'Take an even strain, Colonel Morrell. You'll burst a blood vessel if you don't, and then where will you be?'
'But, sir-!' Morrell waved the papers again.
'Take an even strain,' Donaldson repeated. He liked the phrase. Before Morrell could explode, Donaldson went on, 'Who cares what a bunch of goddamn greasers are up to, anyway?'
'But it's not just greasers, sir,' Morrell said desperately. 'These barrels have Confederate mercenaries as crew. They've got to have Confederates designing them, too. And the Confederate States aren't allowed to build barrels. The armistice agreement makes that as plain as the nose on my face.'
A ceiling fan spun lazily. A fly buzzed. Outside Donaldson's window, summer heat made the air shimmer. The government building across the street from General Staff headquarters might have belonged to some other world, some other universe. Morrell laughed softly. He'd had that feeling about the General Staff before, with no tricks of the eye to start it going.
Trying to come back to what he was sure was reality, he said, 'We ought to protest to Richmond. The Confederate government is turning a blind eye toward what has to be several regiments' worth of their veterans going south to fight on Maximilian's side. That may not be against the letter of their agreements with us, but it's dead against the spirit.'
After another puff on that pipe, Colonel Donaldson said, 'Nice idea, but don't hold your breath. President Sinclair is looking for good relations with the CSA. He doesn't want to bother Richmond with trifles, and he thinks anything this side of a Confederate invasion of Kentucky is a trifle.'
Morrell muttered something under his breath. It wasn't that he thought Donaldson was wrong. No, he feared his superior was right. 'Why did we bother to win the war, if we won't make it count?'
'You'd have to talk to President Sinclair about that, Colonel Morrell,' Donaldson answered. ' Why isn't my job, or yours, either. It's for the civilians. They decide what to do, and they tell us. Doing it is our department.'
'I know, sir.' The lesson had been drilled into Morrell since his West Point days. During the War of Secession, U.S. generals had spoken of overthrowing the republic and becoming military dictator. Then they'd gone out and lost the war, so they'd never had the chance to do more than talk about it. No one had wanted to take the risk of such things since, though it was only now, a lifetime later, that the United States had to deal with the consequences of victory rather than defeat.
'In fairness, we could use some peace and quiet with Richmond right about now,' Donaldson said. 'After all, we've got Germany to worry about, too.'
'Well, yes,' Morrell admitted reluctantly. He knew why he was reluctant to admit any such thing, too: 'But if we ever do fight the Kaiser, that'll be the Navy's worry, not the Army's. At least, I have a devil of a time seeing how the Germans could invade us, or how we could land troops in Europe.'
'It wouldn't be easy, would it?' Donaldson said. 'But, of course, a lot depends on who's friends with whom. The Germans have the same worries about France and England as we do about the CSA. And God only knows what's going to happen to the Russians, even now. They're having more trouble putting down their Reds than the Confederates ever did during the war.'
'Not our worry, thank God.' Morrell chuckled. The puff of smoke Donaldson sent up might have been a fragrant question mark. Morrell explained: 'The Russian Reds make up the best names for themselves. I especially like the two who are operating in that town on the Volga-Tsaritsin, that's the name of the place. The Red general is the Man of Steel, and his second-in-command goes by the Hammer. The Reds in the CSA weren't so fancy.'
'They were nothing but a bunch of coons,' Donaldson said. 'You can't expect much from them.'
That made Morrell thoughtful. 'I wonder,' he said. 'I do wonder, sir. When I was in the field, I ran up against Negro regiments a few times. Far as I could tell, they didn't fight any worse than raw regiments of white Confederate troops.'
'Huh.' The older man sounded deeply skeptical. But then he shrugged. ' That's not our worry, either, thank God.'
'No, sir,' Morrell agreed. 'Are you sure there's no point to writing that report about the barrels down in Mexico, sir? I really do think that's alarming.'
