In the Balance (60 page)

Straha did not answer. None of the other shiplords said anything, either, though a few let their mouths fall open in amusement. Atvar thought the story was funny, too, in a scatological way, but it also had a point. He drove that point home: “The Big Uglies are ignorant, but they are far from stupid. Within their limits, they can be very dangerous. They have learned better than to stand up to us in large-scale combat, but at these little pinprick raids they excel.”

“This
raid was more than a pinprick,” Straha insisted.

“Strategically, yes, but not tactically,” Atvar said. “The Big Uglies also use this world’s revolting weather to good advantage. They are accustomed to wet and cold, even to the various forms of frozen water which occur on Tosev 3. We have to learn to deal with these case by case, and they are making our education expensive.”

Straha said, “In my opinion, this world may not be worth our settling. The weather is not its only revolting feature: the Big Uglies themselves certainly merit that description.”

“As may be,” Atvar said. “The Emperor has ordained that we bring Tosev 3 into the Empire, and so it shall be done.” That statement of unconditional obedience to the Emperor’s will brought up short the shiplords who before had plainly agreed with Straha. Atvar went on, “Many parts of this world will suit us well, and its resources, which the Big Uglies exploit only inefficiently, will be most valuable to us.”

“If this be so, let us use its resources as if they were on a lifeless planet of one of our own solar systems,” Straha said, “Kill all the Big Uglies and we solve most of our problems with Tosev 3.”

Atvar did not like the number of shiplords who looked as though they agreed with Straha. He said, “You forget one thing: the colonizing fleet is already on its way behind us. It will be here in less than forty years—twenty turns for this planet—and its commander will not thank us for presenting him with a dead world.”

“Given a choice between presenting him with a dead world and a lost war wherein the Big Uglies learn of nuclear weapons, Exalted Fleetlord, which would you prefer?” Straha demanded. Even the shiplords of his
aggressive faction stirred restlessly at that; such acid sarcasm was rare among the Race.

The best way to defuse it, Atvar thought, was to pretend not to recognize it. He said, “Shiplord, I do not believe those are the only choices left to us. I intend to present the commander of the colonizing fleet a planet ready for his settlers.”

If the war went well, that still remained possible. Even Atvar, though, was beginning to doubt whether Tosev 3 would be as ready for the colonists as the plans back Home called for. Conditions on the planet were too different from what the Race had expected: too many Big Uglies here with too many of their own factories.

And Straha, curse him, would not shut up. He said, “Exalted Fleetlord, how can we claim to be winning this war, conquering this world, when even the little gimcrack Tosevite empires which have allegedly surrendered to us continue to maintain armed resistance to our occupying forces?”

“If the sagacious shiplord has a solution to this difficulty, hearing it would gladden my spirit,” Atvar replied. “We continue to defend ourselves, of course, and to strike back against raiders as we may. What else would you have us do?”

Straha was never short on opinions. He said, “Retaliate massively for every act of banditry and sabotage. Slay ten Big Uglies for every truck damaged, a hundred for every soldier of the Race harmed. Force them to respect us—and eventually they will.”

“Exalted Fleetlord, may I speak to this issue?” Kirel asked.

“Speak,” Atvar said.

“I thank you, Exalted Fleetlord. Straha, I want you to know I formerly held a view similar to yours; as you may or may not have heard, I strongly advocated the destruction of the Big Ugly city called Washington to terrify the Tosevites of the United States into ceasing their resistance to us. The strategy likely would have succeeded against the Hallessi or Rabotevs, or even against the Race. Against the Tosevites, it has failed.”

Straha started to interrupt; Kirel stuck out his tongue to stop him. “Let me finish, if you please. I do not claim we have failed to cow many of the Big Uglies by massive shows of force. But there also exists among the Tosevites a strong minority impelled to ever greater resistance by such acts on our part. Your policy plays into the hands of these fanatics.”

“Why should the Big Uglies be different from any civilized species?” Straha said.

