by Algis Budrys
And he had no good reason, really, to be as much nagged as he was. Whatever was going on in Philadelphia was probably local political maneuvering. Holland’s company could handle anything New Jersey might have to put up. Especially with the cars along. And if they got into a serious jam, they could call on Philadelphia. No matter what was going on there, they’d have to turn out garrison on call, whatever they thought of it.
Perhaps he should have taken the Army into Philadelphia.
What for? Just because Willets had suddenly turned noncommunicative and finally gone back to New York? Willets was an old man by now. Old men developed odd quirks.
He wanted no part of politics. He’d decided that a long time ago, and he couldn’t change now. Under no circumstances could he begin dabbling with the internal affairs of the Republic. He had no desire to become a military dictator.
Why should there be any reason for him to be a military dictator?
What was going on in the back of his mind?
He turned away and went back into his trailer, throwing himself on his bunk and staring up at the ceiling.
He’d cut Holland loose. Given him a completely independent command. Why? What had made him decide he might not be in control of the Army much longer?
Was this it? Was this the end he had always somehow felt, waiting in the future, waiting for him to live as he had to, do what he had to, until he finally caught up to it?
Why had he kept Eisner with him?
Why was he Theodore Berendtsen?
The Delaware had picked up heat at its headwaters, and the warmth was running southward with the river. The last cold air mass of the year had spilled over the mountains in the west northwest to meet it, had been deflected slightly by the rising warmth to the north, and was now rolling into Delaware Bay like a downhill tide, picking up speed in its southwesterly mean direction while spinning slowly. Like a scooping hand, it gathered up condensed moisture from the warmer air above the bay, and hurled patches of fog and gusts of cold into the face of the marching column.
Akin to all the troop movements of the Earth’s long military history, the column moved forward at the pace of its slowest element—the 100 thirty-inch strides per minute of the rifle platoons. Garvin sat motionless atop one of the two armored cars spotted between the Second and Third Platoons, his boots braced against a cleat, watching the column’s forward half-snaking into the cold and fog, while his body vibrated gently to the labor of the car’s throttled- back motors. His hands and face were coldly slick, but he stayed where he was rather than drop into the car’s warm interior, where he would not be able to survey the entire column. Occasionally, he broke into short frenzies of shivering. But he did not climb down off his perch.
He looked back over his shoulder, and saw Carmody’s jeep coming up from the column’s rear, where four more of the total of ten cars were posted. He frowned slightly, turning his head to peer forward once more. Holland had kept the column clear of Philadelphia, pointing for the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. Probably, they were about to make contact with the Philadelphian command post set up there.
Garvin bared his teeth in an uneasy grimace, and rose to an abrupt crouch. He waved to the jeep’s driver as the vehicle whined up close to the armored car, and scrambled over the turret. He clung momentarily to the rung of a step, then dropped off into the road, easily matching the car’s speed without a stumble. He caught a handhold on the jeep and swung himself into the back seat, behind Carmody, the Armored Lieutenant, a balding man descended from the remains of the old Marine colony at Quantico.
“Got a contact,” he said. “My lead car just radioed back—in Tampa code. There’s some sort of half-arsed CP at the bridge, all right, but my boy’s upset about something and Dunc doesn’t upset very easy.”
Garvin frowned. Tampa had been intercepting their communications, and they’d had to improve a code during the siege. Now Carmody’s man in the scouting armored car was using it again—which could only mean that he didn’t want Philadelphia to intercept his observations on the Philadelphian post.
“Think he expects them to give us any trouble?” he asked.
“Be a crazy thing to do, with our armor.”
“Might blow the bridge”’ Garvin pointed out.
Now, what’s making me think they’d do a thing like that? he wondered with a stab of illogical panic. “You think they’d feel that way?” Carmody asked, not quite incredulous enough for Garvin’s peace of mind.
“I don’t know,” Garvin said slowly, abruptly realizing that here, deep in the Republic’s territory, it was still as though they were moving into the silent lands to which they were accustomed, waiting for the crash and flame of hidden and unexpected dangers. It was as though they were on the verge of combat.
“But let’s get up there in a hurry,” he told Carmody.
The Command Post was a badly armored shack set beside the bridge approaches. An aerial projected from its roof, and there was a jeep with scabrous paint parked beside it. Someone had daubed a red-and-blue V of converging swaths on its hood.
“What the hell kind of army are you in?” Garvin barked at the man they had found there.
The man spat over his shoulder and stared grubbily up at Holland in the armored car’s forward hatch. “He ain’t Berendtsen, is he?”
“I asked you a question, mister!”
“I’m in the same goddamn army you are, I guess,” the man said irritably. “He ain’t Berendtsen, is he?”
“I’m Commander Holland, commanding A Company, Army of Unification,” Holland said impatiently. “Where’s the rest of your detail?”
“Ain’t none,” the man answered.
“What’s your rank, Bud?” Garvin asked, looking at the man’s grimy jumper.
“Sergeant, Philadelphia Military District,” the man answered, spitting again.
“Okay, Sarge,” Garvin said. “We’re going to cross your little bridge.” He could feel the veins pounding on the backs of his hands, and he could see mounded white crests bulging out the corners of Holland’s jaws.
