Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

As he took her in his arms, Yeager wondered if she just needed reassurance after the brief, wordless, but unpleasant encounter with Jens Larssen. If she did, he was ready to give it. If you couldn’t do that, you didn’t have much business being a husband, as far as he was concerned.

Liu Han felt like a trapped animal with the little scaly devils staring at her from all sides. “No, superior sirs, I don’t know where Bobby Fiore went that night,” she said in a mixture of the little devils’ language and Chinese. “These men wanted him to teach them to throw, and he went with them to do that. He didn’t come back.”

One of the scaly devils showed her a photograph. It was not a plain black-and-white image; she’d seen those before, and even the color pictures the foreign devils printed in some of their fancy magazines. But this photograph was of the sort the little scaly devils made: not only more real than any human could match, but also with the depth the scaly devils put into their moving pictures. It made her feel as if she could reach in and touch the man it showed.

“Have you seen this male before?” the scaly devil holding the picture demanded in vile but understandable Chinese.

“I-may have, superior sir,” Liu Han said, gulping. Just because she felt she could reach into the picture didn’t mean she wanted to. The man it showed was obviously dead, lying in a bean field with his blood and brains splashing the plants and ground around his head. He had a neat hole just above his left eye.

“What do you mean, you may have?” another scaly devil shouted. “Either you have or you have not. We think you have. Now answer me!”

“Please, superior sir,” Liu Han said desperately. “People dead look different from people alive. I cannot be certain. I am sorry, superior sir.” She was sorry Lo-for the dead man in the picture was undoubtedly he-had ever wanted Bobby Fiore to show him how to throw. She was even sorrier he and his henchmen had come to the hut and taken Bobby Fiore away.

But she was not going to tell the little scaly devils anything she didn’t have to. She knew they were dangerous, yes, and they had her in their power. But she also had a very healthy respect-fear was not too strong a word-for the Communists. If she spilled her guts to the little devils, she knew she would pay: maybe not right now, but before too long.

The scaly devil holding the picture let his mouth hang open: he was laughing at her. “To you, maybe. To us, all Big Uglies look alike, alive or dead.” He translated the joke into his own language for the benefit of his comrades. They laughed, too.

But the little devil who had shouted at Liu Han said, “This is no joke. These bandits injured males of the Race. Only through the mercy of the watchful Emperor”-he cast down his eyes, as did the other little devils-“was no one killed.”

No one killed? Liu Han thought. What of Lo and his friends? She was reminded of signs the European devils were said to have put up in their parks in Shanghai: NO DOGS OR CHINESE ALLOWED. To the little scaly devils, all human beings might as well have been dogs.

“We should give her the drug that makes her tell the truth,” the scaly devil with the picture said. “Then we will find out what she really knows.”

Liu Han shivered. She was ready to believe the scaly devils had such a drug. They were devils, after all, with powers effectively unlimited. If they gave it to her, they would find out she hadn’t told them everything, and then… then they would do something horrible to her. She didn’t care to think about that.

But then Ttomalss spoke up. The-what had Bobby Fiore named his calling? — the psychologist, that was it, said, “No, Ssamraff, for two reasons. No first because the drug is not as effective as we believed it would be when we first made it. And no second because this female Big Ugly has a hatchling growing inside her.”

Most of that was in Chinese, so Liu Han could follow it. Ssamraff replied in the same language: “Who cares what she has growing inside her?”

“This growth is disgusting, yes, but it is part of a research study,” Ttomalss insisted. “Having the Big Ugly male who sired it disappear is bad enough. But drugs could do to Big Ugly hatchlings what they sometimes do to our own as they grow in the egg before the female lays it. We do not want this hatchling to emerge defective if we can avoid it. Therefore I say no to this drug.”

“And I say we need to learn who is trying to foully murder males of the Race,” Ssamraff retorted. “This, to me, is more important.” But he spoke weakly; his body paint was less ornate than Ttomalss’, which, Liu Han had gathered, meant he was of lower rank.

The little devils had made her give her body to strange men in their experiments. They had watched her pregnancy with the same interest she would have given to a farrowing sow, and no more. Now, though, because she was pregnant, they wouldn’t give her the drug that ‘might have made’ her betray Lo and the other Reds. About time I got some good out of being only an animal to them, she thought.

Ssamraff said, “If we cannot drug the female, how can we properly question her, then?” He swung his turreted eyes toward Liu Han. She still had trouble reading the scaly devils’ expressions, but if that wasn’t a venomous stare, she’d never seen one. “I am sure she is telling less than she knows.”

“No, superior sir;” Liu Han protested, and then stopped in some confusion: not only Ssamraff, but all the devils were staring at her. She realized he’d spoken in his tongue-as had she when she answered.

“You know more of our words than I thought,” Ttomalss said in Chinese.

Liu Han gratefully returned to the same language: “I am very sorry, superior sir, but I did not realize I was not supposed to learn.”

“I did not say that,” the psychologist answered. “But because you know, we have to be more careful with what we say around you.”

“Because she knows, we should be trying to find out what she knows,” Ssamraff insisted. “This male she was mating with had something to do with the attack on our guard station. I think she is lying when she says she knows nothing of these other males we killed. They are dead, and the one she mates with is missing. Is this not a connection that hisses to be explored?”

“We are exploring it,” Ttomalss answered. “But, as I said, we shall not use drugs.”

Ssamraff turned one eye turret toward Liu Han to see how she would react as he spoke in his own language: “What about pain, then? The Big Uglies are very good at using pain when they have questions to ask. Maybe this once we should imitate them.”

A lump of ice formed in Liu Han’s belly. The Communists and the Kuomintang-to say nothing of local bandit chiefs routinely used torture. She had no reason to doubt the little scaly devils would be devilishly good at it.

But Ttomalss said, “No, not while the hatchling grows inside her. I told you, you may not disturb the conditions under which this experiment is being conducted.”

This time, even the little devil who’d shouted at Liu Han supported Ttomalss: “Using pain to force our will even on a Big Ugly is-” Liu Han didn’t understand the last word he used, but Ssamraff sputtered in indignation almost laughably obvious, so it must have been one he didn’t care for.

When he could speak instead of sputtering, he said, “I shall protest this interference with an important military investigation.”

“Go ahead,” Ttomalss said. “And I shall protest your interference with an important scientific investigation. You have no sense of the long term, Ssamraff. We are going to rule the Big Uglies for the next hundred thousand years. We need to learn how they work. Don’t you see you are making that harder?”