Harry Turtledove - West and East

“In the Far East, fighting continues against the Japanese imperialists,” the newsman said, and not another word on that score. The bald announcement could mean only one thing: the fighting wasn’t going well for the Soviet Union.

Sergei had wondered if the squadron would be detached from the fighting in Poland and sent across the USSR to bomb the Japanese invaders. Since it hadn’t happened yet, he doubted it would for a while: not till spring, at the earliest. Days of decent flying weather were so scarce in this season, it might be faster to disassemble the SB-2s and ship them and their crews by train, then put the machines back together again.

The trouble with that was, the planes couldn’t go far enough by rail. Barring a miracle, Vladivostok would fall. And Marxist-Leninist doctrine had no room for miracles. Too bad, Sergei thought. The Motherland could really use one over there.

“On another front, Japan’s intolerable aggression and oppression have reaped what the historical dialectic would predict,” the newsreader continued. “Chinese guerrilla strikes against the brutal enemy continue in Shanghai, Peking, and other centers occupied by the invaders. Anything that damages Japan on one front cannot help but damage her on all fronts.”

He was right… Sergei supposed. He also sounded like someone whistling in the dark to try to show he wasn’t afraid. If Japan were fighting the United States in the Pacific, that might draw off enough energy to weaken her against the USSR. Chinese guerrillas weren’t a big enough cause to create the same effect.

But the United States remained neutral. If Japan beat the USSR, that would be all right with the Americans. And if the Soviet Union finally beat Japan, that would be all right, too. Why not? Either way, each country would hurt the other badly, and the USA would end up facing a weakened foe.

The newsreader started bragging about aluminum production, hydroelectric plants, and kilometers of copper wire. Sergei stopped listening. Industrial output was important, but he couldn’t do anything about it. The vodka bottle came round once more. He damn well could do something about that. He could, and he did. The bottle felt noticeably lighter when he passed it again. Outside, the wind raved on.

* * *

Christmas was coming again. Peggy Druce hadn’t expected to spend one holiday season away from Herb, let alone two. She couldn’t do anything about that. Before this latest trip to Europe, she’d always thought she was too important, or at least too clever, for anything bad to happen to her.

She knew better now. When the world went to hell around you, you discovered you weren’t fireproof after all, no matter what you’d thought before. Well, I’m doing asbestos I can, she thought, and smiled and flinched at the same time. Herb would make that kind of horrible pun at any excuse or none.

Making it here wouldn’t do her any good. A lot of Swedes, maybe even most of them, knew some English. But they wouldn’t get the wordplay-which might be just as well.

Still, this was better than the joyless Christmas and New Year’s she’d spent in Berlin the year before. The lights were on-no blackouts in Sweden. Food wasn’t rationed. People here wore better clothes, and they went around looking happier than the Germans had. Why not? Sweden wasn’t in the war. She wouldn’t be, either, unless the Nazis dragged her in.

The Swedes were ready to fight if Germany tried it. You saw plenty of men in uniform in Stockholm. Sweden had stronger industries than either Denmark or Norway. She bought planes and tanks from other countries, but also built her own. She made her own artillery, too. Peggy didn’t suppose Sweden could actually lick Germany, but she’d let Hitler know he’d been in a fight.

Didn’t he already have enough on his plate? He seemed likely to win in Norway, and Germany and Poland were doing all right against Russia. Peggy was sure Hitler would happily fight Stalin to the last drop of Polish blood.

But things weren’t going so well for the Nazi supermen in the west. And that was the key front… wasn’t it? When the war first broke out, she would have been certain it was (with the exception that the German attack on Marianske Lazne almost killed her, and what could be more important than that?). She wasn’t so sure any more. One way or another, the Russians would have their say. Peggy was no Red-Herb would have bopped her over the head with something had she leaned that way-but she could look at a map and make sense of what she saw. There was an awful lot of Russia, and there were an awful lot of Russians. Sooner or later, that had to count… unless, of course, it didn’t.

Only one way to tell: wait and see. Peggy had just reached that brilliant conclusion when a knock on the door to her hotel room chased it out of her head. She opened the door without the least hesitation: certainly with less than she would have shown in a hotel back in the States. Stockholm wasn’t the kind of place where a burglar was likely to cosh you and make off with whatever he could carry.

“Yes?” she said, and then, “Ja?” The word was the same in Swedish as in German, but she tried to make it sound different. Jut because she could speak some German didn’t mean she wanted to.

“Hello. My name is Gunnar Landquist,” the man standing in the hallway said in almost perfect English. “I am a reporter from the Handelstidningen, in Goteborg.” That was Sweden’s second-largest city, right across the Kattegat from Denmark. Landquist was about her own age, tall, with brown hair going gray, very fair skin, and blue eyes.

“Isn’t that the newspaper the Germans don’t like?” she said.

“One of them,” Landquist answered with a small-boy grin that made him look much younger. No, the Nazis weren’t happy about freedom of the press, and the freer the press was to call them the SOBs they were, the less happy they got. The Swede went on, “You have seen of the war more than most civilians, or so my friends tell me. Our readers, I am sure, would be interested in the views of an intelligent American traveler.”

“That’s nice,” Peggy said. “Where do you think you’ll find one?”

The Swede blinked, then threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, it will be a pleasure to interview you!” he exclaimed. He was armed with a pencil and a spiral-bound notebook nearly identical to the ones reporters in the USA carried.

“I doubt it, but come on in anyway.” Peggy stood aside so Landquist could. He laughed again. When he perched on a chair, Peggy sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay. What do you want to know?” she asked.

“How do you feel about the Germans and their war?” He poised pencil above paper, waiting.

Peggy was about to rip Hitler for all she was worth. Then she wondered what would happen if she did and German troops suddenly appeared in Stockholm, the way they had in Copenhagen. Nothing good, not to her-and not to Sweden, either. The Nazis had long memories when it came to slights: at least, to slights aimed at them.

And so she was more prudent than she might have been: “What I want to do most is get back to the United States. The German diplomats have done everything they could to give me a hand. Even Hitler himself cleared up some red tape for me once. But”-she gave Gunnar Landquist one of her crooked smiles-“they won’t stop the shooting just to let me go back, darn it.”

He scribbled. “You have been under attack by the Germans and by England and France, is it not so? Which is worse?”

Her smile grew more crooked yet. “The one that’s going on right this minute is the worst attack ever. The one you lived through yesterday, you don’t need to worry about any more.”

“I see. Yes. That makes good sense.” Landquist wrote some more.