Striking the Balance (17 page)

“They’ll get quite a surprise, won’t they?” Sam said, chuckling.

“How many of them are there, anyhow?”

“I do not know, not in precise figures,” Straha replied. “My responsibility, after all, was with the conquest fleet. But if our practice in colonizing the worlds of the Rabotevs and Hallessi was followed back on Home—as it almost certainly would have been, given our fondness for precedent—then we are sending here something between eighty and one hundred million males and females . . .  Those coughs mean nothing in my language, Samyeager.” He pronounced Yeager’s name as if it were one word. “Have they some signflication in yours?”

“I’m sorry, Shiplord,” Sam said when he could speak coherently again. “Must have swallowed wrong, or something.”
Eighty or a hundred
million
colonists?
“The Race doesn’t do things by halves, does it?”

“Of course not,” Straha said.

“One mortflication after another,” Atvar said in deep discontent. From where he stood, the situation down on the surface of Tosev 3 looked gloomy. “Almost better we should have expended a nuclear device on those mutineers than let them go over to the SSSR.”

“Truth,” Kirel said. “The loss of the armaments is bad. Before long, the Big Uglies will copy whatever features they can figure out how to steal. That has happened before, and is happening again: we have recent reports that the Deutsche, for instance, are beginning to deploy armor-piercing discarding sabot ammunition against our landcruisers.”

“I have seen these reports,” the fleetlord agreed. “They do not inspire me with delight.”

“Nor me,” Kirel answered. “Moreover, the loss of the territory formerly controlled by the base whose garrison mutinied has given us new problems. Though weather conditions in the area remain appallingly bad, we have evidence that the SSSR is attempting to reestablish its east-west rail link.”

“How can they do that?” Atvar said. “Surely even Big Uglies would freeze if forced to work in such circumstances.”

“From what we have seen in the SSSR, Exalted Fleetlord, it would appear hardly more concerned about the well-being of its laborers than is Deutschland,” Kirel said mournfully. “Getting the task done counts for more than the number of lives expended in the process.”

“Truth,” Atvar said, and then added, “Madness,” and an emphatic cough. “The Deutsche sometimes appear to put expending lives above extracting labor. What was the name of that place where they devoted so much ingenuity to slaughter? Treblinka, that was it.” The Race had never imagined a center wholly devoted to exterminating intelligent beings. Atvar would have been as glad never to have been exposed to some of the things he’d learned on Tosev 3.

He waited for Kirel to mention the most important reason why the fall of the Siberian base was a disaster. Kirel didn’t mention it. All too likely, Kirel hadn’t thought of it. He was a good shiplord, none better, when someone told him what to do. Even for a male of the Race, though, he lacked imagination.

Atvar said, “We now have to deal with the problem of propaganda broadcasts from the mutineers. By all they say, they are cheerful, well fed, well treated, with plenty of that pernicious herb, ginger, for amusement. Transmissions such as these are liable to touch off not only further mutinies but also desertions by individual males who cannot find partners with whom to conspire.”

“What you say is likely to be correct,” Kirel agreed. “It is to be hoped that increased vigilance on the part of officers will help to allay the problem.”

“It is to be hoped, indeed,” Atvar said with heavy sarcasm. “It is also to be hoped that we shall be able to keep from losing too much ground in this northern-hemisphere winter, and that guerrilla raids against our positions will ease. In some places—much of Italia springs to mind—we are unable to administer or control territory allegedly under our jurisdiction.”

“We need more cooperation from the Tosevite authorities who yielded to us,” Kirel said. “This is true all over the planet, and especially so in Italia, where our forces might as well be at war again.”

“Most of the Italian authorities, such as they were, went up with the atomic bomb that destroyed Roma,” Atvar answered. “Too many of the ones who are left still favor their overthrown not-emperor, that Mussolini. How I wish the Deutsch raider, that Skorzeny, hadn’t succeeded in stealing him and spiriting him off into Deutschland. His radio broadcasts, along with those of our former ally Russie and the traitor Straha, have proved most damaging of all counterpropaganda efforts against us.”

“That Skorzeny has been a pin driven under our scales throughout the campaign of conquest,” Kirel said. “He is unpredictable even for a Tosevite, and deadly as well.”

