In At the Death sa-4

by Harry Turtledove

  "Well, that's a fair answer," Quinn said after silence stretched for more than half a minute. "You've done your soldiering. If you don't want to do it again, who can blame you? I wish you felt different, but if you don't, you don't." He drained his glass and strode out of La Culebra Verde.

  "Did you make him unhappy?" the bartender asked.

  "I'm afraid I did. He doesn't want the war to be over, but I've had enough. I've had too much." He wondered how Gabe Medwick was getting along. He hoped the U.S. soldiers had picked up his wounded buddy back in the Virginia woods. Was Gabe back in Alabama by now, or did he still languish in a POW camp like Miguel?

  And what about Sergeant Blackledge? Jorge would have bet anything that he was raising trouble for the Yankees wherever he was. That man was born to bedevil anybody he didn't like, and he didn't like many people.

  The bartender drew another beer and set it in front of Jorge. "On the house," he said. "I don't want to go to the hills. I don't want the United States shooting hostages here. I don't want to be one of the hostages they shoot. Por Dios, Jorge, enough is enough."

  "Some men will eat fire even if they have to start it themselves," Jorge said, looking at the door through which Robert Quinn had gone.

  "He will find hotheads. People like that always do. Look at Jake Featherston." The bartender never would have said such a thing while the Freedom Party ruled Baroyeca. It would have been worth his life if he had. He went on, "I don't think anyone will speak to the soldados from los Estados Unidos if Seсor Quinn stays here quietly. But if he goes looking for stalwarts…Then he's dangerous."

  Was the bartender saying he would turn in Robert Quinn if Quinn tried to raise a rebellion? If he was, what was Jorge supposed to do about him? Kill him to keep him from blabbing? But that was raising a rebellion, too, and Jorge had just told Quinn he didn't want to do any such thing.

  He also didn't want to sit by while something bad happened to his father's old friend. Sometimes nothing you did would help. He had the feeling that that was true for much of the CSA's last war against the USA.

  He also had the feeling it would be true if Confederates tried to mix it up with the USA in the war's aftermath. Yes, they could cause trouble. Could they cause enough to make U.S. forces leave? He couldn't make himself believe it.

  When he came back to the farm alone late that afternoon, his mother's face fell, the way it always did when he came back alone. "No Miguel?" she asked sadly.

  "No Miguel. I'm sorry, mamacita." Then Jorge told of meeting Robert Quinn as the Freedom Party man got off the train.

  His mother only sniffed. Next to her missing son, a man who wasn't from the family didn't cut much ice. The news excited Pedro, though. "Does he want to-?" He didn't go on.

  "Yes, he does," Jorge answered. "I told him I didn't." He spoke elliptically, as Pedro had, to keep from making their mother flabble.

  Pedro looked discontented. But Pedro hadn't done a whole lot of fighting. He'd spent most of the war behind barbed wire. He didn't have such a good idea of what the United States could do if they decided they wanted to. Jorge did. What he'd seen in Virginia as the war wound down would stay with him for the rest of his life. The overwhelming firepower and the will to use it scared him more than he was willing to admit, even to himself.

  "What are we going to do? Sit here quiet for the rest of our lives?" Pedro asked.

  "You can do what you want," Jorge answered. "Me, I'm going to stay on the farm and see how things go. We have a crop this year, and that's enough for now. If things change later, if the United States make life too hard to stand…Then I'll worry about it. Not until."

  "What kind of patriot are you?" his brother asked.

  "A live one," Jorge answered. "That's the kind I want to go on being, too. Los Estados Confederados are dead, Pedro. Dead. I don't think they'll come back to life no matter what we do."

  "You think we're beaten."

  "Sн. That's right. Don't you?"

  Pedro didn't answer. He stormed out of the farmhouse instead. Jorge started to go after him, then checked himself. His brother could figure out what was going on without him. Jorge hoped he could, anyhow.

  The Oregon cruised off the Florida coast. The weather was fine. It felt more like August than October to George Enos. Back home in Boston, the leaves would be turning and it would be getting cold at night. Everything stayed green here. He didn't think autumn would ever come.

