Striking the Balance

Whistling tunelessly, Jager went outside, unhitched the mare, and rode away. Where to ride troubled him. Should he flee for his life? If he could get to Lodz, Anielewicz and the Jews would protect him. That was loaded with irony thick enough to slice, but it was also probably true.

In the end, though, instead of riding south, he went north, back toward his regiment. Karol and his family had been dead for days now. If the SS did know about him, they would have dropped on him by now. And, never mind the Jews, he still had the war against the Lizards to fight.

When he did get back to the regimental encampment, Gunther Grillparzer looked up from a game of skat and said, “You look a little green around the gills, sir. Everything all right?”

“I must have drunk some bad water or something,” Jager answered. “I’ve been jumping down off this miserable creature”-he patted the horse’s neck-“and squatting behind a bush about every five minutes, all the way back from corps headquarters.” That accounted not only for his pallor but also for getting back here later than he should have.

“The galloping shits are no fun at all, sir,” the panzer gunner said sympathetically. Then he guffawed and pointed to Jager’s mare. “The galloping shits! Get it, sir? I made a joke without even noticing.”

“Life is like that sometimes,” Jager said. Grillparzer scratched his head. Jager just led away the horse. He’d ridden it a long way; it needed seeing to. Grillparzer shrugged and went back to his card game.

Nieh Ho-T’ing and Hsia Shou-Tao passed the little scaly devils’ inspection and were allowed into the main part of the tent on the island in the lake at the heart of the Forbidden City. “Good of you to invite me here with you today,” he said, “instead of-” He stopped.

Instead of your woman, the one I tried to rape.Nieh completed the sentence, perhaps not exactly as his aide would have. Aloud, he answered, “Liu Mei has some sort of sickness, the kind babies get. Liu Han asked the central committee for permission to be relieved of this duty so she could care for the girl. Said permission having been granted-”

Hsia Shou-Tao nodded. “Women need to look after their brats. It’s one of the things they’re good for. They’re-” He stopped again. Again, Nieh Ho-T’ing had no trouble coming up with a likely continuation.They’re also good for laying, which causes the brats in the first place. But Hsia, while he might have thought that, hadn’t come out and said it. His reeducation, however slowly it proceeded, was advancing.

“Liu Han has all sorts of interesting projects going on,” Nieh said. Hsia Shou-Tao nodded once more, but did not ask him to amplify that. Where women were not involved, Hsia was plenty clever. He would not allude to the whereabouts of the scaly devil Ttomalss where other little devils might hear.

Nieh had thought that by this time he would be delivering small pieces of Ttomalss to the little devils one at a time. It hadn’t worked out that way. The capture of the little devil who’d stolen Liu Han’s child had gone off as planned-better than planned-but she hadn’t yet taken the ferocious revenge she and Nieh had anticipated. He wondered why. It wasn’t as if she’d become a Christian or anything foolish like that.

A couple of chairs were the only articles of human-made furniture inside the tent. Nieh and Hsia sat down in them. A moment later, the little scaly devil named Ppevel and his interpreter came out and seated themselves behind their worktable. Ppevel let loose with a volley of hisses and pops, squeaks and coughs. The interpreter turned them into pretty good Chinese: “The assistant administrator, eastern region, main continental mass, notes that one of you appears to be different from past sessions. Is it Nieh Ho-T’ing or Liu Han who is absent?”

“Liu Han is absent,” Nieh answered. The little devils had as much trouble telling people apart as he did with them.

Ppevel spoke again: “We suspect a link between her and the disappearance of the researcher Ttomalss.”

“Your people and mine are at war,” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered. “We have honored the truce we gave in exchange for Liu Han’s baby. We were not required to do anything more than that. Suspect all you like.”

“You are arrogant,” Ppevel said.

That, coming from an imperialist exploiter of a little scaly devil, almost made Nieh Ho-T’ing laugh out loud. He didn’t; he was here on business. He said, “We have learned that you scaly devils are seriously considering cease-fires without time limits for discussion of your withdrawal from the territory of the peace-loving Soviet Union and other states.”

“These requests are under discussion,” Ppevel agreed through the interpreter. “They have nothing to do with you, however. We shall not withdraw from China under any circumstances.”