Striking the Balance Read online

  “I don’t even know where I am, let alone what for,” Ussmak replied with more than a hint of asperity. “After we yielded the base to the soldiers of the SSSR, we were packed first into animal-drawn conveyances of some sort and then into some truly appalling railroad cars, then finally into more conveyances with no way of seeing out. These Russkis are not living up to their agreements the way Straha said they would.”

  When that was translated for him, Lidov threw back his head and made a peculiar barking noise. “He is laughing,” Gazzim explained. “He is laughing because the male Straha has no experience with the Tosevites of the SSSR and does not know what he is talking about.”

  Ussmak did not care for the sound of those words. He said, “This does not strike me as the place of honor we were promised when we agreed on surrender terms. If I didn’t know better, I would say it reminded me of a prison.”

  Lidov laughed again, this time before Ussmak’s words were translated. He knows some of our language, Ussmak thought, and resolved to be more wary about what he said. Gazzim said, “The name of this place is Lefortovo. It is in Moskva, the capital of the SSSR.”

  Casually, without even seeming to think about it, Lidov reached out and smacked Gazzim in the snout. The paintless male cringed. Lidov spoke loudly to him; had the Big Ugly been a male of the Race, no doubt he would have punctuated his speech with emphatic coughs. Gazzim flinched into the posture of obedience.

  When Lidov was done, the interpreter said, “I am to tell you that I am allowed to volunteer no further information. This session is to acquire knowledge from you, not to give it to you.”

  “Ask your questions, then,” Ussmak said resignedly.

  And the questions began—they came down like snow in the Siberian blizzards Ussmak had grown to hate. At first, they were the sort of questions he would have asked a Tosevite collaborator whose background he did not know well: questions about his military specialty and about his experience on Tosev 3 since being revived from cold sleep.

  He was able to tell Colonel Lidov a lot about landcruisers. Crewmales of necessity had to know more than their own particular specialties so they could continue to fight their vehicles in case of casualties. He talked about driving the vehicle, about its suspension, about its weapons, about its engine.

  From there, Lidov went onto ask him about the Race’s strategy and tactics, and about the other Big Uglies he had fought That puzzled him; surely Lidov was more familiar with his own kind than Ussmak could hope to be. Gazzim said, “He wants you to rank each type of Tosevite in order of the fighting efficiency you observed.”

  “Does he?” Ussmak wanted to ask Gazzim a couple of questions before directly responding to that, but didn’t dare, not when the Big Ugly interrogator was likely to understand the language of the Race. He wondered how candid he should be. Did Lidov want to hear his own crewmales praised, or was he after real information? Ussmak had to guess, and guessed the latter: “Tell him the Deutsche fought best, the British next, and then Soviet males.”

  Gazzim quivered a little; Ussmak decided he’d made a mistake, and wondered how bad a mistake it was. The interpreter spoke in the croaking Russki tongue, relaying his words to Colonel Lidov. The Tosevite’s little mouth pursed even tighter. He spoke a few words. “Tell him why,” Gazzim said, giving no indication what. If anything, Lidov thought of the answer.

  Your egg should have been addled instead of hatching, Gazzim, Ussmak thought. But, having begun his course, he saw no choice but to run it through to the end. “The Deutsche keep getting new kinds of equipment, each better than the last, and they are tactically adaptable. They are better tactically than our simulators back on Home, and almost always surprising.”

  Lidov spoke again in the Russki language. “He says the SSSR also discovered this, to their sorrow. The SSSR and Deutschland were at peace, were friends with each other, and the cowardly, treacherous Deutsche viciously attacked this peace-loving not-empire.” Lidov said something else; Gazzim translated: “And what of the British?”

  Ussmak paused to think before he answered. He wondered what a Deutsch male would have said about the war with the SSSR. Something different, he suspected. He knew Tosevite politics were far more complicated than anything he was used to, but this Lidov had slammed home his view of the situation like a landcruiser gunner shelling a target into submission. That argued he wouldn’t care to hear anything unpleasant about his own group of Big Uglies.

