American Empire : The Center Cannot Hold

by Harry Turtledove

  “The Silver Shirts.” O’Doull nodded. “Yes, just like them.” He cocked his head to one side, studying Galtier. “And what do you think of the Action Française?”

  Lucien Galtier clicked his tongue between his teeth. “That is not an easy question for me to answer,” he said slowly. As if to lubricate his wits, his son-in-law poured him more apple brandy. “Thank you,” he murmured, and drank. The applejack might not have made him any smarter, but it tasted good. He went on, “I would not be sorry to see France strong again. She is the mother country, after all. And even if the Republic of Quebec is a friend of the United States, and so a friend of Germany, which is not a friend of France . . .” He could feel himself getting tangled up in his sentence, and blamed the applejack—certainly easier than blaming himself. He tried again: “Regardless of politics, I care about what happens in France, and I wish her well.”

  “Moi aussi,” Nicole said softly.

  Dr. O’Doull nodded. “All right. That’s certainly fair enough. But let me ask you something else—do you think the Action Française will do well for France if they take power there? If France goes to war with Germany, for instance, do you think she can win?”

  “My heart says yes. My head says no.” Galtier let out a long, sad sigh. “I fear my head is right.”

  “I think so, too,” his son-in-law agreed.

  “But let me ask you something in return,” Lucien said. “If the Confederate States were to go to war with the United States, do you think they could win?”

  “Wouldn’t be easy,” O’Doull said. Then he shook his head. “No. They couldn’t. Not a chance, not now.”

  “Well, then, why worry about this Freedom Party?” Lucien asked.

  Before O’Doull answered, he poured his own glass of brandy full again. “Because I fear Featherston would start a war if he got the chance, regardless of whether he could win it or not. Because a war is a disaster whether you win or you lose—it’s only a worse disaster if you lose. I’m a doctor; I ought to know. And because”—he took a long pull at the applejack—“who knows what might happen five years from now, or ten, or twenty?”

  “Who knows, indeed?” Galtier wasn’t thinking about countries growing stronger or weaker. He was remembering Marie, remembering her well, and then in pain, and then, so soon, gone forever. He gulped down his own glass of apple brandy, then reached for the bottle to fill it again.

  Nicole reached out and set her hand on his own work-roughened one. Maybe she was remembering Marie, too. She said, “Hard times mean trouble, no matter where they land. And when they land everywhere . . .” She sighed, shook her head, and got to her feet. “I’m going to see how supper’s doing.”

  By the odor of roast chicken floating out of the kitchen, supper was doing very well indeed. For a moment, Lucien kept thinking about his wife. Then he realized Nicole meant the hard times that made it easy for him to hire help with the planting and harvest; with so many out of work in Rivière-du-Loup, he could pick and choose his workers. Some of them had never done farm labor before, but they were pathetically grateful for a paying job of any sort, and often worked harder than more experienced men might have done.

  To Leonard O’Doull, he said, “It seems to me, mon beau-fils, that you and I are lucky in what we do. People will always need something to eat, and, God knows, they will always fall sick. No matter what sort of troubles the world has, that will always be true. And so the two of us will always have work to keep us busy.”

  “No doubt you are right,” Dr. O’Doull said. “I think you are also lucky you own your farm free and clear and don’t owe much on your machinery. There are too many stories these days of men losing their land because they cannot pay the mortgage, and of losing their tractors and such because they cannot keep up the payments.”

  “I’ve heard these stories, too.” Lucien shivered, though the inside of his son-in-law’s house was toasty warm. “To be robbed of one’s patrimony . . . that would be a hard thing to bear.”

  “It is a hard thing to bear,” O’Doull said. “That fellow in Dakota a couple of weeks ago who shot his wife and children, shot the sheriff and three of his deputies when they came to take him off the farm he’d lost, and then shot himself . . . Before all this started, who could have imagined such a thing?”

  Galtier crossed himself. He’d seen that in the papers, too, and heard about it on the wireless, and he still wished he hadn’t. “God have mercy on that poor man’s soul,” he said. “And on his family, and on the sheriff and his men. That farmer worked a great evil there.”

