Return Engagement

by Harry Turtledove

  The Sweet Sue had a fresh coat of paint. She had new glass. You could hardly see the holes the bullets had made in her–but George knew. Oh, yes. He knew. He'd never be able to go into the galley again without thinking of the Cookie dead on the floor, his pipe beside him. They'd have a new Cookie now, and it wouldn't be the same.

  On the other hand . . . There was Johnny O'Shea, leaning over the rail heaving his guts out. He drank like a fish whenever he was ashore, and caught fish when he went to sea. He wasn't seasick now, just getting rid of his last bender. He did that whenever he came aboard. Once he dried out, he'd be fine. Till he did, he'd go through hell.

  I don't do that, George thought. I never will–well, only once in a while. So what does Connie want from me, anyway?

  "Welcome back, George," Captain Albert called from his station at the bow.

  "Thanks, Skipper," George said.

  "Wasn't sure the little woman'd let you come out again."

  "Well, she did." George didn't want anybody thinking he was henpecked. He went below, tossed the duffel bag in one of the tiny, dark cabins below the skipper's station, and stretched out on the bunk. When he got out of it, he almost banged his head on the planks not nearly far enough above it. He'd get used to this cramped womb again before long. He always did.

  After stowing the duffel, George went back up on deck. But for the skipper and Johnny O'Shea, it was going to be a crew full of strangers. The old Cookie was dead, Chris Agganis was still getting over his wound, and the rest of the fishermen who'd been aboard on the last run didn't aim to come back.

  A round man in dungarees, a ratty wool sweater, and an even rattier cloth cap approached the Sweet Sue. He'd slung a patched blue-denim duffel over his left shoulder. Waving to George, he called, "Can I come aboard?"

  "You the new cook?" George asked.

  "Sure as hell am," the newcomer answered. "How'd you know?" The gangplank rattled and boomed as his clodhoppers thumped on it.

  Shrugging, George said, "You've got the look–know what I mean?" The other man nodded. George stuck out his hand and gave his name.

  "Pleased t'meetcha." The new cook shook hands with him, then jabbed a thumb at his own broad chest. "I'm Horton Everett. Folks mostly call me Ev." He pointed to Johnny O'Shea. "Who's that sorry son of a bitch?"

  "I heard that," O'Shea said. "Fuck you." He leaned over the rail to retch again, then spat and added, "Nothing personal."

  "Johnny'll be fine when he sobers up and dries out," George said. "He's always like this when we're setting out."

  Horton Everett nodded. He took a little cardboard box of cheap cigars from a trouser pocket, stuck one in his mouth, and offered George the box. George took one. Everett scraped a match alight on the sole of one big shoe, then lit both cigars. He liked a honey-flavored blend, George discovered. That made the smoke smooth and sweet, and helped disguise how lousy the tobacco was. And, with the Confederates shooting instead of trading, it would only get worse.

  Other new hires came aboard. One of them, a skinny oldster who talked as if he wore ill-fitting dentures, joined Johnny O'Shea in misery by the rail. Terrific, George thought. We've got two lushes aboard, not just one. The skipper better keep an eye on the medicinal brandy.

  After they pulled away from the wharf, the Sweet Sue had to join a gaggle of other fishing boats going out to sea. Actually, the skipper could have taken her out alone. But the fast little patrol boat shepherding his charges along had a crew who knew the route through the minefields intended to keep Confederate raiders away from Boston harbor. George suspected that was snapping fingers to keep the elephants away. Nobody much worried about his suspicions.

  The Sweet Sue's diesel sounded just the way it was supposed to. George remained amazed that the British fighter could have shot up the boat so thoroughly without doing the engine much harm, but that was how things had turned out. Luck. All luck. Nothing but luck. If the fighter pilot had aimed his nose a little differently, he would have shot George and not the Cookie. George shivered, though summer heat clogged the air.

  He shivered again when, after the Sweet Sue had threaded her way through the minefields, he went into the galley. Horton Everett had a pot of coffee going. "You want a cup?" he asked.

