Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

"Flank attack!" Dowling said. "The Confederates kept nipping at our flanks with their armor. You'll have to guard against that on defense and use it when you have the initiative."

"I intend to have the initiative at all times," MacArthur declared. The cigarette holder he clenched between his teeth jumped to accent the words.

"Um, sir…" Dowling cast about for a diplomatic way to say what damn well needed saying. "Sir, no matter what you intend, you've got to remember the Confederates have intentions, too. I hope you'll mostly be able to go by yours. Sometimes, though, they'll have the ball."

"And when they do, I'll stuff it down their throat," MacArthur said. "They cannot hope to stand against the blow I will strike them."

He sounded very sure of himself. So had Custer, just before the start of one of his big offensives. More often than not, the ocean of blood he spent outweighed the gains he made. Dowling feared the same thing would happen with Daniel MacArthur.

But what can I do? Dowling wondered helplessly. Nobody would pay attention to a fat failed fighting man who'd been put out to pasture. Lord knew MacArthur wouldn't. Everything already seemed perfect in his mind. To him, everything was perfect. What the real world did to his plans would come as a complete and rude shock, as it always had to Custer.

"If you already have all the answers, sir, why did you bother to ask me questions?" Dowling inquired.

Some officers would have got angry at that. Invincibly armored in self-approval, MacArthur didn't. "Just checking on things," he replied, and got to his feet. Dowling also rose. It didn't help much, for MacArthur towered over him. Smiling a confident and superior smile, MacArthur said, "Expect to read my dispatches from Richmond, General."

"I look forward to it," Dowling said tonelessly. Major General MacArthur's smile never wavered. He believed Dowling, or at least took him literally. With a wave, he left Dowling's office and, a procession of one, hurried down the corridor.

With a sigh, Abner Dowling sat back down and returned to the work MacArthur had interrupted. It wasn't a grand assault on Richmond-assuming the grand assault got that far-but it wasn't meaningless, either. He could tell himself it wasn't, anyhow.

He jumped when the telephone on his desk rang. He wondered if it was a wrong number; not many people had wanted to talk to him lately. He picked it up. "Dowling here."

"Yes, sir. This is John Abell. How are you today?"

"Oh, I'm fair, Colonel, I guess. And yourself?" Dowling couldn't imagine what the General Staff officer might want.

"I'll do, sir," Abell answered with what sounded like frosty amusement-the only kind with which he seemed familiar. "Did you just have a visit from the Great Stone Face?"

"The Great-?" Dowling snorted. He couldn't help himself. "Yes, Colonel, as a matter of fact I did."

"And?" Colonel Abell prompted.

"He's… very sure of himself," Dowling said carefully. "I hope he had reason to be. I haven't seen his plans, so I can't tell you about that. You'd know more about it than I would, I'm sure."

"Plans go only so far," John Abell said. "During the last war, we saw any number of splendid-sounding plans blown to hell and gone. Meaning no offense to you, our plans in the West at the start of this war didn't work as well as we wish they would have."

"It does help if the plans take into account all the enemy can throw at us," Dowling replied, acid in his voice.

"Yes, it does," Abell said, which startled him. "I told you I meant no offense."

"People tell me all kinds of things," Dowling said. "Some of them are true. Some of them help make flowers grow. I'm sure no one ever tells you anything but the truth, eh, Colonel?"

Unlike Daniel MacArthur, Colonel Abell had a working sarcasm detector. "You mean there are other things besides truth, sir?" he said in well-simulated amazement.

"Heh," Dowling said, which was about as much as he'd laughed at anything the past couple of months. Then he asked, "Is the General Staff concerned about Major General MacArthur's likely performance?"

Perhaps fifteen seconds of silence followed. Then Colonel Abell said, "I have no idea what you're talking about, General."

He said no more. Dowling realized that was all the answer he'd get. He also realized it was more responsive than it seemed at first. He said, "If you're that thrilled with him, why isn't somebody else in command there?"

After another thoughtful silence, Abell answered, "Military factors aren't the only ones that go into a war, sir. General MacArthur came… highly recommended by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War."

"Did he?" Dowling kept his tone as neutral as he could make it.

"As a matter of fact, he did. His service in Houston before the plebiscite particularly drew the committee's notice, I believe." Abell sounded scrupulously dispassionate, too. "It was decided that, by giving a little here, we might gain advantages elsewhere."

It was decided. Dowling liked that. No one had actually had to decide anything, it said. The decision just sort of fell out of the sky. No one would be to blame for it, not the General Staff and certainly not the Joint Committee. If MacArthur got the command, the committee would leave the War Department alone about some other things. Dowling didn't know what those would be, but he could guess. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. "I hope it turns out all right," he said.

"Yes. So do I," Colonel Abell answered, and hung up.

The knock on Seneca Driver's door came in the middle of the night, long after evening curfew in the colored district in Covington. Cincinnatus' father and mother went on snoring. Neither of them heard very well these days, and a knock wouldn't have meant much to her anyhow. Nothing much meant anything to her any more.

But a knock like that meant something to Cincinnatus. It meant trouble. It didn't sound like the big, booming open-right-now-or-we'll-kick-it-in knock the police would have used. That didn't mean it wasn't trouble, though. Oh, no. Trouble came in all shapes and sizes and flavors. Cincinnatus knew that only too well.

When the knocking didn't stop, he got out of bed, found his cane, and went to the door. He had to step carefully. Darkness was absolute. Police enforced the blackout in this part of town by shooting into lighted windows. If they saw people, they shot to kill. They were very persuasive.

Of course, Luther Bliss didn't run the Kentucky State Police any more. He might come sneaking around to shut Cincinnatus up. That occurred to Cincinnatus just as he put his hand on the knob. He shrugged. He couldn't move fast enough to run away, so what difference did it make?

He opened the door. That wasn't Luther Bliss out there. It was another Negro. Cincinnatus could see that much-that much and no more. "What you want?" he asked softly. "You crazy, comin' round here this time o' night?"

"Lucullus got to see you right away," the stranger answered.

"During curfew? He nuts? You nuts? You reckon I'm nuts?"

"He reckon you come," the other man said calmly. "You want I should go back there, tell him he wrong?"

Cincinnatus considered. That was exactly what he wanted. Saying so, though, could have all sorts of unpleasant consequences. He muttered something vile under his breath before replying, "You wait there. Let me get out of my nightshirt."

"I ain't goin'nowhere," the other man said.

I wish I could tell you the same. Cincinnatus put on shoes and dungarees and the shirt he'd worn the day before. When he went to the door, he asked, "What do we do if the police see us?"

"Run," his escort said. Since Cincinnatus couldn't, that did him no good whatever.

They picked their way along the colored quarter's crumbling sidewalks. Cincinnatus used his cane to feel ahead of him like a blind man. In the blackout, he almost was a blind man. Starlight might have been beautiful, but it was no damn good for getting around.