Harry Turtledove: Reincarnations

"A good thing, too," says I. "I will not miss it a bit, and you can bet on that. Now-are you sure you got it all?"

He held up the pelican again. There was the tooth. It looked pretty much like a whole tooth, I will tell you that. Vankirk, now, he took another look at it. He frowned a little. Says he, "I suppose it is just barely possible some tiny little piece of root may have got left behind. I do not think so, but it is just barely possible. If it troubles you after this wound heals up, you come back, and I will go in there after it."

"I will do that very thing. You may rely on it," says I.

But that was a while ago now, and my teeth have not given me any trouble since. Well, that is not true. I have had some of the usual sort. I have the measure of that, though. With this new chloroform, I hardly even fear going to the tooth-drawer. I have not had any trouble of the other kind. I have not had any dreams of the sort I had with that tooth in my head. Those dreams would stagger an opium eater, and that is nothing but the truth.

They are gone now. Thank heavens for that. Vankirk is a smart fellow, but this time he outsmarted himself. He did yank every bit of that miserable tooth, and he fooled himself when he thought he might not have. I am glad he fooled himself, too, which is one more thing you may take to the bank.

In fact, George M., I am so glad that dreadful tooth is truly gone and will trouble me no more, I am going to ask you to set things up again for everybody, so my friends here can help me celebrate.

Amontillado, all around!

I sold this one to Amazing's Pat Price at the party following the Nebula banquet in Los Angeles in 1988. Anything else I say about it would be longer than the story, so I won't.

"It's true!" Harrison Smedley cried, looking up at last from the tomes over which he had pored for years.

"Reincarnation is true, and I shall prove it!"

Before his wife could stop him, he walked off the balcony of their fifteenth-floor apartment and plunged smiling to his death.

He was right. The very next day, someone bought him and wore him for a boutonniere.

This is an alternate history involving the aftermath of a German victory in World War II. Fedor Tolbukhin was a prominent Soviet general during the war. His name, coupled with the epithet I used, also suggests a famous children's book and lets me indulge a low taste for puns I'm sure you've never, ever noticed before.

General Fedor Tolbukhin turned to his political commissar. "Is everything in your area of responsibility in readiness for the assault, Nikita Sergeyevich?"

"Fedor Ivanovich, it is," Nikita Khrushchev replied. "There can be no doubt that the Fourth Ukrainian Front will win another smashing victory against the fascist lice who suck the blood from the motherland."

Tolbukhin’s mouth tightened. Khrushchev should have addressed him as Comrade General, not by his first name and patronymic. Political commissars had a way of thinking they were as important as real soldiers. But Khrushchev, unlike some-unlike most-political commissars Tolbukhin knew, was not afraid to get gun oil on his hands, or even to take a PPSh41 submachine gun up to the front line and personally pot a few fascists.

"Will you inspect the troops before ordering them to the assault against Zaporozhye?" Khrushchev asked.

"I will, and gladly," Tolbukhin replied.

Not all of Tolbukhin’s forces were drawn up for inspection, of course: too great a danger of marauding Luftwaffe fighters spotting such an assemblage and shooting it up. But representatives from each of the units the Soviet general had welded into a solid fighting force were there, lined up behind the red banners that symbolized their proud records. Yes, they were all there: the flags of the First Guards Army, the Second Guards, the Eighth Guards, the Fifth Shock Army, the Thirty-eighth Army, and the Fifty-first.

"Comrade Standard Bearer!" Tolbukhin said to the young soldier who carried the flag of the Eighth Guards Army, which bore the images of Marx and Lenin and Stalin.

"I serve the Soviet Union, Comrade General!" the standard bearer barked. But for his lips, he was utterly motionless. By his wide Slavic face, he might have come from anywhere in the USSR; his mouth proved him a native Ukrainian, for he turned the Great Russian G into an H.

"We all serve the Soviet Union," Tolbukhin said. "How may we best serve the motherland?"

"By expelling from her soil the German invaders," the young soldier replied. "Only then can we take back what is ours. Only then can we begin to build true Communism. It surely will come in my lifetime."

"It surely will," Tolbukhin said. He nodded to Khrushchev, who marched one pace to his left, one pace to the rear. "If all the men are as well indoctrinated as this one, the Fourth Ukrainian Front cannot fail."

After inspecting the detachments, he conferred with the army commanders-and, inevitably, with their political commissars. They crowded a tumbledown barn to overflowing. By the light of a kerosene lantern, Tolbukhin bent over the map, pointing out the avenues of approach the forces would use. Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov, commander of the Eighth Guards Army, grinned wide enough to show a couple of missing teeth. "It is a good plan, Comrade General," he said. "The invaders will regret ever setting foot in the Soviet Union."

"I thank you, Yuri Nikolaievich," Tolbukhin said. "Your knowledge of the approach roads to the city will help the attack succeed."

"The fascist invaders already regret ever setting foot in the Soviet Union," Khrushchev said loudly.

Lieutenant General Kuznetsov dipped his head, accepting the rebuke. "I serve the Soviet Union!" he said, as if he were a raw recruit rather than a veteran of years of struggle against the Hitlerites.

"You have the proper Soviet spirit," Tolbukhin said, and even the lanternlight was enough to show how Kuznetsov flushed with pleasure.

Lieutenant General Ivanov of the First Guards Army turned to Major General Rudzikovich, who had recently assumed command of the Fifth Shock Army, and murmured, "Sure as the devil’s grandmother, the Phantom will make the Nazis pay."

Tolbukhin didn’t think he was supposed to hear. But he was young for his rank-only fifty-three-and his ears were keen. The nickname warmed him. He’d earned it earlier in the war-the seemingly endless war-against the madmen and ruffians and murderers who followed the swastika. He’d always had a knack for hitting the enemies of the peasants and workers of the Soviet Union where they least expected it, then fading away before they could strike back at his forces.

"Has anyone any questions about the plan before we continue the war for the liberation of Zaporozhye and all the territory of the Soviet Union now groaning under the oppressor’s heel?" he asked.

He thought no one would answer, but Rudzikovich spoke up: "Comrade General, are we truly wise to attack the city from the northeast and southeast at the same time? Would we not be better off concentrating our forces for a single strong blow?"

"This is the plan the council of the Fourth Ukrainian Front has made, and this is the plan we shall follow," Khrushchev said angrily.

"Gently, gently," Tolbukhin told his political commissar. He turned back to Rudzikovich. "When we hit the Germans straight on, that is where we run into trouble. Is it not so, Anatoly Pavlovich? We will surprise them instead, and see how they like that."

"I hope it won’t be too expensive, that’s all," Major General Rudzikovich said. "We have to watch that we spend our brave Soviet soldiers with care these days."

"I know," Tolbukhin answered. "Sooner or later, though, the Nazis have to run out of men." Soviet strategists had been saying that ever since the Germans, callously disregarding the treaty von Ribbentrop had signed with Foreign Commissar Molotov, invaded the USSR. General Tolbukhin pointed to the evidence: "See how many Hungarian and Romanian and Italian soldiers they have here in the Ukraine to pad out their own forces."