“Truth,” the People’s Liberation Army general answered in the language of the little scaly devils. He went back to Chinese: “Thanks to the missiles we got from the Soviet Union, they cannot use their landcruisers or their helicopters or even their aircraft so freely as they would like.”
Mao glanced across the table at them. “We have held Peking now since the uprising began. We hold a good many cities here in the north, and the countryside surrounding them.”
Nieh nodded. “From there to the Soviet border, the scaly devils appear only at great peril to their lives.”
“If Molotov wanted to, he could legitimately recognize us as the government of liberated China,” Mao said. “But will he do it?” He scowled and shook his head. “He does not dare, the dusty little worm, for fear of angering the little devils. Stalin was ten times the man he is. Stalin knew no fear.”
To Liu Han, Nieh murmured, “Anyone who isn’t afraid of the little scaly devils has tiles loose on his roof.”
“Well, of course,” she whispered back. “You know how Mao is. Molotov hasn’t given him everything he wanted, so of course he’s going to rant about it. He isn’t satisfied till things go exactly as he saw them in his mind.”
“That makes him a great leader,” Nieh said, to which she nodded. He added, “It can also make him very tiresome,” and Liu Han nodded again.
Mao took no notice of the byplay; Mao took as little notice as he could of anything that didn’t involve himself. He went right on talking. When Liu Han started paying attention to him again, he was saying, “-might be better off demanding recognition from the little scaly devils than from the Soviet Union.”
Heads bobbed up and down along the table. Chou En-Lai said, “I think there is some hope they may give this to us. We have shown them we are determined and we are not to be trifled with. If we send them an embassy, I think they will listen. They had better listen, or they’ll be sorry.”
“That’s right. That’s just right,” Mao said. Of course he thought anyone who agreed with him was right. He continued, “They’re already sorry. We can send them an embassy under flag of truce. If they heed us, well and good. If they don’t, we’re no worse off.” His forefinger shot out. “Comrade Liu Han! You have dickered with the scaly devils before, haven’t you?”
“Uh-yes, Comrade,” Liu Han said, taken aback.
“Good.” Mao beamed at her, his face round as the full moon. “That’s settled, then. We’ll send you through our line. You know what you are to demand of them.”
“Our independence, of course,” she answered.
“That’s right.” He nodded. “Yes, indeed. No more imperialists in our country. We’ve seen too many-first the round-eyed devils, then the Japanese, then the little scaly devils. No more, not if we’re strong enough to hold our own against them.”
“What if they refuse us that?” Liu Han asked.
“Then the fight goes on, of course,” Mao said.
But she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Comrade. What I meant was, what if they offer us something less than full independence but more than nothing? What if they offer us, say, some small area to rule on our own, or if they offer us some voice in affairs but not real freedom?”
“Refer such things back to me,” Mao told her. “They will be checking with their superiors, too. I have no doubt of that.”
“All right.” Liu Han nodded. What Mao said made good sense, though she wondered whether the little scaly devils would have anything at all to say to a representative of the People’s Liberation Army. She gave a mental shrug. The People’s Liberation Army would contact the imperialist oppressors. If they wanted to talk after that, they would.
She spent the next couple of days discussing possibilities with Mao and with Chou En-Lai. Then word came back that the little devils would treat with her. She got into a motorcar with a white flag tied to the radio aerial. The driver took her out of battered Peking and down to the scaly devils’ shuttlecraft port. Voice cheerful, he said, “This road is supposed to be cleared of mines.”
“If it isn’t, I’m going to be very unhappy with you,” Liu Han said, which made the fellow laugh.
A mechanized fighting vehicle like the one that had taken her out of the little scaly devils’ prison camp blocked the road. An amplified voice blared from it, in the scaly devils’ language and then in Chinese: “Let the negotiator come forward alone.”
Liu Han got out of the motorcar and walked to the fighting vehicle. Clamshell doors at the rear of the vehicle opened. She got in. Three little scaly devils glared at her. They all carried rifles. “I greet you,” she said in their language.
“We will take you to our negotiator,” one of them answered-no politeness, only business.
That was the last they said till the fighting vehicle halted a couple of hours later. Liu Han had no idea just where she was. Her surroundings when she left the vehicle did nothing to enlighten her. She found herself in the middle of one of the little devils’ encampments, full of drab tents.
A scaly devil was waiting for her. “You are the female Liu Han?” he asked, as if anyone else were likely to have emerged from the machine. When she admitted it, he said, “Come with me,” and led her to one of the tents.
“I am Relhost,” said the scaly devil waiting inside. “My rank is general. I greet you.”
“And I greet you,” Liu Han answered, returning courtesy for courtesy. She gave her own name, though he already knew it.
“You are not fond of us. We are not fond of you. These are obvious truths,” Relhost said. Liu Han nodded. The little devil made his kind’s gesture of agreement to show he knew what that meant. He continued, “Your side and mine have made agreements even so. Maybe we can do it again.”
“I hope so. That is why we asked to talk,” Liu Han said. “We have liberated a large stretch of China from your imperialistic grasp.”
