American Empire : The Center Cannot Hold

by Harry Turtledove

  “Maybe,” Mary said. “That would make some sense—as much sense as the Yanks ever make, anyway. But why put that kind of notice in the Register? It’s just stupid here, really, really stupid.” She held up a hand before her mother could answer. “I know why. Some Yank in a swivel chair probably said, ‘Stick this order in every paper in Canada, from British Columbia to Nova Scotia. And stick it in every paper in Newfoundland, too, while you’re about it.’ Who cares whether it makes sense if you’re sitting in a swivel chair?”

  Maude McGregor smiled. “You’re probably right. The Americans do things like that. They like giving big orders, if you know what I mean. It’s part of what makes them the kind of people they are.”

  Had Mary been a man among men and not a young woman talking with her mother, she would have expressed her detailed opinion about what sort of people Americans were. Her eyes must have sparked in a way that got her opinion across without words, for her mother’s smile got wider. Then Maude McGregor said, “Next time you go to the cinema with Mort Pomeroy, make sure there aren’t any Japs under the front seat in his motorcar.”

  “I’ll do that,” Mary said, laughing.

  Her mother’s smile changed. She said, “Your face just lit up. You think he’s special, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Mary nodded without hesitation. “I’ve never felt like this about a boy before.” She hadn’t had much chance to feel anything special about boys up till now. Most of them stayed away from the McGregor house as if she had a dangerous disease. And, in occupied Canada, what disease could be more dangerous than not only descending from someone who’d fought the Yanks to his last breath but also being proud of it?

  “I’m glad he makes you happy,” her mother said. “I hope he keeps making you happy for years and years, if that’s what you both end up wanting.”

  “I think maybe it is,” Mary said slowly, a certain wonder in her voice. “He hasn’t asked me or anything, but I think I’ll say yes if he does. The only thing I don’t know about yet is how he feels about the USA.”

  “Would you let that stand between the two of you if you really love each other?” her mother asked.

  “I don’t think I could really love anybody who sucks up to the Americans,” Mary answered. “I just couldn’t stand it. So I’ll have to find out about that. Then I’ll make up my mind.”

  Maude McGregor sighed. “All right, dear. I’m not going to try to tell you any different. You’re old enough to know your own mind. But I am going to tell you this: I’m afraid you won’t have too many chances, so you’d be smart to think twice before you waste any of them.”

  “I never expected to have any,” Mary said. “We’ll see what happens, that’s all. I’m going out to the barn now. I want to give the cow a bottle of that drench we got from the vet.”

  “I don’t know how much good it will do,” her mother said.

  “Neither do I.” Mary shrugged. “But it won’t do any good if the cow doesn’t drink it, so I’d better try.”

  The trick in getting medicine into a cow, she knew, was making sure she thrust the bottle almost down its throat. Otherwise, the drench would slop out the other side of the beast’s mouth. It probably tasted nasty—it stank of ammonia, and she wouldn’t have wanted to drink it herself. She poured it down the cow, though, and had the satisfaction of pulling the empty bottle from the beast’s mouth and seeing only a few drops on the dirt and straw in the stall.

  However satisfied Mary was, the cow was anything but. It drank from the trough, no doubt to get rid of the taste of the drench. Mary left the stall. She paused and sat down by the old wagon wheel. She hadn’t given up. She didn’t intend to give up. She still burned to pay back the Yanks—and the Canadians who collaborated with them.

  “I’ll take care of it, Father,” she whispered. “Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it.”

  And what would Mort Pomeroy think of that? He hadn’t run away from her when he found out she was Arthur McGregor’s daughter. That surely meant he had some interest in her—and that he liked the Yanks none too well. What else could it possibly mean?

  Cold as Manitoba winter, she answered her silent rhetorical question. It could mean he’s head over heels for you and doesn’t care about politics one way or the other—or, if he does care, he’ll forget about that for the time being because he’s head over heels for you.

