Striking the Balance

Bunim Regional subadministrator, Lodz, Poland

Chook Small-unit group leader near Fall Creek, Illinois

Essaff Guard and interpreter, Peking

Fsseffel Headmale, Race Barracks One,gulagnear Petrozavodsk, USSR

Gazzim Prisoner and interpreter, Moscow

Kirel Shiplord,127th Emperor Hetto

Mzepps Prisoner, Dover, England

Nikeaa Infantry officer outside Pskov, USSR

Oyyag Prisoner,gulagnear Petrozavodsk, USSR

Ppevel Assistant administrator, eastern region, main continental mass, Peking

Pshing Atvar’s adjutant, Cairo

Ristin Prisoner, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Saltta Psychological researcher, Canton, China

Straha Tosevite propagandist, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Strukss Tosevite liaison officer, Cairo

Teerts Killercraft flight leader, Florida

Tessrek Researcher in tosevite behavior

Ttomalss Researcher in tosevite behavior, Peking

Uotat Atvar’s interpreter, Cairo

Ullhass Prisoner, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Ummfac Aircraft armorer, Florida

Ussmak Mutineer outside Tomsk, USSR

Zolraag Negotiator with Jewish guerrillas, Jerusalem

I

In free fall, Atvar the fleetlord glided over to the hologram projector. He poked the stud at the base of the machine. The image that sprang into being above the projector was one the Race’s probe had sent back from Tosev 3 eight hundred local years earlier.

A Big Ugly warrior sat mounted on a beast. He wore leather boots, rusty chainmail, and a dented iron helmet; a thin coat woven from plant fibers and dyed blue with plant juices shielded his armor from the heat of the star the Race called Tosev. To Atvar, to any male of the Race, Tosev 3 was on the chilly side, but not to the natives.

A long, iron-pointed spear stood up from a boss on the contraption the warrior used to stay atop his animal. He carried a shield painted with a cross. On his belt hung a long, straight sword and a couple of knives.

All you could see of the Tosevite himself were his face and one hand. They were plenty to show he was almost as fuzzy as the beast he rode. Thick, wiry yellow fur covered his jaws and the area around his mouth; he had another stripe above each of his flat, immobile eyes. A thi

Atvar touched his own smooth, scaly skin. Just looking at all that fur made him wonder why the Big Uglies didn’t itch all the time. Leaving one eye turret aimed at the Tosevite warrior, he swung the other in the direction of Kirel, shiplord of the127th Emperor Hetto. “This is the foe we thought we were opposing,” he said bitterly.

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. His body paint was almost as colorful and complex as Atvar’s. Since he commanded the ba

Atvar stabbed at the projector control with his left index claw. The Big Ugly warrior vanished. In his place appeared a perfect three-dimensional image of the nuclear explosion that had destroyed the Tosevite city of Rome: Atvar recognized the background terrain. But it could as easily have been the bomb that vaporized Chicago or Breslau or Miami or the spearhead of the Race’s assault force south of Moscow.

“As opposed to the foe we thought we faced, this is what we are actually dealing with,” Atvar said.

“Truth,” Kirel repeated, and, as mournful commentary, added an emphatic cough.

Atvar let out a long, hissing sigh. Stability and predictability were two of the pillars on which the Race and its Empire had flourished for a hundred thousand years and expanded to cover three solar systems. On Tosev 3, nothing seemed predictable, nothing seemed stable. No wonder the Race was having such troubles here. The Big Uglies did not play by any of the rules its savants thought they knew.

With another hiss, the fleetlord poked at the control stud once more. Now the threatening cloud from the nuclear blast vanished. In a way, the image that replaced it was even more menacing. It was a satellite photograph of a base the Race had established in the region of the SSSR known to the locals as Siberia, a place whose frigid climate even the Big Uglies found appalling.

“The mutineers still persist in their rebellion against duly constituted authority,” Atvar said heavily. “Worse, the commandants of the two nearest bases have urged against committing their males to suppress the rebels, for fear they would go over to them instead.”

“This is truly alarming,” Kirel said with another emphatic cough. “If we choose males from a distant air base to bomb the mutineers out of existence, then, will it truly solve the problem?”

“I don’t know,” Atvar said. “But what I really don’t know, by the Emperor”-he cast down his eyes for a moment at the mention of his sovereign-“is how the mutiny could have happened in the first place. Subordination and integration into the greater scheme of the Race as a whole are drilled into our males from hatchlinghood. How could they have overthrown them?”

Now Kirel sighed. “Fighting on this world corrodes males’ moral fiber as badly as its ocean water corrodes equipment. We are not fighting the war that was pla

“This is also truth,” Atvar admitted. “The leader of the mutineers-a lowly landcruiser driver. If you can image such a thing-is shown to have lost at least three different sets of crewmales: two, including those with whom he served at this base, to Tosevite action, and the third grouping arrested and disciplined as ginger tasters.”

“By his wild pronouncements, this Ussmak sounds like a ginger taster himself,” Kirel said.

“Threatening to call in the Soviets to his aid if we attack him, you mean?” Atvar said. “We ought to take him up on that; if he thinks they would help him out of sheer benevolence, the Tosevite herb truly has addled his wits. If it weren’t for the equipment he could pass on to the SSSR, I would say we should welcome him to go over to that set of Big Uglies.”

“Given the situation as it actually is, Exalted Fleetlord, what course shall we pursue?” Kirel’s interrogative cough sounded vaguely accusing-or maybe Atvar’s conscience was twisting his hearing diaphragms.

“I don’t know yet,” the fleetlord said unhappily. When in doubt, his first instinct-typical for a male-was to do nothing. Letting the situation come nearer to hatching so you could understand it more fully worked well on Home, and also on Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, the other inhabited worlds the Race controlled.

But waiting, against the Tosevites, often proved even worse than proceeding on incomplete knowledge. The Big Ugliesdid things. They didn’t fret about long-term consequences. Take atomic weapons-those helped them in the short run. If they devastated Tosev 3 in the process-well, so what?

Atvar couldn’t leave it atso what. The colonization fleet was on the way from Home. He couldn’t very well present it with a world he’d rendered uninhabitable in the process of overcoming the Big Uglies. Yet he couldn’t fail to respond, either, and so found himself in the unpleasant position of reacting to what the Tosevites did instead of making them react to him.

The mutineers had no nuclear weapons, and weren’t Big Uglies. He could have afforded to wait them out… If they hadn’t threatened to yield their base to the SSSR. With the Tosevites involved, you couldn’t just sit and watch. The Big Uglies were never content to let things simmer. They threw them in a microwave oven and brought them to a boil as fast as they could.