Striking the Balance

“Now you have spoken well, Shiplord,” Atvar said, and Kirel stretched out from the rather nervous posture he usually assumed around the fleetlord. Atvar realized he had not given his chief subordinate much in the way of praise lately. That was an error on his part: if they did not work well together, the progress of the conquest would be impeded-and too many things had already impeded the progress of the conquest. Atvar hissed out a sigh. “Had I any conception of the magnitude of the task involved in suppressing resistance on an industrialized world without destroying it in the process, I would have thought long and hard before accepting command.”

Kirel didn’t answer right away. Had Atvar declined the position, he most likely would have been appointed fleetlord. How much did he want to taste the job? Atvar had never been certain of that, which made his dealings with the shiplord of the conquest fleet’s bannership edgier than they might have been. Kirel had never shown himself to be disloyal, but-

When the shiplord did speak, he dealt with the tactical situation under discussion, not with Atvar’s latest remark: “Exalted fleetlord, shall we then prepare to use nuclear weapons against these major Tosevite settlements on the island or continent or whatever it may be?” He leaned forward to read the toponyms on the map so as to avoid any possible mistakes. “Against Sydney and Melbourne, I mean?”

Atvar leaned forward, too, to check the sites for himself. “Yes, those are the ones. Begin preparations as expeditiously as possible.”

“Exalted Fleetlord, it shall be done.”

XII

As prisons went, the one Moishe Russie and his wife and son now inhabited wasn’t bad. It even outdid the villa where the Jewish underground in Palestine had incarcerated them. Here, in what had been a fine hotel, he and his family got plenty of food and enjoyed both electricity and hot and cold running water. If not for bars on the windows and armed Lizard guards outside the door, the suite would have been luxurious.

Despite bars, the windows drew Moishe. He stared in endless fascination out across Cairo at the Nile and, beyond it, the Pyramids. “I never thought we would be like Joseph and come to Egypt out of Palestine,” he said.

“Who will be our Moses and lead us out again?” Reuven asked.

Moishe felt a burst of pride: the boy was still so young, but already not just learning the great stories of the Torah but applying them to his own life. He wished he had a better answer to give his son than “I don’t know,” but he didn’t want to lie to Reuven, either.

Rivka had a question much more to the point: “What will they do to us now?”

“I don’t know that, either,” Moishe said. He wished Rivka and Reuven hadn’t come with him after Zolraag recognized him in the Jerusalem prison camp. Far too late now to do anything but wish, though. But he was vulnerable through them. Even back in Warsaw, the Lizards had threatened them to try to make him do what they wanted. His family’s convenient disappearance had scotched that there. It wouldn’t here. He’d been ready to let himself be killed rather than obey the Lizards. But letting his wife and son suffer-that was something else again.

A key turned in the lock, out in the hall. Moishe’s heart beat faster. It was halfway between breakfast and lunchtime, not a usual hour for the Lizards to bother him. The door opened. Zolraag came in. The former provincelord of Poland was wearing more ornate body paint now than either of the times when Moishe had seen him in Palestine. He hadn’t returned to the almost rococo splendor of his ornamentation back in his Warsaw days, but he was gaining on it.

He stuck out his tongue in Moishe’s direction, then reeled it back in. “You will come with me immediately,” he said in fair German, turningsofort

into a long, menacing hiss.

“It shall be done,” Moishe answered in the language of the Race. He hugged Rivka and kissed Reuven on the forehead, not knowing whether he would see them again. Zolraag allowed that, but made small, impatient noises, like a thick pot of stew coming to a boil.

When Moishe came over to him, the Lizard rapped on the inner surface of the door: the knob there had been removed. Zolraag used a sequence of knocks different from any the Lizards had employed before, presumably to keep the Russies from learning a code, breaking out, and causing trouble. Not for the first time, Moishe wished he and his family were as dangerous as the Lizards believed they were.

Out in the hallway, four males pointed automatic weapons at his midsection. Zolraag gestured for him to walk toward the stairwell. Two of the Lizard guards followed, both of them too far back to let him whirl and try to seize their rifles-as if he would have beenmeshuggeh enough to try.

Zolraag ordered him into a mechanical combat vehicle. The guards got into it, too. One of them slammed the rear doors shut behind him. The clang of metal striking metal had a dreadfully final sound.