  Or—colder yet—it could mean he’s really a collaborator himself, but he’s pretending not to be so he can trap you. Mary shook her head. It wasn’t so much that she believed Mort incapable of such an outrage, though she did. It was much more that she didn’t think the Yanks could be interested in her. Her father, after all, was almost nine years dead. She’d been a girl when he blew himself up. Since then, she hadn’t done anything overt against the Americans. Oh, they were bound to know she didn’t love them. But if they got rid of every Canadian who didn’t love them, this would be a wide and ever so empty land.

  She took her weekly bath earlier than usual that Saturday, and dressed in her best calico. Her mother smiled. “What time is Mort coming for you?” she asked.

  “Between six and six-thirty,” Mary answered. “Do I look all right?” She anxiously patted at her hair.

  “You look wonderful,” her mother answered. “I’m sure you’ll have a good time. Talking pictures! Who would have thought of such a thing?”

  Mary sniffed. “They’ve had them in the USA and the CSA for a couple of years now. We’re only the poor relations. We have to wait our turn.”

  “That may be part of it, but Rosenfeld’s not the big city, either,” Maude McGregor said. “I’ll bet they’ve had them in places like Winnipeg and Toronto for a while now.”

  With another sniff, Mary said, “Maybe.” She didn’t want to give the Americans the benefit of any doubt.

  Mort Pomeroy pulled up in his Oldsmobile at six on the dot. Mary didn’t, couldn’t, hold his driving an American auto against him. After the U.S. conquest, the Canadian automobile industry no longer existed. “Hello, Mary,” Mort said when she came to the door. “You look very pretty tonight. Hello, Mrs. McGregor,” he added to her mother, who stood behind her.

  “Hello, Mort,” Maude McGregor answered gravely.

  “Shall we go?” Mary didn’t sound grave—she was eager.

  “Have a nice time,” her mother said. She didn’t tack on, Don’t stay out too late, as she had on Mort’s first few visits to the farmhouse.

  Riding in a motorcar was something Mary hadn’t done very often before she got to know Mort Pomeroy, though she tried not to let on. It was ever so much faster and smoother than traveling by wagon. Almost before she knew it, they were back in Rosenfeld.

  Mort laid down two quarters at the cinema as if he’d never had to worry about money in his life. That Mary doubted; his father might make a living from his diner, but nobody got rich running a business in Rosenfeld.

  Inside the theater, he bought them a tub of popcorn and some sweet, fizzy stuff called Yankee Cola. The bubbles tickled as they went up Mary’s nose. She laughed in spite of the fizzy water’s name. Music blared from the screen as the newsreel started. Then there were pictures of a damaged warship that, with its flat deck and asymmetrical smokestack and superstructure, was as funny-looking as anything Mary had every imagined. “Jap treachery almost sank the USS Remembrance,” the announcer boomed, “but quick work by her damage-control team saved her.”

  On the screen, a very fair officer looked out at the audience. “We got her back to port,” he said. “She’ll be in action again before long, and then the enemy’s going to pay.”

  Mary leaned toward Mort Pomeroy. “Too bad the Japs didn’t sink her,” she whispered, and waited to see how he’d respond.

  He nodded. He didn’t make a fuss about it or get excited, but he nodded. Mary didn’t think she could have stood it if he’d said he would rather see the USA win than Japan. As things were, she smiled and leaned her head on his shoulder in the dark theater and
enjoyed the film. Sound did add to the story: more than it did to the newsreel, where most of it had been martial music and an announcer reading what would have been shown before in print on the screen. Hearing characters talk and sing made her feel as if she lived in New York City with them—and made her feel as if she wanted to, which was even more startling.

  Afterwards, Mort drove her back toward the farmhouse. Voice elaborately casual, he said, “We could stop for a little while.”

  There were only the two of them, and the motorcar, and the vast Canadian prairie. Who would know if they did stop for a little while? No one at all. “Yes,” Mary said, also casually, “we could.”

  He parked on the soft shoulder and turned off the engine and the headlights. It was very quiet and very dark. They slid towards each other on the front seat. His arms went around her. They kissed for a long time. He squeezed her breasts through the thin cotton fabric of her dress. The heat that filled her had nothing to do with the warm summer evening. But when he set a hand high on her thigh and tried to slide it higher yet, she twisted away. “I’m not that kind of girl, Mort,” she said, and hoped her breathless voice didn’t give away her lie.

