Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

Today, though, he furiously resented the tests. He tried to get the technicians to hurry through them, snapped when they sometimes couldn’t, and had them snapping back at him. “I’m sorry, landcruiser driver Ussmak,” one of the males said. “I didn’t realize you had an appointment with the fleetlord this forenoon.”

“No, it must be an audience with the Emperor,” another technician suggested.

Fuming, Ussmak subsided. He was so upset, he almost forgot to cast down his eyes at the mention of his sovereign. As if to punish him, the males at the lab worked slower instead of faster. By the time they finally let him go back to his cubicle, the orderly with the green rings on his arms was gone.

Another desolate day passed. Ussmak kept trying to recapture the sensation the powder had given him. He could remember it, and clearly, but that wasn’t the same as-or as good as-feeling it again.

When the orderly did show up at last, Ussmak all but tackled him. “Let me have some more of that wonderful stuff you gave me the other day!” he exclaimed.

The orderly put up both hands in the fending-off gesture the Race used to show refusal. “Can’t do it” He sounded regretful and sly at the same time, a combination that should have made Ussmak see warning lights.

But Ussmak wasn’t picking up subtleties, not at that moment “What do you mean, you can’t do it?” He stared in blank dismay. “Did you use it all up? Don’t tell me you used it all up!”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t” The orderly nervously turned his eyes this way and that. “Keep your voice down, will you, friend? Listen-there’s something I didn’t tell you about that stuff the other day, and you better hear it”

“What?” Ussmak wanted to grab the cutpurse or malingerer or whatever he was and shake the truth-or at least some more powder-out of him.

“Here, come on, settle down, friend.” The orderly saw-would have needed to be blind to miss-his agitation. “Well, what you need to know is, this stuff-the Big Uglies call it ginger, so you know that, too-anyhow, this stuff is under ban by order of the fleetlord.”

“What?” Ussmak stared again. “Why?”

The orderly spread clawed bands. “Am I the fleetlord?”

“But you had this-ginger, did you say? — before,” Ussmak said. Suddenly, breaking regulations seemed a lot less heinous than it had.

“The ban was in force then, too.” The orderly sounded smug. Of course, he had the green arm stripes to show what he thought of regulations be found inconvenient in one way or another.

Up until the moment his tongue touched ginger, Ussmak had been a law-abiding male, as most males of the Race were. Looking back on things, he wondered why. What had obeying laws and following orders ever gained him? Only a dose of radiation poisoning and the anguish of watching friends die around him.

But breaking a lifetime of conditioning did not come easy. Hesitantly, he asked, “Could you get me some even if-even if it is banned?”

The orderly studied him. “I might-just might, you understand-be able to do that, friend-”

“Oh, I hope you can,” Ussmak broke in.

“-but if I do, it’s gonna cost you,” the orderly finished, unperturbed.

Ussmak was confused. “What do you mean, cost me?”

“Just what I said.” The orderly spoke as if he were a hatchling still wet with the liquids from his egg. “You want more ginger, friend, you’re gonna have to pay me for it. I’ll take commissary scrip, voluntary electronic transfer from your account to one I have set up, Big Ugly souvenirs that I can resell, all kinds of things. I’m a flexible male; you’ll find that out”

“But you gave me the first bit of ginger for nothing,” Ussmak said, confused more than ever and hurt now, too. “I thought you were just being kind, helping me get through one of those endless days.”

The orderly’s mouth dropped open. “Why shouldn’t the first taste be free? It shows you what I’ve got. And you want what I’ve got, don’t you, friend?”

Ussmak hated to be laughed at The orderly’s arrogant assumption of superiority also angered him. “Suppose I report you to the discipline-masters? We’ll see bow you laugh then, by the Emperor.”

But the orderly retorted, “Suppose you do? Yeah, I’ll draw some more punishment, and likely worse than this, but you, friend, you’ll never taste ginger again, not from me, not from anybody else, either. If that’s how you want it, you go ahead and make that call.”

Never taste ginger again? The idea appalled Ussmak so much, he never wondered if the orderly was telling the truth. What did he know about ethics, or lack of ethics, among ginger sellers? Quickly, he said, “How much do you want?”

“Thought you’d be sensible.” The orderly ticked off rates on his claws. “If it’s just another taste you want, that’ll cost you half a day’s pay. But if you want a vial like the one you saw the other day, with enough ginger in it for maybe thirty tastes, that’s a tenday’s worth of pay. Cheap at the price, eh?”

“Yes.” With little to spend his money on, Ussmak had most of it banked in the fleet’s payroll accounting system. “Let me have a vial. What’s your account code, so I can make the transfer?”

“Transfer it to this code.” The orderly gave him the number, written down on a scrap of paper. “I’ll be able to use it, but the computer won’t pick up that it’s mine.”

“How did you manage that?” Ussmak asked, genuinely curious. Males could be bought, perhaps, but how did you go about bribing a computer?

The orderly let his mouth fall open again, but only a little: he wanted Ussmak to share the joke. “Let’s say there’s somebody who works in payrolls and likes ginger just as much as you do. I’m not gonna tell you any more than that, but I don’t need to tell you any more than that, do I? You’re a clever male, friend; I don’t have to draw you a circuit diagram.”

Well, well, Ussmak thought He wondered how long this clandestine trade in ginger had been going on, how widely its corruption had spread among the Race, and whether anyone in authority had the slightest notion it was there.

Those were all interesting questions. None, though, was as urgent to Ussmak as getting his tongue on some of the preious powdered herb. Like any compartment in a starship, his cubicle had a computer terminal. He used his own account code to access his payroll records, transferred a tenday’s salary to the code the orderly had given him. “There,” he said. “Now, when do I get my ginger?”

“Eager, aren’t you?” the orderly said. “Let’s see what I can do.”

Naive though he was, Ussmak belatedly realized the orderly might keep his money and give him nothing in return. If that happened, he resolved to tell the authorities about the ginger trade and take the cheater down into punishment with him. But the orderly, with the air of a stage magician producing a bracelet from someone’s snout, handed him a vial full of what he craved.

He wanted to pop it open and start tasting it right then. Somehow, though, he didn’t feel easy about doing it in front of the orderly: he didn’t want the fast-talking male to see what a hold he had on him. He knew that was probably foolish; how could the orderly not have a good notion of how much he desired ginger? He held back even so.

He wondered about something else. “Suppose I start running out of pay but still want more ginger? What do I do then?”

“You could do without” The cold, callous ring in the orderly’s voice chilled Ussmak. Then the fellow said, “Or you can find friends of your own to sell it to, and use what you make to buy more for yourself.”

“I-see.” Ussmak wondered about that. It might work for a while, but before too long, it seemed to him, every male in the invasion fleet would be selling ginger to every other male. He started to ask the orderly about that-the fellow certainly acted as if he had all the answers-but the male, having made his profit, left the healing cubicle without so much as a farewell.