The War That Came Early: The Big Switch (35 page)

“This Wizard in the Emerald City, he will help them?” Vera whispered in Pete’s ear. She’d got into the spirit of it, all right.

He cared more about the feel of her warm, moist breath than about all the wizards in the world put together. Smiling, he whispered “You’ll find out” back at her.

Down the Yellow Brick Road capered Dorothy, with Toto and their unlikely companions from Oz. In the distance lay the Emerald City. Its palaces gleamed against the painted sky. If you couldn’t find what you were looking for in a place like that, you probably couldn’t find it anywhere. And they were on their way.

The bomb in the theater went off just before they got there.

One second, Pete was listening to swelling, cheerful music and watching colors brighter than any he’d see in real life. The next, there was a roar and a crash. The theater went dark in the same split second as two walls and part of the ceiling fell in.

As soon as Pete heard the explosion, he tried to throw himself flat
and to sweep Vera down with him. He reacted at a level far below conscious thought—he was a trained Marine. He was halfway to the grimy, threadbare carpet when something clipped him behind the ear and darkness deeper than the one inside the movie house engulfed him.

Some while later—he never knew how long—he came back to himself without fully realizing he’d been knocked for a loop. He kept trying to yank Vera down to the deck. Only then did he notice she wasn’t in the circle of his left arm any more. And only after that did he notice that every square inch of himself, with the possible exception of the soles of his feet, hurt like hell. He couldn’t account for why, not at first. Had a bunch of Japs decided to stomp him? This felt even worse than he thought that should have.

Then memory, as opposed to reflex, came back. He’d been watching the movie. There’d been warnings the Chinese underground was getting frisky. One of the things they shouted at you over and over while you were a boot was
Anything that can happen can happen to you! Be ready for it!
He hadn’t been ready enough.

Or had he? He was still here, anyhow, wherever here was. “Vera?” he said—or tried to say. Only a croak emerged. His mouth was full of blood and what he guessed was plaster dust.

When he spat, a chunk of tooth came out with all the glop. That, at the moment, was the least of his worries. “Vera?” he said again. This time, he could more or less understand himself.

A face appeared above him. One second, it wasn’t there; the next, it was. So it seemed to him, anyhow. He was still drifting in and out of consciousness. The face wasn’t Vera’s. It belonged to a skinny, middle-aged Chinese man. Next thing Pete knew, the fellow’s hand was in his pocket, grabbing for his wallet. He tried to knock it away, but his right arm didn’t want to do what he told it to. The Chinese man disappeared. So did Pete’s cash.

Then another Chinese looked him over. This guy spoke to him in bad French. “Don’t get it,” Pete managed.

“Ah,” the Chinese man said, and tried again in English: “You hurt? Where hurt?”

“Fucking everywhere!” Pete said. He tried to use his right arm to point. The pain almost drove him under. “Arm especially,” he gasped.

To his surprise, the Chinese man produced a syringe from a small leather case and gave him a shot. He felt better right away. If that wasn’t morphine, he didn’t know what it would be. As he drifted toward sleep on a warm cloud of contentment, the Chinese man started bandaging him.
A doc
, was Pete’s last clear thought.
How about that?

When he really came back to himself, he was inside the American consulate. The shot was wearing off. Every nerve screamed. The Navy doc who took care of the Marines didn’t want to give him more dope. “You aim to end up a junkie?” the white man asked.

“Right now, buddy, I don’t give a fuck,” Pete said fervently. Muttering, the Navy doctor stuck him. This time, Pete didn’t go away as the pain receded. “Where’s Vera? How’s she doing?” he asked as soon as he could think of anything outside his own torment.

“The woman you were with unfortunately did not survive the explosion,” the doctor answered, his voice disapproving. “I was told she must have died very quickly and did not suffer.”

Pete wailed. Even drugged, even with his own hurts still tormenting him, he yipped like a puppy taken from its mother. Tears poured down his face. He wanted to kill the doctor for telling him something like that. He wanted to call the man a liar, too. He wanted that more than anything, but he knew he couldn’t have it.

“She can’t be dead,” he said. “I loved her.”

“I’m sorry, son.” The Navy doctor didn’t sound one bit sorry. “You ask me, the Chinese aren’t doing themselves any good with these terror bombs. The Western powers will just decide Japan can do whatever she wants to put down maniacs like that. I bet the Chinks are a bunch of Reds, trying to give Stalin a helping hand.”

Pete hardly heard him. He’d just betrayed his own hopes.
I loved her
. Morphine didn’t keep him from noting the dreadful finality of that past tense. He believed Vera was gone. How could he live without her? He had no idea. He didn’t much want to try. He wailed again.

That made the doctor give him another shot. This one wasn’t morphine. It knocked him for a loop, whatever it was. When he woke up, it was the following afternoon. He didn’t want to believe that, but the strips of sunlight coming in through windows he knew faced west gave him no choice.

He looked around the sick bay. He was the only guy in it. If any other Marines had been watching
The Wizard of Oz
, they’d either got off scot-free or they’d bought the whole farm.

The doctor walked over to him when he saw him awake. “How are you doing?” the man asked.

“Awful,” Pete said honestly.

“I believe it. Fractures, abrasions, contusions … You’re lucky to be here.”

“Some luck.” Pete wanted to wail again, not for himself but for his lost love.

“I am going to recommend that we evacuate you to Manila,” the doctor said as he stuck Pete once more. Now he wasn’t going on about addicting him. He’d had a better chance to see how badly hurt Pete was. And maybe he hoped the morphine would help dull the pain in Pete’s soul along with the one filling his battered carcass.

