Striking the Balance (18 page)

Witold’s pale blue eyes were wide and staring. His mouth was wide, too. It opened and closed a couple of times, but no words emerged. Still wordlessly, he turned on his heel and walked away. All the swagger had leaked out of him, like the air from a punctured bicycle tire.

Quietly, Ludmila told Sholom, “You’ve just given him reason to sell us out to the Lizards.”

Sholom shrugged. The Luger disappeared. “He has reason to want to breathe more, too. He keep quiet or he is dead. He knows.”

“There is that,” Ludmila admitted.

Sholom laughed. “Yes, there is that. All Russia is that, yes?”

Ludmila started to make an angry retort, but stopped before the words passed her lips. She remembered neighbors, teachers, and a couple of cousins disappearing in 1937 and 1938. One day they were there, the next gone. You didn’t ask questions about it, you didn’t talk about it. If you did, you would disappear next. That had happened, too. You kept your head down, pretended nothing was going on, and hoped the terror would pass you by.

Sholom watched her, his dark, deep-set eyes full of irony. At last, feeling she had to say something, she answered, “I am a senior lieutenant in the Red Air Force. Do you like hearing your government insulted?”

“My
government?” Sholom spat on the ground. “I am Jew. You think the Polish government is mine?” He laughed again; this time, the sound carried the weight of centuries of oppression. “And then the Nazis come, and make Poles look like nice and kindly people. Who thinks anyone can do that?”

“So why are you here and not with the Lizards inside Hrubieszów?” Ludmila asked. A moment later, she realized the question was imperfectly tactful, but she’d already let it out.

“Some things are bad, some things are worse, some things are worst of all,” Sholom answered. He waited to see if Ludmila followed the Polish comparative and superlative. When he decided she did, he added, “For Jews, the Nazis are worst of all. For people, the Lizards are worst of all. Am I a person first, or am I a Jew first?”

“You are a person first,” Ludmila answered at once.

“From you, it sounds so easy,” Sholom said with a sigh. “My brother Mendel, he is in Hrubieszów.” The Jew shrugged yet again. “These things happen.”

Not knowing what to say, Ludmila kept quiet. She gave her U-2 one more anxious glance. It was covered up so it would be hard to spot from the air, but it wasn’t concealed the way a Red Air Force crew would have done the job. She did her best not to worry about it. The guerrillas remained operational, so their camouflage precautions were adequate.

In some way, their
maskirovka
was downright inspired, with tricks like those she’d seen from her own experience. A couple of kilometers away from their encampment, large fires burned and cloth tents simulated the presence of a good-sized force. The Lizards had shelled that area a couple of times, while leaving the real site alone.

Fires here were smaller, all of them either inside tents or else hidden under canvas sheets held up on stakes. Men went back and forth or sat around the fires, some cleaning their weapons, others gossiping, still others playing with packs of dog-eared cards.

With the men were a fair number of women, perhaps one in six of the partisans. Some, it seemed, were there for little more than to cook for the men and to sleep with them, but some were real soldiers. The men treated the women who fought like any other fighters, but towards the others they were as coarse and scornful as peasants were to their wives.

A fellow who wore a German greatcoat but who had to be a Jew got up from his card games to throw some powdered herbs into a pot and stir it with a wooden-handled iron spoon. Catching Ludmila’s eye on him, he laughed self-consciously and said something in Yiddish. She got the gist of it: he’d been a cook in Hrubieszów, and now he was reduced to this.

“Better a real cook should cook than someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she answered in German, and set a hand on her stomach to emphasize what she meant.

“This, yes,” the Jew answered. He stirred the pot again. “But that’s salt pork in there. It’s the only meat we could get. So now we eat it, and I have to make it tasty, too?” He rolled his eyes up to heaven, as if to say a reasonable God would never have made him put up with such humiliation.

As far as Ludmila was concerned, the dietary regulations he agonized over transgressing were primitive superstitions to be ignored by modern, progressive individuals. She kept that to herself, though. Even the Great Stalin had made his peace with the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow and enlisted God on the side of the Red Army. If superstition would serve the cause, then what point to castigating it?

She was young enough that such compromises with medievalism still struck her as betrayals, in spite of the indoctrination she’d received on the subject. Then she realized the Jew undoubtedly thought cooking salt pork and, worse yet, eating it, was a hideous compromise with godlessness. He was wrong, of course, but that did not make him insincere.

