Turtledove: World War

by In the Balance

  He thought he was a good lover. He did everything a good lover should, caressing her, putting his face between her legs. But Liu Han did not want either him or his attentions, and so they failed to stir her. Again, Yi Min was so full of himself that her response, or rather lack of it, did not even reach him. Had she not been there at a convenient moment, she was sure he would simply have taken himself in hand. But she was there, so he took her instead.

  “Let us try the hovering butterflies today,” he said, by which he meant that he wanted her on top. She sighed again. He would not even give her the chance just to lie there limply. Once more she wished the scaly devils had herded someone else into the dragonfly plane with her. she did not know why she’d yielded the first time he forced himself on her, save that he was the last link she had to the vanished life she was used to. Having yielded once, saying no became more nearly impossible every time afterward.

  Looking in every direction but at his flushed, rather greasy face, she straddled him, lowered herself. He filled her, but that was all she felt: none of the delight she had known from her husband. She moved vigorously just the same—that was the way to make it over soonest.

  He was thrashing beneath her like a gaffed carp when the tent flap opened. She gasped and grabbed for her cotton trousers at the same moment that Yi Min, oblivious as usual to everything not himself, groaned with his final pleasure.

  Liu Han wanted to die. How could she show her face anywhere in camp now that her body had been seen in truth? She felt like killing Yi Min for piling such humiliation on her shoulders. Maybe tonight, after he fell asleep—

  The hiss from the entranceway brought her out of her dark fantasy and back to the present. That wasn’t a person there seeing her shame, it was a little scaly devil. As she rolled off Yi Min and away, as she scrambled into trousers and tunic, she wondered if that was better or worse. Better, she supposed—a person would surely gossip about her, while a scaly devil might not.

  The devil hissed and sputtered in his own devils’ language, then tried to speak Chinese: “What you do?”

  “We were enjoying the moment of Clouds and Rain, mighty lord devil Ssofeg,” Yi Min answered, as coolly as if he’d said, We were having a cup of green tea. “I did not expect you back so soon.” Much more slowly than Liu Han had, he began to put his clothes back on.

  “Clouds and Rain? Not understand,” the little devil named Ssofeg said. Liu Han could scarcely understand it.

  “As well expect to trap the moon in a mirror as poetry from a little devil, it would seem,” Yi Min said in a low, rapid aside to Liu Han. He turned back to Ssofeg. “I am very sorry, mighty lord devil. I shall speak plain words for you: we were making love, doing what makes a baby, mating, balling, screwing, fucking. Do any of those make sense to you?”

  Wanting as she did to find all things about Yi Min odious, Liu Han had to notice he was good at using simple words, and at using a whole cluster of them in the hope that the devil might grasp at least one.

  Ssofeg did, too. “Make baby?” he echoed.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Yi Min said enthusiastically. He smiled abroad, artificial smile and made extravagant gestures to show how pleased he was.

  The little scaly devil tried to speak more Chinese, but words failed it. It switched to its own language. Now Yi Min was the one who had to grope for meanings. Ssofeg had patience, too, speaking slowly and simply as the apothecary had before. At one point, it aimed a clawed finger at Liu Han. She flinched back in alarm, but the scaly devil seemed just to be asking a question.

  After a while, Yi Min asked a question or two in return. Ssofeg answered with a couple of short words. Without warning, Yi Min brayed laughter. “Do you know what this stupid turtle thinks?” he managed to wheeze out between guffaws. “Can you guess? You would never guess, not in a thousand years.”

  “Tell me, then,” Liu Han said, afraid the joke would turn on her.

  But it did not. Yi Min said, “The little scaly devil wanted to know if it was your breeding season, if you came into heat at a certain time of the year like a vixen or a ewe. If I understand him rightly, that is how his kind’s females are made, and when they are not in season, he can feel no desire himself.” The apothecary laughed again, harder than ever. “Poor, poor devil!”

  “That is strange,” Liu Han admitted. She had never given any thought to the little scaly devils’ love lives; they were so ugly, she hadn’t thought of their having any. Now, almost against her will, she found herself smiling. “Poor devils.”

