Bombs Away

by Harry Turtledove

The farther south he went, the easier that was to forget…for a while. Then the truck passed a lamppost with a body hanging from it. Around the dead man’s neck was a placard: THIEF. Jim Summers whistled softly. “They ain’t fuckin’ around.”

  “No,” Aaron said in a voice quieter than he’d looked to use. “They aren’t.”

  Damage from the downtown bomb faded as they kept on; they hadn’t come far enough to see any from the one that took out the port. Mrs. O’Brynne of Torrance was lucky. Her little suburb, full of fig and orange orchards, seemed untouched.

  Aaron and Jim lugged the refrigerator inside, being careful to keep it upright while they did. They plugged it in. She signed the paperwork. A baby started to cry while she did. “My little girl,” she said.

  “They do that,” Aaron agreed. “Not very old, is she? A couple-three months? I’ve got a little boy who’ll be two in May.” She handed him the clipboard. He checked. She’d put her Jane Hancock everywhere it needed to be. “Much obliged, ma’am.”

  “Purty gal,” Jim said when they got back in the truck. “Reminded me a little o’ that Katharine Hepburn.”

  “If you say so.” Aaron didn’t want to argue. Mrs. O’Brynne wasn’t bad, but he didn’t think she was in that league.

  “A little, I said.” Summers changed the subject. “When you head back north, can you kindly stay farther away from the bomb, huh? You seen what you wanted to see.”

  “Oh, all right.” You had to give to get. Aaron put the truck in gear.

  A TRAIN WHISTLE BLEW, off to the north. Along with the other laborers who’d worked so hard rebuilding the rail line through Harbin, Vasili Yasevich stood by the track and waited for the train to roll by. Like his comrades in socialist labor, he wore a padded cap and a quilted jacket. But he was pink and fair and round-eyed, so he stood out in spite of his ordinary clothes.

  “Here it comes!” Somebody pointed. All the workers craned their necks up the line.

  Here it came indeed, black smoke puffing from the locomotive. The engineer leaned out the window and waved to the crowd. He looked no more Russian than Vasili.

  A claque set up a cheer: “Long live Sino-Soviet solidarity!” The engineer couldn’t possibly have heard them over the din of the mechanical monster he controlled. Even if he had heard them, he wouldn’t have understood what they were saying. The cheer was for the benefit of the Chinese onlookers.

  He tried to keep his breaths as shallow as he could. Maybe that wouldn’t do any good, but it couldn’t hurt. He hadn’t wanted to come into the blast zone to greet the Soviet train. When your gang boss told you to come, though, what you wanted stopped mattering.

  The train was a long one. Some of those tarpaulined shapes lashed to freight cars had to belong to tanks. They would help Mao and Kim Il-sung twist the Americans’ tails down in Korea.

  Those covered tank shapes looked to be the same T-34/85s that had driven the Japanese from Manchukuo with their tails between their legs in August 1945. Vasili had heard that the Russians had a new model, bigger and lower to the ground and generally meaner than their old warhorses. People who knew about such things—or made noises as if they did—complained that Stalin was giving his allies the junk he didn’t use himself any more.

  Vasili had no love for the Soviet Union. With his upbringing, it was unlikely that he should. But he didn’t have anything in particular against their Chinese allies. Mao’s men made better overlords than the Japanese had.

  They did unless they decided to give him to the MGB, anyhow. It hadn’t happened yet, and they’d seized control of Manchuria well before they took the rest of the Chinese mainland. Vasili dared hope they would keep leaving him alone. If they didn’t actually like him, indifference would do.

  He also didn’t have anything in particular against the United States. Even if the Americans had wrecked Harbin, they were the biggest reason Manchukuo was no longer a going concern. The Chinese Nationalists and Communists could have fought Japan for the next hundred years without beating it.

  More flatcars rumbled past. If those tarp-shrouded mysteries weren’t airplane fuselages, he couldn’t imagine what they would be. And if they were fuselages, the flat things strapped down by them would be wings. Could you bolt them on and start flying? He didn’t see why not. Maybe not flying saved wear and tear on the engines. Maybe it just gave the U.S. Air Force less of a chance to shoot down the Russian planes.