  Still, his question about the British gave Ussmak some time to prepare for what he would say about the SSSR. The former landcruiser driver (who now wished he’d never become anything but a landcruiser driver) answered, “British landcruisers do not match those of Deutschland or the SSSR in quality. British artillery, though, is very good, and the British were first to use poisonous gases against the Race. Also, the island of Britain is small and densely settled, and the British showed they were very good at fighting in built-up areas. They cost us many casualties on account of that.”

  “Tak,” Lidov said. Ussmak turned one eye toward Gazzim—a question without an interrogative cough.

  The interpreter explained: “This means ‘so’ or “Well.’ It signflies he has taken in your words but does not indicate his thoughts on them. Now he will want you to speak of the males of the SSSR.”

  “It shall be done,” Ussmak said, politely responding as if Lidov were his superior. “I will say these Russki males are as brave as any Tosevites I have encountered. I will also say that their landcruisers are well made, with good gun, good engine, and especially good tracks for the wretched ground conditions so common on Tosev 3.”

  Lidov’s mouth grew a little wider. Ussmak took that as a good sign. The male from the—what was it? the NKVD, that was the acronym—spoke in his own language. Gazzim rendered his words as, “With all these compliments, why do you place the glorious soldiers of the Red Army behind those of Deutschland and Britain?”

  Ussmak realized his attempt at flattery had failed. Now he would have to tell the truth, or at least some of it, with no reason to be optimistic that Lidov would be glad to hear it. The males of the SSSR had been skillful at breaking the rebellious Siberian males into smaller and smaller groups, each time with a plausible excuse. Now Ussmak felt down to his toes how alone he really was.

  Picking his words with great care, he said, “From what I have seen in the SSSR, the fighting males here have trouble changing their plans to match changing circumstances. They do not respond as quickly as the Deutsche or the British.” In that way, they were much like the Race, which was probably why the Race had had such good success against them. “Communications also leave a good deal to be desired, and your landcruisers, while stoutly made, are not always deployed to best advantage.”

  Colonel Lidov grunted. Ussmak didn’t know much about the noises the Big Uglies made, but that one sounded like what would have been a thoughtful hiss from a male of the Race. Then Lidov said, “Tell me of the ideological motivations behind your rebellion against the oppressive aristocracy which had controlled you up to the point of your resistance.”

  After Gazzim translated that into the language of the Race, Ussmak let his mouth fall open in a wry laugh. “Ideology? What ideology? I had a head full of ginger, my crewmales had just been killed, and Hisslef wouldn’t stop screaming at me, so I shot him. After that, one thing led to another. If I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn’t. It’s been more trouble than it’s worth.”

  The Big Ugly grunted again. He said, “Everything has ideological underpinnings, whether one consciously realizes it or not. I congratulate you for the blow you struck against those who exploited your labor for their own selfish benefit.”

  All that did was convince Ussmak that Lidov didn’t have the slightest idea of what he was talking about. All survivors of the conquest fleet—assuming there were survivors from the conquest fleet, which looked imperfectly obvious—would be prominent, well-established males on the conquered world by the time the colonization fleet ar
rived. They’d have years of exploiting its resources; the first starship full of trade goods might well have headed Homeward before the colonists got here.

  Ussmak wondered how much clandestine ginger would have been aboard that first starship. Even if the Big Uglies had been the animal-riding barbarians everyone thought they were, Tosev 3 would have been trouble for the Race. Thinking of ginger made Ussmak wish he had a taste, too.

  Colonel Lidov said, “You will now itemize for me the ideologies of the progressive and reactionary factions in your leadership hierarchy.”

  “I will?” Ussmak said in some surprise. To Gazzim, he went on, “Remind this Tosevite”—he remembered not to call the Big Ugly a Big Ugly—“that I was only a landcruiser driver. If you please. I did not get my orders straight from the fleetlord, you know.”

  Gazzim spoke in the Russki tongue. Lidov listened, replied. Gazzim translated back the other way: “Tell me whatever you know of these things. Nothing is of greater importance than ideology.”

