Tilting the Balance

Drefsab made the vial disappear. “You don’t taste before you’re going into action? ”

“I try not to. ” Ussmak moved his eye turrets in a way that said he was ashamed of his own weakness. “When the hunger for ginger comes on a male-but you know about that. ”

“Yes, I know about that, ” Drefsab agreed soberly. “The way I look on it is this: a male can yield himself up to the herb and let it be all he lives for, or he can taste the herb as it suits him and go on with the rest of his life as best he can. That’s the road I try to follow, and if it has some bumps and rocky places in it-well, what road on Tosev 3 doesn’t? ”

Ussmak stared at him in admiration. Here was a philosophy for a ginger taster-no, after hearing such words, he needed to be honest with himself: a ginger addict-who nonetheless tried to remember he was a male of the Race, obedient to orders, attentive to duty. He said to Drefsab, “Superior sir, I envy you your wisdom. ”

Drefsab made a gesture of dismissal. “Wisdom? For all I know, I may well be fooling myself, and now you. Whatever it is, the price I paid to win it is much too high. Better by far the herb had never set its claws in me. ”

“I don’t know, ” Ussmak said. “After I’ve tasted, I feel as if ginger were the only worthwhile thing this miserable world produces. ”

“After I’ve tasted, so do I, ” Drefsab said. “But before, or when I need a taste badly and there’s none to be had… times like those, Ussmak, I’m certain ginger is worst for the Race, not best. ”

Times like those, Ussmak had the same feeling. He’d heard stories that some males, if they got desperate enough for ginger, traded pieces of the Race’s military hardware for the herb. He’d never done anything like that himself, but he understood the temptation.

Before he found a safe way to tell that to Drefsab (some things you didn’t say directly even to a male who’d given you a taste of ginger, not until you were positive you could trust him with your life as well as with the herb), he heard a brief, shrill whistle in the air, followed by a loud crummp! The glass from a couple of windows in the barracks blew inward in a shower of tinkling shards.

Ussmak sprang to his feet. As he did so, a loudspeaker blared, “Mortars incoming from forest patch grid 27-Red. Pursuit in force-”

Ussmak didn’t wait to hear any more, not with a good taste of ginger running through him. “Come on, ” he shouted to Drefsab. “Out to the landcruiser park. ” Another mortar bomb hit in the yard in front of the barracks. His words punctuated by the blast, Drefsab said, “But I’ve been assigned to no crew. ”

“So what? Some commander and gunner won’t want to wait for their own driver. ” Ussmak was as sure of that as of his own name. Ginger ran rampant through the base at Besancon; some commander or other would be feeling more intrepid than patient.

The two males ran side by side down the stairs to the yard. Ussmak almost stumbled; the risers were built for Big Uglies, not the smaller Race. Then he almost stumbled again, this time because a blast from a mortar bomb nearly hurled him off his feet. Fragments whistled by; he knew only luck kept them from carving him into jagged, bloody bits.

Off to one side of the barracks, guns opened up, flinging blast and sharp-edged bits of hot brass back at the Tosevites who were hurling them at the Race’s bastion in Besancon. With luck, artillery would take care of the raiders before landcruisers had to go in after them.

When no more mortar bombs fell for a little while, Ussmak hoped that had happened. But then the bombs started coming in again. The Big Uglies didn’t have antiartillery radar, but they’d learned they had to shift their guns to keep the Race from pounding them to bits. That was the trouble with the Big Uglies: they learned too fast.

Hessef and Tvenkel came dashing up from wherever the investigation team had been questioning them. “Come on! ” they shouted together. Ussmak scrambled into his landcruiser the instant he got to it; unless a mortar bomb landed on top of the turret or in the engine compartment, it was the safest place he could be.

The familiar vibration of the big hydrogen-burning engine starting up made him feel this was the purpose for which he’d been hatched. He noted with sober pride that his was the third landcruiser to move out of its revetment. Sometimes the energetic aggression ginger brought wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

With the intercom button taped to one hearing diaphragm, he listened to Hessef telling Tvenkel, “Quick, another taste. I want to be all razor wire when we go after those Deutsche or Francais or whoever’s trifling with us. ”

“Here you go, superior sir, ” the gunner answered. “And wouldn’t the egg-addled snoops who were just grilling us pitch a fit if they knew what we were doing now? ”

“Who cares about them? ” Hessef said. “They’re probably hiding under their desks or else wishing they were back in those addled eggs. ” Silence followed-likely the silence of the two males laughing together.

Ussmak laughed, too, a little. What the other crewmales said was true, but that didn’t mean he was happy about their going into action with heads full of ginger, even If he was doing the same thing himself, it’s not my fault, he thought virtuously. I didn’t know the Big Uglies would sneak a mortar into range.

Square 27-Red was northeast of the fortress, and east of the river that wound through Besancon. Following the two landcruiser crews that had managed to get moving ahead of him, Ussmak roared down the hill on which the fortress sat and toward the nearest bridge. Big Uglies stared at the landcruisers as they went by. Ussmak was sure they wished one of those mortar bombs had blown him to bits.

Sometimes when he rumbled through town, he drove unbuttoned and noticed the fancy wrought-iron grillwork that decorated so many of the local buildings. Not today; today, action was liable to be immediate, so he had only his vision slits and periscopes to peer through. The streets, even the big ones, were none too wide for landcruisers. He had to drive carefully to keep from mashing a pedestrian or two and making the Francais love the Race even less than they did already.

He felt the explosion ahead as much as he heard it; for a moment, he thought it was an earthquake. Then gouts of flame shot from the lead landcruiser, which lay on its side. He slammed on the brakes as hard as he could. The murdered landcruiser’s ammunition load began cooking off, adding fireworks to the funeral pyre. Ussmak shivered in horror. If I’d been just a clawtip faster out of the revetment, I’d have driven over that bomb in the street, he thought. The Big Uglies must have figured out just how the Race would respond to a mortar attack and set their ambush accordingly.