Harry Turtledove - Fallout

“They say we can’t win this upcoming Presidential race. They sure do say a lot of stupid things, don’t they?” Truman grinned out at the crowd. “I say they’re full of hooey. I’d say they were full of something else, something from the barnyard, but we have ladies present. I do want to remind you of a picture somebody took of me four years ago. I was holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune with a big old headline-DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. So tell me, folks, did Dewey defeat Truman?”

“No!” everybody shouted.

“That’s right. Dewey didn’t defeat Truman. If he had, you wouldn’t be here today putting up with my hot air,” Truman said. “And whoever gets our nomination this time around can win the same way I did. All he has to do is work hard, never give up, and remember he’s running for the little man, not for the fat cats. Fat cats always vote Republican. They’ve got other things wrong with ’em, too.”

They whooped and hollered. They liked him fine when he was laying into the GOP. When he had to talk about the war and the punishment America had taken and how things in Europe and Korea were going…No, he wasn’t so popular then. If he had been, he would have run again. So he steered clear of anything that had to do with foreign affairs as far as he could-which wasn’t far.

“We’ve got us a fine field of candidates,” he said. “The way it looks to me is, we’ve got a better field than they’ll run in the Kentucky Derby next week. This is the state Averell Harriman comes from, of course. He’s a fine man. Since he spent time in Moscow as a diplomat during the last war, he knows the Russians as well as any American is likely to. If I haven’t found peace by the time I leave office, I know he’ll make a good one.”

No, he couldn’t ignore the wider world, however much he wanted to. He won more applause, tentative at first but then growing. Everyone wanted a good peace. Finding terms both sides could accept was the hard part.

“Now, I wouldn’t mind if Mr. Harriman were to be the nominee, but I also wouldn’t mind if any of the other leading candidates got the nod.” Truman liked Harriman at least as well as any of the others, and better than most. But he wasn’t about to endorse him publicly. As near as he could tell, his endorsement would be the kiss of death for whoever was unlucky enough to get it.

“The most important thing is, whichever candidate wins the nomination, we all have to get behind him and work for him as hard as we can. No Dixiecrats this time around, please. No so-called Progressives. We’re all Democrats together, consarn it, and we’ve got to stick together as Donkeys against whichever jackass the Elephants run against us. Thanks very much, folks!”

He got a laugh and applause this time. It looked more and more as if the junior Senator from Wisconsin would bear the Republicans’ standard. Without the war, Truman would have bet on Eisenhower. But a general’s luster tarnished when men were fighting and dying all over again. Senator Taft kept trying to pretend Senator McCarthy didn’t exist. It wasn’t working.

Well, this bash cost twenty-five bucks a plate. Some good, solid cash would flow into the Democratic coffers from it. You needed ward-heelers to campaign for your candidates, not just the national ticket but the local men like Steven Pankow as well. You needed flyers and pamphlets and billboards. You needed more money for radio spots. And, in this modern world, you needed more money still for TV ads. Politics had never been cheap. These days, getting somebody elected was ridiculously expensive.

As the gathering started to break up, Truman pressed the flesh and chatted with his supporters. That was also part of the game. If they could imagine they knew you, they’d work harder on the campaign.

“Nice introduction,” the President said when he clasped Pankow’s hand. “You kept it short, and that’s the most important thing.”

“My pleasure, sir,” Pankow replied. “Keep walloping the snot out of those damn Russians-that’s all I’ve got to tell you. And never trust ’em further than you can throw ’em. They’ll cheat if they get half a chance. A quarter of a chance, even.”

“I have noticed that, yes,” Truman said. A man who spoke with a faint Polish accent might well be one of the few people on earth who trusted Russians even less than Truman did. His reasons would be personal and historical, not political, but that only made them more sincere.

A limousine with a police escort took Truman to the airport. Red lights flashed, clearing traffic from the road. It was after midnight; there wasn’t much traffic to clear. Spotlights guided the limo to the waiting Independence. As soon as the President climbed the wheeled stairway and boarded the DC-6, its engines thundered to life and the big props began to spin.

The plane rolled down the runway. It smoothly climbed into the air. Truman leaned back in his seat with a weary sigh. Washington soon, Washington and the war.

–

Boris Gribkov peered out through the Tu-4’s Plexiglas windscreen. All he saw was ocean. Waves in the North Atlantic rolled on endlessly from the northwest toward the southeast. He circled between Norway and Iceland, low enough and far enough away from land that radar sets on Jan Mayen and the Faeroes wouldn’t spot him. Patrol planes…Patrol planes were a chance he simply had to take.

Although the sun had set, it was a long way from dark. He was up near the Arctic Circle, farther north than Leningrad and its famed white nights. That was another chance he had to take. He wouldn’t have had to worry about it during the winter. It was May, though. Things happened when they happened, not when it was most convenient for them to happen.

He spoke to the radar operator over the intercom: “Anything?” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question, or even the tenth.

“No, Comrade Pilot. I’m sorry,” Arkady Oppokov replied. The first few times, he hadn’t apologized.

Muttering to himself, Gribkov spoke to the navigator instead: “We are where we’re supposed to be?” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked that question, either.

“Yes, Comrade Pilot,” Svyatoslav Filevich replied.

“You’re sure?” Boris knew he wouldn’t have asked that question of Leonid Tsederbaum. He’d had confidence in the Jew. He might not have asked it of Yefim Arzhanov, either. But they weren’t here. Filevich was.

“Yes, Comrade Pilot,” he repeated. It also wasn’t the first time Gribkov had asked him that.

Boris fumed. That was all he could do. No, he could also eye his fuel gauge and worry. If his crew didn’t find a milch cow pretty soon, he’d have to abort and fly back to Murmansk. That would effectively end his career. They wouldn’t blame his crewmen. They wouldn’t blame the milch cow’s pilot. They’d blame him, for not flying the mission he was ordered to fly. He had the responsibility, and blame was the other side of that coin.

He was about to query Oppokov yet again when the radar operator suddenly exclaimed, “I have a target, Comrade Pilot! Bearing 270, speed 300 kilometers an hour, range fifteen kilometers, altitude…a long piss above the sea. That’s got to be why I’ve had so much trouble picking it up.”

“Here’s hoping.” Gribkov swung the Tu-4 west. He wasn’t much more than a long piss above the sea himself. His last couple of practice runs at in-flight refueling had been low-level missions. He knew how to do it. He’d done it. It still made him nervous every time.

He also hoped the plane Oppokov’s set had found wasn’t another thirsty calf. That would be a colossal balls-up. He didn’t know what he’d do then. Head back to Murmansk, he supposed, and try to take his medicine like a man.