Upsetting the Balance

“Thatmay do,” Ludmila said, casting a critical eye its way. She turned back to George Bagnall. “I think I am glad to meet you. You English here in Pskov, you are-” She ran out of German, then tried a couple of Russian words Bagnall didn’t understand. Finally he got the idea she meant something likearbitrators.

“Yes, that is right,” Bagnall answered in German. “When theWehrmacht commander and the partisan brigadiers cannot agree, they bring their arguments for us to decide.”

“What if they don’t like what you decide?” Georg Schultz asked. “Why should they listen to a pack of damned Englishmen?” He stared at Bagnall with calculated insolence.

“Because they were killing each other here before they started listening to us,” Bagnall answered. Schultz looked like one very rugged customer, but Bagnall took a step toward him anyhow. If he wanted a scrap, he could have one. The flight engineer went on, “We do need to stick together against the Lizards, you know.”

“That is part of why the two of us were sent here,” Ludmila Gorbunova said. “We are German and Russian, but we have worked well with each other.”

Schultz leered at her. Bagnall wondered if she meant they were sleeping together. He hoped not. She wasn’t as pretty as Tatiana, but on three minutes’ acquaintance she seemed much nicer. Then she noticed Schultz’s slobbering stare, and answered it with one that would have made any longsuffering English barmaid proud.

It also made the world seem a much more cheerful place to George Bagnall “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll take you to theKrom, where both sides have their headquarters.” Ludmila Gorbunova smiled at him as she nodded. He felt like bursting into song.

7

“Do you know what one of the troubles with Big Uglies is?” Atvar said to his English-speaking interpreter as they waited for the emissary from the United States to be shown into the conference chamber.

“They have so many, Exalted Fleetlord,” the interpreter answered. “Which in particular are you thinking of today?”

“They areuntidy creatures,” Atvar said with distaste. “Their clothes flap about them like loose skins, the tufts they grow on their heads either flap about, too, or else are held down with enough oil to lubricate a landcruiser engine, and they spew water from their hides instead of panting, as proper people should. They are disgusting.”

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” the interpreter said gravely.

Pshing, Atvar’s adjutant, came on one of the communications screens. “Exalted Fleetlord, the Tosevite from the United States is here. I remind you, his name is Cordell Hull; his title is Secretary of State. Before we came, he was the chief aide in dealing with other Big Ugly empires for his not-empire’s leader.”

“Send him in,” Atvar said.

Cordell Hull looked uncomfortable in weightlessness, but made a good game show of pretending he wasn’t. Even for a Big Ugly, he was long, though not especially wide. The tuft of fuzz on top of his head was almost white. Atvar knew that meant he was aging. So did the wrinkles and sags in his integument. He was not attractive, but then, to Atvar’s eyes, no Big Ugly was.

After the polite greetings customary even between enemies, Atvar plunged straight in: “I demand from you the immediate return of the traitorous shiplord Straha, who fled to you in violation of all law.”

Cordell Hull spoke a single sharp word: “No.” The translator indicated that that was a negative; Atvar had suspected as much. Hull went on at some length afterwards: “The United States does not give back people who come to us seeking shelter. My land is made up of people who came seeking freedom. We welcomed them; we did not turn them away.”

“You welcomed criminals?” Atvar said, and then, in an aside to the interpreter. “It does not surprise me a bit, though you needn’t tell him that.”

“We did,” Hull answered defiantly. “Many things that were called crimes were really nothing more than disagreeing with the leaders of the lands they left.” His eyes, though sunk deep in his head like any Tosevite’s, bored into Atvar’s with disconcerting keenness.

The fleetlord said, “Do you not call stealing a shuttlecraft a crime? Straha is a robber as well as a traitor. Is your not-empire also in the habit of keeping stolen goods? We demand the shuttlecraft’s return, too.”

“Go ahead and demand,” Hull replied. “In war, if one side is generous enough to help the other, it doesn’t get its toys back.”

“In war, the side that is losing is usually wise enough to deal politely with the side that is winning,” Atvar said. “So the ancient records of the Race tell us, at any rate; the Race has never lost a war against another species.”

“If you think we’re losing, look at Chicago,” Hull said. In his own way, he was as exasperating an opponent as the SSSR’s Molotov. The latter Big Ugly was as inflexible as a poorly programmed machine, mechanically rejecting everything Atvar said. Hull instead tried to twist things.