When she got a bowl of the pork stew, she blinked in amazement at the flavor. He might have thought it an abomination, but he’d given it his best.

She was scrubbing out her bowl with snow when one of the camp women—not one of the ones who carried a rifle—came up to her. Hesitantly, in slow Russian, the woman (girl, really; she couldn’t have been more than seventeen) asked, “You really flew that airplane against the Lizards?”

“Yes, and against the Nazis before them,” Ludmila answered.

The girl’s eyes—very big, very blue—went wide. She was slim and pretty, and would have been prettier if her face hadn’t had a vacant, cowlike expression. “Heavens,” she breathed. “How many men did you have to screw to get them to let you do that?”

The question was innocent, candid. Somehow, that made it worse. Ludmila wanted to shake her. “I didn’t screw anybody,” she said indignantly. “I—”

“It’s all right,” the girl—Stefania, that’s what her name was—interrupted. “You can tell me. It’s not like it’s something important. If you’re a woman, you have to do such things now and again. Everybody knows it.”

“I—didn’t—screw—anybody,” Ludmila repeated, spacing out the words as if she were talking to a half-wit. “Plenty of men have tried to screw me. I got to be a Red Air Force pilot because I’d been in the
Osoaviakhim—
the state pilot training program—before the war. I’m good at what I do. If I weren’t, I’d have got killed twenty times by now.”

Stefania studied her. The intent look on the Polish girl’s face made Ludmila think she’d made an impression on her. Then Stefania shook her head; her blond braids flipped back and forth. “We know what we get from Russians—nothing but lies.” As Witold had, she walked away.

Ludmila wished she were pointing a pistol at the stupid little bitch. She finished cleaning her bowl. This was her second trip outside the Soviet Union. Both times, she’d seen how little use foreigners had for her country. Her immediate reaction to that was disdain. Foreigners had to be ignorant reactionaries if they couldn’t appreciate the glorious achievements of the Soviet state and its promise to bring the benefits of scientflic socialism to all mankind.

Then she remembered the purges. Had her cousin, her geometry teacher, and the man who ran the tobacconist’s shop across from her block of flats truly been counterrevolutionaries, wreckers, spies for the Trotskyites or the decadent imperialists? She’d wondered at the time, but hadn’t let herself think about it since. Such thoughts held danger, she knew instinctively.

How glorious were the achievements of the Soviet state if you didn’t dare think about them? Frowning, she piled her bowl with all the rest.

V

Ussmak didn’t think he’d ever seen such a sorry-looking male in all his days since hatchlinghood. It wasn’t just that the poor fellow wore no body paint, although being bare of it contributed to his general air of misery. Worse was the way his eye turrets kept swiveling back toward the Big Ugly for whom he was interpreting, as if that Tosevite were the sun and he himself only a very minor planet.

“This is Colonel Boris Lidov,” the male said in the language of the Race, although the title was in the Russki tongue. “He is of the People’s Commissariat for the Interior—the NKVD—and is to be your interrogator.”

Ussmak glanced over at the Tosevite male for a moment. He looked like a Big Ugly, and not a particularly impressive one: skinny, with a narrow, wrinkled face, not much fur on the top of his head, and a small mouth drawn up even tighter than was the Tosevite norm. “That’s nice,” Ussmak said; he’d figured the Big Uglies would have questions for him. “Who are you, though, friend? How did you get stuck with this duty?”

“I am called Gazzim, and I was an automatic riflemale, second grade, before my mechanized infantry combat vehicle was destroyed and I taken prisoner,” the male replied. “Now I have no rank. I exist on the sufferance of the Soviet Union.” Gazzim lowered his voice. “And now, so do you.”

“Surely it’s not so bad as that,” Ussmak said. “Straha, the shiplord who defected, claims most Tosevite not-empires treat captives well.”

Gazzim didn’t answer. Lidov spoke in the local language, which put Ussmak in mind of the noises a male made when choking on a bite too big to swallow. Gazzim replied in what sounded like the same language, perhaps to let the Tosevite know what Ussmak had said.

Lidov put the tips of his fingers together, each digit touching its equivalent on the other hand. The strange gesture reminded Ussmak he was indeed dealing with an alien species. Then the Tosevite spoke in his own tongue once more. Gazzim translated: “He wants to know what you are here for.”

“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 arrived. 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.