Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

The scaly devil’s tailstump lashed again. “I must have it! But how?”

“You buy it from me now,” Yi Min repeated. “Then you keep some-enough for yourself-and sell the rest to other males of the Race. They will make up your cost and more.”

Ssofeg turned both eyes full upon the apothecary, staring as if he were the Buddha reincarnated. “I could do that, couldn’t I? Then I could pass on to you what they convey to me, my own difficulties with inventory control would disappear, and you would gain the wherewithal to acquire still more of this marvelous herb which I desire more with each passing day. Truly you are a Big Ugly of genius, Yi Min!”

“The superior of mine is gracious to this humble inferior,” Yi Min said. He did not smile; Ssofeg was a clever little devil, and might notice and start asking questions better left unraised.

No, on second thought, Ssofeg was unlikely to notice anything. He was caught in the gloom that always seemed to seize him when ginger’s exhilaration wore off. Now he shook as if from an ague rather than with delight. He moaned, “But how can I in good conscience expose other males of the Race to this constant craving I feel myself? That would not be right.”

He stared hungrily at the spicepot full of ginger. Fear bubbled through Yi Min. Some opium addicts would kill to keep from being separated from their drug, and ginger seemed to hit Ssofeg far harder than opium did its human users. The apothecary said, “If you take this from me now, superior of mine, where will you get more when you have used it all?”

The little devil made a noise like a boiling kettle. “Plan for tomorrow, plan for next year, plan for the generations yet to come,” he said, sounding as if he were repeating a lesson learned long ago in school. He resumed, “You are right, of course. Thievery would in the long run prove futile. What then is your price for the pot of precious herb you hold here?”

Yi Min had an answer ready: “I want one of the picture-taking machines the Race has made, the ones that take pictures you can look at from all around. I want also a supply of whatever it is the machine takes the pictures on.” He remembered how-interesting-the pictures the devils had taken of Liu Han and him were. Many men in the camp would pay well to watch such pictures… while he could give the young men and girls who would perform in them next to nothing.

But Ssofeg said, “I myself cannot get you one of these machines. Give me the ginger now, and I will use it to find a male who has access to them and can abstract it so it will not be missed.”

Yi Min laughed scornfully. “You called me wise before. Do you all at once think me a fool?” Hard bargaining followed. In the end, the apothecary surrendered a quarter of the ginger to Ssofeg, the rest to remain with him until payment was forthcoming. The little scaly devil reverently enclosed the ground spice in a transparent envelope, put that envelope into one of the pouches he wore on the belt round his waist, and hurried out of Yi Min’s hut. The devils’ gait always struck Yi Min as skittery, but Ssofeg’s movements seemed downright furtive.

Well they might, the apothecary thought. The Japanese had strict laws against selling equipment to the Chinese; since the little devils’ gear was so much better than that of the Japanese, it only stood to reason that their regulations would be harsher. If Ssofeg got caught by his people’s inspectors, he would probably be in even bigger trouble than he thought.

Well, that was his lookout. Yi Min had been certain almost from the day the scaly devils landed that they would make his fortune. At first he’d thought it would be as an interpreter. Now, though, ginger and-with luck-interesting films looked likely to prove even more profitable. He wasn’t fussy about how he got rich, as long as he did.

I’m on my way, he thought.

Sweat trickled through Bobby Fiore’s beard, dripped down onto the smooth, shiny surface of the mat on which he sat. When he got up to walk over to the faucet, his buttocks made rude squelching noises as they pulled free from the mat. The water that came when he pushed a button was warmer than luke- and had a faint chemical tang. He made himself drink anyhow. In heat like this, you had to drink.

He wished he had some salt tablets. He’d spent a couple of seasons playing ball in west Texas and New Mexico; the weather there hadn’t been a lot cooler than the Lizards kept their spaceship. Every team in that part of the country kept a bowl of salt tablets by the bat rack. He thought they did some good: without them, how were you supposed to replace what you sweated away?

The door to his cubicle silently slid open. A Lizard brought in some rations for him, and a magazine as well. “Thank you, superior of mine,” Fiore hissed politely. The Lizard did not deign to reply. It got out of the cubicle in a hurry. The door closed behind it.

The rations, as usual, were Earthly canned goods: this time, a can of pork and beans and one of stewed tomatoes. Fiore sighed. The Lizards seemed to pull cans off the shelf at random. The meal before had been fruit salad and condensed milk, the one before that chicken noodle soup (cold, undiluted, and still in the can) and chocolate syrup. After weeks on such fare, he would have killed for a green salad, fresh meat, or a scrambled egg.

The magazine, however, was a treat, even if it did date from 1941. When he wasn’t with Liu Han, he was here by himself and had to make his own amusement. Something new to look at would keep him interested for several meals. The title- Signal -even let him hope it would be in English.

He found out it wasn’t as soon as he opened it. Just what the language was, he couldn’t tell, his formal education having stopped in the tenth grade. Something Scandinavian, he guessed: he’d seen o ’s with lines through them like these on Minnesota shopfronts in towns where everybody seemed to be blond and blue-eyed.

He didn’t need to be able to read the Signal to figure out what it was-a Nazi propaganda magazine. Here was Goebbels smiling from behind his desk, here were Russians surrendering to men in coalscuttle helmets, here were a rather beefy cabaret dancer and her soldier boyfriend. Here was the world that had been before the Lizards came. He clenched his teeth; tears stung his eyes. Being reminded of that world also reminded him how much things had changed.

One thing fifteen years of playing minor-league ball had taught him was how to roll with the punches. That meant eating pork and beans and stewed tomatoes when the Lizards gave them to him, lest his next meal be worse or fail to come at all. It meant looking at the pictures in the Signal when he couldn’t read the words. And it meant hoping he could see Liu Han some time soon, but not letting himself get downhearted when he had to stay in his cubicle alone.

He was washing molasses and tomato juice off his fingers and trying to rinse his beard clean when the door opened again. The Lizard that had brought in the cans now carried them away. Fiore looked at the Signal a while longer, then lay down on the mat and went to sleep.

The lights in the cubicle never dimmed, but that didn’t bother him. The heat gave him a harder time. Still, he managed. Anyone who could sleep on a bus rattling between Clovis and Lubbock in the middle of July could sleep damn near anywhere. He’d never realized how rough life was in the bush leagues until he found all the rugged things for which it had prepared him.

As usual, he woke slick with sweat. He splashed water over himself to get some of the greasy feel off his skin. For a little while, as it evaporated, he felt almost cool. Then he started sweating again. At least it was dry heat, he told himself. Had it been humid, he would have cooked long since.