Harry Turtledove - The Center Cannot Hold

BOOKS BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE

The Guns of the South

THE WORLDWAR SAGA

Worldwar: In the Balance

Worldwar: Tilting the Balance

Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance

Worldwar: Striking the Balance

COLONIZATION

Colonization: Second Contact

Colonization: Down to Earth

Colonization: Aftershocks

THE VIDESSOS CYCLE

The Misplaced Legion

An Emperor for the Legion

The Legion of Videssos

Swords of the Legion

THE TALE OF KRISPOS

Krispos Rising

Krispos of Videssos

Krispos the Emperor

THE TIME OF TROUBLES SERIES

The Stolen Throne

Hammer and Anvil

The Thousand Cities

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Videssos Besieged

Noninterference

Kaleidoscope

A World of Difference

Earthgrip

Departures

How Few Remain

THE GREAT WAR

The Great War: American Front

The Great War: Walk in Hell

The Great War: Breakthroughs

American Empire: Blood and Iron

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold

I

Lieutenant Colonel Abner Dowling strode into the offices of the U.S. Army General Staff in

Philadelphia, escaping the January snow outside. He was a big, beefy man—unkind people, of whom

he’d met altogether too many, would have called him fat—and walked with a determination that made

other, younger officers get out of his way, even though his green-gray uniform bore not a trace of the

gold-and-black ribbon that marked a General Staff man.

He looked around with more than a little curiosity. He hadn’t been in General Staff headquarters for

many years—not since before the Great War, in fact. He’d spent the past ten years as adjutant to

General George Armstrong Custer, and Custer’s relationship with the General Staff had always been . . .

combustible was the first word that came to mind. The first printable word, anyhow.

But Custer was retired now—retired at last, after more than sixty years of service in the Army—and

Dowling needed a new assignment.I wonder what they’ll give me. What ever it is, it’s bound to be a

walk in the park after what I’ve gone through with Custer. Anything this side of standing sentry on

the battlements of hell would have seemed a walk in the park after ten years with Custer. The man was

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unquestionably a hero. Dowling would have been the first to admit it. Nevertheless . . .

He tried not to think of Custer, which was like trying not to think of a red fish. Then he got

lost—General Staff headquarters had expanded a great deal since his last visit. Having to ask his way did

take his mind off his former superior. At last, by turning left down a corridor where he had turned right,

he made his way to the office of General Hunter Liggett, chief of the General Staff.

Liggett’s adjutant was a sharp-looking lieutenant colonel named John Abell. When Dowling walked into

the office, the fellow was talking on the telephone: “—the best we can, with the budget the Socialists are

willing to let us have.” He looked up and put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Yes, Lieutenant Colonel?

May I help you?”

“I’m Abner Dowling. I have a ten o’clock appointment with General Liggett.” By the clock on the wall,

it was still a couple of minutes before ten. Dowling had built in time for things to go wrong.Custer never

did anything like that. Custer never figured anything would go wrong. Dowling shook his head.

Don’t think about Custer.

Lieutenant Colonel Abell nodded. “Go right in. He’s expecting you.” He returned to his interrupted

telephone conversation: “I know what we should be doing, and I know what we are doing. There will be

trouble one day, but they’re too sure of themselves to believe it.”

However much Dowling wanted to linger and eavesdrop, he went on into General Liggett’s inner office

and closed the door behind him. Saluting, he said, “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

Hunter Liggett returned the salute. He was a jowly man in his mid-sixties, with a penetrating stare and a

white Kaiser Bill mustache waxed to pointed perfection. “At ease, Lieutenant Colonel. Sit down. Make

yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you, sir.” Dowling eased his bulk down into a chair.

“What are we going to do with you?” Liggett said. It had to be a rhetorical question; the answer surely

already lay there on his desk. He went on, “You’ve seen a lot these past few years, haven’t you? By

now, I suspect, you could handle just about anything. Couldn’t you, Lieutenant Colonel?”

Dowling didn’t like the sound of that. “I hope so, sir,” he answered cautiously. Maybe he wouldn’t get a

walk in the park after all. “Ahh . . . What have you got in mind?”

