In at the Death

by Harry Turtledove

  “In a word, no,” he answered, so coldly that she not only shut up with a snap but gave him a fierce glare, which he ignored. He went on, “You’ve got it, all right. You ought to thank your boyfriend for getting you over here.”

  “Not likely!” she said, and added some verbal hot sauce to the comment.

  “However you please,” O’Doull told her. “Roll over onto your stomach so I can give you your first shot.” Goodson Lord ceremoniously handed him a syringe.

  “Will it hurt?” she asked.

  “A little.” O’Doull jabbed the needle home. She yipped. He didn’t care. “You need to come back in three days for your second injection,” he told her.

  “What happens if I don’t?” Betsy sure hadn’t said no to PFC Eubanks—or, odds were, to a lot of guys before him—but she was cooperating with O’Doull as little as she could.

  “Two things,” O’Doull said. “We come and get you, and we tell your folks and everybody in Montevallo how come we came and got you.”

  “You wouldn’t do that!”

  “When it comes to getting rid of VD, we’ll do whatever it takes. Dammit, this is for your own good.”

  “Then how come it hurts?” Betsy whined.

  “If we didn’t treat you, you’d hurt more down the line,” O’Doull said. Actually, a lot of syphilis patients didn’t have symptoms for years after the primary lesions went away. Some never did. But syphilis was also the great pretender; a lot of ills that seemed to be other things really went back to the spirochete that caused it. If you could get rid of the germ, you needed to.

  “Might as well get used to it, Doc,” Sergeant Lord advised. “This is what we’ll see from here on out—guys with drippy faucets, guys in auto crashes, every once in a while a guy who steps on a mine or something.”

  “Could be worse,” O’Doull said. “Long as we don’t start having lots of guys who guerrillas shot, I won’t kick.”

  “Amen to that,” the medic said.

  “Can I go now?” Betsy asked, much as her boyfriend in green-gray had.

  “Yes, you can go,” O’Doull answered. “If you don’t come back for your next shot, remember, we’ll make you sorry you didn’t.”

  “I won’t forget,” she said sullenly. “My pa, he’ll kill me if he finds out.” By the way she scurried away from the aid tent, she meant that literally.

  “Wonder how many round-heeled broads we’ll give the needle to,” Lord said.

  “Quite a few, I bet,” O’Doull said. “And if it’s going to be that kind of practice, you can handle it as well as I can.” He was thinking about home again. He wasn’t a career soldier; he had a life away from the Army. He had it, and he wanted to go back to it.

  Goodson Lord gave him a shrewd look. “Won’t be too long before they start figuring out how to turn people loose, I bet. You paid your dues and then some.”

  “Yeah.” O’Doull nodded. And once I get back into the Republic of Quebec, they’ll never pry me out again. There had been times when his practice in Rivière-du-Loup bored him. He hadn’t been bored the past three years. Scared out of his mind? Astonished? Appalled? All of those, and often, but never bored. He was amazed at how wonderful ennui seemed.

  Abner Dowling stared at Lexington, Virginia, with nothing less than amazement. He turned to his adjutant and said, “Damned if it doesn’t look like they used a superbomb on this place.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Toricelli nodded. “Yes, sir. The fun we had getting here should have given us a hint, I suppose.”

  “Fun? Heh. That’s one word for it, I guess,” Dowling said. As the crow flew, Lexington was only about 110 miles from Richmond. Dowling wished he’d flown from the capital—the former capital?—of the CSA. He’d gone by command car instead, and the roads were disastrously bad…which said nothing about the wrecked bridges and the places where mines were still being cleared. What might have been a two-and-a-half-hour drive ended up taking a day and a half.

  Something moved in the rubble. At first he thought it was a stray dog. Then he realized what it really was: a possum. It looked like a cat-sized rat that had got its nose stuck in a pencil sharpener. The long, bare pinkish tail seemed vaguely obscene. Lieutenant Colonel Toricelli was looking in the same direction. “If that’s not the ugliest thing God ever made, damned if I know what is,” he said.

