Worldwar_ Upsetting The Balance Part 17

"You are a true proletarian," Nieh Ho-T'ing said, not at all ironically. Hsia Shou-Tao beamed at the compliment.

A couple of tables over, a group of men in Western-style suits was having a dinner party, complete with singsong girls and a raucous orchestra. Despite all Peking had been through, the men looked plump and prosperous. Some had their arms around singsong girls, while others were trying to slide their hands up the slits in the girls' silk dresses. A couple of the girls pulled away; not all entertainers were courtesans. Most, though, accepted the attentions either as their due or with mercenary calculation in their eyes.

"Collaborators," Nieh said in a voice that would have meant the firing squad in territory controlled by the People's Liberation Army. "They could not be so rich without working hand in glove with the little scaly devils."

"You're right," Hsia grunted. He filled his bowl of rice again. With his mouth full, he added, "That one there, in the dark shiny green, she's a lot of woman."

"And her beauty is exploited," Nieh answered. Like a lot of Communist officials, he had a wide puritanical streak in him. s.e.x for sport, s.e.x for anything but procreation, made him uneasy. His stay in a Shanghai brothel had reinforced that opinion rather than changed it.

"So it is," Hsia said; Nieh's doctrine was true. But the other man did not sound happy to concur.

"You are not an animal. You are a man of the revolution," Nieh Ho-T'ing reminded him. "If joy girls are what you wanted in life, you should have joined the Kuomintang instead."

"I am a man of the revolution," Hsia repeated dutifully. "Coveting women who are forced to show their bodies"-a Chinese euphemism for prost.i.tution-"to get money to live proves I have not yet removed all the old corrupt ways from my heart. Humbly, I shall try to do better."

Had he made the self-criticism at a meeting of Party members, he would have stood with head bowed in contrition. Here, that would have given him away for what he was-and the scaly devils and their running dogs were as eager as either Chiang's clique or the j.a.panese had been to be rid of Communists. Hsia stayed in his seat and slurped millet wine... and, in spite of self-criticism, his eyes kept sliding toward the singsong girl in the green silk dress.

Nieh Ho-T'ing tried to bring his attention back to the matter at hand. Keeping his voice low, he said, "We have to put fear into these collaborators. If a few of them die, the rest will serve the little devils with less attention to their duties, for they will always be looking over their shoulder to see if they will be next to pay for their treacheries. Some may even decide to cooperate with us in the struggle against imperialist aggression."

Hsia Shou-Tao made a face. "Yes, and then they'd sell us back to the scaly devils, along with their own mothers. That kind of friend does our cause no good; we need people truly committed to revolution and justice."

"We would be fools to trust them very far," Nieh agreed, "but intelligence is always valuable."

"And can always be compromised," Hsia shot back. He was a stubborn man; once an opinion lodged in his mind, a team of water buffaloes would have had trouble dragging it out.

Nieh didn't try. All he said was, "The sooner some are slain, the sooner we have the chance to see what the rest are made of."

That appealed to Hsia, as Nieh had thought it might: his comrade was a man who favored direct action. But Hsia said, "Not that the miserable turtles don't deserve to die, but it won't be as easy even as it was in Shanghai. The little scaly devils aren't stupid, and they learn more about security every day."

"Security for themselves, yes," Nieh said, "but for their parasites? There they are not so good. Every set of foreign devils that has tried to rule China-the Mongols, the English, the j.a.panese-worked with and through native traitors. The little scaly devils are no different. How will they gather in food and collect taxes if no one keeps records for them?"

Hsia noisily blew his nose on his fingers. A couple of the scaly devils' running dogs looked at him with distaste; they'd learned Western manners to go with their Western clothes. He glared back at them. Nieh Ho-T'ing had seen him do such things before: he needed to hate his enemies on a personal level, not just an ideological one.

