Fallout

by Harry Turtledove

  Slog he did, as did the others who lived in Smidovich. A few of them had snowshoes, and moved awkwardly in a different way. Everyone seemed resigned to the weather. It wasn’t as if people came to Siberia from the Riviera. If they weren’t born here, then, like Vasili, they already knew all they needed to know about hard winters. He lowered his head and turned away from the wind. It didn’t help much, but it might have done a little.

  A woman came by with a wool scarf wrapped around her face so only her eyes showed. That was a good idea. Vasili had a wool scarf—who didn’t? He’d have to try her trick himself.

  And there was Grigory Papanin. His smashed nose left him instantly recognizable. He moved with hunched-over care; he still wasn’t back to the swaggering cock-o’-the-walk he’d been before he made the mistake of messing with Vasili.

  In the snowy cold, with everyone bundled up, he didn’t see that he was nearing his nemesis till they almost bumped into each other. His eyes widened a little. If that wasn’t from fear, Vasili had never seen it. Papanin owned some new reasons to fear him, as a matter of fact.

  “Don’t just clump on by, smegma-lips,” Vasili said. “I need to talk to you.”

  Papanin’s eyes went wide again. “I don’t want to talk to you,” he mumbled.

  “I bet you don’t,” Vasili said. “Who tried to sell me to the Chekists? Was that a piece of shit who smelled like you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Fuck your mother in the mouth if you don’t. They told me it was you.”

  That brought Papanin up short. “They…told you?” he said, something not far from existential despair in his voice.

  “Sure they did. Why wouldn’t they?” Vasili realized he’d struck a nerve. Like a dentist doing a root canal, he probed deeper: “You never did figure out what you were screwing with, did you? You aren’t just ugly. You’re stupid to go with it. If I have to have anything to do with you again, bet your balls it’s the last time you’ll be sorry.”

  “I didn’t know you were—” Papanin broke off. He couldn’t make himself come out with it.

  “I never said I was.” Vasili made sure he said that. He might imply he belonged to the MGB, but if he just went and claimed it they’d land on him with hobnailed jackboots as soon as they found out. “But do you want to have another go like the last one? We can take care of that right now.”

  A younger, more innocent Papanin would have sailed into a fight without a thought in his thick head. A man who’d already taken one bad beating, though, wasn’t so anxious to risk another. Papanin seemed to shrink into himself. “Just leave me the fuck alone, why don’t you?” he whined.

  “This time, cunt. Not the next.” Vasili went on his way. He didn’t look back. Had Papanin had the nerve, he could have jumped him. Vasili had got him that way.

  All he did was mooch off through the blowing snow. He knew he was facing a beast meaner than himself. Vasili hadn’t thought of himself that way in China. There, he’d been an ordinary fellow getting along as best he could. He’d looked funny, but he’d known how things worked.

  Here in Smidovich, he looked ordinary. But he still felt much more out of place than he ever had in Harbin. If he worked hard, these people suspected him. How was anybody supposed to guess that might happen? Why would anybody sneer at someone who tried to get ahead?

  For a moment, he thought the question had no possible answer. Then he realized that, in Soviet terms, it did. Working hard for your own benefit was un-Communistic. Stalin and his henchmen wanted people to work hard for the state, to be what they called Stakhanovites and shock workers. The state and the state alone deserved such slavish devotion…or so you thought if you were Stalin or one of his henchmen.

  Peasants who worked hard for themselves and didn’t want to give up to the state what they produced were called kulaks. Stalin had liquidated them when Vasili was still a kid. Reports leaked out of the USSR and into northern China. A few refugees got out. Their tales didn’t shrink in the telling.

  And was the Soviet Union better off for the way it operated? Looking around Smidovich, Vasili had a hard time seeing how.

  THE MORE CADE CURTIS saw of Captain Pak Ho-san, the less he liked him. True, the ROK officer wasn’t a bugout artist. Since too many of his countrymen were, that counted for something. In every other way, though, Pak made Cade wonder why the United States wanted anything to do with a country that produced the likes of him.

  He vented his spleen with Howard Sturgis. “It’s the Lord’s own miracle one of those Korean privates doesn’t toss a grenade onto his sleeping bag. What happens to those sorry SOBs is a shame and a disgrace. The sergeants beat on ’em like drums, and old Pak, he just watches and smiles. What kind of noncoms are those? What kind of officer is he?”

