"It would be good practice for a war with the Kaiser, if we ever had to fight one of those," Horwitz said.
"Yes, it would, wouldn't it?" Morrell grinned at his aide-de-camp. "There's another report for you, if you feel like writing it-tell the people back in the War Department what you just told me. Back it up with maps and force breakdowns and distance charts and all the other little goodies you can think of."
Captain Horwitz's expression was less than overjoyed. "You've really got it in for me, don't you, sir?" he said, about half in jest.
And, about half in jest, Morrell nodded. "Damn right I do. I want to get you promoted again so I don't have to deal with you any more. If you don't want to be a major, don't write the report. I think the last one helped make you a captain."
"I'll write it," his aide-de-camp said. "Anything to escape you." They both grinned.
But Morrell wasn't grinning after Horwitz left his office. "The Japs!" he said softly. " Son of a bitch." As he'd told Horwitz, meddling in Canada did make good logical sense from their point of view. A USA distracted by troubles close to home would be less inclined to look or reach out across the Pacific. But now that Tokyo had got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, the United States would likely… do what?
Sure enough, that was what a popular wireless show called the ninety-nine dollar question. For the life of him, Morrell didn't know why that show didn't give winners a full hundred bucks, but it didn't. He took Japanese interference in British Columbia very seriously indeed. But how serious would it look to War Department functionaries back in Philadelphia? That wasn't so easy to see. He sometimes thought that, if it weren't for the Sandwich Islands the Navy had captured from the British at the start of the Great War, the War Department would have forgotten the Pacific Ocean and the West Coast existed.
Maybe this would make a useful wakeup call. Maybe it would remind those easterners that the United States did have two coastlines, and that they had unfriendly countries to the west as well as to the east. Maybe. He dared hope.
And maybe, just maybe, having an unfriendly power making a public nuisance of itself would remind even the Socialists of why the United States needed an Army and a Navy in the first place. They'd gone out of their way to conciliate the Confederates. (And the Confederates, to be sure, had gone out of their way to conciliate the USA. They were smart enough to remember they were weak, and not to get into trouble they couldn't get out of. They were under the Whigs, anyhow. The Freedom Party worried Morrell more than ever, not least because now it looked as if it might come to power one day.)
I wonder if I ought to write my own report. He laughed and shook his head. What point to that? He wouldn't have been posted to Kamloops if bureaucrats in Philadelphia were likely to pay attention to anything he said. For some people, a report from him might be an argument to do the opposite of what ever he suggested.
Besides, Horwitz might win promotion to major, in which case he would escape Morrell's perhaps stifling influence on his career. No report would get Morrell the brigadier general's stars he craved. Promotion during the war had been swift. Promotion after the war… Even men in good odor in Philadelphia languished. Promotion for someone who wasn't might never come.
And if you retire a colonel? Morrell shrugged. He'd done his part to win one war for his country. No one could take that away from him. If they wanted him to count jackrabbits and pine trees out here in Kamloops, he would do it till they wouldn't let him do it any more. One of these days, they may decide they need someone who knows something about barrels again. You never can tell.
He laughed a bitter laugh. He knew he did a good enough job here in Kamloops, but what he did had nothing to do with the specialized knowledge he'd acquired during the war. Any reasonably competent military bureaucrat could have taken his place and done about as well. That even applied to his proposed solution to Japanese meddling in British Columbia, though he might have wanted to push harder than most uniformed drones would.
He laughed again, this time with something approaching real amusement. Reasonably competent military bureaucrats shuddered at the prospect of ending up in a place like this. They intrigued and pulled wires to stay in Philadelphia, or to go on inspection tours of places like New Orleans. That meant Kamloops and other such garrisons in the middle of nowhere attracted drunks, fools, dullards… and people like me, Morrell thought.
When he went home after finishing the day's stint, he didn't walk. He couldn't, not when the last blizzard had left a foot and a half of snow on the ground, snow that piled into drifts higher than a man. Instead, he buckled on the pair of long wooden skis leaning against the wall of the entry hall.
Captain Horwitz came out while Morrell was making sure he'd got everything tight. His aide-de-camp shook his head. "You wouldn't get me on those things, sir."
"I know. I've tried," Morrell answered. "I keep telling you-you don't know what you're missing. It's the next best thing to flying with your own wings."
"I know what I'm missing," Horwitz said stubbornly. "A broken ankle, a broken leg, a dislocated knee, a broken arm, a broken neck. .. And if I go flying, I'll do it in an aeroplane, thanks."
"O ye of little faith." Holding both ski poles in one hand, Morrell opened the door, then quickly closed it behind him.
Cold smote. He skied down the steps-there was enough snow on them to make it easy-and pushed off for home. Darkness had already fallen. He relished the wind in his face, the play of his muscles as he glided along over the smoothly undulating snow. A shimmer of motion in the sky caught his eye. He stopped, staring up in awe. White and golden and red, the northern lights danced overhead.
He didn't know how long he simply stood there staring. At last, he got moving again, though he kept looking up to the heavens. Warmth and home and family had their place, no doubt-he was always delighted to get back to Agnes and Mildred. But there were so many who, like Captain Horwitz, closed their souls to this chill magnificence.
"God, I'm sorry for them," he said, and skied on.
AmericanEmpire: TheCenterCannotHold
XIV
A nother Friday. Another payday. It wouldn't be much of a check; Chester Martin knew as much. He'd been working six hours a day instead of eight for quite a while now, and not working at all on Saturdays. He should have enjoyed the extra time off. He would have enjoyed it a lot more if he'd had the money to do more things. As it was, fifty cents for a couple of cinema tickets once or twice a month made him and Rita worry. The evening out would mean beans for supper instead of liver and tripe-or, the way things were these days, it might mean potatoes and cabbage instead of beans.
I've still got a job, he thought as he inched toward the clerk who would give him his pay envelope. The clerk still had a job, too, and still had the faintly supercilious air he'd worn when times were good. Petty-bourgeois bastard looking down his nose at the proletariat, Martin thought sourly. Do you really believe the bosses can't replace you, too?
Later on, he remembered that that had gone through his mind just before he got to the clerk and gave him his name and pay number. The clerk checked him off a long, long list, handed him the envelope, and all of a sudden didn't seem so snotty any more. "Here you are, Martin," he said, as if speaking in a sickroom.
What's eating him? Chester wondered. He didn't open the envelope till he got to the front door of the steel mill. A couple of galvanized iron trash cans stood there, to hold just such refuse. Martin pulled out the check and put it into the breast pocket of his overalls. He started to throw away the envelope when he noticed another piece of paper inside.
This one was pink.
Martin stood there staring at it, altogether unmoving, for at least half a minute. He'd known the same mix of numbness, disbelief, and swelling pain when he got wounded on the Roanoke front-never before, and surely never since.