Nieh set down five Mex dollars to cover the cost of the meal; war and repeated conquest had left Peking, like Shanghai, an abominably expensive place to live. Both men blinked as they walked out into the bright sun of the western part of the Chinese City of Peking. Monuments of the past glories of imperial China were all around them. Nieh Ho-T'ing looked at the ma.s.sive brickwork of the Ch'ien Men Gate with as much scorn as he'd given to the scaly devils' puppets. Come the revolution, all the buildings war had spared deserved to be torn down. The people would erect their own monuments.

He and Hsia shared a room in a grimy little lodging house not far from the gate. The man who ran it was himself progressive, and asked no questions about his lodgers' political affiliations. In return, no one struck at the oppressors and their minions anywhere close to the lodging house, to keep suspicion from falling on it.

That evening, over tea and soup, Nieh and his comrades planned how best to hara.s.s the little devils. After considerable comradely discussion-an outsider would have called it raucous wrangling-they decided to attack the munic.i.p.al office building, an ugly modern structure close to the western sh.o.r.e of the Chung Hai, the Southern Lake.

Hsia Shou-Tao wanted to do there what Nieh Ho-T'ing and his followers had done in Shanghai: smuggle guerrillas and weapons into the building under the cover of waiters and cooks bringing in food. Nieh vetoed that: "The little scaly devils are not stupid, as you yourself said. They will know we have used this trick once, and will be on their guard against it."

"We will not be using it against them, only against the men who lick their backsides," Hsia said sulkily.

"We will not be using it at all," Nieh Ho-T'ing repeated. "The risk is too large."

"What shall shall we do, then?" Hsia demanded. That brought on another round of comradely discussion, even more raucous than the one before. But when the discussion was done, they had a plan they could live with-and one which, with luck, not too many of them would die with. we do, then?" Hsia demanded. That brought on another round of comradely discussion, even more raucous than the one before. But when the discussion was done, they had a plan they could live with-and one which, with luck, not too many of them would die with.

The next morning, Nieh Ho-T'ing went with several of his comrades to the national library, which was just across Hsi An Meen-Western Peace Gate-Street, to the north of the munic.i.p.al offices. They all wore Western clothes like those the running dogs in the hibiscus-flower garden had had on; Nieh's shoes pinched his feet without mercy. The librarians bowed to them and were most helpful-who could have guessed they were not carrying papers in their briefcases?

The day was hot and sticky; the windows on the south side of the library were open, to help the air move. Nieh smiled. He had counted on that. All his companions could read. Not all of them had been able to when they first joined the People's Liberation Army, but ignorance was one means through which warlords and magnates held the people in bondage. The Communists fought it hard. That was useful generally, and a special advantage now: they fit right in until the time came for them to go into action.

Nieh Ho-T'ing knew just when that moment arrived. The noise on Hsi An Meen Street suddenly doubled, and then doubled again. Nieh looked out the window, as any curious person might have done. Clerks and officials were filing out of the munic.i.p.al office building, gathering in knots on the sidewalk, blocking traffic on the street itself, and generally complaining up a storm.

He caught the word "bomb" several times and smiled again, now more broadly. Hsia Shou-Tao had phoned in his threat, then. He had a deep, raspy voice, and could sound threatening quite without intending to. When he did intend to, the result was chilling indeed.

To make the joke complete, he'd said the Kuomintang had hidden the explosive. When the little scaly devils got around to laying blame for what was going to happen, they'd lay it in the wrong place.

Nieh nodded to his comrades. As one, they opened their briefcases. The grenades inside-some round ones, bought from the j.a.panese, and some German-style potato mashers, bought from the Kuomintang-had been wrapped in paper, to keep them from rattling about. The men pulled pins, yanked igniters, and hurled them down into the crowd below.

"Fast, fast, fast!" Nieh shouted, flinging grenade after grenade himself. The first blasts and the screams that followed them were music to him. Thus always to those who would oppress not just the peasants and proletarians but all of mankind!

When almost all the grenades were gone, Nieh and his comrades left the chamber. Already there were cries from inside the library. Nieh tossed the last two grenades back into the room he and his men had just abandoned. The grenades went off with twin roars. The diversion worked just as he'd hoped. Feet pounded toward that room. His band of raiders left by a small door on the north side of the library.

