Down to Earth (7 page)

“Truth!” Every male in the rear compartment of the mechanized combat vehicle said that. Several of them added emphatic coughs, to show how strongly they felt about it.

“Truth indeed,” Gorppet said. “Any male who has served where they say such things knows what a truth it is. Because it is a truth, we must stay especially alert. Remember, too many of the local Tosevites will give up their own lives if they can take us with them. They believe this will assure them of a happy afterlife.”

“As you said, they know not the Emperors.” Betvoss’ voice dripped scorn.

Gorppet scorned the Big Uglies for their foolish beliefs, too. That didn’t mean he failed to respect them as fighters, and especially as guerrilla fighters. He pressed an eye turret to the viewing prism above a firing port and looked out of the combat vehicle.

He sat on the left side of the vehicle, the one that faced away from the river, so he could see not only the farmland—worked by Big Uglies in long, flowing robes—but also the drier country where irrigation stopped. The landscape, in fact, put him in mind of Home. It was no wonder the colonists were running up so many new towns in the interior of this region, towns watered with pipes from desalination plants by the edge of the nearest sea.

Even the weather in this part of Tosev 3 was decent. The mechanized combat vehicle didn’t have its heater going full blast, as it would have on most of the planet. Gorppet had fought through one winter in the SSSR. He’d told some stories about that when he went into one of the new towns. None of the newly revived colonists believed him. He’d stopped telling those stories. For that matter, he’d stopped going into the new towns. He disliked the colonists almost as much as he disliked the Big Uglies. He disliked everyone except his comrades from the conquest fleet, and, with Betvoss beside him, he was forcibly reminded he didn’t much care for some of them, either.

Before it should have, the vehicle came to a halt, tracks rattling. “Oh, by the Emperor, what now?” Gorppet demanded. None of his fellow infantrymales knew, of course—they were as cooped up as he. He picked up the intercom and put the question to the driver. If
he
didn’t know, everybody was in trouble.

He had an answer, all right, but not one Gorppet cared to hear: “The accursed Tosevites managed to sabotage the bridge we are supposed to pass over.”

“What do you mean, sabotage?” Gorppet asked irritably. “I am in this metal box back here, remember? I cannot see straight ahead. If I do not look out a viewing prism, I cannot see out at all.”

“They bombed the span. It fell into the river. Is that plain enough for you, Exalted Squadlord?” The driver also sounded irritable.

“How did they manage to bomb it?” Gorppet exclaimed, which made the males in his squad exclaim, too. He went on, “Whoever let that happen ought to have green bands painted on him”—the mark of someone undergoing punishment—“and spend about the next ten years—the next ten Tosevite years, mind you—cleaning out the Big Uglies’ stinking latrines with his tongue.”

His squadmates laughed. He was too furious to find it funny. The driver said, “I agree with you, but I cannot do anything about it.”

“How is this column of vehicles to proceed on to Baghdad, then, if we cannot use the bridge?” Gorppet asked.

“We shall have to go on to As Samawan and cross the river there,” the driver replied. “While it is not the route originally planned, it should not delay us too much.”

“That is good,” Gorppet said. Then he paused in sudden sharp suspicion. “Why would the Big Uglies blow up a bridge if doing so causes us no great harm?”

“Who knows why Tosevites act as they do?” the driver said.

“I know this: they act as they do to cause us the greatest possible harm,” Gorppet said with great conviction. “Either they have an ambush waiting for us on the road to this As Samawan place or they are going to—”

The founder of the superstition in which the local Big Uglies believed so passionately, a certain Muhammad, was said to be a prophet, a male who could see the future. The notion, like so many on Tosev 3, was alien to the way the Race thought. But Gorppet, though not pausing even for a moment, proved a prophet in his own right. He hadn’t finished his sentence before bullets started slamming into the mechanized combat vehicle.

A lot of bullets were slamming into the vehicle. “They must have a machine gun out there, may the purple itch get under their scales!” he exclaimed, grabbing for his own automatic weapon.

As he spoke, the light cannon mounted atop the combat vehicle barked into life. He peered out through the vision prism. He couldn’t see much. Because they were close by the river—the Tosevite name for it was the Tigris—plant life grew exuberantly, providing excellent cover for the Big Ugly raiders. Someone should have thought to trim the vegetation farther back from the roadway, but no one had. He didn’t like that. How many Big Uglies were sneaking through the rank, noxiously green foliage toward the column?

