Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“If they haven’t, it’s only a matter of time till they do,” Dowling said gloomily. “If you think the Freedom Party doesn’t have people who’d martyr themselves for St. Featherston, you’re out of your tree. Plenty of fanatics who’d thank him for the chance to blow up a damnyankee or three. Go ahead. Tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.”

“I wish I could, sir.” Toricelli sounded mournful, too. He went on, “I don’t think the world is ever going to be the same. From now on, if you’re in a big city or if you’re in politics or the military, you won’t be able to go down to the corner diner for a cup of coffee or a ham on rye without wondering whether the quiet fellow in the next booth is going to blow himself to hell and gone-and you along with him.”

“You’re in a cheerful mood today, aren’t you?” But Dowling feared the younger officer was right-dead right. “One thing consoles me, anyhow.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Bound to be more people who want to blow up Jake Featherston than ones who want to see me dead bad enough to kill themselves to get me.”

“Sir, I believe they call that a dubious distinction.”

“And I believe you’re right.” Dowling laughed, but on a note not far from despair. “What is the world coming to, Captain? Just before the war started, I listened to a fellow named Litvinoff going on and on about nerve agents-he wouldn’t call them gases. He was happy as a clam in chowder, you know what I mean?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Toricelli nodded. “I’ve met people like that. It’s their toy, and they don’t care what it does, as long as it does what it’s supposed to.”

“That’s right. That’s exactly right.” Dowling nodded, too. “And now this. Is there anything we won’t do to each other?”

Toricelli considered that. “I don’t know, sir. I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask,” he said. “Don’t you think you ought to talk to one of the Negroes in a Freedom Party camp instead? But ask fast, while there are still some left.”

“Ouch!” Abner Dowling winced. “Well, you got me there. Maybe I ought to put it a different way: aren’t there some things we shouldn’t do to each other?”

“We’ve got the Geneva Convention,” Toricelli said.

“It doesn’t talk about people bombs,” Dowling said. “It doesn’t talk about those camps, either. It doesn’t talk about gas, come to that. Nobody wanted to talk about gas when they were hammering it out, because everybody figured he might need it again one of these days.”

Now Toricelli eyed Dowling with a certain bemusement. “You’re just about as cheerful as I am, aren’t you, sir?”

“I’m as cheerful as I ought to be,” Dowling answered. He looked out the window. An auto painted U.S. green-gray was coming up to his headquarters. The guards stopped it before it got too close. Anybody could paint a motorcar. Who was inside mattered far more than what color it was.

But the driver seemed to satisfy the guards. He got out of the Chevrolet and hurried toward the building. “I’ll see what he wants, sir,” Captain Toricelli said.

“Thanks,” Dowling told him.

His adjutant returned a few minutes later with the man from the auto-a sergeant. “He’s from the War Department, sir,” Toricelli said. “Says he’s got orders for you from Philadelphia.”

“Well, then, he’d better give them to me, eh?” Dowling did his best not to show worry. Orders from Philadelphia could blow up in his face almost as nastily as a people bomb. He could be cashiered. He could be summoned before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War again-and wasn’t even once cruel and unusual punishment? He could be ordered back to the War Department to do something useless again. The possibilities were endless. The good possibilities seemed much more sharply limited.

“Here you are, sir,” the sergeant said.

Dowling opened the orders and put on his reading glasses. If this noncom had orders to report on how he took bad news, he was damned if he’d give the man any satisfaction. Wounded soldiers bit back screams for the same reason.

He skimmed through the orders, blinked, and read them again more slowly. “Well, well,” he said when he’d finished.

“May I ask, sir?” Captain Toricelli was sensitive to everything that might go wrong. What hurt Dowling’s career could hurt his, too.

“I’ve been relieved of this command. I’ve been transferred,” Dowling said.

Toricelli nodded. Like Dowling, he didn’t want to show a stranger his wounds hurt. “Transferred where, sir?” he asked, trying to find out how badly he was hit.

“To Clovis, New Mexico, which is, I gather, near the Texas border,” Dowling answered. He couldn’t keep the amazement out of his voice as he went on, “They’ve appointed me commander of the Eleventh Army there. They want somebody to remind the Confederates there’s a war on in those parts. And-”

“Yes, sir?” Toricelli broke in, eyes glowing. He might have been a soldier who’d discovered a bullet had punched a hole in his tunic without punching a hole in him.

“And they’ve given me a second star, Major Toricelli,” Major General Abner Dowling said. He and Toricelli shook hands.

“Congratulations, sir,” the sergeant from the War Department said to Dowling. The man turned to Toricelli. “Congratulations to you, too, sir.”

“Thank you,” Dowling said, at the same time as Toricelli was saying, “Thank you very much.” Dowling went back to his desk and pulled out the half pint. He eyed how much was left in the bottle. “About enough for three good slugs,” he said as he undid the cap. He raised the little bottle. “Here’s to Clovis, by God, New Mexico.” He drank and passed it to Angelo Toricelli.

“To Clovis!” Toricelli also drank, and passed it to the sergeant. “Here you go, pal. Kill it.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” the noncom said. “To Clovis!” He tilted his head back. His Adam’s apple worked. “Ah! That hits the spot, all right. Much obliged to you both.” He would still have a story to tell when he got back to the War Department, but it wouldn’t be one of frustration and rage and despair. Sergeants didn’t drink with generals-or even majors-every day.

One swig of whiskey didn’t turn him into a drunk. He drove off toward Philadelphia. That left Dowling and his adjutant in a pleasant sort of limbo. “What the deuce is going on in New Mexico?” Toricelli asked.

“All I know is what I read in the newspapers, and you don’t read much about New Mexico there.” Dowling figured he was heading to Clovis to fix that, or try. “Only thing I can really recall is that bombing raid on Fort Worth and Dallas a few months ago.”

“Probably a good idea to find out before we get there,” Toricelli said.

“Probably,” Dowling agreed. He was sure that never would have occurred to George Custer. Custer would have charged right in and started slugging with the enemy, regardless of what was going on beforehand. Nine times out of ten, he and everyone around him would soon have regretted it. The tenth time… The tenth time, he would have ended up a national hero. Dowling didn’t make nearly so many blunders as his former boss. He feared he would never become a national hero, though. His sense of caution was too well developed.

“I’m sure we’ll stop in Philadelphia on our way to Clovis,” his adjutant said. “The War Department can brief us there.” Captain-no, Major-Toricelli had a well-developed sense of caution, too.

Not even the stars on his shoulder straps kept Dowling from being searched before he got into the War Department. “Sorry, sir,” said the noncom who did the job. “Complain to the Chief of Staff if you want to. Rule is, no exceptions.”