Armistice

by Harry Turtledove

They put several trucks out of action. A couple caught fire. The rest, with flat tires or shot-up engines, unloaded their cargo. It wasn’t easy, since all the trucks were fully laden. The journey should have taken no longer than a couple of hours. It went on and on and….

  Pabaiskas was the last village in front of Ukmerge. The lead tank had almost got through when it hit a mine that blew off a track. That made the rest of the column stop. Bandits in the village opened up with everything they had.

  “Christ have mercy! We’re fucked!” Pyotr Polikarpov shouted.

  Konstantin only wished the gunner were wrong. “Keep shooting! Give ’em hell!” he said. “Cannon and machine gun both!” He yelled into the intercom: “Avram! Knock down the houses in your way! We’ve got to get forward!”

  “I’ll do it, Comrade Sergeant!” Lipshitz answered. He might be scared, but he followed orders.

  As the tank turned bulldozer, though, a bandit scrambled up onto its rear decking and smashed two Molotov cocktails on the engine louvers. Blazing gasoline knocked out the diesel. “Now what?” Polikarpov howled when the T-34/85 quit.

  Grabbing a PPSh from a rack inside the turret, Konstantin said, “Now we bail out. We’ll start roasting if we don’t.”

  He yanked the hatch open. When he popped out, he found himself staring at a tall, blond Balt who looked much too much like his old gunner for comfort. The bandit had a machine pistol, too. They both fired at the same time, from a range of no more than five meters. Konstantin saw the Lithuanian fall, but he got sledgehammered in the chest himself. He tried to keep moving, but the world went red, then gray, then black.

  —

  Ihor Shevchenko watched zeks rebuild Kiev. Everyone assured him it was safe to go into the city for a while. Whether what the workmen were doing was also safe, he had no idea. He didn’t think the commissars who put them to work gave a damn one way or the other. They were only zeks. If you used them up, you could always get more.

  Colonel Rogozin’s brother-in-law was a lieutenant colonel named Nikita Azarov. If Ihor’s division commander had thought well of him, Azarov wasn’t inclined to worry about it. And the staff officer used him exactly as Rogozin suggested: as a weapons and tactics instructor.

  That worked better than Ihor had thought it would. He’d figured the soldiers in the Kiev Military District would be men like the ones alongside whom he’d fought: retreads, most of them, who know as much about the art of organized murder as he did. What could he teach soldiers like that?

  But these guys were almost all kids, fresh conscripts, whose only fighting expertise came from the schoolyard or the playground. Quite a few of them looked to have been drafted a year or two early, too. The veterans, the men who’d been through the grinder against the Nazis, were committed in the satellites or the seriously rebellious regions of the USSR. This was what the Soviet Union had left to hold down more quiet regions and to begin to rebuild the Red Army.

  So Ihor showed them what he’d learned in two wars. He showed them how to cut a man’s throat without letting him get out a squawk while you were doing it. He showed them how to sharpen the blade on their entrenching tool, and how to use it to ruin an enemy’s face or ribs.

  “If you know what to do with it, this thing beats the shit out of a bayonet on the end of a rifle,” he told them. “In the trenches, you want one of these babies, some grenades, and a submachine gun or a Kalashnikov.”

  They listened hard, their smooth faces serious. They practiced with that same air of doing it because they had to, not because they understood it would help keep them alive. They’d find out. Or, if things settled down, they’d be lucky enough not to.

  He gave them one other piece of advice: “Always clean your weapon whenever you get the chance. I know we make ’em tough. I know a PPD or a PPSh or a Kalashnikov will probably work no matter how filthy you let it get. But do you want to feel like a stupid pussy—a stupid dead pussy—on account of it jams just when you need it worst? Clean the fucker!”

  He showed them how to read the little swells of ground any field or plain had, and how to camouflage a foxhole so it disappeared into the landscape. “This is a lot more work than digging and hopping in,” one of them grumbled.

  Ihor shrugged. “You want to do that, be my guest. You might as well put up a sign that says CHUCK YOUR GRENADE IN HERE while you’re at it.” The youngster who’d complained turned red as hot iron.