  “Japanese,” Lieutenant Sturgis said. “Remember, I told you that the day the ROK, uh, guys”—he didn’t quite say gooks—“came into the line.”

  “Shit, that’s right,” Cade said. “You did.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sturgis nodded. “Remember, the Japs ran the show here for forty years. Assholes like Pak, when they saw soldiers, what kind of soldiers did they see? They saw the fuckin’ Japs. And the way the Japs treated their enlisted men, if I did that to a dog, the SPCA’d take him away from me.”

  “Yeah,” Cade said thoughtfully, and then, “I didn’t know they let Koreans be real soldiers.”

  “That’s right—labor gangs were pretty much it,” Sturgis said. “I don’t think there were any Korean officers, just noncoms. But we were an English colony, and our army still does a lot of things the way England did. Korea was a Japanese colony. Who were the Koreans gonna copy?”

  That made more sense than anything Cade had thought of on his own. All the same, he said, “We don’t do that kind of crap, and we beat the hell out of the Japs. Next time I see Pak or anybody under him knocking some poor damned draftee around, I’m not gonna put up with it.”

  “You’ll piss off the brass if you mess with our allies,” Sturgis warned.

  Cade threw back his head and guffawed. “What’s the worst thing they can do to me? They can put me in the line in Korea! I’m already in the line in goddamn Korea. Why should I worry?”

  “They can bust your ass down to private if they feel like it.”

  “Big deal. I’d be a private in the line in Korea.”

  “Okay, sir.” By Howard Sturgis’ tone of voice, it wasn’t. Sure enough, he added, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Once Cade made up his mind and decided to do something about the way Captain Pak and the men he led treated the ordinary South Korean soldiers, he figured he wouldn’t have long to wait before they gave him a gold-plated chance. He wasn’t wrong, either. The very next day, Pak Ho-san screamed at a private for having mud on his uniform. The whole trench was muddy. When it wasn’t, that was because the mud had frozen or was covered in snow. Cade didn’t speak Korean, but the way the captain kept jabbing at the spot on the poor private’s tunic with his index finger left him in no doubt about what was going on. Then Pak smacked the private across the face, hard enough to draw blood at the corner of his mouth.

  Cade squelched down the trench. His own uniform was muddy, too. So were most of his men’s. He didn’t get his bowels in an uproar about it. There was a war on, dammit.

  “Hey!” he said sharply. “Yeah, you, Captain Pak! Knock that off!” His voice went louder and deeper than he usually made it. It was, though he didn’t quite realize it, the voice of an angry, fully mature man, the kind of man other men didn’t care to trifle with.

  Pak Ho-san didn’t quite realize that yet, either. “What you say?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He went on poking the ROK private.

  “I said, knock that off. Leave that man alone. He hasn’t done anything worth screaming at him like that or slugging him. So leave him alone.”

  “He my man,” Pak said. “He not your man. None of your fucking business.”

 
; “He’s a man,” Cade said. “That makes him my business. Cut out your crap, you hear me? Or you’ll be sorry.”

  Plainly, no American officer had ever talked to Pak Ho-san like that before. He didn’t laugh in Cade’s face, but he might as well have. “Oh?” he jeered. “Who make me?”

  Cade carried his PPSh. He carried it everywhere, all the time, except when he was sleeping or eating or taking a crap. Then it lay right beside him. He swung it so it bore on Pak Ho-san’s belly button. “I’ll make you,” he said. “It’d be a pleasure.”

  Arguing with a submachine gun took more in the way of intestinal fortitude than arguing with a kid captain. Pak opened his mouth. Then he closed it and stormed away. He got mud on his own trousers. Would he gig himself for it? Cade didn’t think so.

  The ROK private stared at him. It wasn’t gratitude. It was more like terror. What would happen to him as soon as his protector went away? Nothing pretty, that was for sure. Cade realized he’d just adopted a puppy. He gestured toward his own men with the PPSh. A smile broke out on the Korean’s face like sunshine through clouds. He hustled to join the grimy dogfaces.

