’d won. He’d managed to talk the leader of his country into not destroying it-and, incidentally, into not destroying him. It shouldn’t have been as hard as it was. Hard or easy, though, he’d survived. So had Kurchatov’s team. The war would go on, and the Soviet Union, too.

Liu Han hated Peking winter. She was from hundreds and hundreds ofli farther south; the cold months were bad enough there. Here, every time she went outdoors she was acutely reminded the Mongolian steppe lay just to the west. She piled on quilted garments till she looked like a perambulating pile of bedding, and she was still cold.

Nevertheless, tonight she was out on the streets, making her way onhutungs and broader avenues toward the Forbidden City, where the little scaly devils, like the Chinese Emperors before them, made their headquarters. Let the icy wind do with her as it would. Tonight, she wanted to be close to the little devils’ center.

She turned to Nieh Ho-T’ing. “I hope their Emperor has a happy birthday,” she said savagely.

“Yes.” His smile was more a predator’s grimace than one of genuine mirth. “They are the strangest creatures in all the world-the little devils, I mean. They celebrated their Emperor’s birthday-they call it hatching day-six months ago, too, in summertime. How can a man, or even a scaly devil, have two birthdays each year?”

“They tried to explain this to me when I was on their plane that never came down,” Liu Han said. “They were talking about different worlds and different years. I didn’t understand much of it, I’m afraid.” She hung her head. Time in the plane that never came down, in the scaly devils’ camp, and in the city had shown her how ignorant she was. If she’d stayed in her village the rest of her life, as most Chinese peasant women did, she never would have known.

Nieh said, “Yes, they are from a different world. That is so. I had not thought on what it might mean for birthdays and such, to have a world with a different year from ours.”

Even knowing things, sometimes, was not enough. She’d seen that, too. You also had to know how the things you knew fit together. Knowing one thing here and one there wasn’t worth much. If you could put them together, you had something.

“How much longer?” she asked him.

He took a watch from his pocket, looked at it, and quickly replaced it “Fifteen minutes,” he said. If you openly showed you had a watch these days, you ran the risk of being mistaken for one of the little devils’ rich running dogs, or, conversely, having the lackeys think you were a resistance leader who needed to know exactly what time it was so your raid would go as you’d planned. If you were, in fact, such a leader, you didn’t want people to know it.

Fifteen minutes. Save for when she was in labor, Liu Han had never known time to pass so slowly. “Will we be able to hear the songs we’re listening for?” she asked, guarding her meaning in case any of the people milling around was a spy.

“Oh, yes,” Nieh assured her. “I’m sure my friend from the Big Wine Vat will sing very loud and clear, and he is far from the only man in the chorus.” He lowered his voice, careful even though he was speaking in code. “This song will be heard all over China tonight.”

Liu Han hugged herself, partly against the numbing cold and partly from excitement. If all went as she hoped, she would soon have the beginning of her revenge on the little scaly devils who had brought her so much grief. A boy ran past her with a bundle of strips of paper in one hand and a paste pot in the other. He found a blank stretch of wall, slapped paste onto it, and put up a couple of the strips. Then he ran to look for a spot where more might go.

“You had a clever idea there,” Liu Han said, nodding toward the ragamuffin. “Picking boys who can’t read makes it harder for the little scaly devils to trace those messages. All the boys know is that someone gave them money to put them up.”

“Doctrine,” Nieh said. “If you use someone for a purpose like that, the less he knows, the better.” He chuckled. “Our singers are the same way. If they knew just what sort of songs we were asking them to perform, some of them might want to do something else instead.”

“Yes.” Liu Han thought about doctrine. Nieh often seemed to know what to do without having to consider first. The thing he called doctrine told him what he needed, almost as if it let him toss the coins for theI Ching inside his own head. That made it a valuable tool. But he also sometimes seemed unable to think outside the framework his doctrine gave him, as if it were not tool but master. The Communists in the scaly devils’ prison camp had acted the same way. She’d heard Christian missionaries gabble about a Truth they claimed to have. The Communists thought they owned truth, too. It sometimes made them uncomfortable allies, even if she could never have struck the little devils such a blow without them.

Nieh Ho-T’ing was casually tapping the palm of his hand against a trouser leg. His mouth shaped silent words: eight, seven, six…

As he said the wordfive, a sharp, deepbang! came from inside the walls of the Forbidden City. “Early,” Nieh said, “but not so bad.” The grin he was wearing belied even the partial criticism.

He’d hardly finished the sentence when anotherbang! went off, and then another. Liu Han felt as if she were drunk onsamshu, though she’d had nothing stronger than tea. “We give the Emperor a happy birthday,” she said, and added the emphatic cough for good measure.

Two more bombs went off among the scaly devils, then one, then silence. Nieh Ho-T’ing frowned. “We had eight arranged for in all here in Peking,” he said. “Perhaps two timers failed, or perhaps they ran late and the little devils found them before they could blow up.”

That made Liu Han remember the bombs had not got in among the little scaly devils by themselves. The Communists had promised her they’d care for the families of the beast-show men killed in the explosions, and she believed them; they had a good reputation in such things. But money did not pay for the anguish the wives and children of those men would know. She knew how hard losing a family was. It had happened to her twice now.

Had she not had her idea, those beast-show men would still be living, working at their trade. She hung her head. Hurting the little scaly devils might justify what she’d done, but could not make her proud of it.

