After what seemed like forever, the train began to inch backwards. Because it was going in reverse, the smoke from the engine’s stack blew away from the passenger cars, not into them. The breeze the slow motion stirred up wasn’t very strong, but it was ever so much better than nothing. Sweat began to dry on Liu Han’s face. She took off her conical straw hat and fanned herself with it. People all over the car were doing the same thing. They started smiling at one another. A couple of babies and a couple of dogs stopped howling. It was as pleasant a time on a train as Liu Han had ever known.
The train rolled back over a switch. Then it stopped, presumably so a couple of men from the engine could get down and use crowbars to shift the switch and let the train go down the other track. After that, the train started going forward again, and swung onto the route it hadn’t used before.
With the exhaust now blowing back once more, the car filled with coal smoke. Since the passengers had broken a good many windows, they couldn’t do anything about it. The conductor laughed at them. “You see, you stupid turtles? It’s your own fault,” he said. Somebody threw a squishy plum at him, and hit him right in the face. Juice dribbled down the brass-buttoned front of his uniform. He let out a horrified squawk and retreated in disorder. Everyone cheered.
But then somebody not far from Liu Han said, “Since we’re going up a track we’re not supposed to, I hope there’s no train coming down it toward us.”
That produced exclamations of horror. “Eee!” Liu Han said. “May ten thousand little demons dance in your drawers for even thinking such a thing.”
No train slammed head-on into theirs. No stretch of tracks on the new line had been blown up. Thoroughgoing guerrillas often did such things, which caused more than double the delay and aggravation of a single strike. On the receiving end for once, Liu Han was glad these raiders hadn’t been thorough.
Her train was scheduled to get into Peking in the early evening. Even at the best of times, even under the little devils, railroad schedules in China were more optimistic guesses than statements of fact. When things went wrong… Trying to sleep sitting up on a hard seat, with the air full of smoke and other stinks and noise, was a daunting prospect. Liu Han thought she dozed a little, but she wasn’t sure.
She was sure she watched the sun rise over the farmlands to the east a couple of hours before the train did at last roll into the railroad yard in the southwestern part of Peking. It took more time crawling up to the station itself. Liu Han minded that less. It let her look around the city.
Liu Mei was doing the same thing. “We fought them hard. We fought them with everything we had,” she said, and pride rang in her voice.
“So we did,” Liu Han agreed. Wrecked buildings outnumbered those still intact. Laborers carrying buckets on shoulder poles were everywhere, hauling away rubble. Liu Han sighed. “Fighting hard is important, but only up to a point. More important, even so much more important, is winning.”
The little scaly devils had won this fight, and taken Peking back for their own. Liu Han found fresh proof of that at the station. Along with the other passengers, she and her daughter had to walk through a machine that could tell if they were carrying weapons. They weren’t, and had no trouble. Someone else in the car was. Chinese police, running dogs to the imperialist scaly devils, hustled him away. Liu Han and Liu Mei walked out of the station and into the city. “Home,” Liu Mei said, and Liu Han had to nod.
10
Though Atvar had promised him his freedom, Straha found himself more nearly a prisoner in Cairo than he had been in Los Angeles. “Is this how you reward me?” he asked one of his interrogators, a female named Zeshpass. “I hoped to return to the society of the Race, not to be closed off from it forever.”
“And so you will, superior sir,” Zeshpass said soothingly. But Straha was not soothed. Back in the USA, even the Big Uglies who exploited him had called him Shiplord. Whatever he was here, he wasn’t a shiplord, and he never would be again. Zeshpass went on, “As soon as the crisis is resolved, a final disposition of your situation will be made.”
That sounded soothing, too-till Straha turned an eye turret toward it. “What did you just say?” he demanded. “Whatever it was, it did not mean anything.”
“Of course it did.” Zeshpass sounded irate. Like any interrogator, she took her own omniscience for granted, and resented it when others failed to do likewise.
“All right, then,” Straha said. “Suppose you explain to me why my case cannot be disposed of now.”
Most reluctantly, the female said, “I do not have that information.”
Straha laughed at her. “I do. Atvar has not yet figured out what to do with me because he has not yet decided whether I am a hero or a nuisance or both at once. My opinion is that I am both at once, which is bound to make me more annoying to the exalted fleetlord.” As he was in the habit of doing, he laced Atvar’s title with as much scorn as he could.
Her voice stiff with disapproval, Zeshpass said, “It is not for me to judge the exalted fleetlord’s reasons. It is not for you, either.”
“And if no one judges him, how will anyone know when he makes a mistake?” Straha inquired. “He has made enough of them already, in my not so humble opinion. How is he to be held accountable for them?”
“Held accountable? He is the fleetlord.” Zeshpass sounded as if Straha had suddenly started speaking English rather than the language of the Race.
Plainly, the idea that the fleetlord, like any other mortal, needed to be questioned and criticized when he made a mistake had never crossed her mind.
Do you know what has happened to you? Straha asked himself. And he did know. You have become a snoutcounter, at least in part. Living among the American Big Uglies for so long has rubbed off on you.
Of course, he’d had a low opinion of Atvar’s abilities even before fleeing to the United States. If he hadn’t had a low opinion of Atvar’s ability, if he hadn’t tried to take command himself, he wouldn’t have had to flee to the USA. But years spent in a land that institutionalized snoutcounting and made it work had left him even less respectful of the Race’s institutions than he’d expected. We are a stodgy lot, he thought discontentedly.
“He may be the fleetlord,” Straha said aloud, “but he is not the Emperor.”
“That is a truth,” Zeshpass admitted, casting down her eye turrets. Straha had to remind himself to do the same thing. He hadn’t realized how far his habits had slipped in exile till he returned to the society of the Race. Zeshpass continued, “In fact, Reffet, the fleetlord of the colonization fleet, has had frequent disagreements with Fleetlord Atvar.”
“I believe that.” Straha’s voice was dry. As far as he was concerned, anyone who didn’t disagree with Atvar had to have something wrong with him. “What sort of things have they disagreed about? Do you happen to know?”
Given the chance to gossip, Zeshpass didn’t notice she’d gone from interrogator to interrogated. “I certainly do,” she said. “If you can imagine it, Atvar has proposed to levy soldiers from among the males and females of the colonization fleet, to create what would be in effect a permanent Soldiers’ Time on Tosev 3.”
“Has he?” Straha said. That struck him as only common sense. Even Atvar, however much the returned renegade hated to admit it, wasn’t stupid all the time. He sounded even more thoughtful as he asked, “And Reffet disapproves of this?”
“Of course he does,” Zeshpass answered. “We came here to colonize this world, not to fight over it.”
“I understand that,” Straha said. “But if the Big Uglies continue to be ready to fight against us, what shall we do once the males of the conquest fleet begin to grow old and die?”