“I wish I could dispute it, but it is truth,” the fleetlord said sadly. “In addition to all the other harm he has inflicted on our cause, he cost me Drefsab, the one Intelligence officer we had who was both devious and energetic enough to match the Big Uglies at their own primary traits.”

“Wherefore now, Exalted Fleetlord?” Kirel asked.

“We carry on as best we can,” Atvar answered, a response that did not satisfy him and plainly did not satisfy Kirel. Trying to amplify it, he went on, “One thing we must do is increase security around our starships. If the Big Uglies can smuggle nuclear weapons within range of them, rather than of cities, they potentially have the ability to hurt us even worse than they have already.”

“I shall draft an order seeking to forestall this contingency,” Kirel said. “I agree; it is a serious menace. I shall also draft procedures whose thorough implementation will make the order effective.”

“Good,” Atvar said. “Be most detailed. Allow no conceivable loopholes through which a careless male might produce disaster.” All that was standard advice from one male of the Race to another. After a moment, though, the fleetlord added in thoughtful tones, “Before promulgating the order and procedures, consult with males who have had experience down on the surface of Tosev 3. They may possibly make your proposed procedures more leak-proof against the ingenious machinations of the Big Uglies.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel promised. “May I respectfully suggest that none of us up here in orbit has enough firsthand experience with conditions down on the surface of Tosev 3?”

“There is some truth in what you say,” Atvar admitted. “Perhaps we should spend more time on the planet itself—in a reasonably secure area, preferably one with a reasonably salubrious climate.” He called up a flat map of the surface of Tosev 3 on a computer screen. One set of color overlays gave a security evaluation, with categories ranging from unconquered to pacflied (though depressingly little of the planet showed that placid pink tone). Another gave climatological data. He instructed the computer to show him where both factors were at a maximum.

Kirel pointed. “The northern coastal region of the subcontinental mass the Tosevites term Africa seems as near ideal as any region.”

“So it does,” Atvar said. “I have visited there before. It
is
pleasant; parts of it could almost be Home. Very well, Shiplord, make the requisite preparations. We shall temporarily shift headquarters to this region, the better to supervise the conduct of the conquest at close range.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said.

Ludmila Gorbunova wanted to kick
Generalleutnant Graf
Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt right where it would do the most good. Since the damned Nazi general was in Riga and she was stuck outside Hrubieszów, that wasn’t practical. In lieu of fulfilling her desire, she kicked at the mud instead. It clung to her boots, which did nothing to improve her mood.

She hadn’t thought of Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt as a damned Nazi when she was in Riga herself. Then he’d seemed a charming,
kulturny
general, nothing like the boorish Soviets and cold-blooded Germans it had mostly been her lot to deal with.

“Fly me one little mission, Senior Lieutenant Gorbunova,” she muttered under her breath. “Take a couple of antipanzer mines to Hrubieszów, then come on back here and we’ll send you on to Pskov with a pat on the fanny for your trouble.”

That wasn’t exactly what the
kulturny
general had said, of course, and he hadn’t tried to pat her on the fanny, which was one of the things that made him
kulturny.
But if he hadn’t sent her to Hrubieszów, her
Kukuruznik
wouldn’t have tried to taxi through a tree, which would have meant she’d still be able to fly it.

“Which would have meant I wouldn’t be stuck here outside of Hrubieszów,” she snarled, and kicked at the mud again. Some of it splashed up and hit her in the cheek. She snarled and spat.

She’d always thought of U-2s as nearly indestructible, not least because they were too simple to be easy to break. Down in the Ukraine, she’d buried one nose-first in the mud, but that could have been fixed without much trouble if she hadn’t had to get away from the little biplane as fast as she could. Wrapping a
Kukuruznik
around a tree, though—that was truly championship-quality ineptitude.

“And why did the devil’s sister leave a tree in the middle of the landing strip?” she asked the God in whom she did not believe. But it hadn’t been the devil’s sister. It had been these miserable partisans. It was
their
fault.

Of course she’d been flying at night. Of course she’d had one eye on the compass, one eye on her wristwatch, one eye on the ground and sky, one eye on the fuel gauge—she’d almost wished she was a Lizard, so she could look every which way at once. Just finding the partisans’ poorly lit landing strip had been—not a miracle, for she didn’t believe in miracles—a major achievement, that’s what it had been.

