Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

He’d expected Mordechai to blanch, but the Jew was unperturbed “That we can manage easier than you’d think. The Lizards don’t trust us as far as they used to, but we can still move pretty freely through the countryside-and we can get to the sea.”

“Then what?” lager said. “Put your saddlebag on a freighter and sail for New York?”

“You say it as a joke, but I think we could do it,” Mordechal answered. “There’s a surpnsing lot of water traffic going on; the Lizards don’t automatically attack it the way they do trains and lorries. But no, I hadn’t intended to put it on a freighter. We have ways of getting a submarine here without the Lizards’ noticing. We’ve done it a couple of times already, and it ought to be good for one more run.”

“A submarine?” American? Jager thought. No, more likely British. The Baltic had been a German lake; a few months earlier, a British U-boat captain would have been suicidal to poke his periscope into it. Now, though, Germany had more urgent worries than British subs. “A submarine.” This time, Jager made it a statement. “You know, that might be crazy enough to work.”

“Oh, we’re crazy, all right,” Mordechai said. “If we weren’t crazy before the war, you Nazis made us that way.” His laugh was full of self-mockery. “And now I must be crazier than ever, dickering to help Nazis make something that might be the end of the world. Only some ends are worse than others, eh?”

“Yes.” Jager felt just as strange, dickering with Communists and now Jews. Now that he was close to Germany again, he suddenly wondered how his superiors-and the Gestapo-would view his dealings since the Lizards blew his Panzer III out from under him. But unless the world had turned completely insane, what was in the lead-lined saddlebag would redeem almost any amount of ideological contamination. Almost.

“We are agreed?” Mordechai asked.

“We are agreed,” Jager said. Afterward, he was never sure which of them first stuck out a hand. They both squeezed, hard.

Atvar was busy checking the latest reports on how the Race was coping with the insane winter weather of Tosev 3 when a musical note from his computer reminded him of an appointment. He spoke into the intercom mike: “Drefsab, are you there?”

“Exalted Fleetlord, I am,” came the reply from an antechamber. Of course no one would presume to make the commander of the Race’s force wait, but formality persisted nonetheless.

“Enter, Drefsab,” Atvar declared, and pressed a button on his desk that made it possible for the operative to enter.

The fleetlord hissed in shocked dismay when Drefsab came into the office. The investigator had been one of his brightest males, infiltrating Straha’s staff to try to learn how the shiplord was spying on him and also dueling with Big Ugly intelligence agents who lacked his tools but made up for that with deceit unmatched even around the Emperor’s court. He’d always been dapper and crisp. Now his body paint was smeared, his scales dull, his pupils dilated.

“By the Emperor, what’s happened to you?” Atvar exclaimed.

“By the Emperor, Exalted Fleetlord, I find I must report myself unfit for duty,” Drefsab answered, casting down his eyes. Even his voice sounded as if he had rust in the works somewhere.

“I can see that,” Atvar said. “But what’s wrong? How have you become unfit?”

“I took it in my mind, Exalted Fleetlord, to investigate how traffic in the Tosevite herb called ginger was affecting our males. I realize I did so without orders, but I judged the problem to be of sufficient importance to justify the breach in conduct.”

“Go on,” Atvar said. Males who did things without orders were vanishingly rare in the Race, though that kind of initiative seemed all too common among the Big Uglies. If this was what happened when the Race tried to match the Tosevites for sheer energy, the fleetlord wished his starships had never left Home.

Drefsab said, “Exalted Fleetlord, to evaluate both the traffic in ginger and the reasons for its spreading use, I deemed it necessary to seek out and sample the herb for myself. I regret to have to inform the fleetlord that I myself have fallen victim to its addictive properties.”

Males of the Race’s primitive ancestors had been hunters, carnivores. Atvar bent his fingers into the position that gave his claws the best opportunity to rend and tear. He did not need more bad news, not now. Tosev 3, and especially winter on Tosev 3’s northern hemisphere, were giving him plenty of bad news by themselves.

He had to say something. He didn’t know what. At last he tried, “How could you do such a stupid thing, knowing your value to the Race?”

Drefsab hung his head in shame. “Exalted Fleetlord, in my arrogance I assumed I could investigate, could even sample the illicit herb, with no ill effects. I was, unfortunately, mistaken. Even now the craving burns in me.”

“What is it like, to be under the influence of this ginger substance?” The fleetlord had read reports, but his confidence in reports was not what it had been back Home. The report on Tosev 3, for instance, had made it sound like an easy conquest.

“I feel-bigger than myself, better than myself, as if I am capable of undertaking anything,” Drefsab said. “When I don’t have that feeling, I long for it with every scale of my skin.”

“Does this drug-induced feeling have any basis in reality?” Atvar asked. “That is, viewed objectively, do you in fact perform better while taking ginger than without it?” He had a moment of hope. If the noxious powder turned out to be a valuable pharmaceutical, some good might yet spring from Drefsab’s initiative.

But the agent only let out a long, whistling sigh. “I fear not, Exalted Fleetlord. I have examined work I produced shortly after tasting ginger. It contains more errors than I would normally find acceptable. I made them, but simply failed to notice them because of the euphoria the drug induces. And when I have not tasted ginger in some time… Exalted Fleetlord, it is very bad then.”

“Very bad,” Atvar echoed in a hollow voice. “How do you respond to this craving, Drefsab? Do you indulge it at every opportunity, or do you resist as best you can?”

“The latter,” Drefsab answered with a certain melancholy pride. “I go as long as I can between tastes, but that period seems to decrease as time passes. And I am also at less than maximum effectiveness in the black interval between tastes.”

“Yes.” Although with regret, Atvar’s thoughts now turned purely pragmatic: how could he get the best use out of this irrevocably damaged male? Decision came quickly. “If you find yourself more valuable to the Race than without taking it, use it at whatever level you find necessary for your continued function. Ignore all else. I so order you, for the good of the Race.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” Drefsab whispered.

Atvar went on, “I further order you to record in diary form all your reactions to this ginger. Physicians’ views of the problem are necessarily external; your analysis from the ginger user’s perspective will furnish them valuable data.”

“It shall be done,” Drefsab repeated, more heartily now.

“Further, continue your investigation into the trafficking in this drug. Bring down as many of those involved in the foul trade as you can.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” Drefsab said for the third time. For a moment, he sounded like the keen young male, the hunting solmek, he had always been for Atvar. But then he wilted before the fleetlord’s eyes, asking piteously, “Exalted Fleetlord, if I bring them all down, whence shall my further supply of ginger come?”