  After he’d been at it for a week or so, Lieutenant Colonel Azarov summoned him and said, “I’m getting good reports about you, Shevchenko. You seem to have definite leadership abilities.”

  “I serve the Soviet Union, sir!” Ihor said.

  “You’re doing a good job of it,” Azarov replied. “Vsevolod didn’t send you back here only because you can do such things, though, did he? You make your home around these parts, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ihor nodded. “On a kolkhoz not too far from the city.”

  “You have a family there?”

  “My wife, sir. We don’t have children, not yet. We might have started if I hadn’t got called back into the Red Army.”

  “Ah.” Nikita Azarov had a round, fleshy face. With another ten years to work on his jowls and double chin, he’d look like a proper Soviet general, whether he got the rank or not. “You’d probably like to go see her, then, eh? Isn’t that part of the reason why Vsevolod sent you back here?”

  “Sir, I’m just a sergeant. How am I supposed to know why a colonel does anything?” Ihor might have been collectivized when he was a boy, but he came from uncounted generations of peasants. Playing dumb, especially about men of status higher than his own, was in his blood.

  Like an old Russian aristocrat, Lieutenant Colonel Azarov wasn’t blind to what Ihor was up to. The officer let out an expressive grunt. “Can you get to your kolkhoz from here on a bicycle?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes, sir. Anya—my wife—was going to go into Kiev the morning the imperialists bombed it. But she had a horrible cold, so she stayed behind when her friends went. That’s why she’s still alive.”

  “A lot of stories like that. A whole lot more that aren’t so happy,” Azarov said. “All right. I’ll give you a pass to go off the encampment Sunday. I expect you’ll be able to scare up a bike from somewhere, won’t you?”

  “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! I serve the Soviet Union, sir!” Ihor came to the stiffest attention his bad leg allowed. He snapped off a parade-ground salute. An officer who was a human being! It happened now and again, but nowhere near often enough to let you count on it.

  The bike he promoted was a beast. It weighed twenty kilos and had one speed. If it ran into a tank, the tank might have been the one that fell over. However beastly it was, though, pedaling it was faster and easier than walking.

  Ihor thought so, anyhow, till it started to drizzle. He hadn’t brought along a rain cape or anything. He hadn’t thought he’d need one. A bicycle, water, and a dirt road didn’t mix.

  Drizzle turned to downpour by the time he got to the collective farm. They’d got the harvest done; the fields were full of yellowing stubble. Pretty soon, snow would cover it. By the time he reached the kolkhoz, the rain was coming down so hard that he couldn’t see very far. Luckily, he didn’t need to. He knew every centimeter of the ground around here.

  He lowered the kickstand right outside the residential building. Mud squelched under his boots as he walked to the door. The ride back would be even more fun than the trip out here had been. He’d worry about that later. He opened the door and walked inside.

  Familiar faces turned to stare at him. They all looked closed and wary. To the kolkhozniks, he was a stranger, an outsider, a danger. What does the Red Army want with us now? That was what they had to be thinking. They didn’t know him soaking wet and in uniform, especially with his cap pulled down low on his forehead against the rain.

  “Bozhemoi, Comrade Sergeant, what made you come out here in weather like this?” Of course Petro Hapochka read his shoulder b
oards at a glance. The kolkhoz chairman—in the old days, he would have been a village headman—had returned from the Great Patriotic War with only one foot.

  “I’m putting you all in khaki, that’s what!” Ihor growled.

  They looked horrified for a moment. Then Petro recognized his voice. He limped over to Ihor on his artificial foot and folded him into a bear hug, no matter how wet he was. “You son of a bitch!” he roared. “You damn near made me piss myself! Now what are you really doing here?”

  “They sent me back to this military district to be an instructor. Crazy, isn’t it?” Ihor said. “But never mind that. Where’s Anya?”

  “In your room, as far as I know,” Hapochka said. One of the women nodded.

  “I’ll see you later, then.” Off Ihor went. Fear made his own limp worse, the way it did when he went into combat. What if Anya wasn’t alone in the room? What if she was pregnant out to there, or nursing a baby that wasn’t his? I’ll kill her, he thought. I’ll kill the bastard who got her, and then maybe I’ll kill myself.

