Striking the Balance

Ludmila wished she were pointing a pistol at the stupid little bitch. She finished cleaning her bowl. This was her second trip outside the Soviet Union. Both times, she’d seen how little use foreigners had for her country. Her immediate reaction to that was disdain. Foreigners had to be ignorant reactionaries if they couldn’t appreciate the glorious achievements of the Soviet state and its promise to bring the benefits of scientflic socialism to all mankind.

Then she remembered the purges. Had her cousin, her geometry teacher, and the man who ran the tobacconist’s shop across from her block of flats truly been counterrevolutionaries, wreckers, spies for the Trotskyites or the decadent imperialists? She’d wondered at the time, but hadn’t let herself think about it since. Such thoughts held danger, she knew instinctively.

How glorious were the achievements of the Soviet state if you didn’t dare think about them? Frowning, she piled her bowl with all the rest.

V

Ussmak didn’t think he’d ever seen such a sorry-looking male in all his days since hatchlinghood. It wasn’t just that the poor fellow wore no body paint, although being bare of it contributed to his general air of misery. Worse was the way his eye turrets kept swiveling back toward the Big Ugly for whom he was interpreting, as if that Tosevite were the sun and he himself only a very minor planet.

“This is Colonel Boris Lidov,” the male said in the language of the Race, although the title was in the Russki tongue. “He is of the People’s Commissariat for the Interior-the NKVD-and is to be your interrogator.”

Ussmak glanced over at the Tosevite male for a moment. He looked like a Big Ugly, and not a particularly impressive one: skinny, with a narrow, wrinkled face, not much fur on the top of his head, and a small mouth drawn up even tighter than was the Tosevite norm. “That’s nice,” Ussmak said; he’d figured the Big Uglies would have questions for him. “Who are you, though, friend? How did you get stuck with this duty?”

“I am called Gazzim, and I was an automatic riflemale, second grade, before my mechanized infantry combat vehicle was destroyed and I taken prisoner,” the male replied. “Now I have no rank. I exist on the sufferance of the Soviet Union.” Gazzim lowered his voice. “And now, so do you.”

“Surely it’s not so bad as that,” Ussmak said. “Straha, the shiplord who defected, claims most Tosevite not-empires treat captives well.”

Gazzim didn’t answer. Lidov spoke in the local language, which put Ussmak in mind of the noises a male made when choking on a bite too big to swallow. Gazzim replied in what sounded like the same language, perhaps to let the Tosevite know what Ussmak had said.

Lidov put the tips of his fingers together, each digit touching its equivalent on the other hand. The strange gesture reminded Ussmak he was indeed dealing with an alien species. Then the Tosevite spoke in his own tongue once more. Gazzim translated: “He wants to know what you are here for.”

“I don’t even know where I am, let alone what for,” Ussmak replied with more than a hint of asperity. “After we yielded the base to the soldiers of the SSSR, we were packed first into animal-drawn conveyances of some sort and then into some truly appalling railroad cars, then finally into more conveyances with no way of seeing out. These Russkis are not living up to their agreements the way Straha said they would.”

When that was translated for him, Lidov threw back his head and made a peculiar barking noise. “He is laughing,” Gazzim explained. “He is laughing because the male Straha has no experience with the Tosevites of the SSSR and does not know what he is talking about.”

Ussmak did not care for the sound of those words. He said, “This does not strike me as the place of honor we were promised when we agreed on surrender terms. If I didn’t know better, I would say it reminded me of a prison.”

Lidov laughed again, this time before Ussmak’s words were translated.He knows some of our language, Ussmak thought, and resolved to be more wary about what he said. Gazzim said, “The name of this place is Lefortovo. It is in Moskva, the capital of the SSSR.”

Casually, without even seeming to think about it, Lidov reached out and smacked Gazzim in the snout. The paintless male cringed. Lidov spoke loudly to him; had the Big Ugly been a male of the Race, no doubt he would have punctuated his speech with emphatic coughs. Gazzim flinched into the posture of obedience.

When Lidov was done, the interpreter said, “I am to tell you that I am allowed to volunteer no further information. This session is to acquire knowledge from you, not to give it to you.”

“Ask your questions, then,” Ussmak said resignedly.