Donaldson sighed the sigh of a man who'd been a cog in a bureaucratic machine for a long time. 'You can write the report, Colonel, if it makes you happy. I'll even endorse it and send it on. But I can tell you what will happen. The most likely thing is, nothing. It'll go into a file here along with a million other reports. That's what happens if you're lucky.'
'I don't call that luck,' Morrell said.
'Compared to the other thing that could happen, it's luck,' Donaldson told him. 'Believe you me, it's luck. Because the other thing that could happen is, somebody reads the report and passes it on to somebody else, somebody outside the General Staff, and it gets into the hands of one of those precious civilians-say, somebody like N. Mattoon Thomas, the assistant secretary of war.'
'But he's just the man-just the sort of man-who ought to see a report like this one,' Morrell said. 'He thought well of the one I did on the mess in Armenia.'
'Well, maybe. But maybe not, too. Armenia's a long ways off, you see. The Confederate States are right next door,' Colonel Donaldson said. 'If you're lucky, he reads it and then he throws it into a file in the War Department offices. Different file, but that's all right.' He held up a hand to silence Morrell, then went on, 'If you're not so lucky, he reads it and he thinks, Who's this smart-aleck soldier trying to tell me how to do my job? And if that's what somebody like N. Mattoon Thomas thinks, pretty soon you're not here in Philadelphia any more. You're commanding a garrison in the middle of nowhere: Alberta or Utah or New Mexico, somewhere like that.'
He spoke as if of a fate worse than death. That was probably how he saw it. That was how any soldier who was first of all a cog in a bureaucratic machine and only afterwards a fighting man would have seen it. But Morrell didn't want to be here in the first place. Getting back out into the field, even somewhere in the back of beyond, sounded pretty good to him.
Yes, it does-to you, he thought then, several beats later than he should have. What will Agnes think about it? You've got a little girl now, Morrell. Do you want to haul Mildred off to God knows where, just because you couldn't stand to keep your big mouth shut?
He muttered unhappily. Colonel Donaldson thought he was contemplating the horrors of life outside Philadelphia. 'Dismissed,' Donaldson said.
Unhappily, Morrell left his superior's office. Even more unhappily, he went back to his own. Where does your first loyalty lie? To your wife and daughter, or to the United States of America?
He cursed softly. But he didn't need long to make up his mind. Agnes had been a soldier's widow before she met him, dammit. She knew what the price of duty could be. If they had to go off to Lethbridge or Nehi or Flagstaff, she'd take that in stride. It might even end up better for Mildred.
Morrell nodded to himself. He fed a sheet of paper into the typewriter that squatted on his desk like some heathen god. He typed with his two index fingers-a slower way of doing things than proper touch-typing, but it got the job done well enough. If the powers that be chose to ignore his report, that was their business. But he was going to make sure they saw what he saw.
He did warn his wife what he'd done, and what might happen as a result. To his relief, she only shrugged. 'Philadelphia's a nice town,' she said. 'But I got along well enough in Leavenworth, too.'
He kissed her. 'I like the way you think.'
'It isn't a question of thinking,' Agnes said. 'It's a question of doing what you have to do.' Mildred Morrell didn't say anything. She just kicked her legs and grinned up at her father from her cradle, showing off her first two brand new baby teeth. Some of her babbles and gurgles had dada in them, but she didn't yet associate the sound with him.
'What will you think, if you grow up in Lethbridge or Nehi instead of Philadelphia?' Morrell asked her. Mildred only laughed. She didn't care one way or the other. 'Maybe, just maybe,' her father said, 'I'm fixing things so you don't have to go through a war when you grow up. I hope I am, anyway.'
He was eating lunch the next day when Lieutenant Colonel John Abell came up to him. Without preamble, General Liggett's adjutant said, 'You do believe in cooking your own goose, don't you, Colonel?'
'Ah.' Morrell smiled. 'You've read it, then?'
'Yes, I've read it.' The astringently intellectual General Staff officer shook his head in slow wonder. 'Amazing how a man can analyze so brilliantly and be so blind to politics, all at the same time.'
After another bite of meat loaf, Morrell said, 'You've told me as much before. What am I being blind to
