The Victorious opposition ae-3

by Harry Turtledove

  Even though the phonograph was quiet, the fiddlers struck up a tune. People began to dance again. What Lucien noticed was how harsh and ragged the music seemed. When he was young, people had enjoyed whatever music their neighbors made. Some was better, some not quite so good, but what difference did it make?

  It made a difference now. People measured neighbors' music not by the standards of other neighbors' music, but against the professionals who made records. What would have been fine a couple of generations before was anything but now. We're spoiled, Lucien thought. That hadn't occurred to him before, which made it no less true.

  Berlinguet came over to him. "Will you be a wallflower?" he teased.

  "If I want to," Galtier answered. "I can do just about anything I want to, it seems to me. I have the years for it."

  "But you will break the hearts of all the pretty girls here," his host said. "How can they dance with you if you will not dance?"

  "Now that, my friend, that is a truly interesting question," Lucien said. "And now I have another question for you as well: is it that they wish to dance with me, or is it that they wish to dance with my farm and my electricity and my Chevrolet?"

  Franзois Berlinguet did him the courtesy of taking him seriously. "It could be that some of them do wish to dance with the farm and the other things. But, you know, it could also be that some of them wish to dance with you. Will you take away their chance along with that of the others?"

  "I do not know." Galtier shrugged a Gallic shrug. "Truly, I do not. The trouble is, how do I tell with a certainty the ones from the others?"

  Before Berlinguet could answer, Dr. Leonard O'Doull and Galtier's daughter, Nicole, walked into the barn. With his long, angular body and fair, Irish-looking face, O'Doull always looked like a stranger in a crowd of Quebecois. But he wasn't a stranger here. He must have treated at least half the people in the barn. Men and women swarmed up to him. Some wanted to talk about their aches and pains. More, though, wanted to talk politics or gossip. Even if he did still sound a little-and only a little-like the American he was, he'd made a place for himself in and around Riviиre-du-Loup.

  Eventually, he and Nicole came over to Galtier. As Franзois Berlinguet had, O'Doull said, "You're not dancing, mon beau-pиre. Do you think you will wear out all the sweet young things?"

  "It could be," Lucien answered. "It could also be that I think they will wear me out. When I want to dance, I will dance. And if I do not care to… well, who will make me?"

  Nicole grabbed his left hand. When she did, her husband plucked the mug of cider out of his right hand. "I will make you," she said, and dragged him out toward the middle of the floor. "You don't need to wonder why I want to dance with you, either." She understood him very well.

  He wagged a finger at her. "Yes, I know why you want to dance with me. You want to make me look like a fool in front of the entire neighborhood. How is it that you have come down here from town?"

  "I talked with Madeleine Berlinguet when she came up to sell some chickens, and she invited us," Nicole answered. "Before too long, you know, little Lucien will want to start coming to dances, too."

  The idea that his grandson would soon be old enough to want to dance with girls rocked Galtier back on his heels. Had it really been so many years since little Lucien was born? It had, sure enough.

  When the music started-fiddlers playing along with the phonograph-he had to remember where his feet went. Nicole didn't lead too obviously, for which he was grateful. And, once he'd been dancing a little while, he discovered he was having a good time. He didn't intend to admit that, but it was true.

  After the song (an import from the USA, with lyrics translated into French) ended, Leonard O'Doull came out and tapped Galtier on the shoulder. "Excuse me, mon beau-pиre, but I am going to dance this next dance with my wife."

  "You think so, do you?" Galtier asked in mock anger. "Then what am I to do? Return to wallflowerdom?"

  "Is that a word?" His son-in-law looked dubious. "You can go back if you like, or you can find some other lady and dance with her."

  "Such choices you give me. I am not worthy," Galtier said, and Leonard O'Doull snorted. Now Lucien did feel like dancing. He touched a woman on the shoulder. He smiled. "Hello, Йloise. May I have this dance?"