  "Sure, Ev," George said. "Thanks." The new Cookie's cigar smoke gave the place a smell different from the one Davey Hatton's pipe tobacco had imparted. The coffee was hot and strong. George sipped thoughtfully. "Not bad."

  "Glad you like it." Everett puffed on a new cigar. "You and the skipper and what's-his-name–the sot–are gonna measure every goddamn thing I do against what the other Cookie did, ain't you?"

  "Well . . ." George felt a dull embarrassment at being so transparent. "I guess maybe we are. I don't see how we can help it. Do you?"

  The new Cookie took off his cap and scratched tousled gray hair. "Mm, maybe not. All right. Fair enough. I'll do the best I can. Don't cuss me out too hard if it ain't quite the same."

  For lunch, he fried up a big mess of roast-beef hash, with eggs over easy on top and hash browns on the side. Neither Johnny O'Shea nor the other drunk was in any shape to eat, which only meant there was more for everybody else. It wasn't a meal Davey Hatton would have made, but it was a long way from bad.

  The skipper ate slowly, with a thoughtful air. He caught George's eye and raised an eyebrow ever so slightly: a silent question. George gave back a tiny nod: an answer. Captain Albert nodded in turn: agreement. Then he spoke up: "Pretty damn good chow, Cookie."

  "Thanks, Skipper," Everett answered. "Glad you like it. Of course, you'd be just as much stuck with it if you didn't."

  "Don't remind me," the skipper said. "Don't make me wish another British fighter'd come calling, either."

  Horton Everett mimed getting shot. He was a pretty good actor. He got the skipper and the new fishermen laughing. George managed to plaster a smile on his face, too, but it wasn't easy. He'd been right here when the old Cookie really did take a bullet in the chest. The one good thing was, he'd died so fast, he'd hardly known what hit him.

  Everett said, "You guys better like the hash and eggs now, on account of it's gonna be tuna all the goddamn way home."

  They cursed him good-naturedly. They knew he was right. Maybe he could even keep tuna interesting. That would make him a fine Cookie indeed. And, with any luck, they'd never see a British airplane. Lightning doesn't strike twice. George tried to make himself believe the lie.

  ****

  SOMETIMES THE simplest things could bring pleasure. Hipolito Rodriguez had never imagined how much enjoyment he could get just by opening the refrigerator door. An electric light inside the cold box came on as if by magic, so he could see what was inside even in the middle of the night. Vegetables and meat stayed fresh a very long time in there.

  And he could have a cold bottle of beer whenever he wanted to. He didn't need to go to La Culebra Verde. He could buy his cerveza at the general store, bring it home, and drink it as cold as if it were at the cantina–and save money doing it. Not only that, he could drink a cold beer with Magdalena, and his esposa would not have been caught dead in La Culebra Verde.

  Such thoughts all flowed from opening a refrigerator door. If that wasn't a miracle of this modern age, what would be? As soon as the question formed in his mind, so did an answer. What about the new wireless set? He'd left the valley in which Baroyeca sat only twice in his life: once to go to war and once to go to Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, to agitate for a second term for Jake Featherston. But the wireless set brought the wider world here.

  Magdalena came into the kitchen. She wasn't thinking about miracles. She said, "Why are you standing there in front of the refrigerator letting all the cold air out?"

  "I don't know," he answered, feeling foolish. "Probably because I'm an idiot. I can't think of any other reason." Watching the light come on didn't seem reason enough, that was for sure.

  By the way his wife smiled, she had her suspicions. She said, "Well, whatever the reason is, com
e into the front room. It's just about time for the news."

  The wireless set wasn't a big, fancy one, a piece of furniture in its own right. It sat on a small table. But the room centered on it. Chairs and the old, tired sofa all faced it, as if you could actually see the pictures the announcer painted with his words.

  Magdalena turned the knob. The dial began to glow–another little electric light in there. After half a minute or so of warming up, music started to play: it wasn't quite time for the news. Some people had had wind-up phonographs before electricity came to Baroyeca. Those were fine, but this was even better. Any sort of sound could come out of a wireless set, any sound at all.

