Part 39 (1/2)

”Ouch!” Abner Dowling winced. ”Well, you got me there. Maybe I ought to put it a different way: aren't there some things we shouldn't shouldn't do to each other?” do to each other?”

”We've got the Geneva Convention,” Toricelli said.

”It doesn't talk about people bombs,” Dowling said. ”It doesn't talk about those camps, either. It doesn't talk about gas, come to that. n.o.body wanted to talk about gas when they were hammering it out, because everybody figured he might need it again one of these days.”

Now Toricelli eyed Dowling with a certain bemus.e.m.e.nt. ”You're just about as cheerful as I am, aren't you, sir?”

”I'm as cheerful as I ought to be,” Dowling answered. He looked out the window. An auto painted U.S. green-gray was coming up to his headquarters. The guards stopped it before it got too close. Anybody could paint a motorcar. Who was inside mattered far more than what color it was.

But the driver seemed to satisfy the guards. He got out of the Chevrolet and hurried toward the building. ”I'll see what he wants, sir,” Captain Toricelli said.

”Thanks,” Dowling told him.

His adjutant returned a few minutes later with the man from the auto-a sergeant. ”He's from the War Department, sir,” Toricelli said. ”Says he's got orders for you from Philadelphia.”

”Well, then, he'd better give them to me, eh?” Dowling did his best not to show worry. Orders from Philadelphia could blow up in his face almost as nastily as a people bomb. He could be cas.h.i.+ered. He could be summoned before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War again-and wasn't even once cruel and unusual punishment? He could be ordered back to the War Department to do something useless again. The possibilities were endless. The good good possibilities seemed much more sharply limited. possibilities seemed much more sharply limited.

”Here you are, sir,” the sergeant said.

Dowling opened the orders and put on his reading gla.s.ses. If this noncom had orders to report on how he took bad news, he was d.a.m.ned if he'd give the man any satisfaction. Wounded soldiers bit back screams for the same reason.

He skimmed through the orders, blinked, and read them again more slowly. ”Well, well,” he said when he'd finished.

”May I ask, sir?” Captain Toricelli was sensitive to everything that might go wrong. What hurt Dowling's career could hurt his, too.

”I've been relieved of this command. I've been transferred,” Dowling said.

Toricelli nodded. Like Dowling, he didn't want to show a stranger his wounds hurt. ”Transferred where, sir?” he asked, trying to find out how badly he was. .h.i.t.

”To Clovis, New Mexico, which is, I gather, near the Texas border,” Dowling answered. He couldn't keep the amazement out of his voice as he went on, ”They've appointed me commander of the Eleventh Army there. They want somebody to remind the Confederates there's a war on in those parts. And-”

”Yes, sir?” Toricelli broke in, eyes glowing. He might have been a soldier who'd discovered a bullet had punched a hole in his tunic without punching a hole in him.

”And they've given me a second star, Major Toricelli,” Major General Abner Dowling said. He and Toricelli shook hands.

”Congratulations, sir,” the sergeant from the War Department said to Dowling. The man turned to Toricelli. ”Congratulations to you, too, sir.”

”Thank you,” Dowling said, at the same time as Toricelli was saying, ”Thank you very much.” Dowling went back to his desk and pulled out the half pint. He eyed how much was left in the bottle. ”About enough for three good slugs,” he said as he undid the cap. He raised the little bottle. ”Here's to Clovis, by G.o.d, New Mexico.” He drank and pa.s.sed it to Angelo Toricelli.

”To Clovis!” Toricelli also drank, and pa.s.sed it to the sergeant. ”Here you go, pal. Kill it.”

”Don't mind if I do,” the noncom said. ”To Clovis!” He tilted his head back. His Adam's apple worked. ”Ah! That hits the spot, all right. Much obliged to you both.” He would still have a story to tell when he got back to the War Department, but it wouldn't be one of frustration and rage and despair. Sergeants didn't drink with generals-or even majors-every day.

One swig of whiskey didn't turn him into a drunk. He drove off toward Philadelphia. That left Dowling and his adjutant in a pleasant sort of limbo. ”What the deuce is going on in New Mexico?” Toricelli asked.

”All I know is what I read in the newspapers, and you don't read much about New Mexico there.” Dowling figured he was heading to Clovis to fix that, or try. ”Only thing I can really recall is that bombing raid on Fort Worth and Dallas a few months ago.”

”Probably a good idea to find out before we get there,” Toricelli said.

”Probably,” Dowling agreed. He was sure that never would have occurred to George Custer. Custer would have charged right in and started slugging with the enemy, regardless of what was going on beforehand. Nine times out of ten, he and everyone around him would soon have regretted it. The tenth time . . . The tenth time, he would have ended up a national hero. Dowling didn't make nearly so many blunders as his former boss. He feared he would never become a national hero, though. His sense of caution was too well developed.

”I'm sure we'll stop in Philadelphia on our way to Clovis,” his adjutant said. ”The War Department can brief us there.” Captain-no, Major-Toricelli had a well-developed sense of caution, too.

Not even the stars on his shoulder straps kept Dowling from being searched before he got into the War Department. ”Sorry, sir,” said the noncom who did the job. ”Complain to the Chief of Staff if you want to. Rule is, no exceptions.”

Dowling didn't intend to complain. As far as he could see, the rule made good sense. ”How many people bombs have you had?” he asked.

”Inside here? None,” the sergeant answered. ”In Philadelphia? I think the count is five right now.”

”Jesus!” Dowling said. The man who was patting him down nodded sadly.

