"I'll tell you what it is, sir," Captain Angelo Toricelli said.
"Go ahead, Angelo," Dowling urged. "Tell."
"Nobody's building anything, that's what," his adjutant said. "It's quieter than it ought to be."
Slowly, Dowling nodded. "You're right. I'll be damned if you're not right. It isn't on account of they've got everything rebuilt, either. Still plenty of wreckage lying around."
"Yes, sir," Captain Toricelli agreed. "But an awful lot of money that would have paid for more construction all of a sudden isn't there-it's gone."
Dowling nodded again. He gave Toricelli a sidelong glance. Fortunately, his adjutant didn't notice. The way the younger man watched every penny, he might have been a Jew, not an Italian. Dowling didn't want Toricelli to know he was thinking that. He didn't want to insult his adjutant. And everybody had to pay special attention to money these days, because it was so very thin on the ground.
With a sigh, Dowling said, "Not much we can do about it. At least we've got the Army paying our salaries."
"Yes, sir, and I'm damn glad of it, too," Toricelli answered. "I just got a letter from New York, from home. My brother-in-law's out of a job."
"What's he do?" Dowling asked.
"He reads X rays, sir-went to night school to learn the trade," Toricelli said, not without pride. "My sister and he've got five children, and another one on the way. I don't know what they'll do if he doesn't find something quick."
"I hope he does," Dowling said, on the whole sincerely. "Who would have thought the bottom could drop out of things so fast?"
"Nobody," Captain Toricelli answered. "But it has."
He was right about that, too. The Army censored Salt Lake City papers pretty hard. Pain came through their pages even so. Stories of half-done buildings abandoned, of banks going under, of people losing jobs, couldn't very well be prettied up. And the only way to leave those stories out of the newspapers would have been to have no papers at all.
Captain Toricelli touched a fat document on his desk. "Don't tell me what that is," Dowling said. "Let me guess: another normalization petition."
"Right the first time," his adjutant said.
"It's not as though I haven't seen enough of them," Dowling said. Every few months, the Mormons of Salt Lake City-and the occasional gentile, too-would circulate petitions asking that Utah finally be treated like any other state in the USA. Dowling had got a couple of dozen since coming to the state capital. With a sigh, he went on, "They still haven't figured out I'm not the one they ought to send these to, because I have no authority to grant them. They should go to General Pershing-he's supreme commander of the military district."
A thoroughly precise man, Toricelli said, "He hasn't got authority to grant them, either. Only the president and Congress can do that."
"What do you think the chances are?" Dowling asked.
"Better than decent, if the Mormons can keep their noses clean," Captain Toricelli answered. "The Socialists seem to want to do it."
"I know." Dowling packed a world of meaning into two words. "They think a zebra can change its stripes, the way the one in that Englishman's fable did. I think…" He shook his head. "What I think doesn't matter. I don't make policy. I just get stuck with carrying it out." He picked up the petition. It was a hefty one; it had to weigh a couple of pounds. "I'll take this to General Pershing's office, if you like."
"Oh, you don't need to do that, sir," Toricelli said. "It's not important. I can fetch it next time I go over there."
"I'm on my way," Dowling said. "Better Pershing's adjutant should have it on his desk than you on yours."
He caught Toricelli's eye. They shared a slightly conspiratorial chuckle. "Thank you very much, sir," the young captain said.
"You're welcome," Abner Dowling answered. "I've got to go over there and talk with the general about his scheme for mounting better guard on Temple Square. We need to do it; every broken rock from the Temple and the Tabernacle counts for a sacred relic with the more radical Mormons these days."
"Yes, sir," Toricelli said. "But there's a certain problem in shooting anybody who bends to pick up a pebble in the square, too."
"A certain problem, yes," Dowling agreed. "And that's what I've got to talk to General Pershing about. How do we keep the Mormons from getting symbols of revolt without provoking them and ruining what ever bits of goodwill we've managed to build up since the war ended?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir," his adjutant replied. "I hope you and the commanding general can find a way."
"So do I. Can't hope for much in the way of normalization if they're still picking up broken rocks and dreaming of treason." Dowling tucked the petition under his arm and strode down the hall to his superior's office. He took no small pleasure in dropping the document on Pershing's adjutant's desk, and in watching the papers already there jump as it thudded home.
"Thank you so much, sir," Pershing's adjutant, a major named Fred Corson, said with a sickly smile. "The general is waiting for you." He sounded reluctant to admit even that much to Dowling.
"Hello, Colonel," General Pershing said when Dowling walked in. A grin spread across his bulldog features. "Was that the thump of a normalization petition I heard just then?"
"It certainly was, sir," Dowling answered.
"Well, I'll forward it to Philadelphia," the commandant said. "That's my duty. And there that petition will sit till the end of time, along with all the others."
"Unless the Socialists decide to grant them all, that is," Dowling said.
"Yes. Unless. In that case, Colonel, you and I will both need new assignments, because normal states don't have soldiers occupying them. Part of me won't be sorry to get away." Pershing rose from behind his desk and went over to the window not far away. He looked at his fortified headquarters, and at Salt Lake City beyond. "Part of me, though, will regret leaving this state, because I'm convinced that, no matter what this administration may believe, Utah isn't ready for normalization. As a matter of fact, here we-"
Abner Dowling heard a distant pop! It might have been a motorcar backfiring, or a firecracker going off. It might have been, but it wasn't. At the same instant as he heard it, or perhaps even a split second before, the window in front of which General Pershing was standing shattered. Pershing made a surprised noise. That was the best way Dowling could have described it. It didn't hold much pain. Before Dowling fully realized what had happened, the military commandant of the state of Utah crumpled to the carpet in front of him.
"General Pershing?" Dowling whispered. He hurried over to the fallen man. He needed a moment to add two and two together. Only when he saw the neat hole and the spreading bloodstain in the middle of Pershing's chest did he fully understand what he was seeing. "General Pershing!" he said, sharply this time.
He grabbed for Pershing's wrist and felt for a pulse. He found none. Aside from that, the sudden sharp stink in the room told him what he needed to know. Pershing had fouled himself when the bullet struck home.
Thinking of a bullet made Dowling think of the man who'd fired it. He peered out through the shattered window. The U.S. perimeter around the headquarters ran out for several hundred yards. The gunman must have shot from well beyond it, which meant he had to be a brilliant sniper. In war-ravaged Utah, that was anything but impossible, as Colonel Dowling knew all too well.