“Not without a pass from Commander Horton, you’re not.”
“Who the hell’s he?”
“You kidding? He’s Philadelphia Command, and nothing goes over this bridge east without his pass.”
“You kidding?” Carmody said softly, and tracked his jeep’s machinegun around to bear on the man.
The man turned pale, but he cursed Carmody at the same time. “You still ain’t going over that bridge.”
“That settles it,” Garvin said to Holland. “They’ve got the bridge wired. Miler! Find anything like a detonator in that shack?”
“No soap, Jim,” the corporal called back from the CP’s door.
“Okay, sonny boy, let’s you and me go for a ride,” Jim said. He drew his Colt and aimed it at the man’s belly. “Up on the hood with you,” he said, motioning toward the CP’s jeep. The man climbed on sullenly. Jim climbed behind the wheel and kicked the starter. The motor turned over balkily, and he had to nurse it for minutes before it was running well enough to move. Then he pulled out into the highway and pointed the jeep over the bridge.
The man on the hood turned around, his eyes staring. “Hey!” he yelled back, “You wanna get killed?”
Garvin cut his speed. “Where’s she wired?”
The man licked his lips, but said nothing. Garvin gunned his motor.
“Okay, okay! There’s trips buried in the asphalt up ahead.” He was breathing heavily, scared to death. Not of the mine trips, though, Jim decided, but of what would happen to him now he’d given away their location. He wondered what sort of methods Commander Horton used to enforce orders.
They blew the CP to scrap and shot the jeep’s engine into uselessness. As they crossed the bridge, Garvin looked back and saw the black speck of the guard, half-running up the riverbank, away from Philadelphia. He looked at Jack Holland, and didn’t like what he saw in the commander’s eyes, because he knew the same expression was in
his own. There was something wrong—something so wrong that it made him debate disregarding orders and recommending that the column turn toward New York at the fastest pace the men could march.
Holland looked at him and shook his head. “Berendtsen knew what he was doing when he sent us down here,” he said. “Let’s get to finding out what it was.”
* * *
The Army marched into a New York City turned sullen. Berendtsen, feeling the hate like a clammy fog, sucked in his breath.
A crooked smile edged the corners of his mouth He was almost always right. It was a feeling that prickled the back of his neck, each time he made a decision, apparently on the basis of no more than a feeling, and found that he had acted with almost prescient exactness.
Second sight? Or just a subconscious that worked immeasurably well?
There was no way of telling.
There were barricades up in the streets, and the people stayed behind them, kept there by squads of soldiery. There were armed men up on the housetops, and heavy weapons concentrated at strong points. And there was a flight of helicopters overhead, tagging them like whirling crows against the sky.
He could feel the Army growing apprehensive behind him. They had marched into enemy cities before.
He halted the first column in the familiar square in front of Stuyvesant Town, noticing, with a part of his mind, that the bare and rough-hewn outlines he had left were gone, furbished over, so that there was no sign that a block of buildings had once stood there.
The rest of the Army marched into the square and halted at attention, the sergeants’ commands echoing sharply and yet alone in the silence.
And still the people looked out of the windows.
What were they expecting? What were they waiting for, from him? Were they waiting for him to suddenly sweep the buildings with fire? Did they think he’d conquer this city as he’d defeated the others? Did they think somehow, that he had done all this, fought all those battles, killed all those good men, for any sake but theirs?
He turned toward his Army, seeing their white faces turn up to him, noting the men who stole glances at the building, seeing the fingers curled around the rifles, the bodies ready to twist and crouch, firing. Most of these men were not New Yorkers. And all of them were his. All he had to do was issue a command.
He felt a breeze, coming down the street from one of the rivers, touching the skin of his face.
“Dismissed!” he ordered.
* * *
Company A maintained routine contact with Philadelphia and Camden, learning nothing. Horton’s communications operators relayed their reports back into silence, and they heard nothing from Horton himself. Nor from Berendtsen. The fog that had hung over the Delaware seemed to have suddenly taken on far tougher substance, cutting them off from their commander, from the rest of the Republic, from the rest of the world. They learned nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing. The company marched into nothing, and Jim and Holland found it difficult to look into each other’s eyes.
And yet, there had still been nothing to really disquiet them. The land at the other side of the bridge was bare, and they saw nothing. Philadelphia never mentioned the incident at the bridge, or even asked if they had seen the CP’s sergeant. It was as though none of that had happened.
But it had.
They swept out in a broad arc as they moved into the central part of the peninsula, maintaining a light skirmish line backed up by the cars, which quartered back and forth.
But the infection of disquiet had spread to the men. Garvin, riding with Carmody as they worked into position for a standard two-pronged envelopment of the first fair- sized town they had come to, slapped his hand irritably on the hatch coaming.
“Goddamn it, Bill, look at those riflemen! They’re all over the bloody terrain, exposed seven ways from breakfast, none of their heads down, nothing! They act like they’re on a walking tour.
“A vacuum. We’re slogging around in this freakin’ mental vacuum, and it’s turning a bunch of professional soldiers into milk maids!”