  Offhand, Ussmak could have come up with a whole long list of things more important than ideology. Topping the list, at that moment, would have been the ginger he’d thought of a moment before. He wondered why the Big Ugly was so obsessed with an abstraction when there were so many genuinely important things to worry about.

  “Tell him I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to answer,” Ussmak said to Gazzim. “I was never a commander of any sort. All I did was what I was told.”

  “This is not good enough,” Gazzim answered after Lidov had spoken. The male sounded worried. “He believes you are lying. I must explain, so you will understand why, that a specflic ideological framework lies under the political structure of this not-empire, and serves as its center in the same way as the Emperor does for us.”

  Lidov did not hit Gazzim, as he had before; evidently he wanted Ussmak to have that explanation. As he had been conditioned to do, Ussmak cast down his eyes—this in spite of having betrayed the Emperor first by mutiny and then by surrender to the Tosevites.

  But he answered in the only way he could: “I cannot invent bogus ideological splits when I know of none.”

  Gazzim let out a long, hissing sigh, then translated his reply for the male from the NKVD. Lidov flicked a switch beside his chair. From behind him, a brilliant incandescent lamp with a reflector in back of it glared into Ussmak’s face. He swung his eye turrets away from it. Lidov flicked on other switches. More lights to either side burned at Ussmak.

  The interrogation went on from there.

  “Good God almighty damn,” Mutt Daniels said with reverent irreverence. “It’s the country, bread me and fry me if it ain’t.”

  “Bout time they took us out o’ line for a while, don’t you think, sir?” Sergeant Herman Muldoon answered. “They never kept us in the trenches so long at a stretch in the Great War—nothin’ like what they put us through in Chicago, not even close.”

  “Nope,” Mutt said. “They could afford to fool around in France. They had the men an’ they had the initiative. Here in Shytown, we was like the Germans Over There—we was the ones who had to stand there and take it with whatever we could scrape together.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call Elgin the country.” To illustrate what he meant, Captain Stan Szymanski waved his arm to take in the factories that checked the town’s grid of streets. The wave took in what had been factories, anyhow. They were ruins now, jagged and broken against the gray sky. Every one of them had been savagely bombed. Some were just medium-sized hills of broken bricks and rubble. Walls and stacks still stood on others. Whatever they had made, though, they weren’t making it any more. The seven-story clock tower of the Elgin Watch factory, which had made a prime observation post, was now scarcely taller than any other wreckage.

  Mutt pointed westward, across the Fox River. “But that’s farm country out there yonder, sir,” he said. “Ain’t seen nothin’ but houses and skyscrapers and whatnot when I look out for a long time. It’s right nice, you ask me.”

  “What it is, Lieutenant, is damn fine tank country,” Szymanski said in a voice that brooked no argument. “Since the Lizards have damn fine tanks and we don’t, I can’t get what you’d call enthusiastic about it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Daniels said. It wasn’t that Szymanski wasn’t right—he was. It was just the way these young men, born in this century, looked at the world. Born in this century, hell—odds were Szymanski’d still been pissing his drawers when Mutt climbed on a troopship to head Over There.

  But no matter how young the captain was on the outside, he had a cold-blooded way of evaluating things. The farmland over across the river was good tank country and the Lizards had good tanks, so to hell with the whole landscape. One of these days, there might not be a war going on. When Mutt looked at farmland, he thought about that, and about what kind of crops you’d get with this soil and climate, and how big your yield was liable to be. Szymanski didn’t care.

  “Where they gonna billet us, sir?” Muldoon asked.

  “Just off of Fountain Square, not far from the watch factory,” Szymanski answered. “We’re taking over a hotel that hasn’t been bombed to smithereens: the three-story red brick building over there.” He pointed.

  “Fountain Square? Yeah, I been there.” Sergeant Muldoon chuckled. “It’s a triangle, and it ain’t got no fountain. Great little place.”

  “Give me a choice between a hotel an’ the places we been stayin’ at in Chicago, an’ I ain’t gonna carry on a whole lot,” Mutt said. “Nice to lie down without worryin’ about whether a sniper can pick up where you’re sleepin’ and blow your head off without you even knowin’ the bastard was there.”

