Tilting The Balance (4 page)

The heated compartment, the smooth ride over a paved highway, and the soft purr of the hydrogen-burning engine helped most of the males doze off before long: veterans, they knew the value of snatching sleep while they had the chance.

Ussmak tried to rest, too, but couldn’t. The longing for ginger gnawed at him and would not let go.

An orderly had sold him some of the precious herb in the hospital ship. He’d started tasting as much out of boredom as for any other reason. When he was full of ginger, he felt wise and brave and invulnerable. When he wasn’t – that was when he discovered the trap into which he’d fallen. Without ginger, he seemed stupid and fearful and soft-skinned as a Big Ugly, a contrast just made worse because he so vividly remembered how wonderful he knew himself to be when he tasted the powdered herb.

He didn’t care how much he gave the orderly for his ginger: he had pay saved up and nothing he’d rather spend it on. The orderly had an ingenious arrangement whereby he got Ussmak’s funds even though they didn’t go directly into his computer account.

In the end, it hadn’t saved him. One day, a new orderly came in to police up Ussmak’s chamber. Discreet questioning (Ussmak could afford to be discreet then, with several tastes hidden away) showed that the only thing he knew about ginger was the fleetlord’s general order prohibiting its use. Ussmak had stretched out the intervals between tastes as long as he could. But finally the last one was gone. He’d been gingerless – and melancholy – ever since.

The road climbed up through rugged mountains. Ussmak got only glimpses out the transporter’s firing ports. After the monotonous flatlands of the
SSSR
and the even more boring sameness of the hospital ship cubicle, a jagged horizon was welcome, but it didn’t much remind Ussmak of the mountains of Home.

For one thing, these mountains were covered with frozen water of one sort or another, a measure of how miserably cold Tosev 3 was. For another, the dark conical trees that peeked out through the mantling of white were even more alien to his eye than the Big Uglies.

Those trees also concealed Tosevites, as Ussmak discovered a short while later. Somewhere up there in the woods, a machine gun began to chatter. Bullets spanged off the transporter’s armor. Its own light cannon returned fire, filling the passenger compartment with thunder.

The males who had been dozing were jerked rudely back to awareness. They tumbled for the firing ports to see what was happening, Ussmak among them. He couldn’t see anything, not even muzzle flashes.

“Scary,” Forssis observed. “I’m used to sitting inside a landcruiser where the armor shields you from anything. I can’t help thinking that if the Tosevites had a real gun up there, we’d be cooked.”

Ussmak knew only too well that not even landcruiser armor guaranteed protection against the Big Uglies. But before he could say as much, the transporter driver came on the intercom: “Sorry about the racket, my males, but we haven’t rooted out all the guerrillas yet. They’re just a nuisance as long as we don’t run over any mines.”

The driver sounded downright cheery; Ussmak wondered if he was tasting ginger. “I wonder how often they do run over mines,” Forssis said darkly.

“This male hasn’t, or he wouldn’t still be driving us,” Ussmak said. A couple of the other landcruiser crewmales opened their mouths at him After a while, the mountains gave way to wide, gently rolling valleys. Forssis pointed to neat rows of gnarled plants that clung to stakes on south-facing slopes. He said, “I saw those when I was in this France place before. The Tosevites ferment alcoholic brews from them.” He ran his tongue over his lips. “Some have a very interesting flavor.”

The passenger compartment had no view straight forward. The driver had to make an announcement for the males he was hauling: “We are coming into the Big Ugly town of Besangon, our forward base for combat against the Deutsche. You will be assigned to crews here.”

All Ussmak had seen of Tosevite architecture was the wooden farming villages of the
SSSR
. Besangon was certainly different from those. He didn’t quite know what to make of it. Compared to the tall, blocklike structures of steel and glass that formed the cities of Home, its buildings seemed toys. Yet they were very ornate toys, with columns and elaborate stone and brickwork and steep roofs so the frozen water that fell from the sky hereabouts would slide off.

The Race’s headquarters in Besangon was on a bluff in the southeastern part of the town. Not only was the place on high ground, Ussmak discovered on alighting from the transporter that a river flowed around two sides of it. “Well sited for defense,” he remarked.

