Short Fiction · Frigid Fracas (8/17)

VIII

When Major Joe Mauser entered the swank Agora Bar, the little afternoon dance band broke into a few bars of that tune which was beginning to pall on him.

“… I knew her heart was breaking,

And to my heart in anguish pressed,

The girl I left behind me.”

Nadine looked up from the little table she occupied and caught the wry expression on his face and laughed.

“What price glory?” she said.

He took the chair across from her and chuckled ruefully. “All right,” he said, “I surrender. However, if you think a theme song is bad, you’ll be relieved at some of the other ideas my, ah, publicity agent had which I turned down.”

She said, “Oh, did he want you to dash into some burning building and save some old lady’s canary, or something?”

“Not exactly. However, he had a nightclub singer with a list of nine or ten victories behind her⁠—”

“Victories?”

“Husbands. And I was to be seen escorting the singer around the nightclub circuit.”

“A fate worse than death? But, truly, why did you turn him down?”

“I wanted to spend the time with you.”

She made a moue. “So as to carry on our never-ending argument over the value of status?”

“No.”

Her eyes dropped and there was a slight frown on her forehead. Joe interpreted it to mean that she took exception to one of Mid-Middle caste speaking to her in this wise. He said, flatly, “At least the tune is somewhat applicable tonight.”

She looked up quickly, having immediately caught the meaning of his words. “Oh, Joe, you haven’t taken another commission?”

“Why not? I’m a mercenary by trade, Nadine.” He was vaguely irritated by her tone.

“But you admittedly made a small fortune on the last fracas. You were one of the very few investors in the whole country who expected Vacuum Tube Transport to boom, rather than go bankrupt. You simply don’t need to risk your life further, Joe!”

He didn’t bother to tell her that already the greater part of his small fortune had been siphoned off in Freddy Soligen’s campaign to make him a celebrity. He said, instead, “The stock shares I’ll make aren’t particularly important, Nadine. But Stonewall Cogswell has pledged that if I’ll fly for him in the Carbonaceous Fuel⁠–⁠United Miners fracas, he’ll press my ambitions for promotion.”

She said, her voice low, “Promotion in rank, or caste, Joe?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“But, Joe, to risk your life, your life, Joe, for such a silly thing⁠—”

He said softly, “Such a silly thing as attaining to a position which will enable me to court openly the girl I love?”

She flushed, looked into his face quickly. Her flush deepened and her eyes went to her folded hands, on the table.

He said nothing.

Nadine said finally, her voice so low as almost not to be heard, “Perhaps I would be willing to marry a man of Middle caste.”

He was taken with surprise, but even in thrilling to the meaning of her words, his head was shaking in negation. “Nadine Haer, Category Medicine, Rank Doctor, Mid-Upper, married to Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle. Don’t be ridiculous, Nadine. It would be as though back in the Twentieth Century you would have married a Negro or Oriental.”

She was stirred with anger. “There is no law preventing marriage between castes!”

“Nor was there law, in most States, against marrying between races. But there were few who dared, and, of those, few who were allowed to be happy. It’s no go, Nadine. Remember in the Exclusive Room the other night when the waiter questioned my presence in an Upper establishment and you had to tell him I was your guest? I don’t desire to be your guest the rest of my life, Nadine.”

The anger welled higher in her. “And do you think that in the remote case you do jump your caste to Upper, that I would marry you and then realize the rest of my life that our marriage was only possible due to your participation in mass slaughter for the sake of the slobbering multitudes of Telly fans?”

Joe said, “I wasn’t going to bring the matter up until I had made Low-Upper caste.”

“Well, sir, the matter is up. And I reject you in advance. Oh, Joe, if you have to persist in this status-hungry ambition of yours, drop the Category Military and get into something else. You have enough of a fortune to branch into various fields where your abilities would lead to advancement.”

Again he didn’t tell her that his fortune was all but dissipated. Instead, he said bitterly, “Those who have, get. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Things are rigged, these days, so that it’s impossible to work your way to the top except in Military and Religion. The Uppers take care of their own, and at the same time make every effort to keep us of the lower orders from joining their sacred circle. I might make it in the Military, Nadine, but my chances in another field are so remote as to be laughable.”

