The Center Cannot Hold ae-2

by Harry Turtledove

  "Horace Stubbs," Colonel Thorgood said, "I find you guilty of the crime of participating in rebellion against the U.S. occupying authorities in the former province of Ontario." Stubbs' shoulders slumped. The military judge scribbled something else. He continued, "Due to the unusual nature of this case, I sentence you to six months' imprisonment and to a fine of $250: failure to pay the latter will result in a further six months' imprisonment." Bang! went the gavel. "This court is adjourned."

  A couple of husky U.S. noncoms strode forward to take Horace Stubbs off to jail. "Just a minute," he told them. "Just one damn minute." He grabbed Jonathan Moss' hand, hard enough to hurt. "Thank you, sir," he said. "Everything they told me about you, it was all true, and then some. God bless you."

  "You're welcome," Moss said in slightly dazed tones as the noncoms took charge of his client and led him away. He'd hoped Colonel Thorgood would go easy on Stubbs. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined Thorgood would go this easy. Six months and $250? From a military court? That was hardly even a slap on the wrist.

  Major Lopat must have felt the same way. As he put papers back into his military-issue briefcase, he sent Moss a sour stare. "Well, Clarence Darrow, you pulled a rabbit out of the hat this time," he said.

  "Oh, come on," Moss said-he was damned if he'd admit surprise to the other side. "You didn't have a case, and you know it."

  Lopat didn't even bother arguing with him. All the military prosecutor said was, "Yeah? So what? Look where we are."

  "Canadians deserve justice, too," Moss said.

  "Oh, yeah? Since when? Says who?" Having fired three cliches like an artillery barrage, Major Lopat added, "And a whole fat lot you'd care, too, if you weren't sleeping with a Canuck gal."

  That might even have been true. Even so, to Moss it had only one possible answer, and he used it: "Screw you, Sam." He packed his own papers in his briefcase and left the courtroom, grabbing his overcoat as he went. The calendar said spring had started three days earlier, but Berlin, Ontario, paid little attention to the calendar. Snow whitened streets and sidewalks, with more falling even as Moss walked along the street.

  He paused thoughtfully in front of a sign that said, EMPIRE GROCERIES. Below the words, a large, American-looking eagle was painted. Maybe the storekeeper meant the American empire, the one that stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of California, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But maybe, too, it was meant to call to mind the name Berlin had briefly borne during the Great War, when its citizens decided living in a town named for an enemy capital was unpatriotic.

  Moss chuckled. Laura Secord still refused to call the town anything but Empire. As far as she was concerned, the occupying authorities had no right to change back the name. There were no Canadian patriots more fiery than Laura.

  And yet she'd warned him the uprising was imminent. He still didn't fully understand that, and she refused to talk about it now. His best guess was that she hadn't thought the revolt had any chance to succeed, and so she wasn't committing treason by talking about it. But that was only a guess, and he knew it.

  He stopped at a diner a few doors down from Empire Groceries. A waiter brought him a menu. The man walked with a limp; he'd taken a bullet in the leg trying to hold back the U.S. Army. He knew Moss had flown aeroplanes for the USA, but didn't hold it against him-much. "Case over?" he asked as Moss sat down at an empty table.

  "That's right," Moss answered. "Let me have the corned beef on wheat, and coffee to go with it."

  As the waiter scribbled on a pad, he asked another question: "They going to let Horace live?"

  "Six months in jail and $250," Moss said exultantly.

  The waiter dropped his pencil. "Be damned," he said, grunting in pain as he bent to pick it up. He called back to the cook, who was also the owner. "Hey, Eddie! This fast-talking Yank got Horace off easy!"

  "What's 'easy'?" Eddie called back. "Twenty years? Ten?"

  "Six months," the waiter answered, sounding as excited as Moss. "And $250."

  "Be damned," Eddie said, as the waiter had. That impressed him enough to make him come out front. He had on a cloth cap in lieu of the toque a cook at a fancier place might have worn. He tipped it to Moss. "Lunch on the house, pal."

  "Thanks," Moss told him.

  "You did it," Eddie said. "Seems like our own barristers haven't had much luck in Yankee courts. Maybe it takes one to know one."