“Everyone is very pleased with your performance in Canada,” General Liggett said. “The assistant

secretary of war, Mr. Thomas, spoke highly of you in his report to President Sinclair. He wrote that you

did your best to make a difficult and unpleasant situation go more smoothly. Any time a soldier wins

praise from the present administration, he must have done very well indeed.”

“Thank you, sir.” Dowling remembered that Liggett had become chief of the General Staff during the

present Socialist administration, replacing General Leonard Wood. That made him watch his tongue.

“I’m glad Mr. Thomas was pleased. I didn’t really do that much. Mostly, I just sat there and kept my

mouth shut.” N. Mattoon Thomas had come up to Winnipeg to force General Custer into retirement.

Custer hadn’t wanted to go; Custer never wanted to do anything anyone told him to do, and he

thoroughly despised the Socialists. But they’d held the high cards, and he hadn’t.

“Well, what ever you did say, Mr. Thomas liked it,” Liggett said. “He wrote of your tact and your

discretion and your good sense—said if you were a diplomat instead of a soldier, you’d make a splendid

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ambassador.” Liggett chuckled. “Damn me to hell if you’re not blushing.”

“I’m flattered, sir.” Dowling was also embarrassed. Like a lot of fat men, he flushed easily, and he knew

it.

General Liggett went on, “And it just so happens that we have a post where a man with such talents

would be very useful, very useful indeed.”

“Does it? Do you?” Dowling said, and Liggett gave him a genial nod. Dowling had a fair notion of where

such a post might be. Hoping he was wrong, he asked, “What have you got in mind, sir?”

Sure enough, Liggett said, “I’ve had to relieve Colonel Sorenson as military governor of Salt Lake City.

He’s an able officer, Sorenson is; don’t get me wrong. But he turned out to be a little too . . . unbending

for the position. By President Sinclair’s orders, we aretrying to bring Utah back towards being a normal

state in the Union once more. A tactful, diplomatic officer running things in Salt Lake could do us a lot of

good there.”

“I . . . see,” Dowling said slowly. “The only trouble is, sir, I’m not sure I think Utahought to be a normal

state in the Union once more.” The Mormons in Utah had caused trouble during the Second Mexican

War, back at the start of the 1880s—as a result of which, the U.S. Army had landed on them with both

feet. Then, in 1915, perhaps aided and abetted by the Confederates and the British from Canada, they’d

risen in open rebellion. The Army had had to crush them one town at a time, and had made a peace only

in the Tacitean sense of the word, leaving desert behind it.

“Between you and me and the four walls of my office, Lieutenant Colonel, I’m not sure I think so,

either,” Liggett answered. “But the Army doesn’t make policy. That’s the president’s job. All we do is

carry it out. And so . . . would you like to be the next military governor of Salt Lake City?”

Maybe I should have been a nasty son of a bitch when I was working for Custer,Dowling thought.

But he said what he had to say: “Yes, sir.” After a moment, he added, “If I’m being diplomatic . . .”

“Yes?” Liggett asked.

“Well, sir, wouldn’t you say the good people of Salt Lake City might see it as an insult to them if a full

colonel were replaced by a lieutenant colonel?” Dowling said. “Couldn’t it lead them to believe the

United States Army finds them less important than it once did?”

Amusement glinted in Liggett’s eyes. “And how do you propose to make sure the good people of Salt

Lake City—if there are any—don’t find themselves insulted?”

“I can think of a couple of ways, sir,” Dowling replied. “One would be to appoint somebody who’s

already a bird colonel as military governor there.”

“Yes, that stands to reason,” Liggett agreed. “And the other?” He leaned back in his swivel chair, which

squeaked. He seemed to be enjoying himself, waiting to hear what Dowling would say.

Dowling had hoped the chief of the General Staff would come out and say it for him. When Liggett

didn’t, he had to speak for himself: “The other way, sir, would be to promote me to the appropriate

rank.”

“And you think you deserve such a promotion, eh?” Liggett rumbled.

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“Yes, sir,” Dowling said boldly.After ten years with Custer, I deserve to be a major general, by

God. And if he said no, he knew he’d never be promoted again.