Relhost’s shrug was amazingly like a man’s. “For the time being,” he said. He didn’t reckon imperialistic an insult; to him, it was more likely to be a compliment. “I expect we shall retake all the territory you have stolen from us.” He paused. One of his eye turrets swung toward a small portable stove in a corner of the tent, and to the aluminum pot bubbling on it. “Would you care for some tea?”
“No, thank you.” Liu Han shook her head. “I did not come here to drink tea. I came here to discuss the fight with you. I think you are wrong. I think we can keep what we have taken. I think we can take more.”
“It is usual, in a hard fight, for both sides to think they are winning,” Relhost observed. “One of them proves to be wrong. Here, I think-the Race thinks-you will prove to be wrong.”
“Plainly, we disagree about that,” Liu Han said. “We can hold. We will hold. And we can bleed you white.” That was how Liu Han thought of the phrase, anyhow; its literal meaning was, We can crack all your eggs.
“You have cost us a certain amount,” Relhost admitted, and then tempered that by adding, “but not so much as you think. And I am certain that we have hurt you a great deal more.”
That was true, gruesomely true. Liu Han had no intention whatsoever of admitting it. Instead, she said, “We can afford to lose far more than you can.” She also knew that was true; it was an underpinning of Mao’s strategy.
“What do you propose, then?” Relhost asked.
“An end to the fighting. You recognize our independence in the land we control now, and we promise not to try to gain any more,” Liu Han said.
“No. Absolutely not.” Relhost used the little scaly devils’ hand gesture that was the equivalent of a human headshake. “You spoke of cracking eggs. Your promises are not worth cracked eggshells. We have seen that too many times by now. We will not be fooled again.” He appended an emphatic cough.
Liu Han knew the People’s Liberation Army’s promise would be written on the wind, too. She wouldn’t admit that, either. She said, “We have shown we can take and rule broad stretches of territory. We do not hold others
where we can still disrupt you. You might do better to give up this land. You cannot hold it.”
“We can. We shall.” The scaly devil used another emphatic cough. “You think we are not ready for a long fight. I am here to tell you that we will fight for as long as it proves necessary. If we yield here to you now, we would have to yield elsewhere to other Tosevites later. It would mean the ruination of the Empire on this world. That shall not be.”
You understand that you would lose face, Liu Han thought. You under-stand this one stone would start an avalanche. Very often, the little scaly devils were naive about the way people worked. Not here, worse luck. Here, they understood only too well. Liu Han wished they hadn’t. She said, “Another bargain may be possible.”
“I am listening,” Relhost answered.
“You have seen that we are going to be a power in the land for a long time to come,” Liu Han said. “Give us a share in ruling China. It is possible that you might control foreign affairs. But we can share in administering the land.”
But Relhost said, “No,” again. He said it with as little hesitation as he’d used before. He went on, “You want us to admit you have some legitimate right to be part of the government of China. We will never do that. This land is ours, and we intend to keep it.”
“Then the fight will go on,” Liu Han warned.
“Truth,” Relhost said. “The fight will go on. It will go on, and we will win it. You would do better to accept that now, and to live within the Empire. You could become valued partners in it.”
“Partners?” Liu Han asked sardonically. “Partners are equals. You have just said we cannot be equals.”
“Valued subjects, then.” Relhost sounded cross that she had pointed out the contradiction.
“We should not be subjects in our own land,” Liu Han said. “We will not be subjects in our own land. That is why the fight goes on. That is why it will go on.”
“We shall win it,” the little scaly devil said.
Maybe he was right. Liu Han still had faith in the historical dialectic, but less than she’d had when she was younger. And the scaly devils had their own ideology of historical inevitability to sustain them. They believed in what they were doing every bit as much as the People’s Liberation Army believed in its mission.
“I will send you back to your own side under safe-conduct,” said the little scaly devil who was a general. “The war will continue. We will never agree to your independence. We will never agree to your autonomy.”
“You will never defeat us.” Liu Han wondered, not for the first time, whether she would live long enough to find out if she was right.
Queek, the Race’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, was in a worse temper than usual. “Here, Comrade General Secretary,” he said to Vyacheslav Molotov through his Polish interpreter, who as usual seemed to be enjoying himself. “I insist that you examine these photographs.”
Molotov put on his reading glasses and looked at them. “I see a number of explosions,” he said. “So what?”
“This caravan was intercepted from the air just on the Chinese side of the border with the USSR,” Queek said. “These explosions you are generous enough to notice prove that it was carrying munitions-very large quantities of munitions.”
“So what?” Molotov repeated. “The Chinese are in rebellion against you. Why is it surprising that they should use large quantities of munitions?”
“By everything we have seen, the Chinese are incapable of manufacturing many of these munitions for themselves,” Queek said. “This leads us to the conclusion that the Soviet Union is supplying them.”
“You have no proof of that whatever,” Molotov said. “I deny it, as I have denied it whenever you have made that accusation.”
“These photographs prove-” the Lizard began.
“Nothing,” Molotov broke in. “If they were taken on the Chinese side-your side-of the border, they prove nothing about what my country is doing.”