There was the muzzle flash of the Tosevites’ machine gun. That being the only sure target he had, Gorppet started shooting at it. If the machine gun fell silent, he would know he was doing some good. The rest of the males in his squad were also blazing away. He didn’t know what the males on the far side of the combat vehicle were shooting at, but they seemed to have found something.

Before he could ask, a Big Ugly burst from the greenery and rushed toward the vehicle. He was, inevitably, shouting
“Allahu akbar!”
He carried in his right hand a bottle with a flaming wick. Gorppet had seen those in the SSSR. They were full of petroleum distillates, and could easily set even a landcruiser afire.

Gorppet sprayed the Tosevite with bullets. One of them struck the bottle. It burst and exploded into flame, which caught on the Big Ugly’s robes and his flesh. He would have been in greater torment still had Gorppet’s bullets—and probably those of other males as well—not toppled him and sent him quickly on the road to death.

Then a grenade flew out of the plants and exploded not far from Gorppet’s vehicle. He fired in the direction from which it had come, but couldn’t tell whether he’d hit the thrower. Another grenade burst on the far side of the vehicle. “We are surrounded!” Betvoss shouted in alarm.

If Betvoss could see it, it should have been obvious to anyone. Gorppet yelled into the intercom: “We had better get out of here while we still can!”

“I have no orders,” the driver answered, which struck Gorppet as not being nearly reason enough to stay. Before he could say as much, the other male added, “And I will not abandon my comrades without orders.”

That, unfortunately, did make sense to Gorppet. He spotted a shape moving in among the greenery and fired at it. Even through the mechanized combat vehicle’s armor, he heard the shriek the Big Ugly let out. He snarled in savage satisfaction.

The vehicle did begin to back away then, which presumably meant the ones behind it in the column had already started retreating. The machine didn’t have to go around any burning hulks, for which Gorppet let out a sigh of relief. Smoke dischargers helped shield the column from the Tosevites’ eyes. Before long, all the combat vehicles were speeding northwest along the road to As Samawan. Gorppet wasn’t the least bit unhappy to leave that marauding band of Big Uglies behind.

“Praise the spirits of Emperors past, that was not too expensive, anyhow,” Betvoss said. “All they made us do was change our route.”

“Now we have to hope they have not mined the highway to As Samawan,” Gorppet said. Betvoss laughed, but the squad leader went on, “I was not joking. They have forced us to do something we did not plan to do. That means we are moving to their plan, not to our own. They will have something waiting for us.”

Again, he proved right. The column had not gone much farther before a mine exploded under the lead combat vehicle. Fortunately, it did no more than blow off a track. The vehicle’s crew scrambled out, made hasty repairs, with soldiers and the guns of the rest of the column protecting them, and got moving again. All things considered, it was, as Betvoss had said, an inexpensive journey.

As a shuttlecraft pilot, Nesseref was one of the first females revived from the colonization fleet. That meant she had more experience with Big Uglies than most of the other colonists in the new town outside Jezow, Poland. Despite that experience, she admitted—indeed, she proclaimed, whenever she got the chance—she did not understand the way the minds of the natives of Tosev 3 worked.

“Superior sir, when I began coming into this city, I could not imagine why you treated the Tosevites with such restraint,” she told Bunim, the regional subadministrator based in Lodz. “Now, having spent a while on the surface of the planet, I begin to see: they are all of them addled, and many of them heavily armed. I can conceive no more appalling combination.”

The male from the conquest fleet answered, “You may think you are joking, Shuttlecraft Pilot, but that is the problem facing the Race all over Tosev 3. Poland is merely a microcosm of the planet as a whole.”

“In no way was I joking, superior sir,” Nesseref replied. “The Poles are heavily armed. They hate the Jews, the Deutsche, us, and the Russkis, in that order. The Jews are also heavily armed. They hate the Deutsche, the Poles, the Russkis, and us, in that order. The Deutsche, off to the west, hate the Jews, us, the Russkis, and the Poles, in that order. The Russkis, off to the east, hate the Deutsche, us, the Jews, and the Poles, in that order. The Deutsche and the Russkis, of course, are even more heavily armed than the Jews and Poles. Do I have it all straight?”