General Liggett shuffled through papers on his desk. Finding the one he wanted, he shoved it, face

down, across the polished expanse of mahogany to Dowling. “This may be of some interest to you,

then.”

“Thank you,” Dowling said, wondering if he ought to thank Liggett. He turned the paper over, glanced at

it—and stared at his superior. “Thank you very much, sir!” he exclaimed.

“You’re welcome, Colonel Dowling,” Liggett replied. “Congratulations!”

“Thank you very much,” Dowling repeated. “Uh, sir . . . Would you have given me this if I hadn’t asked

for it?”

Liggett’s smile was as mysterious as the Mona Lisa’s, though a good deal less benign. “You’ll never

know, will you?” His chuckle was not a pleasant sound. He found another sheet of paper, and passed it

to Dowling, too. “Here are your orders, Colonel. Your train goes out of Broad Street Station tomorrow

morning. I’m sure you’ll do a fine job, and I know for a fact that General Pershing is looking forward to

having you under his command.”

“Doyou?” All of a sudden, Dowling’s world seemed less rosy. During the war, Pershing’s Second Army

had fought side by side with Custer’s First in Kentucky and Tennessee. The two armies had been rivals,

as neighbors often are, and their two commanders had been rivals, too. Custer was suspicious of his

younger colleague, as he was suspicious of any other officer who might steal his glory. Dowling had

forgotten Pershing was military governor of Utah these days.

“I think I know what’s bothering you, Colonel,” Liggett said. If anyone knew about rivalries, the chief of

the General Staff would be the man. He went on, “You don’t have to worry, not on that score. I meant

what I said: General Pershing is eager to have you.”

But what will he do with me—to me—once he’s got me?Dowling wondered. He couldn’t say that.

All he could say was, “That’s good to hear, sir.”

“Which means you don’t believe me,” Liggett said. “Well, that’s your privilege. You may even be right. I

don’t think you are, but you may be.”

Dowling was by nature a pessimist. If he hadn’t been before, ten years under General Custer would

have made him one. “I’ll do the best I can, sir, that’s all,” he said.And what ever Pershing does to me,

by God, I’ll have eagles on my shoulder straps. That makes up for a lot.

General Liggett nodded. “As long as you do that, no one can ask any more of you.”

“All right, sir.” Dowling started to rise, then checked himself. “May I ask you one more thing, sir? It’s

got nothing to do with Mormons.”

“Go ahead and ask,” Liggett told him. “I don’t promise to answer, not till I’ve heard the question.”

“I understand. What I want to know is, are we really cutting back on building new and better barrels?

I’ve heard that, but it strikes me as foolish.” Like most professional soldiers, Dowling had no use for the

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Socialist Party. There as in few other places, he agreed with the man under whom he’d served for so

long. He would have expressed himself a lot more strongly had he been talking with General Leonard

Wood, a lifelong Democrat and a friend of ex–President Theodore Roosevelt.

But Liggett nodded again, and didn’t sound happy as he answered, “We aren’t just cutting back, as a

matter of fact. We’re gutting the program. No money in the budget any more. That outfit at Fort

Leavenworth called the Barrel Works . . .” He slashed a thumb across his throat. “As our German

friends would say,kaputt .”

“That’s—unfortunate, sir.” Dowling used the politest word he could. “Barrels won us the last war. They

won’t count less in the next one.”

“Don’t be silly, Colonel. There’ll never, ever be another war. Just ask President Sinclair.”He’s still a

soldier first, then, Dowling thought.Good. Both men laughed. But for the bitter undertone in each one’s

voice, the joke might have been funny.

Anne Colleton was studying theWall Street Journal when the telephone rang. She muttered something

under her breath, put down the five-day-old newspaper, and went to answer the phone. Back in the days

when she’d lived on the Marshlands plantation, her butler, Scipio, or one of the other Negro servants

would have done that for her and spared her the interruption. These days, though, the Marshlands

mansion was a burnt-out ruin, the cotton fields around it going back to grass and bushes. Anne lived in

town, not that St. Matthews, South Carolina, was much of a town.

