Blood and iron ae-1

by Harry Turtledove

  George Moerlein, his bunkmate, came by to pull something out of his duffel bag. "Christ, Sam, don't you ever take a break?" he said. He had to repeat himself before Carsten knew he was there.

  At last reminded of Moerlein's existence, Sam sheepishly shook his head. "Can't afford to take a break," he said. "Examinations are only a week away. They don't make things easy on petty officers who want to kick their way up into real officer country."

  Moerlein had been a petty officer a long time, a lot longer than Carsten. He had no desire to become anything else, and saw no reason anyone else should have such a desire, either. "I've known a few mustangs, or more than a few, but I'll be damned if I ever knew a happy one. Real officers treat 'em like you'd treat a nigger in a fancy suit: the clothes may be right, but the guy inside 'em ain't."

  "If I don't pass this examination, it won't matter one way or the other," Sam said pointedly. "And besides, officers can't be any rougher on mustangs than they are on ordinary sailors."

  "Only shows how much you know," Moerlein answered. "Well, don't mind me, not that you was." He went on about his business. Sam returned to his book. He came across a section on engine maintenance he didn't remember quite so well as he should have. From feeling he knew about as much as God, he fearfully sank to thinking he knew less than a retarded ordinary seaman on his first day at sea.

  Mess call was something of a relief. Sam stopped worrying about keeping a warship fueled and running and started thinking about stoking his own boiler. With the Remembrance still tied up in the Boston Navy Yard, meals remained tasty and varied- none of the beans and sausage and sauerkraut that would have marked a long cruise at sea.

  Somebody sitting not far from Sam said, "I'd sooner spend my days belching and my nights farting, long as that meant I was doing something worthwhile."

  Heads bobbed up and down in agreement, all along the mess table. "We ought to be thankful they ain't breaking us up for scrap," another optimist said.

  Somebody else added, "God damn Upton Sinclair to hell and gone."

  That brought more nods, Carsten among them, but a sailor snapped, "God damn you to hell and gone, Tad, you big dumb Polack."

  Socialists everywhere, Carsten thought as Tad surged to his feet. A couple of people caught him and slammed him back down. Sam nodded again, this time in approval. "Knock it off," he said. "We don't want any brawls here, not now we don't. Anything that makes the Remembrance look bad is liable to get her taken out of commission and land the lot of us on the beach. Congress isn't throwing money around like they did during the war."

  "Hell, Congress isn't throwing money around like they did before the war, neither," Tad said. "We busted a gut building a Navy that could go out and win, and now we're flushing it right down the head."

  "Rebs ain't got a Navy worth anything any more," said the Socialist sailor who'd called him a Polack. "Limeys ain't, either. No such thing as the Canadian Navy these days. So who the hell we got to worry about?"

  "Goddamn Japs, for one." Three men said the same thing at the same time, differing only in the adjective with which they modified Japs.

  "Kaiser Bill's High Seas Fleet, for two," Sam added. "Yeah, us and the Germans are pals for now, but how long is that going to last? Best way I can think of to keep the Kaiser friendly is to stay too tough to jump on."

  That produced a thoughtful silence. At last, somebody down at the far end of the mess table said, "You know, Carsten, when I heard you was studying for officer, I figured you was crazy. Maybe you knew what you was doing after all."

  Sam looked around to see who was in earshot. Deciding the coast was clear, he answered, "Maybe you don't have to be crazy to be an officer, but I never heard tell that it hurts."

  Amidst laughter, people started telling stories about officers they'd known. Sam pitched in with some of his own. Inside, he was smiling. A book about leadership he'd read had suggested that changing the subject was often the best way to defuse a nasty situation. Unlike some of the things he'd read, that really worked.

  After supper, he went back to studying, and kept at it till lights-out. George Moerlein shook his head. "Never reckoned you was one of those fellows with spectacles and a high forehead," he said.

  "You want to get anywhere, you got to work for it," Sam answered, more than a little nettled. "Anybody wants to stay in a rut, that's his business. But anybody who doesn't, that's his business, too, or it damn well ought to be."

