Page 92 of Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar 3)

Hou Yi goggled at him, then bowed his head-and almost banged it on the top of the table. “You are much too generous to me. I am unworthy of such an honor.”

Nieh knew that was politely insincere. “Nonsense,” he said. “The little scaly devils demanded it of me-they insisted, I tell you. Could I say ‘no’ to my masters, especially when I know what enjoyment you give them?”

“This is wonderful, wonderful,” Hou Yi babbled. “I am your slave for life.” He looked close to the maudlin tears of drunkenness.

“Just remember,” Nieh said, no idle warning in view of the show man’s condition, “before your next performance in front of the little scaly devils, you come to me with your case of insects, and I will mount the camera inside. Do not act as if you know it is there; the little devils want you to put on your show exactly as you would otherwise.”

“I shall obey you as a dutiful son obeys his father.” Hou Yi giggled, belched, set his head down on the table where he and Nieh Ho T’ing were drinking, and went to sleep.

Nieh looked down on him, then shrugged and left coins on the table to pay for thesamshu they had been drinking. He walked out of the Big Wine Vat and into the maze of Peking’shutungs. Torches and candles and lanterns and the occasional electric light made the alleys almost as bright as day. Nieh used every trick he knew to make sure no one was following him before he made his way back to the rooming house where the Communist cause flourished.

Sitting in the dining room there was Hsia Shou-Tao. To Nieh’s relief, his aide was alone; he never stopped worrying that one of the tarts Hsia brought back here would prove to be an agent of the scaly devils or the Kuomintang or even the Japanese. Hsia simply was not careful enough about such things.

In front of him stood a jar ofsamshu identical to the one from which Hou Yi had been drinking. He also had plates with crackers and meat dumplings and pickled baby crabs and a salad of jellyfish and gelatin. When he saw Nieh, he called, “Come join my feast There’s enough here for two to celebrate.”

“I’ll gladly do that,” Nieh said, waving to the serving girl for a cup and a pair of chopsticks. “What are we celebrating?”

“You know Yang Chueh-Ai, the mouse man? The little scaly devils liked his act, and they want him back. He says they didn’t do a careful search of the cages he carries his mice in, either. We shouldn’t have any trouble planting our bomb inside there.” Hsia slurped at hissamshu. “Ahh, that’s good.”

Nieh poured himself a cup of the potent millet liquor. Before he drank, he ate a couple of crackers and a pickled crab. “That is good news,” he said as he finally lifted his cup. “Hou Yi, one of the fellows who shows dung beetles, told me the same thing. We can get bombs in amongst the little scaly devils; that much seems clear. The real trick will be to have them invite all the beast-show men at the same time, so we can do them as much damage as possible.”

“You’re not wrong there,” Hsia said with a hoarse, raucous chuckle. “Can’t use the beast-show men more than once, either, poor foolish fellows. Once should do the job, though.” He made a motion of brushing something disgusting from the front of his tunic.

To Hsia, the beast-show men were to be used and expended like any other ammunition. Nieh was just as willing to expend them, but regretted the necessity. The cause was important enough to use innocent dupes to further it, but he would not forget the blood on his hands. Hsia didn’t worry about it.

“The other thing we need to make sure of is that we have good timers on all our explosives,” Nieh said. “We want them to go off as close to the same time as we can arrange.”

“Yes, yes, Grandmother,” Hsia said impatiently. He’d had a good deal to drink already, unless Nieh was much mistaken. “I have a friend who is dickering with the Japanese outside of town. From what he says, they have more timers than they know what to do with.”

“I believe that,” Nieh said. With the coming of the little scaly devils to China, Japanese forces south of their puppet state in Manchukuo were reduced to little more than guerrilla bands, and, unlike the Communist guerrillas, did not enjoy the protection of the populace in which they moved. Too many atrocities had taught the Chinese what sort of soldiers the Japanese were.

But Japan was an industrial power. It had been able to manufacture for its troops all sorts of devices the Chinese, unable to produce the like locally, had to beg, borrow, or steal. They had got materiel from the British, the Americans, and the Russians, but now both capitalist imperialists and fraternal socialist comrades were locked in their own struggle for survival. That left the Japanese remnants as the best source for advanced munitions.

Nieh said, “A pity the little scaly devils did not wait another generation before beginning their imperialist onslaught. The spread of industry over the world and the advance of revolutionary progressive forces would have made their speedy defeat a certainty.”

Hsia Shou-Tao reached for a dumpling with his chopsticks. They crossed in his fingers, leaving him with a confused expression on his face. If he was too drunk to handle them properly, he had indeed had quite a lot ofsamshu. He said, “We’ll beat them anyway, and the damned eastern dwarfs from Japan, and the Kuomintang, and anybody else who gets in our way.” He tried for the dumpling again, and succeeded in capturing it He popped it into his mouth, chewed, swallowed. “Jus’ likethat.”

Nieh thought about lecturing him on the difference between something’s being historically inevitable and its being easy to accomplish, but concluded he’d be wasting his breath. Hsia didn’t need a lecture. What he needed was a bucket of cold water poured over his head.

Hsia belched heroically. From confused, his face took on a look of drunken foxiness. “You think Liu Han is going to get her brat back?” he asked, breathingsamshu fumes across the table into Nieh Ho T’ing’s face.

“That I don’t know,” Nieh said. Like any scientific doctrine, the historical dialectic considered the motion through time of mankind as a mass; the vagaries of individuals were beneath its notice.

Leering, Hsia found another question: “You get inside her Jade Gate yet?”

“None of your business,” Nieh snapped. How did Hsia know he wanted her? He was sure he’d been discreet-but evidently not discreet enough.

His aide laughed at him. “That means no.”

Looking at Hsia Shou-Tao’s red, mirth-filled countenance, Nieh decided Hsia didn’t need just a bucke

t of water poured over him. Clobbering him with the bucket afterwards seemed a good idea, too.

Kirel stood beside Atvar and studied the evolving dispositions of the Race’s infantrymales and armor. For a moment, one of his eye turrets slid away from the map and toward his superior. “Exalted Fleetlord, this had better work,” he said.

“I am aware of that, yes,” Atvar answered. He was painfully aware of it, and having Kirel remind him of it so bluntly didn’t make him feel any easier about what he’d set in motion. “If spirits of Emperors past look down on us in approval, we shall smash Deutschland once for all.”

Kirel did not say anything, but his tailstump twitched a little. So did Atvar’s, in irritation. He could read his subordinate’s thoughts: not so very long ago-though it seemed an age-he’d promised to smash Britain once for all. That hadn’t worked out. In spite of hurting the British, the Race had hurt itself worse, and Britain remained in the war.

“This time, it will be different,” the fleetlord insisted. “This time, our logistics are far better than they were for the invasion of that pestiferous island.” He brought up highlights on the map. “Instead of having to fly males and materiel long distances to bring them into the battle, we shall be operating from our own long-established strongholds on either side of the Deutsche, from France and Poland. We shall move forward with both forces and crush the Big Uglies between us.”

“So the operational planners have maintained,” Kirel said. “So they would maintain, the better to underline their usefulness to our efforts. If reality matches the computer simulations, this operation will succeed. But how often, Exalted Fleetlord, does reality match simulations on Tosev 3?”

“We know what the Deutsche have,” Atvar said. “We have even extrapolated that they will have some new weapons, with performance improved over those with which we are familiar: when dealing with the Big Uglies, as you say, an upward slope on the projection line seems as reasonable as one that is flat for us. Even given that, though, the projections show us beating them.”

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