Striking the Balance

What they don’t know is how much I wish I hadn’t done it,Ussmak thought sadly,and how much more I wish I hadn’t yielded the base up to Soviet troops once it was in my claws. Wishes did as much good as they usually did.

The barracks quickly filled with males. As soon as the last new arrivals found bunks-bunks so far away from the stove that Ussmak pitied them when night came-another male and two Big Uglies came into the doorway and stood there waiting to be noticed. As they were, the barracks slowly quieted.

Ussmak studied the newcomers with interest. The male of the Race carried himself like someone who was someone, though his body paint had been faded and abraded till little remained by which to judge his rank. The Tosevites with him presented an interesting contrast. One wore the type of cloth wrappings typical of the guards who had oppressed Ussmak ever since he went into captivity. The other, though, had the ragged accouterments of the males who had watched from the far side of the fanged-wire fence as Ussmak and his colleagues arrived. He’d also let the hair grow out on his face, which to Ussmak made him look even more scruffy than Tosevites normally did.

The male spoke: “I am Fsseffel. Once I was an infantry combat vehicle band commander. Now I am headmale of Race Barracks One.” He paused; the Big Ugly with the fuzz on his face spoke in the Russki language to the one who wore the official-style cloth wrappings.Interpreter, Ussmak realized. He got the idea that a Big Ugly who understood his language might be a useful fellow with whom to become acquainted.

Fsseffel resumed: “Males of the Race, you are here to labor for the males of the SSSR. This will henceforth be your sole function.” He paused to let that sink in, and for translation, then went on, “How well you work, how much you produce, will determine how well you are fed.”

“That’s barbarous,” Oyyag whispered to Ussmak.

“You expect Big Uglies to behave like civilized beings?” Ussmak whispered back. Then he waved Oyyag to silence; Fsseffel was still talking-

“You will now choose for yourselves a headmale for this, Race Barracks Three. This male will be your interface with the Russki males of the People’s Commissariat for the Interior, the Tosevite organization responsible for administration of this camp.” He paused again to let the interpreter speak to the Big Ugly from the NKVD. “Choose wisely, I urge you.” He tacked an emphatic cough onto that. “If you do not make a selection, one will be made for you, more or less at random. Race Barracks Two had this happen. Results have been unsatisfactory. I urge against such a course.”

Ussmak wondered what sort of unsatisfactory results Fsseffel had in mind. All sorts of nasty possibilities occurred to him: starvation, torture, executions. He hadn’t thought in terms like those before the mutiny. His frame of reference had changed since then, and not for the better.

Oyyag startled him by shouting, “Ussmak!” A moment later, half the males in the barracks were calling his name. They wanted him for headmale, he realized with something less than delight. That would bring him into constant contact with the Big Uglies, which was the last thing he wanted. He saw no good way to escape, though.

The Big Ugly with the hairy face said, “Let the male called Ussmak come forward and be recognized.” He was as fluent in the language of the Race as any Tosevite Ussmak had heard. When Ussmak got down from his bunk and walked over to the door, the Big Ugly said, “I greet you, Ussmak. We will be working with each other in days to come. I am David Nussboym.”

“I greet you, David Nussboym,” Ussmak said, although he would rather not have made the Tosevite’s acquaintance.

The breeze still brought the alien stink of Cairo to the scent receptors on Atvar’s tongue. But it was a fine mild breeze, and the fleetlord was more prepared to tolerate Tosevite stinks now that he had succeeded in dealing the Big Uglies a heavy blow.

He called up the Florida situation map on one of the computers installed in his Tosevite lodging. “We’ve broken the Americans here,” he told Kirel, pointing to the map. “The bomb created a gap, and we’ve poured through it. Now they flee before us, as they did in the early days of the conquest. Our possession of the peninsula seems assured.”

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said, but then tempered that by adding, “A pity the conquest does not proceed elsewhere as it did in the early days.”