The little devils’ hissing alarms started going off. Gunfire came from inside the Forbidden City. That wasn’t the raiders. That was the little scaly devils, shooting either at innocent people (there were waiters and other servants who’d also still be alive and well if she hadn’t had her idea; she remembered them, too) or at one another.

Suddenly Liu Han and Nieh Ho-T’ing stood almost alone, not far from the walls of the Forbidden City. People in Peking had seen a lot of war. They knew that, when explosions went off anyplace nearby, going elsewhere was one of the best ideas you could have. She started drifting away with the crowd, and tugged at Nieh’s sleeve when he didn’t move fast enough to suit her.

“You’re right,” he said sheepishly, once she’d finally got his attention. They’d just ducked back into ahutung out of sight of the wall when a little scaly devil up there started shooting with his automatic rifle. A moment later, others up and down the wall poured fire at the humans out and about in the night. What had been a withdrawal became a stampede, some people screaming in panic, others because they were hit.

“Hurry!” Liu Han cried. “We have to get away. If they send their males out of the Forbidden City, they’ll slaughter everyone they can find.” Nieh hurried but, to her surprise, wore a big, fierce grin on his usually solemn face. “What’s funny?” Liu Han demanded indignantly. “They’re killing us.”

“That is what’s funny,” he answered, which made no sense to her till he explained: “They play into our hands. If they kill people who had nothing to do with setting off the bombs among them, they do nothing to help themselves and only make people hate them. Even some of their lackeys will think twice about backing them now, and may come over to us or give us useful information. The scaly devils would have been wiser to do nothing till they found out who had bombed them, then to strike hard at us. That way, they could have claimed they were punishing the guilty. Do you understand?”

He’d taken that tone-almost as if he were a village schoolmaster-with her before when he was instructing her in matters of doctrine. She thought as she fled. Nieh looked at the world cold-bloodedly, more so than anyone else she’d ever known. But he was a war leader. Such men could not afford to be anything but cold-blooded.

She said, “We’ll have to stay in the shadows for a while, till the little devils stop hounding us.”

Nieh Ho-T’ing shook his head. “No. Now we hit them harder than ever, harass them in every way we can, so we keep them too busy to launch a proper campaign against us. If we can keep them off balance, they will be foolish.”

Liu Han thought about that as they trotted along through thehutungs. They went arm in arm to keep from being swept apart by the crowds surging away from the Forbidden City. She decided it made sense. If you were in a fight with someone, you didn’t hit him once and then stand back to see what he’d do next. You hit him again and again, as often as you could, to make sure he gave up or at least didn’t have the chance to hit you back.

The landlord of their roominghouse screamed at them to close the door and stop letting out the heat. “What’s all the commotion outside?” he added.

“I don’t know,” Nieh and Liu Han said together, and then laughed. She’d picked up a good deal of doctrine listening to him. If she showed undue knowledge, the landlord might wonder how she came by it.

Hsia Shou-Tao sat at a table in the eating room. With him was a pretty young woman in a brocaded silk dress with so many slits in it that Liu Han wondered how she kept from freezing to death. A jar ofsamshu sat between them. By the foolish expression on Hsia’s face, it was not the first one that had been there.

“Is all well?” he called to Nieh Ho-T’ing.

“I think so,” Nieh answered, with a pointed glance toward Hsia’s companion. She glared at him like a cat with ruffled fur. If she wasn’t a security risk, Liu Han had never seen one. Could Hsia keep his mouth shut after he took her upstairs to see her body? Liu Han hoped so, but hope wasn’t enough in a game of this importance.

“Join us?” Hsia Shou-Tao asked.

“No, thank you,” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered, rather coldly. The pretty girl muttered something through her painted lips; Liu Han had no doubt it wasn’t a compliment. She was pleased at Nieh’s answer. She didn’t want to sit at the same table with Hsia, even if he had another woman to distract him from her.

She and Nieh Ho-T’ing went to the stairway together. She saw Hsia smirking at the two of them, which only made her more angry with him. The stairwell was cold and dark. She stumbled. Nieh caught her elbow before she could fall. “Thank you,” she said.

“My pleasure,” he answered, and then laughed at himself. “I sound like a perfect member of the bourgeoisie, don’t I? But itis my pleasure. This was your idea, Comrade. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself just as it begins to unfold. You deserve the credit.”

“Thank you,” she said again. Her room was a couple of floors higher than Nieh’s, but she didn’t mind when he walked up past his floor with her. She wondered why she didn’t. Maybe she’d decided to pay Hsia Shou-Tao back for that smirk, maybe she felt filled with the triumph of finally paying back the scaly devils for all they’d done to her. Her mouth twisted. Maybe, after so long, she just wanted a man. Her hand was all right in its way-it knew exactly what she liked-but it couldn’t hold her and hug her afterwards. Of course, not all men did that, either, but the hope was always there.

She’d told Nieh she didn’t want to lie with him. That hadn’t been long ago, either. Neither of them mentioned it now. Liu Han opened the door to her room. A lamp still flickered in there. She used the flame to light the little brazier that gave the place such heat as it had-not much.

Even after she’d shut the door behind them, Nieh Ho-T’ing still hesitated. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s better than all right, in fact.”

That made him smile. He didn’t smile often. When he did, his whole face changed. It wasn’t hard and watchful-committed-any more. Not only did he seem happy, he seemed surprised at being happy, as if he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react.

“Nok’ang to lie on up here,” Liu Han said sadly. “Even with blankets”-she pointed to the mound under which she burrowed-“it won’t be warm.”

