Page 87 of Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar 3)

Mutt tossed the plaster underhand through the air. It came down maybe thirty feet to one side, clattering off what sounded like a brick chimney. Out in no-man’s-land, a Lizard cut loose with his automatic rifle, squeezing off a burst whose bullets whined through the area where the plaster had landed.

Jacobs and Daniels both fired at the muzzle flashes from the Lizard’s weapon. “Did we get him?” Jacobs demanded, shoving a fresh clip into his Springfield.

“Damnfino,” Mutt answered. His ears were still ringing from the racket the tommy gun made. “It ain’t always-how do you say it? — cut and dried like that. Next thing we gotta do is, we gotta find you a new position. We just told ’em where this one’s at.”

“Okay, Lieutenant,” Jacobs said. “I hadn’t thought of that myself, but it makes sense now that you’ve said it.”

Daniels sighed, a long, silent exhalation. But he was used to thinking strategically, and a lot of people weren’t. “We gotta be careful,” he whispered. “If we didn’t get that son of a bitch of a Lizard, he’ll be out there waitin’ to nail us. Now if I remember straight, there was a house over that way”-he pointed west with his right hand-“maybe a hundred yards that’d fill the bill. Lemme go check it out. That Lizard starts shootin’ at me, keep him busy.”

“Sure, okay, yeah, Lieutenant,” Jacobs said. Throwing those words into varying combinations seemed to be his sport for the evening.

Down on his belly like a reptile, Mutt slithered through rubble toward the house he had in mind. Part of its second story was still standing, which made it damn near unique around these parts-and made it a good observation point, too, at least till the Lizards figured out somebody was up in it. Then they were liable to expend a rocket or a bomb just to knock down the place.

Something skittered by, a few feet in front of Mutt. He froze. It wasn’t a Lizard; it was a rat. That much he saw. His imagination filled in the rest-a fat, happy rat like the ones he’d seen in the trenches of France, with a diet it was better not to think about.

He made it to the house he had in mind without getting shot at, which he took as a sign, if not a sure one, that he and Jacobs had hit the Lizard would-be infiltrator. The house seemed all right. The stairway wobbled a little when you went up it, but considering that half the second floor wasn’t there, he didn’t suppose you could expect miracles. And you could see a long way from the second-story window.

He returned to the current sentry post and told Jacobs, “Everything’s okay. Come on with me and I’ll show you where I’m moving you.” Once he’d installed the sentry in his new position, he said, “I’ll go back and give your replacement word about where you’ll be.”

“Yeah, okay, Lieutenant,” Jacobs said.

When Mutt had almost made it back for the second time to the ruins where Jacobs had been, stationed, the Lizard out there in no-man’s-land fired at him. He dug his face into the dirt as bullets cracked all around him and ricocheted with malignant whines from stones and chunks of concrete.

“Sneaky little bastard, ain’t you?” he muttered, and squeezed off a burst of his own, just to let the Lizard know he was still among those present. The Lizard shot back. They traded fire for a few minutes in a surprisingly sporting way, then gave up. Mutt went back to his lines; he wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if the Lizard did the same thing.

Go on ahead, Lizard,he thought.You had your at-bats this summer. Now that cold weather’s here, we’ll throw your scaly ass right out of Chicago. Just wait and see if we don’t.

The Tosevite hatchling rolled over on the floor of the laboratory chamber that had been its home since Ttomalss had taken charge of it. After a little while, it rolled over again, and then again. All three rolls were in the same direction. Ttomalss thought the hatchling was beginning to get the idea of going some particular way.

Any sign of neuromuscular progress in the little creature interested him, since all such signs were few and far between. By the standards of the Race, Hatchling Tosevites had no business surviving to grow up to become the Big Uglies who had proved such complete nuisances ever since the conquest fleet arrived. Were they to be separated from those who cared for them for the first years of their lives, they could not survive. The Race had many stories of feral hatchlings who came from untended clutches of eggs and survived to adulthood, most of them well-authenticated. Among the Tosevites, such tales were vanishingly rare, and even when told often had more of the feel of legend than fact.

Something crinkled-the little female had got its hands on a crumpled-up piece of cellophane that had fallen unnoticed off some work surface. Ttomalss bent quickly and got the cellophane out of the Tosevite’s mouth.

