Walk in Hell gw-2

by Harry Turtledove

  “Thank you,” she said, startled. He was developing his ideological awareness early on; he wouldn’t be able to vote for another six or seven years.

  “What’s the latest?” four people called at once.

  Flora started opening telegrams. “Senator LaFollette is out in front in Wisconsin,” she said, which drew cheers. A moment later, she added, “And Senator Debs is sure to carry the presidential race in Indiana; he’s leading three to two.” Noise filled the Socialist Party offices again. Flora was pleased, too, but if Debs couldn’t carry his own home state, what was the point in having him run?

  Herman Bruck was studying the map, the slow trickle of incoming returns, and a couple of sheets of paper filled with calculations. “If things go on like this,” he announced, “I think we’ll pick up about a dozen seats in the House and two, maybe three, in the Senate.”

  That brought a fresh wave of applause. Bruck’s calculations had been pretty good during the Congressional elections of 1914. That made Flora think she could place some confidence in them now.

  “Roosevelt repudiated!” somebody shouted. Somebody else let out a real war whoop, almost a Rebel yell.

  “It’s not enough,” Flora said, and, being almost a congresswoman, got instant attention from everyone. “It’s not enough,” she repeated. “If the people had wanted to repudiate TR, to repudiate him properly, I mean, they would have elected Debs. And another couple of senators and another handful of congressmen-”

  “And congresswomen!” Maria Tresca broke in.

  “-Aren’t enough to matter,” Flora went on, as if her friend hadn’t spoken. “The Democrats still have a big majority in both houses. TR can jam any bill he likes right down the country’s throat, and we can’t stop him. There aren’t enough progressive Democrats to join us in a united front and keep him out of mischief. We’ve done something this year-a little something. When 1918 comes, we have to do much more.”

  She got some applause for that impromptu speech. She also got some thoughtful silence, which struck her as even more important. The Socialist Party had some notion of the shape of this election now. They had to look ahead, to see where they could go next.

  A phone rang. Herman Bruck answered it. He waved for quiet, which meant he was getting fresh returns. After he wrote them down, he shot a fist into the air in triumph. “Miller, 8,211,” he announced. “Hamburger, 10,625. He’ll never come back from that.”

  Sarah Hamburger had been sitting, watching election night with interest but without much visible concern. Now, though, deliberately and with great dignity, she got up, walked over to her daughter, and embraced her. Tears ran down the older woman’s cheeks, and the younger one’s as well.

  A few minutes later, the telephone rang again. Again, Herman Bruck answered it. After a moment, he waved, put a finger to his lips. Then he waved again, this time for Flora. “It’s Daniel Miller,” he said.

  Silence fell in the offices as Flora walked over to the telephone. She took the earpiece from Herman and leaned close to the mouthpiece. “Hello?”

  The Democratic appointee to Congress sighed in her ear. “I’m calling to congratulate you, Miss Hamburger,” he said. “The latest returns do seem to show that you have won this seat. That being so, I don’t see much point in wasting everyone’s time by not admitting the obvious.”

  “Thank you very much, Congressman Miller,” she said. He was being gracious; she would return the favor. All around her, the Party workers started cheering once more, understanding why Miller had to be calling.

  She tried waving them to silence, as Herman Bruck had done. It didn’t work. Now that they’d gained what they worked so long and hard to accomplish, they weren’t going to be quiet for anybody, not even their own candidate. Hearing the racket, Daniel Miller managed a chuckle. “Enjoy it, Miss Hamburger,” he said. “I wish it were mine. If there’s anything I can do to help you in the next couple of months, I’m sure you know how to reach me. Good night.” He hung up.

  “He’s conceded,” Flora said, also setting the earpiece back on the hook. She didn’t think any of her colleagues heard her. It didn’t matter. They already knew. So did she. She was going to Congress.

  The best thing-Lieutenant Colonel Irving Morrell sometimes thought it was the only good thing-about getting back to General Staff headquarters was the maps. Nowhere else in all the world could he get a better idea of how the war as a whole was going. Looking at them, one after another, he thought it was going pretty well. War Department cartographers had already amended national boundaries on the maps to show Kentucky as one of the United States.

