Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

"I don't suppose you have a warrant," she said as they got to work.

The Quebecois officer shook his head. "I have none. I need none. Military occupation takes precedence. You should know this." He looked at her reproachfully, as if to say he might have to give her a low mark because of her ignorance. But she knew. She'd just wanted to get her protest on the record.

And she had one more protest to add: "I think it's a crying shame you can do this to an innocent person who's never done anybody any harm."

"So you say," Captain Brassens answered coldly. "But is it not true that your brother was shot for sabotage? Is it not true that your father was a notorious bomber who killed many? It could be that you are an innocent person. It could be, yes. But it also could be that you are not. We shall see."

Wilf Rokeby must have been singing like a meadowlark in spring. He has a yellow belly like a meadowlark, too, Mary thought. "You can't blame me for what my family did-and my brother never did anything," she told Brassens. "Go ahead and look as much as you please. I've got nothing to hide." That's the truth. I already hid it.

The soldiers were gentle with Alec. They didn't let him interfere, but they didn't smack him or even shout at him. He seemed to decide they were making a mess for the fun of it. To a little boy, that was a perfectly reasonable conclusion. He started throwing things around, too. The Frenchies thought that was funny.

After they'd done their worst, they reported back to Captain Brassens. They spoke French, so Mary didn't know what they said. He asked them several sharp questions in the same language. After they'd answered, he turned to her and said, "Eh bien, it appears-it appears, mind you-that you have been telling the truth and someone else is the liar. We shall remember that."

"I hope you do," Mary said-raw relief helped her sound angry, the way she was supposed to. She drew herself up and glared at Captain Brassens. "And I hope you'll have the common decency to apologize for being wrong."

He stared steadily back at her. "I am sorry…" he began, and she could tell he meant, I am sorry we did not catch you. But then, after a pause, he finished, "… we have disturbed your tranquility. Good day." He started to turn away.

"Wait," Mary said. The Quebecois officer stopped in surprise. "There's some of our stuff stored in the basement, too," she told him. "If you're going to do this to me, you might as well do everything at once."

"Oh. I see. You need not worry yourself about that, Mrs. Pomeroy," the Frenchy said. "We searched those things before paying a call upon you. Had we found anything of interest there, we would have paid a different sort of call. On that, you may rely." He spoke to his men in their own language. They tramped away.

"Look what they did, Mommy!" Alec said. "Are they going to come back and do it some more?"

"I hope not," Mary answered. "Will you help me try to put things back together?"

He did try. She gave him credit for that. But he was much more interested in making messes than in repairing them. He got bored in a hurry. Mary hadn't realized how much she and Mort had till she saw it all spilled on the floor. The soldiers in blue-gray had enjoyed mess-making as much as Alec did. They'd even pawed through her underwear, though explosives were unlikely to be lurking there.

She'd got things about half repaired by the time Mort came home from across the street. "What happened here?" he asked. "Our own private earthquake?"

"You're close," Mary answered. "The Frenchies searched the place."

Her husband blinked. "Why would they do that?"

"Because my father… did what he did. Because my brother… was who he was," she said. Because Wilf Rokeby is trying to save his own skin, she added, but only to herself. She wasn't supposed to know anything more than the usual gossip about how and why the longtime postmaster had ended up in trouble with the occupying authorities.

Mort gave her a hug. "Those dirty bastards," he said, which was about as rough as he ever talked around her. "They've got no business doing that. None, you hear me?"

"They've got the guns," Mary said bleakly. "They can do whatever they want."

She hated that kind of argument when Mort used it on her. By his sour expression, he didn't like it coming back at him, either. He said, "It's not right. They can't tear your place to shreds for no reason at all." It wasn't for no reason at all, but he didn't know that. Mary didn't intend to let him find out, either.

Big, snorting trucks brought the latest shipment of Negroes to Camp Dependable. The trucks were painted butternut and had butternut canvas covers over the back. From the outside, they looked just like the vehicles that hauled Confederate soldiers here and there. And, in fact, the differences were minor. The biggest one was that these trucks were fitted with manacles and leg irons to make sure their passengers didn't depart before they got where they were going.

Jefferson Pinkard came out to watch the unloading, the way he always did. His men had it down to a science. He watched anyway. The Negroes coming into his camp had nothing to lose, and they probably knew it. If some of them could beat the restraints before they got here, they might grab a guard who was releasing them and turn his gun on the others. Even science could go wrong, especially if you got careless.

Nobody here got careless. That was another reason Jeff came to the unloadings. When men worked under the boss's eye, they worked by the book. They didn't get smart. They didn't get cute. They just did what they were supposed to do. Nothing went wrong, which was exactly what Jeff wanted.

"Good job," he told Mercer Scott when the last Negro had been processed through into the camp.

"Yeah." The guard chief nodded. He paused to light a cigarette, then held out the pack. Jeff took one, too. Scott went on, "All the same, though, I wonder why the hell we bother."

"How do you mean?" Jeff asked.

Scott's gesture left a small trail of smoke in its wake. "Well, shit, we could get rid of these niggers as soon as they come in the gates, blow their goddamn brains out while they're still in the trucks, and save ourselves the bother of leadin' 'em out to the swamp later on."

"Population reductions," Pinkard said distastefully. They still offended his sense of order. He was a jailer, dammit, not a… a… He didn't have the word for what his superiors were turning him into, didn't have it and didn't want to go looking for it very hard. After a moment, he shook his head. "Wouldn't work so good. They'd have to shoot 'em, and then they'd have to get rid of their bodies, 'stead o' just letting 'em fall into the trenches like they do now. We'd have more people eating their guns and going out like Chick Blades."

"Shit," Scott said again, but he didn't try to tell Jeff he was wrong. Instead, he suggested, "We could let the niggers who're still alive dispose of the others."

That sounded halfhearted. There were good reasons why it should, too. Pinkard pointed that out: "This place is antsy enough as is. We start doin' our population reductions right here and let the niggers know for sure we're doin' 'em, it's gonna blow up right in our faces. You want to tell me any different?"

"No." Mercer Scott scowled, but he could see the obvious when you rubbed his nose in it. "No, goddammit."

"All right, then," Jeff said. "We'll keep on doin' it the same old way till we come up with somethin' better. Better, you hear me?"

"I hear you." Scott threw his butt on the ground and crushed it out under his boot heel. He probably would have sooner crushed Jeff under it, but even a guard chief didn't always get his druthers.

For that matter, a camp commandant didn't, either. Jeff went back to his office muttering to himself. He hated the way Camp Dependable worked now, but he hadn't been able to come up with anything better, either. Trucks came in. Shackled prisoners shambled into the swamp. They didn't come out. And, every so often, a Chick Blades would run a hose from his auto's exhaust pipe into the passenger compartment, turn on the motor, and…