  All the same, he didn't want to stay stuck on the battleship the rest of his life. He wanted to get home to Connie and the boys. Fighting in a war was one thing. Yeah, you needed to do that; he could see as much. Occupation duty? As far as he was concerned, they could conscript somebody else for it.

  He griped. Most of the sailors on the Oregon who weren't career Navy guys were griping. Griping let off steam, and did no other good he could see. Nobody who mattered would pay attention. Nobody who mattered ever paid attention to ratings. That was how the Navy operated.

  "Hey, you sorry bastards are stuck," Wally Fodor said. "We can't just pretend the fucking Confederates'll be good little boys and girls, the way we did the last time around. We know better now, right?"

  "All I know is, this ain't what I signed up for," George answered. "I got a family. My kids hardly remember who I am."

  "As soon as you swore the oath and they shipped your sorry rear end to Providence, they had you. They had you but good," the gun chief said. "You might as well lay back and enjoy it."

  "I've been screwed long enough," George said. "Too damn long, to tell you the truth. I want to go home. I'm not the only one, either-not even close. Congress'll pay attention, whether the brass does or not."

  "Don't hold your breath-that's all I've got to tell you." Fodor gave what was much too likely to be good advice.

  In the meantime, there was Miami, right off the starboard bow. If anybody got out of line, the Oregon's big guns could smash the city to bits. That was what battleships were good for nowadays: blasting the crap out of people who couldn't shoot back. In the Great War, they'd been queens of the sea. Now they were afterthoughts.

  "Think we'll get liberty?" one of the shell-jerkers asked, a certain eagerness in his voice. Miami had a reputation almost like Habana's. Didn't hot weather produce hot women? That was how the stories went, anyhow.

  George didn't know whether to believe the stories. He did know he'd been away from Connie long enough to hope to find out if they were true. He could hope it would be his last fling before he went back to his wife for good. That would help him feel not so bad about doing what he wanted to do anyway.

  But Wally Fodor repeated, "Don't hold your breath. Besides, do you really want to get knocked over the head if you go ashore? They don't love us down here. Chances are they're never going to, either."

  "Hey, I don't care about love," the shell-jerker said. "Long as I can get it in, that's good enough." Laughter said it was good enough for most of the gun crew.

  They didn't get liberty. They did get fresh produce. Boats came alongside to sell the battleship fruit and meat and fish. Fresh orange juice and lemonade appeared in the galley. So did fresh peas and green beans, and salads with tender lettuce and buttery avocados and tomatoes and celery. The sailors ate fried shrimp and fried fish and spare ribs and fried chicken.

  George had to let his belt out a notch. The chow beat the hell out of any Navy rations he'd had before. Bumboats brought out fresh water, too, enough so the crew didn't have to use seawater and saltwater soap when they showered. If that wasn't a luxury, he'd never known one. Peace had its advantages, all right.

  He'd just stripped off his uniform to get clean when an enormous explosion knocked him ass over teakettle. "The fuck?" he said, which was one of the more coherent comments from the naked sailors.

  Klaxons hooted. He ran for his battle station without thinking about his clothes. Bodies lay on the deck. He'd worry about them later. Right now, he had a job to do, and he could do it with pants or without. He wasn't the only naked man
heading for duty-not even close.

  Petty Officer Fodor had a cut on his face and another one on his arm. He didn't seem to notice either one. "They blew up a goddamn bumboat," he said. "Right alongside us, they blew up a goddamn bumboat."

  "They're idiots if they did," George said. The Oregon, like any modern battleship, had sixteen-inch armor belts on either side to protect against gunfire and torpedoes. They weren't perfect, as the melancholy roll of torpedoed battlewagons attested. But they were a hell of a lot better than nothing. A blast that might have torn a destroyer in two dented the Oregon and killed and hurt people exposed to it without coming close to sinking her.

  "This is the captain speaking!" the PA blared. "Odd-numbered gun stations, aid in casualty collection and damage assessment. Even numbers, hold your posts."

  As the skipper repeated the order, George and the other men from his twin-40mm mount dashed off to do what they could for the sailors who hadn't been so lucky. There were a lot of them: anybody who'd been on deck when the bumboat exploded was down and moaning or down and thrashing or down and not moving at all, which was worst.