That was a forlorn hope. “What’s wrong with the hospitals here?” Pete asked. “I want to be near—” He couldn’t go on. He choked up instead.

“You can’t do anything for her here,” the doc said. “You’ve got to know that. It isn’t like you two were married or anything. And besides, any excuse that lets us get our personnel out of here, we take. Hospitals here are still here, and we can’t protect you if you’re in one of them.”

Protect him from whom? More Chinese bombers? The Japs? Himself? No, they couldn’t protect him from any of those, and he couldn’t protect himself, either.

ll right.” It wasn’t all right, not even slightly, but Luc Harcourt wasn’t about to admit it till he found out what the hell was going on here. Since he didn’t know, he asked: “What the hell is going on here?”

One of the
poilus
in front of him had a fat lip. The other had a mouse under one eye. They glared at each other as if they would sooner have tangled with machine guns than with fists. Fat Lip jerked a thumb at Mouse. “Sergeant, this
con
is a filthy Communist. He says he doesn’t want to fight the Russians no matter what kind of orders we get.”

“Merde,”
Luc said wearily. He’d been waiting for this kind of crap to break out. The only thing that surprised him was how long it had taken. “Did you really say that, Boileau?”
Were you really that dumb?

“You bet I did, Sergeant.” The man with the shiner sounded proud of his own stupidity. He gave his accuser a withering glance. “And Paul here isn’t just a squealer. The fairy wants to suck Hitler’s cock.”

“Listen to me,” Luc said. “Listen hard, because this is your first, last, and only chance. You can’t make a mutiny. You can’t disobey orders or tell other people to disobey orders. If you do, they’ll shoot you. Have you got that through your thick wooden head? Well? Have you?”

“I hear you,” Boileau answered. “I know you have to come out with that kind of garbage. But you’re a proletarian, too, right? Where’s your class consciousness? I bet one man in three won’t follow orders to attack the heartland of the glorious Socialist revolution. Your precious government can’t shoot all of us. To the barricades!” He thrust a clenched fist in the air.

“Quit trying to sound like Victor Hugo,” Luc said, which earned him a wounded look.

“You ought to have the military gendarmerie take him away, Sergeant,” Paul said. “He’s talking sedition!”

Boileau thrust his arm in the air again, this time in a Nazi salute. Paul jumped on him. They fell to the ground, slugging and swearing. “Cut it out!” Luc yelled. “Cut it out, goddammit!” When they didn’t, he kicked them both with savage impartiality.

For a bad moment, he wondered if that would make them gang up on him. Fortunately, it didn’t. They separated. Now Boileau had two black eyes, while Paul, whose last name Luc couldn’t—and didn’t want to—remember, was bleeding from the nose.

“Save it for the enemy, will you?” Luc snapped.

They might have been doing a vaudeville turn out in the provinces. Their timing impeccable, they pointed at each other and chorused, “
He’s
the enemy!”

“No.
Nom d’un nom
, no,” Luc said. “We’re all Frenchmen together. We do what the government tells us, or we’re all screwed together.”

“We do what the government tells us,
and
we’re all screwed together,” Boileau said. The Communist soldier walked away, rubbing at sore ribs.

“Are you going to let him get away with that?” the rightist soldier demanded indignantly.

“Paul …”

“Yes, Sergeant?”

“Why don’t you fuck off?” Luc made it a friendly suggestion. Under it, though, lay the warning that he would whale the kapok out of Paul if the private didn’t fuck off. Paul eyed him, considering. The sergeant’s hash mark didn’t change Paul’s mind. Luc’s look of anticipation was a
different story. Muttering, Paul departed—not in the same direction Boileau had chosen. That was good, anyhow.

It was the only good thing Luc could see about the situation. He did what he did when he didn’t know what else to do: he hunted up Lieutenant Demange. If anybody was above (or maybe below) politics, Demange was the man. He hated the whole human race, white, black, yellow, brown, and Red.

Luc poured out his tale of woe, finishing, “How many sergeants are trying to deal with this shit right now, all over France? What can I do about it? What can anybody do about it? We’re liable to have a civil war on our hands!”

“Yeah, I know,” Demange said, the perpetual Gitane in the corner of his mouth twitching as he spoke. “You aren’t the first guy who’s come to me up in arms about it, either.”

“What can I do?” Luc asked again.

“Sounds like you did what you could—and I hope you booted both those assholes good and hard,” Demange said. “As long as they remember they’re soldiers and do what you tell ’em, we’re all right. If they don’t …” His ferret face screwed up in a nasty grimace. “If they don’t, it’s gonna be worse than 1917.”

“Ai!” Luc winced. Any Frenchman would have. Things in 1917 had got mighty bad. After one more failed offensive against the
Boches
, whole divisions of the French Army had mutinied. A combination of executions and granted privileges kept things below the point of full explosion, but barely. The army was useless for the rest of the year. The Germans could have walked over it in the spring or summer if they’d ever learned about the mutinies. Somehow, they didn’t. Germans could be blind in the most peculiar ways.

Demange glanced east. German soldiers wandered around out in the open, confident the cease-fire would hold. Part of the deal was that they would evacuate France once the French and English went into action with them against Russia, but they were still here now. “Want to find out what they think about it?” Demange asked with a sour sneer.

“I already know. They’re laughing their nuts off,” Luc said bitterly.