“We’ll have to make it warm, then,” he said, and smiled that uncertain smile once more. It grew broader when she smiled back at him. He glanced toward the little brass lamp. “Shall I blow that out?”

“I don’t think it matters,” she answered. “We’re going to be covered up anyhow.”

“True.” But Nieh did blow out the lamp, plunging the room into blackness. Liu Han got out of her layers of clothes as fast as she could and dove beneath the covers. Nieh almost stepped on the bedding-and her-when he walked over in the dark after undressing himself.

She shivered when he ran his hands up and down her body, partly from excitement and partly because they were cold. But he was warm elsewhere; his erection rubbed against her thigh. When she took him in her hand for a moment, he shivered, too, probably for both the reasons she had.

He kissed her. She stroked his cheek. It was almost as smooth as her own, not furry with beard or rough with the nubs of scraped-off whisker as Bobby Fiore’s had been. Nieh’s chest was smooth and hairless, too, with nothing like the black jungle the American had had growing there. When she’d first been forced to couple with Bobby Fiore, she’d thought that mat of hair disgusting. Then she’d got used to it. Now smoothness felt strange.

His mouth was warm, too. It came down on her left breast. His tongue teased her nipple. She sighed and rested a hand on the back of his head. But although the caresses felt good, they also reminded her of the baby-even if it was only a daughter-who should have been nursing there.

His mouth moved to her other breast. His hand took its place, squeezing her hard enough to be pleasurable and not quite enough to hurt. She sighed again. His other hand was busy between her legs, not yet stroking her most secret places but teasing all around them till she-almost-forgot how cold the room was. He understood patience in a way she’d had to teach to Bobby Fiore.

After a while, he grew too patient to suit her. She closed her fingers around him, gently tugging back his foreskin. He gasped and scrambled onto her. She spread her legs and arched her back to make his entry easy.

The darkness was so complete, she could not see his face above hers. It didn’t matter. She knew that, when their lips weren’t joined, it had to bear the same intent, inward, searching expression as her own. His hips bucked steadily, driving him in and out of her.

Her breath came in short gasps, as if she’d run a long way. Nieh grunted and shuddered, but kept moving inside her until, a moment later, she also quivered in release. Then, still thoughtful, he rolled off beside her so his weight, which suddenly seemed much heavier, wouldn’t flatten her.

He touched her cheek. “You are everything I thought you’d be, and more besides,” he said.

The words warmed her and left her wary at the same time. “I am not going to be your toy or your-what do you say? — your lackey, that’s it, because of what we just did,” she said. Her voice came out sharper than she’d intended, but that was all right, too. He needed to know he couldn’t take advantage of her, in bed or out, because she’d lain with him once. The Communists preached of better days for women. As she’d seen from Hsia Shou-Tao, not all of them meant what they said. She thought Nieh was different. Now she’d find out.

“Fair enough,” he said. He sounded wintry, too, as he went on, “And just because you’ve lain down with me, don’t think I will press for your schemes unless they have merit.” Then he softened that by leaning up on an elbow and kissing her. “The one tonight certainly did.”

“I am glad you think so,” she said. Had she been wondering if she could use her body to influence Nieh and advance her own position among the revolutionaries who fought the scaly devils? She had to admit to herself that it had crossed her mind. In a man’s world, a woman’s body was sometimes the only weapon she had-and she did want to rise to where all her ideas were taken seriously, the better to avenge herself against the little devils. What Nieh said marked a better way, though. “Comrade, we have a bargain.”

As if by accident, his hands strayed along her body toward the joining of her legs. “How shall we seal it?” he asked slyly.

She hesitated, feeling him stir against her side and start to rise. She wouldn’t have minded another round, but-“Notlike that,” she said, and took his hand away. “Didn’t you listen to what I told you?”

To her relief, he didn’t sound angry when he answered, “I listened, but sometimes-often-people do nothing but mouth empty phrases. The Kuomintang, for instance, calls itself a revolutionary party.” His contemptuous snort showed what he thought of that. “But you, Liu Han, you mean what you say. This is something I need to know.”

“Good enough,” Liu Han said after a moment “We seal it like this, then.” Now she kissed him. “It is enough for now.”

The Emperor’s holographic image beamed down on the shiplords’ celebration aboard the127th Emperor Hetto. On three worlds of the Empire, billions from the Race, the Rabotevs, and the Hallessi were celebrating their sovereign’s hatching day at just this moment. Knowing that made Atvar feel part of the great community the Race had built, not the embattled outsider into which he sometimes seemed transformed by the pestilential war on Tosev 3.

Some of the shiplords were behaving so boisterously, he wondered whether they’d illicitly tasted ginger before their shuttlecraft brought them here to the bannership. He didn’t like to think high-ranking commanders could fall victim to the insidious Tosevite herb, but on Tosev 3 what he liked and the truth were often-too often-far apart.

There over to one side floated Kirel, his usual standoffishness forgotten, talking animatedly with a couple of males who had been of Straha’s faction back in the days when Straha was around to have a faction. Atvar was glad to see his chief subordinate happier than usual, less glad to see the company with which he chose to enjoy himself. On the other fork of the tongue, a considerable majority of males had voted for Atvar’s ouster after the SSSR set off its nuclear bomb, so for Kirel to ignore all of them would have left him on good terms with only a few shiplords.

