“If he comes, he will come to China.” Liu Han spoke with the assurance of a man. “He speaks Chinese. I do not think he speaks any other human language. If he robs some poor woman, he will rob one from China.”

Nieh spread his hands. “This is logical, I must say. What do you want us to do about it?”

“Punish him,” she answered at once. “I will bring the matter before the central committee and get official approval for it.”

“The central committee will not approve of an act of personal vengeance,” he warned her. “Getting agreement to put the rescue of your child on the negotiation agenda was difficult enough, but this-”

“I think the motion will be approved,” Liu Han said steadily. “I do not intend to present it as a matter of personal vengeance, but as a symbol that the little devils’ oppression of mankind is not to be tolerated.”

“Present it however you like,” Nieh replied. “It is still personal vengeance. I am sorry, Liu Han, but I do not feel able to give you my own support in this matter. I have spent too much political capital for Liu Mei already.”

“I will present the motion anyhow,” Liu Han told him. “I have discussed it with several committee members. I think it will pass, whether you support it or not.”

He stared at her. They’d worked well together, in bed and out, but he’d always been the dominant partner. And why not? He’d been an army chief of staff before the little scaly devils came and turned everything topsy-turvy, and she’d been nothing but a peasant woman and an example of the scaly devils’ oppression. Everything she was in the revolutionary struggle, she was because of him. He’d brought her onto the central committee to give him more support. How could she turn against him?

By the look in her eye, she’d gained the backing she needed to get her motion adopted. She’d done that quietly, behind his back. Hsia Shou-Tao hadn’t got wind of it, either. “You’re good,” he said in genuine admiration. “You’re very good.”

“Yes, I am,” she said matter-of-factly, to herself as much as to him. Then her expression softened a little. “Thank you for putting me in a place where I’ve had the chance to show I could be.”

Shewas very good. She was even letting him down easy, making sure he didn’t stay angry at her. And she was doing it as a man would, with words, rather than using her body to win the point. He didn’t think it was because she didn’t fancy him any more; it was just another way for her to show him what she could do.

He smiled at her. She looked back in wary surprise. “The two of us will go far if we stick together,” he said. She thought about that, then nodded. Only later did he wonder whether he would be guiding her down his track or she guiding him down hers.

The train groaned to a stop. Ussmak had never ridden on such a hideous conveyance in all his life. Back on Home, rail transport was fast, smooth, and nearly silent; thanks to magnetic levitation, trains never actually touched the rails over which they traveled. It wasn’t like that here. He felt every crosstie, every rail joint, that jounced the train as it slowly chugged along. His landcruiser had had a smoother, more pleasant ride on the worst broken terrain than the train did in its own roadbed.

He let out a soft, sad hissing sigh. “If I’d had my wits about me, I never would have sunk my teeth into that Lidov creature. Ah, well-that’s what ginger does to a male.”

One of the other males jammed into the compartment with him, a riflemale named Oyyag, said, “At least you got to bite one of the stinking Big Uglies. Most of us just got squeezed dry and used up.”

A chorus of agreement rose from the others. To them, Ussmak was a hero of sorts, precisely because he’d managed to strike a blow against the SSSR even after the local Big Uglies got him in their claws. It was an honor he could have done without. The Tosevites knew why he was on this train, too, and treated him worse because of it. As Oyyag had said, the Soviets had simply run out of questions to put to most of the captive males. Not Ussmak, though.

Two Big Uglies carrying automatic weapons opened the door to the compartment. “Out! Out!” they bawled in the Russkis’ ugly language. That was a word Ussmak had learned. He hadn’t learned many, but some of his fellows had been captive for a long time. They translated for those who, like him, were new-caught and innocent.

Out he went. The corridor was chilly. The Tosevites pressed back against the outer wall, making sure no males could come close and attack them. Nobody was foolhardy enough to try; no one who had any experience in the SSSR could doubt that the Big Uglies would cheerfully shoot any male who gave them the least bit of trouble.

The outer door at the far end of the railroad car was open. Ussmak made for it. He was used to being jammed into close quarters with many of his fellow males-he’d been a landcruiser crewmale, after all-but a little open space was welcome now and then, too. “Maybe they’ll feed us better here than they did on the train,” he said hopefully.

“Silence!” one of the weapon-toting guards bawled in the Russki language. He’d learned that command, too. He shut up.

If the corridor had been chilly, it was downright cold outside. Ussmak rapidly swiveled his eye turrets, wondering what sort of place this would be. It was certainly different from the battered city of Moskva, where he’d been brought after yielding up his base to the males of the SSSR. He’d got to see some on that journey, but he’d been a collaborator then, not a prisoner.

Dark green Tosevite trees grew in great profusion all around the open area where the train had halted. He opened his mouth a crack to let his tongue drink in their scent. It was tangy and spicy and almost put him in mind of ginger. He wished he had a taste-anything to take his mind off his predicament. He wouldn’t try to attack these Big Ugly guards. Well, he didn’t think he would, anyhow.

The Big Uglies’ shouts and gestures sent him and his comrades in misery skittering through a gateway in a fence made of many strands of the fanged stuff Tosevites used in place of razor wire, and toward some rough buildings of new, raw timber not far away. Other, more weathered buildings lay farther off, separated from these by more wire with fangs. Big Uglies in stained and faded coverings stared toward him and his companions from the grounds around those old buildings.

Ussmak didn’t have much chance to look at them. Guards yelled and waved some more to show him which way to go. Some held automatic weapons, too; others controlled snarling animals with mouths full of big, sharp yellow teeth. Ussmak had seen those Tosevite beasts before. He’d had one with an explosive charge strapped to its back run under his landcruiser, blow itself up, and blow a track off the armored fighting vehicle. If the Big Uglies could train them to do that, he was sure they could train them to run over and bite males of the Race who got out of line, too.

He didn’t get out of line, literally or figuratively. Along with the rest of the males from the train, he went into the building to which he’d been steered. He gave it the same swift, eye-swiveling inspection he’d used on the terrain surrounding it. Compared to the box in which he’d been stored in the Moskva prison, compared to the packed compartment in which he’d ridden from that prison to this place, it was spacious and luxurious. Compared to any other living quarters, even the miserable Tosevite barracks he’d had to inhabit in Besancon, it gave squalor a new synonym.

There was a small open space in the center of this barracks, with a metal contraption in the middle of it. A guard used an iron poker to open a door on the device, then flung some black stones into the fire inside it. Only when he saw the fire did Ussmak realize the thing was supposed to be a stove.

Surrounding it were row on row of bunks, five and six spaces high, built to a size that conformed to the dimensions of the Race, not those of the Big Uglies. As males hurried to get spaces of their own, the impression of roominess the barracks had given disappeared. They would be desperately crowded in here, too.