Blood and iron ae-1

by Harry Turtledove

  Pinkard's own house was also dark, so he figured Emily had gone to bed, too. Well, if she had, he'd damn well wake her up. He turned his key in the lock. The door didn't squeak as it swung on its hinges. He'd oiled them after he came home from the war, and quietly kept them oiled ever since. He'd caught Emily cheating on him once, and wanted a fair chance to do it again if she stepped out of line. She hadn't, not that he knew of, but…

  The hinges didn't squeak, but something in the house was squeaking, squeaking rhythmically. He knew what that noise was. It came from the bedroom. Rage filled him, the same rage he knew when he put on white and butternut and went off to break heads, but focused now, as if with a burning glass.

  "God damn you, Emily, you little whore!" he bellowed, and stomped down the hall toward the bedroom.

  Twin cries of horror greeted him, one Emily's, the other a man's. They were closely followed by scrabbling noises, a thump, and the sound of running feet. Whoever'd been in there with Emily hadn't wanted to face Jeff. As Jeff stormed in, his feet caught on something, then kicked something else: a man's tangled trousers and his shoe. Whoever the fellow was, he'd departed too quickly to bother retrieving his clothes.

  "Jeff, honey, listen to me-" Emily spoke in a quick, high, desperate voice.

  "Shut up," he said, and she did. She hugged the blanket to herself. The moonlight sliding in through the window-the window through which her lover had fled-showed her arms pale and bare against the dark blue wool.

  He yanked the blanket off her. She was naked under it. He'd known she would be. Breathing hard, he lashed out and slapped her twice, forehand and backhand, fast as a striking snake. She gasped, but made no other sound. If he killed her on the spot, no jury would convict him. She had to know as much.

  When he'd caught her the first time, she'd used all her bodily charms to mollify him. It had worked, too, even if he'd felt filthy and used as he traveled back to the front in west Texas. Now he aimed to use his body to take revenge. He undid his trousers, let them fall to the floor, and flung himself upon her.

  She endured everything he did without a whimper, without a protest. In other circumstances, he might have admired that. Now he just wanted to break her, as if she were a wild horse. When his imagination and stamina ran out at last, he got up from the bed and lit the gas lamp above it. Having spent himself again and again, he was prepared to go easy-and too worn to do anything else.

  Or so he thought, till he saw that the shirt on the floor had the left sleeve pinned up. "Bedford," he whispered in a deadly voice. Emily's face went pale as skimmed milk, which only made the bruises he'd given her look darker.

  He pulled up his pants, then yanked her out of the bed and slung her over his shoulder. She squealed then, squealed and kicked. Ignoring everything she did, he carried her out of the cottage and dumped her, still naked, on the walk. Then he went back inside and locked the door behind him.

  When she came up crying and wailing, he shouted, "Go to hell. You made your choice. Now you pay for it." He'd made his choice, too. I'll live with it, he thought. He went back to the bedroom, lay down, and fell asleep right away.

  Arthur McGregor worried every time he left the room he'd taken in the cheap Winnipeg boardinghouse. He worried while he was in the room, too. That wasn't because inside his trunk sat a wooden box containing the largest, finest bomb he'd ever made. He worried about the bomb when he left the room: he worried that someone would discover it, and that he wouldn't be able to use it.

  When he was in the sparsely furnished room, he worried about the farm. He worried about whether Maude and Julia and Mary could do everything that needed doing without his being there. He also occasionally worried about whether the story he and his family had put about-that he'd gone to visit cousins back in Ontario-would hold up under close scrutiny. If some bright Yank added two and two and happened to come up with four…

  But the Yank likeliest to do that, Major Hannebrink, was dead. McGregor had made sure of that, and he'd got away with it. Now he was going to make sure of General Custer's demise, too, and he thought he could get away with that. And, if he couldn't, he was willing if not eager to pay the price.

  "Strike a blow for freedom," he muttered under his breath as he went downstairs for breakfast.

  He wasn't used to eating anyone's cooking but Maude's. The eggs here were fried too hard, while the bacon felt rubbery between his teeth. Morning chatter flowed around him. Apart from a "Good day" or two and a couple of polite nods, he added nothing to it.