  "Mais certainement, Lucien." Йloise Granche was a widow of about Nicole's age. She'd lost her husband in a train wreck a little before Lucien lost Marie. If he hadn't known her before, he would have thought that was what gave her an air of calm perhaps too firmly held. In fact, she'd always been like that. Philippe Granche had drunk like a fish; maybe that had more to do with it.

  The music started again. Galtier took her in his arms. She was two or three inches shorter than Marie had been, and plumper, too, but not so much that she didn't make a pleasant armful. She danced well. Lucien had to remind himself he needed to say such things.

  "And you," she told him when he did. After a moment, she asked, "Is this your first time since…?"

  She let that hang, but Galtier understood perfectly well what she meant. "No, not quite," he answered, "but it still seems very strange. How long have you been dancing now?"

  "A couple of years," Йloise said. "Yes, it is strange, isn't it? With Philippe, I always knew just what he would do. Other people are surprises, one after another."

  "Yes!" He nodded. "They certainly seem to be. And not only on the dance floor, either. The world is a different place now."

  "It certainly is for me," she said. "I wasn't so sure it would be for a man."

  "Oh, yes. For this man, anyhow." Galtier didn't think he'd ever spoken of his love for Marie outside the bosom of his family. He didn't intend to start now. Even saying so much was more than he'd thought he would do.

  Йloise Granche seemed to know what he meant even when he didn't say it. She said, "You have to go on. It's very hard at first, but you have to."

  He nodded again. "So I've seen. It was hard at first." He hadn't spoken of that even with his family. There had been weeks-months-when he hadn't wanted to get out of bed, let alone get on with his life.

  The music stopped. "Thank you for asking me," Йloise said. "That was very pleasant."

  "I thought so, too." Lucien hesitated. He hadn't talked with anyone who knew what he was talking about before. She'd traveled down the same road as he. After the hesitation, he plunged: "Shall we also dance the next one?"

  "I'd like to," she said briskly. "We've both made the same journey, haven't we?"

  "I was just thinking that very thing!" he said in surprise. When he and Marie had the same thought at the same time, he'd taken it for granted. Why not? They'd spent forty years living in each other's pockets. When he did it with a near stranger… That was a surprise.

  Йloise's shrug said it astonished her less than him. "It springs from what we were talking about, I think." The fiddlers began to play. She swayed forward. They started dancing again, this time without words.

  Galtier wondered what Marie would say. Probably something like, Try not to step on her toes, the way you always did on mine. Йloise's eyes were closed as they spun around the barn. Her expression said she might have been listening to someone who wasn't there, too. But she was also very much with Lucien.

  When the music stopped this time, they both walked over to the table to get some cider. They stood by the wall, talking of this and that, through the next dance-and the next. But Galtier didn't feel like a wallflower any more.

  The USS Remembrance steamed south, accompanied by a couple of destroyers and a heavy cruiser. Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Sam Carsten smeared zinc-oxide ointment on his nose and the backs of his hands. He knew he would burn anyhow, but he wouldn't burn so badly this way.

  Off to the east rose the bleak, almost lunar landscape of Baja California. The Remembrance and her companions sailed outside the three-mile limit the Empire of Mexico claimed, but not very far outside it. Their guns and the carrier's aeroplanes could have smashed up that coast or whatever little gunboa
ts the Mexicans sent out to challenge them.

  But the Mexicans sent out nothing. Cabo San Lucas wasn't much of a port. No, actually, that wasn't true. It had the makings of a fine harbor-or it would have, if only there were any fresh water close by. Since there wasn't, the protected bay went to waste except for an old gunboat or two and a few fishing trawlers.

  Sam turned to Lieutenant Commander Harrison, the assistant officer of the deck. "Sir, may I make a suggestion?"

  "Go ahead, Carsten," Roosevelt Harrison replied. The Annapolis ring on the younger officer's finger explained why he was where he was and Sam was where he was.

  "Thank you, sir," replied Sam, who'd never expected to become an officer at all when he joined the Navy a few years before the Great War started. "The Confederates have a naval base at Guaymas, sir. Where we are and where we're headed, they might want to use us to give their submersible skippers some practice."

  "They aren't supposed to have any submersibles," the assistant OOD said.