  Cade dug into a can of chili and beans. He grinned at Howard Sturgis. “The condemned man ate a hearty meal.”

  “You’re gonna catch it,” Sturgis predicted dolefully.

  “If I do, somebody else can run this madhouse.” Cade was still grinning. He felt great. “Maybe it’ll be you.”

  “They won’t give a lieutenant a battalion,” Sturgis said.

  “I had one for a little while with only one bar.” The great feeling went away. “Those guys are dead now. I would be, too, only I was on a pass when the Russians dropped that bomb.”

  He got summoned to Division HQ, back in Kaeryong, that very afternoon. The summons included a jeep ride, so he could get in trouble faster. “What did you do, sir?” the driver asked. “They usually let you guys walk.”

  “I believed in democracy and the rights of the little man,” Cade replied.

  “Hoo-boy!” The driver clapped a hand to his forehead. “No wonder you’re in deep!”

  “No wonder at all,” Cade said.

  When he told the clerk-typist in the headquarters prefab who he was, he found himself escorted forthwith into the august presence of Brigadier General Randolph Hackworth, who was commanding the division. Hackworth sported a cigar, a chestful of medals from the last war, and a steely glare, which he fixed on Cade. “Captain, what the hell do you mean by interfering in the way our ally conducts his military business?” he rasped.

  By then, Cade didn’t care what happened to him any more. “Sir, what the hell does our ally mean by treating his soldiers like peasants out of the War of the Roses?”

  The Havana jerked in Hackworth’s mouth. “You are insubordinate, young man.”

  “No, sir,” Cade said. “If Captain Pak Ho-san were an American, you’d court-martial him so fast it’d make his head swim…sir.”

  “You are an American,” Hackworth said. “I can do that to you.”

  “Go ahead, sir. After what I’ve seen, it’s no wonder Kim Il-sung’s men fight harder than the Koreans on our side. The guys who give them orders weren’t taking orders from the Japs ten years ago.” Cade silently thanked Howard Sturgis for that bit of intelligence.

  “How does Leavenworth sound, Captain?” Hackworth asked.

  “Sir, after better than a year here, it sounds like a vacation,” Cade said. “But I wouldn’t go, not once my Congressman got my letter.”

  The brigadier general went so dusky a red, Cade wondered if he had heart trouble. “You don’t have the proper attitude,” he said.

  “I guess I don’t, sir. If we aren’t fighting for the idea that every man is just as good as every other man whether he’s rich and connected or not, why don’t we just jump into our boats and let the Reds have this stinking place?” As it did with Pak Ho-san, his voice took on its mature timbre. Even Cade had no idea how intimidating he sounded.

  Hackworth stared at him. “Get the hell out of here,” he said at last.

  “Am I under arrest, sir?”

  “No. Just get out. I’ll fix things with the ROK mucky-mucks. Beat it!” Out Cade went. He didn’t know if he’d won, but he didn’t think he’d lost.

  —

  Konstantin Morozov stared at his “new” tank. He stared at the sergeant in the tank park who’d led him to the machine. “You’re tying my dick in knots,” he said.

  “Comrade Sergeant, it’s a runner,” the tank-park sergeant answered. “Half the machines I’ve got here are just like it. Somebody’s going to take it. Your turn happened to come up.”

  Behind Konstantin, Juris Eigims and Vazgen Sarkisyan looked as appalled as he felt. So did Demyan Belitsky, the driver they’d added to their crew, and Ilya Goledod, the bow gunner. Seeing the dismay in their eyes stiffened his spine.

  “Give it to the Devil’s nephew. It’s bound to be older than he is,” he said. “I know fucking well it’s older than you are.”

  Even though the tank-park sergeant was a fresh-faced kid, the T-34/85 wasn’t older than he was. They hadn’t started making them till the end of 1943. He wasn’t wrong that he had a lot of them in the tank park, either. None of that had anything to do with anything.

  “I don’t care if that piece of shit is a runner or not,” Morozov continued furiously. “It’s a coffin, is what it is. Put it up against a Pershing or a Centurion and we’re all chopped to sausage meat and burned to charcoal ten seconds later.”