  "All right. All right. I'll shut up," Moerlein said. "Swear to Jesus, though, I think you're doing this whole thing 'cause you want I should have to salute you."

  "Oh, no," Carsten said in a hoarse whisper. "My secret's out." For a moment, his bunkmate believed him. Then Moerlein snorted and cursed and rolled over in his bunk and, a couple of minutes later, started to snore.

  Sam ran on coffee and cigarettes and very little sleep till the day of the examinations, which were held in a hall not far from the Rope Walk, the long stone building in which the Navy's great hemp cables were made. Commander Grady slapped Sam on the back as he left the Remembrance, "Just remember, you can do it," the gunnery officer said.

  "Thank you, sir," Sam said, "and, if you please, sir, just remember, this was your idea in the first place." Grady laughed. Sam hurried past him and down the gangplank.

  Sitting at a table in the examination hall waiting for the lieutenant commander at the front of the room to pass out the pile of test booklets on his desk, Sam looked around, studying the competition. He saw a roomful of petty officers not a whole lot different from himself. Only a few were younger than he; several grizzled veterans had to be well past fifty. He admired their persistence and hoped he would outscore them in spite of it.

  Then he stopped worrying about anything inessential, for the officer started giving out the booklets. "Men, you will have four hours," he said. "I wish you all the best of luck, and I remind you that, should you not pass, the examination will be offered again in a year's time. Ready?… Begin."

  How many times had some of those grizzled veterans walked into this hall or others like it? That thought gave Sam a different perspective on persistence. He wondered if he'd keep coming back after failing the examination half a dozen or a dozen times. Hoping he wouldn't have to find out, he opened the booklet and plunged in.

  The examination was as bad as he'd feared it would be, as bad as he'd heard it would be. As he worked, he felt as if his brain were being sucked out of his head and down onto the paper by way of his pencil. He couldn't imagine a human mind containing all the knowledge the Navy Department evidently expected its officers to have at their fingertips. Panic threatened to overwhelm him when he came upon the first question he couldn't even begin to answer.

  Well, maybe these other bastards can't answer it, either, he thought. That steadied him. He couldn't do anything more than his best.

  Sweat soaked his dark uniform long before the examination ended. It had nothing to do with the hall, which was very little warmer than the Boston December outside. But he noticed he was far from the only man wiping his brow.

  After what seemed like forever-and, at the same time, like only a few minutes-the lieutenant commander rapped out, "Pencils down! Pass booklets to the left." Sam had been in the middle of a word. That didn't matter. Nothing mattered any more. He joined the weary, shambling throng of sailors filing out of the hall.

  "There's always next year," someone said in doleful tones. Carsten didn't argue with him. Nobody argued with him. Sam couldn't imagine anyone being confident he'd passed that brutal examination. He also couldn't imagine anyone showing confidence without getting lynched.

  He didn't have any leave coming, so he couldn't even get drunk after the miserable thing was over. He had to return to the Remembrance and return to duty. When Commander Grady asked him how he'd done, he rolled his eyes. Grady laughed. Sam didn't see one thing funny about it.

  Day followed day; 1923 gave way to 1924. Coming up on ten years since the war started, Sam thought. That seemed un
believable, but he knew it was true. He wished ten years had gone by since the examination. When results were slow in coming, he did his best to forget he'd ever taken the miserable thing. There's always next year, he thought-except, by now, this was next year.

  Then, one day, the yeoman in charge of mail called out "Carsten!" and thrust an envelope at him. He took it with some surprise; he seldom got mail. But, sure enough, the envelope had his name typed on it, and DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY in the upper left-hand corner. He stuck his thumb over that return address, not wanting his buddies to know he'd got news he expected to be bad.

  He marched off down a corridor and opened the envelope where no one could watch him do it. The letter inside bore his name and pay number on Navy Department stationery. It read, You are ordered to report to Commissioning Board 17 at 0800 hours on Wednesday, 6 February 1924, for the purpose of determining your fitness to hold a commission in the United States Navy and…

  Sam had to read it twice before he realized what it meant. "Jesus!" he whispered. "Sweet suffering Jesus! I passed!"