And there was poor, hardworking Pshing. He had in his hand a squeezebulb filled with the fermented juices of certain Tosevite fruits. The Big Uglies, being unable to enjoy the intoxicating effects of ginger, made do with ethanol and various flavorings. Males of the Race found some of those vile-why anyone, even a Big Ugly, would drink whiskey, was beyond Atvar-but others might be worth exporting to Home after the conquest was complete.

Atvar drifted over to Pshing, checked himself by snagging a grab ring with the claws of one toe. “How does it feel not to be waking me up to report some disaster?” he asked.

Pshing’s eyes didn’t quite track. He’d probably had several bulbs full of red wine already. “Exalted Fleetlord, it feelswonderful!” he exclaimed, tacking on an emphatic cough that threatened to become a coughing fit “Stinking Big Uglies are quiet for a change.”

“Indeed,” Atvar said. “Now if only they remain so.” He floated toward the console that dispensed bulbs of potations brought from Home, and toward the local drinks kept in bins with lids alongside it. He didn’t want to celebrate the Emperor’s hatching day with a product of Tosev 3. The Emperor represented Home and all it stood for. Far better to drink hudipar-berry brandy, then, than wine.

The male who came into the chamber was conspicuous not only for his subdued body paint but also for the purposeful way he went about looking for Atvar. The fleetlord’s momentary good spirits flickered and blew out Rokois was Pshing’s subordinate, taking the duty for the adjutant so he could enjoy himself. If Rokois was here, instead of waiting in front of a communicator, something had gone wrong-again.

Atvar had a strong impulse to hide himself inside a floating cluster of males so Rokois could not spot his body paint. Just for once, he, like Pshing, deserved a respite from bad news. But even if he escape that, he would not be able to evade the Emperor’s eyes. Some trick of the hologram made them follow you wherever you were in the chamber. And had that trick not been there, he knew his duty too well to flee from it.

But oh, the temptation!

Instead of fleeing the adjutant’s assistant, Atvar pushed off the console toward him (he did carry along the bulb of hudipar-berry brandy). Rokois folded into the posture of respectful obedience and began, “Exalted Fleetlord, I regret to report that-”

Although he had not spoken loudly, those words were plenty to bring near-silence to the festival chamber. Atvar was far from the only male to have noted his arrival and to wonder what news was urgent enough to disturb the fleetlord at the celebration. Had Britain or Nippon or some other, previously discounted, Tosevite empire or not-empire touched off an atomic bomb? Had Deutschland or the United States or even the SSSR touched off another one?

“Tell me, Rokois,” Atvar interrupted. “What do you regret to report now?”

“Exalted Fleetlord, the Big Uglies appear to have discovered our custom of honoring the Emperor’s hatching day,” the adjutant’s assistant answered. “Certain of them were invited to perform with their trained Tosevite beasts at observances of the day in cities on the eastern part of the main continental mass: this is in the large, populous not-empire known as China. Due to inadequate security, they were able to smuggle explosives in amongst our officers and administrators along with their beasts.”

“They died themselves, then?” Atvar said. Defending against males willing to do that was next to impossible. Fortunately, such fanatics were rare even among the fanatical Big Uglies.

“Exalted Fleetlord, in many instances they did,” Rokois answered. “We captured a couple of these males and disarmed their explosives before detonation. They insist they were duped, that they thought the bombs were, in fact, video equipment to allow us to record their performances.”

A rising mutter of anger and outrage came from the shiplords. Atvar understood that; he felt it himself. If you told lies, you didn’t need to recruit fanatics without fear of death. Any race, the Race included, had its share of dupes.

As he usually did in the face of misfortune, he tried to look on tin bright side of things. “If we have some of these beast exhibitors in custody, they may be able to lead us to the males who induced then to undertake their missions.”

“May events prove you correct, Exalted Fleetlord,” Rokois said. “The timing devices on the captured explosives are of Nipponese manufacture, although the males unanimously insist Chinese were the intermediaries who paid them and arranged for their performances.”

“More than one level of dupery may have been involved,” Atvar said. “Or, conversely, the timers may have been used merely to deceive us. Further investigation should shed more light on that. What else have you learned?”

“There is one other thing to support the view that this was a Chinese blow against us,” Rokois answered. “In the areas surrounding several of our administrative centers, we have found small handbills that, if translated correctly-the Chinese write with a peculiarly abominable script-demand the return of the hatchling taken from the Big Ugly female Liu Han for purposes of research.”

“The Big Uglies may not make demands of us,” Atvar said indignantly. Then he wondered why not. In matters military, they had earned wary attention if not full equality. “We shall have to evaluate this further.”

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord.” Rokois held no responsibility there, and was blithely aware of it. He disseminated policy; he did not shape it. After a moment’s hesitation, he went on, “Exalted Fleetlord, reports indicate that casualties among senior administrators and officers in China may be especially heavy. They naturally had seats closest to the Big Uglies presenting the beast shows, and so took the full brunt of the blasts.”

“Yes, that does make sense.” Atvar sighed again. “No help for it. Some junior males will get new marks and colors for their body paint. Some of them won’t have the experience or the sense to do their jobs as well as they should. As they show that, we’ll cull them and put others in their place. We shall rule China. We shall rule Tosev 3.”And I shall drink enough hudipar-berry brandy to forget I’m orbiting above this miserable, hateful world.

Despite that gloomy thought, his outward demeanor inspired Rokois, who exclaimed, “Itshall be done, Exalted Fleetlord!”