  Then again, the U.S. Air Force might shoot up the train, or bomb it, or fire rockets at it. Vasili was glad none of the cheering Chinese around him could tell what he was thinking. He’d go to the MGB in a hurry if they could.

  Another Soviet railroad man waved to the crowd from the caboose. That seemed to be what he was there for: waving to the people he passed. It was a nice, easy job—unless you happened to run into American planes.

  A Chinese man next to Vasili nudged him and said, “You’re the round-eyed barbarian who sells ma huang, right?”

  “That’s me,” Vasili answered with a mental sigh. If you were Chinese, anyone unlucky enough not to be was a barbarian by definition. And the man was right about which kind of barbarian he was.

  “I want to buy some,” the fellow declared, as if sure Vasili had brought some to the ceremony to cater to his needs.

  But Vasili had come to the the ceremony because he got a day off from work and because he was ordered to show up, not to do business. By Chinese standards, that made him a lazy man. The Chinese were ready—eager—to do business anywhere, any time. “I’ll sell you some tomorrow after work. Where do you want to meet?”

  “I need it. I’ll come home with you now,” the man said.

  “No.” One of the things Vasili had learned was that there were times when Chinese were the most formal, flowery people in the world. There were others when nothing but out-and-out rude got through to them. This looked to be one of those. “Tomorrow after work. Where?”

  “I’ll come home with you now,” the man repeated.

  “I said no, you stupid turtle. Do you think I want you in my house?”

  The Chinese man’s eyes opened so wide, they almost went round themselves. He hadn’t looked for a round-eyed barbarian to behave—and to sound—like one of his countrymen. Then he bristled, as if getting ready to fight.

  Vasili reached inside a jacket pocket. He carried a straight razor in there, just because you never could tell. He didn’t threaten with it. He didn’t even show it. He had no intention of starting anything. But if the Chinese man did, Vasili aimed to finish it.

  The man didn’t know what he had in his pocket. A knife? A pistol? Nothing at all—only a bluff? The Chinese decided he didn’t want to find out. He stomped off, cursing as he went.

  “Good job,” another man told Vasili. “I know Wu there a little bit, I’m sorry to say. I wouldn’t trust him inside my house, either. You may be a round-eye, but you’re nobody’s fool.”

  “Thanks.” Vasili wasn’t ready to take this stranger on trust, either.

  “Being a round-eye, do you know how other round-eyes think?” the man asked him.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Being a Chinese, do you know how other Chinese think? That’s the kind of question you’re asking.”

  “Is it? I suppose it is.” The man chuckled. “A lot of the time, I do know how other Chinese would think—they’d think the way I do. Isn’t it the same with round-eyes?”

  “A lot of the time, it is,” Vasili admitted. “Not always, though. Different kinds of round-eyes often don’t think alike, any more than Chinese and Koreans and Japanese do.”

  “Koreans?” The stranger sounded dismissive. “Japanese?” He sounded disgusted. But then he nodded to Vasili. “All right. I see what you mean. What I wondered was, when the Americans find out the railroad line through Harbin is fixed, will they drop another one of those terrible bombs on the city?”

  “Oh.” Vasili shrugged again. “I can’t begin to guess. I hope not. They’re busy over on the other side of the world. Mayb
e that will keep them from noticing Harbin—for a while, anyhow.”

  “Ah. Yes, that makes sense.” The Chinese man nodded. Around them, the crowd that had come out to celebrate the railroad’s reopening was breaking up. Men who had the day off were probably looking for ways to enjoy it as best they could. The stranger changed the subject: “Was nasty Wu there right? You have ma huang to sell?”

  “A little,” Vasili answered. “My father trained me as a druggist. He knew what an excellent medicine it was. When I have the chance, I follow in his footsteps.” Chinese honored and respected their parents more than Russians were in the habit of doing. Putting it like that was calculated to please.

  And it did. “Will you sell me some?” the man asked. “I’ll meet wherever you want.”

  Vasili smiled. Even if Wu hadn’t listened, this fellow had.