She’d circled once. She’d brought the Wheatcutter down. She’d taxied smoothly. She’d never seen the pine sapling—no, it was more than a sapling, worse luck—till she ran into it.

“Broken wing spars,” she said, ticking off the damage on her fingers. “Broken propeller.” Both of those were wood, and reparable. “Broken crankshaft.” That was of metal, and she had no idea what she was going to do about it—what she
could
do about it.

Behind her, someone coughed. She whirled around like a startled cat. Her hand flew to the grip of her Tokarev automatic. The partisan standing there jerked back in alarm. He was a weedy, bearded, nervous little Jew who went by the name Sholom. She could follow pieces of his Polish and pieces of his Yiddish, and he knew a little Russian, so they managed to make themselves understood to each other.

“You come,” he said now. “We bring blacksmith out from Hrubieszów. He look at your machine.”

“All right, I’ll come,” she answered dully. Yes, a U-2 was easy to work on, but she didn’t think a blacksmith could repair a machined part well enough to make the aircraft fly again.

He was one of the largest men she’d ever seen, almost two meters tall and seemingly that wide through the shoulders, too. By the look of him, he could have bent the crankshaft back into its proper shape with his bare hands if it had been in one piece. But it wasn’t just bent; it was broken in half, too.

The smith spoke in Polish, too fast for Ludmila to follow. Sholom turned his words into something she could understand: “Witold, he say if it made of metal, he fix it. He fix lots of wagons, he say.”

“Has he ever fixed a motorcar?” Ludmila asked. If the answer there was yes, maybe she did have some hope of getting off the ground again after all.

When he heard her voice, Witold blinked in surprise. Then he struck a manly pose. His already huge chest inflated like a balloon. Muscles bulged in his upper arms. Again, he spoke rapidly. Again, Sholom made what he said intelligible: “He say, of course he do. He say, for you he fix anything.”

Ludmila studied the smith through slitted eyes. She thought he’d said more than that; some of his Polish had sounded close to what would have been a lewd suggestion in Russian. Well. If she didn’t understand it, she didn’t have to react to it. She decided that would be the wisest course for the time being.

To Sholom, she said, “Tell him to come look at the damage, then, and see what he can do.”

Witold strutted along beside her, chest out, back straight, chin up. Ludmila was not a tall woman, and felt even smaller beside him. Whatever he might have hoped, that did not endear him to her.

He studied the biplane for a couple of minutes, then asked, “What is broken that takes a smith to fix?”

“The crankshaft,” Ludmila answered. Witold’s handsome face remained blank, even after Sholom translated that into Polish. Ludmila craned her neck to glare up at him. With poisonous sweetness, she asked, “You do know what a crankshaft is, don’t you? If you’ve worked on motorcars, you’d better.”

More translation from Sholom, another spate of fast Polish from Witold. Ludmila caught pieces of it, and didn’t like what she heard. Sholom’s rendition did nothing to improve her spirits: “He say he work on car springs, on fixing dent in—how you say this?—in mudguards, you understand? He not work on motor of motorcar.”

“Bozhemoi,”
Ludmila muttered. Atheist she might be, but swearing needed flavor to release tension, and so she called on God. There stood Witold, strong as a bull, and, for all the use he was to her, he might as well have had a bull’s ring in his nose. She rounded on Sholom, who cringed. “Why didn’t you find me a real mechanic, then, not this blundering idiot?”

Witold got enough of that to let out a very bull-like bellow of rage. Sholom shrugged helplessly. “Before war, only two motor mechanics in Hrubieszów, lady pilot. One of them, he dead now—forget whether Nazis or Russians kill him. The other one, he licks the Lizards’ backsides. We bring him here, he tell Lizards everything. Witold, he may not do much, but he loyal.”

Witold followed that, too. He shouted something incendiary and drew back a massive fist to knock Sholom into the middle of next week.

The Jewish partisan had not looked to be armed. Now, with the air of a man performing a conjurer’s trick, he produced a Luger apparently from thin air and pointed it at Witold’s middle. “Jews have guns now, Witold. You’d better remember it. Talk about my mother and I’ll blow your balls off. We don’t need to take
gówno
from you Poles any more.” In Polish or in Russian, shit was shit.