He had a pistol ready in case the guard gave trouble, but the fellow didn't. All he said was, "What's that racket all about?"

"I don't know," Nieh answered importantly. "We were busy with research for the Race." Running dogs often used the little scaly devils' names for themselves.

The guard waved him and his comrades by. Instead of fleeing the area, they walked down toward Hsi An Men Street. A shouting policeman ordered them to help move some of the wounded. Nieh obeyed without a word of complaint. Not only did it let him evaluate how much damage he'd done, it was also the best possible cover against investigators.

"Thank you for your help, gentlemen," the policeman said to Nieh and his group. "Everyone needs to struggle together against these stinking murderers." To Nieh in particular, he added, "Sorry, you got blood on your clothes, sir. I hope it can be laundered."

"I hope so, too. Cold water, they say, is good for such things," Nieh answered. The policeman nodded. In times like these, knowing how to get bloodstains out of clothes was more than merely useful; it was necessary.

Nowhere did the policeman's uniform display a name or number that would identify him. That was clever; it helped prevent reprisals. Nieh Ho-T'ing carefully studied the man's face. He would start inquiries tomorrow. A policeman who spoke of "stinking murderers" was too enthusiastic in his support for the little scaly devils. He struck Nieh as ripe for liquidation.

.8.

Ttomalss wondered more and more often these days why he had ever found the psychology of alien races an interesting study. If he'd taken up, say, landcruiser gunning, he would have dealt with the Big Uglies only through the barrel of a cannon. If he'd taken up something like publishing, he'd probably still be back on Home, comfortably getting on with his career.

Instead, he found himself trying to raise a Tosevite hatchling without any direct help from the Big Uglies. If he could, that would teach the Race a lot about how the Tosevites would do as subjects when the Empire finally succeeded in establishing its control here. If...

The more he worked on the project, the more he wondered how any Big Uglies ever survived to adulthood. When a male or female of the Race emerged from its egg, it was in large measure ready to face the world. It ate the same foods adults did, it could run around, and the biggest problem in civilizing it was teaching it the things it should not do. Since it was obedient by nature, that didn't usually present too big a challenge.

Whereas the hatchling Big Ugly female Ttomalss had taken from Liu Han...

He glared resentfully at the lumpish little thing. Not only couldn't it run around, it couldn't even roll over. It thrashed its arms and legs as if it hadn't the slightest idea they were part of it. Ttomalss marveled that natural selection could have favored the development of such an utterly helpless hatchling.

The hatchling also couldn't eat just anything. It had evolved as a parasite on the female from whose body it emerged, and was able to consume only the fluids that female secreted. Not only did Ttomalss find that disgusting, it also presented him with an experimental dilemma. He wanted to raise the Tosevite hatchling in isolation from others of its kind, but required the stuff Big Ugly females produced.

The result, like so many things connected with Tosev 3, was a clumsy makeshift. One thing-almost the only thing-the hatchling could do was suck. Some of the Big Uglies had developed artificial feeding techniques which took advantage of that with elastomeric nipples. They also used artificial equivalents of the female's natural product.

Ttomalss didn't care to do that. Very little of what the Race had learned about the Big Uglies' medical technology impressed him. He made arrangements for females in the Race's camps who were already secreting for their own hatchlings to give some additional secretion for the one he was trying to raise. He'd feared that would make the Tosevites volatile, but, to his relief, it didn't, and his hatchling enthusiastically sucked from an elastomer copy of the bodily part evolution had given Big Ugly females.

The hatchling also voided enthusiastically; Tosevite excretory arrangements were much messier than those of the Race. The liquid wastes from Big Ugly adults strained the plumbing facilities of the Race's s.p.a.cecraft. But adults, at least, had conscious control over their voiding.

As far as Ttomalss could tell, the hatchling didn't have conscious control over anything. It released liquid and solid waste whenever it felt the need, no matter where it was: it could be lying in its little containment cage, or he could be holding it. More than once, he'd had to wash off the evil-smelling liquid it pa.s.sed, and to refurbish his body paint afterwards.