  Evidently not. He just nodded and said, “Kiss me again, then, sweetheart, and I’ll take you home.” She did, happily. He fired up the Oldsmobile’s engine and put the auto in gear. Off toward the farm it went. Mary didn’t know when she’d been so happy. Looking at Mort Pomeroy there beside her, she was almost sorry she wasn’t that kind of girl.

  “Occupation duty!” Colonel Abner Dowling made the words into a curse. “My country’s at war, and what do I get? Occupation duty. There’s no justice in the world, none at all.”

  “As General Custer’s adjutant, sir, you were right at the heart of things during the Great War,” Captain Toricelli said.

  “I wanted to be at the front, not at First Army headquarters,” Dowling said. That was nothing but the truth. It wasn’t the whole truth, of course. The whole truth was, he would have sold his soul for seventeen cents to escape the company of General Custer, provided the Devil or anyone else had offered him the spare change for it.

  And yet Custer unquestionably was a hero, a hero many times over. How did that square with the other? Dowling cast a suspicious eye in the direction of Captain Toricelli. What did Toricelli think of him? Some things, perhaps, were better left unknown.

  “If you must do occupation duty, sir,” his adjutant persisted, “there are worse places than Salt Lake City. If the Mormons rise up again with all their might, they don’t just tie down men we might use fighting the Japs—”

  “Not likely they could,” Dowling said. “Damned few battleships and cruisers and submersibles in the Great Salt Lake.”

  “Er—yes, sir,” Captain Toricelli said. “But the railroads still run through Utah. An uprising could keep manufactured goods from getting to the West Coast and oil from getting to the East. That would make everything much harder.”

  “I should say it would,” Dowling agreed. “And fighting Japan will be hard enough as is. The little yellow men have been getting ready for this ever since the Great War. And what have we been doing the past twelve years? Not enough, Captain. I’m very much afraid we haven’t done enough.”

  “Do you know what worries me more than anything else, sir?” Toricelli said.

  “Tell me, Captain,” Dowling urged. “I can always use something new to worry about. I may not be able to find enough things on my own.”

  “Er—yes,” Toricelli said again; Abner Dowling in a sportive mood disconcerted him. Gathering himself, he went on, “I’m afraid President Blackford will pick up a lot of votes because we’re at war.”

  “Oh.” Dowling scowled. That made entirely too much sense for him to like it. “I do hope you’re wrong. With luck, people will see a Democrat in Powel House is the best hope we have of winning this war. We’ve been in two with Republicans, and we lost both of those. And we’re not off to a good start with a Socialist running one. I’ll trade you—do you want to know what worries me more than anything else?”

  “Tell me, sir,” Angelo Toricelli replied. He didn’t actually say he wanted to know, but he came close enough. He was an adjutant, after all; part of his job was listening to his superior.

  Dowling knew more about that side of being an adjutant than he cared to. But the shoe was on the other foot now. He didn’t have to listen to General Custer’s maunderings any more. And he didn’t intend to maunder here. He said, “I’m afraid the Japs will take the Sandwich Islands away from us, the way we took them away from England in 1914. That would be very bad. Without the Sandwich Islands, we’d be fighting this war out of San Diego and San Francisco and Seattle. The logistics couldn’t get much worse than that.”

  “Well, no, sir,” Captain Toricelli said. “But we caught the British by surprise when the Great War broke out. I can’t imagine the Japanese pulling off a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor.”

  “I hope not, by God,” Dowling said. “Still, who would have thought they could have pulled off a sneak attack on the Remembrance? That was a pretty slick piece of work.”

  “It cost them, too,” his adjutant said. “They lost their freighter and their speedboat and their submersible.”

  “A good thing they did,” Dowling said. “If that sub could have launched a second spread of torpedoes, we’d have lost our aeroplane carrier. By everything people say, we almost lost her anyhow.” He shook his head. His jowls wobbled. “As far as you can in a situation like that, we got lucky.”

