Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

He got the idea Harbin was a peculiar kind of place even by Tosevite standards, which was saying a good deal. Nipponese troops were the most aggressively visible piece of the blend; in a town near a fighting front, that was not surprising. What was surprising was the way they knocked around Big Uglies not in uniform, natives who, to Teerts’ inexperienced eyes, looked no different from themselves save in clothing.

The farther east Teerts’ vehicle went, the more he saw of another variety of Big Ugly: pink-skinned, with light-colored-brown or even yellow-tufts of fluff or fur or whatever it was on top of their heads. They seemed less voluble than the darker natives who made up most of the local population, and went about their business with a stolid determination-that impressed Teerts.

He turned to Major Okamoto. “These pale Tosevites”-he’d learned, by painful experience, never to say Big Ugly to a Big Ugly’s face-“may I ask where they come from?”

“No,” Okamoto answered at once. “Prisoners may not spy. No questions from you, do you hear me? Obey!”

“It shall be done,” Teerts said, anxious not to anger his captor. The small part of him that was not hungry and afraid insisted the Big Ugly was being foolish: he would never escape to tell what he knew. But Okamoto tolerated no argument, so Teerts gave him none.

The vehicle pulled up in front of a building from which flew Nipponese flags, red ball on white ground. Several antiaircraft guns poked their noses into the sky from sandbagged installations around it. When Teerts was flying killercraft, he’d laughed at such puny opposition. He’d stopped laughing when the Big Uglies shot him down. He hadn’t laughed since.

The guards got out of the vehicle. One unlocked Teerts’ door and pulled it open, then jumped back so the other could level-his rifle at the pilot. “Out!” they yelled together in Nipponese. Out Teerts came, marveling as usual that the Big Uglies could find his unarmed and miserable self so dangerous. He. only wished they were right.

Since they were unfortunately mistaken, he let them lead him into the building. The stairs did not fit his size or his gait. He climbed them anyhow; the interrogation chamber was on the third floor. He walked. in with trepidation. Some very unpleasant things had happened to him in there.

Today, though, the three Big Uglies behind the desk all wore pilot’s wings. That relieved Teerts, a little. If these questioners were pilots, they’d presumably ask him about his killercraft. At least he would know the answers to their questions. Other interrogators had grilled him about the Race’s landcruisers, ground tactics, automatic weapons, even its diplomatic dealings with other Tosevite empires. He’d pleaded ignorance, and they’d punished him for it even though he told the truth.

As he’d learned, he bowed low to the interrogation team and then to Major Okamoto, who interpreted for them. They didn’t bow back; he gathered a prisoner forfeited the right to any gesture of respect.

The Big Ugly in the middle turned loose a torrent of barking Nipponese. Okamoto translated: “Colonel Doi is interested in the tactics you use with your killercraft against our planes.”

Teerts bowed to the Tosevite who had asked the question. “Tactics are simple: you approach the enemy as closely as you can, preferably from behind and above so you are not detected, then you destroy him with missiles or cannon shells.”

Doi said, “True, this is the basis of any successful fighter run. But how do you achieve it? Where precisely do you deploy your wing man? What is his role in the attack?”

“We commonly fly in groups of three,” Teerts answered: “a leader and two trailers. But once in combat, we fly independent missions.”

“What? That is nonsense,” Doi exclaimed.

Teerts turned and bowed nervously to Okamoto, hoping to appease him. “Please tell the colonel that, while it would be nonsense for his aircraft, ours are superior enough to those you Tosevites fly to make my words the truth.”

He didn’t like the grunt that came from the colonel. Of itself, one of his eye turrets swiveled to the collection of nasty tools hung on the wall behind him. When the Race needed to interrogate one of its own, or a Rabotev, or a Hallessi, they pumped the suspected offender full of drugs and then pumped him dry. No doubt physicians were hard at work developing drugs that would let them do the same for the Big Uglies.

The Nipponese were more primitive and more brutal. Techniques to gain information by inflicting pain were lost in the mists of the Race’s ancient history. The Nipponese, however, had proved intimately familiar with such techniques. Teerts suspected they could have hurt him much worse had he been one of their own kind. Since he was strange and valuable, they’d gone easy for fear of killing him before they’d wrung out everything they wanted to know. What they had done was quite ingenious enough.

He felt like cheering when the Big Ugly named Doi changed the subject: “How do these missiles of yours continue to follow aircraft even through the most violent evasive actions?”

“Two ways,” Teerts answered. “Some of them home on the heat from the target aircraft’s engine, while others use radar.”

The Nipponese translation of that took a good deal longer to say than Teerts’ words had. Colonel Doi’s answer was also lengthy, and Major Okamoto fumbled a good deal in putting it into the language of the Race. What he did say sounded like a paraphrase: “The colonel instructs you to give us more information on this radar.”

“Do you mean he doesn’t know what it is?” Teerts asked.

“Do not be insolent, or you shall be punished,” Okamoto snapped. “He instructs you to give us more information on radar. Do so.”

“The Deutsche, the Americans, and the British use it,” Teerts said, as innocently as he could. When that got translated, all three of his interrogators let out excited exclamations. He just stood quietly, waiting for the hubbub to die down. He thought-he hoped-he’d managed to. imply the Nipponese were barbarous even by Tosevite standards.

Eventually, Doi said, “Go on, prisoner. Speak of this device as you use it.”

“It shall be done.” Teerts bowed, granting the Big Ugly reluctant respect for not conceding Nipponese ignorance. “We shoot out a beam of rays like light but of longer wavelength, then detect those that reflect back from the objects they strike. From these we learn distance, speed, altitude, and bearing of targets.”

The Nipponese chattered among themselves again before the one on- the left directly addressed Teerts. Okamoto translated: “Lieutenant Colonel Kobayashi says you are to help our technicians build one of these radar machines.”

“I can’t do that!” Teerts blurted, staring appalled at Kobayashi. Did the Big Ugly have any idea what he was asking for? Teerts couldn’t have built, or even serviced, a radar set with the Race’s tools, parts, and instruments. To expect him to do it with the garbage that passed for electronics among the Tosevites was insane.

Kobayashi spoke a few ominous-sounding words. They sounded even more ominous when Okamoto turned them into the language of the Race: “You refuse?”

Again, Teerts’ eyes involuntarily swung back to the instruments of pain on the wall behind him. “No, I don’t refuse, I am not able,” he said, so quickly that Okamoto had to force him to repeat himself. “I have not the knowledge either of radar itself or of your forms of apparatus. I am a pilot, not a radar technician.”

“Honto?” Kobayashi asked Okamoto. That was one Nipponese word Teerts had learned; it meant Is it true? He waited fearfully for the interpreter’s reply. If Okamoto thought he was lying, he would likely renew his acquaintance with some of those instruments.