“Easy, Jim,” Carmody said, his own voice ragged. “That goes for officers, too, if we’re not careful!”
“You’re damn right it does! I almost wish something would happen to put the edge back on us.”
A sheet of corrugated iron, snapped out like a crumb- laden tablecloth, would have made the same sudden noise.
He caught a glimpse of soldiers tumbling while the harsh roar of controlled, heavy machinegun fire swept down upon them.
“Holy Jesus!” Carmody said. “You whistled one up that time!” and then the bazooka rocket crashed into the car and exploded.
Garvin crawled down the side of the flaming car somehow, dragging his legs, and tumbled into a ditch. He lay there, sobbing curses, while pain ate him.
It took three days to level the town, going systematically from house to stubborn house after losing a platoon of men to the machinegun emplacements. They found themselves fighting women and children as well as men, and when it was all over, they reformed into a scratch company of three understrength platoons and eight cars.
Jack Holland came to see Jim before they pulled out to continue the operation. He walked into the flimsy barn which had been virtually the only undefended structure in the town, picking his way among the other wounded men.
“How’s it going, Jim?” he asked first.
Garvin shrugged. “Wish I could shake it off as fast as it happened.” He grimaced. “What the hell, I had it coming to me after all these years. I don’t have a real kick.” He looked up quickly.
“Hear anything from Ted?”
Holland shook his head, and the creases bunched up tightly on his forehead. “No. Not from him, or anybody else. I sent in a report on this little place, with a special tagline for Horton, telling him what a crummy job of scouting he’d done. Hoped to get a rise out of him.” He squatted down beside Garvin’s cot and lowered his voice.
“Didn’t get one. I know why, too. Jim, this isn’t any no- man’s land down here. Horton’s men were all through here. They weren’t doing any fighting, though. They’ve spent three years telling these farmers what a bastard Ted is. They handed out a line of crap that’d make your blood run cold. Why do you think these boys were all set up for us? Why do you think they fought like they did? And where do you think they got their weapons?”
Jim whistled softly between his clenched teeth. “What the hell’s going on around here?”
Holland shook his head bleakly. “I don’t know for sure, yet. Listen, I asked for nursing volunteers from the survivors. There’ll be about eight or ten girls coming up here. Maybe they’re grateful for us not fulfilling some of the picturesque promises that were made for us. Maybe they’re not. I’m damned well sure there’s a grapevine in this territory that leads straight back to Horton, and the smart move would be for them to be on it. Well, maybe it can work in both directions. Anyway, take a crack at finding out what you can.”
Jim nodded. “Will do.” He looked up at Holland, who had gotten to his feet again. “What’re we messed up in, Jack? How did all this happen? What made Horton think he could get away with this?”
But there was no answer, of course. Not yet. Perhaps never, and if, perhaps, they did somehow find it out, it might be too late.
Holland’s look said the same. He gestured awkwardly. “Well, I’m about due to shove off.”
“Good luck. I’ll see you in about two weeks, huh?” Holland’s mouth twitched. “I hope so.”
“Well, so long,” Jim said, and watched Holland walking out between the rows of wounded men, saying goodbye to each of them.
His nurse was a girl of about eighteen, a pale, darkhaired shape in the barn’s gloom. Her name was Edith, and her voice was pitched so low that he sometimes had to strain to hear it.
“Hurt?” she asked as she shifted his blankets.
He grunted. “About as much as it should. But don’t worry about it, hon—it’s my department.”
He lay on his back, looking up at her as she filled a glass with water. She’d been coming to tend him regularly for the past five days, leaving the other men to the girls who came with her, concentrating on him alone.
He’d asked her about that. “Shouldn’t you be spending less time on me? I’m not that bad off.”
“But you’re an officer,” she’d answered.
He wondered where she’d picked up that philosophy, and thought of Horton’s men. It made interesting thinking.
“Is that why all you girls are up here? Because it’s your natural duty to tend wounded soldiers?”
“Well… Well, no, it’s just a—a thing you do, that’s all.”
He hadn’t liked that answer. It explained nothing. It was lame with vagueness. Now he looked up at her, and wondered if Holland had been right about the grapevine.
“You always live around here, Eadie?”
She shook her head and handed him the glass, helping him raise his shoulders so he could drink. “Oh, no. I came here from Pennsylvania with my folks. All of us did. There wasn’t anybody living here then.”
He digested that, and wondered how far Horton’s treason had gone.
“Sorry you came, now?”
“Oh, no! If we’d stayed where we were, Berendtsen would have gotten us.”
“But we’re Berendtsen’s men.”
“I know,” she said. “But you’re not anything like him.”
She sounded so gravely positive that he almost laughed, stopping himself just in time.
“Did you know he was married to my sister?”
“Your sister!” He seemed to have shocked her profoundly. “Is she—is she a good woman?”
This time he did laugh, while she buried her face in her hands.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that!”
He reached out and stroked her hair. “It’s all right. And yes, she’s a good woman.”
But he was beginning to understand what Holland had meant about propaganda. Somebody had been giving these people a near lethal dose.
