Return Engagement

by Harry Turtledove

  "Good. That's good." To his relief, his father didn't push it. He just sighed and said, "If Livia hadn't chose that one day to wander off . . ."

  "Uh-huh." Cincinnatus nodded. That came close to paralleling the thought he'd had walking home. He managed a shrug. "Ain't nothin' nobody can do about it now."

  "Ain't it the truth?" Seneca smiled a sweet, sad smile. "I's sorry you down here. Shouldn't oughta happen on account of our troubles."

  "Do Jesus, Pa!" Cincinnatus exclaimed. "If your troubles ain't my troubles, too, whose is they? Everything shoulda gone fine when I came down. It just . . . didn't, that's all."

  "Leastways you ain't got that Luther Bliss bastard breathin' down your neck no more. That's somethin', anyhow," his father said.

  "Yeah, somethin'." Cincinnatus hoped his voice didn't sound too hollow. Bliss wasn't exactly breathing down his neck, true. But the former head of the Kentucky State Police hadn't been happy to have Cincinnatus recognize him. Bliss might yet decide dead men couldn't go blabbing to the Confederates. Cincinnatus didn't know what to do about that. He couldn't hide and he couldn't run.

  "Still and all, I reckon you do better goin'to Lucullus' place'n down to the saloon," his father said.

  "I'm all grown up, Pa." Now Cincinnatus knew he sounded patient. "And I never knew you was a temperance man."

  "Temperance man?" Seneca Driver shook his head. "I ain't. I never was. Don't reckon I ever will be. But I tell you, too many people does too much listenin' at the saloons. Too many people does too much talkin', too, an' a lot of 'em ends up sorry afterwards."

  Cincinnatus had had that thought himself. He said, "I never been one to run my mouth, not even when I get liquored up. I don't get liquored up all that often, neither, not even after . . . all this happen." He gestured with his cane to show what he meant.

  "All right, son. All right. I's glad you don't." His father raised a placating hand. "But I ain't wrong. Lucullus watch what goes on in his place for his sake. Some o' the niggers in them saloons, they watch what goes on for the gummint's sake." Cincinnatus was damned if he could tell him he was wrong.

  ****

  NO MATTER how many strings Colonel Irving Morrell pulled, he couldn't get sent to the Virginia front. From southern Ohio, he listened with growing dismay to the reports of a bogged-down U.S. offensive. He also listened to them with considerable sympathy. Why not, when he presided over a bogged-down offensive himself? If the War Department had given him enough barrels, he might have accomplished something with them. They hadn't; they'd taken. And he'd accomplished nothing.

  "It's enough to drive a man to drink, Sergeant," he told Michael Pound. They hadn't moved from Caldwell. The front a few miles to the west hadn't moved, either. The only thing that had moved was the calendar, and it was not in the USA's favor. The longer the Confederates held their corridor through Ohio, the worse they squeezed the United States.

  "Nobody would blame you if it did, sir," Pound answered.

  "The War Department would," Morrell said dryly.

  "Well, if those idiots in Philadelphia aren't a pack of nobodies, who is?" As usual, Pound sounded reasonable. If you already despised the powers that be, he could give you more reasons for doing so than you'd thought of yourself.

  Morrell laughed. If he didn't laugh, he'd start swearing. He'd already done that a time or six. He didn't think doing it again would help. "You're thoroughly insubordinate, aren't you, Sergeant?"

  "Who, me?" Pound might have been the picture of innocence. "I don't know what you're talking about, sir. Have I ever been insubordinate to you?"

  "Well, no," Morrell admitted.

  "There you are, sir. As long as somebody shows he knows what he's doing, I don't have any trouble with him at all. Some numskull who thinks he's a little tin Jesus because he's got oak leaves on his shoulder straps, now . . ."

  "You've taken that thought about as far as it ought to go," Morrell said. Pound had known that for himself, or he wouldn't have stopped where he did. Sometimes a reminder didn't hurt, though. Morrell's principal concern was with numskulls who thought they were big tin Jesuses because they had stars on their shoulder straps. They could do more damage than the ones Pound had named.

  Shrugging, the gunner said, "What are we going to do to get this war rolling the way it should?"

