Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

The newcomer cast down his eyes. So did Ussmak. The new male said, “Good to see someone who shares my specialization.” He tossed his stuff onto a vacant cot. “What are you called, friend?”

“Ussmak. And you?”

“Drefsab.” The new driver swiveled both eye turrets. “What a dismal, ugly hole this is.”

“Too right,” Ussmak said. “Even for the Big Uglies who used to live here, it was nothing to boast about. For properly civilized males-” He let that hang. “Where did they transfer you from?”

“I’ve been serving in the far east of this continent, against the Chinese and Nipponese,” Drefsab answered.

“You must have come out of your eggshell lucky,” Ussmak said enviously. “That’s easy duty, from all I’ve heard.”

“The Chinese don’t have much in the way of landcruisers at all,” Drefsab agreed. “The Nipponese have some, but they aren’t very tough. Hit them and they’re guaranteed to brew up-one-shot firestarters, we call them.” The new male let his mouth fall open at the joke.

Ussmak laughed, too, but said, “Don’t get overconfident here or you’ll pay for it. I was in the SSSR just after the invasion, and the Soviets, while their landcruisers weren’t too bad, didn’t have the faintest idea how to use them. Then I got hurt, and then I came here. I didn’t believe what the males told me about the Deutsche, but I’ve been in action against them now, and it’s true.”

“I listen,” Drefsab said. “Tell me more.”

“Their new landcruisers have guns heavy enough to hurt us with a side or rear deck shot, and front armor thick enough to turn a glancing shot from one of our guns. You can forget about the one-shot firestarter business here. And they use their machines well: reverse slopes, ambushes, any trick you can think of and too many you’ve never imagined in your worst nightmares.”

Drefsab looked thoughtful. “As bad as that? I’ve heard of some of the things you’re talking about, but I figured half of that, maybe more, was males shooting off steam to haze the new fellow.”

“Listen, my friend, we were rolling north from here not long ago when we got our eye turrets handed to us.” Ussmak told Drefsab about the push that had started for Belfort and ended up back here at the Besancon barracks.

“We were held-by Big Uglies?” The new driver sounded as If he couldn’t believe it Ussmak didn’t blame him. When the Race tried to go somewhere on Tosev 3, it generally got there. In lower tones, Drefsab went on, “What happened? Were all the landcruisers tongue-deep in the ginger jar?”

Although Drefsab had spoken quietly, Ussmak scanned the barracks before he answered. No one was paying any particular attention. Good. Almost whispering, Ussmak said, “As a matter of fact, that might have had something to do with it. Have you been assigned to a landcruiser crew yet?”

“No,” Drefsab said.

“I’ll give you a few names to try to stay away from, then.”

“Thank you, superior sir.” By their paint, Drefsab and Ussmak were of virtually identical rank, but Drefsab honored him not only for the favor but also because of his longer service at this post. Now the new male glanced around the barracks. He too whispered: “Not that I have anything against a taste now and again, you understand-but not in combat, by the Emperor.”

After he’d raised his eyes from the ritual gesture of respect for the sovereign, Ussmak said cautiously, “No, that’s not so bad.” It was what he tried to do himself. But If Drefsab had asked him for a taste, he would have denied keeping any ginger. He had no reason to trust the other male.

Instead, though, Drefsab produced a tiny glass vial from one of the pockets of his equipment bag. “Want some of the herb?” he murmured. “We’re not in combat now.”

Ussmak’s suspicions flickered and blew out. When Drefsab poured a little ginger into his hand, Ussmak bent his head down and flicked it off the scales with his tongue. The new driver tasted, too. They sat companionably together, enjoying the surge of pleasure the powdered herb gave them.

“Very fine,” Ussmak said. “It makes me want to go out and kill all the Deutsche I can find-or maybe Hessef instead.” He had to explain that: “Hessef is my landcruiser commander. If ginger truly made you as smart as it makes you think you are, Hessef would be the greatest genius the Race ever produced. Barracks, battle, it’s all the same to him: a good enough time for a taste. And Tvenkel the gunner tastes enough to make him shoot before he takes proper aim. I’ve seen him do it.”

“That doesn’t strike me as smart, not if the Deutsche are as good as you make them out to be,” Drefsab said.

“They are,” Ussmak answered. “When we got to this miserable iceball of a planet, we had equipment and training simulations. The Deutsche had experience in real combat, and their equipment keeps getting better, while ours doesn’t. Let them choose the terms of the fight and they can be a handful.”

Drefsab made the vial disappear. “You don’t taste before you’re going into action?”

“I try not to.” Ussmak moved his eye turrets in a way that said he was ashamed of his own weakness. “When the hunger for ginger comes on a male-but you know about that.”

“Yes, I know about that,” Drefsab agreed soberly. “The way I look on it is this: a male can yield himself up to the herb and let it be all he lives for, or he can taste the herb as it suits him and go on with the rest of his life as best he can. That’s the road I try to follow, and if it has some bumps and rocky places in it-well, what road on Tosev 3 doesn’t?”

Ussmak stared at him in admiration. Here was a philosophy for a ginger taster-no, after hearing such words, he needed to be honest with himself: a ginger addict-who nonetheless tried to remember he was a male of the Race, obedient to orders, attentive to duty. He said to Drefsab, “Superior sir, I envy you your wisdom.”

Drefsab made a gesture of dismissal. “Wisdom? For all I know, I may well be fooling myself, and now you. Whatever it is, the price I paid to win it is much too high. Better by far the herb had never set its claws in me.”

“I don’t know,” Ussmak said. “After I’ve tasted, I feel as if ginger were the only worthwhile thing this miserable world produces.”

“After I’ve tasted, so do I,” Drefsab said. “But before, or when I need a taste badly and there’s none to be had… times like those, Ussmak, I’m certain ginger is worst for the Race, not best.”

Times like those, Ussmak had the same feeling. He’d heard stories that some males, if they got desperate enough for ginger, traded pieces of the Race’s military hardware for the herb. He’d never done anything like that himself, but he understood the temptation.

Before he found a safe way to tell that to Drefsab (some things you didn’t say directly even to a male who’d given you a taste of ginger, not until you were positive you could trust him with your life as well as with the herb), he heard a brief, shrill whistle in the air, followed by a loud crummp! The glass from a couple of windows in the barracks blew inward in a shower of tinkling shards.

Ussmak sprang to his feet. As he did so, a loudspeaker blared, “Mortars incoming from forest patch grid 27-Red. Pursuit in force-”

Ussmak didn’t wait to hear any more, not with a good taste of ginger running through him. “Come on,” he shouted to Drefsab. “Out to the landcruiser park.” Another mortar bomb hit in the yard in front of the barracks. His words punctuated by the blast, Drefsab said, “But I’ve been assigned to no crew.”

“So what? Some commander and gunner won’t want to wait for their own driver.” Ussmak was as sure of that as of his own name. Ginger ran rampant through the base at Besancon; some commander or other would be feeling more intrepid than patient.