“Our scholars will be debating that for thousands of years to come, as they review the records of this campaign,” Kirel said. Mouths lolled open here and there among the assembled shiplords; the Race’s scholars were notoriously more sure but slow than slow but sure. Kirel went on, “I, however,
lack the luxury of leisure, as is true of everyone here on Tosev 3. Were I to speculate, I would say the Big Uglies’ differences go back to their peculiar—I might say unique—mating patterns.”

Straha made a disgusted noise. “Always we come back to mating. Do the miserable Big Uglies think of nothing else?”

“The answer to this may be no,” Atvar said. “The intense emotional bonds they form with sexual partners and with offspring make them willing to take risks any member of the Race would reckon insane, and also provoke them to take vengeance should partners or offspring be harmed.”

“There may even be more to it than that,” Kirel added. “Some of our scholars speculate that the Big Uglies, because of the familial attachments they are accustomed to forming, also are predisposed toward forming equally strong attachments to the causes of their little empires and their implausible religious systems. We are in effect dealing with a species full of fanatics—and fanatics, by definition, are not to be constrained by threats of force which would deter more rational individuals.”

“Let me see if I understand you, Honored Shiplord,” Straha said. “You are advancing the hypothesis that Tosev 3 may never be as fully pacified as Halless 1 and Rabotev 2 are, and that the Big Uglies may continue suicidal resistance to us even after overall military victory is achieved.”

“You extrapolate further than I have been willing to go, but the answer is basically yes,” Kirel said unhappily.

Atvar said, “Let us eat the worms ahead of the soup, Shiplords. Before we can discuss ways to reduce harassment of our forces after we conquer, we must first complete our conquest. The truly atrocious winter weather prevailing over much of the northern hemisphere of Tosev 3 makes matters no easier for us.”

“Our males should have been better trained to withstand such conditions,” Straha said.

The fleetlord wished one of the fearsome Tosevite snipers would draw a bead right in the middle of Straha’s snout. All he did was complain and intrigue; he didn’t care for solving the problems he pointed out. Atvar said, “I might remind the shiplord that no territory within the Empire closely simulates the climate of the Tosevite lands wherein, to our misfortune, our most formidable opponents dwell.”

Several males even of Straha’s faction showed their agreement with that. It relieved Atvar a little. He was coming to dread these assemblages. Too often he had bad news to report, and news bad in ways he never would have imagined before the fleet left Home. He’d expected his principal concern on this campaign to be how many soldiers carelessly got hurt in traffic accidents, not whether the Big Uglies would soon be fighting him with nuclear weapons of their own.

He’d also expected much better data from the Race’s probes. He’d already resigned himself to their missing the weird technological jump the Tosevites had taken after they departed: that was the Big Uglies’ fault, not theirs. But they should have done a better job of reporting on Tosevite social and sexual habits, so Kirel’s research crews wouldn’t have had to start learning about them from scratch.

What really worried him was the thought that maybe the probes had sent accurate data back to Home, only to have those data ignored, misinterpreted, or downright disbelieved by scholars who analyzed them from a Race-centered perspective. If similar mistakes had been made before the conquests of the Rabotevs and Hallessi, the Race not only got by with them but didn’t even notice them—the subject species really weren’t very different from their overlords. But the Big Uglies were … and finding out how much so was proving more costly than anyone could have imagined.

“Exalted Fleetlord, how shall we minimize the mischief the Tosevites may cause with nuclear material in their possession?” Kirel asked.

“I shall summarize for the shiplords new orders which will soon reach them in written form,” Atvar answered. “In essence, we will increase our bombardment of major urban centers in which important scientific research is likeliest to take place. Let us see how well they do at such research if, for instance, their facilities lack electrical power.”

Horrep, one of the males of Straha’s faction, waggled his tailstump to ask to be recognized. When Atvar turned both eyes in his direction, he said, “I would respectfully remind the exalted fleetlord that our own stockpiles of munitions are not so high as they might be. We have used far more than we anticipated when we set out from Home, and our replenishment facilities have not been established here at the pace originally planned, due to both commitment of our resources to the actual fighting and unexpectedly heavy damage from Tosevite resistance.”

