Harry Turtledove - American Front

After he'd disposed of the potatoes, he washed his mess tin in a bucket of water and scrubbed it with a rag till the metal took on a dull gleam. He made sure the rest of the gun crew did the same. Nothing gave you food poisoning faster than eating out of a dirty mess tin.

Scott broke out a deck of cards. Jake declined to get into a poker game, saying, "My luck's been lousy lately." That was, if anything, an understatement; he'd lost most of a month's pay a week before, betting a full house against four artfully concealed nines.

He walked out onto Hampstead's main street and peered north. The fall air was cool against his cheek. He couldn't see anything much in the deepening twilight, and told himself that was just as well. If he had seen something, it would have been Yankee artillery flashes lighting up the horizon, which would have meant Yankee shells paying the battery a visit. This past year, he'd had all the glory and drama and excitement of combat he'd needed to prove to him that the best thing to hope for in the middle of a war was a nice, quiet day-or two or three of them in a row.

Since he didn't feel like sleeping, he went back to check on the horses. Perseus and Nero had done their usual capable job of taking care of the animals. He patted the gray gelding on the nose, then headed out of the barn where the animals were resting.

A cricket chirped. Somewhere off in the middle distance, an owl let loose with a mournful hoot. From the front came the occasional crack of rifle fire. It was only occasional, though, not the continuous, almost surflike roar it became when the action heated up. He looked up to the rather cloudy heavens and thanked God he wasn't an infantryman.

Captain Stuart's tent was pitched not far from Jake's gun. A lot of officers, instead of living under canvas, would have commandeered a house and made themselves comfortable there. That would have been all right with Feather- ston; what point to being an officer if you couldn't take advantage of it? But Stuart, despite his fancy dinners and such, still affected a pose as just another artilleryman — except when he needed something from his father. The hypocrisy irked Jake.

He heard a low murmur of voices from beyond the battery commander's tent. He frowned. What was going on back there? The voices grew quiet as he approached. He found Nero and Perseus, along with the Negro laborers from the rest of the guns in the battery and even with Captain Stuart's servant Pom-pey, gathered in a circle around a tiny fire. Walls all around made it impossible for any Yankee to spot from the ground; they could smother it in an instant if aeroplanes came over.

Near the fire lay a pair of dice and some money. "Evenin", Sergeant," Pompey said in his mincing voice when he recognized Jake. "We is just spreadin' the wealth around, you might say." He grinned. His teeth were very white in his dark face.

"Yeah, well, I done spread my wealth around lately," Featherston said. Perseus and Nero laughed. They'd heard him grouse about losing his shirt with that full house. When Pompey reached for the dice, Jake shrugged and left.

His own gun crew had their poker game going strong. He watched for a while, then pulled out what money he had left and sat in with them. He won a couple of little hands, lost a couple, then lost with a flush to a full house. That cost him a big piece of the anemic bankroll he'd brought to the game. He quit in disgust and went off to wrap himself in his blanket.

Some time in the middle of the night, somebody gently shook him awake. He looked up to find Perseus squatting beside his bedroll. In a voice not much above a whisper, the laborer said, "We ain't actin' like niggers no more, Marse Jake. Figured I'd tell you, on account of you know we don't got to. You want to be careful fo' a while, is all I got to say." He slipped away.

Featherston looked around, not altogether sure he hadn't been dreaming. He didn't see Perseus. He didn't hear anything. He rolled over and went back to sleep.

A little before dawn, Captain Stuart's angry voice woke him: "Pompey? Where the hell are you, Pompey? I call you, you bring your black ass over here and find out what I want, do you hear me? Pompey!"

Stuart's shouts went on and on. Wherever Pompey was, he wasn't coming when called. And then Michael Scott hurried up to Jake, a worried look on his face. "Sarge, you seen Nero or Perseus? Don't know where they're at, but they sure as hell ain't where they're supposed to be."

"Jesus," Featherston said, bouncing to his feet. "It wasn't a dream. Sure as hell it wasn't." Scott stared at him, having no idea what he meant. He wasn't altogether sure himself. One thing seemed clear: trouble was brewing.

The policeman at the corner of Beaufain and Meeting Street-a pudgy, white-mustached fellow who might have fought in the War of Secession-threw up his right hand, halting north-south traffic on Meeting so trucks and wagons on Beaufain could continue making their way to and from the Charleston railroad lines and harbor.

Anne Colleton snarled something distinctly unladylike and stomped on the brakes of her Vauxhall Prince Henry. The motorcar groaned and squeaked to a stop, its radiator grill projecting slightly out onto Beaufain. She'd bought the Vauxhall because it could go fast, not for its ability to stop in a hurry. The brakes were a good deal weaker than the sixty-horsepower engine.

A man in a battered Ford was stopped alongside her. He gave her a look halfway between curious and rude. She'd long since grown used, if not resigned, to that look. Even in the USA, lady automobilists were a small mi nority. In the more conservative Confederacy, they were rare. She smiled back at the man. He might have thought it a sweet smile… if he were an imbecile.

Rather nervously, he tipped his straw hat. "Sure you know what you're doing in the car"-he proved himself a Charleston native by pronouncing it cyar — "little lady? Wouldn't you rather have a chauffeur drive you around?"

Anne smiled again, even more savagely than before. "I had to fire my last two chauffeurs," she answered. "They went too slow to suit me."

The policeman halted traffic on Beaufain and let the waiting vehicles on Meeting Street move. Anne put the potent Vauxhall — with three times the power of the Ford next to it-through its paces. She left the Ford's driver choking on her exhaust.

She was almost sorry the Charleston Hotel lay only a couple of blocks south of Beaufain. The sensation of speed in the Vauxhall exhilarated her far more than the same speed would have in a train. Here she was the engineer, her foot on the throttle. Freedom, she thought.

A pair of Negro servants came dashing out from under the columned portico of the hotel. One of them handed her down to the sidewalk. Then both of them grabbed her suitcases and followed her inside. The doorman, a fat col ored fellow in a getup that made him look like a Revolutionary soldier, threw wide the door to allow the procession to enter.

Electric fans mounted on the ceiling stirred the air without cooling it. Anne strode up to the desk clerk, gave her name, and said, "I believe you have the Presidential Suite reserved for me."

"Uh, Miss Colleton, I'm uh, very sorry, ma'am," the clerk said, plainly alarmed at having to give her bad news, "but we've, uh, had to move you to the Beauregard Suite on the third floor."

She froze him with a glance. "Oh? And why is that?" Her voice was low, calm, reasonable… dangerous.

"Because, ma'am, President Wilson's in the Presidential Suite," he blurted.

"Oh," she said again. Her laugh, much to the unhappy clerk's relief, held acquiescence. "Nothing you can do about that, I suppose. I didn't know he was going to be in Charleston."

"Yes, ma'am," the clerk said. "He's come down to launch the Fort Sumter — you know, the new cruiser that just got built. That's tomorrow. Tonight there's a reception and dance here. In fact…" He turned back to the rectangular array of message slots behind the registration desk and pulled out a cream-colored envelope. "You have an invitation here. When Mr. Wilson's private secretary learned who had been booked into the Presidential Suite before him, he made sure to give you one."