  Off he went, for all the world as if he had a job to which he didn't want to be late. His landlady thought he did have a regular job. He'd made certain she thought that. If she thought anything different, the Yanks were liable to hear about it. That was the last thing he wanted.

  Almost three years after the end of the Great War, Winnipeg presented an odd mixture of rubble and shiny new buildings, as if a phoenix had risen halfway from the ashes. In another few years, McGregor thought, it might turn into a handsome city again. The rubble would be forgotten. So would the buildings and the hopes from which that rubble had been made. The new Winnipeg would be an American city, not a Canadian one.

  HORNE'S HOUSE PAINTS, said a sign on Donald Street. 37 COLORS AVAILABLE. If Horne had been in business before 1914, if he wasn't a johnny-come-lately Yank, his sign would have advertised 37 COLOURS then. Even spelling changed under U.S. rule.

  McGregor scowled. To him, COLORS looked clipped, unnatural… American. He stepped off the curb-and almost got clipped himself, by an American motorcar. An angry blast from the Ford's horn sent him leaping back onto the sidewalk. "Watch out, you goddamn hayseed!" the driver screamed, in an accent unmistakably from the USA. "Ain't you never seen an automobile before?" He stepped on the gas and whizzed away before McGregor could say a single word.

  "Christ!" McGregor wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "That'd be all I need, stepping out in front of one of those damn things when I'm carrying…" He let his voice trail away. He did not intend to mention out loud what he might be carrying. He wouldn't have come so close had he not just come close to getting killed.

  Had so many motorcars scurried through the streets of Winnipeg before the Great War? McGregor had come up to the city only a couple of times in those days, so he couldn't be sure, but he didn't think so. It might end up prosperous as well as handsome.

  He didn't care. He would sooner have been poor under King George than rich under the Stars and Stripes. The Yanks had taken his country away from him. If they expected him to be happy about it, they were in for a disappointment.

  As a matter of fact, if they expected him to be happy about it, they were in for a big disappointment. He chuckled grimly-so grimly that a fellow in a business suit edged away from him. He didn't notice. He wanted to make sure their disappointment was as big as possible.

  He crossed the Donald Street bridge over the Assiniboine and strolled past a three-story building that had somehow come through the war intact. Soldiers in green-gray with pot-shaped helmets stood guard around the building in sandbagged machine-gun nests that gave it a formidable defensive perimeter. He didn't linger. The U.S. guards asked pointed-or sometimes blunt- questions of people naive enough to linger around General Custer's headquarters.

  They would, without a doubt, ask even more pointed-or perhaps blunt-questions of anyone foolhardy enough to try to leave a wooden box anywhere in the neighborhood. McGregor had seen as much on his last trip to Winnipeg.

  There was a park not far away. It didn't even boast children's swings. All it had were grass and a few benches. McGregor sat down on the grass and waited for noon. He'd done that a good many times by now, and come to know the park well. The earth here was not smooth, but full of round depressions of different sizes and depths. A narrow zigzag strip of low ground, partly obliterated by the depressions, ran across the park from east to west. The troops defending Winnipeg had made a stand here. McGregor grunted. They'd failed, damn them.

  He wasn't the only on
e out on this fine, mild day. Boys and girls frolicked where shells had burst and men had bled. An unshaven man in a filthy Canadian Army greatcoat and tattered khaki trousers lifted a bottle to his lips. He set it down slowly and reluctantly, as if its opening were the mouth of his beloved. In a drunken way, that was bound to be so.

  McGregor killed time till the bells of the St. Boniface Cathedral, across the Red River, chimed twelve. He got up and ambled back by Custer's headquarters. He'd timed it perfectly. He'd just gone past the building when a chauffeur-driven Packard-the motorcar that had almost run him down in Rosenfeld when Custer was on his way up to Winnipeg-pulled away from the front of the place. He kept on walking, hardly looking at the automobile, and turned west, away from the Red River.

  After a little while, he went up Kennedy. Sure as the devil, there in front of a chophouse called Hy's sat the Packard. The chauffeur remained on the front seat, eating a sandwich. General Custer and his aide, a tubby officer who seemed to accompany him everywhere, had gone inside.

