Harry Turtledove: Tilting the Balance

The trip across the ice gave him more time to think. It also convinced him that if he was going to live in the twentieth century, he’d use its tools where he could. He’d do better even if the Lizards did bomb him while he was just partway to Denver. When at last he got into Duluth, he went looking for the train station.

The hauler aircraft rolled to a stop. Ussmak stared out the window at the Tosevite landscape. It was different from the flat plains of the SSSR where the landcruiser driver had served before, but that didn’t make it any better, not as far as he was concerned. The plants were a dark, wet-looking green under sunlight that seemed too white, too harsh.

Not that the star Tosev adequately heated its third world. Ussmak felt the chill as soon as he descended from the hauler onto the concrete of the runway. Here, though, at least water wasn’t falling frozen from the sky. That was something.

“Landcruiser crew replacements!” a male bawled. Ussmak and three or four others who had just deplaned tramped over to him. The male took their names and identity numbers, then waved them into the back of an armored transporter.

“Where are we?” Ussmak asked as the machine jounced into life. “Whom are we fighting?” That was a better question; the names the Big Uglies gave to pieces of Tosev 3 meant little to him.

“This place is called France,” a gunner named Forssis answered. “I served here for a while shortly after we landed, before the commander decided it was largely pacified and transferred my unit to the SSSR.”

All the males let their mouths fall open in derisive laughter at that. Everything had seemed so easy in the days right after the landing. Ussmak remembered being part of a drive that had smashed Soviet landcruisers as if they were made of cardboard.

Even then, though, he should have had a clue. A sniper had picked off his commander when Votal, like any good landcruiser leader, stuck his head out the cupola to get a decent view of what was going on. And Krentel, the commander who replaced him, did not deserve the body paint that proclaimed his rank.

Well, Krentel was dead, too, and Telerep the gunner with him. A guerrilla-Ussmak did not know whether he was Russki or Deutsch-had blown the turret right off the landcruiser while they were trying to protect the crews cleaning up nuclear material scattered when the Big Uglies had managed to wreck the starship that carried the bulk of the Race’s atomic weapons.

From his driver’s position, Ussmak had bailed out of the landcruiser when it was stricken-out of the landcruiser and into radioactive mud. He’d been in a hospital ship ever since… till now.

“So whom are we fighting?” he repeated. “The Francais?”

“No, the Deutsche, mostly,” Forssis answered. “They were ruling here when we arrived. I hear the weapons we’ll be facing are better than the ones they threw at us the last time I was here.”

Silence settled over the transporter’s passenger compartment. Fighting the Big Uglies, Ussmak thought, was like poisoning pests: the survivors kept getting more resistant to what you were trying to do to them. And, like any other pests, the Big Uglies changed faster than you could alter your methods of coping with them.

The heated compartment, the smooth ride over a paved highway, and the soft purr of the hydrogen-burning engine helped most of the males doze off before long: veterans, they knew the value of snatching sleep while they had the chance. Ussmak tried to rest, too, but couldn’t. The longing for ginger gnawed at him and would not let go.

An orderly had sold him some of the precious herb in the hospital ship. He’d started tasting as much out of boredom as for any other reason. When he was full of ginger, he felt wise and brave and invulnerable. When he wasn’t-that was when he discovered the trap into which he’d fallen. Without ginger, he seemed stupid and fearful and soft-skinned as a Big Ugly, a contrast just made worse because he so vividly remembered how wonderful he knew himself to be when he tasted the powdered herb.

He didn’t care how much he gave the orderly for his ginger: he had pay saved up and nothing he’d rather spend it on. The orderly had an ingenious arrangement whereby he got Ussmak’s funds even though they didn’t go directly into his computer account.

In the end, it hadn’t saved him. One day, a new orderly came in to police up Ussmak’s chamber. Discreet questioning (Ussmak could afford to be discreet then, with several tastes hidden away) showed that the only thing he knew about ginger was the fleetlord’s general order prohibiting its use. Ussmak had stretched out the intervals between tastes as long as he could. But finally the last one was gone. He’d been gingerless-and melancholy-ever since.

The road climbed up through rugged mountains. Ussmak got only glimpses out the transporter’s firing ports. After the monotonous flatlands of the SSSR and the even more boring sameness of the hospital ship cubicle, a jagged horizon was welcome, but it didn’t much remind Ussmak of the mountains of Home.

For one thing, these mountains were covered with frozen water of one sort or another, a measure of how miserably cold Tosev 3 was. For another, the dark conical trees that peeked out through the mantling of white were even more alien to his eye than the Big Uglies.

Those trees also concealed Tosevites, as Ussmak discovered a short while later. Somewhere up there in the woods, a machine gun began to chatter. Bullets spanged off the transporter’s armor. Its own light cannon returned fire, filling the passenger compartment with thunder.

The males who had been dozing were jerked rudely back to awareness. They tumbled for the firing ports to see what was happening, Ussmak among them. He couldn’t see anything, not even muzzle flashes.

“Scary,” Forssis observed. “I’m used to sitting inside a landcruiser where the armor shields you from anything. I can’t help thinking that if the Tosevites had a real gun up there, we’d be cooked.”

Ussmak knew only too well that not even landcruiser armor guaranteed protection against the Big Uglies. But before he could say as much, the transporter driver came on the intercom: “Sorry about the racket, my males, but we haven’t rooted out all the guerrillas yet. They’re just a nuisance as long as we don’t run over any mines.”

The driver sounded downright cheery; Ussmak wondered if he was tasting ginger. “I wonder how often they do run over mines,” Forssis said darkly.

“This male hasn’t, or he wouldn’t still be driving us,” Ussmak said. A couple of the other landcruiser crewmales opened their mouths at him.

After a while, the mountains gave way to wide, gently rolling valleys. Forssis pointed to neat rows of gnarled plants that clung to stakes on south-facing slopes. He said, “I saw those when I was in this France place before. The Tosevites ferment alcoholic brews from them.” He ran his tongue over his lips. “Some have a very interesting flavor.”

The passenger compartment had no view straight forward. The driver had to make an announcement for the males he was hauling: “We are coming into the Big Ugly town of Besancon, our forward base for combat against the Deutsche. You will be assigned to crews here.”

All Ussmak had seen of Tosevite architecture was the wooden farming villages of the SSSR. Besancon was certainly different from those. He didn’t quite know what to make of it. Compared to the tall, blocklike structures of steel and glass that formed the cities of Home, its buildings seemed toys. Yet they were very ornate toys, with columns and elaborate stone and brickwork and steep roofs so the frozen water that fell from the sky hereabouts would slide off.

The Race’s headquarters in Besancon was on a bluff in the southeastern part of the town. Not only was the place on high ground, Ussmak discovered on alighting from the transporter that a river flowed around two sides of it. “Well sited for defense,” he remarked.