Upsetting the Balance

“Damnfino,” Mutt answered. His ears were still ringing from the racket the tommy gun made. “It ain’t always-how do you say it? — cut and dried like that. Next thing we gotta do is, we gotta find you a new position. We just told ’em where this one’s at.”

“Okay, Lieutenant,” Jacobs said. “I hadn’t thought of that myself, but it makes sense now that you’ve said it.”

Daniels sighed, a long, silent exhalation. But he was used to thinking strategically, and a lot of people weren’t. “We gotta be careful,” he whispered. “If we didn’t get that son of a bitch of a Lizard, he’ll be out there waitin’ to nail us. Now if I remember straight, there was a house over that way”-he pointed west with his right hand-“maybe a hundred yards that’d fill the bill. Lemme go check it out. That Lizard starts shootin’ at me, keep him busy.”

“Sure, okay, yeah, Lieutenant,” Jacobs said. Throwing those words into varying combinations seemed to be his sport for the evening.

Down on his belly like a reptile, Mutt slithered through rubble toward the house he had in mind. Part of its second story was still standing, which made it damn near unique around these parts-and made it a good observation point, too, at least till the Lizards figured out somebody was up in it. Then they were liable to expend a rocket or a bomb just to knock down the place.

Something skittered by, a few feet in front of Mutt. He froze. It wasn’t a Lizard; it was a rat. That much he saw. His imagination filled in the rest-a fat, happy rat like the ones he’d seen in the trenches of France, with a diet it was better not to think about.

He made it to the house he had in mind without getting shot at, which he took as a sign, if not a sure one, that he and Jacobs had hit the Lizard would-be infiltrator. The house seemed all right. The stairway wobbled a little when you went up it, but considering that half the second floor wasn’t there, he didn’t suppose you could expect miracles. And you could see a long way from the second-story window.

He returned to the current sentry post and told Jacobs, “Everything’s okay. Come on with me and I’ll show you where I’m moving you.” Once he’d installed the sentry in his new position, he said, “I’ll go back and give your replacement word about where you’ll be.”

“Yeah, okay, Lieutenant,” Jacobs said.

When Mutt had almost made it back for the second time to the ruins where Jacobs had been, stationed, the Lizard out there in no-man’s-land fired at him. He dug his face into the dirt as bullets cracked all around him and ricocheted with malignant whines from stones and chunks of concrete.

“Sneaky little bastard, ain’t you?” he muttered, and squeezed off a burst of his own, just to let the Lizard know he was still among those present. The Lizard shot back. They traded fire for a few minutes in a surprisingly sporting way, then gave up. Mutt went back to his lines; he wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if the Lizard did the same thing.

Go on ahead, Lizard,he thought.You had your at-bats this summer. Now that cold weather’s here, we’ll throw your scaly ass right out of Chicago. Just wait and see if we don’t.

The Tosevite hatchling rolled over on the floor of the laboratory chamber that had been its home since Ttomalss had taken charge of it. After a little while, it rolled over again, and then again. All three rolls were in the same direction. Ttomalss thought the hatchling was beginning to get the idea of going some particular way.

Any sign of neuromuscular progress in the little creature interested him, since all such signs were few and far between. By the standards of the Race, Hatchling Tosevites had no business surviving to grow up to become the Big Uglies who had proved such complete nuisances ever since the conquest fleet arrived. Were they to be separated from those who cared for them for the first years of their lives, they could not survive. The Race had many stories of feral hatchlings who came from untended clutches of eggs and survived to adulthood, most of them well-authenticated. Among the Tosevites, such tales were vanishingly rare, and even when told often had more of the feel of legend than fact.

Something crinkled-the little female had got its hands on a crumpled-up piece of cellophane that had fallen unnoticed off some work surface. Ttomalss bent quickly and got the cellophane out of the Tosevite’s mouth.

“That is not edible,” he said in what he hoped was a severe voice.

The hatchling laughed at him. Anything it could reach went into its mouth. You had to watch it every waking moment.A miracle all the Big Uglies didn’t poison themselves or choke on things they swallow, Ttomalss thought. He picked up the hatchling. It had soiled itself again.