  He let it go at that. He’d told nothing but the truth. If he also said he understood how the desperate American had felt when he knew he must lose his patrimony, Nicole would understand if she was listening from the kitchen, but would Dr. Leonard O’Doull? Lucien doubted it, and so kept quiet.

  Then Dr. O’Doull said, “Of all the sins in this world, which is more unforgivable than the sin of not having enough money? None I can think of.” Galtier realized he’d underestimated his son-in-law.

  “Well, well.” Colonel Irving Morrell stared at the report on his desk. “Isn’t that interesting?” He whistled tunelessly, then looked back at his aide-de-camp. “There’s no doubt of this?”

  “Doesn’t seem to be, sir,” answered Captain Ike Horwitz, who’d gone through the report before giving it to Morrell.

  “It makes an unpleasant amount of sense,” Morrell said, “especially from the Japs’ point of view. I wonder how long it’s been going on.” He flipped through the document till he found what he was looking for. “We never would have found out about it at all if that fellow in Vancouver hadn’t had a traffic accident while his trunk was full of Japanese gold.”

  “Tokyo’s denying everything, of course,” Horwitz said.

  “Of course.” Morrell laced agreement with sarcasm. “But what makes more sense for Japan than keeping us busy with rebellion up here? The busier we are here, the less attention we’ll pay to what goes on across the Pacific. Hell, we did the same thing during the war, when we helped the Irish rise up against England so the limeys would have more trouble getting help across the Atlantic from Canada.”

  “A lot of coastline in British Columbia,” his aide-de-camp observed.

  “Isn’t there just?” Morrell said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Japs are operating out of Russian Alaska, too. The Russians have to be afraid we’ll take their icebox away from them one day.”

  “Why would anybody want it?” Horwitz asked.

  “There’s gold in the Yukon,” Morrell answered. “Maybe there’s gold in Alaska, too. Who knows? The Russians don’t; that’s for sure. They’ve never tried very hard to find out, or to do much else with the place.”

  “They tried to sell it to us after the War of Secession—I read that somewhere, a long time ago,” his aide-de-camp said. “I forget what they wanted for it; seven million dollars is the number that sticks in my mind, but I wouldn’t swear that’s right. What ever it was, though, we turned them down because we didn’t have the money.”

  “From what the old-timers say, we didn’t have a pot to piss in after the War of Secession,” Morrell said, and Horwitz nodded. Morrell went on, “But that’s neither here nor there. The question is, what do we do—what can we do—about the damned Japanese?”

  “At least now we know we’ve got to do something about them,” Horwitz replied.

  “Anybody with half an eye to see has known that since the Great War ended. No, since before it ended,” Morrell said. “We didn’t beat ’em; they fought us to a draw in the Pacific, and then they said, ‘All right, that’s enough. We’ll have another go a few years from now.’ And they’re stronger than they used to be. They took Indochina away from the French and the Dutch East Indies away from Holland—oh, paid ’em a little something to salve their pride, but they would’ve gone to war if the frogs and the Dutchmen hadn’t said yes, and everybody knows it.”

  “Who could have stopped them?” Horwitz said
. “England before the war, yes—but not any more. She’s got to be glad the Japs didn’t take Hong Kong and Malaya and Singapore the same way and head for India. The Kaiser doesn’t have the kind of Navy or the bases to let him fight the Japs in the Pacific. And we’d have to get past the Japanese Philippines to do anything. So . . .”

  “Yeah. So,” Morrell agreed sourly. “What they do six thousand miles away is one thing, though. What they do right here in our own back yard—that’s a whole different kettle of fish. If they don’t know as much, we’d better show ’em pretty damn quick.” He’d been aggressive leading infantrymen. He’d been aggressive leading barrels. Now, with a vision that suddenly stretched to the Pacific a few hundred miles to the west, he wanted to be aggressive again.

  “What have you got in mind, sir?” Horwitz asked.

  “We ought to be flying patrols up and down the coastline,” Morrell answered. “They couldn’t sneak their spies ashore so easily then. And if they have a destroyer or something lying out to sea, we damn well ought to sink it.”

