The Center Cannot Hold ae-2

by Harry Turtledove

  She waited for Tom to give her a lecture. But he only asked another question: "Can you go on by yourself for the rest of your days?"

  "I don't know," Anne admitted. To keep from having to think about it, she tried to change the subject: "What about you, Tom? You're as single as I am."

  "Yeah, I know," he said with a calm that surprised her. "But there are a couple of differences between us. For one thing, I'm a few years younger than you are. For another, I'm starting to look hard, and you're not."

  "Are you?" she said, surprised. "You didn't tell me anything about that."

  Tom nodded, almost defiantly. "Well, I am, and yes, I know I haven't told you anything. No offense, Sis, but you like running people's lives so much, you don't like it when they try and run their own." That held enough truth to make Anne give him a wry nod in return. He dipped his head, acknowledging it, and continued, "There's one more thing, no offense. A lot of ways, when a man gets married matters a lot less than when a woman does."

  And that was all too true, as well. In a fair, just world it wouldn't have been, but Anne had never been naive enough to imagine the world either fair or just. Looks weren't what kept a man, but they were what lured him. She'd used her own blond beauty to advantage more times than she could count. Again, turning thirty-nine reminded her she wouldn't be able to do that forever. If she wanted to have a baby or two, she wouldn't be able to do that forever, either.

  She sighed. "Well, Tom, when you're right, you're right, and you're right, dammit. I'm going to have to do something about it."

  Her brother blinked. He'd probably been expecting a shouting match, not agreement. "Just like that?" he asked.

  Anne nodded briskly. "Yes, just like that, or as close to just like that as I can make it. Or don't you think I can do what I set my mind to doing?" If he said he didn't, he would have a shouting match on his hands.

  But he only laughed. "Anybody who thinks that about you is a damn fool, Sis. Now, I may be a damn fool-plenty of people have called me one, and they've had their reasons-but I'm not that particular kind of a damn fool, thank you kindly."

  Although Anne laughed, too, she also gave him another nod. "Good. You'd better not be."

  She meant what she said. As if to prove it, she drove up to Columbia a couple of days later. She knew the eligible bachelors in little St. Matthews, South Carolina, much too well to have the slightest interest in marrying any of them. He was too old; he was too dull; he was too grouchy; he couldn't count to twenty-one without dropping his pants. The pickings had to be better, or at least wider, in the state capital.

  They would be better still down in Charleston, but Columbia was a lot closer. That made it more convenient both for her and for the battered Ford she drove. Keeping the motorcar alive would probably let the local mechanic send his children to college, but she had to let it keep nibbling her to death a bit at a time. She couldn't afford a new one, however much she wanted one.

  Before the war-that phrase again! — and even into it, she'd driven a powerful, comfortable Vauxhall, imported from England. Confederate soldiers had confiscated it at gunpoint during the Red uprising of 1915. Almost ten years ago now, she thought with slow wonder. The Ford, now, the Ford was a boneshaker that couldn't get past thirty-five miles an hour unless it went over a cliff. And it was a Yankee machine. But it was what she had, and it ran… after a fashion.

  She did like driving into Columbia. The town's gracious architecture spoke of the better days of the last century. When the Negroes rebelled here, some houses, some blocks, had gone up in flames, but most of the city remained intact-and the damage, at last, was largely repaired. She couldn't imagine a conflagration big enough to destroy the whole town. Columbia was too big for such disasters.

  Charleston had better hotels than Columbia, but the Essex House, only a few blocks from the green bronze dome of the State Capitol, would do. The Essex House also boasted a first-rate switchboard. She had no trouble keeping up with her investments while away from home. And she could even study day-old copies of the New Orleans Financial Mercury and three-day-old editions of the Wall Street Journal. Since she kept most of her money in U.S. rather than C.S. markets, the latter did her more good.