  By the way he asked the question, he thought he and Morrell could take care of it personally. Morrell wished he thought the same thing. He said, "I'm going to do whatever my superiors tell me to. And you, Sergeant, you're going to do whatever your superiors tell you to. If you'd let me promote you, you wouldn't have so many superiors. Wouldn't you like that?"

  "There'd still be too many," Pound said. The only way he would be happy, Morrell realized, was to have no superiors at all. In the military, that wasn't practical. Why not? Morrell wondered. Would he do so much worse than the people we have in charge now? The answer was bound to be yes, but the fact that Morrell could frame the question didn't speak well for what was going on back at the War Department.

  Pound took out a pack of cigarettes, stuck one in his mouth, and offered them to Morrell. "Thanks," Morrell said. Pound flicked a cigarette lighter. Both men inhaled. Both made sour faces when they did. Morrell took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it. He neighed, suggesting where what passed for the tobacco had come from. Sergeant Pound got a case of the giggles. "Can you tell me I'm wrong?" Morrell asked him.

  "Not me, sir," Pound said. "But we keep smoking them just the same."

  "We do, don't we? Bad tobacco's better than no tobacco." Morrell studied the cigarette before he put it back in his mouth. "I wonder what that says about us. Nothing good, probably."

  Still puffing on it, he walked towards a barrel whose crew was working on the engine. One of the men in dark coveralls looked up and waved. "I think we've finally got the gunk out of the goddamn carburetor," he called.

  "Good. That's good." Morrell kept his distance. The barrel crew had the sense not to smoke while they messed around with the engine. That deserved encouragement. He looked out toward the woods that ringed Caldwell. With the leaves off the trees, they seemed much grimmer than they would have in summertime.

  Because he was looking out toward them, he saw the muzzle flash. The rifle report came a split second later–right on the heels of the bullet that slammed into his shoulder.

  "Oh, shit!" he exclaimed, and clapped his other hand to the wound. Blood dripped out through his fingers. For a couple of seconds, he felt only the impact–as if somebody'd belted him with a crowbar. Then the pain followed. He howled like a wolf. The next thing he knew, he was sitting on the muddy ground, with no memory of how he'd got there.

  "Holy shit! The colonel's down!" Three people said the same thing at the same time. Another shot rang out. This one cracked past Morrell's ear.

  Sergeant Pound ran over to him. The gunner grabbed Morrell and heaved him across his broad back. Morrell howled again, louder this time–getting manhandled like that hurt worse than getting shot had. Michael Pound paid no attention to him. He ran for cover, shouting, "Doc! Hey, Doc! Some son of a bitch shot the colonel!"

  One more bullet snarled by, much too close for comfort. That's not just somebody picking off whoever he can get, Morrell thought dazedly. He wants my ass. Christ, I wish that's where he'd shot me.

  Morrell hadn't thought about the aid station in a while. The medics and the doctor there hadn't had to worry about anything worse than cuts and burns for a bit, not since the planned U.S. offensive stalled. They'd probably been playing poker in their tent before Pound burst in, still carrying Morrell. "For God's sake, Doc, patch him up," the gunner panted.

  The doctor attached to the force was a New Yorker named Sheldon Silverstein. "Get him on the table," he said. The corpsmen obeyed, taking Morrell from Sergeant Pound. Morrell tried to bite down on a shriek as they shoved him around. He succeeded less well than he wished he would have.

  Silverstein looked down at him. The doctor settled a gauze mas
k over his nose and mouth. His eyes were dark and clever. "Morphine," he said, and one of the corpsmen stuck a needle in Morrell. Silverstein went on, "I'm going to have to poke around in there, Colonel. I'm sorry, but I've got to figure out what's going on."

  When he did, pieces of broken bone grated. Morrell tried to rise up off the table like Lazarus. The corpsmen and Michael Pound held him down. He called them and Silverstein every name in the book–and a couple he invented specially for the occasion.

  "Smashed up your clavicle, sure as hell," Silverstein said, as if he and Morrell were discussing the weather. "Doesn't look too bad after that–bounced off a rib and exited under your arm."

  "Hot damn," Morrell said, or perhaps something rather warmer.

