“Please.” Liu Han nodded.
“Remember not long ago the Soviet Union gave Finland an ultimatum? And the Finns, instead of knuckling under to the Russians, ran under the wing of the scaly devils like a duckling running to its mother?”
Finland, as far as Liu Han was concerned, was so far away, it might as well have been on the world the little scaly devils came from. She wasn’t sure she’d even heard of it till the Soviet Union pressured it. Even so… She nodded again. “I understand. This is the Russians’ revenge. If they cannot get what they want from Finland”-she had to pronounce the unfamiliar name with care-“they will do what they can do to make the little devils sorry elsewhere-and we happen to be the elsewhere.”
“Exactly so.” Nieh eyed her with respect. “The Party was lucky when you joined us and got an education. You see very clearly; you would have wasted your life as an oppressed peasant woman.”
But Liu Han laughed at him this time. “This has nothing to do with education. If a strong peasant loses a quarrel with a stronger one, what does he do? Not fight him again-he would lose again, and lose face doing it. No: he sows hatred against his enemy in the other people in the village, so the other man will have trouble wherever he goes.”
“Eee!” Nieh said, a high-pitched sound of glee. “You are right. You are so very right. That’s just what the Russians are doing. So Comrade Molotov thinks like a peasant, does he? I’m sure he would be offended to hear it.”
“What kind of weapons are we getting?” Liu Han was sure that would be answered at the next Central Committee meeting, but she didn’t want to wait. She had one particular question: “Will the Russians send us anything that we can use to wreck the scaly devils’ landcruisers?” That last was a word Chinese had adapted from the language of the Race; the Japanese had had only a few of the fearsome vehicles, while those of the scaly devils roamed everywhere, deadly and all but unstoppable.
Nieh Ho-T’ing was smiling again. “Yes. For once, the Red Army truly is opening its storehouse to us. The Russians are sending us plenty of their mines with the wooden casings, the ones even the little devils have trouble detecting. Bury those on roadways and in fields, and the landcruisers will be most unhappy.”
“Good,” Liu Han said. “They deserve to be unhappy. But mines are not enough. What about rockets, so we can take the fight to the little devils instead of waiting for them to come to us?”
“You know what the Russians always say about those things,” Nieh answered. “That has not changed while we were imprisoned.”
Liu Han made another face, a sour one this time. “They say they cannot send us anything like that, because it would let the little scaly devils know where the weapons came from. But I thought you said they truly opened their storehouse to us.”
“They did.” Nieh was grinning again. “After the fighting in Europe, they somehow got hold of a lot of German antilandcruiser rockets. I don’t know how-maybe these were rockets the Germans gave them instead of surrendering them to the little devils, or maybe they got them from one of the German puppet regimes. However they got them, they have them-and they are sending them to us.”
“Ahhh.” Liu Han bowed to Nieh as if he’d been responsible for getting the rockets rather than just for giving her the news about them. “Are these weapons only promised, or are they really on the way?”
“The first caravan has already crossed the Mongolian desert,” he answered. “The weapons, or some of them, are in our hands.”
Liu Han did not have sharp teeth like a tiger’s, but her smile would have sent any tiger with a drop of sense scurrying back into the undergrowth. She’d been fighting the little scaly devils most of her adult life, fighting them with a hatred not only ideological and nationalistic but personal. If the People’s Liberation Army had the chance to strike them a heavy blow, that delighted her on every one of those levels.
Before she could say as much, a woman’s cry of anger and, a moment later, a man’s cry of pain burst from a peasant hut not far away. She whirled in surprise. So did Nieh Ho-T’ing. A heartbeat later, the man himself burst from the hut, running for all he was worth. He might have run faster had he not been yanking up his trousers with one hand.
“Ten million little devils!” Liu Han exclaimed. “Who has Hsia Shou-Tao tried to outrage now?”
No sooner had she spoken than her own daughter came out of that hut. Liu Mei was carrying a chamber pot. Her expressionless face was even more frightening than it would have been had fury filled it. She flung the pot with both hands, as a man might fling a heavy stone. The pot flew through the air and smashed against the back of Hsia’s head. He fell forward onto his face and lay motionless, as if shot. Blood poured from his scalp. So did urine and night soil; the chamber pot had been full.