  McGregor smiled to himself. Custer dined at Hy's every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He was reliable as clockwork. He ate his dinner somewhere else-McGregor hadn't been able to find out where-on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So far as McGregor could tell, no swarm of guards surrounded him here.

  Luck had had very little to do with McGregor's discovering his weekday routine, or at least three-fifths of it. The embittered farmer had taken to tramping the streets of Winnipeg during the dinner hour, looking for that Packard. Patience paid, as patience has a way of doing. McGregor walked past the motorcar on the other side of the street. The driver paid him no attention whatever. Had he suddenly turned around and gone back the way he'd come, that might have drawn the fellow's notice to him.

  He couldn't have that, not when he was so close. He made his way back to the park, though he didn't go past Custer's headquarters this time. "Now they shouldn't see me at all," he said as he sat down on the grass once more. No one heard him. The children were gone. The ex-soldier had passed out. His bottle lay empty beside him.

  A little past five, McGregor returned to the boardinghouse. He ate the landlady's frugal supper without complaint. Afterwards, he went up to his room and read Quentin Durward till he grew sleepy. Then he turned off the electric lamp and, so far as he knew, didn't stir till morning.

  Since the next day was Thursday, Custer wouldn't be dining at Hy's. McGregor walked in, went over to the bar, and ordered himself a Moosehead. As he drank the beer, he studied the place. He couldn't very well plant the bomb among the seats; he had nowhere to conceal it there. But a lot of tables were close to the bar, and he'd packed a lot of dynamite and a lot of tenpenny nails for shrapnel into the wooden case he'd brought up from the farm. If he could hide it under the bar somewhere, that stood a good chance of doing the trick. The blast might even bring down the whole building… if the detonation worked as it should.

  He worried about that, too. He'd known from his earlier trip to Winnipeg that he'd have to set this bomb and leave it. To make it go off when he wanted it to, he'd brought up an alarm clock, which he would set while he was planting the bomb. When it rang, the vibrating hammer and bells would set off the blasting caps he'd pack around them, which would in turn set off the dynamite. So he hoped, at any rate. But he knew the method was less reliable than a tripwire or a fuse.

  "It will work," he whispered fiercely. "It has to work."

  He got out of bed at two the next morning and sneaked out of the boardinghouse. He carried the bomb on his back with straps, as if it were a soldier's pack. In one pocket of his coat were caps, in the other a small electric torch and a pry bar.

  Winnipeg remained under curfew. If a patrolling U.S. soldier spotted him, he was liable to be shot then and there. If he got shot, he was liable to go straight to the moon then and there, in fragments of various sizes. He was taking any number of mad chances with this venture, and knew it. He didn't care, not any more. Like a soldier about to go over the top, he was irrevocably committed.

  An alley ran behind Hy's. Motion there made his heart spring into his mouth, but it was only a cat leaping out of a garbage can. He wondered if the restaurant had a burglar alarm. He would find out by experiment. He let out a long, happy sigh when the back door yielded to the pry bar almost at once.

  Tiptoeing through the kitchen, he came out in back of the bar, as if he were the greasy-haired gent who tended it. Only when he crouched behind it did he turn on the torch. He felt like cheering on seeing not only plenty of room under the bar to stash the bomb but also a burlap bag with which to hide it.

  He wound the alarm clock and set it for one, then pried up the lid to the bomb, set the clock in place, and, handling them very carefully, packed the blasting caps by the bells. Then he replaced the lid, covered the box with the burlap sack, and left by the route he'd used to come. He closed the door behind him, risking the torch once more to see if the pry marks were too visible. He grinned: he could hardly see them at all. Odds were, no one else would even notice he'd come and gone.

  He reentered the boardinghouse as stealthily as he'd left. Going back to sleep was hard. Getting up to appear to go to work was even harder. When he departed after breakfast, he didn't pass by Custer's headquarters, but used the next street over to head for the park. He settled himself on the grass to wait.