  "Yes, sir. I know that, sir," Carsten said, and said no more.

  Harrison considered. After a few seconds, he said, "You may have a point. I wouldn't trust those bastards as far as I could throw 'em." He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and raised his voice to a shout: "Attention on deck! All hands be alert for submarines in the neighborhood." Sailors hurried to the edge of the deck and peered in all directions, shielding their eyes from the glare of the sun with their palms. Lieutenant Commander Harrison gave his attention back to Sam. "A good thought. I don't believe they'd try anything even if they do have boats in the water, but you're right-stalking us would give them good practice."

  "What happens if somebody does spot a periscope?" Carsten asked. "Do we drop ashcans on the submersible?"

  "That's a damn good question, and I'm glad the skipper's the one who's got to answer it," Harrison said. "My guess would be no. The Confederates aren't allowed to have any submersibles, but how do we know whatever we spot isn't flying Maximilian's flag?" He and Sam exchanged wry grins; the Empire of Mexico could no more build submarines than it could aeroplane carriers. But where a boat was built had nothing to do with whose flag she flew.

  "I don't suppose we can tell, sir," Sam allowed. "Still, if it looks like a boat's getting ready to fire something…"

  "Then we're liable to have a war on our hands." The assistant OOD shivered, though the day was fine and warm. "Till I see a wake in the water, I won't order an attack on any submarine we spot. If the skipper has a different notion, that'll be up to him."

  Sometimes not having rank was a comfort. Sam knew that from his days as a petty officer. If you weren't important enough to give any really important orders, you couldn't get into really big trouble. When he was a petty officer, he would have figured a lieutenant commander had the clout to screw up in a big way. From Harrison's point of view, though, that exalted status belonged only to the skipper.

  Of course, Harrison wasn't thinking small. He was talking about starting a war. Back in Sam's petty-officer days, he couldn't have imagined a decision with that much riding on it. Even though he'd clawed his way up to officer's rank, carrying that much responsibility still didn't seem real to him.

  It must have to Lieutenant Commander Harrison, though. A little later, Sam saw him talking on a telephone line that led straight to the bridge. And, not too long after that, elevators started lifting aeroplanes from the hangars belowdecks. Pilots raced to the aeroplanes, some of them putting on goggles as they ran. The Remembrance turned into the wind, what there was of it. One after another, the aeroplanes roared off the flight deck.

  Were they hunting submersibles, too? Carsten couldn't think of anything else they might have in mind. Maybe Captain Stein thought that, if the Confederates were getting in some training, he might as well do the same thing. Or maybe the skipper just believed in wearing both suspenders and belt. In his place, Sam knew he would have.

  He wished he could hang around the wireless shack and find out what the aeroplanes were seeing, but the skipper chose that moment to sound general quarters. Maybe it was a drill. Undoubtedly, most of the crew would figure it was. But maybe, too, one of the pilots had spotted something that made him jumpy. The Remembrance had been a nervous ship going through the Straits of Florida a few years before, and for many of the reasons also relevant today.

  Sam's general-quarters station was deep in the bowels of the ship. He sighed as he hurried down to it. He still wished he had another post besides damage control. He'd been stuck with it for years now, but that didn't mean he liked it. He wished he could see, could be part of, what the ship was doing against its enemies. Cleaning up the mess after the guns and aeroplanes had failed to stop trouble was a lot less appealing.

  It was to him, anyhow. Some people wouldn't have done anything else. Some people fancied sauerkraut, too-no accounting for taste. Lieutenant Commander Pottinger found damage control fascinating. He probably liked sauerkraut, too, though Carsten had never asked him about that.

  By now, Hiram Pottinger had had more than a year to learn the ropes around the Remembrance. He really led the damage-control party, which he hadn't when he first boarded the carrier. Part of Sam chafed at losing the responsibility that had been his. The rest insisted he'd never wanted that particular responsibility in the first place.

  "Do you know anything, Carsten?" Pottinger asked. "Have any idea why the captain called us to general quarters? You like to hang around on the flight deck." By the way he said it, that was a faintly-or maybe more than faintly- reprehensible habit for a damage-control man to have. Sam told what he'd seen and heard. Pottinger frowned. "Do you think it's the real McCoy?"