Eyes blazing in her dead-calm countenance, Liu Mei said, “He tried to take what I did not want to give him. First I stamped on his foot, then I kicked him, then I did this, and now I’m going to kill him.”
“Wait!” Nieh Ho-T’ing got between Hsia Shou-Tao and Liu Mei, who plainly meant exactly what she’d said: she’d drawn a knife and was advancing on the officer and Communist Party dignitary she’d felled.
Hsia groaned and tried to roll over. Liu Han had wondered if the flying chamber pot smashed in the back of his skull. Evidently not. Too bad, she thought. “You know how he is with women,” she said to Nieh. “You know he’s always been that way with women. He tried to outrage me, too, you know, back in Peking not long after the little devils came. I’m not pretty enough for him any more, so now what does he do? He tries to molest my daughter. If you ask me, he deserves whatever Liu Mei gives him.”
A crowd had gathered, drawn by the commotion. Several women laughed and jeered to see Hsia Shou-Tao bleeding and filthy on the ground. If that didn’t mean Liu Mei was far from the only one he’d tried to molest, Liu Han would have been astonished.
But Nieh still held up a hand, ordering Liu Mei to stop. “You have punished him as he deserves,” the People’s Liberation Army general said. “He is a good officer. He is a bold officer. He is fierce against the little scaly devils.”
Liu Mei did stop, but she didn’t put away the knife. “He is a man. You are a man,” she said. “He is an officer. You are an officer. He is your friend. He has been your aide. No wonder you take his side.”
The women, most of them peasants but some lesser Party functionaries, yelled raucous agreement. One of them threw a stone at Hsia. It thudded into his ribs. He writhed and grunted; he still wasn’t more than half conscious.
“No!” Now Nieh spoke sharply, and set a hand on the pistol in his belt. “I say enough. Hsia may be subject to self-criticism and revolutionary justice, but he will not be mobbed. The revolutionary struggle needs him.”
His words probably wouldn’t have stopped the angry women. The pistol did. Liu Han wondered if the struggle between men and women would end before the struggle against the little scaly devils. She doubted it; she wasn’t sure even the coming of perfect Communism would make men and women get along.
“Mother!” Rage still filled Liu Mei’s voice. “Will you let this, this man protect his friend so?”
No, the struggle between the sexes surely had a long way to go. With great reluctance, Liu Han nodded. “I will. I do not like it, but I will. Let revolutionary justice see to him from here on out. We will remember him smeared with blood and night soil. We will all remember him like that. He won’t trouble you again-I’m sure of it.”
“No, but he will touch someone else,” Liu Mei said grimly. “I didn’t knock out enough of his brains to keep him from doing that.”
She was bound to be right. Liu Han wouldn’t have minded seeing Hsia dead, not personally, not even a little bit. But Nieh said, “He will also trouble the scaly devils again, and that is more important.”
“Not to me,” Liu Mei said. “He didn’t put his filthy hands inside your trousers.” She didn’t advance on Hsia any more, though, and she did put the knife away. A couple of people drifted back toward their huts. The worst was over. Hsia Shou-Tao wouldn’t get all of what was coming to him, but Liu Mei had already given him a good piece of it.
Hsia groaned again. This time, he managed to sit up. Something like reason was in his eyes. His hand went to the back of his head. When he found it was wet, he jerked it away. When he found what the moisture was, he frantically rubbed his hand in the dirt beside him.
“I should have cut it off you when I had the chance,” Liu Han told him. “If I had, this wouldn’t have happened to you.”
“I’m sorry,” Hsia said vaguely, as if he couldn’t quite recall why he should be apologizing.
“Sorry you got hurt. Sorry you got caught,” Liu Han said. “Sorry for what you did? Don’t make me laugh. Don’t make us all laugh. We know better.” The women who were still watching Hsia wallow in filth and blood clapped their hands and cried agreement. Liu Han found a smile stretching wide across her face. Russian arms for the People’s Liberation Army, Hsia Shou-Tao humiliated-it was a very good day indeed.
Reuven Russie walked slowly and glumly to the office he shared with his father. The sun shone hot and warm in Jerusalem even in early autumn, making the yellow limestone from which so much of the city was built gleam and sparkle like gold. The beauty was wasted on him. So was the sunshine.