  Yi Min gave his attention back to Ssofeg. He mixed Chinese and the devils’ language to get across the idea that women could be receptive at any time. Ssofeg hissed and squeaked. So did Yi Min. Then, in Chinese, he said, “I give you oath, master devil, that I tell you the truth here.”

  Ssofeg squeaked again before it—no, he, Liu Han thought—tried Chinese again, too: “True all woman? Not just”—he pointed at Liu Han—“woman here?”

  “True for all women,” Yi Min agreed solemnly, though Liu Han saw the glint of laughter still in his eye. To make sure, his own sex was not demeaned, he added, “It is also true that men—human men—have no fixed mating season, but can mate with women at any time of the year.”

  That started Ssofeg making cooking noises again. Instead of asking more foolish questions, the little scaly devil whirled and scampered out of the tent. Liu Han heard his clawed feet pattering away at a dead run. She said, “I’m glad he’s gone.”

  “So am I,” Yi Min said. “It lets me think—how can I best turn to my advantage this strange and sorrowful weakness of the scaly devils? If they were proper men, I could sell them proper medicine to strengthen their peerless pillars. But if I correctly follow Ssofeg, without devil females he and his brethren might as well be so many eunuchs—though even eunuchs have desires, they say. Hmm . . .”

  Not five minutes after his yang essence had mingled with Liu Han’s yin, he might as well have forgotten she remained in the tent. To Yi Min, Yi Min was all that truly mattered, with everyone and everything else to be rearranged at his whim for his convenience. Now he sat cross-legged on the mat, his eyes almost closed, feverishly planning how to turn the devils’ debility into money or influence for him.

  All at once, he let out a cry nearly as intense as the one he’d made when he spent himself inside her. “I have it!” he exclaimed. “I will—”

  Liu Han never found out what Yi Min’s latest scheme was. Before he could announce it, Ssofeg burst back into the tent. Three more little scaly devils were right behind him, all of them carrying guns. Liu Han’s bowels turned to water. Now Yi Min bleated like a sheep facing the butcher’s cleaver. “Mercy, kind devil!” he wailed.

  Ssofeg pointed outside, then to Yi Min. “You come,” he said in Chinese Yi Min was so frightened, he had trouble getting to his feet. He stumbled out of the tent on stiff, numb legs. Two of the armed devils flanked him as he went.

  Liu Han gaped at Ssofeg. At a stroke, the little devil had given her what she wanted most—freedom from Yi Min. And if he was gone, then she’d have this fine tent to herself. She felt like kissing Ssofeg. If he hadn’t had a mouthful of sharp teeth and one armed retainer still standing by him, she might have done it.

  Then the devil pointed at her. “Too come you,” he said.

  “Me?” Her sudden hopes crashed down. “Oh, no, kind devil, you don’t want me, you don’t need me, I am just a poor woman who knows not a thing in all the world.” She knew she was talking too fast for the ignorant little devil to understand, but the words poured out of her like the sweat that all at once began to pour from her armpits.

  Ssofeg paid no more attention to what she wanted than Yi Min had when he undressed her and satisfied his own urges. “Too come you, woman,” he said. The scaly devil behind him moved his gun so it bore on her. The devils were not in the habit of taking no for an answer. Moaning, she followed Yi Min out into the street.

  People stared and pointed and exclaimed as the little devils
marched her along behind the apothecary. She understood a couple of their remarks: “Ee, that doesn’t look good!” “I wonder what they did?” Liu Han wondered what she’d done, too, aside from being foolish enough to let, Yi Min take advantage of her. And why should the scaly devils care about that?

  No one did anything more than stare and exclaim. The devils were little, but they were powerful. The three with guns could kill many Chinese by themselves, and even if they were somehow overwhelmed, the rest of the scaly devils would flay the prison camp with fire from their dragonfly planes. Liu Han had seen what such fire did to the Japanese in her village, and they had had arms to fight back. The people in the camp were utterly defenseless against assault from the air.