  He had to remind himself that he wasn't home free yet. Everybody said commissioning boards did strange things. In this particular case, what everybody said was likely to be true. Standing there in the cramped corridor, he refused to let what everybody said worry him in the least. The worst had to be over, for the simple reason that nothing could have been worse than that examination. The worst was over, and he'd come through it. He was on his way.

  These days, Lucien Galtier thought of himself as an accomplished driver. He didn't say he was an accomplished driver, though. The one time he'd done that, Georges had responded, "And what have you accomplished? Not killing anyone? Bravo, monperer

  No matter how accomplished he reckoned himself (Georges to the contrary notwithstanding), he wasn't planning on going anywhere today. That he had a fine Chevrolet mattered not at all. He wouldn't have gone out on the fine paved road up to Riviere-du-Loup even in one of the U.S. Army's traveling forts-why the Americans called the infernal machines barrels he'd never figured out. The snowstorm howling down from the northwest made the trip from the farmhouse to the barn cold and hard, let alone any longer journey.

  When he got inside, the livestock set up the usual infernal racket that meant, Where have you been? We're starving to death. He ignored all the animals but the horse. To it, he said, "This is ingratitude. Would you sooner be out on the highway in such weather?"

  Only another indignant snort answered him as he gave the beast oats for the day. When it came to food, the horse could be-was-eloquent. On any other subject, Galtier might as well have been talking to himself whenever he went traveling in the wagon. He knew that. He'd known it all along. It hadn't stopped him from having innumerable conversations with the horse over the years.

  "I cannot talk with the automobile," he said. "Truly, I saw this from the moment I began to drive it. It is only a machine- although this, I have seen, does not keep Marie from talking with her sewing machine from time to time."

  The horse let drop a pile of green-brown dung. It was warmer in the barn than outside, but the dung still steamed. Lucien wondered whether the horse was offering its opinion of driving a motorcar or of conversing with a sewing machine.

  "Do you want to work, old fool?" he asked the horse. The only reply it gave was to gobble the oats. He laughed. "No, all you want to do is eat. I cannot even get you a mare for your amusement. Oh, I could, but you would not be amused. A gelding is not to be amused in that way, n 'est-cepas?"

  He'd had the vet geld the horse when it was a yearling. It had never known the joys not being gelded could bring. It never would. Still, he fancied it flicked its ear at him in a resentful way. He nodded to himself. Had anyone done such a thing to him, he would have been more than merely resentful.

  "Life is hard," he said. "Even for an animal like yourself, one that does little work these days, life is hard. Believe me, it is no easier for men and women. Most of them, most of the time, have very little, and no hope for more than very little. I get down on my knees and thank the Lord for the bounty He has given me"

  Another ear flick might have said, Careful how you speak, there-lam apart of your bounty, after all Maybe the horse was exceptionally expressive today. Maybe Galtier's imagination was working harder than usual.

  "Truly, I could have been unfortunate as easily as I have been fortunate," Galtier said. The horse did not deny it. Galtier went on, "Had I been unfortunate, you would not be eating so well as you are now. Believe me, you would not."

  Maybe the horse believed him. Maybe it didn't. Whether it did or not, it knew it was eating well now. That was what mattered. How could a man reasonably expect a horse to care about might-have-beens?

  But Lucien Galtier cared. "Consider," he said. "I might have been driven to try to blow up an American general, as was that anglophone farmer who blew himself up instead, poor fool. For I will not lie: I had no love for the Americans. Yes, that could have been me, had chance driven me in the other direction. But I am here, and I am as I am, and so you have the chance to stand in your stall and get fat and lazy. I wonder if that other farmer had a horse, and how the unlucky animal is doing."

  His own horse ate all he had given it and looked around for more, which was not forthcoming. It sent him a hopeful look, rather like that of a beggar who sat in the street with a tin cup beside him. Galtier rarely gave beggars money; as far as he was concerned, men who could work should. He did not insist that the horse work, not any more, but he knew better than to overfeed it.

