Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“If you hadn’t risen up, I’d be back east somewhere with Confederates trying to shoot me,” Armstrong said. “And you’d be here in Utah, happy as a goddamn clam. They didn’t even conscript you people.”

“We want to be free. We want to be independent,” the Mormon said as he picked up his white flag. “What’s so wicked about that?” He came toward the U.S. lines.

Armstrong laughed a dirty laugh. “You want to have lots of wives. Are they all in the same bed when you screw ’em? Does one lick your balls while another one gets on top?”

The Mormon’s jaw set. “It’s a good thing I don’t know your name, Sergeant.” He walked past Armstrong as if he didn’t exist. Armstrong called for a couple of privates to take him back toward the rear.

“He’s going to put you on a list even if he doesn’t know your name,” Yossel said. “You’ll be the sergeant in so-and-so sector, and those bastards will be gunning for you.”

“Big fucking deal.” Armstrong laughed again. “Easy enough to get shot around here even when the bastards aren’t gunning for you. Won’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference one way or the other.”

“You better hope it won’t.” Yossel seemed willing to look on the gloomy side of life.

“Screw it. Nobody’s even shooting right now.” Armstrong lived for, and in, the moment. The less you thought about all the horrible things that had happened, the horrible things that would happen, and the horrible things that might happen, the better off you were.

After a bit, Captain Lloyd Deevers came over and got down in the hole with him. Armstrong liked Deevers a lot better than Lieutenant Streczyk, who ran the platoon. Deevers actually had a pretty good idea of what he was doing. He nodded to Armstrong now and said, “I don’t think that Mormon likes you.”

“Now ask me if I care, sir,” Armstrong answered. “I don’t like him, either.”

Deevers chuckled. “All right. I’m not going to flabble about it-except if you want to transfer to some other outfit on the line, I won’t say no.”

“No, thanks, sir. I already told Reisen I can stop one as easy somewhere else as I can here,” Armstrong said. Captain Deevers grinned and slapped him on the back. Armstrong asked, “Did that Mormon say why he wanted the truce?”

“Not to me,” Deevers answered. “He wanted to talk to the high mucky-mucks. I passed him back to Division HQ, and we’ll see what they do with him. If I had to guess, I’d say he wants to dicker a surrender that isn’t really a surrender, if you know what I mean. But that’s only a guess.”

“Good fucking luck, uh, sir,” Armstrong said. Lloyd Deevers laughed.

“He would have had a better chance before they started blowing themselves up,” Yossel said. “If we let ’em off the hook now, it’s like they screwed it out of us. And if they want something else, they’ll think all they have to do is use a few more people bombs to make us give in.”

“That’s how it looks to me, too, especially since we’ve almost got ’em licked,” Armstrong said.

“Well, boys, I won’t argue with either one of you, ’cause I think you’re dead right,” Deevers said. “But it isn’t up to me, any more than it’s up to you. We’ll see what the fellows with the stars on their shoulders have to say-and maybe the fellows in the cutaway coats, too.”

“They’ll screw it up,” Armstrong predicted. “They always do.” He waved a hand at the devastation all around. The wreckage and the smell of corpses might not prove his point, but they didn’t come out and call him a liar, either.

Captain Deevers just shrugged. “Like I told you, I can’t do anything about it, either. I suppose what they decide to do here depends a lot on how things look in Pennsylvania and up in Canada.”

That made sense. Armstrong might have been happier if it didn’t. Soldiers in Utah didn’t hear much news from Pennsylvania. Not hearing news was a bad sign all by itself. When things went right, nobody on the wireless would shut up about it. That same ominous quiet came out of Canada. For all Armstrong knew, hordes of pissed-off Canucks were swarming over the border toward Minneapolis and Seattle.

“We’re off in the back of beyond,” Yossel said. “Nobody tells us anything.”

“Wonder how much news about us gets out,” Captain Deevers said musingly.

“You ought to ask your aunt,” Armstrong told Yossel. He kept an eye on the company CO as he spoke. Deevers didn’t blink. He was fairly new to the unit, but he knew it had a VIP’s nephew.

Yossel said, “She doesn’t tell me a whole lot-nothing I’m not supposed to know. She’s got to worry about security like anybody else.”

“Too bad,” Armstrong said. “What’s the point of being related to a big shot if you don’t get anything out of it?”

“People always say that,” Yossel Reisen answered. “But if somebody important gives you a hand all the time, how do you know what you’re good for by yourself?”

He had a point. Armstrong could see it. His family, though, had no fancy connections. He thought not having to worry about money or a good job or the right college would be awfully nice. No doors had opened for him because he was so-and-so’s nephew. His family had plenty of so-and-sos in it, but not that kind.

Somebody called a question across the line to the Mormons: “How long is this truce supposed to last?”

“Till the major comes back,” a rebel answered. “Then we give you thieving wretches more of what you deserve.”

Thieving wretches. Armstrong smiled in spite of himself. The Mormons seldom came right out and cussed. Some of the insults they used instead sounded pretty funny.

Men on both sides walked around and stretched, showing their faces without fear of taking a bullet if they did. The Mormons were scrupulous about honoring truces. U.S. soldiers smoked. Some of them probably had something better than water in their canteens. The Mormons weren’t supposed to use tobacco or alcohol, and most of them didn’t. Armstrong figured that meant screwing was the only way they could have a good time. They sure did that. They’d raised up a big new generation of rebels after getting one killed off in their uprising during the Great War.

In midafternoon U.S. soldiers passed the Mormon officer back through the lines to his own side. His face was a thunderstorm of fury. He hardly even had an extra glare for Armstrong as he went by. The Mormons fired a warning shot into the air. A U.S. soldier answered it. A couple of minutes later, a screaming meemie came down on Armstrong’s company, and then another one. All things considered, maybe he would rather have stayed anonymous.

Leonard O’Doull had worked in a hospital before. He’d met his wife working in one outside of Riviere-du-Loup during the last war. If the authorities hadn’t decided Lucien Galtier was an unreliable nuisance and confiscated his land for the building, Nicole never would have come to work there. O’Doull knew he wouldn’t have settled in the Republic of Quebec if he hadn’t made family ties. Sometimes very strange things could twist a man’s fate.

He was in a fancier hospital now. The University of Pittsburgh had had one of the best medical schools in the USA, and a large hospital where staff members trained residents, interns, medical students, and nurses. Now the hospital was full of wounded and gassed soldiers. Along with the people in training-those who hadn’t put on the uniform-the staff were getting trained themselves, by experts like Leonard O’Doull and Granville McDougald.

“Speed,” McDougald told a surgeon with an old-fashioned, upturned Kaiser Bill mustache. “The faster we can get to ’em, the better they do. If we’re operating less than an hour after they get hit, they’ll probably make it. Every minute after that hurts their chances.”