  That wasn't exactly praise, though the cook no doubt meant it as such. It also wasn't so, or not necessarily. With a sigh, Moss said, "That fellow they said was a bomber, they threw the book at him no matter what I did."

  "Enoch Dupree, you mean?" the waiter said.

  Moss nodded. "That's right."

  The waiter and Eddie looked at each other. After a long pause, Eddie said, "Hate to tell you, but Enoch, he was a bomber. I happen to know it for a fact, on account of his brother-in-law's married to my cousin. I-"

  "I don't want to hear about it." Moss held up a hand to show he really meant it. "My job is to give people the best defense they can get, regardless of whether they're guilty or not."

  "Don't know I much fancy that," the waiter said. "Shouldn't be guilty people running around loose just 'cause they've got smart lawyers."

  "Well, your other choice is to send innocent people to jail," Moss answered. "How do you like that?"

  "I don't, much," the Canadian answered. "But I thought it was what you Yanks call justice. Sure has looked like that since you came."

  "You shouldn't blame him," Eddie said. "He's done everything he could for us, ever since he hung out his shingle here."

  "That's so," the waiter admitted, and Moss felt good till the fellow added, "Sure as hell wish he could do a lot more, though."

  Lucien Galtier sighed as he and Marie and Georges and Jeanne-the last two children left at home-got into his Chevrolet for the Sunday trip to Riviere-du-Loup. "I'd sooner go to Mass in St.-Antonin or St.-Modeste," he said, "but sometimes there's no help for it."

  "Doing this is wise," his wife said. "As long as we come to church every so often and let Bishop Pascal see us, everything should be fine."

  "We don't want to give him any reason to complain about us to the Americans, no," Lucien agreed.

  "But the Republic of Quebec is free and independent," Georges said. "And if you don't believe me, just ask the first American soldier you see."

  Georges always liked to sound as if he were joking. Sometimes he was. Sometimes… Lucien had learned an English expression: kidding on the square. That summed things up better than anything in Quebecois French.

  "You're getting pretty good at this driving business," Georges went on as they rolled up the paved road past the hospital and toward the town on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence. "Anyone would think you'd been doing it all your life." He chuckled. "They'd hardly even invented horses when you were a boy, eh, Papa, let alone motorcars?"

  "They hadn't invented such smart alecks, I'll tell you that," Lucien said. His younger son preened, as if at praise.

  The Eglise Saint-Patrice in Riviere-du-Loup was called a cathedral these days, though it was the same building it had always been. Quite a few motorcars parked nearby. Times were… Lucien wouldn't say they were good, but he thought it now and again.

  As people filed into the church (being the stubborn Quebecois farmer he was, Galtier refused to think of it as a cathedral, no matter what Bishop Pascal declared), some of them talked about the stocks they'd bought, and about how much money they'd made from them. Lucien felt Marie's eyes on him. Ever so slightly, he shook his head. He'd stayed away from the bourse, and intended to go right on staying away from it. It struck him as being much more like gambling than any legitimate way to make money. Gambling, now, gambling was all very well-so long as you knew you could lose as easily as you could win.

  He was almost to the door when he heard the word scandal for the first time. Now he and his wife looked at each other. He shrugged. Marie did the same. A moment later, he hea
rd the word again. Something juicy had happened. And I've been on the farm minding my own business, and so I haven't the faintest idea what it is, he thought regretfully.

  "Tabernac," he muttered. The look Marie sent him this time was definitely reproachful. He pretended not to notice. It wasn't-quite-as if he'd cursed on holy ground. The other side of the door, it would have been a different business.

  No sooner had he gone inside than someone else-a woman-said scandal, and immediately started giggling. "What's going on, mon pere?" Georges asked. Scandal-especially scandal that might be funny-drew him the way maple syrup drew ants.

  A young priest named Father Guillaume stood by the altar in Bishop Pascal's place. As Lucien took his seat in the pews, he asked the fellow next to him, a townsman, "Where's the bishop?"

  "Why, with the children, of course," the man answered, and started to laugh. Lucien fumed. He didn't want to admit he didn't know what was going on. That would make him look like a farmer who came to town only to sell things and to hear Mass. Of course, he was a farmer who came to town only to sell things and to hear Mass, but he didn't want to remind the world of it.