He felt like saying Jesus! Jesus! again when he got a look at the situation map for the TexasNew Mexico border. The so-called Eleventh Army had a division and a half-an understrength corps-to cover hundreds of miles of frontier. The bombers that had plastered Dallas and Fort Worth had long since been withdrawn to more active fronts. again when he got a look at the situation map for the TexasNew Mexico border. The so-called Eleventh Army had a division and a half-an understrength corps-to cover hundreds of miles of frontier. The bombers that had plastered Dallas and Fort Worth had long since been withdrawn to more active fronts.

Only one thing relieved his gloom: the Confederates he was facing were just as bad off as he was. Where he had a division and a half under his command, his counterpart in b.u.t.ternut commanded a scratch division, and somebody had been scratching at it pretty hard. Dowling thought he could drive the enemy a long way.

After studying the map, he wondered why he ought to bother. If he advanced fifty miles into Texas, even a hundred miles into Texas-well, so what? What had he won except fifty or a hundred empty, dusty miles? All those wide-open s.p.a.ces were the best s.h.i.+eld the Confederacy had. Advance fifty or a hundred miles into Virginia and the CSA staggered. Advance fifty or a hundred miles into Kentucky and you cut the enemy off from the Ohio River and took both farming and factory country. Texas wasn't like that. There was a lot of it, and n.o.body had done much with a lot of what there was.

”Are you sending me out there to do things myself, or just to keep the Confederates from doing things?” he asked a General Staff officer.

That worthy also studied the map. ”For now, the first thing is to make sure the Confederates don't do anything,” he replied. ”If they take Las Cruces, people will talk. If they go crazy and take Santa Fe and Albuquerque, I'd say your head would roll.”

”They'd need a devil of a lot of reinforcements to do that,” Dowling said, and the colonel with the gold-and-black arm-of-service colors didn't deny it. Dowling went on, ”They'd have to be nuts, too, because even taking Albuquerque won't do a d.a.m.n thing about winning them the war.”

”Looks that way to me, too,” the colonel said.

”All right, then-we're on the same page, anyhow,” Dowling said. ”Now, the next obvious question is, who do I have to kill to get reinforcements of my own?”

”Well, sir, till we settle the mess in Pennsylvania, you could murder everybody here and everybody in Congress and you still wouldn't get any,” the General Staff officer said gravely. That struck Dowling as a reasonable a.s.sessment, too. The colonel added, ”I hope you'll be able to hold on to the force you've got. I don't promise, but I hope so.”

”All right. You seem honest, anyhow. I'll do what I can,” Dowling said.

When he headed to the Broad Street Station for the roundabout journey west, he discovered fall had ousted summer while he wasn't looking. The temperature had dropped ten or twelve degrees while he was visiting the War Department. The breeze was fresh, and came from the northwest. Gray clouds scudded along on it. No red and gold leaves on trees, no brown leaves blowing, not yet, but that breeze said they were on their way.

Home. Cincinnatus Driver had never imagined a more wonderful word. While he lived in it, the apartment in Des Moines had seemed ordinary-just another place, one where he could hang his hat. After almost two years away, after being stuck in a country that hated his-and hated him, too-that apartment seemed the most wonderful place in the world.

The apartment and the neighborhood seemed even more amazing to his father. ”Do Jesus!” Seneca Driver said. ”It's like I ain't a n.i.g.g.e.r no more. Don't hardly know how to act when the ofay down at the corner store treat me like I's a man.”

Cincinnatus smiled. ”It's like that here. I tried to tell you, but you didn't want to believe me.” Of course one reason it was like that was that Des Moines didn't have very many Negroes: not enough for whites to flabble about. The United States as a whole didn't have very many. Cincinnatus' smile slipped. The USA didn't want many Negroes, either. That left most of them stuck in the CSA, and at the tender mercy of Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party.

No such gloom troubled his father. ”Bought me a pack of cigarettes, an' I give the clerk half a dollar. An' he give me my change, an' he say to me, 'Here you is, sir.' Sir! Ain't n.o.body never call me 'sir' in all my born days, but he do it. Sir!” He might have been walking on air. Then something else occurred to him. ”That clerk, he call a Chinaman 'sir,' too?”

”Reckon so,” Cincinnatus answered. ”What color you are don't matter-so much-here. Achilles and Amanda, they both graduated from high school. You reckon that happen in Kentucky? And you got yourself two grandbabies that are half Chinese, and another one on the way. You reckon that that happen in Kentucky?” happen in Kentucky?”

”Not likely!” His father snorted at the idea. ”I seen Chinamen in the moving pictures before, but I don't reckon I ever seen one in the flesh in Covington. Now I ain't just seen 'em-I got 'em in the family!” He thought himself a man of the world because of that.

”They've got you in the family, too,” Cincinnatus said. Achilles' wife, the former Grace Chang, really seemed to like Cincinnatus' father, and to be glad Cincinnatus himself was home. Her parents had much less trouble curbing their enthusiasm. They weren't thrilled about being tied to Achilles or Cincinnatus or Seneca. The funny thing was, they would have been just about as dismayed if the Drivers were white. What bothered them was that their daughter had married somebody who wasn't Chinese.

”They is welcome in my family, long as they make that good beer,” Seneca Driver said. Cincinnatus nodded. Homebrew mattered in Iowa, a thoroughly dry state. He first got to know Joey Chang because of the beer his upstairs neighbor brewed. Achilles and Grace got to know each other in school. The rest? Well, the rest just happened.