thousands here to build a proper prototype and get the new-model barrel a step closer to production.'
'That's pretty damn stupid, all right,' Jenkins said. 'If the Rebs can start putting money in their own pockets again instead of in ours, they'll be spoiling for a fight faster than you can say Jack Robinson.'
'That's the truth,' Morrell said. 'That's the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Why can't Sinclair see it? You can't get along with somebody who's bound and determined not to get along with you.' He did his best to look on the bright side of things: 'Maybe Congress will say no.'
'Socialist majority in each house.' Jenkins' voice was gloomy. He kicked at the dirt. 'After the Confederates licked us in the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War, they weren't dumb enough to try and make friends with us. They knew damn well we weren't their friends. Why can't we figure out they aren't our friends, either?'
'Why? Because workers all across the world have more in common with other workers than they do with other people in their own country.' Morrell wasn't usually so sarcastic, but he wasn't usually so irate, either. 'What happened in 1914 sure proved that, didn't it? None of the workers would shoot at any of the other workers, would they? That's why we didn't have a war, isn't it?'
'If we didn't have a war, sir, where'd you get that Purple Heart?' Jenkins asked.
'Must have fallen from the sky,' Morrell answered. 'Pity it couldn't have fallen where Sinclair could see it and have some idea of what it meant.'
'Why don't you send it to him, sir?' Jenkins asked eagerly.
'If I did, I'd have to send it in a chamber pot to show him how I felt,' Morrell said. 'And I'll bet I could fill that chamber pot with medals from men on just this base, too.' For a moment, the idea of doing just that held a potent appeal. But then, reluctantly, he shook his head. 'It wouldn't do. I'd throw my own career in the pot along with the medal, and somebody has to defend the United States, even if Sinclair isn't up to the job.'
'Yes, sir, I suppose so.' Jenkins was a bright lad; he could see the sense in that. He was still not very far from being a lad in the literal sense of the word, though, for his grin had a distinct small-boy quality to it as he went on, 'It would have been fun to see the look on his face when he opened it, though.'
'Well, maybe it would.' Morrell laughed. He knew damn well it would. He slapped Jenkins on the back. 'See you in the morning.' Jenkins nodded and hurried away toward the officers' club, no doubt to have a drink or two or three before supper. In his bachelor days, Morrell might-probably would-have followed him, even if he would have been sure to stop after the second drink. Now, though, he was more than content to hurry home to Agnes.
She greeted him with a chicken stew and indignation: she'd heard the news about Sinclair's proposal to end reparations down in Leavenworth. 'It's a disgrace,' she said, 'nothing but a disgrace. He'll throw money down the drain, but he won't do anything to keep the country strong.'
'I said the same thing not an hour ago,' Morrell said. 'One of the reasons I love you is, we think the same way.'
'We certainly do: you think you love me, and I think I love you,' Agnes said. Morrell snorted. His wife went on, 'Would you like some more dumplings?'
'I sure would,' he answered, 'but I'll have to run them off one day before too long.' He still wasn't close to fat-he didn't think he'd ever be fat the way, say, General Custer's adjutant was fat- but now, for the first time in his life, he wondered if he'd stay scrawny forever. Agnes' determination to put meat on his bones was starting to have some effect. He was also past thirty, which meant the meat he put on had an easier time sticking.
'You served under General Custer,' Agnes said a little later. With a mouth full of dumpling, Morrell could only nod. His wife continued, 'What do you think about him taking a tour through Canada before he finally comes home for good?'
After swallowing, Morrell said, 'I don't begrudge it to him, if that's what you mean. He did better up there than I thought he would, and he's the one who really broke the stalemate in the Great War when he saw what barrels could do and rammed it down Philadelphia's throat. He may be a vain old man, but he's earned his vanity.'
'When you're as old as he is, you'll have earned the right to be just as vain,' Agnes declared.