  Yi Min yelled, “Help me, someone! I haven’t done a thing. Save me from the terrible devils!” Liu Han snorted angrily and glowered at his back. He didn’t care what happened to anyone else, so long as he saved his own worthless skin. She snorted again. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already know that.

  Despite his bawling like a pig with a cut hock, no one did anything foolish, for which Liu Han was heartily glad. But she felt very lonely as the armed escort of devils led her out of the prison camp, away from her own people, and toward a dragonfly plane. “In!” Ssofeg said. Having no choice, first Yi Min and then Liu Han obeyed.

  A few minutes later, the dragonfly plane scrambled noisily into the air. Even though her stomach lurched every time the plane changed direction, she wasn’t as completely petrified as she had been the first time the little scaly devils forced her aboard one of their flying machines. After all, several of them were in here, too, and no matter how little they cared about her, she’d seen that they valued their own painted hides.

  “This is all your fault!” Yi Min shouted at her. “If you weren’t flaunting yourself there in my tent, I never would have gotten into this predicament.”

  The unfairness of that took her breath away. Before she could answer, one of the devils let out an ominous hiss. It punctured the apothecary’s bluster like a pin popping an inflated sow’s bladder. He shut up, though he didn’t stop glaring at her. She glared right back.

  After about half an hour’s flight, the dragonfly plane set down not far from some much bigger machines of the scaly devils. The devils, with guns urged her and Yi Min out, marched them along to one of those big machines, and up a ladder into its belly. Unlike the ones on the dragonfly plane, the seats in there were padded, though still not big enough eyen for her.

  These seats had straps, too. A little devil waiting for them fastened those straps so Liu Han could not reach the buckles no matter how she squirmed. Her fear came back. Yi Min writhed even more violently than he had under her. Here, though, his thrashing won no release.

  The door to the outside world slammed shut. The devil twisted a handle to make sure it stayed that way. Then he scrambled up an interior ladder into a higher room, leaving the two people alone and helpless.

  “Your fault,” Yi Min insisted. He went on in that vein for some time. Liu Han stopped listening to him. Nothing, obviously, had ever been his fault in all his born days, and if you didn’t believe it, you had but to ask him.

  Without warning, the machine shuddered beneath them. “Earthquake,” Liu Han squalled. “We’ll be crushed, we’ll be killed—” she’d never heard anything like the roar that went with the terrible, unending shaking.

  Without warning, she felt as if two or three people—or maybe a brick wall, knocked down by the earthquake—had fallen on top of her. She tried to scream, but produced no more than a gurgle; the dreadful, unending weight made it hard to breathe at all, let alone drag in enough air for a shriek. After a little while, much of the racket went away, though a more muted rumble and several medium-loud mechanical noises persisted.

  “What’s happening to us, Yi Min?” Liu Han gasped out. However much she disliked him, he was the only other human being caught in this devilish trap. Besides, with his education, he might even have known the answer.

  “I have ridden on the railroad,” he replied, his voice also coming forth in effortful grunts. “When a train starts to move, it presses you back into your seat. But—never like this.”

  “No, never like this. This is no train,” Liu Han said scornfully. His words satisfied her no better than his body had.

  The rumble from beneath them abruptly cut off. At the same instant, the crushing pressure on Liu Han’s chest also went away. Her own weight somehow seemed to disappear, too. Were it not for the prisoning straps that grasped her, she felt as if she could have floated away from her seat, perhaps even flown like a magpie. Exhilaration she’d never known flooded through her. “It’s wonderful,” she exclaimed.

  The only answer Yi Min gave was a sick, gulping noise that reminded her of a fish trying to breathe after it was hauled out of its pond. She twisted her neck so she could look over at him. His face was pale as whey. “I will not vomit,” he whispered fiercely, as if trying to make himself believe it. “I will not vomit.”

  Big drops of sweat grew on his cheeks and forehead. He shuddered, still fighting to control his rebellious stomach. Liu Han watched, fascinated, as one of the drops broke free. It didn’t fall. It just hung almost motionless in midair, as if hooked to the ceiling with an invisible line of spider silk. But no, no silk here.