“That is not edible,” he said in what he hoped was a severe voice.

The hatchling laughed at him. Anything it could reach went into its mouth. You had to watch it every waking moment.A miracle all the Big Uglies didn’t poison themselves or choke on things they swallow, Ttomalss thought. He picked up the hatchling. It had soiled itself again.

With a hissing sigh, he carried it over to the table where he kept the waste-absorbing (or at least partially absorbing) cloths. It babbled cheerfully all the while. Some of the babbles were beginning to sound as if they were emulating the hisses and clicks that made up a good part of the Race’s language. Those were nothing like the sounds it would have been hearing had it stayed among the Big Uglies. Its linguistic talents, he suspected, would prove very adaptable.

After he had cleaned it, it gave the whining cry that meant it was hungry. He let it suck from the bottle, then walked back and forth with it as it fought a losing battle against sleep. At last, with a sigh of relief, he set it down on the pad where it rested.

“The Emperor be praised,” he said softly when the hatching did not wake up. Since he’d taken it up here, he measured the time that was his own by the spaces during which it slept. Even when he left the laboratory, he always wore a monitor attached to his belt. If the Big Ugly started to squawk, he had to hurry back and calm it. He hadn’t been able to trust any other males to do the job properly; no one else had his unique and hard-won expertise.

No sooner had he taken a couple of steps away from the pad on which the hatchling lay than another psychologist, a male named Tessrek, tapped with his fingerclaws on the doorjamb to the chamber to show he wanted to come in. When Ttomalss waved that he could enter, he said, “How is the little Tosevite treating you today, Mother?” His mouth dropped open in amusement at the joke.

Ttomalss did not think it was funny. By now, he’d heard it from a lot of his colleagues. Most, like Tessrek, borrowed the wordmother from the Tosevite language with which they were most familiar. That seemed to make it doubly amusing for them: they could imply not just that Ttomalss was an egg-laying male, but one who’d hatched out a Big Ugly.

He said, “The creature is doing very well, thank you. It’s definitely been displaying increased mobility and a greater sense of purpose lately.” It still couldn’t come close to matching what a hatchling of the Race was able to do the moment the eggshell cracked, and he’d been thinking disparaging thoughts about it only moments before. But mocking the Big Ugly hatchling was mocking his chosen research topic, and that he would defend as fiercely as he had to.

Tessrek’s mouth opened in a different way: to show distaste. “It certainly is an odiferous little thing, isn’t it?” he said.

“Have you any other pleasantries to add?” Ttomalss asked, his tone frigid. He and Tessrek were of identical rank, which complicated matters: as neither owed the other formal deference, they had no social lubricant to camouflage their mutual dislike. Ttomalss went on, “My scent receptors do not record the odor to any great degree. Perhaps I have grown used to it.” That was at best a quarter-truth, but he would not let Tessrek know it.

“That must be because you have spent so much time with the creature,” Tessrek said. “Continual exposure has dulled your chemoreceptors-or perhaps burned them out altogether.”

?

?Possibly so,” Ttomalss said. “I have been thinking I spend an inordinate amount of time here with the hatchling. I really do need someone to relieve me of creature-tending duties every so often, not least so I can pass on some of the data I have gathered.” He swung both eye turrets toward Tessrek. “As a matter of fact, you might make an excellent choice for the role.”

“Me?” Tessrek recoiled in alarm. “What makes you say that? You must be daft to think so.”

“By no means, colleague of mine. After all, did you not study the Tosevite male Bobby Fiore, whose matings with the Tosevite female brought into our spacecraft for research purposes led to her producing the hatchling here? You have a-what is the term the Big Uglies use? — a family attachment, that’s it.”

“I have no attachment at all to that ugly little thing,” Tessrek said angrily. “It is your problem and your responsibility. At need, I shall state as much to superior authority. Farewell.” He hurried out of the laboratory chamber.

Behind him, Ttomalss’ mouth opened wide. Sometimes jokes had teeth, as he’d shown Tessrek. He’d put forward his suggestion in an effort to make the other psychologist’s skin itch right down under the scales where you couldn’t scratch. But, now that he thought about it, it struck him as a pretty good idea. He could use help with the Tosevite hatchling, and Tessrek was the logical male to give it to him.

Still laughing, he picked up the telephone and called the office of the seniormost psychologist.

---