  Some of the paint was burning. Men already had hoses playing on the fires. The stink made George's asshole pucker. When your ship got hit, that odor was one of the things you smelled. And he almost fell on his face skidding through a puddle of seawater from the fire-fighters.

  He knelt by a burned man who was clutching his left shoulder. "C'mon, buddy-I'll give you a hand," he said.

  "Thanks." The wounded sailor groped for him. "Sorry. I can't see a goddamn thing."

  "Don't worry about it. The docs'll fix you up." George had no idea whether they could or not. The other man's face didn't look good, which was putting it mildly. "Your legs all right? I'm gonna get you on your feet if I can."

  "Give it a try," the injured man said, which might have meant anything. He groaned and swayed when George hauled him upright, but he didn't keel over again. George got the fellow's good arm around his own shoulder. He also got blood on his own bare hide, but that was something to flabble about later.

  Helping the other sailor down three flights of steep, narrow steel stairs when the poor guy couldn't see where to put his feet was an adventure all by itself. George managed. Other sailors and groups were carrying injured men and trying to get them down in stretchers without spilling them out.

  In the sick bay and in the corridors outside it, the battleship's doctors and pharmacist's mates were working like foul-mouthed machines. One of the mates took a quick look at the sailor George had brought down. "Put him there with them," he said, pointing to a group of other men who were hurt but not in imminent danger of dying. "We'll get to him as soon as we have a chance to."

  "Good luck, pal," George said as he eased the wounded sailor down. It was painfully inadequate, but it was all he could offer.

  "Thanks. Go help somebody else," the other man said. Somebody-maybe a pharmacist's mate, maybe a rating one of the doctors had dragooned-stuck a needle into him. Morphine sure wouldn't hurt.

  George was helping to get another injured man down to first aid when someone said, "I wonder what we'll do to Miami for this."

  "Blow the fucking place off the fucking map," the wounded sailor said. That sounded good to George. He'd heard of people bombs and auto bombs, but a boat bomb? The son of a bitch who thought of that one had more imagination than he knew what to do with. George hoped he'd been on the boat and pressed the button that blew it up. If he had, maybe the scheme would die with him.

  Or was that too much to hope for?

  "Hell of a note if we've got to inspect every boat that brings us supplies," a CPO said. "Sure looks like we will, though."

  When George got down to sick bay this time, he noticed a group of badly hurt men nobody was helping. They had to be the ones the doctors thought wouldn't get better no matter what. No time to waste effort on them, then. That was cruel logic, but it made sense.

  The Oregon, he learned later, lost 31 dead and more than 150 wounded. In response, the U.S. Army seized 1,500 Miamians. Some of the attempted seizures turned into gun battles, too. The locals knew what the soldiers were coming for, and weren't inclined to give themselves up without a fight. Because of the casualties the Army took rounding up the hostages, it rounded up more hostages still.

  Guns aimed toward the city, the Oregon sailed close inshore. The sharp, dry crack!s of rifle volleys came across the water, one after another after another. They got the message across: if you messed with the USA, you paid. And paid. And paid.

  Some of the sailors weren't satisfied even so. "We ought to blast the shit out of that place," Wally Fodor said. "Those assholes fucked with us, not with the Army. We ought to give them a fourteen-inch lesson."

  "Sure works for me," George said. All right, so battleships were shore-bombardment vessels these days. There was a shore that needed bombarding, and it was lying there naked and undefended in front of them.

  But the order didn't come. The men pissed and moaned. That was all they could do. They couldn't open up on Miami without orders. Oh, maybe they could-the men on the smaller guns, anyhow-but they were looking at courts-martial and long terms if they did. Nobody had the gall to try it.

  Discipline tightened up amazingly. They'd taken it easy after the Confederate surrender. They didn't any more. You never could tell what might happen now. George would have bet skippers and execs all around the fleet were preaching sermons about the battleship. That was just what he wanted, all right: to serve aboard the USS Object Lesson.

  "Isn't it great?" he said to Fodor. "All those guys are going, 'See? You better not be a bunch of jerkoffs like the clowns on the Oregon. Otherwise, the Confederates'll blow your nuts off, too.'"

