Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

“You are sensible,” Nieh said, inclining his head to the little scaly devil. Liu Han listened to Essaff explaining to Ppevel that that was a gesture of respect. Nieh went on, “As we have noted”-his voice was dry; the People’s Liberation Army had noted it with bombs-“we demand that you return the girl child, you callously kidnapped from Liu Han here.”

Ttomalss jumped as if someone had jabbed him with a pin. “This is not a small matter!” he exclaimed in Chinese, and added an emphatic cough to show he meant it. Essaff was put in the odd position of translating for one little devil what a different one said.

Nieh Ho-T’ing raised an eyebrow. Liu Han suspected the gesture was wasted on the scaly devils, who had no eyebrows-nor any other hair. Nieh said, “What would you call a small matter, then? I could tell you I find the stuff from which you have made this tent very ugly, but that is hardly something worth negotiating. Compared to having all you imperialist aggressors leave China at once, the fate of this baby is small, or at least smaller.”

When that had been translated, Ppevel said, “Yes, that is a small matter compared to the other. In any case, this land is now ours, which admits of no discussion-as you are aware.”

Nieh smiled without replying in words. The European powers and the Japanese had said such things to China, too, but failed in their efforts to consolidate what they had taken at bayonet point Marxist-Leninist doctrine gave Nieh a long view of history, a view he’d been teaching to Liu Han.

But she knew from her own experience that the little scaly devils had a long view of history, too, one that had nothing to do with Marx or Lenin. They were inhumanly patient; what worked against Britain or Japan might fail against them. If they weren’t lying, even the Chinese, the most anciently and perfectly civilized nation in the world, might have been children beside them.

“Is my daughter well?” Liu Han asked Ttomalss at last. She dared not break down and cry, but talking about the girl made her nose begin to run in lieu of tears. She blew between her fingers before going on, “Are you taking good care of her?”

“The hatchling is both comfortable and healthy.” Ttomalss took out a machine of a sort Liu Han had seen before. He touched a stud. Above the machine, by some magic of the scaly devils, an image of the baby sprang into being. She was up on all fours, wearing only a cloth around her middle and smiling wide enough to show two tiny white teeth.

Liu Han did start to weep then. Ttomalss knew enough to understand that meant grief. He touched the stud again. The picture vanished. Liu Han didn’t know whether that made things better or worse. She ached to hold the baby in her arms.

Gathering herself, she said, “If you talk to people as equals or something close to equals, you do not steal their children from them. You can do one or the other, but not both. And if you do steal children, you have to expect people to do everything they can to hurt you because of it.”

“But we take the hatchlings to learn how they and the Race can relate to each other when starting fresh,” Ttomalss said, as if that were almost too obvious to need explanation.

Ppevel spoke to him in the scaly devils’ tongue. Essaff declined to translate what he said. Nieh looked a question to Liu Han. She whispered, “He says one thing they have learned is that people will fight for their hatchlings, uh, children. This may not have been what they intended to find out, but it is part of the answer.”

Nieh neither replied nor looked directly at Ppevel. Liu Han had enough practice at reading his face to have a pretty good notion that he thought Ppevel no fool. She had the same feeling about the little devil.

Ppevel’s eye turrets swung back toward her and Nieh Ho-T’ing. “Suppose we give back this hatchling,” he said through Essaff, ignoring another start of dismay from Ttomalss. “Suppose we do this. What do you give us in return? Do you agree to no more bombings like those that marred the Emperor’s birthday?”

Liu Han sucked in a long breath. She would have agreed to anything to have her baby back. But that decision was not hers to make. Nieh Ho-T’ing had authority there, and Nieh loved the cause more than any individual or that individual’s concerns. Abstractly, Liu Han understood that that was the way it should be. But how could you think abstractly when you’d just seen your baby for the first time since it was stolen?

“No, we do not agree to that,” Nieh said. “It is too much to demand in exchange for one baby who cannot do you any harm.”

“Giving back the hatchling would harm our research,” Ttomalss said.

Both Nieh and Ppevel ignored him. Nieh went on, “If you give us the baby, though, we will give you back one of your males whom we hold captive. He must be worth more to you than that baby is.”

“Any male is worth more to us than a Tosevite,” Ppevel said. “This is axiomatic. But the words of the researcher Ttomalss do hold some truth. Disrupting a long-term research program is not something we males of the Race do casually. We require more justflication for this than your simple demand.”

“Does child-stealing mean nothing to you as a crime?” Liu Han said.

“Not a great deal,” Ppevel answered indifferently. “The Race does not suffer from many of the fixations on other individuals with which you Tosevites are so afflicted.”

Worst, Liu Han realized, was that he meant it. The scaly devils were not evil, not in their own strange eyes. They were just so different from mankind that, when they acted by their own standards of what was right and proper, they couldn’t help horrifying the people on whom they inflicted those standards. Understanding that, though, did nothing to get her daughter back.

“Tell me, Ppevel,” she asked with a dangerous glint in her eye, “how long have you been assistant administrator for this region?”

Nieh Ho-T’ing’s gaze slid toward her for a moment, but he didn’t say anything or try to head her off. The Communists preached equality between the sexes, and Nieh followed that preaching-better than most, from what she’d seen. Hsia Shou-Tao’s idea of the proper position for women in the revolutionary movement, for instance, was on their backs with their legs open.

“I have not had this responsibility long,” Ppevel said. “I was previously assistant to the assistant administrator. Why do you ask this irrelevant question?”

Liu Han did not have a mouthful of small, sharp, pointed teeth, as the little scaly devils did. The predatory smile she sent Ppevel showed she did not need them. “So your old chief is dead, eh?” she said. “Did he die on your Emperor’s birthday?”

All three scaly devils lowered their eyes for a moment when Essaff translated “Emperor” into their language. Ppevel answered, “Yes, but-”

“Who do you think will replace you after our next attack?” Liu Han asked. Interrupting at a parley was probably bad form, but she didn’t care. “You may not think stealing children is a great crime, but we do, and we will punish all of you if we can’t reach the guilty one”-she glared at Ttomalss-“and you don’t make amends.”

“This matter requires further analysis within the circles of the Race,” Ppevel said; he had courage. “We do not say yes at this time, but we do not say no. Let us move on to the next item of discussion.”

“Very well,” Nieh Ho-T’ing said, and Liu Han’s heart sank. The little scaly devils were not in the habit of lying over such matters, and she knew it. Discussion on getting her daughter back would resume. But every day the little girl was away would make her stranger, harder to reclaim. She hadn’t seen a human being since she was three days old. What would she be like, even if Liu Han finally got her back?