Return Engagement

by Harry Turtledove

  "Sorry I'm not more help for you," Cincinnatus said again. "I know trucks–you're right about that. But you know a hell of a lot more about the Freedom Party than I do. I ain't sorry about that, not even a little bit. I wish to God I didn't know nothin' about 'em."

  "Don't we all!" Lucullus said. "All right, git on home, then." He turned to the man who'd brought Cincinnatus to the barbecue place and sat silently while he and Lucullus talked. "Git him back there, Tiberius."

  "I take care of it," the other man promised. "Don't want no trouble." He caught Cincinnatus' eye. "You ready?"

  Slowly, painfully, Cincinnatus rose. "Ready as I ever be." That wasn't saying a hell of a lot. He knew it, whether Tiberius did or not.

  They went out into the eerie, blackout-deepened darkness. Everything was quiet as the tomb: no bombers overhead tonight. A police car rattled down a street just after Cincinnatus and Tiberius turned off it, but the cops didn't know they were around. Lights were for emergencies only. Tiberius laughed softly. "Curfew ain't so hard to beat, you see?" he said.

  "Yeah," Cincinnatus answered. Tiberius stayed with him till he went up the walk to his folks' house, then disappeared into the night.

  Cincinnatus' father was up waiting for him. "You did come home. Praise the Lord!" Seneca Driver said.

  "Wasn't the police at the door, Pa," Cincinnatus answered. "Sorry you woke up while I was tendin' to it."

  "Don't worry about that none," his father said. "Got us plenty o' more important things to worry about." Cincinnatus wished he could have told him he was wrong. And he could have, too–but only if he were willing to lie.

  ****

  TOM COLLETON felt proud of himself. He'd managed to wangle four days of leave. That wasn't long enough to go home to South Carolina, but it did let him get away from the front and down to Columbus. Not worrying about getting shelled or gassed for a little while seemed a good start on the road to the earthly paradise.

  It also proved too good to be true. As he got on the train that would take him from Sandusky to Columbus, a military policeman said, "Oh, good, sir– you've got your sidearm."

  "What about it?" Tom's hand fell to the pistol on his hip.

  "Only that it's a good idea, sir," the MP answered, his white-painted helmet and white gloves making him stand out from the ordinary run of noncoms. "The damnyankees down there aren't real happy about the way things have gone."

  "Unhappy enough so that a Confederate officer needs to pack a pistol?" Tom asked. The MP gave back a somber nod. Tom only shrugged. "Well, if U.S. soldiers couldn't kill me, I'm not going to lose too much sleep over U.S. civilians." That got a grin from the military policeman.

  The train was an hour and a half late getting into Columbus. It had to wait on a siding while workmen repaired damage– sabotage– to the railway. Tom Colleton fumed. "Don't get yourself in an uproar, sir," advised a captain who'd evidently made the trip several times. "Could be a hell of a lot worse. Leastways we haven't had any fighters shooting us up this time around."

  "Gurk," Tom said. No, he hadn't come far enough to escape the war–not even close.

  And he was reminded of it when he got into Columbus. The city had been at the center of a Yankee pocket. The U.S. soldiers who'd held it had fought hard to keep the Confederates from taking it. They'd quit only when they ran too low on fuel and ammunition to go on fighting. That meant Columbus looked as if rats the size of automobiles had been taking big bites out of most of the buildings.

  The porter who fetched suitcases from the baggage car for those who had them was a white man. He spoke with some kind of Eastern European accent. Tom stared at him. He'd rarely seen a white man doing nigger work, and in the CSA few jobs more perfectly defined nigger work than a porter's.

  This fellow stared right back at him. That wasn't curiosity in his eyes. It was raw hatred. Measuring me for a coffin, Tom thought. He'd wondered if the MP had exaggerated. Now he saw the man hadn't. The weight of the .45 on his hip was suddenly very comforting.

  Union Station was a few blocks north of the state Capitol, whose dome had taken a hit from a bomb. Fort Mahan, which had been the chief U.S. military depot in Ohio, was now where visiting Confederates stayed. It lay a few blocks east of the station, on Buckingham Street

  . Sentries checked Tom's papers with scrupulous care before admitting him. "You think I'm a Yankee spy?" he asked, amused.