  After finishing in the barn, he walked through the snow to the farmhouse. The heat of the stove in the kitchen seemed a greater blessing than any Bishop Pascal could give. As Galtier stood close by it, Marie poured him a cup of steaming hot coffee. She added a hefty dollop of cream and, for good measure, a slug of applejack, too.

  "Drink it before it gets cold," she said in a tone that brooked no argument. "You should be warmed inside and out." And, before he could answer, almost-but not quite-before he could even think, she added, "And do not say what is in your mind, you dreadful brute of a man."

  "I?" After sipping the coffee, which was delicious, Galtier said, "I declare to the world that you have wronged me."

  "So you do," his wife replied. "You should remember, though, that declaring a thing does not make it true."

  She was laughing at him. He could hear it in her voice. She was also laughing because of him, a very different business. He waggled a forefinger at her. "You are a very troublesome woman." he said severely.

  "No doubt you have reason," Marie said. "And no doubt I have my reasons for being troublesome. One of those reasons that comes straight to my mind is that I have a very troublesome husband."

  "Me?" Lucien shook his head. "By no means. Not at all." He took another sip of fortified coffee. "How could I possibly be troublesome when I am holding here a cup of the elixir of life?" He put down the elixir of life so he could shrug out of his wool plaid coat. It was not quite warm enough in the bitter cold outside, but much too warm for standing by the stove for very long. As Lucien picked up the coffee cup again, Georges came into the kitchen. Lucien nodded to himself. "If I am troublesome, it could be that I understand why."

  "How strange," Marie said. "I just now had this same thought at the same time. Men and women who have been married a long while do this, they say."

  "How strange," Georges said, "I just now had the thought that I have been insulted, and for once I do not even know why."

  "Never fear, son," Galtier said. "There are always reasons, and they are usually good ones."

  "Here, then-I will give you a reason," Georges said. He left the kitchen, and flicked the light switch on the way out. The electric bulb in the lamp hanging from the ceiling went dark, plunging the room into gloom.

  "Scamp!" Galtier called after him. Georges laughed-he was being troublesome, all right. Muttering, Galtier went over and turned on the lamp again. The kitchen shone as if he'd brought the sun indoo
rs. "Truly electricity is a great marvel," he said. "I wonder how we ever got along without it."

  "I cannot imagine," Marie said. "It makes everything so much easier-and you were clever enough to squeeze it out of the government."

  "And the Americans," Galtier said. "You must not forget the Americans"

  "I am not likely to forget the Americans." His wife's voice was tart. "Without the Americans, we would not have the son-in-law we now have, nor the grandson, either. Believe me, I remember all this very well."

  "Without the Americans, we would not be living in the Republic of Quebec," Galtier said, looking at the large picture as well as the small one. "We would still be paying our taxes to Ottawa and getting nothing for them, instead of paying them to the city of Quebec… and getting nothing for them." Neither independence nor wealth reconciled him to paying taxes. Wealth, indeed, left him even less enthusiastic than he had been before, for it meant he had to pay more than he had when he was not doing so well.

  "When the Americans came, we thought it was the end of the world," Marie said.

  "And we were right," Lucien answered. "It was the end of the world we had always known. We have changed." From a Quebe-cois farmer, that was blasphemy to rank alongside tabernac and calisse. "We have changed, and we are better for it." From a Que-becois farmer, that was blasphemy viler than any for which the local French dialect had words.

  His wife started to contradict him. He could tell by the way she opened her mouth, by the angle at which her head turned, by any number of other small things he could not have named but did see. Before she could speak, he wagged a finger at her-only that and nothing more. She hesitated. At last, she said "Peut-etre-it could be."

  That was a greater concession than he'd thought he could get from her. He'd been ready to argue. Instead, all he had to say was, "We are lucky. The whole family is lucky. Things could so easily be worse." He thought again of the farmer out in Manitoba who'd tried to kill General Custer.