  "This is radio station CSON, telling you the truth from Hermosillo," the announcer said in a mixture of Spanish and English almost anyone from Sonora and Chihuahua–and a lot of people in Texas, U.S. New Mexico and California, and several of the Empire of Mexico's northern provinces–could understand. The announcer went on, "One more song to bring us up to the top of the hour, and then the news."

  Like most of what CSON played, the song was norteño music, full of thumping drums and accordion. The singer used the same blend of Sonora's two languages as the announcer. That made Rodriguez frown a little. When he was a young man, norteño music had been in Spanish alone–even though its instruments were borrowed from German settlers along the old border between Texas and Mexico. Because that was what he'd grown up with, he thought it right and natural. As the years went by, though, English advanced and Spanish retreated in his home state.

  When the syrupy love song ended, a blaring march–a Confederate imitation of John Philip Sousa–announced the hour and introduced the news. "Here is the truth," the newscaster said: the Freedom Party's claim to it, these days, was far from limited to Jake Featherston alone. Another march, a triumphant one, rang out. That meant the newscaster was going to claim a victory. Sure enough, he spoke in proud tones: "Your brave Confederate soldiers have closed an iron ring around Columbus, Ohio. Several divisions of Yankee troops are trapped inside the city. If they cannot break out, they will be forced to surrender."

  "That's amazing," Rodriguez said to Magdalena. "To have come so far so fast . . . Neither side did anything like this in the last war."

  "Shh," she told him. "If we're going to listen, let's listen." He nodded. A wise husband didn't quarrel even when he was right. Quarreling when you knew you were wrong was a recipe for disaster.

  The newscaster said, "Here is Brigadier General Patton, commander of the Army of Kentucky's armored striking force."

  In pure English, a man with a raspy, tough-sounding voice said, "We've got the damnyankees by the neck. Now we're going to shake them till they're dead." For those who couldn't follow that, the announcer translated it into the mixed language commonly used in the Confederacy's Southwest. The officer–General Patton–went on, "They thought they were going to have things all their own way again this time. I'm here to tell them they've missed the bus."

  Hipolito Rodriguez followed that well enough. He glanced over to Magdalena. She was waiting for the translation. He hadn't had much English, either, before he went to war. These days, he dealt with it without thinking twice.

  The announcer went on to talk about what he called a terror-bombing raid by U.S. airplanes over Little Rock. "Forty-seven people were killed, including nineteen children sheltering at a school," he said indignantly. "Confederate bombers, by contrast, strike only military targets except when taking reprisals for U.S. air piracy. And President Featherston vows that, for every ton of bombs that falls on the Confederate States, three tons will fall on the United States. They will pay for their aggression against us."

  "This is how it ought to be," Rodriguez said, and his wife nodded.

  "In other news, the reckless policies of los Estados Unidos have earned the reward they deserve," the newscaster said. "The Empire of Japan has declared war on the United States, citing their provocative policy in the Central Pacific. The United States claim to have inflicted heavy losses on carrier-based aircraft attacking the Sandwich Islands, but the Japanese dismiss this report as just another U.S. lie."

  "They are supposed to be very pretty–the Sandwich Islands," Magdalena said wistfully.

  "Nothing is pretty once bombs start falling on it," Rodriguez replied with great conviction. "That was true in the last war, and it is bound to be even more true in this one, because the bombs are bigger."

  "Prime Minister Churchill calls the entry of Japan into the war a strong blow against the United States," the announcer went on. "He says it will restore the proper balance of power in the Pacific. Once the United States are driven from the Sandwich Islands, Japanese-Confederate cooperation against the West Coast of the USA will follow as day follows night, in his opinion."

  That was a very large thought. Rodriguez remembered that the Japanese had bombed Los Angeles during the Pacific War. But that had been only a raid. This could prove much more important. Of course, the Japanese hadn't pushed los Estados Unidos out of the Sandwich Islands. If they did, that would be wonderful. If they didn't, they would still tie up a big U.S. fleet. Too bad they wouldn't be able to pull off a surprise attack, the way the USA had against Britain at the start of the Great War.