  "Sir, we've had us some trouble with that," one of the sentries answered, which brought him up short.

  "Have you?" he said. All three sentries nodded. Two of them had examined his bona fides while the third covered them and Tom with his automatic rifle. Tom asked, "You have a lot of problems with people shooting at you, stuff like that?"

  "Some," answered the corporal who'd spoken before. "We gave an order for the damnyankees to turn in their guns when we took this here place, same as we always do." He made a sour face. "Reckon you can guess how much good that done us."

  "I expect I can," Tom said. If the United States had occupied Dallas and tried to enforce the same order, it wouldn't have done them any good, either. People in both the USA and the CSA had too many guns and too many hiding places–and the Yankees hated the Confederates just as much as the Confederates hated the Yankees, so nobody on either side wanted to do what anyone on the other side said.

  The sentry added, "It's not shooting so much. We've hanged some of the bastards who tried that, and we've got hostages to try and make sure more of 'em don't. But there's sabotage all the time: slashed tires, busted windows, sugar in the gas tank, shit like that. We shot a baker for mixing ground glass in with the bread he gave us. They even say whores with the clap don't get it treated so as they can give it to more of us."

  "Do they?" Tom murmured. He hadn't been with a woman since the war started. But Bertha was a long way away. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. He'd thought he might . . . Then again, if what this fellow said was true, he might not, too.

  "I don't know that that's so, sir," the corporal said. "But they do say it." He gave Tom his papers again. "Pass on, and have yourself a good old time."

  Don't eat the bread, Tom thought. Don't lay the women. Sounds like a hell of a way to have a good old time to me. At least he didn't say the bartenders were pissing in the whiskey.

  He found the Bachelor Officers' Quarters without any trouble. Fort Mahan bristled with signs, some left over from when the USA ran the place, others put up by the Confederates. He got a room of his own, one of about the same quality as he would have had in the CSA. Two stars on each collar tab helped. Had he been a lieutenant or a captain, he probably would have ended up with a roommate or two.

  Since the sentry hadn't warned that they were pissing in the booze, he headed for the officers' club once he'd dumped his valise in the room. He got another jolt when he walked in: the barkeep was as white as the railroad porter. Tom walked up to him and ordered a highball. The man in the boiled shirt and black bow tie didn't bat an eye. He made the drink and set it on the bar. "Here you go, sir," he said quietly. His accent declared him a Yankee.

  Tom sipped the highball. It was fine. Even so . . . "How long have you been tending bar?" he asked.

  "About . . . fifteen years, sir," the fellow said after a moment's pause for thought. "Why, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "Just wondering. What do you think of the work?"

  "It's all right. Money's not bad. I never did care for getting cooped up in a factory. I like talking with people and I listen pretty well, so it suits me."

  "Doesn't it, oh, get you down, having to do what other folks tell you all the time? Serving them, you might say?"

  He and the bartender both spoke English, but they didn't speak the same language. The man shrugged. "It's a job, that's all. Tell me about a job where you don't have to do what other people tell you. I'll be on that one like a shot."

  Tom decided to get more direct: "Down in the Confederate States, we'd call a job like this nigger work."

  "Oh." The barkee
p suddenly found himself on familiar ground. "Now I see what you're driving at. Some other people have asked me about that. All I got to tell you, pal, is that you're not in the Confederate States any more."

  "I noticed that." Shaking his head, Tom found an empty table and sat down. The man behind the bar plainly didn't feel degraded by his work. A white Confederate would have. You're not in the CSA any more is right, Tom thought. That was true.

  A couple of other officers came in and ordered drinks. One of them nodded to Tom. "Haven't seen you before," he remarked. "Just get in?"

  "That's right," Tom answered. "Nice, friendly little town, isn't it? I always did enjoy a place where I could relax and not have to look over my shoulder all the time."

  The officer who'd spoken to him–a major–and his friend–a lieutenant-colonel like Tom–both laughed. After they'd got their whiskeys, the major said, "Mind if we join you?"

