Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

"Congratulations, General Morrell," Abell said.

"Oh, my," Morrell whispered. "Oh, my." He went on staring. After some little while, he realized he ought to say a bit more. Softly, he went on, "The last time I felt something like this, I was holding my new daughter in my arms."

"Congratulations," Abell repeated. "If the Confederates think you're important enough to be worth killing, I daresay you're important enough to deserve stars."

Morrell gave him a sharp look. The General Staff officer looked back blandly. He probably wasn't kidding. He almost surely wasn't, in fact. What Morrell had done in the field looked unimpressive to Philadelphia. What the enemy thought of him was something else again. That mattered to the powers that be. In the end, though, how Morrell had got the stars hardly mattered. That he'd got them made all the difference in the world.

Jefferson Pinkard swore when the telephone in his office jangled. Telephone calls were not apt to be good news. He always feared they'd be from Richmond. As far as he could remember, calls from Richmond had never been good news. When his curses failed to make the telephone stop ringing, he reluctantly picked it up. "Pinkard here."

"Hello, Pinkard. This is Ferd Koenig. Freedom! How are you this morning?"

"Freedom! I'm fine, sir. How are you?" What the hell do you want with me? But that wasn't a question Jeff could ask the Attorney General.

"Couldn't be better," Koenig said expansively, which only made Jeff more suspicious. The Attorney General continued, "Got a question for you."

"Shoot." What else could Pinkard say? Nothing, and he knew it.

"You reckon Mercer Scott's ready to take over Camp Dependable?"

Ice ran through Pinkard's veins. "I reckon that depends, sir," he said cautiously.

"Depends on what?"

Caution flew out the window. "On what you intend to do with me, sir. I've run this here camp since we took it over from that goddamn Huey Long. Don't think I've done too bad a job, either. Just in case you forgot, I was the fellow came up with those trucks. Nobody else-me."

"Easy, there. Easy. I do remember. So does the President. Nobody's putting you on the shelf," Ferdinand Koenig said. "It's not like that at all. Matter of fact, I've got a new job for you, if you want it."

"Depends on what it is," Pinkard said, dubious still.

"Well, how long have you been complaining that Camp Dependable isn't big enough for everything it's supposed to do?"

"Only forever."

Koenig laughed, which did nothing to make Jeff feel any easier. "All right, then," the Attorney General said. "How would you like to run a camp that's big enough for everything? Not just run it, but set it up from scratch. You've got practice at that kind of thing, don't you?"

"You know damn well I do, sir," Jeff answered. "Wasn't for me startin' up a camp in Mexico, I never would've got into this here line of work at all." And there's plenty of times I wish I never did. "Whereabouts'll this new camp be at?"

"Texas," Koenig said. "We'll put you out on the goddamn prairie, so you'll have plenty of room to grow. There'll be a railroad spur out to the place so you can ship in supplies easy. Won't be any trouble shippin' in plenty of niggers, either."

"That kind of camp again?" Pinkard said heavily. "I was hopin' you'd let me handle real prisoners of war."

"Any damn fool can do that," Ferd Koenig said. "We've got plenty o' damn fools doing it, too. But this other business takes somebody with brains and somebody with balls. That's you, unless…"

Unless you haven't got the balls to do it. That hurt. Angrily, Pinkard said, "I've never backed away from anything you threw at me, Koenig, and you know it goddamn well. I'll do this, and I'll do it right. I just wish I had my druthers once in a while, is all."

He waited. If the Attorney General felt like canning him because he had the nerve to answer back… If he did, then he would, that was all. Jeff refused to worry about it. He'd paid his dues, and he'd given the Freedom Party everything it could possibly have asked from him. He could always find other things to do now. He was too old to make a likely soldier, but he still had his health. Factories lined up to hire people like him these days.

Instead of getting angry, Koenig said, "Keep your shirt on, Jeff. I know what you've done. Like I told you, the President knows, too. Why do you think I called you first? This is going to be the top camp job in the whole country. We want the best man for it-and that's you."

Koenig had never been the sort to flatter for the sake of flattery. As Jake Featherston's right-hand man, he'd never needed to. He meant it, then. Since he meant it, Pinkard didn't see how he could say no. He drummed his fingers on the desktop. But he also had reasons he hadn't mentioned for being unenthusiastic about saying yes. He asked, "How long would it be before I have to go out to this place in Texas?"

"Part-time, pretty damn quick. Like I said, you'll be doing a lot of the setup," Koenig answered. "Full-time? A few months, I expect. You can ease Scott into your slot there while you're away, finish showing him whatever he needs when you come back to Louisiana. How's that sound?"

"Fair, I reckon," Jeff said, still with something less than delight. "A little longer might be better."

To his surprise, Ferd Koenig laughed out loud. "I know what part of your trouble is. You're courting that guard's pretty widow."

Pinkard growled something he hoped the Attorney General couldn't make out. Of course the government and the Freedom Party-assuming you could tell one from the other-were keeping an eye on him. He'd risen high enough that they needed to. He didn't like it-how could anybody like it?-but he understood it.

"Well, what if I am, goddammit?" he said. He almost said, God damn you, but managed not to. "I don't sit in this office or prowl around the camp every minute of the day and night."

"Didn't say you did," Koenig told him. "All right-how's this? When you go to Texas full-time, bring her along. Call her a secretary or whatever the hell you please. If she really does some work, that's fine. If she doesn't, nobody's gonna lose any sleep over it. We'll pay her a salary on top of the pension either way. We want you there, and if that means forking over a little extra on the side, then it does, and we'll live with it. That's why we've got bookkeepers."

"Thank you kindly, Mr. Koenig." Now Jeff was glad he hadn't aimed his curses straight at the Attorney General. "That's mighty handsome of you. I'll do it, and I'll see if she wants to come along."

"Good," Koenig said. "I'll tell you one more thing, long as I'm on the line: if she doesn't want to go to Texas with you, chances are it wouldn't have worked out even if you stayed in Louisiana."

Pinkard grunted. That was probably gospel, too. He said, "She's got young, 'uns, you know. There a place close by this here new camp for them to go to school?"

"Beats me," the Attorney General said. "But if there isn't, there will be by the time you move there for good. You've got my word on it. You're an expensive proposition, you know that?"

"You said you wanted the good stuff. I don't come cheap," Pinkard answered.

Ferdinand Koenig laughed again. "We'll take it from there, then," he said, and hung up.

"Yeah. I guess maybe we will," Pinkard said to the dead line. He set the telephone back in the cradle.

When he went out into the yard, he wasn't surprised to find Mercer Scott coming up to him inside a minute and a half. The guard chief knew when he got a telephone call. Jeff had never found out how, but Scott knew. "What's the latest?" the hard-faced man asked casually.

"Congratulations," Jeff said, his own features as tightly shuttered as if he were in a high-stakes poker game. "Looks like you're gonna be takin' over this here camp in a few months' time."