  —

  The Independence touched down at Los Angeles International Airport, a landing as smooth as a baby’s cheek. “Well, we’re here,” Harry Truman said. A cross-country flight, even on an airliner as luxurious as this one, was always wearing.

  “Quite a view, wasn’t it?” asked Joseph Short, who’d taken over from Stephen Early as Truman’s press secretary. His deep-South drawl made Truman’s Missouri twang sound almost New England-y by comparison.

  “It was, yes. The kind I hope I never have again,” Truman said. Sitting on the right side of the DC-6 as it descended across Los Angeles from east to west, he’d got a good look at what the Russian bomb had done to the heart of the city. After a moment, he went on, “Who was that guy who captured their flyer and turned him over to the cops?”

  “His name is Finch, Mr. President. Aaron Finch.” As a good press secretary should have, Short had the facts at his fingertips. “He drives a truck and installs appliances for a local company called Blue Front.”

  “Oh. Blue Front. That’s Herschel Weissman’s outfit, isn’t it?” As a good politician should have, Truman recognized a prominent contributor to his party.

  Short nodded. “I believe it is, sir.”

  “Okay. Maybe we can play it up. Is this Finch a veteran? That’d help.”

  “No, sir. He served in the merchant marine. The military wouldn’t take him—he can’t see past his nose without Coke-bottle specs.”

  “He served his country, anyhow. That’ll work,” Truman said.

  As the plane taxied over to the terminal and stopped, the props spun down to stillness. Airport workers wheeled a portable stairway to the door. Truman expected it to be warm when that door opened. This was Southern California, after all! But it was still only April, and the airport lay close by the Pacific. The air that came in was chilly and moist. He set his fedora on his head before he stepped outside.

  Reporters and photographers stood on the runway. So did National Guardsmen. The military was practically running the West Coast these days. It was in decent working order and could get directions straight from Washington. That put it several steps ahead of the battered state and local governments. Putting the Humpty-Dumpty of civilian administration back together when peace came back—if peace came back—might not be so easy. Well, the country had managed it after the Civil War. It could again.

  Truman shoved such worries out of his mind—one more time. Flashbulbs popped. The President waved to the members of the Fourth Estate. “Hello, boys!” he called. They were vultures, hoping he’d trip halfway down the stairs or do something else stupid so they could write a story about it.

  A couple of Secret Service agents pushed past Truman, hurried down the stairs, and took stations near the base of the wheeled platform to keep the newshounds from coming too close. They no doubt felt virtuous about that. But if one of the gentlemen of the press pulled out a pistol and started shooting, he could fill the President full of holes before the Secret Service men knocked him down with their guns.

  No one fired. Truman had been seventeen, almost a man but not quite, when that crazed anarchist shot William McKinley. No one had assassinated a President since then. A nut had taken a shot at FDR, but he’d only managed to kill the mayor of Chicago. And those Puerto Rican independence fanatics had hunted Truman himself, but they hadn’t made it into the White House.

  Truman’s mouth twisted. Other, even worse, madness was running wild now. He wouldn’t be visiting this ravaged city if that weren’t so. How many had died here, in the two blasts? Hundreds of thousands. Put a President’s life in the scales against so many and it didn’t seem like much.

  “How did those Russian bombers get through, Mr. President?” a reporter called. “Up and down the West Coast, sir, how did they get through?”

  “I wish I had a good answer for you,” Truman said, a reply that came from the heart. “I wish I did, but I don’t. The best I can tell you is, they must have used the same kind of tricks we’ve used to strike at their territory. And I promise you, we’ve hit them harder than they’ve hit us.”

  “That doesn’t do people here a whole lot of good,” another man said.

  “I understand that. I’ve come to see the damage with my own eyes. I’ll go up to San Francisco and Portland and Seattle afterwards, too,” the President said. “I want to make sure this can never happen again.”

  “The Russians are still advancing in Germany, too,” said a fellow with a loud necktie. “How can they be doing that if we’re hitting them with fire and brimstone like you claim?”

