Harry Turtledove: Two Fronts

“Catch me!” she said. It was a long, angular Hupmobile from the first years of the Depression. The whole company had gone belly-up not long before the USA got into the war.

Herb shrugged. “I couldn’t find anything better in a hurry. Lord knows what I’ll do if it breaks down and needs parts. But I won’t be putting a whole bunch of miles on it, so maybe it’ll last a while.”

He held the passenger door open for her. She slid inside. He went around and got behind the wheel. The car rattled when he started it. It seemed all the noisier because she was used to the silky-smooth Packard. The Hupmobile wheezed and rattled when he drove off.

Donofrio’s was their favorite Italian place. Herb ordered spaghetti and meatballs. Peggy chose the lasagna. “You have chianti, George?” Herb asked the waiter.

“Only from California,” George answered regretfully-he was a Greek playing at being a dago. “Can’t hardly get no gen-u-ine Eye-talian stuff.”

“Well, bring us a bottle just the same,” Herb said. Peggy nodded. Vino might blunt the edge of what she was feeling. She wasn’t the kind of person who’d let out a war whoop and swing the bottle at her now ex-husband’s head if she got loaded. She didn’t think she was, anyhow.

The guy in the bow tie and the red apron set the bottle on the table. Herb poured for both of them. He raised his glass. “Good luck to you.”

Peggy couldn’t even not drink to that. The wine was … red. “Thursday vintage,” she guessed.

“Oh, it’s older than that. Tuesday, I bet,” Herb said. They bantered as if they’d been married for years. And so they had. And so they weren’t. Peggy drained the big glass in a hurry, but no faster than Herb. He filled them both up again.

They were halfway down their second glasses when the food came. Donofrio’s lasagna was as familiar as … as being married to Herb. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do that?” Peggy asked. “Jesus, why didn’t you even tell me you wanted to do that?”

Herb was using fork and tablespoon to twirl a bite of spaghetti. He paused and looked down at the plate for a moment. Then he met Peggy’s eyes again. Sighing, he answered, “On account of I didn’t feel like a screaming row, and that’s what we would’ve had. When I found out Uncle Samuel was sending me to Nevada anyhow, I figured I’d use the time I was stuck there two different ways.”

That did sound like him; he was nothing if not organized. And it cleared up something she’d wondered about: “So you didn’t make up the story about going to Nevada because the government sent you there?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I didn’t lie to you.”

“You just kept your mouth shut about what you were up to,” Peggy said. That sounded like Herb, too.

“It’s not the same thing,” he insisted, a touch of stiffness in his voice. That might have been the lawyer in him talking. Or maybe he really believed it. Who the hell knew? How much did it matter now either way?

Peggy sharpened her tongue on another question: “Seen anything of Gladys since you got back into town?”

She had the satisfaction of watching him turn almost as red as the tomato sauce on his plate. But he shook his head again. “Nah,” he answered. “I told you before-that didn’t mean anything.”

“Yeah. You told me. And I told you. And we were both telling the truth. And here we are.” Peggy looked at the little strip of fishbelly-white skin on the fourth finger of her left hand, where her ring had lived for so long. Was honesty really the best policy? If they’d both just kept quiet, would they still be married? Would they still be happy enough with each other? Again, who the hell knew? She had trouble believing things could have turned out worse, though.

Herb also finished his sort-of chianti. What was left in the bottle splashed into their glasses without going very far. He waved to the waiter for reinforcements. “Thanks, George,” he said when the fresh bottle came.

“ Prego ,” George replied. Hey, it was a job.

“We’re not far from the house, but will you be able to drive back to your new place if you get crocked?” Peggy asked.

“I’ll do fine. Not enough traffic to worry about,” Herb said. That was true enough.

When he finished his spaghetti, he shoved the plate aside and lit a cigarette. Peggy wasn’t quite done, but she looked forward to hers, too. The one after dinner was the best of the day-even better than the one after sex, usually.

But she hadn’t fired it up when she said, “When I got all those papers, your note said you didn’t love me any more. Have you found somebody else? Not Gladys, but somebody?”

“Nope.” One more shake of the head. “Maybe I’ll go looking. Or maybe I’ll just decide I’m an old goat who’s only fit for his own company. I haven’t worked that one out yet.”

“Okay.” Peggy had no idea whether it was or not. She also had no idea what she’d do along those lines herself. She wasn’t sure she wanted a man who wasn’t Herb in her life. Even if she did, she wasn’t sure she could find one. She was … not so young any more. Herb had a couple of years on her, but so what? It was different with guys. A woman in her thirties wouldn’t see anything wrong with a man in his fifties. The other way around? She snorted quietly to herself. Good luck!

“I wish things didn’t work out the way they did,” Herb said.

Then why did you go to Reno? But Peggy’s bitter question died unspoken. That wasn’t what he meant. He was talking about the things that led up to his going there. “We got stuck in the goddamn war,” she said. “It killed … us … the same way it killed all those soldiers.”

“It sure did,” Herb said. “We get to try and pick up the pieces, though. The poor guys they go and bury can’t even do that.”

Peggy wondered if they were the lucky ones. Everything was over for them, and they didn’t have to worry any more. But that was just self-pity talking. Any one of those poor damned kids would have traded places with her or Herb in a split second. She sighed and made herself nod. “Well,” she said, “you’re right.”

In his seat on the far side of the radio set from Theo Hossbach, Adi Stoss hit the Panzer IV’s starter button. The weather was warm. The panzer was new. The motor caught right away.

“I could get used to this!” Adi said. Before Theo could decide whether to chide him for that, he chided himself: “As soon as I do, the beast won’t start up like this any more.” Theo nodded; Adi had that straight.

“Let me know as soon as we’re warm enough to go, Adi, or even a little before that,” Hermann Witt said from the turret.

“Will do.” Adi watched the engine temperature and the oil pressure and the rest of the gauges on the instrument panel. All around them, the other panzers in the company were starting up and moving out, too. “We’re just about ready, Sergeant.”

“Then get rolling,” Witt said. “Sounds like we’re going to earn our pay the next little while.”

Adi put the Panzer IV in gear. Along with the others, it rolled north and east. The Russians had punched through the German line in front of Gorki, and an armored column was driving on the city. The panzer company was part of the southern jaw of the Wehrmacht ’s counterattack. If the Germans could bite off the column, they could chew it up afterwards at their leisure.

If. From everything Theo heard in his earphones over the radio net, the Ivans had shoved a lot of men and machines through there. They were trying to take their own bites out of the German holdings in the East, and they kept learning more and more about how to do such things.

The company hadn’t been on the move more than ten minutes before flights of Katyushas rained down on the panzers and on the infantry coming forward with them. Theo thought the screaming rockets’ roar was one of the most horrible things he’d ever heard, even through thick steel armor. Hermann Witt ducked down into the panzer and slammed the cupola lid shut. Blast shook the heavy machine. Fragments clanged off it.