Harry Turtledove: In At the Death

"About the only thing we could do to make Sequoyah work would be to kill all the redskins in it." Dowling sighed. "And if we do that, how are we any better than the goddamn Confederates?"

"Those Indians really are fighting us," Toricelli said.

"Sure." Dowling's chins wobbled as he nodded. "But if you listen to Confederate wireless, you hear all the stories about the terrible wicked black guerrillas. Some of that's got to be bullshit, sure. But not all of it, because we both know the War Department helps the guerrillas when it can."

Major Toricelli looked unhappy, but he nodded. One of the reasons Dowling liked him was that he would look facts in the face, even when they were unpleasant.

As if on cue, a soldier from the signals unit stuck his head into the office and said, "Sir, we just got a message that needs decoding."

"I'll take care of it," Toricelli said, and hurried away. Dowling wondered what was going on. Eleventh Army wasn't important enough to receive a lot of encrypted transmissions. The Confederates were welcome to read most of the usual messages it did get.

"Well?" Dowling asked when his adjutant came back forty-five minutes later.

"Well, sir, we're ordered to step up air attacks against Abilene." Toricelli had the look of a man who'd gone hunting in the mountains and brought home a ridiculous mouse.

"We can do that," Dowling allowed. He even understood why the order was coded-no point to letting the Confederates haul in more antiaircraft guns to shoot down U.S. bombers. But, after what he and Toricelli were talking about, the order felt anticlimactic, to say the least.

Colonel Terry DeFrancis was one of the youngest officers of his rank in the Army. He was also one of the better ones; his fighters had established U.S. dominance in the air over west Texas. "Pound the crap out of Abilene?" he said when Dowling told him about the new order. "Sure. We can do that, sir. I'll step up the recon right away, so we know what we're up against."

"Step up the recon over other targets, too," Dowling said. "No use advertising what we're up to."

"Will do, sir," DeFrancis promised. "You're sneaky, you know that?"

"Well, I try." Dowling paused to light a cigarette. No two ways about it-Raleighs and Dukes beat the hell out of anything the USA made. And Confederate cigars…Reluctantly, Dowling brought his mind back to the business at hand. "That's one thing I had to pick up on my own. General Custer never much went in for being sneaky."

"What was it like serving under him?" Colonel DeFrancis asked.

"It wasn't dull, I'll tell you that. He always knew what he wanted to do, and he went ahead and did it." Dowling nodded. That was true, every word of it. It was also the sanitized, denatured version of his long association with the man who was, by his own modest admission, the greatest general in the history of the world. Dowling suspected he'd kept Custer from getting sacked several times. He also suspected he'd kept himself from getting court-martialed at least as often. But Terry didn't need to hear about that.

"Was he as much of an old Tartar as everybody says?" DeFrancis had already heard something, then.

"Well…yes." Dowling couldn't say no without making himself into a bigger liar than he wanted to be.

"But he won the war, pretty much. He got the job done. Morrell was under his orders when he used that armored thrust to roll up the Confederates and take Nashville."

"That's true." Dowling gave a reminiscent shiver. Custer and Morrell had gone against War Department orders to mass their barrels. Dowling himself had lied like Ananias, writing reports that denied they were doing any such thing. Had Philadelphia found out he was lying, or had the attack failed…The aftermath wouldn't have been pretty.

And it wasn't a sure thing, not ahead of time. A lot of Custer's straight-ahead charges at the enemy failed, and failed gruesomely. Dowling knew how nervous he was before the barrels crossed the Cumberland. If Custer had any doubts, he never showed them.

"You know, Colonel, he really is the hero of the last war. In an odd way, he's the hero of the whole first part of this century," Dowling said. "He knew what he wanted to do, and he found a way to make it work."

"We just have to go and do the same thing, then," DeFrancis said. "I expect we can." He saluted and hurried off.

Abner Dowling stubbed out his cigarette. He didn't have George Armstrong Custer's relentless drive, or even Terry DeFrancis'. He was a sane man in a business where the crazy and the obsessed often prospered. He hoped his ability to see all sides of a problem gave him an edge over commanders with tunnel vision. He hoped so, but he was a long way from sure it did.

Major Toricelli stuck his head into the office. "Sir, there's a local who wants to see you. His name is Jeffries, Falstaff Jeffries. He runs the big grocery on the edge of town."

"Has he been searched?" Dowling didn't want to talk to a people bomb, or even a fellow with a pistol in his pocket. But his adjutant nodded. So did Dowling. "All right. Send him in. You know what's eating him?"

"No, sir. But I expect he'll tell you."

Falstaff Jeffries didn't live up to his name. He was short and skinny and somber, nothing like Shakespeare's magnificent clown. He did have the virtue of coming straight to the point: "Where am I going to get more food, General?"

"Where were you getting it?" Dowling asked.

"From farther east. That's where everything comes from out here," Jeffries answered. "Except now I'm on the wrong side of the line. Folks're gonna start getting hungry pretty damn quick unless somebody does something about it."

"I don't think anyone will starve," Dowling said. "Plenty of rations, if it comes to that."

The storekeeper looked at him as if he'd just ordered no presents at Christmastime. "Rations." Jeffries made it into a swear word. "How in blazes am I supposed to run a business if you go around handing out free rations?"

"A minute ago, you were talking about people going hungry," Dowling reminded him. "Now you're flabbling about where your money's coming from. That's a different story, and it's not one I care much about."

"That's on account of you don't have to worry about feeding your family." Falstaff Jeffries eyed Dowling's expanse of belly. "You don't worry about feeding at all, do you?"

"I told you-nobody'll starve," Dowling said tightly. "Not you, not your family, and not me, either."

"But my store'll go under!" Jeffries wailed.

"There's a war on, in case you didn't notice," Dowling said. "You're alive, you're in one piece, your family's all right. Count your blessings."

Jeffries muttered something under his breath. Dowling wouldn't have sworn it was "Damnyankee," but he thought so. The grocer rose. "Well, I can see I won't get any help here."

"If you think I'll open our lines so your supplies can get through, you're even crazier than I give you credit for, and that's not easy," Dowling said.

Jeffries took a deep breath, then seemed to remember where he was and to whom he was talking. He left without another word, which was no doubt wise of him. Abner Dowling hadn't acted like a military tyrant in the west Texas territory Eleventh Army had conquered, but the temptation was always there. And, if he felt like it, so was the power.

L ieutenant-Colonel Jerry Dover was not a happy man. The Confederate supply officer had had to pull back again and again, and he'd had to wreck or burn too much that he couldn't take with him. His dealings with the higher-ups from whom he got his supplies, always touchy, approached the vitriolic now.

"What do you mean, you can't get me any more antibarrel rounds?" he shouted into a field telephone. Coming out of the restaurant business in Augusta, he was much too used to dealing with suppliers who welshed at the worst possible time. "What are the guns supposed to shoot at the Yankees? Aspirins? I got plenty of those."