  Yi Min let out another gulp, this one louder than the last. All at once, Liu Han hoped he would not be sick. If his vomit hung as the drop of sweat had, it was liable to smother him—and if it drifted through the air, it was liable to smother her.

  Then the apothecary quavered, “L-look at the devil, Liu Han.”

  Liu Han turned back toward the ladder up which the little scaly devil had climbed. He was there in the hatchway again, peering down at the two humans with his unnerving, independently mobile eyes. But those eyes, at the moment, were the least unnerving thing about him. He floated head-down, a couple of yards above Liu Han, with neither hands nor feet holding onto anything. He did not fall, any more than the drop of Yi Min’s sweat had.

  When he saw that the people could not escape, he twisted in midair so his legs were toward them. The practiced maneuver might have been part of a dance in three dimensions; for the first time, Liu Han found a devil graceful. He reached out, grabbed a rung of the ladder, pushed. Sure enough, just as Liu Han had imagined, he flew upward into his own cabin.

  “Isn’t that the most amazing thing you ever saw?” she said.

  “It’s impossible,” Yi Min declared.

  “Who knows what’s impossible for devils?” Liu Han asked. Through his sickness, Yi Min stared at her. She needed a moment to read the expression on his face. Then she realized that without thinking about it, she had spoken to him as to an equal. That was not proper, but it was the truth; here, caught by the devils’ cords, they were equals, equal, nothings. And of the two of them, she was having the better time of coping with this strange (she would not say impossible) place.

  If Yi Min had reprimanded her, shoved her, back down into the subservient role she’d taken all her life, likely she would have accepted it without a murmur. But he didn’t; he was too filled with his own nausea, too filled with his own fear. Because of that, some things—not everything, but some things—changed forever between them in the next few silent minutes.

  she didn’t know how long they traveled with their weight left behind. She enjoyed every second of it, and wished only that she were free to float about and try the twisting move the little scaly devil had used. Yi Min lay huddled on his seat. Every so often, he made another sick gulping noise. Liu Han did her best not to laugh at him.

  The plane in which they were flying made noises of its own. The pops and hisses meant nothing to Liu Han, so she hardly noticed them. But the metallic bangs and the grating sound that came from the front end after a while were impossible to ignore. She said, “Are we going to crash?”

  “How should I know?” Yi Min answered peevishly, diminishing himself in her sight yet again.
>
  They did not crash. More strange noises came from the front end of the plane, then the harsh sounds of the little scaly devils’ speech. Three devils came floating back into the compartment where Liu Han was strapped down, though she had not known the plane held more than one. Her fear came back with them, for two of the devils bore long knives that were almost swords. she’d imagined Yi Min’s vomit drifting through the air like stinking fog. Now in her mind’s eye she saw a red mist of her own blood filling the room. She shuddered and tried to make herself as small as she could.

  The devil with a sword-knife glided down to the seat on which she lay, reached out. She shuddered again. A thousand times better Yi Min’s caresses than the touch of the scaly devil. But all he did was unfasten the straps that held her in place, then those confining the apothecary. When they were both free, the devil pointed upward, in the direction from which he and his companions had come.

  All at once, in an almost blinding flash of enlightenment, Liu Han saw that the armed devils were there to protect the other one from her and from Yi Min. Just as it hadn’t occurred to her that she could talk back to Yi Min, so she hadn’t imagined mere humans might be dangerous to devils. Again something changed for good in the way she looked at the world.

  Yi Min spoke hesitantly in the devils’ language. The one who had released him answered. “What does he say?” Liu Han asked; her tone said she had a right to know.

  “He’s telling us to go that way,” Yi Min replied, pointing in the same direction the little devil had. “He says they will not hurt us if we do as they say.”

  Liu Han pushed against the arms of her seat. She floated up, lighter than a feather. The scaly devil did grab her, but only to straighten her course. Yi Min followed, still making queasy noises in the back of his throat.

  The room from which the devils had come was smaller than the one in which they’d confined the humans. One wall was nothing but dials and buttons and screens. A scaly devil with a short sword floated in front of it. He hissed at Liu Han, as if warning her to come no closer. She wanted to laugh at him—she had no intention of doing that.