Upsetting the Balance (60 page)

He yelled with savage glee as puffs of smoke spurted from the railroad cars. As he shot over the locomotive that pulled the train, he yanked the stick back hard to gain some altitude and come around for another pass. Acceleration tugged at him; the world went gray for a moment. He swung the killercraft through a ninety-degree roll so he could look back at the train. He yelled again; either Sserep or Nivvek had hit the engine hard, and it was slowing to a stop. Now he and the other two males could finish destroying it at their leisure.

Off in the middle distance on his radar set, something—half a dozen somethings—rose almost vertically into the air. “What are those?” Nivvek exclaimed.

“Nothing to worry about, I don’t think,” Teerts answered. “If the Deutsche are experimenting with antiaircraft missiles of their own, they have some more experimenting to do, I’d say.”

“Truth, superior sir,” Nivvek said, amusement in his voice. “None of our aircraft is even in the neighborhood of those—whatever-they-ares.”

“So I see,” Teerts said. If they were missiles, they were pretty feeble. Like other Tosevite flying machines, they seemed unable to exceed the speed of sound in the local atmosphere. They climbed toward the peak of their arc in what looked to be a ballistic trajectory . . . whereupon Teerts forgot about them and gave his attention over to smashing up the train.

It had been carrying infantrymales, perhaps among other things. The first pass hadn’t got all of them, either; some had bailed out of the damaged coaches. The gray-green clothes they wore were hard to see against the ground, but muzzle flashes told Teerts some of them were shooting at him. Memories of the Nipponese made fear blow through him in a choking cloud—what if the Big Uglies got lucky twice with him?

They didn’t. His killercraft performed flawlessly as he flailed them with cannon fire. Shells smashed at them; they boiled like the waves of Tosev 3’s oversized oceans. He hoped he’d slaughtered hundreds of them. They weren’t Nipponese, but they were Big Uglies, and in arms against the Race. No qualms about killing civilians diluted his revenge, not here, not now.

He pulled back on his stick again. The train was afire at several places up and down its length; one more run would finish the job of destroying it. Now that the nose of his killercraft was pointing upward again, he checked the radar screen to make sure no Deutsch aircraft were approaching.

Sserep must have done the same thing at the same time, for he shouted, “Superior sir!”

“I see them,” Teerts answered grimly. The Deutsch machines he’d dismissed as experimental—and inept—antiaircraft missiles were diving on his flight of killercraft, and plainly under intelligent control. For the Tosevites, that meant they had to be piloted; the Big Uglies didn’t have automatic systems good enough for the job.

With a small shock, he saw that the Tosevite aircraft were flying faster than his own machine. At least momentarily, that let them choose terms of engagement, something rare in their air-to-air engagements with the Race. He gave his killercraft maximum power; acceleration shoved him back against the seat. The Big Uglies wouldn’t keep the advantage long.

“I am firing missiles, superior sir,” Sserep said. “After we get back to base, I’ll argue about it with the males in Supply who seem to spend all their time counting pieces of eggshell. The point is to be able to get back
to
base.”

Teerts didn’t argue. The missiles streaked past his killercraft, tailing thin plumes of smoke. The Tosevites’ aircraft had smoky exhaust, too, far more smoky than that of the missiles. With hideous speed, they swelled from specks to swept-wing killercraft of peculiar design—just before he stabbed his firing button with a fingerclaw, he had a fractional instant to wonder how they maintained stability without tailfins.

Whatever the details of the aerodynamics, maintain stability they did. One of them managed to sideslip a missile. Electronics would have been hard-pressed to do that; for mere flesh and blood to accomplish it was little short of a miracle. Sserep’s other missile exploded its target in a spectacular midair fireball that made Teerts’ nictitating membranes flick out to protect his eyes from the flash. What in the name of the Emperor were the Big Uglies using for fuel?

That thought, too, quickly faded. He blazed away at the strange machine heading straight for his killercraft. Winking flashes of light at its wing roots said it was shooting at him, too. Deutsch killercraft carried cannon; they could do real damage if they scored hits.