  Toricelli nodded. “And Canada’s quiet—for the time being, anyhow. And President Mitchel’s keeping the CSA quiet, too. He can’t possibly strike at us—the Confederates are no more ready for a big war than we are: less, if anything. And the Action Française is busy puffing out its chest and making faces at the Kaiser. So it’s just us and the Japs.”

  “And thousands of miles of water,” Dowling added.

  “Yes, sir—and several thousand miles of water,” Captain Toricelli agreed.

  Those thousands of miles of water, of course, were the main reason Abner Dowling would almost surely stay in Utah for as long as the war lasted. The United States had needed an enormous Army to take on the Confederate States along the land frontier the two American republics shared—had needed it, got it, and won with it. But what good was an enormous Army out in the Pacific, where most of the islands were small and where the only way to get to them was by ship? None Dowling could see.

  He surged to his feet, saying, “I’m going to take a bit of a constitutional.” Every doctor he’d ever seen told him he’d be better off if he lost weight. Trouble was, he had no great interest in losing it. He’d always been heavy. He felt good. And he liked nothing in the whole wide world better than eating.

  By the time he got to the entrance to Army headquarters in Salt Lake City, a squad of armed guards waited to escort him on his stroll: his adjutant must have telephoned ahead. Dowling fumed a little; he didn’t want to go for a walk surrounded by soldiers. But he could hardly claim he didn’t need guards, not after he’d been in General Pershing’s office when that still uncaught assassin gunned down the military governor of Utah.

  If anybody in a third-story window had a rifle, or maybe just a grenade, all the guards wouldn’t do him a hell of a lot of good. He knew that—knew it and refused to dwell on it. “Let’s go, boys,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” they chorused. The privates among them were young men, conscripts. The sergeant who led the squad was in his thirties, a Great War veteran with ribbons for the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star among the fruit salad on his chest.

  The wind blew out of the west. It tasted of alkali. Dowling thought tumbleweeds should have been blowing down dusty streets with a wind like that. The streets in Salt Lake City weren’t dusty, though. They were well paved. Everything in the city—with the inevitable exception of the ruins of the Temple and Tabernacle—was shiny and new. Everything from before the Great War had been knocked
flat during the Mormon uprising.

  Sea gulls spiraled overhead. Seeing them always bemused Dowling. Staying within the borders of the United States, you couldn’t get much farther from the sea than Salt Lake City. The gulls didn’t care. They ate bugs and garbage and anything else they could scrounge. Farmers liked them. Dowling pulled down his hat, hoping the gulls wouldn’t make any untoward bombing runs.

  He strolled past the sandbagged perimeter around the headquarters. Soldiers in machine-gun nests saluted as he went by. He returned the salutes. Leaving headquarters wasn’t so hard. To return, he knew he’d have to show his identification. The Mormons hadn’t tried anything lately. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t.

  People on the street looked like . . . people. Women tugged at their skirts to keep them from flipping up in the breeze. Boys in short pants ran and shouted. A long line of men waited patiently in front of a soup kitchen. Dowling could have seen the like in any medium-sized city in the USA. And yet . . .

  Nobody said anything to him. He hadn’t expected anyone would, not with soldiers tramping along beside him with bayonets glittering on their Springfields. No one even gave him a dirty look. But he still had the feeling of being in the middle of a deep freeze. The locals hated him, and they’d go right on hating him, too.

  After a bit, he noticed one difference between Salt Lake City and other medium-sized towns in the USA. No election posters shouted from walls and fences. No billboards praised Hosea Blackford and Calvin Coolidge. Being under martial law, Utah didn’t enjoy the franchise. Lawsuits to let the locals vote had gone all the way to the Supreme Court—and had been rejected every time. Ever since the War of Secession, the Supreme Court had taken a much friendlier line toward the federal government’s authority than toward any competing principle.

  And it’s paid off, by God, Dowling thought. We finally licked the damned Confederates. We’re the strongest country in America. We’re one of the two or three strongest countries in the world. We did what we had to do.