  But here she was more interested in men who might have investments of their own than in investments themselves. Dinner at the hotel restaurant the first night she got into town made her wonder if she'd waited several years too long to make this particular hunting expedition. Before the war, she couldn't possibly have eaten without shooing away anywhere from two to half a dozen men more interested in other pleasures than in those of the table. Here, she enjoyed-or didn't so much enjoy-some very tasty fried chicken without drawing so much as a single eye.

  I might as well be eating crow, she thought as she rose, unhappy, from the table.

  A visit to her assemblyman the next day was no more reassuring. Edgar Stow was younger than she was. He wore the ribbon for the Purple Heart in his lapel; the three missing fingers on his left hand explained why. Because of those missing digits, he had what she took to be a wedding band on the surviving index finger. He was polite to Anne, but polite to Anne as if she was an influential constituent (true) rather than a good-looking woman (false?). He also seemed maddeningly unaware of what she was trying to tell him.

  "Parties? Banquets?" He shook his head. "It's pretty quiet here these days, ma'am. The old-timers, the men who've held their seats since before the war, they complain all the time about how dead it is. But we get a lot more business done nowadays than they ever did."

  Stow sounded pleased with himself. He had an ashtray on his desk made from the brass base of a shell casing, with a couple of dimes bent into semicircles and welded to it to hold cigarettes. He'd surely made it, or had it made, while he was in the Army. Anne wanted to pick it up and brain him with it. His blindness stung. But that ma'am hurt worse. By the way he said it, he might have been talking to his grandmother.

  "So what exactly can I help you with today, ma'am?" he asked, polite, efficient-and stupid.

  Anne didn't tell him. Why waste my time? she thought as she left his office. But she had to wonder if she'd already wasted too much time.

  V

  Sam Carsten smeared zinc-oxide ointment on the bridge of his nose. It wouldn't do him any good. He was dolefully certain of that. When summer came, he got a sunburn. He'd got sunburned in San Francisco, which wasn't easy. Hell, he'd got sunburned in Seattle, which was damn near impossible.

  The port of Brest, France, toward which the USS O'Brien was steaming, lay on the same parallel of latitude as Seattle. Somebody'd told that to Carsten, but he'd had to look it up for himself in an atlas before he would believe it. The bright sunshine dancing off the ocean-and off the green land ahead-seemed almost tropical in comparison to what Seattle usually got.

  He patted the breech of the destroyer's forward four-inch gun. "This here is one more place I figured I'd have to fight my way into," he remarked.

  "Yes, sir," Nathan Hirskowitz agreed. The petty officer shrugged. "But we've got one thing going for us, even on a little courtesy call like this."

  "You bet we do," Sam said. "We aren't Germans."

  Hirskowitz nodded. He scratched his chin. Whiskers rasped under his nails, though he'd shaved that morning. "Yes, sir," he said. "That's what I was thinking, all right."

  "They just don't like Germans here in France, same as they just don't like Englishmen in Ireland." Carsten thought for a moment, then went on, "And same as they just don't like us in the CSA-what do you want to bet a ship from the Kaiser's High Seas Fleet gets the same sort of big hello in Charleston as we do here?"

  "I won't touch that one. You got to be right," Hirskowitz said.

  "Damn funny business, though," Sam said. "We were at war with the froggies, too, same as Kaiser Bill was at war with the Confederates."

  "But we didn't lick France, same as the Germans didn't lick the Confederate States. That makes all the difference." Hirskowitz added something in Fre
nch.

  "What the hell's that mean?" Sam asked in surprise.

  "Something like, the better you know somebody, the more reasons you can find to despise him," the gunner's mate answered.

  "Well, I've known you for a while, and this is the first I knew you spoke any French."

  Nathan Hirskowitz surprised Sam again, this time by looking and sounding faintly embarrassed: "It's my old man's fault, sir. He came to the United States out of this little Romanian village in the middle of nowhere-that's what he has to say about it, anyway. But he'd taught himself French and German and English while he was still there."

  "That's pretty good," Sam said. "He taught you, too, eh?"

  "Yeah, me and my brothers and my sister. German was easy, of course, because we already used Yiddish around the house, and they're pretty close. But he made us learn French, too."

