Striking the Balance

“I believe it.” Sam listened to the radio some more. “They’re moving that incompetent officer to-upstate New York.” He wrote it down. “That’s worth knowing. With luck, we’ll be able to take advantage of his weaknesses over there, too.”

“Truth,” Straha said again, this time in bemused tones. “You Big Uglies aggressively exploit the intelligence you gather, and you gather great quantities of it. Do you do this in your own conflicts as well?”

“Don’t know,” Yeager answered. “I’ve never been in a war before, and I’m only a little fellow in this one.” He thought back to his ballplaying days, and to all the signs he and his teammates had stolen. Mutt Daniels was a genius at that kind of thing. He wondered how-and if-Mutt was doing these days.

Straha shifted to yet another frequency. An excited-sounding Lizard was relaying a long, involved message. “Ah, that is most interesting,” Straha said when he was done.

“I didn’t follow all of it,” Sam confessed, embarrassed at having to say that after Straha had praised his grasp of the Lizards’ tongue. “Something about ginger and calculator fraud, whatever that is.”

“Not calculator fraud-computer fraud,” Straha said. “I do not blame you for not understanding completely. You Big Uglies, while technically far more advanced than you have any business being, as yet have no real grasp of the potential of computing machines.”

“Maybe not,” Yeager said. “Sounds like we don’t have any grasp of how to commit crimes with them, either.”

Straha’s mouth dropped open in amusement. “Committing the crime is easy. Males in the payroll section diverted payments to ginger purveyors into accounts of which only they and the purveyors-and, of course, the computers-were aware. Since no one else knew these accounts existed, no one not party to the secret could access them. The computers would not announce their presence; it was, in essence, a perfect scheme.”

“We have a saying that there’s no such thing as a perfect crime,” Yeager remarked. “What went wrong with this one?”

Straha laughed again. “Nothing is accident-proof. A male in the accounting section who was not part of the miscreants’ scheme was investigating a legitimate account. But he made a mistake in entering the number of that account and found himself looking at one of the concealed ones. He recognized it at once for what it was and notflied his superiors, who began a larger investigation. Many males will find themselves in difficulties because of it.”

“Hope you won’t be angry if I tell you that doesn’t make me too unhappy,” Sam said. “Who would have thought the Race would turn out to have drug fiends? Makes you seem almost human-no offense.”

“I shall endeavor to take none,” Straha replied with dignity.

Yeager kept his face straight; Straha was getting pretty good at interpreting human expressions, and he didn’t want the Lizard to see how funny he thought that was. He said, “I wonder if we have any way to use the news, maybe make some of your people think males who aren’t ginger tasters really are. Something like that, anyhow.”

“You have an evilly twisted mind, Sam Yeager,” Straha said.

“Thank you,” Sam answered, which made Straha first jerk both eye turrets toward him and then start to laugh as he understood it was a joke. Yeager went on, “You might talk with some of our propaganda people, maybe ask if they want you to broadcast about it. Who knows what kind of trouble you might stir up?”

“Who indeed?” Straha said. “I shall do that.” It wasn’t quiteIt shall be done,

the Lizards’ equivalent forYes, sir, but it was more deference than Sam had ever got from Straha before. Little by little, he was earning respect.

When his shift was done, he started to go upstairs to see Barbara and Jonathan, but ran into Ristin and Ullhass in the hospital lobby. Those two Lizard POWs were old buddies; he’d captured them back in the summer of 1942, when the Lizard invasion was new and looked irresistible. By now, they seemed well on the way to becoming Americans, and wore their official U.S. prisoner-of-war red-white-and-blue body paint with considerable pride. They’d also picked up pretty good English over the last couple of years.

“Hey, Sam,” Ristin said in that language. “Baseball this afternoon?”

“Yes,” Ullhass echoed. “Baseball!” He added an emphatic cough.

“Maybe later-not now,” Sam said, to which both Lizards responded with steam-whistle noises of disappointment. With their fast, skittery movements, they made surprisingly good middle infielders, and had taken to the game well. Their small size and forward-sloping posture gave them a strike zone about the size of a postage stamp, too, so they were good leadoff men-well, leadoff males-even if they seldom hit the ball hard.