  “We use what we have, Comrade Sergeant.” The guy at the tank park tried to stay reasonable. He could afford to. His balls weren’t on the line. He went on, “The Americans are using Shermans, I’ve heard. The English are using Cromwells and Churchills. Any tank is better than no tank.”

  “Even the Nazis killed these things last time. I ought to know—I was in a couple of them. My men and I didn’t recover from radiation sickness to go back to duty in a horse and buggy!”

  “I’ll bring the lieutenant over here if you want,” the tank-park sergeant said.

  As soon as Konstantin heard that, he knew he and his crew were stuck with the T-34/85. When an officer poked his beak into something like this, what would he do? Back the guy he worked with, of course. And he would order the crew into the obsolescent tank instead of just giving it to them.

  “Fuck you. Fuck your mother. Fuck both your ugly old grannies, one in the mouth and one up the ass. Fuck your father up the ass,” Konstantin said wearily. “You’re sending us out there to get us killed.”

  The tank-park sergeant only shrugged. “You aren’t the only ones in machines like this one. I told you that before.” How many other tank commanders who got an ancient rustbucket had cussed him up one side and down the other? How many of them were still alive?

  “Come on, boys,” Morozov said to his crew. “Let’s see what we can do with this pile of garbage.” He’d feared this would happen as soon as he saw they’d given him a bow gunner. The T-34/85 had a machine gun at the right front of the hull and one coaxial with the cannon. The T-54 carried only the coaxial machine gun.

  As soon as he climbed into the tank, the faint smell of kerosene filled his nostrils. He knew what that meant. They’d swabbed out the fighting compartment with it to get rid of the stench of death. How many crews had already bought a plot in here? Better not to wonder about that.

  “Crowded in here,” Juris Eigims remarked.

  “You think this is bad, you should’ve seen the first T-34, the one with the 76mm gun,” Konstantin said. “Really small turret, and the commander had to aim the gun along with everything else. The Germans could shoot three times as fast as those babies could.”

  “This sight is junk, too,” the Balt said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “The one on the T-54 isn’t great, but this….How are you supposed to hit anything with it?”

  “Do your best, please.” Morozov tried the intercom to the forward part of the tank and discovered it didn’t work. He only wishe
d that surprised him more. He shouted into the speaking tube instead: “Start the motor, Demyan.”

  “Right, Comrade Sergeant.” Demyan Belitsky’s voice came back brassily. The diesel farted to life, belching black smoke. Konstantin swore under his breath. If it had refused to go, he could have claimed another tank. But that would have been a T-34/85, too, unless they had something older. You couldn’t expect favors after you proposed fucking somebody’s father in the ass.

  “Take us up to the regimental tank depot,” Morozov said. “They’ll tell us what to do when we get there.”

  “I serve the Soviet Union!” Belitsky said, and put the tank in gear.

  Konstantin stuck his head out of the cupola to look around. It was safe enough; they were still a good ways behind the front. The shape of the tank, so much more angular than the turtle-topped T-54, was as familiar to him as the look of an old lover’s body after he hadn’t slept with her for several years. She might have got long in the tooth, but he still understood her moods.

  Whether that would do anything at all to keep him breathing was liable to be a different question.

  Tank tracks had chewed up the paving on the road Belitsky was using. Most of the buildings Konstantin saw had been blown up or burned or blown up and burned. In one T-54 or another, he might well have helped to knock some of them down. Now he was going over the same ground again for another round of destruction. The Americans’ A-bombs had let the enemy retake a big chunk of western Germany.

  He shuddered. He knew he still wasn’t a hundred percent himself. Somewhere not far away, someone fired a ripping burst from a PPD or a PPSh. Konstantin ducked down into the turret and closed the cupola hatch. It was cold out there, and starting to rain.

  The major in charge of the tank regiment was a veteran named Kliment Todorsky. He actually seemed glad to see Morozov’s crew join his unit. “I’m using T-34s as point vehicles in my platoons,” he said. “They develop the opposition, and the T-54s behind them deal with it.”

  “I serve the Soviet Union!” Konstantin said, because he couldn’t tell a major to go fuck his father in the ass. By develop the opposition, Todorsky meant draw enemy fire. Any enemy fire a T-34/85 drew in this day and age was all too likely to leave it a smoldering hulk, and the men inside it mangled or dead.