“Interesting you should say that,” the driver answered. “This used to be a Big Ugly fortress.” He pointed to a long, low, gloomy-looking building. “Go in there. They’ll process you and assign you to a crew.”

“It shall be done.” Ussmak hurried toward the doorway; the cold was nipping at his fingers and eye turrets.

Inside, the building was heated to the point of comfort for civilized beings – Ussmak hissed gratefully. Otherwise, though, the local males were mostly using the furnishings they’d found. A planet was a big place, and the Race hadn’t brought enough of everything to supply all its garrisons. And so a personnel officer seemed half swallowed by the fancy red velvet chair in which he sat, a chair designed to fit a Big Ugly. The male had to stretch to reach the computer on the heavy, dark wood table in front of him; the table was higher off the ground than any the Race would have built.

The personnel officer turned one eye toward Ussmak. “Name, specialization, and number,” he said in a bored voice.

“Superior sir, I am Ussmak, landcruiser driver,” Ussmak answered, and gave the number by which he was recorded, paid, and would be interred if he got unlucky.

The personnel officer entered the information, used his free eye to read Ussmak’s data as they came up. “You were serving in the
SSSR
against the Soviets, is that correct, until your landcruiser was destroyed and you were exposed to excess radiation?”

“Yes, superior sir, that is correct.”

“Then you’ve not had combat experience against the Deutsche?”

“Superior sir, I am told the guerrilla team that wrecked my vehicle was part Deutsch, part Soviet.

If you are asking whether I’ve faced their landcruisers, the answer is no.”

“That is what I meant,” the personnel officer said. “You will need to maintain a higher level of alertness hereabouts than was your habit in the
SSSR
, landcruiser driver. Tactically, the Deutsche are more often clever than perhaps any other Tosevite group. Their newest landcruisers have heavier guns than you will have seen, too. Combine these factors with their superior knowledge of the local terrain and they become opponents not to be despised.”

“I understand, superior sir,” Ussmak said. “Will my landcruiser commander be experienced?” I hope.

The personnel officer punched at the computer again, waited for a response to appear on the screen. “You’re going to be assigned to Landcruiser Commander Hessef s machine; his driver was wounded in a bandit attack here in Besangon a few days ago. Hessef compiled an excellent record in Espafia, south and west of here, as we expanded out of our landing zone. He’s relatively new to the northern sector.”

Ussmak hadn’t known Espafia from France until the moment the personnel officer named them. And no matter what that officer said about the superior skills of the Deutsche, to Ussmak one band of Big Uglies seemed pretty much like another. “I’m glad to hear that he has fought, superior sir. Where do I report to him?”

“The hall we are using as a barracks is out the door through which you entered and to your left. If you do not find Hessef and your gunner – whose name is Tvenkel – there, try the vehicle park down past the antiaircraft missile launcher.”

Ussmak tried the vehicle park first, on the theory that any commander worth his body paint took better care of his landcruiser than he did of himself. Seeing the big machines lined up in their sandbagged revetments made him eager to get back to the work for which he’d been trained, and also eager for the tight-knit fellowship that flowered among the males of a good landcruiser crew.

Crewmales working on their landcruisers directed him to the one Hessef commanded. But when he walked into its stall, he found it buttoned up tight. That presumably meant Hessef and Tvenkel were back at the barracks. Not a good sign, Ussmak thought as he began to retrace his steps.

He longed to feel a part of something larger than himself. That was what the Race was all about: obedience from below, obligation from above, all working together for the common good. He’d known that feeling with Votal, his first commander, but after Votal died, Krentel proved such an incompetent that Ussmak could not bond to him as subordinate was supposed to bond to superior.

Then Krentel had got himself killed, too, and Ussmak’s original gunner with him. That worsened the driver’s feeling of separation, almost of exclusion, from the rest of the Race. The long stay in the hospital ship and his discovery of ginger had pushed him even further out of the niche he’d been intended to fit. If he couldn’t have ginger any more, crew solidarity would have been a good second best. But how could he really feel part of a crew that didn’t have the simple sense to treat their landcruiser as if their lives depended on it?

As he walked back past the missile launcher, bells began to ring down in the town of Besangon. He turned to one of the males. “I’m new here. Are those alarms? Where should I go? What should I do?”

