Harry Turtledove - Breakthroughs

Captain Cremony said, “Russell, take him down the line to the section he’ll be leading. The sooner he fits himself into the scheme of things, the better for everybody.”

“Yes, sir,” Tilden Russell said. “You come with me, Sergeant. It’s not far.” As soon as he and Martin were out of earshot of Captain Cremony, he added, “The one you’re going to have to watch out for, Sarge, is Corporal Reinholdt. He’s been running the section since Sergeant Kelly stopped a Tredegar round with his ear, and he was steamed when they didn’t give him his third stripe.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Martin said. He didn’t blame Reinholdt for being steamed. If you were doing a three-striper’s job, you deserved a third stripe. A file card with Martin’s name on it must have popped up in the War Department at just the wrong moment for Reinholdt.

Either that, Martin thought, or the guy doesn’t deserve two stripes, let alone three. He’d have to see about that, too.

Quietly, Russell said, “Here we are, Sarge.” Then he raised his voice: “Heads up, you lugs. This here is Sergeant Martin. He’s off convalescent leave-spent the whole damn war till now on the Roanoke front.”

One of the men Martin would be leading was stirring a kettle of stew. A couple were on the firing step, though they weren’t shooting at the Rebels. One was dealing from a battered deck of cards for himself and three friends. A couple were cleaning their rifles. One was repairing a tunic, using a needle and thread with what Martin could see at a glance was extraordinary skill. A few were asleep, rolled in blankets.

Everybody who was awake gave Martin a once-over. He was a stranger here, and so an object of suspicion, and in a clean uniform, and so doubly an object of suspicion. He looked the men over, too. The tailor, or whatever he was in civilian life, was a kid. So were one of the fellows on the firing step, a cardplayer, and one of the men working with gun oil and cleaning rod. The rest, Martin guessed, had been in the fight longer.

He looked around for Corporal Reinholdt, and found him glowering at the cards he was holding. Reinholdt looked like somebody who spent a lot of time glowering. Martin decided to try it the smooth way first: “Corporal, I hope you’ll give me a hand getting to know people.”

By way of answer, Reinholdt only grunted. His eyes went back to his hand, but kept flicking toward Martin’s face. Martin sighed. The smooth way wasn’t going to work. Sooner or later, he’d have trouble with the disgruntled corporal. He resolved to make it sooner, and to pick the time himself.

Holding in his temper, Martin spoke to the men of the section: “Tell me who you are. I’ll get it wrong for a while, but not for long.”

Names washed over him: Willie and Parker and Zeb and Cal and two guys named Joe and one, the fellow with needle and thread, who seemed to be called Hamburger. “That a first name or a last name?” Martin asked, and got a laugh from everybody except Corporal Reinholdt.

“Hey, don’t get him mad at you,” one of the Joes said. “His sister’s a congressman-congresslady-whatever the hell they call her.”

“Yeah, and I’m Queen of the May,” Martin said.

That got more laughter, but the soldiers said things like, “We’re not shitting you, Sarge.” “She really is.” “We ain’t lyin’.”

Martin still didn’t believe it. Pointing at the kid named Hamburger-David, his first name turned out to be-he asked, “Listen, if your sister’s in Congress, what the hell are you doin’ here ? She don’t like you or somethin’?”

“She likes me fine,” Hamburger said through more laughter. His swarthy face flushed. “She just doesn’t think it’s right to use her job to make things soft for her family. That’s not why the working people elected her.”

Socialist, Martin thought from the way the kid said working people . It didn’t faze him; about one soldier in three voted that way. “New York City?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Hamburger nodded. “You can tell from the way I talk, I bet.”

“Right the first time,” Martin said. He would have tagged the kid for a dago from his looks, but with that last name he was likelier to be a Jew. “Your old man a peddler?”

“No-he sews for a living, same as me, same as my other two sisters.” That explained the deft hand with a needle. “How about you, Sarge?”

“I was a steelworker in Toledo before the war, like my pa still is,” Martin answered. “He makes the stuff, and we throw it at the Rebs. That works out pretty good, hey?” David Hamburger nodded again. Martin thought he’d get on here well enough-except he didn’t like Corporal Reinholdt’s eyes.

Anne Colleton paced back and forth like a caged lioness in the little room she’d rented in St. Matthews, South Carolina. “I will not go any farther from Marshlands,” she snapped, as if someone had insisted that she should.

A wisp of dark blond hair escaped from its pin and tickled her cheek. She forced it back into place without breaking her furious stride. The Red uprising of 1915 had sent the Marshlands mansion up in flames; her brother Jacob, an invalid after the damnyankees gassed him, died then, too. She’d been in Charleston when the Negroes rebelled, and, unlike so many white landowners, returned to her plantation after the revolt was quelled. She’d even managed to bring in a cotton crop of sorts. And then-

“God damn you, Cassius,” she said softly. In the days before the war, he’d been the chief hunter at Marshlands-and a secret Red, when she’d thought the Negroes there had no secrets from her. In the rebellion, he’d headed the murderous outfit that styled itself the Congaree Socialist Republic. He still led a ragtag band of black brigands who skulked through the swamps, eluding the authorities and calling murder and thievery acts of revolution.

They had friends among the Negroes who’d gone back to work at Marshlands. They had more friends among them than Anne had imagined. A month or so earlier, on Christmas night, 1916, they’d come horrifyingly close to killing her.

“I will have my revenge,” she said, as she’d said a hundred times since managing to escape. “I will have-” A knock on the door interrupted her. She stormed over to it and threw it open. “What is it?” she demanded.

Even though the delivery boy for the Confederate Wire Service wore a uniform close in color and cut to that of the Army, he couldn’t have been a day above fifteen years old. The sight of a tall, fierce, beautiful blond woman twice his age glaring at him unstrung him altogether. He tried to stammer out why he had come, but words failed him. After a couple of clucks a hen would have been ashamed to claim, he dropped the envelope he carried and incontinently fled.

Feeling triumph over so lowly a male would have demeaned Anne. She bent, scooped up the envelope, tore it open, and unfolded the telegram inside. REGRET NO CONFEDERATE TROOPS AVAILABLE TO AID SOUTH CAROLINA FORCES IN HUNTING DOWN BANDITS. HOPE ALL OTHERWISE WELL. GABRIEL SEMMES, PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES.

She crumpled up the telegram and flung it into the wickerwork wastebasket that had come with the room. “You stingy son of a bitch!” she snarled. “I poured money into your campaign. The niggers burned down Marshlands, and I still twisted arms to help get your bill for Negro troops through Congress. And now you won’t-”

She broke off. Some of her rage evaporated. The only reason Semmes had wanted to arm Negroes was that the war, as it was presently being fought, was going so badly. It hadn’t gone any better lately. Maybe the president of the CSA really couldn’t spare any decent soldiers to help the lame, the halt, and the elderly of South Carolina’s militia go after Cassius and his guerrillas.