Upsetting the Balance

Nieh nodded to his comrades. As one, they opened their briefcases. The grenades inside-some round ones, bought from the Japanese, and some German-style potato mashers, bought from the Kuomintang-had been wrapped in paper, to keep them from rattling about. The men pulled pins, yanked igniters, and hurled them down into the crowd below.

“Fast, fast, fast!” Nieh shouted, flinging grenade after grenade himself. The first blasts and the screams that followed them were music to him. Thus always to those who would oppress not just the peasants and proletarians but all of mankind!

When almost all the grenades were gone, Nieh and his comrades left the chamber. Already there were cries from inside the library. Nieh tossed the last two grenades back into the room he and his men had just abandoned. The grenades went off with twin roars. The diversion worked just as he’d hoped. Feet pounded toward that room. His band of raiders left by a small door on the north side of the library.

He had a pistol ready in case the guard gave trouble, but the fellow didn’t. All he said was, “What’s that racket all about?”

“I don’t know,” Nieh answered importantly. “We were busy with research for the Race.” Running dogs often used the little scaly devils’ names for themselves.

The guard waved him and his comrades by. Instead of fleeing the area, they walked down toward Hsi An Men Street. A shouting policeman ordered them to help move some of the wounded. Nieh obeyed without a word of complaint. Not only did it let him evaluate how much damage he’d done, it was also the best possible cover against investigators.

“Thank you for your help, gentlemen,” the policeman said to Nieh and his group. “Everyone needs to struggle together against these stinking murderers.” To Nieh in particular, he added, “Sorry, you got blood on your clothes, sir. I hope it can be laundered.”

“I hope so, too. Cold water, they say, is good for such things,” Nieh answered. The policeman nodded. In times like these, knowing how to get bloodstains out of clothes was more than merely useful; it was necessary.

Nowhere did the policeman’s uniform display a name or number that would identify him. That was clever; it helped prevent reprisals. Nieh Ho-T’ing carefully studied the man’s face. He would start inquiries tomorrow. A policeman who spoke of “stinking murderers” was too enthusiastic in his support for the little scaly devils. He struck Nieh as ripe for liquidation.

8

Ttomalss wondered more and more often these days why he had ever found the psychology of alien races an interesting study. If he’d taken up, say, landcruiser gunning, he would have dealt with the Big Uglies only through the barrel of a cannon. If he’d taken up something like publishing, he’d probably still be back on Home, comfortably getting on with his career.

Instead, he found himself trying to raise a Tosevite hatchling without any direct help from the Big Uglies. If he could, that would teach the Race a lot about how the Tosevites would do as subjects when the Empire finally succeeded in establishing its control here. If…

The more he worked on the project, the more he wondered how any Big Uglies ever survived to adulthood. When a male or female of the Race emerged from its egg, it was in large measure ready to face the world. It ate the same foods adults did, it could run around, and the biggest problem in civilizing it was teaching it the things it should not do. Since it was obedient by nature, that didn’t usually present too big a challenge.

Whereas the hatchling Big Ugly female Ttomalss had taken from Liu Han…

He glared resentfully at the lumpish little thing. Not only couldn’t it run around, it couldn’t even roll over. It thrashed its arms and legs as if it hadn’t the slightest idea they were part of it. Ttomalss marveled that natural selection could have favored the development of such an utterly helpless hatchling.

The hatchling also couldn’t eat just anything. It had evolved as a parasite on the female from whose body it emerged, and was able to consume only the fluids that female secreted. Not only did Ttomalss find that disgusting, it also presented him with an experimental dilemma. He wanted to raise the Tosevite hatchling in isolation from others of its kind, but required the stuff Big Ugly females produced.

The result, like so many things connected with Tosev 3, was a clumsy makeshift. One thing-almost the only thing-the hatchling could do was suck. Some of the Big Uglies had developed artificial feeding techniques which took advantage of that with elastomeric nipples. They also used artificial equivalents of the female’s natural product.