Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

Reuven, Rivka, and he all shared one crowded bed. He gently rolled his son against the far wall. Reuven mumbled and thrashed, but didn’t wake up. Moishe got into bed next to him, held up the covers so Rivka could slide in, too.

His hand brushed her hip as he let the blankets down over them. She turned toward him. The lamps gave just enough light to let him see the questioning look on her face. The touch had been as much an accident as a caress, but he drew her to him just the same. The questioning look turned to a smile.

Later, they lay nestled together like spoons, her backside warm against the bottom of his belly. It was a gentle way to make love, and one not likely to disturb their son. Moishe stroked Rivka’s hair. She laughed quietly. “What’s funny?” he asked. He could hear sleepiness blur his voice.

She laughed again. “We didn’t do-this-so much when we were first married.”

“Well, maybe not,” he said. “I was just starting medical school and busy all the time, and then the baby came…”

And now, he thought, what else is there to do? It’s too dark to read much, we’re both sleeping a lot-if we didn’t take our pleasure from each othet we’d be as cross as a couple of bears cooped up down here.

He didn’t think saying he enjoyed Rivka’s body because there wasn’t anything else to do would endear him to her. Instead, he said with mock severity, “Most women, I hear, kvetch because their husbands don’t pay them enough attention. Are you complaintng because I pay you too much?”

“I didn’t think I was complaintng.” She moved away from the edge of the bed, and against him. Pressed tight against her firm flesh, he felt himself begin to rise again. So did she. Without a word, she raised a leg enough to let him slip himself back into her. Her breath sighed out when he did.

No hurry, he thought. We aren’t going anywhere. Unhurriedly, he tried to make the best of where they were.

The door to Bobby Fiore’s cell hissed open. It wasn’t the usual time for food, as well as he could judge without any clock. He looked around hopefully. Maybe the Lizards were bringing in Liu Han.

But no. It was only Lizards: the usual armed guards and another one, the latter with more elaborate body paint than the others. He’d figured out that was a mark of status among them, just as a man who wore a fancy suit was likely to be a bigger wheel than one in bib overalls and a straw hat.

The Lizard with the expensive paint job said something in his own language, too fast for Fiore to follow. He said as much, I don’t understand being a phrase he’d found worth memorizing. The Lizard said, “Come-with,” in English.

“It shall be done, superior sir,” Fiore answered, trotting out a couple of other stock phrases. He got to his feet and approached the Lizard-not too close, though, because he’d learned that made the guards anxious. He didn’t want anybody with a gun anxious about him.

The guards fell in around him, all of them too far away for him to try grabbing one of those guns. He wasn’t feeling suicidal this morning-assuming it was morning; only God and the Lizards knew for sure-so he didn’t try.

When the Lizards took him to Liu Han’s cell, they turned right out the door. This time they turned left. He didn’t know whether to be curious or apprehensive, and finally settled for a little of each: heading someplace out of the ordinary might be dangerous, but it gave him the chance to see something new. After being cooped up so long with essentially nothing to see, that counted for a good deal.

The trouble was, just because something was new didn’t necessarily make it exciting. Corridors remained corridors, their ceilings unpleasantly close to his head. Some were bare metal, others painted a flat off-white. The Lizards who passed him in those corridors paid him no more attention than he would have given a dog walking down the street. He wanted to shout at them, just to make them jump. But that would have made the guards jumpy, too, and maybe earned him a bullet in the ribs, so he didn’t.

Peering through open doorways was more interesting. He tried to figure out what the Lizards in those rooms that weren’t cells were up to. Most of the time, he couldn’t. A lot of the aliens just sat in front of what looked like little movie screens. Fiore couldn’t see the pictures on them, just that they were in color: the bright squares stood out in the midst of silver and white.

Then came something new: an oddly curved stairway. But as he descended it, Fiore discovered that while his eyes saw the curve, his feet couldn’t feel it, and when he got to the bottom, he seemed lighter than he had up at the top. He shifted his weight back and forth. No, he wasn’t imagining it.

Boy, if I’d been this light on my feet, I’d’ve made the big leagues years ago, he thought. Then he shook his head. Maybe not. His bat had always been pretty light, too.

The Lizards took the weird stairs and the change in weight utterly for granted. They hustled him along the corridors on this level, which didn’t seem any different from those up above. At last they took him into one of the rooms with the movie screens.

The Lizard who’d ordered him out of his own cell spoke to the one who waited in there. That one had an even spiffier paint job than the alien who’d come in with the guards. Fiore couldn’t follow what the Lizards said as they talked back and forth, but he heard his own name several times. The Lizards massacred it worse than Liu Han did.

The alien who’d been in the room. surprised him by speaking decent English: “You are the Tosevite male Bobby Fiore, the one mated to the female Liu Han in an exclusive”-the word came out as one long hiss-“arrangement?”

“Yes, superior sir,” Fiore answered, also in English. He took a small chance by asking, “Who are you, superior sir?”

The Lizard didn’t get mad. “I am Tessrek, senior psychologist.” More hisses there. Tessrek went on, “I seek to learn more about this-arrangement.”

“What do you want to know?” Fiore wondered if the Lizards had figured out Liu Han was pregnant yet. He or she would have to spell things out pretty soon if they kept on being dumb about it.

They knew more than he’d thought. Tessrek turned a knob on the desk behind which he was sitting. Out of thin air, Fiore heard himself saying, “Goddamn, who woulda thought my first kid would be half Chink?” Tessrek turned the knob again, then asked, “This mean the female Liu Han will lay eggs-no, will reproduce; you Big Uglies do not lay eggs-the female Liu Han will reproduce?”

“Uh, yeah,” Fiore said.

“This is as a result of your matings?” Tessrek twiddled with another knob. The little screen behind him, which had been a blank blue square, started showing a picture.

Stag film, Fiore thought; he’d seen a few in his time. This one was in color good enough for Technicolor, not the grainy black-and-white typical of the breed. The color was what he noticed first; only half a heartbeat later did he realize the movie was of Liu Han and him.

He took a step forward. He wanted to squeeze Tessrek’s neck until the Lizard’s strange eyes popped from his head. The murder on his face must have shown even to the guards, because a couple of them hissed a sharp warning and trained their weapons on his midsection. Reluctantly, every muscle screaming to go on, he checked himself.

Tessrek seemed to have no notion of what had rattled his cage. The psychologist went on blithely, “This mating-this spawn, you would say-you and the female Liu Han will care for it?”

“I guess so,” Bobby mumbled. Behind the Lizard, the dirty picture went on, Liu Han’s face slack with ecstasy, his own intent above her. In a distant way, he wondered how the Lizards managed to show a movie in a lighted room with no projector visible. He made himself come back to the question. “Yeah, that’s what we’ll do if you”- things -“let us.”