Striking the Balance

What then? Nieh’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a grin that showed scant amusement. The likeliest explanation was that Major Mori hoped he’d try the same trick twice in a row-and get smashed as a result. In Mori’s boots, Nieh would have hoped for something like that.

“Well, whatare you after now?” Mori demanded. Although the troops he led were hardly more than a guerrilla band, he kept all the arrogance the Japanese had shown when they held the whole of northeastern China and coastal enclaves elsewhere-and could push forward as they wished, even if they couldn’t always hold the gains they’d made.

“Artillery shells would be useful about now,” Nieh said musingly.

“Maybe so, but you won’t get them from us,” Mon said. “We still have some 75mm guns in commission, though I won’t tell you where.”

Nieh Ho-T’ing knew where the Japanese were concealing those cannon. Going after them struck him as being more trouble than it was worth, since they were far more likely to be turned on the Lizards than on his own men. He said, “Soldiers can be coolies and haul 75mm guns from one place to another. As you say, they are also easy to hide. But the Japanese Army used to have heavier artillery, too. The scaly devils destroyed those big guns, or else you’ve had to abandon them. But you still should have some of the ammunition left. Do you?”

Mori studied him for a while before answering. The eastern devil was somewhere not far from forty, perhaps a couple of years older than Nieh. His skin was slightly darker, his features slightly sharper, than a Chinese was likely to have. That didn’t bother Nieh nearly so much as Mori’s automatic assumption of his own superiority.Barbarian, Nieh thought scornfully, secure in his knowledge that China was the one true home of culture and civilization. But even a barbarian could be useful.

“What if we do?” Mori said. “If you want one of those shells, what will you give us for it?”

Capitalist,

Nieh thought.Imperialist. If all you care about is profit, you don’t deserve even that. Aloud, though, he answered, “I can give you the names of two men you think reliable who are in fact Kuomintang spies.”

Mori smiled at him. It was not a pleasant smile. “Just the other day, the Kuomintang offered to sell me the names of three Communists.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Nieh said. “We have been known to give the names of Japanese sympathizers to the Kuomintang.”

“Miserable war,” Mori said. Just for a moment, the two men understood each other completely. Then Mori asked. “And when you dicker with the little devils, whom do you sell to them?”

“Why, the Kuomintang, of course,” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered. “When the war with you and the scaly devils is over, the reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries will still be here. We shall deal with them. They think they will deal with us, but the historical dialectic shows they are mistaken.”

“You are mistaken if you think Japanese cannot enforce on China a government friendly to its wishes-leaving the little scaly devils out of the picture, of course,” Major Mori said.

“Whenever your troops and ours meet in battle, yours always come off second best.”

“And what has that got to do with the price of rice?” Nieh asked in honest bewilderment. “Eventually you will get sick of winning expensive battles and being nibbled to death inside areas you think you control, and then you will go away and leave China alone. The only reason you win now is that you started using the machines of the foreign devils”-by which he meant Europeans-“before we did. We will have our own factories one day, and then-”

Mori threw back his head and laughed, a deliberate effort to be insulting.Go ahead, Nieh thought.Laugh now. One fine day the revolution will cross the sea to your islands, too. Japan had a large urban proletariat, exploited workers with nothing to offer but their labor, as interchangeable to a big capitalist as so many cogs and gears. They would be dry tinder for the flame of class warfare. But not yet-the Lizards remained to be beaten first.

Nieh said, “Are we agreed on the price of one of these shells?”

“Not yet,” the Japanese answered. “Information is useful, yes, but we need food, too. Send us rice, send us noodles, send usshoyu, send us pork or chicken. Do this and we will give you as many 150mm shells as you can use, whatever you plan to do with them.”