  "Not a bit. I'd be glad of the company," Tom said, and gave his name. He got theirs in return. The major, a skinny redhead, was Ted Griffith; the other light colonel, who was chunky and dark and balding, was Mel Lempriere. He had a pronounced New Orleans accent, half lazy and half tough. Griffith sounded as if he came from Alabama or Mississippi.

  They started talking shop. Aside from women, the great common denominator, it was what they shared. Ted Griffith was in barrels, Lempriere in artillery. "We caught the damnyankees flatfooted," Lempriere said. "It would've been a lot tougher if we hadn't." Actually, he said woulda, as if he came from Brooklyn instead of the Crescent City.

  "Reckon that's a fact," Griffith agreed. "Their barrels are as good as ours, and they use 'em pretty well. But they didn't have enough, and so we got the whip hand and ripped into 'em."

  "Patton helped, too, I expect," Tom said. He got to the bottom of his highball and waved for a refill. The bartender nodded. He brought over a fresh one a minute later.

  "Patton drives like a son of a bitch," Lempriere said. "Sometimes our guys had a devil of a time keeping up with the barrels." He and Major Griffith both finished their drinks at the same time. They also waved to the barkeep. He got to work on new ones for them, too.

  Once Griffith had taken a pull at his second drink, he said, "Patton's a world-beater in the field. No arguments about that. If the Yankees hadn't had their number-one fellow here, too, we'd've licked 'em worse'n we did. Yeah, he's a damn good barrel commander."

  He didn't sound as delighted as he might have. "But . . . ?" Tom asked. A but had to be hiding in there somewhere. He wondered if Griffith would let it out.

  The major made his refill disappear and called for another. Dutch courage? Tom thought. "Patton's a world-beater in the field," Griffith repeated. "He does have his little ways, though."

  Mel Lempriere chuckled. "Name me a general officer worth his rank badges who doesn't."

  "Well, yeah," Griffith said. "But there's ways, and then there's ways, if you know what I mean. Patton fines any barrel man he catches out of uniform, right down to the tie on the shirt underneath the coveralls. He fines you if your coveralls are dirty, too. How are you supposed to run a barrel without getting grease and shit on your uniform? I tell you for a fact, my friends, it can't be done."

  "Why's he bother?" Tom asked.

  "Well, he likes everything just so," Griffith answered, which sounded like an understatement. "And he likes to say that a clean soldier, a neat soldier, is a soldier with his pecker up. I suppose he's got himself a point." Again, he didn't say but. Again, he might as well have.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Lempriere laughed again. "You know any soldier in the field longer'n a week who hasn't got his pecker up?"

  That brought them around to women. Tom had figured they'd get there sooner or later. He asked about the local officers' brothels, and whether the girls really did steer clear of cures for the clap. Lempriere denied it. He turned out to be a mine of information. As Tom had, he'd been in the last war. Ted Griffith was too young. He listened to the two lieutenant-colonels swap stories of sporting houses gone by. After a while, he said, "Sounds like bullshit to me, gentlemen."

  "Likely some of it is," Tom said. "But it's fun bullshit, you know?" They all laughed some more. They ended up yarning and drinking deep into the night.

  ****

  WHEN THE USS Remembrance sortied from Honolulu, Sam Carsten had no trouble holding in his enthusiasm. The airplane carrier wasn't going any place where the weather suited him: up to Alaska, say. She could have been. The Tsars still owned Alaska, and Russia and the United States were formally at war. But they hadn't done much in the way of fighting, and weren't likely to. The long border between the U.S.-occupied Yukon and northern British Columbia on the one hand and Alaska on the other was anything but the ideal place to wage war.

  The western end of the chain of Sandwich Islands, now . . .

  Midway, a thousand miles north and west of Honolulu, had a U.S. base on it. The low-lying island wasn't anything much. Aside from great swarms of goony birds, it boasted nothing even remotely interesting. But it was where it was. Japan had seized Guam along with the Philippines in the Hispano-Japanese War right after the turn of the century, and turned the island into her easternmost base. If she took Midway from the USA, that could let her walk down the little islands in the chain toward the ones that really mattered.

  Japan didn't have anyone to fight but the USA. The United States, by contrast, had a major land war against the Confederate States on their hands. They were trying to hold down a restive Canada. And the British, French, and Confederates made the Atlantic an unpleasant place–to say nothing of the Confederate submersibles that sneaked out of Guaymas to prowl the West Coast.