For that matter, its solid wastes barely deserved the adjective. They clung to the hatchling; they clung to everything. Keeping the little creature clean was nearly a full-time job. Ttomalss learned the Big Uglies lessened the problem by wrapping absorbent cloths around their hatchlings' excretory organs. That helped keep the hatchling's surroundings cleaner, but he still had to wash it every time it voided.

And the noises it made! Hatchlings of the Race were quiet little things; they had to be coaxed into talking. From an evolutionary point of view, that made sense: noisy hatchlings drew predators, and didn't survive long enough to reproduce. But natural selection on Tosev 3 seemed to have taken a holiday. Whenever the hatchling was hungry or had fouled itself, it howled. Sometimes it howled for no reason Ttomalss could find. He'd tried ignoring it then, but that didn't work. The hatchling could squall longer than he could ignore it, and he also feared ignoring it might lead to damage of some kind.

Gradually he began picking it up when it raised a ruckus. Sometimes that made it belch up some air it had swallowed along with the secretions it ate (and sometimes it belched up those secretions, too, in a partially digested and thoroughly revolting state). When that happened, it sometimes brought the hatchling enough relief to make it shut up.

Sometimes, though, the hatchling had nothing whatever wrong with it and still made noise, as if it wanted to be held. And holding it would sometimes calm it. That bewildered Ttomalss, and made him wonder if the Tosevites didn't start the socialization process earlier in life than the Race did.

His colleagues' mouths dropped open when he suggested that. "I know it sounds funny," he said defensively. "They've fragmented themselves into tens of tiny empires that fight all the time, while we've been comfortably united for a hundred millennia. On the other hand, they have that powerful year-round s.e.xual drive to contend with, and we don't."

"You're tired, Ttomalss," his fellow psychologists said, almost in chorus.

Ttomalss was was tired. Adult Tosevites had the decency to be respectably diurnal-one of the few decencies they did have. The hatchling was asleep whenever it felt like sleeping and awake whenever it felt like waking, and when it was awake, Ttomalss was perforce awake, too, feeding it or cleaning it (or feeding it tired. Adult Tosevites had the decency to be respectably diurnal-one of the few decencies they did have. The hatchling was asleep whenever it felt like sleeping and awake whenever it felt like waking, and when it was awake, Ttomalss was perforce awake, too, feeding it or cleaning it (or feeding it and and cleaning it) or simply holding it and trying to persuade it to calm down and go back to sleep and let him go back to sleep. No wonder his eye turrets felt as if someone had poured sand in them when they swiveled. cleaning it) or simply holding it and trying to persuade it to calm down and go back to sleep and let him go back to sleep. No wonder his eye turrets felt as if someone had poured sand in them when they swiveled.

As days pa.s.sed, the hatchling gradually began to develop a pattern to its sleeping and waking. That was not to say that it didn't wake up once or twice or sometimes three times in the night, but it seemed more willing to go back to sleep then and to be awake during the day. Little by little, Ttomalss began to reckon himself capable of coherent thought once more.

He also began to believe the hatchling might one day be capable of coherent thought-or thought as coherent as that of Big Uglies ever got. It began to make noises more complex than its first primordial yowls. It also began to look at him with more attention than it had formerly shown him or anything else.

One day, the corners of its mouth lifted in the facial twitch the Tosevites used to express good humor. Ttomalss wished he could return the twitch and reinforce it, but his own features were respectably immobile.

In spite of the hatchling's increasing responsiveness, in spite of everything he was learning from it, there were a great many times when he wished he'd left it with the Tosevite female from whose body it had come. Better it should drive her mad than him, he thought.

It was not the proper att.i.tude for a scientist, but then again, a proper scientist got enough sleep.