Without warning, the Big Ugly aircraft blew up as violently as the one Sserep’s missile had hit “Yes!” Teerts shouted. The only feeling that matched midair triumph was a good taste of ginger.

“Superior sir, I regret to report that my aircraft is damaged,” Nivvek said. “I waited too long before firing missiles, and they shot past the Tosevites: they were still too close to me to arm their warheads. I am losing speed and altitude, and fear I shall have to eject. Wish me luck.”

“Spirits of Emperors past go with you, Nivvek,” Teerts said, gnashing his teeth in anguish. Urgently, he added, “Try to stay away from the Big Uglies on the ground. As long as you can keep clear of them, your radio beacon gives you some chance of being rescued.” How good a chance, here in the middle of Deutschland, he tried not to think about. His own memories of captivity were too sharp and dreadful.

Nivvek did not answer. Sserep said, “He has ejected, superior sir; I saw the capsule blast free of his killercraft and the parachute deploy.” He paused, then went on, “I don’t have the fuel to loiter till rescue aircraft come.”

After a quick glance at his own gauges, Teerts said, “Neither have I,” hating every word. He checked his radar. Only one of the Deutsch killercraft was still in the air, streaking away at low altitude. Sserep and Nivvek hadn’t been idle—nor had he. He turned and expended one of his missiles. It streaked after the strange little tailless aircraft and blew it out of the sky.

“That’s the last of those,” Sserep said. “The Emperor grant that we don’t see their like again soon.”

“Truth,” Teerts said feelingly. “The Big Uglies keep coming up with new things.” He said that as if he’d been accusing them of devouring their own hatchlings. Against what they’d had when the Race landed on Tosev 3, combat had been a walkover. Only males who were unlucky—as Teerts had been—got shot down. Now, at least above the western end of the main continental mass, you had to earn your living every moment in the air.

“We won’t even be able to cannibalize spares from Nivvek’s aircraft,” Sserep said, his voice sad.

Somewhere down there in a Deutsch factory, Big Ugly technicians were welding and riveting the airframes for more of their nasty little killercraft. Somewhere down there, Big Ugly pilots were learning to fly them. The Race made do with what it had brought along. Day by day, less and less of that remained. What would happen when it was all gone? One more thing to think about.

Teerts used satellite relay to call both his base in southern France and the nearest air base the Race held east of Deutschland, in the territory called Poland. Nivvek’s rescue alarm should have been received at both of them, but Teerts was taking no chances. He got the feeling the base in Poland had more things to worry about than Nivvek; the male to whom he spoke spent half his time babbling about a Deutsch rocket attack.

Teerts wondered why antimissile missiles didn’t protect the base. The most obvious—and the most depressing—answer was that no missiles were left. If that was so . . . how soon would he be flying without any antiaircraft missiles? What would happen when his radar broke down and no spare parts were left?

“We’ll be even with the Big Uglies,” he said, and shuddered at the thought of it.

Liu Han stared at the row of characters on a sheet of paper in front of her. Her face was a mask of concentration; the tip of her tongue slipped out between her lips without her noticing. She gripped a pencil as if it were a dagger, then remembered she wasn’t supposed to hold it that way and shifted it back between her index and middle fingers.

Slowly, painstakingly, she copied the characters written on the sheet of paper. She knew what they said:
Scaly devils, give back the baby you stole from Liu Han at your camp near Shanghai.
She wanted to make sure the little devils could read what she wrote.

When she’d finished the sentence, she took a pair of shears and clipped off the strip of paper on which she’d written. Then she picked up the pencil and wrote the sentence again. She had a great bundle of strips, all saying the same thing. She was also getting a new callus, just behind the nail on her right middle finger. A lifetime of farming, cooking, and sewing had left her skin still soft and smooth there. Now that she was doing something less physically demanding than any of those, it marked her. She shook her head. Nothing was as simple as it first seemed.

She started writing the sentence yet again. Now she knew the sound and meaning of each character in it. She could write her own name, which brought her its own kind of excitement. And, when she was out on the streets and
hutungs
of Peking, she sometimes recognized characters she’d written over and over, and could occasionally even use them to figure out the meanings of other characters close by them. Little by little, she was learning to read.