  His eldest daughter, Nicole; her husband, the American doctor named Leonard O'Doull; and their son, Lucien, sat down behind his family. He started to lean back and ask them what was so delicious, but Father Guillaume began speaking in Latin just then, so he had to compose himself in patience.

  He dared hope the priest's sermon would enlighten him, but it only left him more tantalized and titillated than ever. Father Guillaume talked about those without sin casting the first stone. He praised Pascal, and wished him good fortune in whatever he chose to do with the rest of his life.

  Lucien wiggled like a man with a dreadful and embarrassing itch. What ever the scandal was, it must have got Bishop Pascal! He'd never cared for Pascal; the man was too pink, too clever, too… too expedient, to suit him. But Pascal had always come up smelling like a rose-till now. And I don't even know what he did! Galtier thought in an agony of frustration.

  He went up and took communion from Father Guillaume. He swallowed the wafer as fast as he could; he didn't want to speak of scandal with the Body of Christ still on his tongue. But then he made a beeline for his son-in-law.

  "What? You don't know? Oh, for heaven's sake?" Dr. O'Doull exclaimed. He'd come to Quebec during the war, speaking tolerably good Parisian French. After ten years here, his accent remained noticeable, but only a little. He sounded more as if he'd been born in la belle province-la belle republique, now-every day.

  "No, I don't know," Galtier ground out. "Since you are such a font of knowledge, suppose you enlighten me."

  "Mais certainement, mon beau-pere," O'Doull said, grinning. "Bishop Pascal's lady friend just had twins."

  "Twins!" Lucien said. "Le bon Dieu!"

  "God was indeed good to Bishop Pascal, wouldn't you agree?" his son-in-law said, and laughed out loud. "I should say, to former Bishop Pascal, for he has resigned his see in light of this… interesting development. Father Guillaume will serve the spiritual needs of Riviere-du-Loup until the see has a new bishop."

  "Twins," Galtier repeated, as if he'd never heard the word before. "Yes, I can see how he would have to resign after that."

  No one was surprised when priests had lady friends. They were men of the cloth, yes, but they were also men. A lot of women, down through the years, had sighed over Father, later Bishop, Pascal. Lucien didn't understand it, but he'd never been a woman, either. And few people were astonished if the lady friends of priests sometimes presented them with offspring. That, too, was just one of those things. Life went on, people looked the other way, and the little bastards were often very well brought up.

  "But twins!" Lucien said. "You can't look the other way at twins. By the nature of things, a bishop's twins are a scandal."

  "Exactly so, mon beau-pere," Leonard O'Doull said. "And that is why Bishop Pascal is Bishop Pascal no more, but plain old Pascal Talon."

  "Pascal Talon!" Galtier exclaimed. "That's right-that is his family. I hadn't thought of his family name in years, though. No one has, I'm sure."

  "Of course not, not when he belonged to the Church for all those years," Dr. O'Doull said. "That's what belonging to the Church means. That's what it does. It takes you away from your family and puts you in God's family." He laughed again. "But, now that he's gone and made God's family bigger…"

  Galtier laughed, too. He asked, "Since you are in town and hear all these things the moment they happen-and since you don't bother telling your poor country cousins about them-could you tell me what M. Pascal Talon plans to do now that he is Bishop Pascal no more?" Whatever it was, he had the nasty feeling the man would make a great success of it.

  And, sure enough, his son-in-law said, "I understand he's decided Riviere-du-Loup is too small a place for a man of his many talents. He will be moving to Quebec City, they say, where he can be appreciated for everything he is."

  A snake, a sneak, a worm, a collaborator, a philanderer-yes, in the capital of the Republic he should do well for himself, Galtier thought. He found some more questions: "And what of the twins? Are they boys or girls, by the way? And what of their mother? Is Pascal now a married man?"

  "They're a boy and a girl. Very pretty babies-I've seen them," O'Doull replied. Being a doctor, he'd seen a lot of babies. If he said they were pretty, Lucien was prepared to believe him. He went on, "I am given to understand that Suzette is now Mme. Talon, yes, but I don't think she'll be going to Quebec City with her new husband."

