No matter how much the U.S. Army Medical Corps wanted his services, they hadn't wanted them badly enough to spring for a Pullman berth. His seat reclined, a little. He dozed, a little. His route went south, away from the river at last and down toward the United States. Even so, the train kept right on stopping at every tiny town.
Here in what people called the Eastern Townships, Quebec changed. English-speakers replaced Francophones. The towns, from what he could see of them, lost their distinctively Quebecois look and began to resemble those of nearby New England. Most of the settlers in this part of Quebec were descended from Loyalists who'd had to flee the USA during and just after the Revolution.
O'Doull wondered how loyal those people were to the government in Quebec City even now. French-speaking Catholics dominated the Republic of Quebec-as well they might, when they made up close to seven-eighths of the population. The Republic's constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, and no one had yet tried to ram French down the throats of the people here, but where in the world did minorities ever have an easy time? Nowhere.
Not my worry, thank God, O'Doull thought, and dozed some more.
When he woke up again, the train was passing from the Republic of Quebec to the United States. Customs inspectors in dark green uniforms went up and down the aisles, asking people from the Republic for their travel documents. What O'Doull had was sketchy: a U.S. passport from just before the Great War and a letter from Jedediah Quigley certifying that he had been invited down to the USA to rejoin the Medical Corps.
The customs inspector who examined his papers looked as if he'd swallowed a lemon. "Hey, Charlie!" he called. "Come take a gander at this. What the hell we got here?"
In due course, Charlie appeared. He had slightly fancier gold emblems on his shoulder boards than the other customs man did. He frowned at the ancient passport, and frowned even harder at the letter. "Who the devil is Jedediah Quigley?" he demanded. "Sounds like somebody out of Dickens."
A literate official-who would have believed it? O'Doull answered, "Actually, I think he's from New Hampshire or Vermont. He's been the middleman for a lot of deals between the USA and Quebec. As far as he's concerned, I'm just small change."
Charlie might have been literate, but he wasn't soft. "As far as I'm concerned, you're just small change, too, buddy," he said coldly. "I think you better get off the train till we can figure out if you're legit. There's a war on, you know."
"If there weren't a war on, I wouldn't be back in the United States," O'Doull said. "You can count on that."
"I don't count on anything," Charlie said. "That's why I've got this job, and that's why you're getting off this train."
O'Doull wanted to punch him in the nose. If he had, he probably would have ended up in jail instead of in the train station at Mooers, New York. By the time the sun came up, the distinction seemed academic. Mooers lay in the middle of what had been forest and was now stubble, as if the earth hadn't shaved for several days. O'Doull had seen haphazard logging jobs in Quebec, but this one seemed worse than most.
Adding to the surreal feeling his weariness gave him, almost everybody in the train station except the customs inspectors seemed to be an immigrant from Quebec. When he spoke French to a girl who brought him coffee, her face lit up. But he just made the customs men more suspicious.
"How come you parlez-vous?" Charlie demanded. "You're supposed to be a Yankee, aren't you?"
"I am a Yankee, dammit," O'Doull answered wearily. "But I've lived in Quebec for twenty-five years. My wife speaks French. All my neighbors speak French. All my patients, too. I'd better, don't you think?"
"I think we'll get your cock-and-bull story checked out, that's what I think," Charlie said. "Then we'll figure out what's what."
The girl brought O'Doull a plate of scrambled eggs and fried potatoes and more coffee. The customs men sent her sour stares; maybe she wasn't supposed to. O'Doull doubted she would have if he'd just used English with her. The potatoes were greasy and needed salt. He wolfed them down anyhow.
When he went to the men's room to get rid of some of that coffee, one of the customs men tagged along. "Do you really think I'd try to run away?" O'Doull asked. "Where would I go?"
"Never can tell," said the man in the green uniform. O'Doull thought he was nuts, but didn't say so. Mooers might not have been in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn't right at the edges, either.
Instead of escaping, he went back and sat down on the padless metal folding chair he'd vacated to whizz. His backside was sick of sitting, and this chair was even less comfortable than the seat on the train. He twisted and turned. Whenever he stood up to stretch, the customs men got ready to jump him.
He bought a hamburger and more greasy fries for lunch. By then, he'd started to wonder if he could open a practice here, because he seemed unlikely to go any farther. The customs men did finally let him buy a newspaper, too: a copy of the Plattsburg Patriot from two days before. The headline insisted that Columbus wasn't cut off and surrounded, and denied that the U.S. Army had pulled its Ohio headquarters out of the city. O'Doull had seen headlines like that before. They were usually lies. He didn't say so. It would have made the customs men think him a defeatist.
Finally, at half past four, Charlie came up to him and said, "As far as we can tell, Dr. O'Doull, you are what you say you are. We're going to let you go on as soon as the next train gets in."
"That's nice," O'Doull answered. "It would have been a lot nicer if you'd decided that a while ago, but it's still nice. When does the next train get in?" If Mooers hadn't been on the border, no railway would have come anywhere near it.
"Tomorrow evening," Charlie said, a little uncomfortably.
A little-not nearly enough. "Tomorrow evening!" Leonard O'Doull exploded. "Jesus Christ! I'm stuck in this lousy place for two stinking days? No wonder we're losing the goddamn war!" In the face of two days in Mooers, New York, defeatism suddenly seemed a small thing.
"We are not," Charlie said, but he didn't sound as if he believed himself. "And if you'd had proper travel documents-"
"I did," O'Doull said. "It only took you about a year and a half to check them." Charlie looked sullen. O'Doull didn't care. "I don't suppose there's actually a hotel here?" The customs man's face told him there wasn't. He made more disgusted noises. If he wasn't going to enjoy himself in Mooers, he was damned if Charlie was going to enjoy having him here.
After the Second Mexican War, Philadelphia became the de facto capital of the USA for one simple reason: it was out of artillery range of the CSA. During the Great War, Philadelphia hadn't quite come within artillery range of the CSA, either. Confederate bombers had visited the city every now and then, but they hadn't done much damage.
That was then. This was now. Flora Blackford had already come to hate the rising and falling squeal of the air-raid siren. Confederate bombers came over Philadelphia every night, and they weren't just visiting. They seemed bound and determined to knock the town flat.
Hurrying down to the cellar of her apartment building after the latest alarm, Flora complained, "Why didn't they move the government to Seattle?"
"Because then the… lousy Japs would bomb us," said a man ahead of her.
She scowled. The stairwell was dark. No one noticed, not even Joshua beside her. She'd been in Los Angeles in 1932, campaigning with her husband in his doomed reelection bid, when Japanese carrier airplanes came over the city. It had been only a pinprick, but it had let the last of the air out of his hopes.
Someone else on the stairs said, "Japan hasn't declared war on us yet."