In the Balance

“Provided the latest Lizard advances have not cut it, yes,” Lidov said. “I can also let you transmit on the frequency arranged with your government You must talk around what you truly wish to say there, however, to keep the Lizards from following if they intercept the signal, as they very likely will.”

“The telegraph first, then,” Skorzeny said. “That failing, the radio. The mission strikes me as worth accomplishing. Other concerns can wait” He studied the NKVD lieutenant colonel as if through the eyepiece of a panzer cannon sight Lidov scowled right back at him. Without words, both men said that, while other concerns could wait, they were not forgotten.

Liu Han sat naked on the shiny mat in her room in the giant airplane that somehow never fell down from the sky. She made herself into the smallest bundle she could, legs drawn up tight, hands clasped on her shins, head pressed down till it touched her knees. With her eyes closed, she could imagine the entire universe around her had disappeared.

Her world view did not include the concept experimental animal, but that was what she had become. The little scaly devils who held her here wanted to discover certain things about the way people functioned, and were using her to help them learn. They cared not at all what she thought of the process.

The door to the chamber slid open. Before she could will herself to stillness, she looked up. Two Lizards marched in, with a man-a foreign devil, not even decently Chinese-between them. The man wore no more clothes than she did. “Another one here,” one of the scaly devils said in his hissing Chinese.

She lowered her head again, refused to answer. Another one, she thought. When would they be satisfied that she could indeed fit the prongs of however many men they brought her? This was-the fifth? The sixth? She couldn’t remember. Maybe, after a while, it ceased to matter. How could her defilement grow any greater?

She tried to recapture the feeling of power, the feeling of being her own person, she’d known for that little while when Yi Min was helpless and afraid. Then her own will had mattered, if only for a short time. Before then, she’d been held in her place by the customs of her village, and her people, afterward by the terrifying might of the Lizards. Just for a moment, though, she’d almost been free.

“You two show what you do, you eat. You not, no food for you,” the devil said. Liu Han knew he meant it. After the first couple of men in this grim series, she’d tried to starve herself to death, but her body refused to obey her. Her belly cried louder than her spirit. Eventually, she did what she had to do to eat.

The other Lizard spoke to the foreign devil in a language that was neither Chinese nor the Lizards’ own speech-Liu Han still tried to pick up words of that whenever she could. Then the scaly devils went out of the chamber. They were probably (no, certainly) taking pictures, but that was not the same as having them in the room. She still drew the line there.

Reluctantly, she looked up at the foreign devil. He was very hairy, and had grown a short thick beard that reached to within a couple of fingers’ breadth of his eyes. His nose seemed nearer a hawk’s beak than what a proper person should grow. His skin was not too different in color from hers.

At least he did not simply ravage her, as one man had the second the door closed behind him. He stood quietly, watching her, letting her look him over. Sighing, she stretched herself out flat on the mat. “Come ahead; let’s get it over with,” she said in Chinese, her weary voice full of infinite bitterness.

He stooped beside her. She tried not to cringe. He said something in his own language. She shook her head. He tried what sounded like a different tongue, but she understood no better. She expected him to get on top of her then, but instead he let out hisses and grunts which, she realized after a moment, were words in the Lizards’ speech: “Name-is.” He ended with the cough that showed the sentence was a question.

Her eyes filled with tears. None of the others had even bothered to ask. “Name is Liu Han,” she answered, sitting up. She had to repeat herself; the accents she and he gave the Lizards’ words were so different that they had trouble following each other. Once she’d given her name, she saw she ought to treat him as a human being, too. “You-name-is?”

He pointed to his furry chest. “Bobby Fiore.” He turned toward the doorway by which the little scaly devils had departed, spoke their name for themselves. “Race-” Then he delivered an extraordinary series of gestures, most of which she’d never seen before but all obviously a long way from compliments. Either he didn’t know his picture was being taken or he didn’t care. Some of his antics were so spirited, almost like those of a traveling actor in a skit, that she found herself smiling for the first time in a long while.