Moss plowed into scrambled eggs and a young mountain of fried potatoes. He washed them down with mug after tin mug of corrosive coffee partly tamed by lots of cream and sugar. Once he got all that inside him, he felt amazingly lifelike. But when he asked Boardman for clearance to fly, the doctor shook his head. "Why not?" Moss demanded irately.
"Because your reflexes are still shot," Boardman answered. "Tomorrow? Fine. Today? Nope. Let the pills wear all the way off. The Confederates haven't marched into Philadelphia while you were out, and I don't expect one more day with you on the sidelines will lose us the war."
He only laughed when Moss suggested what he could do to himself. But as it happened, Moss did fly out of Winchester late that afternoon. It wasn't a flight he much wanted to make, but he had less choice than he would have liked. The Confederates had come far enough north to let their heavy artillery start probing for the airstrip. That likely meant the town would fall before long. Sure as hell, Moss spotted barrels nosing up from the south when he took off.
The squadron came down at a field near Bluffton, a town about two-thirds of the way from Muncie to Fort Wayne. The town looked pleasant as Moss flew over it. It sat on the south bank of the Wabash River. The streets downtown were paved with red brick; those farther out were mostly just graveled. So many shade trees grew around the houses that some of those were hard to see from the air. Nobody'd bombed the place yet.
He wondered how long the landing field had been there. Not long, probably: it had been gouged out of the middle of a wheat field. Groundcrew men threw camouflage tarps over the fighters as they came in, but how much good would those do? How much good would anything do? Moss was gloomy as he headed for the tent where he'd flop that night. The field stuck out like a sore thumb. They hadn't mowed BOMB ME! in the wheat, but they might as well have.
As evening fell, trucks brought up three antiaircraft guns. More camouflage netting went over them. Camouflaged or not, they were still going to stick out, too. The younger pilots weren't worried about a thing. They laughed and joked and bragged about the havoc they'd wreak on the Confederates the next day.
Was I like that up in Canada in the last war? Moss wondered. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. He probably had been. Everybody'd been like that back then. Flying was brand new. It hadn't been around long enough to attract gray, middle-aged pilots who could see farther than the end of their noses.
Up in the sky, he still knew what he was doing. He'd proved it the only way you could: he'd gone into combat and come back alive. Down here? Down here, he wanted to talk with grownups. The only one anywhere close by who seemed to meet the description was Dr. Clement Boardman.
"Take a walk with me, will you, Doc?" Moss said.
Boardman glanced at him sidelong. By the evil gleam in his eye, he almost said something like, You aren't my type. But he didn't. Maybe the look on Moss' face convinced him it wasn't a good idea. They strode out into the night.
Crickets chirped. A whippoorwill sang mournfully. Off in the distance, a dog howled. Fireflies blinked on and off like landing lights. The muggy air smelled of growing things, and faintly of exhaust and hot metal. Moss' footfalls, and Boardman's, were almost silent on the soft ground.
When they'd gone a hundred yards or so from the tents, the doctor asked, "Well, what's on your mind now?"
"We're losing the war, aren't we?" Moss said bluntly.
Boardman stopped. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and offered them to Moss. The pilot shook his head. Boardman shrugged, dragged till the coal glowed red, and blew out a cloud of smoke. Only then did he answer, "Mm, I expect things could look a little better."
"What are we going to do?" Moss said. "We can't let Featherston take a bite out of us. He'll just want another one as soon as he can get it."
"Why are you asking me? I'm not the President. I didn't even vote for him." The doctor blew out more smoke. As always, what he exhaled smelled milder than the harsh stuff spiraling up off the cigarette.
Moss' Canadian law practice meant he hadn't voted for close to twenty years. He said, "It's either talk about it or start screaming, you know what I mean? It's not just could look better. Things don't look good. For God's sake, tell me I'm wrong. Make me believe it." Dr. Boardman walked along in silence. After a few steps, Moss realized that was all the answer he'd get. "Give me a smoke after all, would you?" he said, and Boardman did.
V
Jake Featherston had fought through the Great War in the First Richmond Howitzers. Even then, the name had been a misnomer; the artillery outfit had had quick-firing three-inch field guns-copies of the French 75-instead of the howitzers its gunners had served during the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War.
Nowadays, the First Richmond Howitzers used four-inch guns. They could fire a shell twice as heavy almost half again as far as the last war's models. But the principles hadn't changed one goddamn bit.
If the crew that was shelling damnyankee positions north of Fredericksburg, Virginia, was nervous about performing under the knowing eye of the President of the CSA, it didn't show. Bare to the waist and gleaming with sweat in the July sunshine, they loaded, aimed, and fired again and again. The gun pit in which they served their piece was bigger and deeper than the ones Jake remembered, but the gun was bigger, too. It needed more digging in.
A sergeant named Malcolm Clay commanded not only the gun but the battery of which it was a part. He was about thirty-five, blond with strawberry stubble on his cheeks and chin, and did a perfectly capable job. All the same, watching him, Jake smiled behind his hand.
He turned to Saul Goldman and asked quietly, "Did you put them up to this, or were they smart enough to come up with it on their own?"
Goldman looked silly in a helmet, the way a coal miner would have looked silly in a top hat: it wasn't his style at all. The director of communications conscientiously wore it just the same. Peering out from under the steel brim, he said, "I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. President."
"Hell you don't," Jake said genially. "I was a sergeant in charge of a battery, too. They let me run it on account of I could and I was good, but the bastards never would promote me." He raised his voice: "Clay! Come on over here!"
"Yes, sir?" Red dust kicked up from the noncom's boots as he obeyed. He smelled hot and sweaty, too, but it wasn't a nasty stink. He was working and sweating too hard for that.
"How'd you get command of this here battery?" Featherston asked.
"Sir, Captain Mouton got wounded four or five days ago, and I'm in charge till they drop another officer into his slot."
"No, goddammit." Jake shook his head. "It's your battery now, Lieutenant Clay. You can do the job, so you deserve the rank."
"Thank you very much, sir!" Sergeant-no, Lieutenant-Clay's eyes were a bloodshot blue. They shone now. His grin showed a missing front tooth.
"You're welcome," Featherston answered. "In this here war, people who deserve to be promoted are going to get promoted. Nobody's gonna get screwed over like I got screwed over twenty-five years ago."
"You won't be sorry, sir!" Clay exclaimed. "We'll give those damnyankees what-for-you wait and see. Freedom!" He shouted the Party greeting.
"Freedom!" Jake said. "On this front, what I want is for you to keep the Yankees from giving us what-for. That's what we need here: to stop those sons of bitches in their tracks. Can you do that?"
"Hell, yes," Clay said, and then, "Uh, yes, sir."
Jake Featherston laughed. "I understood you the first time. I used to do your job, remember?"
Newsreel cameras ground away. They would capture Jake daring to visit the front, brave Confederate soldiers blasting the hell out of the damnyankees, and as much other good news as they could find. Before long, the result would be in theaters all across the CSA, running in front of thrillers from before the war and, soon, melodramas that would help people see things the way the Freedom Party wanted them to.