Tilting the Balance

He went down to breakfast like a condemned man heading off for his last meal. Even eyeing the girls couldn’t snap him out of his funk. He was finishing his cup of tea When Nieh HoT’ing stuck his head into the kitchen and waved to him. “Come here. We have things to talk about. ”

Bobby came. Nieh handed Fiore a rattan suitcase. It was heavy. When Fiore opened it, he found a Russian submachine gun, several magazines of ammunition, and four potato-masher grenades.

“You will not go in with us, ” Nieh said. “You loiter across from the front entrance to the British Consulate. When the time comes-you will know, I assure you-kill the guards there if you can and help any human beings who come out through those doors. ”

“Okay, ” Fiore said in English when he was sure he understood what Nieh wanted from him. The Red nodded; he got that. Fiore switched to his lousy Chinese: “How will you get in the consulate? How will you bring more guns in? ”

“I should not tell you-security. ” But Nieh Ho-T’ing looked too pleased with himself to keep his mouth shut altogether. He went on, “This much I will say: the consulate will have some new human cooks and waiters today, and they will be bringing in ducks to go with the lobsters for the commandant’s feast. ”

He clammed up again-if Bobby couldn’t work it out from there, that was his tough luck. But he could, and started to laugh when he thought about how those ducks would be stuffed. No wonder Nieh looked so smug! “Good luck, ” Fiore said. He stuck out his hand, but yanked it back; Chinamen didn’t go in for handshakes.

Nieh Ho-T’ing surprised him, though, by reaching out and taking his hand. “My Soviet comrades have this custom; I know what it means, ” he said, then looked at his watch. “Take your place at noon. The banquet is supposed to begin at half past the hour, and will not last long. ”

“Okay, ” Fiore said. If he’d been in a town where he spoke the language, he would have thought about taking it on the lam with the arsenal. Getting the Reds mad at him, though, seemed a worse bet than taking his chances on the Lizards.

He had plenty of time for another screw before he took off. Shura came back upstairs with him willingly enough. Afterwards, she blinked when he gave her an extra couple of dollars Mex; he was usually as cheap as he could get away with. “You rob a bank, Bobby? ” she asked.

“Two of ’em, babe, ” he said, deadpan, as he started to dress. She blinked again, then decided it was a joke and laughed.

Suitcase in hand, he headed for the Bund. He knew Nieh Ho-T’ing and his buddies were taking the real risk; if the Lizards inside the British Consulate were on their toes, the scheme was dead in the water.

He got to Number 33, the Bund, just as clocks were striking twelve. Nieh would be pleased with him; when he said noon, he meant on the dot. Now Bobby had to hang around and look inconspicuous till the fireworks started. He bought a bowl of watery soup from a passing vendor, then had an inspiration and bought the bowl itself. He sat down on the pavement with it beside him and made like a beggar.

Every once in a while, somebody tossed a copper in the bowl, or even some silver. Bobby kept track-when the shooting started, he had just over a dollar, Mex.

The British Consulate was a large, imposing building. Not even its stonework, though, could muffle the rattle of automatic weapons fire. The Lizard guards at the main entrance whirled around and stared, as if unsure what to do next and unable to believe the ears they didn’t have.

Fiore didn’t give them much of a chance to think it over. As soon as he heard guns, he opened the suitcase, yanked out a grenade, unscrewed the metal cap at the bottom, pulled the porcelain bead inside to work the friction igniter, and let fly as if he were making a throw to the plate.

Had there been a runner, he would have been out. The grenade landed right in the middle of the four Lizards. When it went off a second later, people who had been exclaiming over the shots inside the consulate started screaming and running instead.

The only trouble was, it didn’t knock out all the Lizards. A couple of them started shooting, even if they didn’t know just where it had come from. The screams along the Bund turned into shrieks. Fiore dove behind a solid bench of wood and iron; he opened up with the submachine gun. He hoped he didn’t hit anybody on the street, but he wasn’t going to lose any sleep if he did-those Lizards had to go down. And down they went.

More shots from inside the British Consulate, then those entry doors burst open. Nieh and half a dozen other Chinamen, some wearing cooks’ clothes the rest looking like penguins in fancy waiter getup (though waiters didn’t commonly tote automatic weapons), sprinted down the steps and then down the street.

Lizards opened up on them from the roof and from second-story windows. The fleeing humans started spinning and dropping and kicking, like flies swatted not quite hard enough to die right away. “You just talked about the bastards at the door, goddammit, ” Bobby muttered, as if Nieh Ho-T’ing were close enough to hear. “You didn’t say nothin’ about the rest of ’em. ”

He raised the submachine gun and blazed away at the Lizards till his magazine ran dry. He grabbed another one, slammed it into the weapon, and had just started shooting again when a burst of three bullets stitched across his chest. The submachine gun fell out of his hands. He tried to reach for it, found he couldn’t. He didn’t hurt. Then he did. Then he didn’t, ever again.

Brigadier General Leslie Groves strode across the campus of the University of Denver with his head down, as if he were a bull looking to trample anyone who got in his way. That hard-charging attitude had been instinctive in him until one day he noticed and deliberately cultivated it. Thanks in no small part to that, not a whole lot of people got in his way these days.