Liu Han's b.r.e.a.s.t.s ached with milk. She'd earned money and food as a wet nurse on her way to Peking, but for the past day and a half she hadn't found anyone with a baby that needed to nurse. If she didn't come on one soon, she'd have to squeeze out some milk by hand. She hated to waste it that way, but being so painfully full was no delight, either.

Sometimes, when she was worn and hungry and her feet felt as if they couldn't take another step, she almost wished she was back in the camp. She'd had plenty to eat there, and not much to do. But she'd also had the little scaly devils spying on everything she did, and finally stealing her baby. Even if it was a girl, it was hers. hers.

Getting away from camp hadn't been easy. Not only did the little devils have cameras mounted inside the hut, they also frequently followed her when she went out and about-and she could hardly walk through the gates in the razor wire. No human walked out through those gates.

If it hadn't been for the poultry seller who was a Communist, she never would have got out. One day when he was shutting up his stall, he said to her, "Come with me. I'd like you to meet my sister."

She didn't think the hut to which he'd taken her was his own; that would have been too dangerous. In it sat a woman who probably was not the poultry seller's sister. She wore her hair in a short bob, as Liu Han did, and was of about the same age and build.

The poultry seller turned his back on them. The woman said, "Oh, Liu Han, I love your clothes so much. Will you trade them for mine, right down to your sandals and underwear?"

Liu Han had stared down at herself for a moment, wondering if the woman was out of her mind. "These rags?" she said. The "sister" nodded emphatically. Then Liu Han understood. The scaly devils were very good at making small things. They might have put some of those small things in her clothes, even in her drawers, to keep track of where she was.

She undressed without bothering to see whether the poultry seller peeked at her. So many men had seen her body that her modesty had taken a severe beating. And anyhow, so soon after childbirth, her body, she was sure, hadn't been one to rouse a man's l.u.s.t.

When the exchange was complete, the poultry seller had turned around and said to the other woman, "I will take you back to your own home, Liu Han." He turned to Liu Han. "Sister, you wait here for me. I will be back soon."

Wait Liu Han did, marveling at his gall. She knew the scaly devils had trouble telling one person from another. If the poultry seller's "sister" dressed like her, they might think she was Liu Han, at least for a while. And while they were fooled...

As he'd promised, the poultry seller had soon returned. He took Liu Han through deepening twilight to another hut that was bare but for mats on the floor. "Now we wait again," he said. Twilight had given way to night. The camp fell as nearly silent as it ever did.

She'd expected him to demand her body, lumpy from childbirth though it was. She'd even made up her mind not to protest; he was, after all, risking his life to help her, and deserved such thanks as she could give. But he made no advances; he used the time to talk of the paradise China would become when Mao Tse-Tung and the Communists freed it from the scaly devils, the eastern devils from j.a.pan, the foreign devils, and its native oppressors. If a quarter of what he said was true, no one would recognize the country after a generation of new rule.

At last, he'd unrolled a mat near one wall. It concealed a wooden trapdoor that he'd slid aside. "Go down this tunnel," he said. "Keep going ahead, no matter what. Someone will be waiting for you at the far end."

She'd quaked like bamboo stalks when the wind blew through them. Bobby Fiore had gone down a tunnel like this, and he'd never come back; he'd ended up lying in a pool of his own blood on a Shanghai street. But down the wooden ladder she'd climbed, and then on hands and knees through damp and the smell of earth and blackness so perfect and intense, it seemed to close in on her until she wanted to huddle where she was and wait for it to swallow her.

But on and on she'd crawled, and at last she came to a rock barring the way. When she pushed it aside, it fell with a splash into an irrigation ditch and she could see again. "Come on," a voice hissed to her. "This way."

Liu Han had done her best to go "this way," but, like the stone, she fell into the ditch. She stood up, wet and dripping, and staggered in the direction from which the voice had come. A hand reached out to pull her onto dry land. "That's not so bad," her rescuer whispered. "The cold water will make it harder for the scaly devils to see your heat."

At first she'd just nodded. Then, though the night breeze on her dripping clothes left her shivering, she drew herself up very straight.

