“The Russians will have to send us more, then,” Liu Han said.
“That won’t be so easy, not any more,” Nieh Ho-T’ing replied. “The scaly devils have already shot up a couple of caravans-and Molotov, damn him, doesn’t dare get caught in the act of helping us. If he does get caught, the little devils land on him instead, and he won’t take that chance. So we’re liable to be stuck with what we’ve got.”
“Not good,” Liu Han said, and used one of the scaly devils’ emphatic coughs.
“No, not good at all,” Nieh said. “And we had an unpleasant report today from down in the south.”
“You’d better tell me,” Liu Han said, though she was anything but sure she wanted to hear.
“Here and there, the scaly devils are starting to use human troops against us,” Nieh Ho-T’ing said.
“They’ve tried that before,” Liu Han said. “It doesn’t work well. Before long, the soldiers go over to us, or enough of them do, anyhow. Humans naturally have solidarity with one another.”
But Nieh shook his head. “This is different. Before, they would try to use Chinese soldiers here in China, and you’re right-that didn’t work. But these men, whoever they are, aren’t Chinese. They’re mercenaries in the pay of the little devils. They don’t speak our language, so we can’t reach them. They just do what the scaly devils tell them to do-they’re the perfect oppressors.”
“Now that is not good. That is not good at all.” Liu Han scratched her jaw, as she had while judging Ku Cheng-Lun. What she decided here was a good deal more important than her verdict in the clerk’s case-though Ku would not have agreed with that. After some time, she said, “We will have to speak in the little scaly devils’ language. The mercenaries are bound to understand that, or some of them are. Otherwise, the scaly devils couldn’t give them their orders.”
Nieh Ho-T’ing nodded. “Yes, that is a good idea. Better than anything we’ve tried yet-it’s bound to be. Some people say these soldiers are from South America, others say they’re from India. Either way, they might as well come from Home for all the sense we can make of what they say.”
“We have to make them understand,” Liu Han said. “Once we do, the rot will start.”
“Here’s hoping, anyhow,” Nieh said.
Before Liu Han could answer, jet engines started howling low over Peking. Antiaircraft guns barked. Antiaircraft missiles took off with roaring whooshes. Bombs burst. The ground started to shake. Little waves shimmered in Liu Han’s bowl of broth and noodles. She picked it up. “I wish we had airplanes of our own,” she said. “The way things are, the little devils can hit us, but we can’t hit back.”
“I know.” Nieh Ho-T’ing shrugged. “Nothing we can do about that, though. Molotov isn’t about to pack fighter planes on camelback, any more than he’s likely to send us landcruisers. But now, at least, we make the scaly devils pay a price when they use those things.”
“Not enough,” Liu Han said. More bombs burst, some not very far away. She glanced at the oil lamps that lit the inside of the noodle shop. So easy for a hit to knock them into the rubble and start a fire… Broad stretches of Peking had already burned from fires of that sort.
“If we fail this time, we try again,” Nieh said, “and again, and again, and as often as need be. Sooner or later, we win.”
Or we give up, Liu Han thought. But she would not say that; saying it seemed to make it more likely to come true. Part of her realized that was nothing but peasant superstition, but she kept quiet all the same. She’d grown up a peasant, never expecting to be anything else, and couldn’t always escape her origins.
Bombs fell again, some nearer, some farther away. Nieh Ho-T’ing said, “If they keep doing this, there won’t be anything left of Peking but ruins.”
“Maybe not,” Liu Han said, “but they’ll be our ruins.”
Nieh eyed her with more than a little admiration. “You would say that about all of China, wouldn’t you?”
“If it meant being rid of the little scaly devils for good, I would,” she replied.
He nodded. “You always have taken the hard line against them.”
“I have my reasons, even if some of them are personal and not ideological,” Liu Han said. “But I am not really a hardliner. My daughter, now, she would say, ‘Let all of China be ruined even if it doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of the little devils for good, just so they can’t have it.’ ”
Nieh Ho-T’ing nodded again. “I see the difference. Mao would probably agree with Liu Mei, you know.”
“Well, he’ll have his chance with this uprising,” Liu Han said. Unless the people refuse to fight any more-unless they would sooner have peace regardless of who rules them. She kept that to herself, too.