She stood and looked down at him emptily. “No,” she said, “don’t get up. I’m leaving, Major Mauser.” He began to rise, to protest, but she said, her voice curt, “I have seen only one fracas on Telly in my entire life, and was so repelled that I vowed never to watch again. However, I am going to make an exception. I am going to follow this one, and if, as a result of your actions, even a single person meets death, I wish never to see you again. Do I make myself completely clear, Major Mauser?”

IX

Marshal Stonewall Cogswell looked impudently around at this staff officers gathered about the chart table. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I assume you are all familiar with the battle of Chancellorsville?”

No one bothered to answer and he chuckled. “I know what you are thinking, that had any of you refrained from a thorough study of the campaigns of Lee and Jackson, he would not be a member of my staff.”

The craggy marshal traced with his finger on the great military chart before them. “Then you will have noticed the similarity of today’s dispensation of forces to that of Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, on May 2, 1863.” He pointed with his baton. “Our stream, here, would be the Rappahannock, this woods, the Wilderness. Here would be Fredericksburg and here Chancellorsville.”

One of his colonels nodded. “My regiment occupies a position similar to that of Jubal Early.”

“Absolutely correct,” the marshal said crisply. “Gentlemen, I repeat, our troop dispensations, those of Lieutenant General McCord and myself, are practically identical. Now then, if McCord continues to move his forces here, across our modern day Rappahannock, he makes the initial mistake that finally led to the opening which allowed Jackson’s brilliant fifteen-mile flanking march. Any questions, thus far?”

There were some murmurs, no questions. The accumulated years of military service of this group of veterans would have totaled into the hundreds.

“Very interesting, eh?” the marshal pursued. “Jed, your artillery is massed here. It’s a shame that General Jack Altshuler has taken a commission with Carbonaceous Fuel. We could use his cavalry. He would be our J. E. B. Stuart, eh?”

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Warren cleared his throat unhappily. “Sir, Jack Altshuler is the best cavalryman in North America.”

“I would be the last to deny it, Paul.”

“Yes, sir. And he’s fought half his fracases under you, sir.”

“Your point, Paul?” the marshal said crisply.

“He knows your methods, sir. For that matter, so does Lieutenant General McCord. He’s fought you enough.”

There was silence in the staff headquarters, broken suddenly by Cogswell’s curt chuckle. “Paul, I’m going to recommend to the Category Military Department, your promotion to full colonel on the strength of that. You were the first to see what I have been getting to. Gentlemen, do you realize what General McCord and his staff are doing this very moment? I would wager my reputation that they are poring over a campaign chart of the battle of Chancellorsville.”

The craggy veteran bent back over the map again, his voice dropped all humor and he stabbed with his baton. “Here, here, and here. They expect us to duplicate the movements of Lee. Very good, we shall. But the advances of Lee and Jackson, we will make feints. And the feints made by Lee and Jackson will be our attacks in force. Gentlemen, we are going to literally reverse the battle of Chancellorsville. Major Mauser!”

Joe Mauser had been in the background as befitted his junior rank. Now he stepped to the table’s edge. “Yes, sir.”

The marshal indicated a defile. “Were we actually duplicating the Civil War battle, this would have been the right flank of Sedgwick’s two army corps. We’re not dealing in army corps these days but only regiments, however, the position is relatively as important. Jack Altshuler’s cavalry is largely concentrated here. When the action is joined, he can move in one of three ways. Through this defile, is least likely. However, if his heavy cavalry does work its way through here, I must know immediately. This is crucial, Joe. Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

The marshal turned his attention to his chief of artillery. “Jed, when we need your guns, we’re going to need them badly, but I doubt if that time will develop until the second or third day of the fracas. Going to want as clever a job of camouflage done as possible.”

The other scowled. “Camouflage, sir?”

“Confound it, yes. French term, I believe. Going to want your guns so hidden that those two gliders of McCord’s will fail to spot them.” The marshal grimaced in the direction of Joe Mauser, who, having his instructions, had fallen back from the table again. “When you reintroduced aerial observation to the fracas, major, you set off a whole train of related factors. Camouflage is going to be in every field officer’s lexicon from this day on. Which reminds me.” He looked to his artilleryman.

“Yes, sir.”

“Put your mind to work on devising Maxim gun mounts to be used to keep enemy gliders at as high altitude as possible, or preferably, of course, to bring them down. We’ll need an antiaircraft squadron, in short. Better put young Wiley on it.”

“Yes, sir.”