“This is Anne Colleton,” she said crisply. She was in her mid-thirties. With her sleek blond good looks,

she could have lied ten years off her age with no one the wiser—till she spoke. Few people younger than

she—few her own age, for that matter, but even fewer younger—could have so quickly made plain they

put up with no nonsense at all.

“And a good day to you, Miss Colleton,” replied the man on the other end of the line. By the hisses and

pops accompanying his voice, he was calling from some distance away. He went on, “My name is

Edward C.L. Wiggins, ma’am, and I’m in Richmond.”

Long distance, sure enough,Anne thought—he sounded as if he were shouting down a rain barrel.

“What is it, Mr. Wiggins?” she said. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“No, ma’am, I haven’t had the pleasure,” he agreed, “but the Colleton name is famous all over the

Confederate States.”

He doubtless meant that as pleasant flattery. Anne Colleton had heard enough pleasant flattery to last the

rest of her life by the time she was sixteen—one consequence of her looks men seldom thought about.

“You can come to the point, Mr. Wiggins,” she said pleasantly, “or I’ll hang up on you no matter where

you are.”

“Once upon a time, President Semmes sent me up to Philadelphia to see if I could dicker a peace with

the Yankees, but they wouldn’t do it,” Wiggins said.

That wasn’t coming to the point, or Anne didn’t think it was, but it did get her attention. “This would

have been fairly early on, before we finally had to quit?” she asked.

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“That’s right, ma’am,” he said.

“I heard rumors about that,” she said. “With all the money I gave the Whigs in those days, I would have

thought I deserved to hear something more than rumors, but evidently not. So you were representing

President Semmes, were you?”

“Yes, ma’am, in an unofficial sort of way.”

“And whose representative are you now, in an unofficial sort of way? I’m sure you’re somebody’s.”

Edward C.L. Wiggins chuckled. “I heard you were one clever lady. I guess I heard right.”

“Who told you so?” Anne asked sharply.

“Well, now, I was just getting to that. I—”

Anne did hang up then. She wasted not a minute getting back to work. With her finances in the state

they were, they needed all the time she could give them. They needed more than that, too: they needed

something close to a miracle. She wasn’t a pauper, as so many prewar planters were these days. But she

wasn’t rich enough not to have to worry, either, and she didn’t know if she ever would be.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again. Anne picked it up. “Why, Mr. Wiggins. What a pleasant

surprise,” she said before whoever was on the other end of the line could speak. If it wasn’t Wiggins, she

would have to apologize to someone, but she thought the odds were good enough to take the chance.

And it was. “Miss Colleton, if you would let me explain myself—”

She cut him off, though she didn’t—quite—hang up on him once more. “I gave you two chances to do

that. You didn’t. If you think I’m in the habit of wasting my time on strange men who call me out of the

blue, you’re mistaken—and whoever told you what you think you know about me hasn’t got the faintest

notion of what he’s talking about.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Wiggins’ voice was dry. “He told me you were sharp as a tack but a first-class

bitch, and that doesn’t seem so far out to me.”

“I’m sure he meant it as an insult, but I’ll take it for a compliment,” Anne said. “Last chance, Mr.

Wiggins—who told you that?”

“Jake Featherston.”

Anne had expected almost any other name than that of the Freedom Party leader. Something she didn’t

want to call alarm shot through her. She took Jake Featherston very seriously. That didn’t mean she

wanted anything to do with him. She’d backed him for a while, yes, but she backed winners, and he

didn’t look like one any more. Trying to gain time to recover her composure, she asked, “If you used to

work for the Whigs, why are you calling me for Featherston now?”

“On account of what I saw when I went to Philadelphia, ma’am,” he replied. “The United States don’t

respect you when you’re weak. If you’re down, they’ll kick you. But if you’re strong, they have got to sit

up and take notice. That’s a fact.”

“I agree with that. I think everyone in the Confederate States agrees with that,” Anne said.