Someone knocked on the door to the cramped little chamber she used at the rooming house. She picked up her one set of spare clothes and used them to hide what she was doing before she went to open the door. The rooming house was a hotbed of revolutionary sentiment, but not everyone was to be trusted. Even people who did support the revolution might not need to know what she was doing. Living in a village and especially in a camp had taught her the importance of keeping secrets.

But waiting outside in the hall stood Nieh Ho-T’ing. She didn’t know whether he knew the secrets of everyone in the rooming house, but he did know all of hers—all, at least, that had anything to do with the struggle against the little scaly devils. She stood aside. “Come in, superior sir,” she said, the last two words in the scaly devils’ language. No harm in reminding him of the many ways she could be useful to the people’s cause.

Nieh knew next to nothing of the little devils’ tongue, but he did recognize that phrase. It made him smile. “Thank you,” he said, walking past her into the little room. His own was no finer; anyone who could believe he had become a revolutionary for personal gain was a fool. He nodded approvingly when he noticed trousers and tunic covering up her writing. “You do well to keep that hidden from prying eyes.”

“I do not want to let people know what I am doing,” she answered. As she shut the door behind him, she laughed a little before going on. “I think I would leave it open if you were Hsia Shou-Tao.”

“Oh? Why is that?” Nieh Ho-T’ing asked, a little more sharply than her comment deserved.

“You know why perfectly well, or you should,” Liu Han said, irritated at his obtuseness.
Men!
she thought. “All he wants to do is see my body”—a euphemism for doing other things with it than merely seeing it.

Nieh said, “That is not all Hsia Shou-Tao wants. He is a committed people’s revolutionary, and has risked much to free the workers and peasants from the oppression first of the upper classes and then of the scaly devils.” He coughed. “He is also fond of women, perhaps too fond. I have spoken to him about this.”

“Have you?” Liu Han said, pleased. That was more action than she’d expected. “Men usually look the other way when their comrades take advantage of women.”

“Er—yes.” Nieh paced around the chamber, which did not have a lot of room for pacing. Liu Han took her spare clothes off the table. Nieh not only knew what she was doing, he had started her on the project He came over and examined what she’d done. “You form your characters more fluidly than you did when you began,” he said. “You may not have the smooth strokes of a calligrapher, but anyone who read this would think you had been writing for years.”

“I have worked hard,” Liu Han said, a truth that applied to her entire life.

“Your labor is rewarded,” he told her.

She didn’t think he had come to her room for no other reason than to compliment her on her handwriting. Usually, though, when he had something to say, he came out and said it. He would have called anything else bourgeois shilly-shallying . . . most of the time. What, then, was he keeping to himself?

Liu Han started to laugh. The sound made Nieh jump. She laughed harder. “What do you find funny?” he asked, his voice brittle.

“You,” she said, for a moment seeing only the man and not the officer of the People’s Liberation Army. “When I complained about Hsia Shou-Tao, that left you in a complicated place, didn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. But he knew, he knew. She could tell by the way he paced again, harder than ever, and by the way he would not look at her.

She almost did not answer him, not directly. A proper Chinese woman was quiet, submissive, and, if she ever thought about desire between woman and man, did not openly say so. But Liu Han had been through too much to care about propriety—and, in any case, the Communists talked a great deal about equality of all sorts, including that between the sexes.
Let’s see if they mean what they say,
she thought.

“I’m talking about you—and about me,” she answered. “Or didn’t you come up here now to see if you could get down on the mattress with me?”

Nieh Ho-T’ing stared at her. She laughed again. For all he preached, for all the Communists preached, down deep he was still a man and a Chinese. She’d expected nothing different, and so was not disappointed.

But, unlike most Chinese men, he did have some idea that his prejudices were just prejudices, not laws of nature. The struggle on his face was a visible working out of—what did he call it?—the dialectic, that’s what the word was. The thesis was his old, traditional, not truly questioned belief, the antithesis his Communist ideology, and the synthesis—she watched to see what the synthesis would be.

“What if I did?” he said at last, sounding much less stern than he had moments before.