  “Now that Jake Featherston’s dead, I agree with you,” Dowling said, which jerked a laugh from the younger man.

  Washington University lay on the north side of town. U.S. soldiers who’d come down from the north right after the surrender were already thick on the ground there. The only way you could tell the university grounds from the rest of Lexington these days was that they’d taken an even heavier pounding from the skies.

  It didn’t do enough, dammit, Dowling thought. In spite of everything that came down on their heads, the Confederate physicists managed to put together a superbomb. Abstractly, Dowling admired the achievement. Staying abstract when they’d blown a big chunk of Philadelphia off the map wasn’t so easy, though.

  The surviving physicists were housed in tents surrounded by barbed wire and machine-gun nests. A U.S. colonel named Benjamin Frankheimer was in charge of them. Before he let Dowling in to talk with the prisoners, he checked with the War Department.

  “Weren’t you told to expect me?” Dowling asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Frankheimer replied. “But we haven’t met, and I wanted to make sure they confirmed that a man of your description went with your name.”

  “You’re…a careful man, Colonel.”

  “Taking care of people who know this kind of stuff, I need to be, sir.” Frankheimer scratched his nose. It was much the most prominent feature on his face: he was little and skinny and looked very, very Jewish. Dowling guessed he’d got this job because he was a scientist himself…till he noticed the fruit salad on the colonel’s chest. It showed he’d won a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star with oak-leaf cluster, and a Purple Heart with oak-leaf cluster. Frankheimer had had himself a busy war.

  “Well?” Dowling said. “Am I who I say I am?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. No doubt about it,” Frankheimer answered. “You’re free to go in and do whatever you need to do—now.”

  “Thanks.” Dowling sounded less sarcastic than he might have. The men inside this heavily guarded compound weren’t just dynamite—they were a hell of a lot more explosive than that, and they’d proved it.

  He wasn’t astonished when he and Lieutenant Colonel Toricelli had to surrender their sidearms before going in, either. He didn’t think of physicists as tough guys, but you never knew. If the fellows with the white lab coats and the slide rules didn’t have the chance to grab any weapons, they wouldn’t be tempted.

  The first man he saw inside the compound sure didn’t look like a tough guy. The fellow was about fifty, on the skinny side, and walked with a limp and a cane. “Can you tell me where Professor FitzBelmont is?” Dowling called to him.

  “That tent there.” The middle-aged man pointed.

  “Thanks.” Dowling ducked inside.

  He recognized FitzBelmont right away; the photos he’d studied were good likenesses. Tall, tweedy, bespectacled: he looked like a physicist, all right. He gave Dowling a grudging nod. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, and then, “I’ve already met a lot of U.S. officers”—so he probably wasn’t very pleased.

  “Come outside with me, Professor,” Dowling said. “We’ve got some talking to do.”

  “If you like,” FitzBelmont said. “But anything you say to me, my colleagues can also hear. What are you going to do with us, anyway?”

  “Well, that’s one of the things I’m here to talk about,” Dowling answered. “More than a few people in Philadelphia who want to string you up by the thumbs, paint you with gasoline, and light a match. Then there are the ones who think that’s too good for you.”

  Some of the scientists and technicians in there with FitzBelmont flinched. He didn’t. “I don’t underst
and why,” he said. “We were serving our country in the same way that your scientists were serving the United States. If your service is permitted, even heroic, why shouldn’t ours be, as well?”

  He had a scientist’s detachment—or maybe he was just a natural-born cold fish. “There is a difference, Professor,” Dowling said.

  “I fail to see it,” Henderson FitzBelmont said.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Lieutenant Colonel Toricelli murmured.

  “Hush,” Dowling said, and then, to FitzBelmont, “It’s simple. I’ll spell it out for you. We won. You lost. There. Is that plain enough?”

  “To the victors go the spoils?” FitzBelmont said. “Is that what this war was about?”

  “That’s part of it. If you don’t believe me, ask Jake Featherston,” Dowling answered. FitzBelmont turned red, so maybe at one point or another he had asked the late, unlamented President of the CSA. Dowling continued, “The other part is, now you can’t go on murdering your own smokes any more.”