  Marie heard that and let out a loud sniff. "He made himself a member of God's family. If he cheated on his vows to the Lord, how can anyone think he won't cheat on his vows to a woman? Poor Suzette."

  "Yes, very likely Pascal will cheat on her, but she must have known he cheated when she first started her games with him," Lucien said.

  "Why do you always blame the woman?" his wife demanded.

  "Why do you always blame the man?" he returned, also heatedly.

  "Excuse me." Dr. O'Doull made as if to duck. "I'm going somewhere safer-the trenches during the war were probably safer."

  "It will be all right," Galtier said. "We've been married this long. We can probably last a little longer."

  Marie didn't argue, but her expression was mutinously eloquent. And, as a matter of fact, Galtier wondered why he did take the former Bishop Pascal's side. It wasn't as if he liked the man. He never had. He'd never trusted him, either. Pascal had always been too smooth, too rosy, to be reliable. That was what Lucien had thought, at any rate. Plainly, a lot of people had had a different opinion.

  But was Suzette, the new Mme. Talon, such a bargain? Galtier also had his doubts about that. After all, if she'd let Pascal into her bed, what did that say about her taste? Nothing good, certainly.

  "Let's go home," he said.

  "All right," Marie answered. Her voice had no, We'll come back to this later, in it, so he supposed this wouldn't be a fight that clouded things between them for days at a time. They'd had a few of those, but only a few: one reason they still got on so well after thirty years and a bit more besides.

  "Why do you dislike Bishop Pascal so much?" Jeanne asked on the way back to the farm.

  "Well, just for starters, because he tried to get us to collaborate with the Americans during the war. And when we wouldn't do it, he got them to take away our land and build the hospital on it," Galtier replied. "You were just a little girl then, so you wouldn't remember very well, but he alienated our patrimony."

  "But…" His youngest daughter seemed to have trouble putting her thoughts into words. At last, she said, "But my sister married an American. We're paid rent, and a good one, for the land the hospital sits on."

  Georges laughed. "How do you answer that one, Papa?"

  That was a good question. Galtier did the best he could, saying, "At the time, what Father Pascal did seemed wrong. It worked out for the best. I can't quarrel with that. But just because it worked out for the best does
n't mean Pascal did what he did for good reasons. He did what he did to grab with both hands."

  "Suppose the Americans had lost the war," Marie added. "What would have happened to Pascal then?"

  "He would have come out ahead of the game, and convinced everyone everything was somebody else's fault," Georges replied at once.

  He was probably right, even if that wasn't the answer his mother had been looking for. Lucien sighed. The farmhouse wasn't far now. "Quebec City had better watch out," he said, and drove on.

  S ylvia Enos stood in the kitchen of her flat, glaring at her only son. She had to look up to glare at him. When had George, Jr., become taller than she? Some time when she wasn't watching, surely. He looked unhappy now, twisting his cloth cap in his hands. "But, Ma," he said, "it's the best chance I'll ever have!"

  "Nonsense," Sylvia told him. "The best chance you'll ever have is to stay in school and get as much learning as you can."

  His face-achingly like his dead father's, though he couldn't raise a mustache and they were falling out of style anyhow-went closed and hard, suddenly a man's face, and a stubborn man's at that, not a boy's. "I don't care anything about school. I hate it. And I'm no.. good in it anyhow." He wouldn't say damn, not in front of his mother. Sylvia had done her best to raise him right.

  "You don't want to go to sea at sixteen," Sylvia said.

  "Oh, yes, I do," he said. "There's nothing I want more."

  Till you meet a girl. Then you'll find something you want more. But Sylvia didn't say that. It wouldn't have helped. What she did say was, "If you go to sea at sixteen, you'll be doing it the rest of your life."

  "What's wrong with that?" he asked. "What else am I going to be doing the rest of my life?"

  "That's why you go to school," Sylvia said. "To find out what else you could be doing."

  "But I don't want to do anything else," George, Jr., said, exactly as his father might have. "I just want to go down to T Wharf and out to sea, the way Pop did."

  All the reasons he wanted to go to sea were all the reasons Sylvia wanted him to stay home. "Look what going to sea got your father in the end," she said, fighting to hold back tears.