Striking the Balance

Along with vegetables, the merchants in the market sold all sorts of Tosevite life forms for food. Because refrigeration hereabouts ranged from rudimentary to nonexistent, some of the creatures were still alive in jugs or glass jars full of seawater. Ttomalss stared at gelatinous things with a great many sucker-covered legs. The creatures stared back out of oddly wise-looking eyes. Other Tosevite life forms had jointed shells and clawed legs; Ttomalss had eaten those, and found them tasty. And still others looked a lot like the swimming creatures in Home’s small seas.

One fellow had a box containing a great many legless, scaly creatures that reminded Ttomalss of the animals of his native world far more than did the hairy, thin-skinned life forms that dominated Tosev 3. After the usual loud haggling, a Big Ugly bought one of those creatures. The seller seized it with a pair of tongs and lifted it out, then used a cleaver to chop off its head. While the body was still writhing, the merchant slit open the animal’s belly and scooped out the offal inside. Then he cut the body into finger-long lengths, dripped fat into a conical iron pan that sat above a charcoal-burning brazier, and began frying the meat for the customer.

All the while, instead of watching what he was doing, he kept his eyes on the two males of the Race. Nervously, Ttomalss said to Saltta, “He would sooner be doing that to us than to the animal that shares some of our attributes.”

“Truth,” Saltta said. “Troth, no doubt. But these Big Uglies are still wild and ignorant. Only with the passage of generations will they come to see us as their proper overlords and the Emperor”-he lowered his eyes, as did Ttomalss-“as their sovereign and the solace of their spirits.”

Ttomalss wondered if the conquest of Tosev 3 could be accomplished. Even if it was accomplished, he wondered if the Tosevites could be civilized, as the Rabotevs and Hallessi had been before them. It was refreshing to hear a male still convinced of the Race’s power and the rightness of the cause.

North of the market, the streets were narrow and jumbled. Ttomalss wondered how Saltta found his way through them. The comfortable warmth was a little less here; the Big Uglies, for whom it was less comfortable, built the upper stories of their homes and shops so close together that they kept most of Tosev’ s light from reaching the street itself.

One building had armed males of the Race standing guard around it. Ttomalss was glad to see them; walking through these streets never failed to worry him. The Big Uglies were so-unpredictable was the kindest word that crossed his mind.

Inside the building, a Tosevite female held a newly emerged hatching to one of the glands on her upper torso so it could ingest the nutrient fluid she secreted for it. The arrangement revolted Ttomalss; it smacked of parasitism. He needed all his scientific detachment to regard it with equanimity.

Saltta said, “The female is being well compensated to yield up the hatching to us, superior sir. This should prevent any difficulties springing from the pair bonding that appears to develop between generations of Tosevites.”

“Good,” Ttomalss said. Now he could get on with his experimental program in peace-and if snivelers like Tessrek did not care for it, too bad. He switched to Chinese to speak to the Big Ugly female: “Nothing bad will happen to your hatching. It will be well fed, well cared for. All its needs will be met. Do you understand? Do you agree?” He was getting ever more fluent; he even remembered not to use interrogative coughs.

“I understand,” the female said softly. “I agree.” But as she held out the hatching to Ttomalss, water dripped from the corners of her small, immobile eyes. Ttomalss recognized that as a sign of insincerity. He dismissed it as unimportant. Compensation was the medicine to heal that wound.

The hatchling wiggled almost bonelessly in Ttomalss’ grasp and let out an annoying squawk. The female turned her head away. “Well done,” Ttomalss said to Saltta. “Let us take the hatching back to our own establishment here. Then I shall remove it to my laboratory, and then the research shall begin. I may have been thwarted once, but I shall not be thwarted twice.”

To make sure he was not thwarted twice, four guards accompanied him and Saltta back toward the Race’s base in the little island in the Pearl River. From there, a helicopter would take him and the hatching to the shuttlecraft launch site not far away-and from there, he would return to his starship.

Saltta retraced in every particular the route by which he had come to the female Big Ugly’s residence. Just before he, Ttomalss, and the guards reached the marketplace with the strange creatures in it, they found their way forward blocked by an animal-drawn wagon as wide as the lane down which they were coming.

“Go back!” Saltta shouted in Chinese to the Big Ugly driving the wagon.