“More or less,” Bunim said. “You will notice, however, that in your list each group of Big Uglies hates some other group of Big Uglies more than it hates us. That is what makes our continued administration of this region possible.”

“Yes, I understand as much,” Nesseref said. “But I also notice that each group of Big Uglies does hate us. This strikes me as ungrateful on their part, but seems to be so.”

“Truth,” Bunim agreed. “That is what makes our continued administration of this region difficult. That is what makes our continued administration of this whole planet difficult. Each Tosevite faction—and there are tens upon tens of them—reckons itself superior to all the others. Each resents being administered by anyone but one of its own members. Each also resents being administered by anyone not of the Tosevite species. And, with so many explosive-metal bombs on this planet and orbiting it, we must be cautious in our actions lest we touch off a catastrophe.”

“Madness,” Nesseref said. “Utter madness.”

“Oh, indeed.” Bunim used an emphatic cough to show just how much madness he thought it was. “But it is not madness we can afford to disregard. Understanding that fact has often come hard to males and females of the colonization fleet. You show a better grasp of it than most.”

“I thank you, Regional Subadministrator,” Nesseref said. “Difficulties in finding land for the shuttlecraft port and in dealing with Big Ugly laborers in the construction process have proved most educational.”

“I can see how they would. Everything on Tosev 3 is educational, although some of the lessons are those we would rather not learn.” Bunim paused. “And you are also acquainted with the Jew Anielewicz, are you not?”

“Yes, superior sir,” Nesseref answered. She also paused before continuing, “For a Big Ugly, he is quite likable.” She wondered how Bunim would take that; he certainly seemed none too fond of any of the Tosevites whose territory he helped govern.

To her surprise, the regional subadministrator said, “Truth.” But Bunim went on, “He is very clever, he is very capable, he is very dangerous. He plays us off against the Deutsche, the Poles, and the Russkis, and plays those groups off against one another. His own group should be the weakest among them, but I am not nearly sure it is—and if it is not, that is largely thanks to his abilities.”

“Many Tosevites, I gather, are able,” Nesseref said. “Your experience is greater than mine, but I would say as many Tosevites are as able as are members of the Race.”

“Yes, I would say that is probably a truth,” Bunim agreed. “We would have an easier time on this planet were it a falsehood.” He let out a long, heartfelt sigh.

“No doubt,” Nesseref said. “Many Big Uglies are able, as I say. But few are, or can make themselves be, congenial to us. Anielewicz is one of those who can. I count him a friend of sorts, even if he is not of our species—certainly more of a friend than an accursed male who sought to give me ginger to induce me to mate with him.”

“I sometimes think ginger is the revenge Tosev 3 is taking on the Race for our efforts to bring this world into the Empire,” Bunim said wearily. “In some ways, the herb causes us more trouble than the Big Uglies do.”

“Truth,” Nesseref said, with an emphatic cough. She’d tried ginger once herself, before the Race fully understood what it did to females. She’d gone straight into her season, of course, and mated with a couple of Bunim’s sentries. Only luck that she hadn’t laid a clutch of eggs afterwards. And only luck—luck and a strong, strong will—that the one taste hadn’t led to addiction, as it had for so many males and females.

Bunim went on, “I also note that, however congenial you may find Anielewicz, by no means do all of his fellow Tosevites share your opinion. He was recently the target of an assassination attempt by one of the Big Ugly groupings with no great use for Jews. I am not certain which, but there is no shortage of such groups. You have shown you understand as much.”

“Yes.” Nesseref did her best to hold in surprise and dismay. Murder, especially political murder, was rare among the Race. She supposed she shouldn’t have been shocked to learn it was otherwise here on Tosev 3, but she was. “An attempt, you say, superior sir? Was he injured?”

“No. Apparently fearing someone might be seeking to attack him, he dropped to the floor an instant before the assailant fired through the door of his flat. Whoever that assailant was, he escaped.”

“I am relieved to hear Anielewicz was not harmed,” Nesseref said.

“So was I,” the regional subadministrator answered. “You cannot imagine the chaos into which a successful assassination would have thrown this area. I very likely cannot imagine it, either, and I am glad I do not have to.”