Nieh had other things on his mind at the moment, though. He trudged upstairs to the room he’d been sharing with Liu Han-and, lately, with her daughter, at last redeemed from the little scaly devils. As he climbed the stairs, he let out a small, silent sigh. That wasn’t yet working out as well as Liu Han had imagined it would… In Nieh’s experience, few things in life did. He had not found a good way to tell that to Liu Han.
He tried the door. It was locked. He rapped on it. “Who’s there?” Liu Han called warily from within. She hadn’t casually opened the door since the day Hsia Shou-Tao tried to rape her. But, when she heard Nieh’s voice, she lifted the bar, let him in, and stepped into his arms for a quick embrace.
“You look tired,” he said. What she looked was haggard and harassed. He didn’t think he ought to say that to her. Instead, he pointed to her daughter, who sat over in a corner playing with a straw-stuffed doll made of cloth. “How is Liu Mei this afternoon?”
To his surprise and dismay, Liu Han started to cry. “I gave birth to her, and she is still frightened of me. It’s as if she thinks she ought to be a little scaly devil, not a human being.”
Liu Mei started to pull some of the stuffing out of the doll, which was far from new. “Don’t do that,” Liu Han said. Her daughter took no notice of her. Then she spoke a word in the little devils’ language and added one of their coughs. The little girl stopped what she was doing. Wearily, Liu Han turned to Nieh. “You see? She understands their tongue, not Chinese. She cannot even make the right sounds for Chinese. What can I do with her? How can I raise her when she is like this?”
“Patience,” Nieh Ho-T’ing said. “You must remember patience. The dialectic proves Communism will triumph, but says nothing with certainty as to when. The little scaly devils know nothing of the dialectic, but their long history gives them patience. They had Liu Mei her whole life, and did their best to make her into one of them. You have had her only a few days. You must not expect her to change overnight for you.”
“I know that-here.” Liu Han tapped a finger against her forehead. “But my heart breaks every time she flinches from me as if I were a monster, and whenever I have to speak to her in a language I learned because I was a slave.”
“As I said, you are not viewing this rationally,” Nieh answered. “One reason you are not viewing it rationally is that you are not getting enough sleep. Liu Mei may not be a human child in every way, but she wakes up in the night like one.” He yawned. “I am tired, too.”
Liu Han hadn’t asked him to help take care of the baby. That she might had never occurred to him. Caring for a child was women’s work. In some ways, Nieh took women and their place as much for granted as Hsia Shou-Tao did.
So did Liu Han, in some ways. She said, “I wish I had an easier time comforting her. I am not what she wants. She makes that quite plain.” Her mouth twisted into a thin, bitter line. “What she wants is that little devil, Ttomalss. He did this to her. He should be made to pay for it.”
“Nothing we can do about that, not unless we learn he’s come down to the surface of the world again,” Nieh said. “Not even the People’s Liberation Army can reach into one of the scaly devils’ ships high in the sky.”
“The little devils are patient,” Liu Han said in a musing tone of voice. “He will not stay up in his ship forever. He will come down to steal another baby, to try to turn it into a little scaly devil. When he does-”
Nieh Ho-T’ing would not have wanted her to look at him that way. “I think you are right,” he said, “but he may not do that in China. The world is a larger place than we commonly think.”
“If he comes, he will come to China.” Liu Han spoke with the assurance of a man. “He speaks Chinese. I do not think he speaks any other human language. If he robs some poor woman, he will rob one from China.”
Nieh spread his hands. “This is logical, I must say. What do you want us to do about it?”
“Punish him,” she answered at once. “I will bring the matter before the central committee and get official approval for it.”
“The central committee will not approve of an act of personal vengeance,” he warned her. “Getting agreement to put the rescue of your child on the negotiation agenda was difficult enough, but this-”
“I think the motion will be approved,” Liu Han said steadily. “I do not intend to present it as a matter of personal vengeance, but as a symbol that the little devils’ oppression of mankind is not to be tolerated.”
“Present it however you like,” Nieh replied. “It is still personal vengeance. I am sorry, Liu Han, but I do not feel able to give you my own support in this matter. I have spent too much political capital for Liu Mei already.”
“I will present the motion anyhow,” Liu Han told him. “I have discussed it with several committee members. I think it will pass, whether you support it or not.”
He stared at her. They’d worked well together, in bed and out, but he’d always been the dominant partner. And why not? He’d been an army chief of staff before the little scaly devils came and turned everything topsy-turvy, and she’d been nothing but a peasant woman and an example of the scaly devils’ oppression. Everything she was in the revolutionary struggle, she was because of him. He’d brought her onto the central committee to give him more support. How could she turn against him?
By the look in her eye, she’d gained the backing she needed to get her motion adopted. She’d done that quietly, behind his back. Hsia Shou-Tao hadn’t got wind of it, either. “You’re good,” he said in genuine admiration. “You’re very good.”
“Yes, I am,” she said matter-of-factly, to herself as much as to him. Then her expression softened a little. “Thank you for putting me in a place where I’ve had the chance to show I could be.”
Shewas very good. She was even letting him down easy, making sure he didn’t stay angry at her. And she was doing it as a man would, with words, rather than using her body to win the point. He didn’t think it was because she didn’t fancy him any more; it was just another way for her to show him what she could do.
He smiled at her. She looked back in wary surprise. “The two of us will go far if we stick together,” he said. She thought about that, then nodded. Only later did he wonder whether he would be guiding her down his track or she guiding him down hers.
The train groaned to a stop. Ussmak had never ridden on such a hideous conveyance in all his life. Back on Home, rail transport was fast, smooth, and nearly silent; thanks to magnetic levitation, trains never actually touched the rails over which they traveled. It wasn’t like that here. He felt every crosstie, every rail joint, that jounced the train as it slowly chugged along. His landcruiser had had a smoother, more pleasant ride on the worst broken terrain than the train did in its own roadbed.
He let out a soft, sad hissing sigh. “If I’d had my wits about me, I never would have sunk my teeth into that Lidov creature. Ah, well-that’s what ginger does to a male.”
One of the other males jammed into the compartment with him, a riflemale named Oyyag, said, “At least you got to bite one of the stinking Big Uglies. Most of us just got squeezed dry and used up.”
A chorus of agreement rose from the others. To them, Ussmak was a hero of sorts, precisely because he’d managed to strike a blow against the SSSR even after the local Big Uglies got him in their claws. It was an honor he could have done without. The Tosevites knew why he was on this train, too, and treated him worse because of it. As Oyyag had said, the Soviets had simply run out of questions to put to most of the captive males. Not Ussmak, though.
Two Big Uglies carrying automatic weapons opened the door to the compartment. “Out! Out!” they bawled in the Russkis’ ugly language. That was a word Ussmak had learned. He hadn’t learned many, but some of his fellows had been captive for a long time. They translated for those who, like him, were new-caught and innocent.