  The door stood open. Anya sat on the bed, darning socks. No pregnancy. No little bastard in a cradle. A great stone of dread fell from Ihor’s shoulders. He stood straighter; he could feel it.

  Anya looked up when the footsteps stopped outside the door. Like the other kolkhozniks, she needed a second to recognize him. Then her face lit up like sunrise. “Ihor!” she squeaked, and ran to him. She plastered herself against him, even though that meant her whole front got soaked. Between kisses, she managed to ask, “What are you doing here, darling?”

  “I came back,” he said. “I didn’t even get shot this time, but I came back.” He propelled her from the hallway back into the room. Then, quietly but firmly, he closed the door behind them.

  —

  Luisa Hozzel wandered around Fulda like a woman caught in a bad dream she couldn’t wake up from. The town had been bombed during the last war, but not so badly as this time around. American and English planes must have hit it day and night after she got shipped off to Siberia. Too many roads and railways went through here. To keep the Russians from sending men and machines farther west, they had to wreck those roads and railways—and the place that held them.

  The money the clerk gave her at the border seemed a cruel joke now. Her apartment was gone, along with everything it held. There were no rooms to be had. Almost half the people were living in shanties or tents or caves. Fall was in the air. Winter would be coming soon. She had a cot in a tent for herself. How much fun would that be in the middle of a blizzard?

  She ate at a soup kitchen, along with swarms of others. Actually, it wasn’t soup most of the time, but American military rations. They filled her belly, but the flavors screamed how foreign they were.

  Gustav would have eaten rations like that. The Amis seemed to have no trouble feeding as many people as they needed to. Spam and canned corn and fruit salad and cigarettes, enough for a whole planet—even if no one but an American could want that kind of food. But what difference did wanting make? When you chose between Spam and hunger, Spam won every time.

  Yes, Gustav would have eaten these rations, but Gustav was dead. She’d heard that at the border. Max had confirmed it. He’d seen Gustav’s body.

  Max was alive. What was he doing, being alive when Gustav was dead? What were he and Trudl doing, being happy when Luisa was miserable? True, their flat and Max’s printing business were wrecked, too. They were living in a lean-to, little if any improvement over Luisa’s tent. They had each other, though. She had nobody.

  Where was the justice in that? Nowhere she could see.

  She had no idea how she could ever be happy again. On the contrary—the temptation to use her body to get herself out of trouble was as strong here as it had been back in the gulag. Of all the things she hadn’t imagined when she climbed into the train that took her out of Russia and back to the civilized world, that stood high on the list.

  Even if she didn’t know how to make herself happy, she knew perfectly well how to make other people unhappy. All she had to do to make Trudl and Max as miserable as she was would be to tell him how his wife had wound up keeping her belly full while she was in the gulag.

  Trudl would deny everything, of course. Could she deny everything well enough to make Max believe her? Before the MGB men came for her and Luisa, Luisa wouldn’t have believed it for a minute. Now…Now she wasn’t sure. The gulag was a postgraduate course in deceit. If you somehow got your hands on extra food or makhorka or anything else, you deceived your fellow zeks so they wouldn’t steal whatever you had.

  And deceiving the guards was as natural, and as vital, as breathing. You made them think you were working hard in the taiga when you were really goofing off. You made them think you weren’t so strong as you really were. Every once in a while, you helped them get the count wrong.

  So yes, Trudl would have a lot of practice at spinning convincing lies. Max would want to think she was telling the truth, too. He’d be happier doing that than thinking his wife had opened her legs for a camp guard so she wouldn’t have to cut wood and so she could get extra helpings of swill.

  Every once in a while, Luisa reminded herself that Trudl and Max were her friends. Friends didn’t hurt other friends for the fun of it, not if they wanted to stay friends. But whoever’d said misery loved company knew what he was talking about, down to the last millimeter.

