Striking the Balance

Liu Han shoved him again, lightly this time. He walked forward till she said, “Go left,” and emphasized that by moving the hand on his back in the appropriate way. He turned to the left. Why not? In the sphere of blackness in which he moved, one direction was as good as another. A little later, Liu Han said, “Go right.” Ttomalss went right.

He had not known where he was when he set out. Had he known, he soon would have become hopelessly lost. He turned right and left and right and left tens of times, with what seemed to him random intervals and choices. The streets of Peking were very quiet. He guessed it was somewhere between the middle of the night and dawn, but could not be certain.

At last, Liu Han said, “Stop.” Ttomalss did, in apprehension. Was this the moment? Was this the place? Liu Han untied the cord fastening the cloth sack over his head. She said, “Count to one hundred, out loud, slowly, in your language. Then lift off the hood. If you lift it before you reach one hundred, youwill die at once. Do you understand?”

“Y-Yes, superior female,” Ttomalss quavered. “It shall be done. One… two… three…” He went on, as steadily as he could: “Ninety-eight… ninety-nine… one hundred.” As he reached for the sack, he waited for bullets to tear into him. He yanked the cloth from his head in a quick, convulsive gesture.

No one shot him. His eye turrets scanned all around. He was alone, at the mouth of one of Peking’s innumerable littlehutungs. He threw down the sack. The softthwap! it made hitting the ground was the only sound that reached his hearing diaphragms. Ever so cautiously, he stepped out into the street onto which thehutung opened.

To his amazement, he recognized it. It was the Lower Slanting Street, in Chinese theHsia Hsieh Chieh. And there stood the ruins of theCh’ang Ch’un Ssu, the Temple of Everlasting Spring. He knew how to get back to the Race’s headquarters in the center of Peking. He did not know if he would be allowed to do so, but he knew he had to try. The Lower Slanting Street even led in the right direction.

Before long, he ran into a patrol of males of the Race. Where the Tosevites had let him go, the patrol almost shot him before recognizing him as one of their own.That would have been an irony on which to end his career! But when he told them who he was, they hurried him off to the thoroughly fortified citadel the Race retained in what had been the Forbidden City.

He was pleased to find his arrival important enough to justify rousing Ppevel. Soon the assistant administrator, eastern region, main continental mass, came into the chamber where Ttomalss was enjoying proper food for the first time in ever so long and said, “I am glad to see you at liberty once more, Researcher. The Tosevites informed us yesterday they would release you, but they are not always reliable in their assertions, as you know.”

“Truth, superior sir-as I know too well,” Ttomalss said with an emphatic cough. “Did they saywhy they were releasing me? To me, they never gave a reason.” Without waiting for an answer, he dug into the plate of fried worms the cooks had given him. Even though they’d been desiccated for the trip to Tosev 3 and then reconstituted, they were still a taste of Home.

Ppevel said, “By their messages, partly as a goodwill gesture and partly as a warning: typical of the Big Uglies to try to do both at once.” As if to give his words a different sort of emphatic cough, a rattle of gunfire broke out, off in the distance. He went on, “They say this shows us they can move at will through this city and other cities in this not-empire, releasing whom they will, taking whom they will, killing whom they will. They warn us the struggle to integrate China into the Empire will fail.”

Before coming down to the surface of Tosev 3, perhaps even before his kidnapping, Ttomalss would have found that laughable, ludicrous. Now-“They are determined, superior sir, and they are both ingenious and surprisingly well armed. I fear they may trouble us for years, maybe generations, to come.”

“It could be so,” Ppevel admitted, which surprised Ttomalss.

He said, “While I was a captive, the female Liu Han claimed the Race had granted certain Tosevite not-empires a cease-fire. Can this be so?”

“It can. It is,” Ppevel said. “These are the not-empires capable of producing their own nuclear weapons and desperate enough to use them against us. China-all of its factions-has no such weapons, and is excluded from the cease-fire. This offends the Chinese, or so it would seem, and so they redouble their annoyances in an effort to be included.”

“The Race-treating with barbarous Tosevites as if they were equals?” Ttomalss looked up toward the ceiling in wonder and dismay. “Even from your mouth, superior sir, I have trouble believing it.”