  In portentous tones, the newscaster continued, "Prime Minister Churchill also spoke of the pounding Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, and other German cities have taken from the French and British air fleets. Smoke climbs thousands of feet into the sky. German efforts to retaliate are feeble indeed. The Prime Minister also declares that the collapse of the Ukraine at Russia's first blows and the clear weakness of Austria-Hungary argue the war in Europe will go differently this time."

  Hipolito Rodriguez tried to imagine another war across the sea, a war as big as the one here in North America and even more complicated. He had trouble doing it. He would have had trouble imagining the war here if he hadn't fought in the last one. That was what came of peacefully living most of his life on a farm outside a small town in Sonora.

  "In a display of barbarism yesterday, the United States executed four Canadians accused of railroad sabotage," the newsman said. "Confederate security forces in Mississippi, meanwhile, smashed a squadron of colored bandits intent on murdering white men and women and destroying valuable property. The mallates and their mischief will be suppressed."

  He sounded full of stern enthusiasm. Rodriguez found himself nodding. He'd suppressed mallates himself–niggers, they called them in English. That had been his first taste of war, even before he faced the Yankees. As far as he was concerned, black men caused nothing but trouble. He had another reason for despising them, too. They were below folk of Mexican descent in the Confederate social scale. If not for blacks, the white majority would have turned all its scorn on greasers. Rodriguez was as sure of that as he was of his own name.

  A string of commercials followed. The messages were fascinating. They made Rodriguez want to run right out and buy beer or shampoo or razor blades. If he hadn't lived three miles from the nearest general store, he might have done it. Next time he was in Baroyeca, he might do it yet.

  More music followed the commercials. The news was done. Rodriguez said, "The war seems to be going well."

  "No war that has our son in it is going well." Now Magdalena was the one whose voice held conviction.

  "Well, yes," Rodriguez admitted. "Tienes razón. But even if you are right, wouldn't you rather see him in a winning fight than a losing one? Winning is the only point to fighting a war."

  His wife shook her head. "There is no point to fighting a war," she said, still with that terrible certainty. "Win or lose, you only fight another one ten years later, or twenty, or thirty. Can you tell me I am wrong?"

  Rodriguez wished he could. The evidence, though, seemed to lie on his wife's side. He shrugged. "If we win a great victory, maybe los Estados Unidos won't be able to fight us any more."

  "They must have thought the same thing about los Estados Confederados," Magdalena said pointedly.<
br />
  "They did not count on Jake Featherston." Rodriguez missed that point.

  His wife let out an exasperated sniff. "Maybe they will have that kind of President themselves. Or maybe they will not need a man like that. They are bigger than we are, and stronger, too. Can we really beat them?"

  "If Señor Featherston says we can, then we can," Rodriguez answered. "And he does, so I think we can."

  "He is not God Almighty," Magdalena warned. "He can make mistakes."

  "I know he can. But he hasn't made very many," Rodriguez said. "Until he shows me he is making mistakes, I will go on trusting him. He is doing very well so far, and you cannot tell me anything different."

  "So far," his wife echoed.

  Sometimes Rodriguez let her have the last word–most of the time, in fact. He was indeed a sensible, well-trained husband. But not this time, not when it was political rather than something really important. They argued far into the night.

  ****

  BRIGADIER GENERAL Abner Dowling had never expected to command the defense of Ohio from the great metropolis of Bucyrus. The town–it couldn't have held ten thousand people–was pleasant enough. The Sandusky River, which was barely wide enough there to deserve the name, meandered through it. The small central business district was full of two- and three-story buildings of dull red and buff bricks. A factory that had made seamless copper kettles now turned out copper tubing; one that had built steamrollers was making parts for barrels.

  How long any of that would last, Dowling couldn't say. With Columbus lost, he had no idea whether or how long Bucyrus could hold out. He counted himself lucky to have got out of Columbus before the Confederate ring closed around it. A lot of good U.S. soldiers hadn't. The Columbus pocket was putting up a heroic resistance, but he knew too well it was a losing fight. The Confederates weren't trying very hard to break into the city. Cut off from resupply and escape, sooner or later the U.S. soldiers would wither on the vine. The Confederates, meanwhile, kept storming forward as if they had the hosts of hell behind them.