Striking the Balance

“Very well. I rely on you to see that he does.”Your head will go on the block if he doesn’t, Molotov meant, and Kurchatov, unlike Kagan, was not so naive as to be able to misunderstand. The foreign commissar continued, “This center holds the future of the USSR in its hands. If we can detonate one of these bombs soon and then produce more in short order, we shall demonstrate to the alien imperialist aggressors that we can match their weapons and deal them such blows as would in the long run prove deadly to them.”

“Certainly they can deliver such blows to us,” Kurchatov replied. “Our only hope for preservation is to be able to match them, as you say.”

“This is the Great Stalin’s policy,” Molotov agreed, which also meant it was how things were going to be. “He is certain that, once we have shown the Lizards our capacity; they will become more amenable to negotiations designed to facilitate their withdrawal from therodina.”

The foreign commissar and the Soviet physicist looked at each other, while Max Kagan stared at the two of them in frustrated incomprehension. Molotov saw one thought behind Kurchatov’s eyes, and suspected the physicist saw the same one behind his, despite his reputation for wearing a mask of stone. It was not the sort of thing even Molotov could say.The Great Stalin had better be right.

Ttomalss’ hiss carried a curious mixture of annoyance and enjoyment. The air in this Canton place was decently warm, at least during Tosev 3’s long summers, but so moist that the researcher felt as if he were swimming in it. “How do you keep fungus from forming in the cracks between your scales?” he asked his guide, a junior psychological researcher named Saltta.

“Superior sir, sometimes you can’t,” Saltta answered. “If it’s one of our fungi, the usual creams and aerosols do well enough in knocking it down. But, just as we can consume Tosevite foods, some Tosevite fungi can consume us. The Big Uglies are too ignorant to have any fungicides worthy of the name, and our medications have not proved completely effective. Some of the afflicted males had to be transported-in quarantine conditions, of course-to hospital ships for further treatment.”

Ttomalss’ tongue flicked out and wiggled in a gesture of disgust. A great deal of Tosev 3 disgusted him. He almost wished he could have been an infantrymale so he could have slaughtered Big Uglies instead of studying them. He didn’t like traveling through Tosevite cities on foot. He felt lost and tiny in the crowd of Tosevites who surged through the streets all around him. No matter how much the Race learned about these noisy, obnoxious creatures, would they ever be able to civilize them and integrate them into the structure of the Empire, as they’d succeeded in doing with the Rabotevs and Hallessi? He had his doubts.

If the Race was going to succeed, though, they’d have to start with new-hatched Tosevites, ones that weren’t set in their ways, to learn the means by which Big Uglies might be controlled. That was what he’d been doing with the hatching that had come out of the female Liu Han’s body… until Ppevel shortsightedly made him return it to her.

He hoped Ppevel would come down with an incurable Tosevite fungus infection. So much time wasted! So much data that would not be gathered. Now he was going to have to start all over with a new hatching. It would be years before he learned anything worth having, and for much of the first part of this experiment, he would merely be repeating work he’d already done.

He would also be repeating a pattern of sleep deprivation he would just as soon have avoided. Big Ugly hatchlings emerged from the bodies of females in such a wretchedly undeveloped state that they hadn’t the slightest idea about the difference between day and night, and made a horrendous racket whenever they felt like it. Why that trait hadn’t caused the species to become extinct in short order was beyond him.

“Here,” Saltta said as they turned a corner. “We are coming to one of the main market squares of Canton.”

If the streets of the city were noisy, the market was cacophony compounded. Chinese Tosevites screamed out the virtues of their wares at hideous volume. Others, potential customers, screamed just as loud or maybe louder, ridiculing the quality of the merchants’ stock in trade. When they weren’t screaming, and sometimes when they were, they entertained themselves by belching, spitting, picking their teeth, picking their snouts, and digging fingers into the flesh-flapped holes that served them for hearing diaphragms.

“You want?” one of them yelled in the language of the Race, almost poking Ttomalss in an eye turret with a length of leafy green vegetable.

“No!” Ttomalss said with an angry emphatic cough. “Go away!” Not in the least abashed, the vegetable seller let out a series of the yipping barks the Big Uglies used for laughter.