  “Amen,” Muldoon said enthusiastically. “ ‘Sides which—” He glanced over at Captain Szymanski, then decided not to go on. Mutt wondered what that was all about. He’d have to wander over to Fountain Square himself and see what he could see.

  Szymanski didn’t notice Muldoon’ s awkward pause. He was still looking westward. “No matter what they do and what kind of armor they might bring up, the Lizards would have a tough time forcing a crossing here,” he observed. “We’re nicely up on the bluffs and well dug in. No matter how hard they pasted us from the air, we’d still hurt their tanks. They’d have to try flanking us out if they wanted to take this place.”

  “Yes, sir,” Muldoon said again. The brass didn’t think the Lizards would be trying to take Elgin any time soon, or they wouldn’t have sent the company here to rest and recuperate. Of course, the brass wasn’t always right about such things, but for the moment no bullets were flying, no cannon bellowing. It was almost peaceful enough to make a man nervous.

  “Come on, Lieutenant,” Muldoon said. “I’ll show that there hotel and__” Again, he didn’t go on; he made a production of not going on. What the devil had he found over by Fountain Square? A warehouse full of Lucky Strikes? A cache of booze that wasn’t rotgut or moonshine? Whatever it was, he sure was acting coy about it.

  For a Midwest factory town, Elgin looked to be a pretty nice place. The blasted plants didn’t make up a single district, as they did so many places. Instead, they were scattered among what had been pleasant homes till war visited them with fire and sword. Some of the houses, the ones that hadn’t been bombed or burned, still looked comfortable.

  Fountain Square hadn’t been hit too badly, maybe because none of the town buildings was tall enough to draw Lizard bombers. God only knew why it had the name it did, because, as Muldoon had said, it was neither square nor overburdened with fountains. What looked to be a real live working saloon greeted GIs with open doors—and with a couple of real live working MPs inside those open doors to make sure rest and recuperation didn’t get too rowdy.

  Was that what Muldoon had had in mind? He could have mentioned it in front of Szymanski; the captain didn’t mind taking a drink now and then, or even more often than that.

  Then Mutt spotted the line of guys in grimy olive drab snaking their way down a narrow alley. He’d seen�
�hell, he’d stood in—lines like that in France. “They got themselves a whorehouse goin’,” he said.

  “You betcha they do,” Muldoon agreed with a broad grin. “It ain’t like I need to get my ashes hauled like I did when I was over in France, but hell, it ain’t like I’m dead, neither. I figure after we got our boys settled in at the hotel, maybe you an’ me—” He hesitated. “Might be they got a special house for officers. The Frenchies, they done that Over There.”

  “Yeah, I know. I remember,” Mutt said. “But I doubt it, though. Hell, I didn’t figure they’d set up a house a-tall. Chaplains woulda given ’em holy hell if they’d tried it back in 1918.”

  “Times have changed, Lieutenant,” Muldoon said.

  “Yeah, a whole bunch of different ways,” Daniels agreed. “I was thinkin’ about that my own self, not so long ago.”

  Captain Szymanski’s was not the only company billeted at the Gifford Hotel. Along with the beds, there were mattresses and piles of blankets on the floor, to squeeze in as many men as possible. That was fine, unless the Lizards scored a direct hit on the place. If they did, the Gifford would turn into a king-sized tomb.

  When things were going smoothly there, Mutt and Muldoon slid outside and went back to Fountain Square. Muldoon gave Daniels a sidelong look. “Don’t it bother you none to have all these horny kids watch you gettin’ in line with ’em, Lieutenant?” he asked slyly. “You’re an officer now, after all.”

  “Hell, no,” Mutt answered. “No way now they can figure I ain’t got any balls.” Muldoon stared at him, then broke up. He started to give Mutt a shot in the ribs with an elbow, but thought better of it before he made contact. As he’d said, even in a brothel line an officer was an officer.

  The line advanced steadily. Mutt figured the hookers, however many there were, would be moving the dogfaces through as fast as they could, both to make more money and to give themselves more breathers, however brief, between customers.