  FitzBelmont got redder. “I didn’t know anything about that.”

  “I ought to kick your scrawny ass for lying, you miserable son of a bitch,” Dowling said with weary revulsion. “If I had a dime for every Confederate shithead who told me the same thing, I’d be too rich to wear this uniform—you’d best believe I would. Where the hell did you think all the coons in fucking Lexington disappeared to? You think somebody swept ’em under the goddamn rug?”

  “I never even considered the issue,” Professor FitzBelmont said.

  Dowling almost did haul off and belt him. But the way FitzBelmont said it gave him pause. Unlike most of his countrymen, the physicist might have been telling the truth. From the reports the USA had on FitzBelmont, he had trouble noticing anything bigger than an atomic nucleus.

  “How many millions did they do in, Angelo?” Dowling asked.

  “Best guess right now is about eight million, sir,” his adjutant replied. “But that could be off a million either way, easy.”

  “And you never considered the issue?” Dowling tried to wither Henderson FitzBelmont with his scorn.

  “I’m afraid not,” FitzBelmont said, unwithered. “We had no Negroes at all involved in the project. Even our cooks and janitors were whites or Mexicans. Negroes were deemed to be security risks, and so we did not see them. It’s as simple as that, I’m afraid.”

  The Confederates had good reason to think Negroes might be security risks. Blacks had brought the USA lots of good intelligence data. Dowling didn’t know how much in the way of physics a cook or janitor could understand. Understand it or not, anybody could steal papers, though. Which reminded him…

  “Under the terms of the surrender, you’re supposed to keep all your paperwork intact. You’ve done that?”

  “What survives of it, yes, certainly.”

  “What’s that mean?” Dowling demanded.

  “You ought to know,” Professor FitzBelmont said. “Your airplanes have been bombing Lexington for the past year. Do you think you didn’t do any damage? You’d better think again.”

  “Huh,” Dowling said. The Confederate physicist had a better excuse than The dog ate my homework. He and his pals could have destroyed anything, and then blamed it on U.S. bombers. Dowling didn’t know what he could do about it, either.

  “It is possible for you to expect too much of us, you know,” FitzBelmont said.

  “Maybe. I’m not the expert,” Dowling agreed. “But you will be interrogated by people who are experts—I promise you that. Even if your paperwork is gone, they’ll figure out what you were up to. And yes, you’re obliged to cooperate with them.”

  “If we don’t?” the physicist asked.

  Dowling made hand-washing motions. “God help you, in that case. You can bet your bottom dollar nobody else will.”

  “You have an unpleasant way of making your point,” Professor FitzBelmont said.

  “Thank you,” Dowling answered, which stopped FitzBelmont in his tracks.

  After a moment, the physicist asked, “When will they let us go?”

  “Beats me,” Dowling answered cheerfully. “Suppose you’d won. When would you have let our superbomb people go? Ever?”

  “I…don’t know,” the Confederate scientist said slowly. That, at least, struck Dowling as basically truthful. Henderson FitzBelmont went on, “Surely you understand that we can’t be dangerous to the United States without facilities like the ones we had here. You can’t make a superbomb with a blackboard and chalk.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. It’s not my call to make, anyhow,” Dowling said. “My job is to make sure you’re here, to make sure you’re well protected, and to put you at the disposal of our scientists when they get around to needing you. I’m taking care of that right now.”

  “How about making sure we’re well treated?” FitzBelmont asked.

  “Believe me, Professor, you are,” Dowling said. “You have shelter. You have enough to eat. You have a doctor and a dentist when you need one. Compared to the average white man in the CSA these days, you’re in hog heaven. Compared to the average Negro in the CSA…Hell, you’re alive. That puts you ahead of the game right there.”

  Professor FitzBelmont looked severe. “If that’s a joke, General, it’s in poor taste.”

  “Who’s joking?” Dowling said. “You’re the one who didn’t look at what was going on with your Negroes, you say? We’re going to hang some of the bastards who did that to them. Crimes against humanity, we’re calling it. Considering what happened in Philadelphia, you ought to thank your lucky stars we aren’t charging you with the same thing…yet.”