Several other males spoke up to support Horrep. Again Atvar had that unsettling mental image of expending his last round of ammunition, only to see one more Big Ugly landcruiser crawl out from behind a pile of rubble. “Do you say you cannot obey the forthcoming order?” he demanded.

“No, Exalted Fleetlord—it shall be done,” Horrep answered. “But I must warn you that such a program cannot be sustained indefinitely. I very much hope the results it achieves will be in proportion to the munitions it expends.”

So do I
, Atvar thought. He thanked the forethoughtful spirits of Emperors past that the Race had brought far more weapons of war to Tosev 3 than would have been necessary to conquer the semisavages they’d expected to find here. If his people had done things hastily, they might have walked headlong into ignominious defeat.

On the other hand, if the Race had been hasty and come to Tosev 3 a few hundred years sooner, the Big Uglies would have been much easier prey, because they wouldn’t have had the time to develop their own technology. Did that mean haste would have been advisable here? The harder one looked at a complicated question, the more complicated it generally became.

The fleetlord reluctantly decided to scrap for the time being another part of the order he’d intended to issue: he’d wanted to command increased efforts against the boats on which the Big Uglies lavished so much effort and ingenuity. Because Tosev 3 had so much water, the locals made much more use of it than any species within the Empire. Atvar had the feeling they used water transport enough to make suppressing it worthwhile for the Race … but with munitions in shorter supply than he would have liked, he’d have to preserve as much as he could for targets of the highest priority.

He sighed. Back on Home, the aptitude tests had said he might make a successful architect as well as a soldier. The choice had been his. He’d always been an idealist, eager to serve the Emperor and the Race as fully as possible. Only when confronted with the unending morass of the conquest of Tosev 3 had he seriously started wondering whether he wouldn’t have been happier putting up buildings after all.

He sighed again. That choice was dead for him now. He had to do the best he could with the one he’d made. He said, “Shiplords, I know this meeting bas been imperfectly satisfying. The Big Uglies have shown a revolting knack for making everything we do appear unsatisfactory. Before I dismiss you back to your commands, has any of you anything further to note?”

More often than not, the formal question went unanswered. This time, however, a male named Relek signaled for recognition. When Atvar acknowledged him, he said, “Exalted Fleetlord, my vessel, the
16th Emperor Osjess
, is grounded in the eastern part of Tosev 3’s main continental mass, in the Big Ugly empire called China. Lately a fair number of males have made themselves unfit for duty due to excessive consumption of some local herb which apparently has a stimulant and addictive effect on them.”

“My ship is based in the center of that continental mass, and I’ve had the same experience with a handful of my troopers,” said another shiplord, this one called Tetter. “I thought I was the only shiplord so affected.”

“You are not,” said Mozzten, a shiplord whose vessel was based in the U.S.A. portion of the smaller continental mass—Atvar took notice of that. Mozzten went on, “The Big Ugly name—a Big Ugly name, I should say—for the herb is ‘ginger.’ Its effects on the males in my command have been deleterious.”

“I shall issue a general order condemning this herb in no uncertain terms,” Atvar declared. “To add to its effectiveness, I would have each shiplord—especially you three who have indicated a problem—issue his own order forbidding the individuals under his jurisdiction from having anything to do with this—ginger, was that the name I heard?”

“It shall be done,” the shiplords chorused.

“Excellent,” Atvar said. “There’s one problem settled, at least.”

The mechanic spread his thick-fingered, greasy hands, shook his head helplessly. “I am very sorry, Comrade Pilot,” he said, “but I cannot find the cause of the trouble. As best I can tell, the devil’s grandmother has set up shop in your engine.”

“Move out of the way, then, and I will see for myself,” Ludmila Gorbunova snapped. She wanted to kick some sense into the stupid
muzhik
, but both his head and his arse were probably hard enough to break her foot. She wished she still had her old mechanic; unlike this oaf, Katya Kuznetsova had actually understood engines and gone after problems instead of babbling about the devil and his stupid relatives.

It wasn’t as if the little five-cylinder Shvetsov radial was the most complicated piece of machinery ever built, either. It was about as simple as an engine could be and still work, and as reliable as anything that didn’t walk on all fours.