Harry Turtledove - Bombs Away

When she pulled the curtains back to let him into the smoky snug, she saw that he was carrying a bouquet of roses. “What in blazes are those?” she demanded, pointing.

“They’re something to help me say I’m sorry,” McNulty answered. “I was out of line when I stomped out of here the last time I came. I was a jerk, but at least I know I was a jerk.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Daisy said. No one had brought her flowers since Tom, just before he had to go back to the Continent from leave, before he went off on the attack he didn’t come back from. It hadn’t been like him to do such a thing; he’d surprised her-startled her, really. Maybe he’d guessed something. Or maybe all the talk like that was just moonshine.

“I didn’t do it because I had to. I did it because I wanted to.” McNulty shifted from foot to foot like a nervous schoolboy. “Now I’d better get back to base, huh? I know you’ve got work to do here. You don’t need me hanging around wasting your time.”

“You’re not wasting my time,” Daisy said. “And thank you very much! I didn’t say that before, did I? They’re-they’re lovely. There was no need-I did say that.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so flustered.

“My pleasure, believe me. Anyway, I’m gone. But is it okay if I come back as long as the Russians let me?”

“Of course it is! D’you think I want to see a good customer get away?” But Daisy realized flipness wouldn’t do. When he joked about the Russians, he was trying not to think about flying through the valley of the shadow of death. She had no excuse like that. Quickly, she added, “I didn’t want you to leave to begin with. I lost my temper, that’s all. Believe me, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” he said, which didn’t come within miles of being true. Had he tried to kiss her then, she would have let him. She might have let him do more than that, too, which she hadn’t come close to doing in all the years since Tom’s tank brewed up.

He didn’t, though. He only touched the patent-leather brim of his cap in that way he had, nodded, and walked back out into the quiet night. The door closed. He was gone. Daisy stared at the place where he’d been, then at the roses in her arms. They were sweet. She could smell them through the clouds of tobacco smoke.

She took them upstairs, to the rooms where she’d never invited any of the men who drank at the Owl and Unicorn. If she left them down in the pub, everybody would wonder who’d given them to her and what she’d done to make him give them. Or rather, they wouldn’t wonder what she’d done. They’d be sure. What else could she have done?

And then they’d start talking. Somebody would start lying. And her reputation would wind up as flat as the center of Norwich.

That wouldn’t happen now, anyway. Out of sight, out of mind. A lot of the flyers might well have been out of their minds. Considering what they did to earn what their countries paid them, who could blame them?

Daisy’d seen only the outskirts of Norwich before the soldiers chased her home. She was no saint even if she didn’t sleep with pilots. She wanted revenge for the city close to home. The men flying out of Sculthorpe were the ones who gave it to her. Good for them, too!

In the meantime, she still had the mugs to deal with. She set about that, then cleaned out the toilets. Afterwards, she scrubbed her hands with the strongest soap and the hottest water she could stand. They still felt filthy afterwards. They always felt that way after the toilets, no matter how clean she got them. She knew it was in her mind. Knowing didn’t help her change.

At last, she went upstairs again. Her nose twitched-the roses perfumed her rooms. She smiled. Bruce McNulty knew how to do an apology up brown: no doubt of that. How much that meant, what she ought to do about it…She’d worry about such things some other time. She set the alarm clock, snuggled under the covers, and slept.

Whenever a motorcar came to the collective farm, Ihor Shevchenko worried. Motorcars meant the authorities. The authorities meant trouble. Ihor’s ancestors-serfs for generations uncounted-would have understood exactly how he felt. The symbols that panicked them might have been different from that black Gaz, but the panic would have been the same.

Two men got out and clumped toward the dining hall. It was early in the morning. People were still spooning up kasha, drinking glasses of tea, and smoking their first cigarettes. Like Ihor, the rest of the kolkhozniks eyed one another in apprehension when the badly tuned engine stopped so close by.

As soon as Ihor saw the men, he knew they had to belong to the MGB. The Chekists didn’t just mean trouble. They meant disaster for whomever their gaze fell upon. These fellows wore gray suits that fit their lumpy bodies none too well. One had a red tie, the other a black. Fedoras sat at a challenging angle on their bullet heads.

They eyed the kolkhozniks in the dining hall the way Ihor would have eyed a chicken he was about to take to the chopping block. “We’re here to bring two men into the service of the glorious, ever-victorious Red Army of the Soviet Union,” the one with the red tie announced. He spoke Russian, of course. To expect a Chekist, even a Chekist born in Kiev, to use Ukrainian would have been to expect the sun to rise in the west. He figured the nervous people in front of him would be able to understand…and he was right. Nodding to his partner, he said, “Read the names, Vanya.”

“I’ll do it,” the one with the black tie-Vanya-said. He fumbled in an inside pocket that held the paper with those names. The fumbling showed he had a shoulder holster, though the bulge under his left arm, and under his boss’, had already warned of that. He unfolded the paper. “First name is Gavrysh, Bogdan Stepanovich.” In his mouth, too, Ukrainian h ’s turned to Russian g ’s.

Bohdan stared in horror. He always made noises that marked him as a patriotic man. He’d fought against the Nazis, and must have thought the government would keep leaving him alone this time around.

“Come on,” said the MGB man with the red tie-the one who wasn’t Vanya. “Do you serve the Soviet Union or don’t you?”

“I serve the Soviet Union!” Bohdan choked out. Any other answer would have sent him to the gulags instead of the Red Army, or maybe into the Red Army after a beating that should have earned him a medical exemption.

His wife put her head down and covered her face with her hands. Elizaveta was shocked, and well she might be. Ihor guessed it wouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks before she decided she was at least as well off without him. Ihor didn’t know Bohdan was as big a gasbag in private as in public, but it sure seemed likely to him.

Miserably, the kolkhoznik got up and walked over to the two MGB men. The one with the red tie nodded to Vanya. “The other whore, and then we’ll be on our way.” He sounded as if getting out of here was his fondest wish. He also sounded like a zek, dropping mat’ into his talk without noticing he was doing it.

“The other one. Right.” Vanya peered down at the paper again. “Shevchenko, Igor Semyonovich.”

Anya shrieked, then clapped both hands to her mouth. Ihor felt as if someone had slapped him in the face with a meter-long salmon. “You can’t do that!” he said automatically.

Tovarishch Red Tie glowered at him. With the Chekist’s ugly, badly shaved mug, it was a good glower. “No, huh?” he growled. His voice wasn’t deep enough for a truly scary growl, but he did his best with what he had. “You want to find out what we can do and what we can’t, prick?”