"You're telling me that to get any more for Peter, we have to rob Paul?" he said. Then, deliberately provocative-Star-buck was one of those people who thought better angry: "I thought war was supposed to get economies going? World War II and all that."
"Jared, it's nonsense to think that when you take what people grow and make, lug it to the other side of the world with a lot of sweat and time, and then throw it on a bonfire, it somehow makes you well-off," Starbuck snapped. "I was a teenager in the tail end of the Depression; after Pearl Harbor, the ones who'd been idle got put to work, so everyone felt richer. That's how I got my first job."
Joseph, I happen to know you spent '44 climbing down boarding nets off very unwelcoming Pacific islands, Jared thought to himself. Not that he'd ever heard Starbuck talk about Okinawa. Or the fact that he'd lied about his age to enlist…
The older man spread liver-spotted hands. "Here, though? We were already using every pair of hands, tool, and machine we had before the war started. We can't afford to divert more."
"We can't afford to lose the war, either," Cofflin said.
Starbuck sighed. "I'm not just being cheap, Jared," he said. "With productivity so low, taxes really hurt. Back up in the twentieth, rich countries could afford… sort of, for a while… to pay half their incomes to the government. Half of a great deal is still a fair amount. Half of just enough is not enough to live on."
Cofflin ran exasperated fingers through his thinning, grizzled sandy hair; he'd been fighting this particular battle since the Event, off and on.
"I know… but what'm I supposed to tell Marian and Ken Hollard, Joseph? When they say I'm trading the lives of their troops for money?"
"That we can't do any more except as a temporary last-ditch, all-out burst. Oh, I can switch things around-selling interest-bearing war bonds, things like that-but the bottom line is that we're using all our surplus. If I fiddle the books, all we'll get is inflation."
Cofflin sighed slightly again. "Well, I think we can get our new allies to contribute a bit more, but they can't do a lot of what we're doing; they don't have the industry."
"If they do more of the basics, we can shift around and it'll lighten the overall burden," Starbuck said. "And you could cut down on nonessential projects, like that new settlement in Argentina." He snorted. "New 'Sconset, indeed!"
Cofflin smiled, a slight curve of mouth. "Just planning so far, which is cheap. Got to think long-term." He held up a hand. "Not so much for the direct payoff, though we can always use more food and fiber. But when this war is over, we're going to be mustering out a lot of troops. A lot of them new citizens who'll stay here. A land grant is part of the enlistment package."
"Hmmm." Starbuck rubbed his short, white beard. "Plenty of places in the Republic to homestead already, without annexing new territory."
"Not as many as you might think. We're keeping half of Long Island in wilderness reserve. Mebbe three hundred more farms there. Besides, the Pampas aren't covered in hundred-foot-tall oak trees laced together with wild grapevines thicker than your leg. It's tall-grass prairie; Iowa by the sea, with a better climate."
"Well, that sort of decision is your department, Jared," Star-buck said. "I'm here to take the punch bowl away when your parties are half-done. You run the war."
Cofflin snorted. "At these distances? All I do is look over Marian's plans, keep the home fires burning, and go around shaking people down to pay for it all."
He paused for a moment, looking out the door. -''Ever think how strange it is, Joseph, that we're giving orders here… and on the other side of the world, people we've never heard of are killing each other because of it?"
Starbuck snorted. "They'd be going to war anyway, Jared. We're just giving them a different reason."
The One in whose control are horses, cattle, all chariots;
The One who has caused to be born the sun, the dawn;
The One who is the leader of the waters;
He, O people, is Indara Thunderer!
Raupasha's voice rang out; first in the common Hurrian language, then in the ancient tongue of the ariammanu, the founders of the kingdom of Mitanni. Few here could speak it even in her stumbling, book-learned fashion, but holiness had ensured that the prayers survived in memory:
The One without whom people do not conquer;
The One to whom the warriors call for help;
The One who shakes the unshakable;
He, O people, is Indara Thunderer!
Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna raised her hands to the sky as the ancient, ancient chant echoed across the upland plain; the smell of the sacrificial blood, the fire that consumed it, the oil and pinewood, lifted her with the smoke of sacrifice to the uttermost heavens. Dawn paled the stars, and she felt as one with them-a singing exultation, like that brought by the soma of the oldest tales. Reluctantly she descended from that eagle-aerie of the spirt, down to the common earth of day.
That was well enough, for she liked the place of the encampment, though she had been born and raised far south of here, in the southern Mitannian borderlands. Yet still these Hittite uplands spoke to something in her soul, the vast clear spaces fringed with mountains, the spare beauty of the landscape and the thin pure upland air, even the unaccustomed chill of their early-winter nights. They went well with the sounds and sights and smells of war, barley porridge cooking over the campfires and pigmeat frying, leather, oil, horse sweat and man sweat and the leather of the tents.
Those were being struck even as she watched, the men of her chariot squadrons-hers!-fanning out from where they'd gathered for the sacrifice. She would have preferred a horse, or at least an ox, but a sheep was what they had. Orders were to hoard food jealously.
The Mitannian camp was a little away from the main Babylonian base, and that was half a day's journey southwest of Hattusas itself, for greater ease of gathering supplies. Both were laid out as the Nantukhtar had taught, in straight rows and streets; there was much digging involved in the Nantukhtar way of war, from field fortifications to latrines.
Raupasha brought herself up to attention and saluted as riders from the main camp drew rein in a spurt of dust and a few pebbles shot from under the iron-shod hooves. It was the Seg Kallui; as second-in-command of the Babylonian expeditionary force under King Kashtiliash, Kathryn Hollard was also in charge of the Mitannian vassal troops. Her staff and bodyguards followed her, as the noble Tekhip-tilla and Gunnery Sergeant Connor and the chiefs of the four chariot squadrons did Raupasha.
She spent a second to envy the older woman the neat uniforms of her soldiers, as the gesture was returned. The clothing was drab-khaki of a shade not much different from the Is-lander Marines-but uniforms were part of the New Learning. Symbols of the power of a King who could dress whole armies in his own livery.
"The sacrifice went well, I hope?" Kathryn said.
"Very well, thank you, Lady Ka"-Raupasha made a heroic effort and wrapped her mouth around the maddening th sound-"Kathryn."
She and Kathryn had English and Akkadian in common; they spoke the latter because many of Raupasha's followers knew the Assyrian version of that tongue.
As soon as this war is over, I must see that many of my people learn the English speech and writing, she thought. She herself worked doggedly every day at perfecting her command of it. Perhaps even send some to Nantucket for schooling.