Morrell tried to imagine himself in the early 1970s. He couldn't do it. The reach was too far; he couldn't guess what that distant future time would be like. He couldn't guess what he'd be like, either. He could see forty ahead, and even fifty. But eighty and beyond? He wondered if anybody in his family had ever lived to be eighty. He couldn't think of anyone except possibly one great-uncle.
He said, 'I hope I don't have the chance to get that vain, because I'd need another war, maybe another couple of wars, to come close to doing all the things Custer's done.'
'In that case, I don't want you to get old and vain, either,' Agnes said at once. 'As long as you have the chance to get old, you can stay modest, for all of me.'
'I suppose that will do,' Morrell answered. Agnes smiled, thinking he'd agreed with her. And so he had… to a point. Old men, veterans of the War of Secession, talked about seeing the elephant. He'd seen the elephant, and all the horror it left in its wake. It was horror; he recognized as much. But he'd never felt more intensely alive than during those three years of war. The game was most worth playing when his life lay on the line. Nothing felt better than betting it-and winning.
He had a scarred hollow in the flesh of his thigh to remind him how close he'd come to betting it and losing. Agnes had a scarred hollow in her heart: Gregory Hill, her first husband, had laid his life on the life-and lost it. Morrell knew he ought to pray with all his heart that war never visited the borders of the United States again. He did pray that war never visited again. Well, most of him did, anyhow.
The next morning, he put on a pair of overalls and joined the rest of the crew of the test model in tearing down the barrel's engine. They would have done that in the field, too, with less leisure and fewer tools. The better a crew kept a barrel going, the less time the machine spent behind the lines and useless.
Morrell liked tinkering with mechanical things. Unlike the fluid world of war, repairs had straight answers. If you found what was wrong and fixed it, the machine would work every time. It didn't fight back and try to impose its own will-even if it did seem that way sometimes.
Michael Pound looked at the battered engine and sadly shook his head. 'Ridden hard and put away wet,' was the gunner's verdict.
'That's about the size of it, Sergeant,' Morrell agreed. 'It does a reasonably good job of making a White truck go. Trying to move this baby, though, it's underpowered and overstrained.'
'We ought to build something bigger and stronger, then,' Pound said. 'Have you got the three-sixteenths wrench, sir?'
'Matter of fact, I do.' Morrell passed it to him. He grinned while he did it. 'You always make everything sound so easy, Sergeant-as if there weren't any steps between we ought to and doing something.'
'Well, there shouldn't be,' Pound said matter-of-factly. 'If something needs doing, you go ahead and do it. What else?' He stared at Morrell with wide blue eyes. In his world, no steps lay between needing and doing. Morrell envied him.
Izzy Applebaum, the barrel's driver, laughed at Pound. 'Things aren't that simple, Sarge,' he said in purest New York. His eyes were narrow and dark and constantly moving, now here, now there, now somewhere else.
'Why ever not?' Pound asked in honest surprise. 'Don't you think this barrel needs a stronger engine? If it does, we ought to build one. How complicated is that?' He attacked the crankcase with the wrench. It yielded to his straightforward assault.
Morrell wished all problems yielded to straightforward assault. 'Some people don't want us to put any money at all in barrels,' he pointed out, 'let alone into better engines for them.'
'Those people are fools, sir,' Pound answered. 'If they're not fools, they're knaves. Hang a few of them and the rest will quiet down soon enough.'
'Tempting, ain't it?' Izzy Applebaum said with another laugh. 'Only trouble is, they make lists of people who ought to get hanged, too, and we're on 'em. The company's better on their list than on ours, but none of them lists is any goddamn good. My folks were on the Czar's list before they got the hell out of Poland.'
'Down south of us, the Freedom Party is making lists of people to hang,' Morrell added. 'I don't care for it, either.'
Michael Pound was unperturbed. 'Well, but they're a pack of wild-eyed fanatics, sir,' he said. 'Go ahead and tell me you don't think there are some people who'd be better off dead.'
'It is tempting,' Morrell admitted. He had his mental list, starting with several leading Socialist politicians.