  “How could you do that when your own scientists built the bombs that blew up Newport News and Charleston? Where is the justice there?”

  Dowling shook his head. FitzBelmont really didn’t get it. “How much justice would you have given our guys if you won? As much as you gave your own smokes? We don’t need justice, Professor—I told you that once already. We may use it, but we don’t need it. We damn well won.”

  Colonel Roy Wyden eyed Jonathan Moss with what looked like real sympathy. “What are we going to do with you?” Wyden asked.

  “Beats me, sir,” Moss answered. “Not much call for a fighter jockey any more, is there? Especially one who’s my age, I mean.”

  “I’m sorry, but there isn’t,” Wyden said. “Your file shows you weren’t in the military straight through. What did you do between the wars?”

  “I’m a lawyer, sir.”

  Wyden brightened. “Well, hell, you’ll make more money after you muster out than you’re pulling down now.”

  Moss laughed harshly. “It ain’t necessarily so. My specialty was occupation law. For one thing, the Canadian uprising’s still going. For another, they’ll change all the rules once they finally do knock it flat. And, for another, I don’t want to go back to it anyway. A terrorist blew up my wife and my daughter. Maybe the bomb was meant for me—I don’t know. But that’s the big reason I rejoined. So I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”

  “Jesus! I guess you don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t know your story,” Wyden said.

  “Not like I’m the only one who’s had the roof fall in on him,” Moss said. “I’ll land on my feet one way or another.”

  “If you think you will, chances are you’re right,” Wyden said. “Let me make a few telephone calls for you, see if I can line something up.”

  “What have you got in mind?” Moss asked.

  “I don’t want to tell you yet, in case it doesn’t pan out,” Wyden answered. “Are you willing to give me a couple of days to see if it will?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Moss managed a wry grin. “It isn’t like I’ve got a hell of a lot of other stuff going on.” He left Colonel Wyden’s tent more intrigued than he’d thought he would be.

  Wyden didn’t summon him back for three days. When he did, he came straight to the point: “How would you like to go to the Republic of Texas?”

  “T
o do what?” Moss inquired.

  “They’re going to try the bastards who ran Camp Determination and then Camp Humble,” Wyden answered. “They’ve got guys lined up from here out the door to prosecute them, but their number one defense lawyer, a guy named Izzy Goldstein, was in an auto wreck last week. He’s in the hospital, pretty torn up—no way he’ll be able to fill that slot now. So they’re looking for a legal eagle. Are you game?”

  Moss whistled softly. “I don’t know. I mean, I think those guys are guilty as shit. Don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” Wyden answered. “You’re the lawyer, though. Don’t guilty people deserve to have somebody on their side, too?”

  That was a commonplace argument in law school. Moss had always believed it there. He’d acted on it, too, when he was doing occupation law up in Canada. A lot of his clients there weren’t guilty of anything worse than falling foul of U.S. occupation procedures. This…This was a different story. “Only thing worse would be defending Jake Featherston himself.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Wyden answered. “The people I talked to said they were gonna shoot him without trial if they caught him. That colored kid just took care of it for them, that’s all. Look, you don’t have to do this if you can’t stomach it. I’m not giving you orders or anything—I wouldn’t, not for this kind of thing. But you were at loose ends, and it’s military justice, so you’re qualified, you know what I mean? Your call. One of the guys there remembers you from Canada. He said you were a son of a bitch, but you were a smart son of a bitch.”

  “From a military prosecutor, that’s a compliment…I guess,” Moss said. Colonel Wyden grinned and waited. Moss lit a Raleigh to help himself think. “Damn,” he muttered, sucking in smoke. He blew it out in what was at least half a sigh. “Tell you what. Why don’t I go over there and talk to one of those assholes? If I decide to take it on, I will. If I don’t…I won’t, that’s all.” The Army couldn’t put much pressure on him. If it did, he’d damn well resign his commission. Then he’d have to figure out what to do with the rest of his life as a civilian, that was all.