“Yes, spirits of past Emperors aiding us, it shall.” Now Atvar paused before resuming, “When you came in here, I feared you were bringing me word the Big Uglies had touched off another nuclear device. The Emperor be praised, I was wrong.” Instead of lowering his eye turrets, he turned them toward the hologram of his ruler.

“May it not come to pass,” Rokois burst out, also gathering strength from the image of the Emperor.

“Indeed. May it not” The fleetlord squirted a long pull of brandy down his throat.

Teerts’ radar gave him a new target. He didn’t have it visually, not yet. All he saw through his windscreen were clouds and, through occasional rents in them, the wave-chopped surface of the ocean that stretched between the main and lesser continental masses.

He was just as glad not to be flying over Deutschland any more. Maybe Munchen had deserved what the Race gave it; he was no targeting specialist or shiplord, to be able to judge such things from full knowledge. Flying over the glassy ruins of what had been a large city, though, left him glum. The sight made him think of Tokyo, which, but for him, might still be standing. To hate the Nipponese was one thing, to visit on them nuclear fire quite another.

They would have visited the same fire on the Race, had they possessed it Teerts knew that full well. It salved his conscience, but not enough.

He thought about tasting ginger, but decided to wait until his body’s need could no longer be denied. “I think faster with ginger,” he said, first making sure his radio was off. “I don’t think better. Or I think I don’t think better, anyhow.” He puzzled through that, finally deciding it was what he meant.

He dove down beneath the clouds. This would be the third ship he’d attacked on his flight to the lesser continental mass. They seemed almost as thick as parasites on the water. The males with the fancy body paint were right to start paying more attention to them, as far as he was concerned. The Race had automatically discounted water and travel on it.

“Trust the Big Uglies to do things we’d never think of,” he muttered. You could use up a lot of aircraft and a lot of munitions trying to suppress the Tosevites’ nautical commerce. If you tried shutting down all of it, would you have any aircraft left to commit to other tasks?

That wasn’t his judgment to make. But attacking ships wasn’t like blowing cities off the face of Tosev 3. It was a real part of war, easily comprehensible to any male at all. For once, Elifrim had assigned him something he didn’t loathe.

There! Sheet metal and wood, crude and homely, slow and wallowing, belching a trail of smoke into the cloudy sky. You didn’t need missiles for this. He’d used up his laser-guided bombs on the two previous targets, but he still had cannon and plain bombs taken from a Tosevite arsenal. They would do the job.

The ship swelled monstrously fast. His killercraft screamed toward it in a shallow dive. The targeting computer told him to release the bombs. The aircraft’s nose tried to come up as they dropped away. He and the autopilot kept it on its proper course.

He spotted Tosevites scrambling about on the deck of the ship. The killercraft bucked in the air as he thumbed the firing button of the cannon. He poured shells into the ship before the blasts from the bombs, and the water they kicked up, obscured it from sight “Goodbye, Big Uglies,” he said, pulling out of the dive, so he could make another pass and inspect the damage.

He hadn’t sunk this one. Radar told him as much, before he got a good look at it. But smoke spurted from places it hadn’t before. Some of the Big Uglies were down and motionless now, others struggling to repair the damage he’d done.

And others-Fire spurted from the front end of the ship, again and again and again. They had an antiaircraft gun aboard, and were using it with great vim even if the shells they threw up weren’t coming very close to him.

“Praise the Emperor’s name for that,” he said. If he was unlucky enough to get shot down twice, he wouldn’t be taken prisoner, not here. He’d go into the water and see whether he froze before he drowned or vice versa.

This time, he fired a long burst at the Tosevite’s popgun. He knew he’d damaged their vessel some more, and had no intention of coming round again to find out how much. That antiaircraft cannon might not have been wrecked.

Up above the clouds once more, to broaden the radar’s range. He looked forward to landing in what the locals called Florida. The air-base in southern France from which he’d been flying had turned unpleasantly cold, by his standards if not by those of Tosev 3. But Florida stayed close to temperate throughout its winter season, even if the air was moist enough to make him inspect his scales for mold whenever he got up in the morning.

He checked his fuel supply. The attack runs he’d made had left him rather low on hydrogen to make it all the way across this ridiculously wide stretch of water. The Race kept a couple of refueling aircraft flying above the ocean for such contingencies. Satellite relay quickly put him in touch with one of them. He swung north for a rendezvous.

Guiding the prong from the refueling aircraft into his own took delicacy and concentration. He was glad he hadn’t tasted beforehand; he knew how jumpy and impatient he got with ginger in him. Unfortunately, he also knew how sad and morose he got with no ginger in him.

He attacked one more ship on his way to Florida. The fog was so thick over the water that he carried out the run almost entirely by radar. He saw the wallowing Tosevite craft only at the last instant, just in time to add a few rounds from his cannon to the bombs he’d dropped.

Before long, he left behind the clouds and fog. The sky above him was a deep blue, the water below an even deeper shade of the same color. For once, Tosev 3 seemed almost beautiful-if you liked blue. It was a color far less common on Home than here. A proper world, to his way of thinking, was supposed to have an abundance of yellows and reds and oranges. Blue should have been an appetizer, not a main course.

Radar spotted the land ahead before he did-but radar was not concerned with aesthetics. Teerts didn’t think much of the low, damp terrain toward which he was flying. Its hideous humidity meant that everything not recently cleared was covered by a rank, noxious coat of vegetation. He wasn’t any too fond of green, either, though he did prefer it to blue.

