Msseff said to Ttomalss, “Superior sir, if all this is necessary for survival, then I am an addled egg.” Ttomalss’ mouth fell open.
The midwife bathed the baby, dried her, and sprinkled alum on her here and there. Then she laid the child on her back and set slices of ginger by the blackened stump of the umbilical cord. She put a little smoldering ball of catnip leaves on the ginger, and another at the baby’s head. A couple of the scaly devils let out hisses of longing for the ginger. Ttomalss took no notice of those, perhaps not recognizing what they signified.
Other ritual objects made their appearance: the small weight that portended a big future, the padlock to ward off impropriety, the tap of the onion punningly used to impart wisdom (both were pronouncedts’ung), and the comb for the child’s hair. The onion would be tossed on the roof of the hut, to predict the sex of Liu Han’s next child by the way it landed.
Ho Ma extinguished the burning balls of catnip and lit the paper images of the gods, who, having done their duty, were thus urged to depart the scene. The hut filled with smoke. Coughing a little, the midwife took her leave. The onion thumped up onto the roof. “The root points to the eaves,” Ho Ma called. “Your next baby will be a boy.”
Liu Han couldn’t remember what the onion had foretold after the birth of her first child. She wondered how many fortune-tellers made a good living by counting on their bad predictions’ being forgotten. A lot of them, she suspected, but how could you tell which ones till after the fact?
As if Ho Ma’s leaving the hut had been a signal, several little scaly devils came in. They were not carrying cameras; they were carrying guns. Alarm flared in Liu Han. She snatched up the baby and held it tight.
Ttomalss said, “That will do you no good. We now go to the next step of the experiment-we of the Race will raise this hatchling apart from you Tosevites, to learn how well it can acquire duty and obedience.” He turned to the males and spoke in his own language: “Take the hatchling.”
Liu Han screamed and fought with all she had in her. It did no good. Individually, the scaly devils were little, but several of them together were much stronger than she. The threat of their guns drove back the people who came out to see why she was screaming. Even the sight of a wailing infant in their arms was not enough to make men brave those terrible guns.
Liu Han lay on the ground in the hut and moaned. Then, slowly, she rose and made her painful way through the staring, chattering people and into the marketplace. Eventually, she came to the stall of the poultry seller. The little scaly devils might think they were through with her, but she was not through with them.
Half past two in the morning. Vyacheslav Molotov wished he were home and asleep in bed. Stalin, however, had not asked his opinion, merely summoned him. Stalin was not in the habit of asking anyone’s opinion. He expected to be obeyed. If he kept late hours, everyone else would, too.
The doorman nodded politely to Molotov, who nodded back. Normally he would have ignored such a flunky, but the doorman, along-time crony of Stalin’s, knew as many secrets as half the members of the Politburo-and he had his master’s ear. Slighting him was dangerous.
Stalin was writing at his desk when Molotov came in. Molotov wondered if he’d become dominant simply because he needed less sleep than most men. No doubt that wasn’t the whole answer, but it must have played its part.
“Take some tea, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” Stalin said, pointing to a samovar in a corner of the cramped room.
“Thank you, Iosef Vissarionovich,” Molotov answered. When Stalin told you to take tea, you took tea, even if it was the vile mix that passed for the genuine article these days-much worse than the coarsemakhorka everyone, even Stalin, had to smoke. Molotov poured a glassful, sugared it-as long as the Soviet Union had beets, it would have sugar-and drank. He had to work to keep from betraying surprise. “This is-excellent.”
“The real leaf,” Stalin said smugly. “Brought in from India, thanks to the lull in the fighting with the Lizards after we showed we could match them bomb for bomb.”So there, his eyes added. He’d gone against Molotov’s advice and not only got away with it but prospered. Not only was that bad in itself, it meant he would pay less attention to Molotov the next time.
The Foreign Commissar sipped his tea, savoring its warmth and its rich flavor. When he was through, he set the glass down with real regret. “What do you need, Iosef Vissarionovich?” he asked.
“The lull is slowly dying away,” Stalin answered. “The Lizards begin to suspect we have no more bombs than that first one.” He sounded as if that were Molotov’s fault.
“As I have noted, Comrade General Secretary, they are aware we used their metal to produce that bomb,” Molotov said cautiously; telling StalinI told you so was as dangerous as defusing any other pyrotechnic device. Molotov tried to put the best face on it he could: “They cannot know, however, whether we have enough of that metal to use it for more bombs.”
“We should,” Stalin said. “Sharing with the Germans was a mistake.” His mouth twisted in annoyance at the irrevocability of the past.“Nichevo.” Try as he might, Stalin could not utterit can’t be helped with the fatalism a native Russian put in the word. His throaty Georgian accent gave it a flavor of,but someone ought to be able to do something about it.
Molotov said, “Creating the impression that wedo have more bombs available will be a cornerstone of our policy against the Lizards for some time to come. They suspect our weakness now. If they become certain of it, the strategic situation reverts to what it was before we used the bomb, and that was not altogether to our advantage.”
He stood up and got himself another glass of tea, both because he hadn’t had any real tea in a long time and because he was all too aware of how large an understatement he’d just loosed. If the Soviet Union hadn’t set off that bomb, the Lizards surely would have been in Moscow by now. If Stalin and he had escaped the fall of the city, they’d be trying to run the country from Kuibyshev, in the heart of the Urals. Would the workers and peasants-more to the point, would the soldiers-of the Soviet Union have continued to obey orders from a defeated government that had had to abandon the national capital?
Maybe. Neither Molotov nor Stalin had been anxious to attempt the experiment.
Stalin said, “Kurchatov and his team must accelerate their efforts.”
“Yes, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said dutifully. Igor Kurchatov, Georgi Flerov, and the rest of the Soviet nuclear physicists were doing everything they could to isolate uranium 235 and to produce the equally explosive element 94. Unfortunately, before the war nuclear physics in the Soviet Union had lagged several years behind its course in the capitalist and fascist nations. The mere search for abstract knowledge had not seemed vitally urgent then. Now it did, but, with their limited expertise and limited cadre, the physicists were still years away from producing homegrown nuclear material.
“The fascists in Germany are not idle,” Stalin said. “In spite of their setback, espionage confirms that their explosive-metal project goes forward. I believe the same is true in the United States and Britain, though communications with them both are not everything we might wish.” He slammed a fist down on the top of the desk. “And the Japanese?who knows what the Japanese are doing? I don’t trust them. I never trust them.”
The only man Stalin had ever trusted was Hitler, and that trust almost destroyed the Soviet Union. But here Molotov agreed with him. He said, “If Zhukov hadn’t treated them roughly in Mongolia in 39, they would have joined with the Nazis two years later, and that might have been very difficult for us.”