Tilting the Balance

“I am called Nossat, ” the scaly devil answered. “I am a-I do not know it, your language has an exact word for it-I am a male who studies how you humans think. I am colleague to Tessrek, who spoke with your mate Bobby Fiore. ”

“Yes, I understand, ” Liu Han said. That was the little scaly devil with whom Bobby Fiore had spoken down here. What had he called the devil Tessrek? English had a name for what that devil did-psychologist, that was it. Liu Han relaxed. Talking could not be dangerous.

Nossat said, “You are going to lay an egg in the time to come? No, your kind does not lay eggs. You are going to give birth? Is that what you say, ‘give birth’? You will have a child? ”

“I am going to have a child, yes, ” Liu Han agreed. Of themselves, the fingers of her right hand spread fanlike over her belly. She had long since resigned herself to being naked in front of the scaly devils, but she remained automatically protective of the baby growing inside her.

“The child is from matings between Bobby Fiore and you? ” Nossat said. Without waiting for her to reply, he stuck one of his thin, clawed fingers into a recess on the desk. A screen, as if for motion pictures, lit up behind him. The picture that moved upon it was of Bobby Fiore thrusting atop Liu Han.

She sighed. She knew the little scaly devils took pictures of her while she made love, as well as any other time they chose. They had mating seasons like farm animals, and were utterly uninterested in matters of the flesh at any other time. The way people mated the whole year round seemed to fascinate and appall them.

“Yes, ” she answered as the picture played on, “Bobby Fiore and I made love to start this baby. ” Before long, it would begin to kick inside her, hard enough to feel. She remembered what a marvel that was from the boy she’d borne her husband before the Japanese killed him and the child.

Nossat stuck his finger into a different recess. Liu Han was not sorry to see the picture of her joined gasping to Bobby Fiore fade. A different moving picture took its place, this one of an immensely pregnant black woman giving birth to her baby. Liu Han watched the woman with more interest than the birth process: she knew about that, but she’d never before seen a black, man or woman. She hadn’t known the palms of their hands and soles of their feet were so pale.

“This is how your young are born? ” Nossat said as the baby’s head and then shoulders emerged from between the straining woman’s legs.

“What else could it possibly be? ” To Liu Han, the little scaly devils were an incomprehensible blend of immense and terrifying powers on the one hand and childishly abysmal ignorance on the other.

“This is-dreadful, ” Nossat said. The motion picture kept running. The woman delivered the afterbirth. It should have been over then. But she kept on bleeding. The blood was hard to see against her dark skin, but it spread over and soaked into the ground where she lay. The little scaly devil went on, “This female died after the young Tosevite came out of her body. Many females in the land we hold have died bearing their young. ”

“That does happen, yes, ” Liu Han said quietly. It was not something she cared to think about. Not just bleeding, but a baby trying to come out while in the wrong position, or fever afterwards… so many things could go wrong. And so many babies never lived to see their second birthday, their first outside their mother.

“But it’s not right, ” Nossat exclaimed, as if he held her personally responsible for the way people had their babies. “No other kind of intelligent creature we know puts its mothers in such danger just to carry on life. ”

Liu Han had never imagined any kind of intelligent creatures but human beings until the little scaly devils came. Even after she knew of the devils, she hadn’t thought there could be still more varieties of such creatures. Irritation in her voice, she snapped, “Well, how do you have your babies, then? ” For all she knew, the little devils might have been assembled in factories rather than born.

“Our females lay eggs, of course, ” Nossat said. “So do those of the Rabotevs and Hallessi, over whom we rule. Only you Tosevites are different. ” His weird eyes swiveled so that one watched the screen behind him while the other stayed accusingly on Liu Han.

She fought to keep from laughing, fought and lost. The idea of making a nest-out of straw, maybe, like a chicken’s-and then sitting on it till the brood hatched was absurd enough to tickle her fancy. Hens certainly didn’t seem to have trouble laying eggs, either. It might be an easier way to do the job. But it wasn’t the way people did it.

Nossat said, “Your time to have the young come out of your body is now about a year away? ”

“A year? ” Liu Han stared at him. Didn’t the little scaly devils know anything?

But the devil said, “No-this is my mistake, for two years of the Race, more or less, make one of yours. I should say-should have said-you are half a year from your time? ”

“Half a year, yes, ” Liu Han said. “Maybe not quite so long. ”

“We have to decide what to do with you, ” Nossat told her. “We have no knowledge of how to help you when the young is born. You are only a barbarous Tosevite, but we do not want you to die because we are ignorant. You are our subject, not our enemy. ”

Fear blew through Liu Han, a cold wind. Give birth here, in this place of metal, with only scaly devils beside her, without a midwife to help her through her pangs? If the least little thing went wrong, she would die, and the baby, too. “I will need help, ” she said, as plaintively as she could. “Please get some for me. ”

“We are still planning, ” Nossat said, which was neither yes nor no. “We will know what we do before your time comes. ”