Upsetting the Balance

“That foreign devil, the American, you mean?” Hsia asked. “Yes, he was useful. I’ve never seen a man who could throw like-what was his name?”

“Bobby Fiore,” Nieh answered, pronouncing the foreign sounds with care. “Yes, without him we probably would not have escaped after we assassinated that scaly devil back in Shanghai. Pity he was killed; he could have taught our men his skill.”

“He was a reactionary, of course,” Hsia said.

“Of course,” Nieh Ho-T’ing agreed. “Also a lecher.” Bobby Fiore had made full use of the services of the Shanghai brothel in which Nieh bad based himself while preparing the assault on the scaly devil official. Like a lot of his Communist comrades, Nieh looked on such looseness with disdain. But he was a pragmatic man. “As you say, though, he was useful, not only for his throwing but also because he understood the little devils’ language.”

“We would have had to liquidate him sooner or later,” Hsia said. “He was ideologically most unsound.”

“Of course,” Nieh said again. “I think he may even have known that. But he had a true hatred for the little scaly devils, even if it was just personal and not ideological.”

“Personal hatred for the little devils is too easy to come by to be much of a virtue,” Hsia Shou-Tao said. There Nieh could not disagree with him.

Pick up a foot, put it down, pick it up, put it down… If you let your feet work and didn’t think about it, you covered more ground than you dreamt you could. The Long March had drilled that into Nieh. He looked back over his shoulder. The men he led were strung out along ali — a third of a mile-of the dirt road. That was all right. The less they looked like part of an armed force, the less likely the little devils were to give them trouble.

Peasants labored in the fields and paddies to either side of the road. They looked up warily from their labor as Nieh and his followers went by. They were wiser than the scaly devils; they knew soldiers when they saw them. A couple of men waved to Nieh: they knew what kind of soldiers he led, too. That pleased him. If at need his men could become but a single minnow in the vast school of the peasantry, they would be impossible for any enemy to root out.

One of the peasants called, “Are you people going by the camp the little devils built up ahead? You want to be careful if you are; they don’t like anyone snooping around there.”

“Thank you for the warning, friend. We’ll steer clear,” Nieh Ho T’ing said. He waved to the peasant, who nodded and went back to work. Nieh and Hsia nodded, too, to each other. As long as the people supported your efforts, you could not be beaten.

As a matter of fact, Nieh wanted as close a look at the prison camp as he could get without making himself appear an obvious spy to the scaly devils. The camps they’d set up to oppress the people had become fertile sources of intelligence against them. From this one, for instance, had come word that the scaly devils had cameras that could somehow see heat. The news had tactical implications: no campfires at night when in close contact with the enemy-except as diversions-travel through cool water whenever possible, and more.

The camp, set in the middle of the fields that might otherwise have raised a good crop of beans, was as big as a fair-sized city. The stink of its night soil came sharp on the breeze. “A lot of shit there that’s not going into the fields for fertilizer as it should,” Hsia Shou-Tao said. He thought like a peasant, too.

“True,” Nieh said, his voice abstracted. As casually as he could, he peered across the fields toward the perimeter of the camp: razor wire, with sentry posts and little forts all around. Liberating it would be suicidally expensive, however grand to contemplate.

Down the road, swiftly drawing nearer, came a rising cloud of dust. Its speed meant motor vehicles were kicking it up, and motor vehicles, in these days, meant little scaly devils. Nieh did not break his stride. His submachine gun was hidden in the blanket roll he carried slung over one shoulder. He could get at it in a hurry if he had to, but hoped the occasion would not arise. Motor vehicles were usually armored against weapons like his.

Hsia walked along as nonchalantly as he did. They stepped off the road into the field beside it when the vehicle-a troop carrier-sped past. Had they not moved, Nieh thought, the driver would have run them down: what were peasants to an imperialist aggressor, especially one of alien race?

“What we ought to have,” Hsia said thoughtfully, “is more land mines. The little devils would lose some of their arrogance if they had to worry about blowing up as they barreled down the road.”