  "Sir, I don't know for sure one way or the other," Carsten answered. "All I know is, it could be the McCoy."

  "Yes." Pottinger nodded emphatically. "Of course, that's the way we have to treat every general-quarters call-something to remember."

  He spoke now to the seamen and petty officers in the party, not to Sam. Their nods held varying degrees of impatience. They knew the truth of that better than he did. Most of them had served on the Remembrance when the war with Japan broke out. Pottinger hadn't. As far as Sam knew, he hadn't seen combat.

  The damage-control party waited, down there in what they knew could easily become their tomb. A torpedo hit in the engine room, and the light bulbs that were the only illumination in this world of narrow steel corridors smelling of paint and oil and sweat would go out, trapping them in the darkness while, all too probably, the sea surged in around them.

  Maybe my trouble is too much imagination, Sam thought unhappily. Damage control's no place for somebody who sees all the things that can go wrong before they do.

  But that thought had hardly crossed his mind before the all-clear sounded. As always, sighs of relief accompanied it. If they seemed more heartfelt than usual this time… well, they did, that was all.

  Reprehensible habit or not, Sam made a beeline for the flight deck as soon as he could leave his station. He soon found out the call to general quarters had been a drill, and hadn't sprung from sighting a submersible or anything else that could have been hostile. That was all to the good.

  On steamed the Remembrance, into the Gulf of California. She was scrupulous about staying outside the territorial waters of both the Empire of Mexico and the Confederate States. Legally speaking, she was as much on the high seas as she would have been halfway out from San Francisco to the Sandwich Islands. Somehow, though, neither the Mexicans nor the Confederates seemed to feel that way.

  A rusty gunboat flying the Mexican flag chugged out from La Paz to look her over. A Confederate coast-defense battleship, a much more serious threat, steamed into the Gulf from Guaymas. On the open sea, the Remembrance could easily have outrun her. Here in these narrow waters, the slow but heavily armored and armed ship had no trouble sticking close.

  And, as they had in the Straits of Florida, aeroplanes flew over the Remembrance. Her own machines leaped into the air to warn off the intruder
s. The Confederacy was supposed to have no military aeroplanes, but… Carsten waited for another general-quarters call. In his time as a seaman and petty officer, he'd served the carrier's five-inch guns. These days, they fired at aeroplanes as well as aiming at targets on land and sea.

  When the alarm didn't come, Sam drifted over to the wireless shack. He let out a snort when he found out the strange aeroplanes overhead were labeled confederate citrus company. "What's so funny, sir?" asked a wireless operator, a youngster who hadn't been aboard on that earlier cruise.

  "That's the same outfit that eyeballed us when we sailed between Florida and Cuba," Carsten answered. "Do the Confederates even grow citrus over by Guaymas?"

  "Damned if I know, uh, sir," the operator said. Sam didn't know, either. He did know the land there would have to be more fertile than the sorry, sunbaked soil of Baja California to give anybody even half a chance.

  He didn't know the Confederate Citrus Company was a smoke screen to get around the military restrictions the armistice had imposed on the CSA. He didn't know, but he'd wondered even back in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Here in the Gulf of California, he went from wondering to down-right suspicion.

  The wireless operator said, "Sir, shall we remind the skipper the name's the same now as it was then?"

  "He's bound to remember," Sam said, but then, "Yes, go ahead and remind him. It can't hurt, and it might do some good."

  He went back out to the flight deck. The aeroplanes from the Confederate Citrus Company seemed about as swift and maneuverable as the ones that had sprung into the air from the Remembrance's flight deck. Why would an outfit that dealt with oranges and lemons and limes need machines like that? Carsten didn't know, but he got more suspicious.

  About twenty minutes later, the aeroplanes that had flown out from the coast of Sonora suddenly went back the way they'd come. Rumor, which flew faster than any aeroplane, said Captain Stein had warned them he would have his pilots shoot them down if they lingered.