“Where else would the bandits and rebels in China have come up with such advanced weapons?” the Lizards’ ambassador said. “They cannot make these weapons for themselves. The caravan carrying the weapons was intercepted near the USSR’s border. Do you seriously expect the Race to believe even for a moment that the Soviet Union had nothing to do with them?”
“Were any of these weapons of Soviet manufacture?” Molotov asked-a little apprehensively, because there was always the chance that the Red Army, in its zeal to arm the People’s Liberation Army, might have ignored his orders against such a blunder and added Soviet weapons to those obtained from the Reich.
But Queek said, “No. They were made by the Germans and Americans.”
Molotov was confident his relief didn’t show. Nothing showed unless he wanted it to, and he never wanted it to. And, as a matter of fact, the USSR hadn’t supplied the Chinese with many American weapons lately. Nice to know we really are innocent of something, he thought. It makes my protestations all the more convincing.
He said, “In that case, you would do better to talk with the Germans and Americans, don’t you think, instead of making these outrageous false charges against the peace-loving workers and peasants of the Soviet Union.”
“We do not necessarily view them as false,” Queek said. “The Race understands that it is far from impossible to obtain weapons from the nation that manufactured them, and then to pass them on to bandits who support your ideology.”
“On the basis of this presumption, you have made these provocative charges against the Soviet Union,” Molotov said. “In view of the unsettled state of the world this past year, do you not think you would be wise to avoid provocation?”
“Do you not think you would be wiser to keep from provoking us?” the Lizard returned.
“As I have repeatedly told you, I deny that we have done any such thing, and it is plain that you have no proof whatever of any guilt on our part,” Molotov said. Had the Race had any such proof, life would have grown more interesting than he really cared to deal with. He went on, “You might also inquire of the Japanese, who had their own imperialist ambitions in China before the Race came to Earth.”
“We are doing so,” Queek answered. “But they deny any part in supporting these bandits, who, as they accurately point out, are ideologically aligned with the USSR, not with Japan.”
“They might well support them anyhow, merely for the sake of giving you trouble,” Molotov answered. “Has this concept never occurred to you?”
“Before we came to Tosev 3, it probably would not have,” Queek said. “You Tosevites have taught us several interesting lessons on the uses of duplicity. If we are less trusting now than we were just after we arrived, you have only yourselves to blame.”
That, no doubt, held a lot of truth. But it had nothing to do with the business at hand. “You had proof against the Germans,” Molotov said, “the best proof of all: they attacked you. You had proof against the Americans, because of the defector. With proof, war becomes justified. To threaten war without proof is foolhardy. I insist that you convey my strongest possible protest to the fleetlord. I demand a formal apology from the Race for making these unfounded and unwarranted accusations against the Soviet Union. We have done nothing to deserve them.”
He sounded vehement, even passionate. Queek spoke in the Lizards’ language. The interpreter sounded downcast as he translated: “I shall convey your insistence and your demand to the fleetlord. I cannot predict how he will respond.”
An apology, of course, would cost Atvar nothing but pride. Sometimes that mattered very much to the Lizards. Sometimes it seemed not to matter at all. They were less predictable than people that way.
But then Queek went on, “It may be that we have no proof of the kind you describe, Comrade General Secretary. Regardless of your protests and your bluster, however, you must never forget that we do have a great deal of circumstantial evidence linking the USSR to these weapons. If the evidence ever becomes more than circumstantial, the Soviet Unio
n will pay a heavy price-and it will be all the heavier to punish you for your deceit.”
“As you must know, the peace-loving workers and peasants of the Soviet Union are prepared to defend themselves against imperialist aggression from any enemies,” Molotov answered, once more suppressing a nasty stab of fear. “We taught both the Nazis and the Race as much a generation ago. Our means of defense now are more formidable than they were then. And, just as we were prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States, you may reasonably expect that the USA will also stand shoulder to shoulder with us.”
He had no idea whether the Lizards could reasonably expect any such thing. Harold Stassen would act in what he reckoned his nation’s self-interest, and Molotov had no good grip on that. He also had no notion whether Stassen would be reelected in 1968; political writers in the United States seemed dubious about his prospects. But Queek couldn’t readily disprove his claim.
And it seemed to rock the Lizard. It rocked him, in fact, a good deal more than Molotov had thought it would. Queek said, “You have told us to mind our own business in our dealings with you. Now I tell you to mind your own business in respect to our dealings with the United States. You would be wise to heed and obey.”
Well, well, Molotov thought. Yes, that was a more interesting response than he’d looked for. He wondered what had happened between the Lizards and the Americans to prompt it. No new crisis had come to the notice of the GRU or the NKVD. The NKVD, of course, was not what it had been. Damn Beria anyhow, Molotov thought, as he did whenever that unpalatable truth forced itself to his attention.
Aloud, he said, “I was not speaking of your dealings with the United States, but of my own country’s. I have no control over how you and the Americans deal between yourselves, any more than you have control over how we and the Americans deal between ourselves.” He yielded a little ground there, or seemed to, without committing himself to anything.
Queek said, “I have told you everything the fleetlord instructed me to convey. For your benefit, I shall repeat the gist: do not meddle in China, or you will regret it.”
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