Page 35 of Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar 3)

It also made the world seem a much more cheerful place to George Bagnall “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll take you to theKrom, where both sides have their headquarters.” Ludmila Gorbunova smiled at him as she nodded. He felt like bursting into song.

7

“Do you know what one of the troubles with Big Uglies is?” Atvar said to his English-speaking interpreter as they waited for the emissary from the United States to be shown into the conference chamber.

“They have so many, Exalted Fleetlord,” the interpreter answered. “Which in particular are you thinking of today?”

“They areuntidy creatures,” Atvar said with distaste. “Their clothes flap about them like loose skins, the tufts they grow on their heads either flap about, too, or else are held down with enough oil to lubricate a landcruiser engine, and they spew water from their hides instead of panting, as proper people should. They are disgusting.”

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” the interpreter said gravely.

Pshing, Atvar’s adjutant, came on one of the communications screens. “Exalted Fleetlord, the Tosevite from the United States is here. I remind you, his name is Cordell Hull; his title is Secretary of State. Before we came, he was the chief aide in dealing with other Big Ugly empires for his not-empire’s leader.”

“Send him in,” Atvar said.

Cordell Hull looked uncomfortable in weightlessness, but made a good game show of pretending he wasn’t. Even for a Big Ugly, he was long, though not especially wide. The tuft of fuzz on top of his head was almost white. Atvar knew that meant he was aging. So did the wrinkles and sags in his integument. He was not attractive, but then, to Atvar’s eyes, no Big Ugly was.

After the polite greetings customary even between enemies, Atvar plunged straight in: “I demand from you the immediate return of the traitorous shiplord Straha, who fled to you in violation of all law.”

Cordell Hull spoke a single sharp word: “No.” The translator indicated that that was a negative; Atvar had suspected as much. Hull went on at some length afterwards: “The United States does not give back people who come to us seeking shelter. My land is made up of people who came seeking freedom. We welcomed them; we did not turn them away.”

“You welcomed criminals?” Atvar said, and then, in an aside to the interpreter. “It does not surprise me a bit, though you needn’t tell him that.”

“We did,” Hull answered defiantly. “Many things that were called crimes were really nothing more than disagreeing with the leaders of the lands they left.” His eyes, though sunk deep in his head like any Tosevite’s, bored into Atvar’s with disconcerting keenness.

The fleetlord said, “Do you not call stealing a shuttlecraft a crime? Straha is a robber as well as a traitor. Is your not-empire also in the habit of keeping stolen goods? We demand the shuttlecraft’s return, too.”

“Go ahead and demand,” Hull replied. “In war, if one side is generous enough to help the other, it doesn’t get its toys back.”

“In war, the side that is losing is usually wise enough to deal politely with the side that is winning,” Atvar said. “So the ancient records of the Race tell us, at any rate; the Race has never lost a war against another species.”

“If you think we’re losing, look at Chicago,” Hull said. In his own way, he was as exasperating an opponent as the SSSR’s Molotov. The latter Big Ugly was as inflexible as a poorly programmed machine, mechanically rejecting everything Atvar said. Hull instead tried to twist things.

Atvar said, “Look at Chicago yourself. Our forces continue to advance through the city. The large factories you defended for so long are now practically cleared of Tosevites, and soon our victorious males will reach the shore of the lake by which the city lies.”

“Bully for them,” Hull answered, which caused the interpreter considerable confusion. After the misunderstanding was straightened out, the U.S. Secretary of State said, “Some of your victorious males may make it to Lake Michigan, but how many of ’em won’t? How many of ’em are dead and stinking in the streets of Chicago?”

“Far fewer than the males you throw away like wastepaper in a futile effort to halt us,” Atvar snapped. He didn’t like being reminded of the casualties the conquest of Chicago was costing the Race.

Cordell Hull’s face twisted into one of the leers the Big Uglies used to show emotion. (“This is an expression of amusement and irony,” the interpreter told Atvar in a brief aside.) He said, “We have more men to spend than you do, and more of everything else, too. Before long, you’re going to have to start robbing Peter to pay Paul if you want reinforcements.”

The interpreter needed to go back and forth with Hull a few times, but when he finally made sense of that, it made sense to Atvar, too. Worst of it was that the Tosevite was right. Every time fresh males went into Chicago, an offensive somewhere else on Tosev 3 necessarily suffered, either that or a garrison in a “safely conquered” region was reduced, whereupon, more often than not, the region was found not to be so safely conquered after all.

Trying to match Hull’s irony, the fleetlord said, “What would you have us do, then, Exalted Tosevite?”

“Who, me? I’m just a jumped-up Tennessee lawyer,” Hull replied, which occasioned still more translation difficulties. Once they were resolved, Hull went on, “We don’t hold with fancy titles in the United States-never have, never will. We figure part of being free is getting away from all that nonsense.”

Atvar stared at him in honest bewilderment. Every society built by every intelligent race was hierarchical-how could it be otherwise? Why pretend such a manifest and obvious truth did not exist?

He had no time to ponder that; Hull was still talking: “If you really want to know what I want you to do, what the people of the United States want you to do, what the people of the world want you to do, it’s not what anybody would call complicated: quit killing people and go back to your own planet.”

The fleetlord tried to imagine his reception if he returned to Home with a beaten army in cold sleep, bearing word that the species that had defeated him was now seeking to develop space travel on its own and would in a short time (as the Race reckoned such things) be heading out

toward the Empire. “It cannot be,” he answered quickly.

“Well, I allow I reckoned you’d say as much,” Cordell Hull told him. “Next best would be for you to stay here-we’d set aside land somewhere for you, maybe-and make peace with us.”

“You Tosevites are not in any position to grant us terms,” Atvar said angrily. “We are in the process of conquering you, of bringing you into the Empire, and we shall continue until victory is won, in Chicago and everywhere else.”

“If you’re going to take that attitude, why did you bring me up here to this spaceship in the first place?” Hull asked. “Flying up here was a big jolt for an old man like me.”

“You were summoned to hear our demand for the return of the traitor Straha, which you have insolently refused, and to bring a warning back to your emperor,” Atvar said.

“We don’t have an emperor, or want one, either,” Hull said.

“Your leader, then-whatever you call him.” Atvar hissed in exasperation. “The warning is simple: if you seek to produce nuclear weapons, you will be utterly destroyed.”

Hull studied him for a while before answering. Every so often, despite their weird features, the Tosevites could look disconcertingly keen. This was one of those times. Being divided up into tens or hundreds of ephemeral little squabbling empires, each always trying to outdo or outcheat its neighbors, had given them a political sophistication-or perhaps just a talent for chicanery-the Race, despite its long history, had trouble matching.

Slowly, Hull said, “You intend to conquer us whether we make these weapons or not. Why should we give up the best chance not just to hurt you but to beat you? What’s the percentage in it for us?”

“We shall conquer you with or without your nuclear weapons,” Atvar answered. “More of your not-empire, more of your people, will survive if you do not force us to extremes.”

Cordell Hull made a strange noise, half gasping, half barking. “This is what the Big Uglies use for laughter,” the interpreter said.

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