  "Yeah, that's about the size of it, all right," the gun chief agreed. "They can fix up the scar on the side of the ship and slap fresh paint all over the place, but the scar on our reputation ain't gonna go away so fast. Goddamn Confederate cockknockers took care of that in spades."

  "Fuck it," George said. "I just want to get back to Boston in one piece. Goddamn war was supposed to be over months ago."

  "You think we were down here for no reason?" Fodor patted the gun mount. "I wish they would've lined up the hostages right there on the beach. Then we coulda opened up on 'em with the 40mms. Boy, we would've gone through 'em in a hurry."

  "Yeah." George hadn't thought of the antiaircraft guns as weapons that could substitute for a firing squad. But Wally Fodor wasn't wrong. "You turn these babies on people, you know what you've got? You've got Grim Reapers, that's what."

  "I like it," Fodor said, and damned if he didn't show up the next day with a can of white paint and some stencils. GRIM REAPER 1 went on the right-hand gun barrel, GRIM REAPER 2 on the gun on the left. "Way to go, Enos. Now they've got names."

  "Oh, boy." George tried not to sound too gloomy. He was stuck on the Oregon, though, and he wished to God he weren't.

  A fter so long in the war zone, Cincinnatus found Des Moines strange. Sleeping in his own bed, sleeping with his own wife-that was mighty good. Getting used to a peacetime world wasn't so easy.

  He flinched whenever an auto backfired or a firecracker went off. He automatically looked for somewhere to hide. He noticed white men half his age doing the same thing. They noticed him, too. "You go through the mill, Pop?" one of them called when they both ducked walking down the street after something went boom.

  "Drove a truck all the way through Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia," Cincinnatus answered. "Wasn't right at the front, but I got bushwhacked a couple-three times."

  "Oughta do it," the white man agreed. "I was in Virginia, and I got shot. Then they sent me to Alabama. I don't think I'll ever stop being jumpy."

  "Man, I know what you mean," Cincinnatus said with feeling. They gave each other waves that weren't quite salutes as they passed.

  Cincinnatus knew just where he was going: to the recruiting station where he'd signed up to drive a truck. It was right where it had been.
UNCLE SAM STILL NEEDS YOU! said the sign out front. He went inside.

  Damned if the same recruiting sergeant wasn't sitting in there, doing paperwork with a pen held in a hook. The man looked up when the door opened. "Well, well," he said, smiling. "I know you, and your name will come to me in a second if I let it. You're Mr.-Driver."

  "That's right, Sergeant." Cincinnatus smiled, too. "I first came in here, I called you suh."

  "You didn't know the ropes then. I see you do now," the noncom answered. "I'm glad you came through in one piece. I bet you cussed the day you stuck your nose in here plenty of times."

  "Best believe I did," Cincinnatus said. "You mind if I sit down?"

  "Not even a little bit. I remember you had a bad leg. And you can see I'm busy as hell right now, right?" The sergeant got to his feet. "Can I grab you a cup of coffee?"

  "I'd thank you if you did," Cincinnatus replied. "Stuff 's startin' to taste good again."

  "We're getting real coffee beans for a change, not whatever kind of crap we were using instead," the recruiting sergeant said. "You take cream and sugar?"

  "Both, please." Cincinnatus hesitated. "You know, I never learned your name the las' time I was here."

  "I'm Dick Konstam-a damn Dutchman, but at your service. You've got a fancy handle. I remember that, but you'd better remind me what it is."

  "Cincinnatus-that's me… Thank you kindly." Cincinnatus sipped from the paper cup. The coffee was strong, but it hadn't been sitting on the hot plate long enough to get bitter yet. He took another sip. Then he asked the question he'd come here to ask: "Sergeant Konstam-uh, Dick-how the hell do I get myself to fit back into things? Wasn't near so hard the last time around."

  Konstam paused to light a cigarette. It was a Niagara. He made a sour face. "Tobacco still sucks." He blew out smoke. "You sure you want to talk about that with me, Cincinnatus? What makes you think I've got any answers?"

  "You done it yourself. And you've seen plenty of other fellows come and go through here," Cincinnatus said. "If you don't know, who's likely to?"