  St. Boniface's bells chimed the hours. After they rang twelve times, he began to fidget. Time seemed to crawl on hands and knees. How long till one o'clock? Forever? No. Before the bells chimed one, a far greater and more discordant blast of sound echoed through Winnipeg. Arthur McGregor sprang to his feet, shouting in delight. He frightened a few pigeons near him. Other than the pigeons, no one paid him the least attention.

  Lieutenant Colonel Abner Dowling eyed General Custer with a sort of sad certainty. The old boy was having altogether too much fun for his own good. When his wife noticed how much fun he'd been having-and Libbie would; oh yes, she would- she would have some sharp things to say about it.

  For the moment, though, Custer was doing the talking. He liked nothing better. 'All in the line of duty," he boomed, like a courting prairie chicken. "All in the line of duty, my dear."

  The reporter's pencil scratched across the notebook page, filling it with shorthand pothooks and squiggles. "Tell me more," Ophelia Clemens said. "Tell me how you happened to decide the War Department was using barrels the wrong way and how you came up with one that proved more effective."

  "I'd be glad to," Custer said with a smile broad enough to show off all the coffee-stained splendor of his store-bought teeth.

  I'll bet you would, Dowling thought. He wouldn't have minded having Ophelia Clemens interview him, either. She was a fine-looking woman-somewhere between forty and forty-five, Dowling guessed-with red-gold hair very lightly streaked with gray, and with an hourglass figure that had yielded nothing (well, next to nothing) to time.

  Instead of answering her question, as he'd said he would, Custer asked one of his own: "How'd a pretty lady like you get into the newspaper business, anyhow? Most reporters I know have mustaches and smoke cigars."

  Miss Clemens-she wore no wedding band-shrugged. "My father was in the business for fifty years, till he died ten years ago. He taught me everything I know. For whatever it may be worth to you, he wore a mustache and smoked cigars. Now, then-" She repeated the question about barrels.

  She s sharp as a tack behind that pretty smile, Abner Dowling judged. Custer hadn't figured that out yet; the pretty smile was all he noticed. His answer proved as much. He didn't quite say God and a choir of angels had delivered the new doctrine for barrels to him from on high, but he certainly implied it.

  Ophelia Clemens tapped the unsharpened end of her pencil against the spiral wire that held her notebook together. "Isn't another reason the fact that you've been known for headlong attacks straight at the foe ever since the days of the War of Secession, and that barrels offered you the chance to do that again, except in a new way?"

  Dow
ling wanted to kiss her for reasons that had nothing to do with the way she looked. She was sharp as a tack, by God. Custer had done nothing but go straight at the enemy all through the Great War. First Army had suffered gruesomely, too, sending attack after attack straight into the teeth of the Rebs' defensive positions. If not for barrels, Custer would probably still be banging heads with his Confederate opposite numbers down in Tennessee.

  Now he said, "What was that, Miss Clemens? My ears aren't quite what they used to be, I'm afraid." Dowling had seen him use that selective deafness before. He wasn't too hard of hearing, not considering how old he was. But he was, and always had been, ever so hard of listening.

  Patiently, Ophelia Clemens repeated the question, changing not a single word. As she did so, the bells of St. Boniface's Cathedral, over on the east side of the Red River, announced the noon hour.

  Custer had no trouble hearing the bells, even if he managed to miss the question again. He said, "Perhaps you'll take luncheon with my adjutant and me, Miss Ophelia. There's a very fine chophouse not ten minutes away that I visit regularly: in fact, I have a motorcar laid on that should be pulling up in front of this building right about now."

  "I'd be delighted," the reporter said, "provided we can keep working through it. That way, my editors won't mind picking up the tab forme."

  "Oh, very well," Custer said with poor grace. He'd no doubt wanted to use the luncheon as a breather from her astute questions. But Ophelia Clemens wasn't half bad at getting her own way, either.

  When they boarded the chauffeured Packard, Custer got his way, placing himself between Dowling and Miss Clemens. The seat was crowded for three: both he and his adjutant took up a good deal of space. Had Custer been so tightly squeezed against another officer, he would have had something rude to say about Dowling's girth. As things were, he didn't complain a bit.