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“Well, there you are,” Wiggins said cheerily. “If you agree with that, the Freedom Party is really and

truly the only place for you, because—”

“Nonsense.” Anne didn’t care about his reasons. She had reasons of her own: “The Freedom Party has

about as much chance of electing the next president as I do of getting elected myself. I have no intention

of giving Jake Featherston one more dime. Every since that madman of a Grady Calkins murdered

President Hampton, it’d take a special miracle for anyone from the Freedom Party to get himself elected

dog catcher, let alone anything more. I don’t spend my money where it does me no good.”

“I don’t think the clouds are as black as you say, ma’am,” Wiggins replied. “Yes, we lost a couple of

seats in the election last November, but not as many as people said we would. We’ll be back—you wait

and see if we aren’t. Folks don’t have much in the way of memory—and besides, ma’am, we’reright .”

“If you can’t win an election, whether you’re right or not doesn’t matter,” Anne pointed out.

“We will.” Wiggins sounded confident. She got the idea he sounded confident all the time. He went on,

“I want to say a couple of other things, and then I’m through. First one is, Mr. Featherston, he knows

who’s for him, and he knows who’s against him, and he never, ever, forgets the one or the other.”

He was, without question, right about that. Featherston was as relentless as a barrel smashing through

one line of trenches after another. Anne didn’t intimidate easily, but Jake Featherston had done the job.

That just gave her more reason to harden her voice and say, “I’ll take my chances.”

Edward C.L. Wiggins chuckled. “He told me you were near as stubborn as he is himself, and I see he’s

right. One more thing, and then I’m through, and I won’t trouble you any more.”

“Go ahead,” Anne said. “Make it short.”I’ve already wasted more than enough time on you.

“Yes, ma’am. Here’s what I’ve got to say: there’s only one party in the CSA that’s got any notion at all

about what the devil to do about the nigger problem in this country, and that’s the Freedom Party. And

now I’m done. Good-bye.” He surprised her by hanging up.

Slowly, she put the mouthpiece back on its hook and set down the telephone. She said a word she was

unlikely to use in public, one that would have made strong men gasp and women of delicate sensibilities

blush and faint. Wiggins had known how to get through to her, after all. No one was likely to forget the

Red Negro uprising that had tied the Confederacy in knots late in 1915 and early in 1916. No one knew

how much it had helped the USA win the war, but it couldn’t have hurt. The Freedom Party stood

foursquare for vengeance, and so did Anne Colleton.

And why not?she thought.One brother dead, my plantation wrecked, me almost murdered . . . Oh,

yes, I owe those black bastards just a little. The whole country owes them just a little, whether the

Whigs and the Radical Liberals want to admit it or not.

She repeated that word, louder this time. Behind her, her surviving brother burst out laughing. She

whirled around. “Confound it, Tom,” she said angrily, “I didn’t know you were there.”

Tom Colleton laughed harder than ever. “I’ll bet you didn’t,” he answered. “If you had, you would have

said something like, ‘Confound it,’ instead.” He was a couple of years younger than Anne, and a little

darker, with hair light brown rather than gold. He’d gone into the war an irresponsible boy and come out

of it a lieutenant-colonel and a man, something of which Anne still had to remind herself now and again.

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She shrugged now. “I probably would have. But I meant what I did say.”

“Who was on the telephone?” he asked.

“A man named Edward C.L. Wiggins,” Anne replied. “He wanted money from us for the Freedom

Party.”

Tom frowned. “Those people don’t take no for an answer, do they?”

“They never have,” Anne said. “It’s their greatest strength—and their greatest weakness.”

“Did you find out why he travels with a herd of initials?” her brother asked. She shook her head. Tom

went on, “What did you tell him?”

“No, of course,” Anne answered. “The way things are now, I’d sooner cozy up to a cottonmouth than

to Jake Featherston.”

“Don’t blame you a bit,” Tom Colleton said. “He’s an impressive man in a lot of ways, but. . . .” He

shook his head. “He puts me in mind of a time bomb, wound up and waiting to go off. And when he

does, I don’t think it’ll be pretty.”

“There were times when I thought he had all the answers,” Anne said. “And there were times when I

thought he was a little bit crazy. And there were times when I thought both those things at once. Those

were the ones that scared me.”