Only the sandy beaches reminded him of Home, and they should have been broad expanses, not narrow strips hemmed in by more of Tosev 3’s omnipresent water. He sighed. He wasn’t going to have to do anything complicated from here on out, so he let himself have some ginger.

“I might as well be happy when I land,” he told the cockpit canopy as he followed the seacoast south toward his destination. Every so often, he’d fly over a little Tosevite town. Some of them had ships in their harbors. The aggressiveness the herb put in him made him want to blast those ships, as he had the ones out on the ocean. But the Race had held this territory for a long time, and any traffic was likely to be in authorized goods.

Staying rational through that first jolt of pleasure and excitement was never easy-the ships were just sitting there, as if begging to be destroyed. But Teerts knew how to separate the urgings of the ginger from those he would have had without it. He didn’t let the herb make him as stupid as he once had.

The radar was linked to a map that listed the names of the cities over which he flew. Coming up was Miami, and past that the landing strip the Race had taken for its own. Miami was easy to recognize, being much the largest center the Big Uglies had built hereabouts. He could see it coming up in the distance. It had a large harbor, with tens upon tens of ships. Teerts’ mouth fell open in ginger-induced amusement as he imagined the havoc he could wreak upon them with a good strafing run. It was almost-but not quite-worth braving the wrath of his superiors once he’d landed.

Then, right before his eyes, the whole harbor-for all he could tell, the whole city-went up in a fireball.

Ginger made you think faster. That much he knew. He swung the killercraft away from that fireball in as tight a turn as it would take. He knew what the fireball was. He’d seen one of the same sort over the Deutsch city Jisrin had incinerated. This one, in fact, wasn’t quite so large as the other, and looked to be a ground burst rather than one in the air. But nothing could be mistaken for the explosion of a nuclear bomb.

The blast slapped the killercraft like a blow across the muzzle. For a dreadful moment, he thought he had no control. The ocean here was supposed to be warmer than it was farther east and north, but that didn’t mean he wanted to go into it. And if Miami had just exploded in radioactive fire, who would rescue him, anyhow?

He was starting to review ejection procedures in his mind when the aircraft decided to answer the controls. He wondered how much radiation he’d picked up from being all too close to two nuclear blasts in a matter of days. Nothing he could do about that, not now.

His next query was much more urgently relevant: was his landing site still on the map? He got on the radio: “Flight Leader Teerts to south Florida airbase. Are you there?” He’d never before meant that question literally.

To his relief, the answer came back in moments, though it was hashed with static. “Reading you clearly, Flight Leader Teerts. Were you damaged in the explosion? Was that…? Could that have been…?”

Teerts didn’t blame the male for not wanting to say it out loud. But the ginger in him made him impatient with subterfuge and euphemism. “That was a nuclear bomb in Miami, air base. Whatever we had in the city, it’s gone now.”

“How could they have done that?” The male on the other end of the radio connection sounded stunned, disbelieving. “Our radar spotted no aircraft to deliver the weapon, nor missiles, either. And we’ve chased the Big Uglies out of this peninsula. They couldn’t have smuggled the weapon in by land. What does that leave?”

Maybe ginger really did make Teerts think better, not just faster. Or maybe his mission had freed his mind from the Race’s usual patterns of thought. Without a moment’s hesitation, he replied, “Maybe they brought it in by water.”

“By water?” The fillip the male added to his interrogative cough made him sound incredulous, not just curious. “How could they do that?”

“I don’t know exactly how.” Teerts’ right eye turret swung back toward the capped cloud still rising above Miami. “But I’d say they seem to have managed.”

Atvar was growing to hate the reports he got from the targeting specialists, and to hate the sessions he spent with Kirel translating the recommendations from those reports into an order that would throw another city into the fire. Kirel called up a map of the United States.

“Once again, Exalted Fleetlord, Denver is a recommended target, along with this other, more peripheral one.”

“There is enough radiation loose on this continental mass, thanks to the Big Uglies,” Atvar answered. Somehow, catastrophe endlessly repeated didn’t seem so catastrophic as it had the first time. One Tosevite atomic bomb had had the shiplords hissing for his skin. Now that the Big Uglies had touched off a whole string of them, the males stopped worrying about Atvar. They had a new kind of war on their hands.

Kirel said, “The Emperor be praised we didn’t delay another generation in attacking this planet, as some of the budget-cutters proposed. Even if we’d kept our nuclear armory intact, we’d have faced more nuclear weapons than we brought along. We might not even have effected a planetfall, let alone conquest.”

“Truth,” Atvar said. “This device, you will note from the analysis, was prepared entirely from the Big Uglies’ own plutonium. They would have had nuclear arms all too soon in any case, even if we had not come to this miserable world. Of course, if we had come a generation later, they might also have succeeded in fighting their own full-scale atomic war, which would have solved most of our problems for us.”

“Ours, yes, but not those of the colonization fleet,” Kirel said.

“If the Big Uglies slagged Tosev 3 themselves, the colonization fleet could stop here just long enough to pick up reaction mass for the motors, and then honorably return Home,” Atvar answered. “But since the Big Uglies have not quite wrecked the planet, we cannot do so, either. We know limits; they seem unaware of the concept.”

“We have spoken before of how the restraint we feel compelled to observe has been the Tosevites’ biggest single safety factor,” Kirel agreed. He illuminated the other possible bomb site the targeting specialists had chosen. “I don’t know why they reckon this place a candidate for annihilation, Exalted Fleetlord. By planetary standards, it’s far away from everything.”