  Captain John Abell came into the map room. Morrell nodded to him. That Abell still was a captain filled Morrell with a sense that there might be justice in the world after all, no matter how well life attempted to conceal it.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant Colonel Morrell,” Abell said-coolly, as he said everything coolly. That Morrell was now a lieutenant colonel seemed to fill him with a sense that there was no justice in the world.

  “Morning,” Morrell agreed. The use of such polite formulas let even men who didn’t care for each other find something safe to say, and no doubt often kept them from going after each other with knives. Morrell didn’t need to look very hard to find something else safe: “With TR on the job for another four years, we’ll have the chance to make these end up looking the way they should.” He waved to the maps.

  “So we will,” Abell said. “Debs would have been a disaster.”

  “This is already a disaster,” Morrell said. Abell looked at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking Turkish. To the General Staff officer who’d spent the whole war in Philadelphia, the conflict was a matter of orders and telegrams and lines on maps, nothing more. Having almost lost a leg himself, having seen men bleed and heard them scream, Morrell conceived of it in rather more intimate terms. He went on, “It would be an even worse disaster if we dropped it in the middle, though. Then we’d just have to pick it up again in five years, or ten, or fifteen at the most.”

  “There is, no doubt, some truth in that.” Abell sounded relieved, at least to the degree he ever sounded much like anything. “We have the tools, and we can finish the job.”

  “Hope so, anyhow,” Morrell said. “The Canadians are in a bad way, and that’s a fact. If we knock them out of the war, that will let us pull forces south and give it to the CSA with both barrels.”

  “If the Canadians had any sense, they would have long since seen they were fighting out of their weight.” Abell scowled at the situation maps of Ontario and Quebec. “They’re as irrational as the Belgians.”

  Morrell shrugged. “They’re patriots, same as we are. If the Belgians had rolled over, our German friends would long since have got to Paris. If the Canadians had rolled over, we wouldn’t just be in Richmond-we’d be in Charleston and Montgomery by now.”

  “I believe you’re right about that, sir.” A light kindled in Abell’s pale eyes. “We may get there yet, in spite of everything.”

  “Yes,” Morrell said, and the word sounded…hungry. “We’ve owed the Rebs for a long time, and now, maybe, we can finally pay them back.”

  Abell smiled. So did Morrell. They distrusted each other, being as different as two men could be while both wearing the uniform of the United States. But no matter how different they were, they shared the U.S. loathing for the Confederate States of America.

  “Two generations of humiliation,” Abell said dreamily. “Two generations of those drawling bastards telling us what to do, and giving us orders out of the barrel of a gun. Two generations of their hiding behind England’s skirts, and France’s, knowing we couldn’t fight them and their friends all at the same time. We tried it once, and it didn’t work. But we have friends of our own now, so the Confederates have to try to take us on by themselves this time, and it’s turning out to be a harder job.”

  Morrell walked over to the map that showed how things stood on the Maryland front. The cartographers had le
ft on the map the Confederate advance to the Susquehanna, as if it were the high-water mark of a flood. And so, in a way, it had been-if the Rebs had got to the Delaware instead, the war would look a lot different now.

  But that high-water mark was not what had drawn Morrell’s attention. These days, western Maryland was cleared of the invaders. One day soon, U.S. forces would cross the Potomac and carry the war into the Confederate States. Fortunes changed, and so did the enemy’s responses. Thoughtfully, he said, “I wonder how much trouble their nigger troops are going to cause.”

  “That is the wild card,” Abell admitted. “Those black units will be riddled with Reds, so we can dare hope they won’t fight hard. And, after all, they are only Negroes.”