“Nothing – take no notice of them,” the fellow answered. “The Big Uglies just have a lot of mechanical clocks that chime to divide up the day and night. They startled me at first, too. After a while here, you won’t even notice them. One is spectacular for something without electronics. It must have seventy dials, and these figures all worked by gears and pulleys come out and prance around and then disappear back into the machine. When you get some slack time, you ought to go see it: it’s worth turning both eye turrets that way.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will.” Relieved, Ussmak kept on toward the barracks building. Just as he pushed the door open, the sweet metallic clangor ceased. Even the cots the males were using had formerly belonged to the Big Uglies. The thin mattresses looked lumpy, the blankets scratchy. They were undoubtedly woven from the hair of some native beast or other, an idea that made Ussmak itch all by itself. A few males lounged around doing nothing in particular.

“I seek the landcruiser commander Hessef,” Ussmak said as some of those males turned an eye or two toward him.

“I am Hessef,” one of them said, coming forward. “By your paint, you must be my new driver.”

“Yes, superior sir.” Ussmak put more respect into his voice than he truly felt. Hessef was a jittery-looking male, his body paint sloppily applied. Ussmak’s own paint was none too neat, but he thought commanders should adhere to a higher standard.

Another male came up to stand beside Hessef. “Ussmak, I introduce you to Tvenkel, our gunner,” the landcruiser commander said.

“Be good to have a whole crew again, go out and fight,” Tvenkel said. Like Hessef, he couldn’t quite hold still. His body paint was, if possible, in even worse shape than the landcruiser commander’s – smeared, blotched, daubed on in a hurry. Ussmak wondered what he’d done to deserve becoming part of this substandard crew.

Hessef said, “Sitting around the barracks all day with nothing to do is as boring as staying awake while you go into cold sleep.”

Then why aren’t you out tending to your landcruiser? Ussmak thought. But that wasn’t something he could say, not to his new commander. Instead, he answered, “Boredom I know all about, superior sir. I just spent a good long while in a hospital ship, recovering from radiation sickness. There were times when I thought I’d been in that cubicle forever.”

“Yes, that could be bad, just staring at the metal walls,” Hessef agreed. “Still, though, I think I’d sooner stay in a hospital ship than in this ugly brick shed that was never made for our kind.” He waved to show what he meant. Ussmak had to agree: the barracks was indeed a dismal place. He suspected even Big Uglies would have found themselves bored here.

“How did you get through the days?” Tvenkel asked. “Recovering from sickness makes time pass twice as slowly.”

“For one thing, I have every video from the hospital ship’s library memorized,” Ussmak said, which drew a laugh from his new crewmales. “For another-” He stopped short. Ginger was against regulations. He didn’t want to make the commander and gunner aware of his habit.

“Here, drop your gear on this bed by ours,” Hessef said “We’ve been saving it against the day when we’d be whole again.”

Ussmak did as he was asked. The other two males crowded close around him, as if to create the unity that held a good landcruiser crew together. The rest of the males in the barracks looked on from a distance, politely allowing Ussmak to bond with his new comrades before they came forward to introduce themselves.

Quietly, Tvenkel said, “You may not know it, driver, but the Big Uglies have an herb that makes life a lot less boring. Would you care to try a taste, see what I mean?”

Ussmak’s eyes both swung abruptly, bored into the gunner. He lowered his voice, too. “You have – ginger?” He hesitated before he named the precious powder.

Now Tvenkel and Hessef stared at him. “You know about ginger?” the landcruiser commander whispered. His mouth fell open in an enormous grin.

“Yes I know about ginger. I’d love a taste, thanks.” Ussmak wanted to caper like a hatchling. Instead, the three males looked at each other for a long time, none of them saying anything. Ussmak broke the silence: “Superior sirs, I think we’re going to be an outstanding crew.”

Neither commander nor gunner argued with him.

The big Maybach engine coughed, sputtered, died. Colonel Heinrich Jager swore and flipped up the Panther D’s cupola. “More than twice the horsepower of my old Panzer
III
,” he grumbled, “and it runs less than half as often.” He pulled himself out, dropped down to the ground.