  Dr. Silverstein smiled a thin smile. "I'll see how we do," he said. An ether cone came down over Morrell's face. He feebly tried to pull it off–it reminded him too much of poison gas. Somebody grabbed his good hand. Then the ether took him away from himself.

  When he came back to the real world, things hurt less than they had before he went under. He croaked something even he couldn't understand. A corpsman called, "Hey, Doc! He's awake!" The man gave Morrell a small swig of water.

  Silverstein looked down at him from what seemed a great height. "How do you feel?" he asked.

  "I was born to hang," Morrell said feebly.

  "Wouldn't be a bit surprised." Nothing fazed Silverstein–he worked at it. "Can you move the fingers on your right hand?"

  "Don't know." As more cobwebs came off his brain, Morrell realized a good many were still there. He tried to move those fingers. The effort made him grunt. "I–think so." He wasn't sure whether he'd succeeded.

  But Dr. Silverstein nodded. "Yeah. That means the bullet didn't tear up the nerve plexus in there. You should do pretty well now, as long as you don't get a wound infection."

  Even dopey and doped-up as he was, Morrell winced. "Had one of those in the last war. Damn near lost my leg."

  "Well, we can do some things this time around they didn't know about then," the doctor told him. "I think you've got a pretty good chance."

  "That's nice." Morrell yawned. Yes, he still felt disconnected from the physical part of himself. Considering what had happened to his physical part, that was just as well. "How long will I be on the shelf?"

  "Depends on how you do," Silverstein said, which was no answer at all. He seemed to realize that. "My best guess is a couple of months, maybe a little longer than that. You aren't as young as you used to be."

  When Morrell was young, he'd lain in the dust in Sonora wondering if he'd bleed to death. Was this an improvement? "Should be sooner," he said, and yawned again. Whatever Dr. Silverstein told him, he didn't hear it.

  He woke later with something closer to his full complement of wits. He also woke in more pain, because the morphine they'd given him was starting to wear off. He was in a different place–a real building with walls and a ceiling, not a tent. A corpsman he'd never seen before asked him, "How do you feel?"

  "Hurts," he answered–one word that covered a lot of ground.

  "I believe it, buddy. Stopping a bullet's no fun at all." The corpsman gave him a shot. "Here you go. This'll make things better pretty soon."

  "Thanks," Morrell said. What was pretty soon to the medic seemed like forever to him. He tried to think, hoping that would distract him from the fire in his shoulder. The fire made thinking hard work, and all he could think about was how he'd got wounded. He was behind the line when he got hit. How had the Confederates sneaked a sniper that far into U.S.-held territory?

  After a little while, he realized how might not be the right question. Why had the Confederates sneaked a sniper that deep into U.S.-held territory? The only answer that came to mind was to knock off a certain Irving Morrell. The bastard had been shooting at him–at him and nobody else–even while Sergeant Pound was hauling him to Dr. Silverstein's tent.

  It was an honor, of sorts. It was one he would gladly have done without. He tried to move the fingers on his right hand again. When he did, it was as if he'd put a bellows to the fire in his shoulder. The Confederates thought he was dangerous to them, did they? He wondered if the United States were trying to assassinate Confederate officers who'd hurt them. Neither side had fought that way in the Great War. This time, it looked to be no holds barred.

  Little by little, the new shot of morphine sneaked up on him. It built a wall between his wound and the part of him that mattered. It also slowed his thinking to a crawl . . . and that wasn't such a bad thing, either.

  ****

  PART OF Mary Pomeroy was glad to see Alec in kindergarten. It meant she didn't have to keep an eye on him every hour of every day. She'd almost forgotten what having time to herself felt like. Finding some again was even better than she'd thought it would be.

  But, however convenient it was for her, it came at a price. What didn't? In kindergarten and all the years of school that followed, Alec's teachers would do their best to turn him into a Yank, or at least into somebody who thought like a Yank. Some of what they taught him would be small and probably harmless. Would it really matter if he spelled in the U.S. style, writing color for colour and check for cheque? Maybe not. As far as Mary was concerned, though, it would matter a lot if he decided the United States had had right on their side in the War of 1812–or, for that matter, in the Great War.