  “The French have had pretty good luck with their colored soldiers,” Morrell said. “Guderian was telling me the Germans don’t like facing them for beans. When they attack, they put everything they’ve got into it, and they don’t want to be bothered with prisoners, either.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that, too,” Abell said. “But I’ve also heard they’ve got no staying power to speak of. That’s what the Rebs will need, being on the defensive as they are. They’re in no position to attack us. Even if the Canucks stay in the fight, the initiative is in our hands.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Morrell said. “If the Rebs stand on the defensive, they’ll lose. We’ll hammer them to death-and the voters just gave Teddy Roosevelt four more years-well, two, anyhow, till the next Congressional elections-to do exactly that. If the Confederates want to stop us, they’ll have to do some striking of their own.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, Lieutenant Colonel.” By the way Abell said it, he thought Morrell was out of his mind but, inexplicably being of two grades’ superior rank, had to be humored. “The maps make it difficult to see where they could hope to do so, however.”

  “Maps are wonderful,” Morrell said. “I love maps. They let you see things you could never hope to spot without ’em. But they aren’t a be-all and end-all. If you don’t factor morale into your strategic thinking, you’re going to get surprised in ways you don’t like.”

  “Perhaps,” Abell said again. Again, he sounded anything but convinced. Since he had few emotions of his own, he didn’t seem to think anyone else had them, either. Maybe that accounted for his still being a captain.

  “Never mind,” Morrell said, a little sadly. “But I’ll tell you this, Captain: anybody who’s looking defeat in the face isn’t going to fight a rational war once he figures he’s got nothing left to lose.”

  “Yes, sir,” Abell said. It didn’t get through to the General Staff captain. Morrell could see as much. He wondered when Abell had last fired a Springfield. He wondered if Abell had ever had to command a platoon on maneuvers. He had his doubts. Had Abell ever done anything like that, he wouldn’t have retained such an abiding faith in rationality.

  “What will you do when the war’s over?” Morrell asked.

  Abell didn’t hesitate. “Help the country prepare itself for the next one, of course,” he replied. “And you?”

  “The same.” For the life of him, Morrell couldn’t think of anything he’d rather do. “I think, if I get the chance, I’m going to go into barrels. That’s where we’ll see a lot of effort focused once the fighting’s done this time.”

  Abell shook his head. “They’ve been a disappointment, if you ask me. Like gas, they promise more than they deliver. Now that the enemy has seen them a few times, we don’t get the panic effect we once did, and enemy barrels are starting to neutralize ours. They may have occasional uses, I grant you, but I think they’ll go down in the history of this war as curiosities, nothing more.”

  “I don’t agree,” Morrell said. “They need more work; they’d be much more useful if they could move faster than a soldier can walk. And I’m not sure our doctrine for employing them is the best it could be, either.”

  “How else would you use them, sir, other than all along the line?” Abell asked. “They are, as you pointed out, an adjunct to infantry. This matter has been discussed here at considerable length, both before your arrival and during your absence.”

  Had Abell been wearing gloves, he might have slapped Morrell in the face with one of them. His remarks really meant, Who do you think you are, you Johnny-come-lately, to question the gathered wisdom of the War Department and the General Staff?

  “All I know is what I read in the reports that come back from the field, and what I’ve seen in the field for myself,” Morrell answered, which didn’t make Captain Abell look any happier. “They’ve done some good, and I think they could do more.”

  “I suggest, then, sir, that you put your proposals in the form of a memorandum for evaluation by the appropriate committee,” Abell said.

  “Maybe I will,” Morrell said, which startled John Abell. One more memorandum no one will ever read, Morrell thought. Just what the war effort needs now. Aloud, he went on, “Yes, maybe I’ll do that. And maybe I’ll do something else, too.” The gaze Abell gave him held more suspicion than any the smooth young captain had ever aimed at the Confederates and their plans.

  Roger Kimball said, “You’re all volunteers here, and I’m proud of every one of you for coming along on this ride. I knew the Bonefish had the finest damn crew in the C.S. Navy, and you’ve gone and proved it again.”

  “Sir,” Tom Brearley said, “we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  Brearley was the executive officer, and was supposed to think like that. Kimball wanted to get a feel for how the ordinary sailors felt. Yes, they’d all volunteered, but had they really understood what they were getting into?