  Luisa fitfully tried to find work. She could be a shopgirl or a clerk or even a secretary, as long as she didn’t have to take much dictation. But none of the few business open in Fulda seemed the least bit interested in hiring her or any other outsiders. They were family concerns, and didn’t want to take on anyone who wasn’t a sister or at least a sister-in-law.

  For that matter, Max found his own unhappiness without any help from Luisa. When he ran into her on Fulda’s cratered main street, he looked as if he’d just bitten into a lemon. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

  “The print shop is kaput—you know that,” he said. She nodded. He went on, “I applied to my insurance company. If they would have paid off, I could have used the money to get back on my feet, maybe even get the shop started again.”

  “If they would have…?”

  Max’s nod was sour as vinegar. “That’s right. The policy excludes acts of God and acts of war, they tell me. So I’m stuck. I’d like to give them an act of war, is what I’d like to do.”

  “You sound like you mean it,” Luisa said.

  “Which is only because I do. I bet I could still get my hands on a bazooka. I know plenty of guys who wouldn’t ask any questions. Go to Frankfurt in the middle of the night, send a rocket or two into the pigdogs’ building…They’d find out about acts of war, by Jesus!”

  “They’d know who did it,” she pointed out.

  But the printer just snorted. “The devil they would! You think I’m the only one the insurance company’s shitting on? Fat chance, Luisa. Fat chance. There were acts of war all over the Bundesrepublik. How much you bet they don’t want to pay off on any of them? The line of people they’re screwing forms on the left and winds around the block three or four times.”

  He sounded perfectly serious, as he had when he said he knew how to get hold of a bazooka. For all Luisa knew, he was perfectly serious. A stretch in the gulag had taught her more about lying and cheating and stealing than she’d ever dreamt she’d learn. What would two long stretches of fighting the Russians have taught him? Something like, if anybody gets in your way or gives you a hard time, you kill him? She wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

  He eyed her. “I’m sorrier about Gustav than I know how to tell you. He was a good fellow, your man. He worked hard, and he was fun to work with. And he was a good Kamerad, too—the best. Nothing we went through got him down. Just like me and Rolf, he’d seen worse the last time around.”

  “Who’s Rolf?” Luisa asked.

  “Who was, you mean. He’s dead now, too, poor bastard. A guy in our squad—a
piece of work, and then some. A Waffen-SS veteran—LAH, no less. An officer then, I think, but he stayed an ordinary soldier with us. Crazy brave, I’ll say that for him. But he was one of those guys who hurt things for the fun of it, so I wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with him away from the front.”

  “What happened to him? Do I want to know?”

  “He was clearing mines after the ceasefire—I told you he was brave. His luck ran out—he wound up in the middle of one of our old fields left over from the last war. I don’t think he knew it was there till too late. He blew himself up. Hoist by his own petard, you might say.”

  Luisa had only a vague notion of what a petard was. She didn’t ask Max; she got his drift. She said, “It’s a shame he got killed after the fighting stopped.”

  “It’s always a shame when anybody gets killed,” Max said. “But you could see it coming with him. He was happy when he was fighting, and I don’t think any other time. So he would have caught something sooner or later. You go looking for trouble, you’ll find it.”

  “Or it’ll find you,” Luisa said.

  “Ja. If he’d lived, I bet he would have wound up in the French Foreign Legion, even if he couldn’t stand the frogs. Or maybe the Spanish one instead. He could have kept on soldiering in Africa or Indochina.”

  “It could be.” Luisa knew a lot of Germans with shady pasts or a taste for blood had put on the white kepi after the Third Reich went down in flames. The French asked few questions of men who’d never seen Europe again.

  Max touched the brim of his beat-up hat and wandered off. Luisa felt proud that she hadn’t blurted out anything about Trudl. Not this time, anyway.

  ISTVAN SZOLOVITS PUNCHED OUT at the Blue Front warehouse and hurried toward his old Hudson. He still wasn’t much of a driver or much of an English-speaker, but he’d managed to convince the California Department of Motor Vehicles that he deserved a license. The C-note the car had set him back made it overpriced.

  “Nu, where you heading with your pants on fire like that?” Aaron Finch called after him.