Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“Fetch him hither,” Atvar said.

“It shall be done.”

Atvar hung in midair as he awaited the arrival of the Tosevite official. He’d ordered the spin taken off the bannership when he began receiving natives. He was used to free-fall; while he did not particularly enjoy it, he endured it without trouble, as did his crew. The Tosevites, however, were without space travel. Finding themselves weightless might fluster them and put them at a disadvantage. Atvar hoped so, at any rate.

He let his jaws fall open in amusement as he remembered the unfortunate native from the empire called Deutschland who had lost all his stomach contents, luckily while still in the transfer craft. That poor befuddled Ribbensomething had been in no state even to try to negotiate his empire’s submission to the Empire.

The door to the office opened. An officer charged with learning the appropriate Tosevite dialect floated outside along with the native for whom he would interpret. The officer said, “Exalted Fleetlord, I present to you the emissary of the empire called the Soyuz Sovietskikh Sotzialesticheskikh Respublik- SSSR for short. His name is Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov.”

“Give him my polite greetings,” Atvar answered, thinking the Tosevite empire was too small to deserve such a big name. Like most Tosevites, though, the emissary himself was substantially larger than the fleetlord.

The interpreter talked haltingly in Molotov’s speech. Part of the problem was that Tosevite languages did not fit well in the mouths of the Race: to Atvar, all Tosevites sounded as if they had their mouths full of pap. Tosevite languages were also hard for the Race because they were so maddeningly irregular; they had not spent long millennia being smoothed into efficient rationality. And, even without those difficulties, the languages remained incompletely familiar to the officers assigned to learn them. Up until the actual landings on Tosev 3, they’d had only radio transmissions from which to work (the first convenient thing Atvar could see about the Tosevites’ possessing radio), and comprehension had emerged slowly out of those, even with the help of computers programmed to deduce probable word meanings by statistics.

Molotov listened to the fleetlord’s greeting, gave back one of his own. Unlike the Tosevite from Deutschland, he had sense enough to speak slowly so as not to overwhelm the interpreter. Also unlike that Tosevite, he gave no sign of discomfiture at being off his home planet and in free-fall for the first time in his life.

A viewscreen showed a hologram of Tosev 3 as it appeared from the 127th Emperor Hetto, but Molotov did not even deign to glance at it. Through the corrective lenses hooked in front of his fiat, immobile eyes, he stared straight toward Atvar. The fleetlord approved. He had not thought to find such singleness of purpose among these big barbarians.

Molotov spoke again, still slowly and without raising his voice. The interpreter turned both eye turrets toward Atvar in embarrassment; the fleetlord should have enjoyed the privilege of first address. But what could a Big Ugly know of proper protocol? Atvar said, “Never mind his manners. Just tell me what he says.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord. Vyacheslav Mikhailovich-this is the polite way to address the Tosevites who speak Ruskii: by their own name and that of their father-well, never mind that; the Tosevite demands the immediate unconditional withdrawal of all our forces from the land and air belonging to the empire of the SSSR.”

“Oh, he does, does he?” The fleetlord let his jaws gape in a guffaw. “Remind him he is in no position to make demands. If he occupied Home, he might have the right to bend us to his will. But it is the surrender of the SSSR that is under discussion, not ours.”

Molotov listened to the interpreter’s translation without changing expression. To Atvar, the Tosevites he’d seen and met owned extraordinarily mobile features; his own facial hide and musculature were far less flexible. But this native might have been carved from stone. Still stubbornly ignoring his surroundings, he paused to think, then replied:

“We shall not yield. We have fought the Gitlerites [”By which he means the Deutsch Tosevites, exalted fleetlord,” the interpreter explained] to a standstill when they expected us to collapse. Our land is vast, our resources widespread. We are not to be easily overcome.”

“Tell him that his vast empire”-Atvar loaded the word with scorn-“would vanish almost without trace on any of the three worlds of the Empire.”

Molotov again listened, thought, answered: “All three of your worlds are not here with you, and you seek to conquer not just the SSSR but the whole of this world. Consider if you have not overextended yourselves.”

Atvar glared at the impassive Tosevite. The native might be barbarous, but he was no fool. A whole world-even a world with too much water like Tosev 3-was a big place, bigger than the fleetlord had truly understood until he began this campaign. He hadn’t expected to face industrialized opposition, either.

Nevertheless, he and the Race had advantages, too. He bludgeoned Molotov with them: “We strike you as we please, but you come to grief whenever you try to hit us back. Once all your factories are in ruins, how do you propose to hit back at all? Yield now, and you will still have something left for your own people.”

Molotov wore the same sort of bulky garments most Tosevites preferred. His face was damp and shiny with water exuded as a metabolic coolant; the 127th Emperor Hetto was at a temperature comfortable to the Race, not for natives. But he still answered back boldly enough: “We have many factories. We have many men. You have won battles against us, but you are far from winning your war. We will fight on. Even the Gitlerites have more sense than to yield to you.”

“As a matter of fact, I recently spoke with the foreign minister of Deutschland,” Atvar said. That Tosevite had also been too stubborn to yield until his empire was pounded flat, but Molotov did not have to know it.

The native looked intently at the fleetlord. “And what had he to say?” Since the SSSR and Deutschland were at war before the Race reached Tosev 3, it stood to reason that they had little reason to trust each other.

“We discussed the feasibility of Deutschland’s acknowledging the authority of the Emperor,” Atvar answered. On speaking of his sovereign, he cast down his eyes for a moment. So did the interpreter.

“Emperor, you say? I want to be sure I understand you correctly,” Molotov said. “Your-nation-is headed by a person who rules because he is a member of a family that has ruled for many years before him? Is that what you tell me?”

“Yes, that is correct,” Atvar said, puzzled by the Tosevite’s puzzlement. “Who else would rule an empire- the Empire-but the Emperor? The Tosevite named Stalin, I gather, is the emperor of your SSSR.”

So far as the fleetlord could see, Molotov still did not change expression. Nor was his voice anything but its usual mushy monotone. But what he said made the interpreter hiss in rage and astonishment, and even lash his tail stump back and forth as if in mortal combat. The officer mastered himself, spoke in Molotov’s language. Molotov answered. The interpreter trembled. Slowly, he mastered himself. Even more slowly, he turned to Atvar.

He still hesitated to speak. “What does the Big Ugly say?” Atvar demanded.

“Exalted Fleetlord,” the interpreter stammered, “this-this thing of a Tosevite tells me to tell you that the people-the people of his SSSR-that they, they executed-murdered-their emperor and all his family twenty-five years ago. That would be about fifty of our years,” he added, remembering his function as translator. “They murdered their emperor, and this Stalin, this leader of theirs, is no emperor at all, but the chief of the group of bandits that killed him”