  Then Ben Coulter said, “If we can give the damnyankees’nuts a good twist, Skipper, reckon it’ll turn out to be worth it.” The rest of the crew, some in greasy dungarees, some in black leather that was every bit as greasy but didn’t show it so much, rumbled their agreement with the veteran petty officer. A lot of them had quit shaving after they sailed out of Charleston, which made them look even more piratical than they would have otherwise.

  “All right,” Kimball said, heartened. “You understand what we’re doing here. If it goes wrong, we ain’t gonna be like my old chum Ralph Briggs. Calls himself a submariner, and the Yankees have captured him twice.” He spat to show what he thought of that. “If it goes wrong, we’re sunk.” His eyes gleamed. “But if it goes right, there’s gonna be a lot of unhappy Yankees in New York harbor.”

  That wolfish growl rose from the crew again. Rationally, Kim-ball knew the odds were he’d said his last good-byes to everybody except the crew of the Bonefish, and he’d probably never get the chance to say good-bye to them. But the risk was worth the candle, as far as he was concerned.

  Bookish and thoughtful where Kimball was fierce and emotional, Tom Brearley said, “We’ve loaded this boat with so many extra batteries, we only need to fill our buoyancy tanks half full to go straight down to the bottom.” That was an exaggeration, but not a big one. Brearley went on, “We’ve got chemicals aboard to take some of the carbon dioxide out of the air while we’re submerged, too. What all that means is, we can submerge farther out from New York City than the Yankees think, sneak up on them, do our worst, and then get away again.”

  “That’s what we can do, all right,” Kimball said. “That’s what we’re going to do.”

  He went up the ladder to the conning tower and looked all around. The Stars and Bars flapped where the Confederate naval ensign would normally have flown. As it had been in the Chesapeake Bay, that was part of the deception scheme he’d laid on. A passing ship or aeroplane would see red, white, and blue and-he hoped-assume the boat belonged to the U.S. Navy. What made it especially delicious was that it didn’t even slightly contravene international law.

  The Bonefish was only a couple of hundred miles southeast of New York harbor now, and ship traffic was heavy. As he’d counted on, none of the merchantmen paid any attention to a surfaced submersible sailing along on w
hat were obviously its own lawful occasions.

  An aeroplane with the U.S. eagle-and-swords emblem flew past, at first taking the Bonefish for granted but then sweeping back for a closer look. Cursing under his breath-if that aeroplane carried wireless and identified him as a hostile, all his preparations were wasted-Kimball took off his cap and waved it at the Yankee flying machine.

  It came no closer, but waggled its wings and flew off, satisfied. He let out a sigh of relief. Five minutes later, he spotted a U.S. airship, a giant flying cigar. He cursed again, this time not at all under his breath. The airship could look him over at close range and hover above his boat, penetrating its disguise. He stayed up top, ready to order the Bonefish to dive if the dirigible turned his way. It didn’t, evidently taking the sub for a U.S. vessel if it noticed the boat at all.

  When he was inside a hundred miles of the harbor-and also about to enter the first ring of mines around it-he went below, dogged the hatch after himself, and said, “Take her down to periscope depth, Tom. Five knots.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Periscope depth. Five knots,” Brearley said. The Bonefish slid below the surface with remarkable alacrity; those extra batteries were heavy. Without them, though, he couldn’t have come close enough to the harbor to contemplate an attack.

  Confederate Naval Intelligence had given him their best information on where the lanes through the mines lay. He was betting his boat-betting his neck, too, but he didn’t care to think of it that way-the boys in the quiet offices knew what they were talking about.

  And then, as he’d hoped he would, he caught a break. Peering through the periscope, he spotted a harbor tug leading a little flotilla of fishing boats back toward New York. “We’re going to sneak up on their tails and follow ’em in,” he said to Brearley, and gave the orders to close the Bonefish up on the last of the fishing boats, which, in among the mines, were going no faster than he was.

  He was reminded of stories about a gator swimming behind a mother duck and her ducklings and picking them off one by one. He let the ducklings swim. All of them together wouldn’t have satisfied his hunger.