“Scared me, too,” Tom agreed, “and we don’t scare easy.”

“No. We’d be dead by now if we did,” Anne said, and Tom nodded. She eyed him. “And speaking of

looking pretty, you’re fancier than you need to be for staying around here. Is that a necktie?” She thought

its gaudy stripes of crimson and gold excessive, but declined to criticize.

Her brother nodded again. “Sure is. Bought it from what’s-his-name, the Jew tailor. And I’m going to

pay a call on Bertha Talmadge in a little while.”

Before the war, Anne would have discouraged such a call—with a bludgeon, if necessary. The Muncies,

Bertha’s parents, were grocers, and their daughter no fit match for a planter’s son. These days . . . Well,

grocers never starved. And Bertha Talmadge, though a widow whose husband, like so many others, had

died in the trenches, was reasonably young, reasonably pretty, reasonably bright.

Anne nodded approval. “Have a nice time. You should find yourself a wife, settle down, have yourself

some children.”

He didn’t get angry at her, as he would have before the war. In fact, he nodded again himself. “You’re

right. I should. And, as a matter of fact, so should you.”

“That’s different,” Anne said quickly.

“How?”

Because he was her brother, she told him: “Because my husband would want to try to run everything,

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because that’s what men do. And odds are he wouldn’t be as good at it as I am. That’s why.”

“And even if he was, you wouldn’t admit it,” Tom said.

That was also true. Anne Colleton, however, had not the slightest intention of admitting it. Giving her

brother her most enigmatic smile, she went back to theWall Street Journal .

Mary McGregor was only thirteen years old, but her course in life was already set. So she told herself,

anyhow, and also told her mother and her older sister as they sat down to supper on their farm outside

Rosenfeld, Manitoba: “The Yankees killed my brother. They killed my father, too. But I’m going to get

even—you see if I don’t.”

Fright showed on her mother’s careworn face. Maude McGregor touched the sleeve of her woolen

blouse to show Mary she still wore mourning black. “You be careful,” she said. “If anything happened to

you after Alexander and Arthur, I don’t think I could bear it.”

She didn’t tell Mary not to pursue vengeance against the Americans occupying Canada. Plainly, she

knew better. That would have been telling the sun not to rise, the snow not to fall. Ever since the

Americans arrested her older brother during the war on a charge of sabotage, lined him up against a wall,

and shot him, she’d hated them with an altogether unchildlike ferocity.

“Of course I’ll be careful,” she said now, as if she were the adult and her mother the worried, fussy

child. “Pa was careful. He just . . . wasn’t lucky at the end. He should have got that . . . blamed General

Custer.” However much she hated Americans, she wasn’t allowed to curse at the supper table.

Her older sister nodded. “Who would have thought Custer would be waiting for Father to throw that

bomb and ready to throw it back?” Julia said. “Thatwas bad luck, nothing else but.” She sighed. She

hadn’t only lost her father. Arthur McGregor’s failure had also cost her an engagement; the Culligans had

decided it just wasn’t safe to join their son, Ted, to a bomber’s family.

“Part of it was,” their mother said. “Mary, would you please pass the butter?” Mayhem and manners

lived together under the McGregors’ roof.

“Here you are, Ma,” Mary said, and her mother buttered her mashed potatoes. Mary went on, “What

do you mean, part of it was bad luck? Itall was!”

Her mother shook her head. “No, only part. The Americans suspected your father. They came sniffing

around here all the time, remember. If they hadn’t suspected, Custer wouldn’t have been ready to . . . to

do what he did.”

What he’d done by throwing the bomb back had blown Arthur McGregor to red rags; the family could

have buried him in a jam tin. No one still alive wanted to think about that. “I’ll be careful,” Mary said

again. She brushed a wisp of auburn hair back from her face in a gesture her mother might have made.

Maude McGregor had reddish hair, too. Julia was darker, as her father had been.

Maude McGregor said, “I just thank God you’re only thirteen, and not likely to get into too much

mischief for a while. You know the Yankees will keep an eye on us forever, on account of what the

menfolks in our family did.”

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Harry Turtledove - The Center Cannot Hold

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