“Mao has been a revolutionary his whole life,” Nieh said. “A lot of us have. We will go on fighting, however long it takes. We are patient. The dialectic is on our side. We will bring the country with us.”
“Of course we will,” Liu Han declared. But then the doubts that never quite went away came out: “The only thing that worries me is, the little scaly devils are patient, too.” Nieh Ho-T’ing looked at her as if he wished she hadn’t said any such thing. She too wished she hadn’t said it. But she feared that didn’t make it any less true. More bombs rained down on Peking.
Just seeing Tosevite railroads had convinced Nesseref that she didn’t like them. Instead of being clean and quiet, they roared and puffed and chugged and belched filthy, stinking black smoke into the air. One of these days, she was told, the Race would replace the horrible engines in Poland with more modern machinery. But it didn’t look as if that would happen any time soon. There were so many more urgent things to do. No matter how filthy the locomotives the Big Uglies built, they did work after a fashion, and so they stayed in service.
And now she found herself in a passenger car behind one of those noxious locomotives. The rolling, swaying, jouncing ride was even worse than she’d expected, and left her as nervous as a wild Big Ugly would have been to fly in a shuttlecraft for the first time.
Fortunately, few Tosevites saw her discomfiture: one car on each train was reserved for males and females of the Race. In fact, Nesseref had the entire compartment to herself. A Tosevite conductor came through and spoke in her language (a relief, because she’d learned only a handful of words in either Polish or Yiddish): “Przemysl is the next stop. All out for Przemysl.”
Out she went, in some anxiety. If no one was waiting for her here at the station, she would have to brave a taxi. That would be doubly difficult: first finding a driver who understood her and then surviving a trip through terrifying Tosevite traffic. Having experienced both, she vastly preferred space travel, which had fewer things that could go wrong.
But a Big Ugly on the platform waved to her, waved and called, “Shuttlecraft Pilot! Nesseref! Superior female! Over here!”
With more than a little relief, Nesseref waved back. “I greet you, Mordechai Anielewicz. I am glad to see you.”
“And I am glad to see you,” her Tosevite friend replied. “I was even gladder to see you when I came out of that house in Kanth. Seeing any friends there was very good indeed.”
“I can understand how it would have been.” Nesseref’s eye turrets swiveled this way and that. To her, this crowded platform in Przemysl, full of shouting, exclaiming Big Uglies, was a frightening place; she would not have wanted to be here without a friend, and especially a Tosevite friend. But this was different from what Anielewicz had gone through inside the Reich. She was, fortunately, sensible enough to understand as much. No one wanted to kill her here-she certainly hoped not, at any rate. But Anielewicz could have died at any moment in Kanth, and he’d volunteered to go there understanding that was so.
Now he said, “Come with me. My apartment is not very far away. My mate and hatchlings look forward to meeting you. Well, Heinrich looks forward to meeting you again. And he looks forward to showing you his beffel.”
Nesseref’s mouth fell open in amusement. “Ah, yes-the famous Pancer.” She pronounced the Tosevite name as well as she could. “He may be interested in meeting me, too-I probably smell like a tsiongi, and that is an odor that will always get a beffel’s attention.”
Anielewicz spoke three words in his own language: “Dogs and cats.” Then he explained: “These are Tosevite domestic animals that often do not get along with each other.”
“I see,” Nesseref said. She skittered after Anielewicz so she wouldn’t lose him in the cavernous train station. Tosevites stared and pointed at her and exclaimed in their unintelligible languages. Many of them inhaled the burning herb that always struck her as noxious; its acrid smoke filled her scent receptors.
Outside, the cold smote her. Mordechai Anielewicz repeated, “It will not be far.”
“Good,” she said, shivering. “Otherwise, I do believe I would freeze before I got there. This winter weather of yours makes me see why you Tosevites deck yourselves in so many wrappings.”
“I have seen members of the Race do it, too,” Anielewicz said. “Staying warm is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I suppose not.” Nesseref hurried down the street after him. “But wrappings are rarely necessary back on Home. We do not like to think they should be necessary anywhere we live.”
“What you like to think is not always what is true,” Anielewicz remarked, a comment with which she could hardly disagree.