Striking the Balance

“It’s certainly a source of some of it,” Moishe agreed. That was the closest to understanding him the Lizards had ever come, at any rate, and vastly preferable to their equating his actions with treason, as they had been doing.

“If a knife breaks because it is used as a pry bar, is that the fault of the knife?” Atvar resumed. “No, it is the fault of the operator. Because your service, Moishe Russie, has improved when you are properly used, I grow more willing to overlook past transgressions. When these negotiations between the Race and the Tosevites are completed, perhaps we shall establish you in the area where you were recaptured-”

“The exalted fleetlord means Palestine,” Zolraag put in on his own. “These names you give places have caused us considerable difficulty, especially where more than one name applies to the same place.”

Atvar resumed: “We shall establish you there, as I was saying, with your female and hatchling, and, as necessary, consult with you on Tosevite affairs. We shall do a better job of recognizing your limits henceforward, and not force you to provide information or propaganda you find distasteful. Would you accept such an arrangement?”

They wanted to set him up in Palestine-in the Holy Land-with his family? They’d use him as an expert on humanity without coercing him or humiliating him? Cautiously, he said, “Exalted Fleetlord, my only worry is that it sounds too good to be true.”

“It is truth,” the fleetlord answered. “Have you not seen, Moishe Russie, that when the Race makes an agreement, it abides by what it agrees?”

“I have seen this,” Moishe admitted. “But I’ve also seen the Race ordering rather than trying to agree.”

The fleetlord’s sigh sounded surprisingly human. “This has proved far less effective on Tosev 3 than we would have desired. We are, accordingly, trying new methods here, however distasteful innovation is for us. When the males and females of the colonization fleet arrive, they will undoubtedly have a great many sharp things to say about our practices, but we shall be able to offer them a large portion of a viable planet on which to settle. Considering what might have happened here, this strikes me as an acceptable resolution.”

“I don’t see how I could disagree, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe said. “Sometimes not everyone can get everything he wants from a situation.”

“This has never before happened to the Race,” Atvar said with another sigh.

Moishe went from the world-bestriding to the personal in the space of a sentence: “When you settle me and my family in Palestine, there is one other thing I would like.”

“And what is this?” the fleetlord asked.

Russie wondered if he was pushing his luck too far, but pressed ahead anyhow: “You know I was studying to become a doctor before the Germans invaded Poland. I’d like to take up those studies again, not just with humans but with males of the Race. If there is peace, we’ll have so much to learn from you… ”

“One of my principal concerns in making a peace with you Big Uglies is how much you will learn from us, and what sorts of things,” Atvar said. “You have learned too much already. But in medicine I do not suppose you will become a great danger to us. Very well, Moishe Russie, let it be as you say.”

“Thank you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe said. Some American in a film had once used an expression that sounded so odd when dubbed literally into Polish, Moishe had never forgotten it: come up smelling like a rose. If Atvar stayed by the terms of the agreement, he’d somehow managed to do exactly that. “A rose,” he muttered. “Just like a rose.”

“Moishe Russie?” Atvar asked, with an interrogative cough: Zolraag hadn’t been able to make sense of the words.

“It is a bargain, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe said, and hoped the rose didn’t prove to have too many thorns.

Straha leaned away from the microphone and took off his earphones, which didn’t fit well over his hearing diaphragms anyhow. “Another broadcast,” he said, turning an eye turret toward Sam Yeager. “I do not see the necessity for many more, not with talks between the Race and you Big Uglies progressing so well. You cannot imagine how you must have horrified stodgy old Atvar, to get him to talk with you at all.”

“I’m glad he did, finally,” Sam said. “I’ve had a bellyful of war. This whole world has had a bellyful-two bellyfuls-of war.”

“Half measures of any sort do not appear to succeed on Tosev 3,” Straha agreed. “Had it been I in the fleetlord’s body paint, we would have tried sooner and harder to batter you Tosevites into submission.”