Tilting the Balance

The Nipponese seemed to notice his changed attitude, too. They’d developed the habit of interrogating him right after he ate. He didn’t mind. Food made him seem so omniscient that he dealt with their questions with effortless ease.

He heard a squeak and a rattle down the hall: the food cart. He sprang to his feet, waited eagerly by the bars of his cell for the cart to arrive. One guard unlocked the cell. Another stood watch with a knife-tipped rifle. The fellow who actually served the food handed Teerts his bowl.

“Thank you, superior sir,” he said in Nipponese, bowing as he did so. The guard locked the cell door again. The cart clattered away.

Out of necessity, Teerts had become adept with the little paired sticks the Nipponese used to manipulate food. He brought a chunk of fish to his mouth, twisted his tongue around it. It didn’t taste the way it had for a good many meals. It wasn’t bad, though. They’ve changed the herbs they’re using, he thought, and gulped it down.

He got to the bottom of the bowl in a hurry; although the Nipponese were feeding him better than they had, he wasn’t any great threat to get fat. As he ran his tongue over his hard outer mouthparts to clean them, he waited for the wonderful feeling of well-being that had come to accompany each meal.

He didn’t get it, not this time. He’d been more than unusually gloomy when the feeling passed away after a meal. Now, failing to find it at all, he felt desperate, betrayed; the iron bars of his cell seemed to be closing in around him. He paced restlessly back and forth, his tailstump jerking like a metronome.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d depended on that mealtime burst of euphoria till it was denied him. He opened his mouth, displaying his full set of small, sharp teeth. If Major Okamoto came by, he’d gnaw a chunk off him. That would give him a good feeling, by the Emperor!

Not much later, Major Okamoto did come down the hallway. He stopped in front of Teerts’ cell. The captured killercraft pilot’s dreams of vengeance turned to fear at the sight of the Big Ugly, as they always did.

“Good day,” Okamoto said in the language of the Race. He’d become quite fluent, much more so than Teerts was in Nipponese. “How are you feeling today?”

“Superior sir, I am not so well as I would like,” Teerts answered; among the Race, that question was taken literally.

Okamoto’s rubbery face twisted into what Teerts had come to recognize as an expression of amusement. That worried the male; Okamoto’s amusement often came at his expense. But the Big Ugly’s words were mild enough: “I may know what is troubling you, and may even have a medicine to cure your trouble.”

“Honto? — Really?” Teerts asked suspiciously: From all he’d seen of what the Big Uglies called medicine, he’d sooner have taken his chances on being sick.

“Hai, honto,” Okamoto answered, also falling back into Nipponese. From a pocket of his uniform, he pulled out a small waxed-paper bag. He poured a little of the brown powder it held into the palm of his hand, then held the hand out to Teerts through the bars. “Here, put your tongue on this.”

Teerts sniffed first. The powder had a pungent, spicy odor that seemed familiar, though he could not place it at once. He reflected that the Tosevites could kill him any time they chose; they did not need to put on an elaborate charade if they wanted him dead. Therefore he flicked out his tongue and licked up the powder.

As soon as he tasted it, he knew what it was: the flavor that had been missing from his latest bowl of food. A moment later, he realized the Nipponese must have been feeding it to him in tiny doses till now. He didn’t just feel good; he felt as if the sacred Emperor were some sort of lowly cousin of his. Ruling the Race would have been too small a job for him; keeping track of all the planets in all the galaxies seemed about right.

Through the omnipotence that blazed in him, he saw Okamoto’s face contort again. “You like that, neh?” the Big Ugly asked, all but the last word in Teerts’ tongue.

“Yes,” Teerts said, as if from very far away. He wished Okamoto were very far away, so he would not pester him at this transcendent moment.

But the interrogator and interpreter did not pester him. The Big Ugly just leaned back against the bars of the empty cell across from Teerts’ and waited. For a while, Teerts ignored him as being beneath notice, let alone contempt. The glorious feeling from the powder he’d licked up, though, didn’t last as long as he’d hoped it would. And when it was gone…