  “In international waters?”

  “Hell, yes, in international waters, if they’re using it as a base to subvert our hold on British Columbia. All we’d need is to spot a boat and the destroyer. That’d be all the excuse I needed, anyhow.”

  Horwitz frowned. “You might start a war that way.”

  “Better to start it when we want to than when they want to, wouldn’t you say?” Morrell returned. “Sooner or later, we will be fighting ’em; you can see that coming like a rash. Why wait till they’re ready for us?”

  “I don’t think President Blackford wants a war with Japan,” his aide-de-camp said.

  “I don’t, either.” But Morrell only shrugged. “But I also don’t think Blackford has a Chinaman’s chance of getting reelected this November. Come next March—”

  Horwitz shook his head. “No, they’ve amended the Constitution, remember? The new president takes over on the first of February from now on. With trains and aeroplanes and the wireless, he doesn’t need so long to get ready to do the job.”

  “That’s right. I’d forgotten. Thanks. Come February first, then, we’ll have a Democrat in the White House—or Powel House, take your pick—again. Maybe he’ll have better sense. Here’s hoping, anyhow.” Morrell rubbed his chin. “It would be a funny kind of war, wouldn’t it? Not much room for chaps like us: all ships and aeroplanes and maybe Marines.”

  “It would be good practice for a war with the Kaiser, if we ever had to fight one of those,” Horwitz said.

  “Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?” Morrell grinned at his aide-de-camp. “There’s another report for you, if you feel like writing it—tell the people back in the War Department what you just told me. Back it up with maps and force breakdowns and distance charts and all the other little goodies you can think of.”

  Captain Horwitz’s expression was less than overjoyed. “You’ve really got it in for me, don’t you, sir?” he said, about half in jest.

  And, about half in jest, Morrell nodded. “Damn right I do. I want to get you promoted again so I don’t have to deal with you any more. If you don’t want to be a major, don’t write the report. I think the last one helped make you a captain.”

  “I’ll write it,” his aide-de-camp said. “Anything to escape you.” They both grinned.

  But Morrell wasn’t grinning after Horwitz left his office. “The Japs!” he said softly. “Son of a bitch.” As he’d told Horwitz, meddling in Canada did make good logical sense from their point of view. A USA distracted by troubles close to home would be less inclined to look or reach out across the Pacific. But now that Tokyo had got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, the United States would likely . . . do what?

  Sure enough, that was what a popular wireless show called the ninety-nine dollar question. For the life of him, Morrell didn’t know why that show didn’t give winners a full hundred bucks, but it didn’t. He took Japanese interference in British Columbia very seriously indeed. But how serious would it look to War Department functionaries back in Philadelphia? That wasn’t so easy to see. He sometimes thought that, if it weren’t for the Sandwich Islands the Navy had captured from the British at the start of the Great War, the War Department would have forgotten the Pacific Ocean and the West Coast existed.

  Maybe this would make a useful wakeup call. Maybe it would remind those easterners that the United States did have two coastlines, and that they had unfriendly countries to the west as well as to the east. Maybe. He dared hope.

  And maybe, just maybe, having an unfriendly power making a public nuisance of itself would remind even the Socialists of why the United States needed an Army and a Navy in the first place. They’d gone out of their way to conciliate the Confederates. (And the Confederates, to be sure, had gone out of their way to conciliate the USA. They were smart enough to remember they were weak, and not to get into trouble they couldn’t get out of. They were under the Whigs, anyhow. The Freedom Party worried Morrell more than ever, not least because now it looked as if it might come to power one day.)

  I wonder if I ought to write my own report. He laughed and shook his head. What point to that? He wouldn’t have been posted to Kamloops if bureaucrats in Philadelphia were likely to pay attention to anything he said. For some people, a report from him might be an argument to do the opposite of what ever he suggested.

  Besides, Horwitz might win promotion to major, in which case he would escape Morrell’s perhaps stifling influence on his career. No report would get Morrell the brigadier general’s stars he craved. Promotion during the war had been swift. Promotion after the war . . . Even men in good odor in Philadelphia languished. Promotion for someone who wasn’t might never come.