“Only if you look at matters from the perspective of a male of the Race,” Atvar said. “To the Tosevites, in its own way it is as important a nexus as Chicago.”Which they went and destroyed themselves, he added mentally.

“You are going to choose the out-of-the-way site, then,” Kirel said, not quite in resignation, but with the clear intention of conveying that, had he been fleetlord, he would have come to a different conclusion.

Well, he wasn’t fleetlord, and Atvar now had reason to hope he never would be. A small or medium-sized crisis agitated males; in a large one, they got behind the leaders they had. The fleetlord said, “That is my choice, yes.”

“Very well,” Kirel said. “Per your orders, it shall be done. We shall bomb this Pearl Harbor place.”

Ttomalss did not read Chinese well. He was one of the few males of the Race who read Chinese at all. Learning a separate character for each word struck him as far more trouble than it was worth, and he had a computer to help him recognize the angular squiggles and remind him of what they meant. How a Big Ugly ever learned to cope with this cumbersome system was beyond him.

He did not need to know a great many characters to decipher those on the strips of paper that had been brought up to him from cities throughout the eastern stretch of China the Race occupied. Those strips had been found pasted up around sites the Chinese Tosevites had bombed; some of them had been captured in the cases of beast-show males before the bombs in those cases exploded.

The Tosevite female called Liu Han not only wanted her hatchling back, she was in a position with the Chinese who still resisted the Race’s rule to make her demands widely known and to exert force to persuade the Race to yield to them.

Ttomalss turned an eye turret toward the hatchling in question. That was partly in reaction to the demands for its return and partly a simple caution to make sure it wasn’t getting into anything it shouldn’t. It could move around on all fours now, and could reach for things with at least some chance of having a hand actually land on them. And, as always, whatever it touched went straight into its mouth.

None of the beast-show males who hadn’t blown themselves to small, gory fragments admitted to having heard of Liu Han. Ttomalss wished he’d never heard of her, either. Given the amount of trouble her hatchling had caused him, he might well have been delighted to give it back to her, would that not have disrupted his research program. As things were, though, he hated to abandon the experiment just when its results were beginning to seem interesting.

“What have you to say for yourself?” he asked the hatchling, and tacked on the usual interrogative cough at the end.

The hatchling turned its head to look at him. He’d been around Big Uglies enough that he no longer found that unnerving. The creatures were just too poorly made to move their eyes as the Race did. The hatchling’s face twisted into a Tosevite gesture of amiability: the rest of its features were far more mobile than Ttomalss’. He didn’t think that made it superior; he thought it made the hatchling and its race even uglier than they would have been otherwise.

It screwed up its face and let out a noise that sounded amazingly like an interrogative cough. It had done that two or three times already. As best he could tell, it began by making all sorts of sounds, and then gradually started picking out those the beings around it used in their language.

He wondered if its vocal apparatus would be able to handle the language of the Race. By two or three thousand years after the conquest, all the Big Uglies would be speaking that tongue; they would, unlikely as the notion now seemed, be normal subjects like the Rabotevs and Hallessi. A lot of them were good at languages. With so many different ones on Tosev 3, that was hardly surprising. But one of the things Ttomalss needed to learn was how they would handle the Race’s tongue when learning it from hatchlinghood. If this hatchling was returned to Liu Han, he would have to start that process over again.

Tessrek stuck his head into the laboratory. “Enjoy your Little Ugly while you have it,” he said.

What Ttomalss would have enjoyed was sending Tessrek out the airlock with no space suit. “The creature is not here to enjoy,” he said stiffly. “Animals are to exploit, not to befriend as the Big Uglies do.” Remembering his earlier thought, he added, “Not that the Tosevites are animals. Once the conquest is complete, they will be our subjects.”

“It would be much more convenient if theywere animals,” Tessrek said. “Then this world would be ours. Even if they were barbarians-remember the image of the Tosevite warrior the probe sent Home?”

“The sword-swinging savage in rusty iron, mounted on a beast? I’m not likely to forget.” Ttomalss hissed out a sigh. Would that that image were still truth on Tosev 3. It would have made his life-the Race’s life-ever so much simpler. But he wasted only a moment on the barbarous past of the Tosevites. “What do you mean, enjoy the hatchling while I have it? No decision to abandon it to the Big Uglies has reached me.”

“As far as I know, the decision hasn’t been made,” Tessrek admitted. “But when it is made, what do you think it will be? Everybody’s eye turrets are swiveling every which way because of the atomic bombs the Tosevites have started using against us, but the Chinese raids cost us a lot of capable males, too. If giving back one hatchling can get us a respite from more of those, don’t you think we ought to take it?”

“That depends,” Ttomalss said judiciously. “If we do return the hatchling, we encourage the Big Uglies to make other demands of us, and then to harm us if we don’t obey. They’re supposed to be afraid of us, not the other way round.”

“If they are, they hide it very well,” Tessrek said, “and who can blame them? Now that they have atomic weapons, they can do us severe damage. We may have to treat with them as equals.”

“Nonsense,” Ttomalss said automatically. The Race recognized no equals. The Rabotevs and Hallessi had legal equality in most areas of life, and had their own social hierarchies, but their worlds were in the Race’s hands even so. Yet, on reflection, maybe it wasn’t nonsense. Tosev 3 wasn’t in the Race’s hands, not yet Ttomalss still assumed it eventually would be, but the assumption looked less and less assumable all the time.

