Harry Turtledove - West and East

“Bad? This could be another Nanking,” Max said.

“Christ! I hope not!” Pete said, and the U.S. consul nodded. When the Japs took Nanking, they went blue-goose loony. Most of the stories that came back from there were too outrageous to seem possible. Which proved exactly nothing, because some of the worst stories had photos to back them up. You wouldn’t think people could do such things to other people, let alone have fun while they were doing it, but that was what the photos seemed to show.

Another machine gun started up, this one closer. The gunner was an old pro, squeezing out one murderous burp after another. Pete could hear screams, too. Again, who were the targets? Some of the Chinese who’d planted bombs, or poor luckless devils who happened to have wound up in front of the gun?

A pause. Another short burst, and then one more. Pete didn’t know who the gunner’s targets were, but he knew too well what he guessed.

* * *

They gave Joaquin Delgadillo his very own set of denim coveralls. His old uniform was so torn and tattered, it was almost falling off of him. Several Nationalist prisoners were already wearing the unofficial uniform of the Republic. He was glad of that; he wouldn’t have wanted to be the first one.

He got razzed even so. “Gone over to the other side, have you?” said a middle-aged POW still in the Nationalists’ yellowish khaki.

“I’m the same as I was yesterday,” Joaquin answered. “Only the clothes are different.”

“The same as you were yesterday?” the older man returned. “Well, how were you then, by God?”

“Why, the same as I am today, claro,” Delgadillo said. The other POW laughed and let him alone.

He was glad of that. He didn’t know himself how he’d been yesterday, not in the way the older man meant. Everything spun round and round inside his head, making him wonder which way was up-or if any way was. He had all the things he’d believed since he was a kid. And he had Chaim Weinberg; the Jew threw grenades at those old certainties every time he opened his mouth.

If what Weinberg said was true, the Republic had been right all along. If what he said was true, the future lay in its hands. Things would be richer, freer, better than anything Marshal Sanjurjo could deliver.

If. But it was a big if. Joaquin had been fighting the Republic for a long time before he got captured. He’d been in the Republican trenches. He’d taken prisoners before he became one. The bastards on the other side-on this side-were at least as skinny, at least as sorry, as the fellows he’d fought alongside. They could claim to be the wave of the future, but their present looked pretty sorry.

Of course, so did what he’d been fighting for. What did landlords do? Why, they took. Factory owners? The same thing, no doubt about it. Priests? Them, too. Them more than any of the others, because what did they give back? Nothing you could eat, nothing you could wear, nothing you could use.

They give you heaven, or a chance for it. Everything that got pounded into him while he was growing up was still there. It hadn’t gone away, even if the Jew-the Jew!-had done his best to exorcise it. But now it had company inside his head. New ideas and old warred in there like Republicans and Nationalists.

Yes, just like that, he thought unhappily.

Plainly, the Republic wasn’t the tool of Satan he’d thought it was before the trench raid that went south. As plainly, more things were wrong with the Nationalist regime than he’d imagined. But did that make the Republic the new earthly paradise? If it did, how come he was still lousy?

“Free love!” called another Nationalist still in decrepit khaki, pointing to his overalls.

“Oh, piss off,” Joaquin said, and his fellow prisoner chuckled. It was an article of faith among the Nationalists that all the women who favored the Republic would lie down for you if you snapped your fingers. Joaquin didn’t know of anybody who’d had the chance to find out whether that was true, but he did know everybody on his old side believed it.

Which meant… what? Weinberg went on and on about how stupid it was to take anything on faith. Unless you had a reason to think this, that, or the other thing, why do it? He would ask that over and over, and nobody had a good answer for him.

Joaquin had had a question that gave the Jew pause, though: “Why do you think Stalin is so wonderful? Have you met him? Have you gone to Russia?”

“No,” Weinberg said slowly. “But I have seen the bad things Hitler and Mussolini are doing. There’s a saying in English. It goes, The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Hitler and Mussolini are the enemies of the workers and peasants. Stalin has to be their friend, then.”

“We think Stalin is Spain’s enemy,” Joaquin said. “Where is Spain’s gold? In Moscow, that’s where. Stalin stole it.”

“No, he didn’t.” Weinberg shook his head. “The Republic bought weapons from Russia. Nobody else would sell to us, but Stalin did.”

Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t. Joaquin realized he shouldn’t argue. He believed some of what the guy who’d captured him came out with. If he tried to convince Weinberg and the other Reds on the far side of the barbed wire that he believed all of it, maybe they’d turn him loose. Once he was on the far side of the wire himself…

Well, what then? Would they hand him a rifle and send him to a trench somewhere to fight against the men for whom he’d formerly fought? If they did that, he might be better off staying right where he was. Some people did switch sides. About half of them fought harder for the side they chose themselves than for the one where they’d started. The rest were spies or worthless for some other reason. Sorting out who was who got… interesting.

Then again, it was also possible that a distant trench was a better place than a POW camp in the middle of Madrid. Nationalist bombers still visited the capital. Joaquin had cheered them on when they flew over the lines. He’d wanted the Republicans to get what was coming to them. Now there was a chance that some of what was coming to them would land on him instead.

Before, they’d unloaded on Madrid in broad daylight. They mostly came at night these days. The more modern fighters the Republic had got from France and England made day bombing too costly to try very often any more. Even coming by day, the bombers weren’t very accurate; the craters pocking the park proved as much. Flying by night did nothing to improve their aim.

Pounding guns and wailing sirens woke Joaquin from a fitful sleep. It was cold. It had been bitterly cold lately-this was going to be a winter to remember, and in no fond way. The drone of engines overhead penetrated the rest of the din.

“Fuck ’em all,” somebody in the big tent said, and promptly started snoring again.

Joaquin envied him without being able to imitate him. Too much racket, and too much in the way of nerves, too. Swearing under his breath, Joaquin went outside to watch the show.

The sky was black as a sergeant’s heart. The stars seemed even farther off than usual-grudging little flecks of light. The blue ones might have been cut from ice; the red ones didn’t feel warm, either.

Searchlights darted and probed. Antiaircraft tracers and bursts were beautiful, but they didn’t make Joaquin think of celebrations, the way they usually did. He knew too well that this was war, and all the bright lights intended nothing but death.

A searchlight speared a three-engined bomber-an Italian plane-in its glare. Antiaircraft fire from half a dozen guns converged on the machine the gunners could see. The bomber twisted and jinked, writhing like a stepped-on bug. The searchlight hung on to it. Others also found the bomber. Fire licked along its right wing. It tumbled toward the ground.