This man knew the little scaly devils could see heat! That information had come from her, and people outside the prison camp were using it. In a life without much room for pride, Liu Han cherished the moments when she knew it.

"Come on," the man hissed to her. "We have to get farther away from the camp. You're not safe yet."

Safe! She'd wanted to laugh. She hadn't known a minute's safety since the little scaly devils had attacked her village-not even before that, for the town had been full of j.a.panese when the little devils came in their dragonfly planes and turned her whole life-to say nothing of the world-upside down.

But as the days went by, as she tramped through the Chinese countryside, one of uncounted thousands of people going along the dirt tracks, she did begin to feel safe, or at least safe from the little scaly devils. She still saw them now and again: soldiers in their vehicles, or sometimes marching on foot and looking no more happy about it than human troops. Every so often, one would turn an eye turret her way, but only idly, or perhaps warily, to make sure she was not a danger to him. But to them, she was just another Big Ugly, not a subject for study. What a relief that was!

And now Peking. Peiping-Northern Peace-it had been renamed, but no one paid much attention to that. Peking it had been, Peking it was, and Peking it would remain.

Liu Han had never seen a walled city before; the closest to such a thing she'd known was the razor wire around the camp in which the little devils had confined her while waiting for her to give birth. But Peking's walls, in the shape of a square perched atop a broader rectangle, ran for almost forty-five li li around the perimeter of the city; further internal walls separated the square-the Tartar City-from the rectangle-the Chinese City. around the perimeter of the city; further internal walls separated the square-the Tartar City-from the rectangle-the Chinese City.

Broad streets ran north and south, east and west, paralleling the walls. The little scaly devils controlled those streets, at least to the point of being able to travel on them by day or night. Between the avenues, there twisted innumerable hutungs hutungs-lanes-where the bulk of the city lived its life. The little scaly devils took their lives in their little clawed hands when they went along the hutungs. hutungs. They knew it, too, so they seldom went there. They knew it, too, so they seldom went there.

Ironically, prison camp had been Liu Han's best preparation for life in bustling, crowded Peking. Had she come straight from her village, she would have been altogether at sea. But the camp had been a fair-sized city in its own right, and readied her to deal with a great one.

She quickly had to learn how to get around in the Chinese City, for the Communists kept shifting her from one dingy lodging house to another, to throw off any possible pursuit from the little devils. One day they took her to a place not far from the Ch'ien Men, the Western Gate. As she came in, one of the men sitting around and talking over rice spoke a few syllables that were not Chinese. Liu Han recognized them anyway.

She broke away from her escort and walked up to the man. He was a few years older than she, compact, clever-looking. "Excuse me," she said, politely lowering her eyes, "but did I hear you speak the name of a foreign devil called Bobby Fiore?"

"What if you did, woman?" the man answered. "How do you know this foreign devil's name?"

"I-knew him in the scaly devils' prison camp west of Shanghai," Liu Han said hesitantly. She did not go on to explain that she had borne Bobby Fiore's child; now that she was fully among her own people once more, having lain with a foreign devil seemed shameful to her.

"You know him?" The man's eyes raked her. "Are you then the woman he had at that camp? Your name would be-" He looked up to the ceiling for a moment, riffling through papers in his mind. "Liu Han, that was it."

"Yes, I am Liu Han," she said. "You must have known him well, if he spoke to you of me." That Bobby Fiore had spoken of her left her touched. He'd treated her well, but she'd always wondered if she was anything more than an enjoyable convenience to him. With a foreign devil, who could say?

"I was there when he died-you know he is dead?" the man said. When Liu Han nodded, the man went on, "I am Nieh Ho-T'ing. I tell you this, and tell you truly: he died well, fighting against the little scaly devils. He was brave; by doing what he did, he helped me and several others escape them."

Tears came into Liu Han's eyes. "Thank you," she whispered. "They brought his picture-his picture dead-to me in the camp. I knew he died in Shanghai, but not how. He hated the little devils. I am glad he had revenge." Her hands curled into fists. "I wish I could."