  "So what does he do in New York City?" Sam asked. "How come you aren't too rich to think about joining the Navy?"

  "How come?" Hirskowitz snorted. "I'll tell you how come, sir. Pop had a storing and hauling business. But he liked horses better than trucks, and so that went under. He's smart, but he's a stubborn bastard, my old man is. And since his business went under, he hasn't done much of anything. He sponges off the rest of my relatives, that's all. You listen to him talk, he's too smart to work."

  "Oh. One of those." Carsten nodded; he'd met the type. "Too bad. Any which way, though, I expect I'll stick with you when we get shore leave. Always handy to have somebody along who knows the lingo."

  "Sir, you're an officer, remember? You got to find one of your own who speaks French. You can't go drinking with a no-account gunner's mate."

  Sam cursed under his breath. Hirskowitz was right, no doubt about it. The trouble was, Carsten didn't like drinking with officers. That was the bad news about being a mustang. He'd spent close to twenty years as an able seaman and petty officer himself. His rank had changed, but his taste in companions hadn't. Officers still struck him as a snooty lot. But he would hear about it, and in great detail, if he fraternized-that was the word they'd use-with men of lower rank.

  Up to the wharf came the O'Brien. The skipper handled that himself, disdaining the help of the tugboats hovering in the harbor. If he made a hash of it, he'd have nobody but himself to blame. But he didn't. With all the Frenchmen watching-and, no doubt, with some Germans keeping an eye on the destroyer, too-he came alongside as smoothly as if parking a car.

  A French naval officer whose uniform, save for his kepi, didn't look a whole lot different from American styles, came aboard the O'Brien. "Welcome to la belle France," he said in accented English. "We have been allies before, your country and mine. We are not enemies now. It could be, one day, we shall ally again."

  He didn't say against whom he had in mind. He didn't say-and he didn't need to say. The O'Brien 's executive officer said something in French. Sam didn't want to go drinking with the exec. The Frenchman saluted. The executive officer returned the salute. He said, "We come to France on a peaceful visit, and hope that peace will last forever."

  With a very Gallic shrug, the French officer replied, "What lasts forever? Nothing in this world, monsieur. I need to say one thing to you, a word of- comment dit-on? — a word of warning, yes. Your men are welcome to go ashore, but they should use a certain… a certain caution, oui?"

  Since the Frenchman plainly wanted the O'Brien 's crew to hear that, the exec carried on in English: "What sort of caution, sir?"

  "Political caution," the local said. "The Action Francaise has no small power here in Brest. You know the Action Francaise?"

  "Mais un petit peu," the executive officer said, and then, "Only a little."

  "Even a little is too much," the Frenchman told him. "They are royalist, they are Catholic-very, very Catholic, in a political way-and (forgive me) they oppose those who were the allies of the United States during the… the unpleasantness not so long past."

  They hate the Germans' guts, Carsten thought. That's what he means, but he's too polite to say so. The O'Brien 's executive officer nodded and said, "Thanks for the warning. We will be careful."

  "I have done my duty," the French officer answered. I wash my hands of the lot of you, he might have said. With another salute, he went back over the gangplank, up onto the pier, and into Brest.

  Carsten wondered if the skipper would keep his crew aboard the ship after a greeting like that, but he didn't. He did warn the men who got liberty to stick together and not to cause trouble. Sam hoped they would listen, but sailors in port weren't always inclined to.

  He went ashore himself, as much from simple curiosity as from any great desire to paint the town red. Brest wasn't the sort of place to which tourists thronged. It was, first and foremost, a navy town. That didn't faze Sam. The steep, slippery streets were another matter. Brest sat on a ridge above the Penfeld River, and seemed more suited to mountain goats than to men.

  Mountain goats, though, didn't go into bars. Carsten did, the first chance he got. "Whiskey," he told the bartender, figuring that word didn't change much from one language to another.

  But the fellow surprised him by speaking English: "The apple brandy is better." Seeing Sam's look of surprise, he explained, "Many times during the Great War-and since-sailors from Angleterre come here."