  And if you retire a colonel? Morrell shrugged. He’d done his part to win one war for his country. No one could take that away from him. If they wanted him to count jackrabbits and pine trees out here in Kamloops, he would do it till they wouldn’t let him do it any more. One of these days, they may decide they need someone who knows something about barrels again. You never can tell.

  He laughed a bitter laugh. He knew he did a good enough job here in Kamloops, but what he did had nothing to do with the specialized knowledge he’d acquired during the war. Any reasonably competent military bureaucrat could have taken his place and done about as well. That even applied to his proposed solution to Japanese meddling in British Columbia, though he might have wanted to push harder than most uniformed drones would.

  He laughed again, this time with something approaching real amusement. Reasonably competent military bureaucrats shuddered at the prospect of ending up in a place like this. They intrigued and pulled wires to stay in Philadelphia, or to go on inspection tours of places like New Orleans. That meant Kamloops and other such garrisons in the middle of nowhere attracted drunks, fools, dullards . . . and people like me, Morrell thought.

  When he went home after finishing the day’s stint, he didn’t walk. He couldn’t, not when the last blizzard had left a foot and a half of snow on the ground, snow that piled into drifts higher than a man. Instead, he buckled on the pair of long wooden skis leaning against the wall of the entry hall.

  Captain Horwitz came out while Morrell was making sure he’d got everything tight. His aide-de-camp shook his head. “You wouldn’t get me on those things, sir.”

  “I know. I’ve tried,” Morrell answered. “I keep telling you—you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s the next best thing to flying with your own wings.”

  “I know what I’m missing,” Horwitz said stubbornly. “A broken ankle, a broken leg, a dislocated knee, a broken arm, a broken neck . . . And if I go flying, I’ll do it in an aeroplane, thanks.”

  “O ye of little faith.” Holding both ski poles in one hand, Morrell opened the door, then quickly closed it behind him.

  Cold smote. He skied down the steps—there was enough snow on them to make it easy—and pushed off for home. Darkness had already fallen. He relished the wind in
his face, the play of his muscles as he glided along over the smoothly undulating snow. A shimmer of motion in the sky caught his eye. He stopped, staring up in awe. White and golden and red, the northern lights danced overhead.

  He didn’t know how long he simply stood there staring. At last, he got moving again, though he kept looking up to the heavens. Warmth and home and family had their place, no doubt—he was always delighted to get back to Agnes and Mildred. But there were so many who, like Captain Horwitz, closed their souls to this chill magnificence.

  “God, I’m sorry for them,” he said, and skied on.

  XIV

  Another Friday. Another payday. It wouldn’t be much of a check; Chester Martin knew as much. He’d been working six hours a day instead of eight for quite a while now, and not working at all on Saturdays. He should have enjoyed the extra time off. He would have enjoyed it a lot more if he’d had the money to do more things. As it was, fifty cents for a couple of cinema tickets once or twice a month made him and Rita worry. The evening out would mean beans for supper instead of liver and tripe—or, the way things were these days, it might mean potatoes and cabbage instead of beans.

  I’ve still got a job, he thought as he inched toward the clerk who would give him his pay envelope. The clerk still had a job, too, and still had the faintly supercilious air he’d worn when times were good. Petty-bourgeois bastard looking down his nose at the proletariat, Martin thought sourly. Do you really believe the bosses can’t replace you, too?

  Later on, he remembered that that had gone through his mind just before he got to the clerk and gave him his name and pay number. The clerk checked him off a long, long list, handed him the envelope, and all of a sudden didn’t seem so snotty any more. “Here you are, Martin,” he said, as if speaking in a sickroom.

  What’s eating him? Chester wondered. He didn’t open the envelope till he got to the front door of the steel mill. A couple of galvanized iron trash cans stood there, to hold just such refuse. Martin pulled out the check and put it into the breast pocket of his overalls. He started to throw away the envelope when he noticed another piece of paper inside.