  Sam wished he hadn't thought about all that. It made him realize how alone out here in the Pacific the Remembrance was. If something went wrong, the USA would have to send a carrier around the Horn–which wouldn't be so easy now that the British and Confederates had retaken Bermuda and the Bahamas. The only other thing the United States could do was start building carriers in Seattle or San Francisco or San Pedro or San Diego. That wouldn't be easy or quick, either, not with the country cut in two.

  Most of the crew enjoyed the weather. It was mild and balmy. The sun shone out of a blue sky down on an even bluer sea. Carsten could have done without the sunshine, but he had special problems. Zinc oxide helped cut the burn a little. Unfortunately, a little was exactly how much the ointment helped.

  He glanced up to the carrier's island every so often. The antenna on the Y-range gear spun round and round, searching for Japanese airplanes. Midway also had a Y-range station. Between the two of them, they should have made a surprise attack impossible. But Captain Stein was a suspenders-and-belt man. He kept a combat air patrol overhead all through the day, too. Sam approved. You didn't want to get caught with your pants down, not here.

  Fighters weren't the only things flying above the Remembrance and the cruisers and destroyers that accompanied her. As she got farther out into the chain of Sandwich Islands, albatrosses and their smaller seagoing cousins grew more and more common. Watching them always fascinated Sam. They soared along with effortless ease, hardly ever flapping. The smaller birds sometimes dove into the ocean after fish. Not the albatrosses. They swooped low to snatch their suppers from the surface of the sea, then climbed up into the sky again.

  They were as graceful in the air as they were ungainly on the ground. Considering that every landing was a crash and every takeoff a desperate sprint into the wind, that said a great deal.

  The other impressive thing about them was their wingspan, which seemed not that much smaller than an airplane's. Sam had grown up watching hawks and turkey buzzards soar over the upper Midwest. He was used to big birds on the wing. The goony birds dwarfed anything he'd seen then, though.

  "I hear the deck officer waved one of them off the other day," he said in the officers' wardroom. "Fool bird wasn't coming in straight enough to suit him."

  "He didn't want it to catch fire when it smashed into the deck,"
Hiram Pottinger said. "You know goonies can't land clean."

  "Well, sure," Sam said. "But it shit on his hat when it swung around for another pass."

  He got his laugh. Commander Cressy said, "Plenty of our flyboys have wanted to do the same thing, I'll bet. If that albatross ever comes back, they'll pin a medal on it."

  Sam got up and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. He was junior officer there, so he held up the pot, silently asking the other men if they wanted any. Pottinger pointed to his cup. Sam filled it up. The head of damage control added cream and sugar. Before long, the cream would go bad and it would be condensed milk out of a can instead. Everybody enjoyed the real stuff as long as it stayed fresh.

  Pottinger asked Commander Cressy, "You think the Japs are out there, sir?"

  "Oh, I know they're out there. We all know that," the exec answered. "Whether they're within operational range of Midway–and of us–well, that's what we're here to find out. I'm as sure that they want to boot us off the Sandwich Islands as I am of my own name."

  "Makes sense," Sam said. "If they kick us back to the West Coast, they don't need to worry about us again for a long time."

  Dan Cressy nodded. "That's about right. They'd have themselves a perfect Pacific empire–the Philippines and what were the Dutch East Indies for resources, and the Sandwich Islands for a forward base. Nobody could bother them after that."

  "The British–" Lieutenant Commander Pottinger began.

  Sam shook his head at the same time as Commander Cressy did. Cressy noticed; Sam wondered if the exec would make him do the explaining. To his relief, Cressy didn't. Telling a superior why he was wrong was always awkward. Cressy outranked Pottinger, so he could do it without hemming and hawing. And he did: "If the British give Japan a hard time, they'll get bounced out of Malaya before you can say Jack Robinson. They're too busy closer to home to defend it properly. The Japs might take away Hong Kong or invade Australia, too. I don't think they want to do that. We're still on their plate, and they've got designs on China. But they could switch gears. Anybody with a General Staff worth its uniforms has more strategic plans than he knows what to do with. All he has to do is grab one and dust it off."