Tilting the Balance

The personnel officer entered the information, used his free eye to read Ussmak’s data as they came up. “You were serving in the SSSR against the Soviets, is that correct, until your landcruiser was destroyed and you were exposed to excess radiation?”

“Yes, superior sir, that is correct.”

“Then you’ve not had combat experience against the Deutsche?”

“Superior sir, I am told the guerrilla team that wrecked my vehicle was part Deutsch, part Soviet. If you are asking whether I’ve faced their landcruisers, the answer is no.”

“That is what I meant,” the personnel officer said. “You will need to maintain a higher level of alertness hereabouts than was your habit in the SSSR, landcruiser driver. Tactically, the Deutsche are more often clever than perhaps any other Tosevite group. Their newest landcruisers have heavier guns than you will have seen, too. Combine these factors with their superior knowledge of the local terrain and they become opponents not to be despised.”

“I understand, superior sir,” Ussmak said. “Will my landcruiser commander be experienced?” I hope.

The personnel officer punched at the computer again, waited for a response to appear on the screen. “You’re going to be assigned to Landcruiser Commander Hessef’s machine; his driver was wounded in a bandit attack here in Besancon a few days ago. Hessef compiled an excellent record in Espafia, south and west of here, as we expanded out of our landing zone. He’s relatively new to the northern sector.”

Ussmak hadn’t known Espafia from France until the moment the personnel officer named them. And no matter what that officer said about the superior skills of the Deutsche, to Ussmak one band of Big Uglies seemed pretty much like another. “I’m glad to hear that he has fought, superior sir. Where do I report to him?”

“The hall we are using as a barracks is out the door through which you entered and to your left. If you do not find Hessef and your gunner-whose name is Tvenkel-there, try the vehicle park down past the antiaircraft missile launcher.”

Ussmak tried the vehicle park first, on the theory that any commander worth his body paint took better care of his landcruiser than he did of himself. Seeing the big machines lined up in their sandbagged revetments made him eager to get back to the work for which he’d been trained, and also eager for the tight-knit fellowship that flowered among the males of a good landcruiser crew.

Crewmales working on their landcruisers directed him to the one Hessef commanded. But when he walked into its stall, he found it buttoned up tight. That presumably meant Hessef and Tvenkel were back at the barracks. Not a good sign, Ussmak thought as he began to retrace his steps.

He longed to feel a part of something larger than himself. That was what the Race was all about: obedience from below, obligation from above, all working together for the common good. He’d known that feeling with Votal, his first commander, but after Votal died, Krentel proved such an incompetent that Ussmak could not bond to him as subordinate was supposed to bond to superior.

Then Krentel had got himself killed, too, and Ussmak’s original gunner with him. That worsened the driver’s feeling of separation, almost of exclusion, from the rest of the Race. The long stay in the hospital ship and his discovery of ginger had pushed him even further out of the niche he’d been intended to fit. If he couldn’t have ginger any more, crew solidarity would have been a good second best. But how could he really feel part of a crew that didn’t have the simple sense to treat their landcruiser as if their lives depended on it?

As he walked back past the missile launcher, bells began to ring down in the town of Besancon. He turned to one of the males. “I’m new here. Are those alarms? Where should I go? What should I do?”

“Nothing-take no notice of them,” the fellow answered. “The Big Uglies just have a lot of mechanical clocks that chime to divide up the day and night. They startled me at first, too. After a while here, you won’t even notice them. One is spectacular for something without electronics. It must have seventy dials, and these figures all worked by gears and pulleys come out and prance around and then disappear back into the machine. When you get some slack time, you ought to go see it: it’s worth turning both eye turrets that way.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will.” Relieved, Ussmak kept on toward the barracks building. Just as he pushed the door open, the sweet metallic clangor ceased. Even the cots the males were using had formerly belonged to the Big Uglies. The thin mattresses looked lumpy, the blankets scratchy. They were undoubtedly woven from the hair of some native beast or other, an idea that made Ussmak itch all by itself. A few males lounged around doing nothing in particular.

“I seek the landcruiser commander Hessef,” Ussmak said as some of those males turned an eye or two toward him.