Upsetting the Balance by Harry Turtledove Page A

apt to fall asleep in front of the microphone.”
    “It’ll be hot, anyhow,” Jacobi said, which was true. “As for the jolt, you never can tell from day to day, not with these messes of leaves and roots and rose hips we get instead of the proper stuff.” He sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a cup of vintage Darjeeling—Bloody war.”
    The last two words were in English. Moishe knew what they meant, but took the adjective literally. “Bloody war is right. And the worst of it is, we can’t make the Lizards out to be as black as we would otherwise, because they haven’t done much worse to us than we were already doing to ourselves.”
    “You would know best about that. Anyone who was in Poland—” Jacobi shook his head. “But still, if we hadn’t been geared up to a fever pitch to fight each other, could we have put up such a battle against the Lizards?”
    “I suppose not, but it’s no credit to us that we were,” Russie answered. “It’s not as if we knew they were coming. We’d have gone right on slaughtering ourselves if they hadn’t come, too. Still, I admit that’s neither here nor there at the moment. They are here, and we have to make life miserable for them.” He waved the pages of his script, then fished out his pass and showed it to the guard at the door. The guard nodded. Russie and Jacobi went in to get ready to broadcast.

 
    3
     
     
    “Forgive me, Exalted Fleetlord, but I have an emergency call for you from the
206th Emperor Yower
,” Atvar’s adjutant said. In the vision screen, the younger male looked as worried as he sounded.
    “Very well, Pshing, patch it through,” Atvar said, setting aside for a moment the war against the Big Uglies for his private conflict with the shiplord Straha. After Straha failed to topple him from command of the conquest fleet, the shiplord should have known revenge was on its way. Atvar wondered what sort of lying nonsense Straha would come up with to justify himself.
    Pshing’s face disappeared from the vision screen. It was not, however, replaced by that of Straha. Instead, Atvar’s chief security officer, a male named Diffal, turned his eye turrets toward the fleetlord. Diffal was earnest and capable. All the same, Atvar yearned for the cunning deviousness Drefsab had brought to the job. Even as a ginger taster, he’d been the best in the fleet. But now he was dead, and Atvar had to make do. “Do you have the shiplord Straha in your custody?” he demanded.
    “Exalted Fleetlord, I do not.” Diffal also sounded worried. “I am informed that, shortly before the arrival of my team aboard the
206th Emperor Yower,
the shiplord Straha left this vessel and traveled down from orbit to confer with Horrep, shiplord of the
29th Emperor Jevon,
whose ship has landed in the central region of the northern portion of the lesser continental mass, near the city called St. Louis.”
    Atvar hissed. Horrep was a member of Straha’s faction. Pshing, who must have been monitoring the conversation from his outer office, came onto the screen for a moment. “Exalted Fleetlord, the
206th Emperor Yower
did not report this departure to us.”
    Diffal said, “I have been in communication with the
29th Emperor Jevon.
Straha is not aboard that ship, nor has his shuttlecraft landed nearby. I examined the radar records of the trajectory of the shuttlecraft. Computer analysis of the course they indicate gives a landing point relatively close to the
29th Emperor Jevon,
but not so close as would be expected if Straha truly intended to confer with Horrep. The shiplord Horrep, I should inform you, vehemently denies that Straha sent messages announcing a visit, as custom and courtesy would have required.”
    “Ever since we came to Tosev 3, custom and courtesy have been corroding,” Atvar said. Diffal stared back at him, not replying. One couldn’t expect a male in security to be concerned with philosophy as well. Atvar dragged himself back to the matter at hand: “Well,