  "All right. Thanks. I'll try the stuff." When Sam did, he found he liked it-Calvados was the name on the bottle. He drank some more. Warmth spread through him. A navy town had to have friendly women somewhere not too far from the sea. After I drink some more, I'll find out about that, he thought.

  Before he could, though, three or four French officers came in. One of them noticed his unfamiliar uniform. "You are-American?" he asked in halting English. "You are from the contre-torpilleur new in the harbor?"

  "Yes, from the destroyer," Sam agreed.

  "And what think you of Brest?" the fellow asked.

  "Nice town," Carsten said; his mother had raised him to be polite. "And this Calvados stuff-this is the cat's meow." The Frenchman looked puzzled. Sam simplified: "It's good. I like it."

  "Ah. 'The cat's meow.' " The French officer-a tough-looking fellow in his forties, a few years older than Sam-filed away the phrase. "Would it please you, monsieur, to see more of Brest?"

  "Thank you, friend. I wouldn't mind that at all," Sam answered, thinking, among other things, that an officer ought to know where the officers' brothels were, and which of them had the liveliest girls. But the Frenchman-his name turned out to be Henri Dimier-took him to the maritime museum housed in a chateau down by the harbor, and then to the cathedral of St. Louis closer to the center of town. Maybe he was an innocent, maybe he thought Sam was, or maybe he was subtly trying to annoy him. If so, he failed; Carsten found both buildings interesting, even if neither was exactly what he'd had in mind.

  When they came out of the cathedral, a whole company of blue-uniformed policemen rushed up the street past them. "What's going on there?" Sam asked.

  "I think it is the Action Francaise," Dimier answered, his face hard and grim. "They are to have a-how do you say? — a meeting in the Place de la Liberte. It is not far. Would you care to see?"

  "Well… all right." It wasn't what Sam had had in mind. It wouldn't be much fun. But it might be useful, and that counted, too. I suppose that counts, too, he thought mournfully.

  The Place de la Liberte wasn't far from the cathedral: only two or three blocks. Even before Carsten and Henri Dimier got there, the sound of singing filled the air. A forest of flags sprouted inside the park. Some were the familiar French tricolor, others covered with fleurs-de-lys. Pointing, Sam asked, "What are those?"

  "That is the old flag, the royal flag, of France," Dimier replied. "They want to, ah, return to his throne the king."

  "Oh." Carsten wasn't sure what to make of that. The mere idea struck him as pretty strange. He tried another question: "What are they singing?"

  "I translate for you." The French officer cocked his head to one side, listening.
"Here. Like this:

  "The German who has taken all,

  Who has robbed Paris of all she owns,

  Now says to France:

  'You belong to us alone:

  Obey! Down on your knees, all of you!'

  "And here is the-the refrain-is that the word?

  "No, no, France is astir,

  Her eyes flash fire,

  No, no,

  Enough of treason now.

  "Would you hear more, monsieur?"

  "Uh-yeah. If you don't mind." I do need to know this. We all need to know it.

  Dimier picked up the song again:

  "Insolent German, hold your tongue,

  Behold our king approaches,

  And our race

  Runs ahead of him.

  Back to where you belong, German,

  Our king will lead us!"

  And the refrain:

  "One, two, France is astir,

  Her eyes flash fire,

  One, two,

  The French are at home."

  And once more:

  "Tomorrow, on our graves,

  The wheat will be more beautiful,

  Let us close our ranks!

  This summer we shall have

  Wine from the grapevines

  With royalty.

  "Do you understand, being an American, what all this means?"

  "I doubt it," Sam answered. "Do you?"

  Before Henri Dimier could answer, the men of the Action Francaise charged the police who were trying to hold them in the square. For a moment, clubs flailing, the police did hold. But then the ralliers-the rioters, now-broke through. With shouts of triumph, they swarmed into the streets of Brest. Sam had a devil of a time getting back to the O'Brien. After that, though, he understood, or thought he understood, a good deal that he hadn't before.