Oyyag startled him by shouting, “Ussmak!” A moment later, half the males in the barracks were calling his name. They wanted him for headmale, he realized with something less than delight. That would bring him into constant contact with the Big Uglies, which was the last thing he wanted. He saw no good way to escape, though.
The Big Ugly with the hairy face said, “Let the male called Ussmak come forward and be recognized.” He was as fluent in the language of the Race as any Tosevite Ussmak had heard. When Ussmak got down from his bunk and walked over to the door, the Big Ugly said, “I greet you, Ussmak. We will be working with each other in days to come. I am David Nussboym.”
“I greet you, David Nussboym,” Ussmak said, although he would rather not have made the Tosevite’s acquaintance.
The breeze still brought the alien stink of Cairo to the scent receptors on Atvar’s tongue. But it was a fine mild breeze, and the fleetlord was more prepared to tolerate Tosevite stinks now that he had succeeded in dealing the Big Uglies a heavy blow.
He called up the Florida situation map on one of the computers installed in his Tosevite lodging. “We’ve broken the Americans here,” he told Kirel, pointing to the map. “The bomb created a gap, and we’ve poured through it. Now they flee before us, as they did in the early days of the conquest. Our possession of the peninsula seems assured.”
“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said, but then tempered that by adding, “A pity the conquest does not proceed elsewhere as it did in the early days.”
Atvar did not care to dwell on that unless forcibly reminded of it. After the Americans exploded their own nuclear device outside Denver, the Race’s attack there had bogged down. It had already proved more expensive than calculations predicted, as attacks against Big Ugly strongpoints had a way of doing. The bomb had broken the southern prong of the attack, and weakened the center and north as well, because the local commander had shifted forces southward to help exploit what had looked like an opening. An opening it had been-the opening of a trap.
Kirel said, “Exalted Fleetlord, what are we to make of this latest communication from the SSSR? Its leadership is certainly arrogant enough, demanding that we quit its territory as a precondition for peace.”
“That is-that must be-a loud bluff,” Atvar replied. “The only nuclear weapon the SSSR was able to fabricate came from plutonium stolen from us. That the not-empire has failed to produce another indicates to our technical analysts its inability to do so. Inform the Big Ugly called Molotov and his master the Great Stalin-great compared to what?” the fleetlord added with a derisive snort, “-that the SSSR is in no position to make demands of us that it cannot enforce on the battlefield.”
“It shall be done,” Kirel said.
Atvar warmed to the subject: “In fact, the success of our retaliatory bomb once more makes me wonder if we should not employ these weapons more widely than we have in the past.”
“Not in the SSSR, surely, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said in some alarm. “The broad expanse of land there is vulnerable to widespread radioactive pollution, and would otherwise be highly satisfactory for agriculture and herding for our colonists.”
“In purely military terms, this would be a much more highly satisfactory campaign if we could ignore the requirements of the colonization fleet,” Atvar answered resentfully. He sighed. “Unfortunately, we cannot. Were it not for the colonization fleet, this conquest fleet would have no point. The analysts agree with you: large-scale nuclear bombing of the SSSR, however tempting it would be to rid this planet of the Emperor-murdering clique now governing that not-empire, would create more long-term damage than the military advantage we would gain could offset.”
“I have also studied these analyses,” Kirel said, which raised Atvar’s suspicions: was Kirel trying to prepare himself to wear a fleetlord’s body paint? But he hadn’t done anything about which Atvar could take exception, so the fleetlord waited for him to go on. He did: “They state that there are certain areas where nuclear weapons may successfully be employed in an offensive role without undue damage to the planet.”
Atvar’s suspicion diminished, not least because Kirel had agreed with him. He said, “If we do employ nuclear weapons on our own behalf rather than as retaliation for Tosevite outrages, we will also make ourselves appear less predictable and more dangerous to the Big Uglies. This may have a political effect out of proportion to the actual military power we employ.”
“Again, Exalted Fleetlord, this is truth,” Kirel said. “Letting the Big Uglies know we, too, can be unpredictable may prove, as you say, a matter of considerable importance for us.”
“That is a vital point,” Atvar agreed. “We cannot predict the actions of the Big Uglies even with all the electronics at our disposal, while they, limited as they are in such matters, often anticipate what we intend to do, with results all too frequently embarrassing for us.”
Finding Kirel in accord with him, Atvar blanked the map of Florida and summoned another from the computer to take its place. “This large island-or perhaps it is a small continent, but let the planetologists have the final say there-lying to the southeast of the main continental mass had huge tracts of land ideally suited for settlement by the Race and little used by the Big Uglies, most of whose habitations cling to the damper eastern coast. Yet from those bases they continually stage annoying raids on us. All conventional efforts to suppress these raids have proved useless. This might prove the ideal site for nuclear intervention.”
“Well said, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel answered. “If we do strike those areas with nuclear weapons, most of the radioactive fallout they produce will be blown out to sea, and seas the size of those here on Tosev 3 undoubtedly can accommodate such with far less damage than the land.”
“This planet has altogether too much sea in proportion to its land area,” Atvar agreed. “The planetologists will spend centuries accounting for what makes it so different from Home and the worlds of the Rabotevs and Hallessi.”
“Let them worry about such things,” Kirel said. “Our job is to make certain they have the opportunityto worry.”
“Now you have spoken well, Shiplord,” Atvar said, and Kirel stretched out from the rather nervous posture he usually assumed around the fleetlord. Atvar realized he had not given his chief subordinate much in the way of praise lately. That was an error on his part: if they did not work well together, the progress of the conquest would be impeded-and too many things had already impeded the progress of the conquest. Atvar hissed out a sigh. “Had I any conception of the magnitude of the task involved in suppressing resistance on an industrialized world without destroying it in the process, I would have thought long and hard before accepting command.”
Kirel didn’t answer right away. Had Atvar declined the position, he most likely would have been appointed fleetlord. How much did he want to taste the job? Atvar had never been certain of that, which made his dealings with the shiplord of the conquest fleet’s bannership edgier than they might have been. Kirel had never shown himself to be disloyal, but-
When the shiplord did speak, he dealt with the tactical situation under discussion, not with Atvar’s latest remark: “Exalted fleetlord, shall we then prepare to use nuclear weapons against these major Tosevite settlements on the island or continent or whatever it may be?” He leaned forward to read the toponyms on the map so as to avoid any possible mistakes. “Against Sydney and Melbourne, I mean?”
Atvar leaned forward, too, to check the sites for himself. “Yes, those are the ones. Begin preparations as expeditiously as possible.”
“Exalted Fleetlord, it shall be done.”
XII
As prisons went, the one Moishe Russie and his wife and son now inhabited wasn’t bad. It even outdid the villa where the Jewish underground in Palestine had incarcerated them. Here, in what had been a fine hotel, he and his family got plenty of food and enjoyed both electricity and hot and cold running water. If not for bars on the windows and armed Lizard guards outside the door, the suite would have been luxurious.