Tessrek said, “Besides, as I and other males have noted, the presence of the small Tosevite aboard this vessel has had noxious consequences for the local environment In short, the creature still stinks. Many males would be glad to see it gone for that reason alone, and have stated as much.”

“My personal attitude is that that viewpoint has a far more noxious odor than the Tosevite,” Ttomalss answered. He did his best to disguise the stab of fear that ran through him. If all the other researchers and psychologists banded together against his experiment, it might be terminated regardless of its virtues. That wasn’t fair, but sometimes it was the way the egg hatched.

He wondered if the Big Uglies let personalities get in the way of scientific research. He doubted it. Otherwise, how could they have so quickly moved forward from barbarism to rivaling a Race unified perhaps before their species had evolved its present form? It was itchy to think of the Tosevites as more advanced, in a way, than his own people, but the logic seemed inescapable.

He said, “Until I am told otherwise, the experiment will continue in its present form. Even if I am told otherwise, I shall not surrender the hatchling to the inept mercies of the Big Uglies without an appeal to highest authority. And I, too, have backers for my cause. This work is an important part of understanding not only our future relations with the Tosevites but also that of their sexuality and its consequences for their species. Terminating it would disrupt several research tracks.”

“And probably send you back down to the surface of Tosev 3,” Tessrek said maliciously.

“At least I’vebeen down to the surface of Tosev 3,” Ttomalss retorted. Though he regarded that surface and the Big Uglies who dwelt on it as rivaling each other for unpleasantness, he added, “Some males seem to be of the opinion that research can be conducted only in sterile laboratory settings; they do not understand that interactions with the environment are significant, and that results obtained in the laboratory are liable to be skewed precisely because the setting is unnatural.”

“Some males, on the other fork of the tongue, simply enjoy stepping into lumps of excrement and stooping to wash it out from between their toes.” Tessrek turned his eye turrets toward the Tosevite hatchling. “And some males, I might add, are in a poor position to sneer at the practices of others when they themselves are comfortably ensconced in a laboratory aboard ship.”

“Being here is a necessary component of my research,” Ttomalss answered angrily. “I am trying to determine how well the Big Uglies can be made to conform to our practices if those are inculcated into them from hatchlinghood. Just as one intending fraud goes to a computer for access to resources, I have brought the hatchling here for access to the Race undiluted by contact with the Tosevites. Such would be most difficult to arrange down on the surface of Tosev 3.”

“You’ve certainly given the rest of us undiluted olfactory contact with the wretched little creature,” Tessrek said. “The scrubbers up here are designed to eliminateour wastes from the air, not its, and some of those odors have proved most persistent and most disgusting.” He added an emphatic cough.

The hatching made a noise that, if you were in a charitable mood, you might have recognized as an emphatic cough. Perhaps you didn’t need to be in a charitable mood; Tessrek’s eyes swung sharply toward the little Tosevite, then moved away as if to say he refused to acknowledge what he’d just heard.

Triumphantly, Ttomalss said, “There, you see? The hatching, despite its deficiencies, is being socialized toward our usages even at this early stage in its development.”

“It was just another in the series of loud, unpleasant sounds the creature emits,” Tessrek insisted. “It held no intelligible meaning whatsoever.” To show he meant what he said, he let out a second emphatic cough.

Now Ttomalss looked anxiously toward the hatchling. Even he would have been willing to concede it did not know the meanings of the noises it made in imitation of his. It seemed likely to learn meanings by observing what the beings around it did in response to the stimuli varying sounds evoked. But despite his knowledge, he would have yielded a pay period’s wages to have it come out with another emphatic cough.

He didn’t think it was going to happen. But then, just when he’d given up hope, the little Tosevite did make a noise that sounded like an emphatic cough-sounded more like one, in fact, that its first effort had.

“Coincidence,” Tessrek declared, before Ttomalss could say a thing. Yet no matter how dogmatically certain he sounded, he did not presume to tack yet a third emphatic cough on behind his assertion.

“I think not,” Ttomalss said. “This is how the Big Uglies go about acquiring language. Since we are the language possessors with whom the hatchling is in constant contact, it is imitating our repertoire of sounds. Eventually, I believe, it will attach mental signification to the sounds it uses: in other words, it will begin to speak intelligibly.”

“The Big Uglies have enough trouble doing that no matter what language they use,” Tessrek said. But he did not try directly refuting Ttomalss, from which Ttomalss inferred he conceded the point.

Ttomalss said, “Since video and audio monitors constantly record the activities in this chamber, I want to thank you for adding to our store of data concerning Tosevite language acquisition.”

Tessrek hissed something unpleasant and departed more quickly than he’d come in. Ttomalss let his mouth fall open in a long laugh, which he thought well-earned. The Tosevite hatchling emitted one of the squeals it used in place of a sensibly quiet gesture. Sometimes those squeals, so unlike any sound the Race made, annoyed Ttomalss no end. Now he laughed even harder. The hatchling had understood his mirth and responded with its own.

For the benefit of the recorders, he emphasized that point aloud, adding, “This growing level of successful interspecies communication appears to me to warrant further serious investigation.” He looked at the little Tosevite with something more nearly approaching warmth than he ever remembered showing it. “Let’s see them try to take you away from me now. Even if you are a nuisance, you’re too valuable to give back to the Big Uglies.”