Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“You think we get a lot of pussy thrown at us? Man, what about him?” Sprinks sounded jealous. Rodriguez only shrugged. If they tried to give you more than you wanted or could use, who cared how much more than that they tried to give you?

Pinkard spotted him, waved, and made a sudden left turn to head his way. The guards tramped along behind him like a couple of well-trained hounds. “How you doin’, Hip?” the camp commandant called.

“Not bad, sir. Thank you.” Rodriguez was always careful to show respect for his friend’s rank. Nobody’d called him Hip since the Great War ended; it was the sort of nickname only an English-speaker would use. From Pinkard, it didn’t bother him; it reminded him of the days when they’d been miserable side by side.

“Your barracks got fumigated this morning-ain’t that right?” Pinkard asked.

“Yes, Senor Jeff.” In spite of himself, Rodriguez was impressed by Pinkard’s grasp of detail. Nothing went on in Camp Determination that he didn’t know about, often before it happened.

“Bet you’ll be glad to get rid of the bugs,” Jeff said.

“Oh, yes, sir.” Rodriguez nodded. “But it is like anything else, si ?” He had the brains not to talk directly about the way the camp worked, not where mallates could overhear. “One batch goes away, but before long there is another.”

“Yeah, well, then we’ll call out those Buggone folks one more time and do it all over again. We’ll-” Pinkard broke off. He looked around the women’s half of Camp Determination. Then he looked back at Hipolito Rodriguez. “Son of a bitch,” he said softly. “ Son of a bitch!”

“What is it?” Rodriguez asked.

“Don’t rightly know yet,” Jeff answered. “Might be nothin’. But it might be somethin’ big, too. You never can tell till you go and find out. If it is, I promise you I’ll get you what you deserve for it. Don’t want you to be like Chick Blades, who never did find out what he came up with.”

Rodriguez scratched his head. “What you mean, Senor Jeff?”

“Never mind. Don’t worry about it. It happened a long time ago, back in Louisiana.” Pinkard shook his head, as if at something he didn’t want to remember but couldn’t forget. He gathered himself. “You got to go on with your rounds, and so do I. See you later. Freedom!” Off he went, his guards in his wake.

“What the devil was that all about?” Alvin Sprinks asked.

“I don’t know,” Rodriguez said truthfully. “The commandant, he has an idea, I think.”

“Reckon so.” Despite agreeing, Sprinks sounded doubtful. The next idea he had would be his first. He could read and write-Rodriguez didn’t think there were any guards who couldn’t-but he didn’t like to.

“When we gonna git outa this place?” a gray-haired colored woman asked as the guards started through the camp again.

">“Soon, Auntie, soon,” Rodriguez answered. Alvin Sprinks nodded solemnly. Rodriguez thought he would laugh or give the game away in some different fashion, but he didn’t. Maybe the troop leader had put the fear of God in him, at least for a while. He might not have his own ideas, but he could get them from someone else.

Waiting for the balloon to go up was the hardest thing a soldier did. Back in 1914, Tom Colleton had waited eagerly, even gaily, confident the war would be won and the damnyankees smashed before the cotton harvest came in. Everything would be glorious. Three years later, he was one of the lucky ones who came home again, glory quite forgotten.

The new war had smashed the USA, had split the country in two. That he was up here by Sandusky, Ohio, proved as much. Like Jake Featherston, like everyone else in the CSA, he’d assumed that splitting the United States meant winning the war. There was a lesson there, on what assumptions were worth, but he didn’t care to dwell on it.

“This time for sure,” he muttered.

“Sir?” asked an improbably young lieutenant commanding one of the companies in his regiment. He should have had a more experienced officer in that slot, but the replacement depot hadn’t coughed one up. Reinforcements were coming into Ohio, which was good. Even with them, though, not every hole got filled.

Tom wished the damnyankees had the same problem. He envied them their manpower pool. Confederate soldiers mostly had better weapons. He thought, and was far from alone in thinking, Confederate soldiers were better trained. Every one of them was worth more in combat than his U.S. counterpart. But Jesus God, there were a hell of a lot of Yankees!

He needed to answer the youngster. “This time for sure,” he repeated. “When we hit the U.S. forces this time, we’ve got to knock them out of the war. We’ve got to, and we damn well will.”

“Oh, yes, sir!” said the shavetail-Tom thought his name was Jackson. It was a safe bet, anyway; about one in every three Confederate soldiers seemed to be named Jackson. “Of course we will!”

He hadn’t been at the front very long. He could still think about-could still talk about-inevitable victory, the way Confederate wireless broadcasts did. Tom knew better. He thought the Confederates still had a good chance of doing what they wanted, but a good chance wasn’t a sure thing. Anyone who’d ever lost a hand with a flush knew all about that.

“We’ll see pretty soon,” he said.

Lieutenant-Jackson? — said, “How can we lose?”

Colleton put a hand on his shoulder. “I said the same damn thing when I came to the front at the start of the last war. I would have been a little older than you are now, I suppose, and then I spent all the time that came afterwards finding out how we could lose. I just hope like hell that doesn’t happen to you.”

“It won’t.” Jackson sounded supremely confident. “We got stabbed in the back last time. Niggers won’t have the chance to do that now. The Party’s going to take care of ’em, but good.”

He really believed that. To a certain extent, Tom did, too, but only to a certain extent. He said, “We would have had a better chance if they hadn’t risen up-sure. But there’s something you’ve got to remember, or you’ll go home in a box and never find out how the latest serial ends: the damnyankees can fight some, too.”

“Yes, sir.” Jackson’s tones were those of a well-brought-up young man too polite to correct an elder who’s said something obviously foolish. “But they’re just doing it on account of their government makes ’em.”

“Where did you hear that?” Tom asked, sending him a curious stare.

“In school. Everybody knows it.”

Is this what they’re teaching my children, too? Tom wondered. God help us if it is. Gently, he asked, “Haven’t you ever noticed that not everything they teach you in school is true, and that a lot of things ‘everybody knows’ aren’t true at all?”

“No, sir, can’t say that I have,” Jackson answered after serious, earnest, and very visible consideration.

He meant that, too. For the first time, Tom found himself frightened for the younger generation in the CSA. If this was what they learned… “Lieutenant, there’s something you have to understand, because it’s the Lord’s truth. The Yankees don’t like us any better than we like them. They don’t need the government to make them fight. They’d do it anyhow, on account of we jumped them. Next time we interrogate some prisoners, you listen in. You’ll see.”

“I’ll do that,” Jackson said. “But they’ll just spout the nonsense their higher-ups told them. They’re-what’s the word? They’re indoctrinated, that’s it.” He looked pleased with himself for remembering.