  Her own father had pulled her out of school when he saw what the Yanks were up to. She couldn't do that with Alec. The rules were tighter now than they had been a generation before–and she was in town, not on a farm. If she held him out, she'd draw questions. They'd investigate her. They might look harder at what Wilf Rokeby had claimed about her. She couldn't take the chance. And so Alec went off to school every day, and never knew about his mother's misgivings.

  He had none of his own. He loved school. He said over and over that he was the biggest boy in his class, and the toughest. He had fights on the schoolyard, and he won them. Every once in a while, his teacher paddled him. He seemed to take that in stride–part of the price of being exuberant. Mary still sometimes had to whack him to get his attention, too.

  "He's a little hell-raiser, isn't he?" Mort said, more proudly than not, one day after Alec came home with a torn shirt and a fat lip.

  "Does he take after you?" Mary asked.

  "Oh, I expect so," Mort answered. "I got into trouble every now and again. Not a whole lot of kids who don't, are there? Boys, anyway, I mean. Girls are mostly pretty good."

  "Mostly," Mary said, and Mort laughed. He didn't know about the bomb she'd put in Karamanlides' general store, or about the one she'd sent to Laura Moss. She had no intention that he find out, either.

  The laugh drew Alec into the kitchen. "What's so funny?" he asked.

  "You are, kiddo," Mort said.

  "I'm not funny. I'm tough," Alec said.

  "You sure are, kiddo," Mort said. "Here–put up your dukes." He and Alec made as if to turn the kitchen into Madison Square Garden.

  "You'd better be careful, champ, or he'll knock you out when you aren't looking," Mary said. Alec threw haymakers with wild enthusiasm. Mort caught them with his hands. He didn't let his chin get in the way of one. When Alec stepped on Mary's toes twice in the space of half a minute, she chased him and her husband out of the kitchen. Had she married a different man, she might have threatened him with having to do his own cooking. That didn't work with Mort, though.

  "Good chicken," he said once she finally got it on the table. Threats might not work with him, but his compliments counted for more than they would have from a man who didn't know anything about food.

  Alec gnawed all the meat off his drumstick, then thumped it against his plate. That was taking the word too literally for Mary. "Cut it out," she said, and then, louder, "Cut it out!" Next stop was a spanking. Alec knew as much, and did cut it out. His mother sighed. "He is a little . . . what you said earlier."

  "A what?" Alec asked. "What am I? I'm a what?"

&nb
sp; "You're a what, all right," Mort Pomeroy said. "Try to be a good what, and do what your mother tells you to."

  "I'm a what! I'm a what! What! What!" Alec shouted. He liked that so well, he wasn't about to pay attention to anything else.

  When supper was done, Mary got up from the table, saying, "I'm going to wash dishes. How would you like to dry them, what?"

  The what didn't like that idea at all. He retreated into the living room, where he loudly told the cat what he was. If Mouser was impressed, he hid it very well. Mort said, "I'll dry. I'm less likely to drop things than Alec is, anyway."

  "I'm not Alec! I'm a what!" The what, like a lot of little pitchers, had big ears.

  Most husbands who volunteered to dry would have got nothing but gratitude from their wives. Mort made Mary feel guilty. She said, "You mess around with dishes all day long."

  "A few more won't hurt me," he said gallantly, and then, lowering his voice, "Besides, maybe we can talk a little without the hell-raiser listening in." Since Alec didn't know he was a hell-raiser, he didn't rise to that.

  Mary started running water in the sink. The splashing helped blur their voices. "What's up?" she asked, also quietly.

  "They gave Wilf Rokeby ten years," Mort answered as he grabbed a dish towel. "Five for having subversive literature, and five for lying about you and that bomb. He swore up and down that he wasn't lying, but he would, wouldn't he?"

  "He knew my father. He remembered what happened to my brother. He thought the Yanks–well, the Frenchies–would believe any old lie about me on account of that." Mary had no trouble sounding bitter. She was bitter about everything the USA had done to her family and made it do to itself. That the postmaster was telling the truth was something only he and she knew–an odd sort of intimacy, but no less real for that. In an abstract way, she pitied him. He had to be out of his mind with rage and frustration because he couldn't make anybody believe him.

  "He's got a lot of . . . darn nerve, trying to get you in trouble on account of what happened a long time ago." Mort slung a couple of forks into the silverware drawer. He was furious, even if he didn't raise his voice.