In the Balance

“I thank you, Exalted Fleetlord. Straha, I want you to know I formerly held a view similar to yours; as you may or may not have heard, I strongly advocated the destruction of the Big Ugly city called Washington to terrify the Tosevites of the United States into ceasing their resistance to us. The strategy likely would have succeeded against the Hallessi or Rabotevs, or even against the Race. Against the Tosevites, it has failed.”

Straha started to interrupt; Kirel stuck out his tongue to stop him. “Let me finish, if you please. I do not claim we have failed to cow many of the Big Uglies by massive shows of force. But there also exists among the Tosevites a strong minority impelled to ever greater resistance by such acts on our part. Your policy plays into the hands of these fanatics.”

“Why should the Big Uglies be different from any civilized species?” Straha said.

“Our scholars will be debating that for thousands of years to come, as they review the records of this campaign,” Kirel said. Mouths lolled open here and there among the assembled shiplords; the Race’s scholars were notoriously more sure but slow than slow but sure. Kirel went on, “I, however, lack the luxury of leisure, as is true of everyone here on Tosev 3. Were I to speculate, I would say the Big Uglies’ differences go back to their peculiar-I might say unique-mating patterns.”

Straha made a disgusted noise. “Always we come back to mating. Do the miserable Big Uglies think of nothing else?”

“The answer to this may be no,” Atvar said. “The intense emotional bonds they form with sexual partners and with offspring make them willing to take risks any member of the Race would reckon insane, and also provoke them to take vengeance should partners or offspring be harmed.”

“There may even be more to it than that,” Kirel added. “Some of our scholars speculate that the Big Uglies, because of the familial attachments they are accustomed to forming, also are predisposed toward forming equally strong attachments to the causes of their little empires and their implausible religious systems. We are in effect dealing with a species full of fanatics-and fanatics, by definition, are not to be constrained by threats of force which would deter more rational individuals.”

“Let me see if I understand you, Honored Shiplord,” Straha said. “You are advancing the hypothesis that Tosev 3 may never be as fully pacified as Halless 1 and Rabotev 2 are, and that the Big Uglies may continue suicidal resistance to us even after overall military victory is achieved.”

“You extrapolate further than I have been willing to go, but the answer is basically yes,” Kirel said unhappily.

Atvar said, “Let us eat the worms ahead of the soup, Shiplords. Before we can discuss ways to reduce harassment of our forces after we conquer, we must first complete our conquest. The truly atrocious winter weather prevailing over much of the northern hemisphere of Tosev 3 makes matters no easier for us.”

“Our males should have been better trained to withstand such conditions,” Straha said.

The fleetlord wished one of the fearsome Tosevite snipers would draw a bead right in the middle of Straha’s snout. All he did was complain and intrigue; he didn’t care for solving the problems he pointed out. Atvar said, “I might remind the shiplord that no territory within the Empire closely simulates the climate of the Tosevite lands wherein, to our misfortune, our most formidable opponents dwell.”

Several males even of Straha’s faction showed their agreement with that. It relieved Atvar a little. He was coming to dread these assemblages. Too often he had bad news to report, and news bad in ways he never would have imagined before the fleet left Home. He’d expected his principal concern on this campaign to be how many soldiers carelessly got hurt in traffic accidents, not whether the Big Uglies would soon be fighting him with nuclear weapons of their own.

He’d also expected much better data from the Race’s probes. He’d already resigned himself to their missing the weird technological jump the Tosevites had taken after they departed: that was the Big Uglies’ fault, not theirs. But they should have done a better job of reporting on Tosevite social and sexual habits, so Kirel’s research crews wouldn’t have had to start learning about them from scratch.

What really worried him was the thought that maybe the probes had sent accurate data back to Home, only to have those data ignored, misinterpreted, or downright disbelieved by scholars who analyzed them from a Race-centered perspective. If similar mistakes had been made before the conquests of the Rabotevs and Hallessi, the Race not only got by with them but didn’t even notice them-the subject species really weren’t very different from their overlords. But the Big Uglies were… and finding out how much so was proving more costly than anyone could have imagined.