  “Because there are swarms of them. It’s the same trouble we had in Korea facing the Communists from the North and the Red Chinese,” Truman snapped. “We cut our military to the bone after we whipped the Germans and the Japs. Joe Stalin didn’t. We probably put too much faith in the power of our atom bombs, and didn’t look for the Russians to build theirs as soon as they did. We can see all that now. We couldn’t then, no matter how much I wish we’d been able to. Hindsight is always 20/20.”

  Behind him, Joe Short had to be pained. To a press secretary, admitting you’d made a mistake was an unpardonable sin. Truman couldn’t see it. The Führer was always right. He’d said so, repeatedly. Teachers had taught German schoolkids to believe it. Stalin was the same way—Mao, too.

  Hitler hadn’t turned out so well. Stalin and Mao killed anybody who dared disagree with them. Truman had wanted to punch a reporter in the nose a time or three, but that was as far as it went. He knew damn well he wasn’t always right. The people deserved to know he knew it.

  “Will we drive them back?” Mr. Yellow-and-Orange Necktie persisted. “Why can’t we smash their army with more A-bombs?”

  “Because that army is on the soil of a land we’re allied to, a land we’re committed to defend,” Truman said. “We use atomic weapons as a last resort, not as a first one. We don’t want to wreck our own friends.”

  Another reporter found a different kind of question for him: “Do you think anybody in the whole country will want to vote for you in 1952 after…this?” His wave took in all of shattered Los Angeles and, by extension, all of the shattered country.

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m not worrying about it right now,” Truman answered. They’d proposed the Twenty-second Amendment, limiting a President’s tenure to two terms of his own and half of a predecessor’s minus one day, in 1947. They’d got enough states to ratify it just weeks earlier. But it didn’t apply to the President in whose administration it was ratified. If he could get people to keep reelecting him till 1976, it would be legal.

  For now, though, he tended to agree with the snoopy reporter. He’d have a hard time getting elected dogcatcher next year, let alone President. That didn’t necessarily prove anything. A lot could change in a year and a half. The USA might have won the war by then.

  Or the Russians might have dropped one on the White House, the way the United States had dropped one on the Kremlin. The American effort hadn’t got rid of Stalin, which was too bad. Maybe the Russians won’t get me, either, Truman thought. If they did, the USA would have an easier time going on than Russia would without
Uncle Joe. If the United States could get along without Roosevelt, it could definitely get along without Truman.

  He held up both hands. “Boys, I didn’t come to chew the fat on the runway,” he said. “I came to see what Los Angeles looks like now, and how we can get it back on its feet as soon as possible.” He’d also come to eat rubber chicken at a banquet that would swell Democratic coffers, but he didn’t mention that.

  He’d hoped for a convertible so he could see better, but they put him into a sedan. The fan was uncommonly noisy. That turned out to be because it wasn’t just a fan. “This car has an air-conditioning and filtering system, sir,” explained the Air Force colonel who played tour guide for him. “Some of the dust in the air is still radioactive in the damaged regions. We don’t know how much long-term harm it can do, and we don’t want to experiment on the President.”

  “No, eh?” Truman said. “Well, thanks for that much.”

  In the air-conditioned car, he got close to ground zero. Nothing much stirred there. The area had been comprehensively flattened. But a crow hopped around on the glassy ground before flying off in search of a place that offered better eating. The bird didn’t worry about radioactivity.

  The bird also didn’t have to decide whether and when to launch new strikes against the Soviet Union. All it worried about were cats and hawks. It didn’t know how lucky it was.

  —

  Cade Curtis watched the distant plumes of black exhaust heading his way. Sure as hell, more T-34/85s had made it into Korea. Tanks with diesel engines had all kinds of advantages over ones powered by gas. They went farther on the same amount of fuel. They were easier to maintain. If hit by an AP round, they were far less likely to explode into flame.

  But they didn’t run clean. You could see them coming if they moved by day. You could, and Cade did. He went down the trench to the radioman. “Let division know we’ve got half a dozen tanks coming toward us,” he said. “An air strike would be nice, or some artillery if they can’t do that.”

  “Yes, sir,” the kid with the heavy backpack said. Some kid—he was likely a year or two older than Curtis. He hesitated, then asked, “What if they can’t do it?”