The Victorious Opposition (71 page)

O’Doull’s receptionist was already at the office when he got there. She smiled at him and said,
“Bonjour, monsieur. Ça va?”

“Pas pire, merci,”
he answered, which made her smile. Nobody who spoke Parisian French would have said,
Not bad, thanks,
like that. O’Doull had put down deep roots here, and he knew it. He went on, “When is the first appointment?”

“Half an hour, Doctor,” she said.

“Good. I’ll see what I can catch up on till then.” He went into his private office to skim through medical journals. He wished he had time to do more than skim. He had never known—had never imagined—such an exciting age in medicine. Back when he was a boy, immunization and sanitation had begun to cut into death rates, which had kept on falling ever since. Now, though, some of the new drugs on the market were doing what quack nostrums had promised since the beginning of time: they really were curing diseases that could easily have been fatal. How many times had he watched someone die of infection after surgery that would have succeeded without it? More than he cared to recall, certainly. Now, with luck, he—and his patients—wouldn’t have to go through that particular hell any more.

And here was an article about some new medicine that was said to be even more effective than the sulfonamides, which had been the last word for the past year or two. Drugs that killed germs without poisoning people were, to him, far more exciting than fighters that flew twenty miles an hour faster and five thousand feet higher than previous models.

Not everybody thought so, though, which meant new models of fighters came out more often and got more fanfare than new drugs did. They were liable to be used, too, which worried him.

“Madness,” he muttered, and went back to reading about this fungus with what seemed a miraculous ability to murder microbes.

His first patient was a pregnant woman due in about six weeks. He’d always liked working with women who were going to have babies. Their condition was obvious, and usually had a happy outcome. He only wished the rest of what he did were as easy and rewarding.

Then he saw a child with mumps. He couldn’t do anything about that despite the new drugs in the medical journal. The little boy was very unhappy, but he would get better in a few days.

A man with a bad back came in next. “I’m sorry,
Monsieur
Papineau,” he said, “but aspirins and liniment and rest are the most I have to offer you.”

“Tabernac!”
Papineau said. “Can’t you cure it? If you could put me under the knife for it, I would go in a minute. I can’t pick up my children or make love to my wife without feeling I’m breaking in two.”

Dr. O’Doull considered. Papineau was younger than he was, and might not be shocked at a suggestion. On the other hand, he might. Rivière-du-Loup was a straitlaced place in a lot of ways. Still, worth a try . . . “Since you mention it,
monsieur,
it could be that you might have less pain during intimacy if your wife were to assume the, ah, superior position.”

There. That sounded properly medical. Was it too medical for Papineau to understand? Evidently not, for he turned red. “What? You mean her on top?
Calisse!
”

“I didn’t mean to offend,” O’Doull said hastily. “I offered the suggestion only for reasons of health and comfort. You were the one who mentioned the, ah, difficulty, after all.”

“Well, so I did.” His patient looked thoughtful. “For reasons of health, maybe. I wonder what Louise would say.” Papineau left the office rubbing his chin. O’Doull managed to hold in a snort of laughter till he was gone. Then it came out.

He was still smiling when his next patient, a little old lady with arthritis, came in. “What’s funny, Doctor?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nothing to do with you,
Madame
Villehardouin,” he assured her. “I was just . . . remembering a joke I heard last night.” She gave him a fishy stare, but couldn’t prove he was lying. He had only aspirins and liniment to offer her, too. As far as things had come in the past few years, they still had at least as far to go.

A few days later, he ran into Papineau in a grocery. As usual, the man moved in a gingerly way, but he greeted O’Doull with a smile. “That was a wonderful prescription you gave me, Doctor,” he said. “Wonderful!”

“Well, I’m glad it did you some good,” O’Doull said. Papineau nodded enthusiastically. O’Doull
was
pleased at helping him, and his pleasure diminished only a little when he reflected that Hippocrates could have given the same advice. Yes, medicine still had a long way to go.

T
he ground unrolled beneath Jonathan Moss. His fighter dove like a falcon—dove, in fact, far faster than any falcon could dream of diving. He was coming out of the sun. The young hotshot calmly tooling along in the other fighter had no idea he was there—till he zoomed past. Had it been a dogfight, his opponent never would have known what hit him.

His wireless set let out a burst of static, and then a startled squawk: “Son of a bitch! How the hell did you do that? Uh, over.”

Moss started to make a joke, to say something like,
Clean living.
But the smile and the words died unspoken. He thumbed his own wireless and answered, “Son, I did that because I wanted it more than you.” He thought he’d stopped, but his mouth kept going: “I want it more than anybody does.” A long, long pause followed before he remembered to add, “Over.”

Wasn’t all that the Lord’s bitter truth? He
did
want it more than anybody else, and what he’d known since the war
was
over. Ever since he got his law degree, he’d done everything he could to make things better, make them more tolerable, for Canadians. He’d married a Canadian patriot. He’d had himself a half-Canadian little girl.

And what thanks had he got? Some other Canadian, someone who no doubt thought of himself as a patriot, had blown up everything in the world that mattered to him. Wherever that other Canadian lived, he was bound to be laughing and cheering these days. He’d settled his score with a Yank, all right. He sure had.

I wasted twenty years of my life.
The only thing Moss wanted more than sitting in this fighter was to be able to pilot the biggest bomber the United States had. He wanted to fly it at random over some good-sized Canadian town, open the bomb-bay doors, and pour out a couple of tons of death, the way that Canadian had sent Laura and Dorothy death through the mail. He wanted that so badly, he could all but taste it. He could practically feel the bomber jump and get livelier as its heavy load of explosives fell away. Hallucination? Of course. It seemed very real just the same.

Maybe the bombs had been meant for him. Maybe, but he didn’t think so. People in his family didn’t open mail unless it was addressed to them. Had the bomb had his name on it, his wife and daughter would have left it alone.
And they might still be alive, and I wouldn’t.
He’d had that thought the day the bomb went off.

Why would anyone want to kill a woman and a little girl? That ate at Moss. Could somebody have been angry enough at Laura for marrying an American to want to see her dead? Moss knew some of the people who wanted Canada free once more were a fanatical lot, but that fanatical? It seemed excessive, even for them. And most of them were willing to admit he’d done a few useful things in his time there. He’d had some threats, but they’d never amounted to anything—not till now.

What he’d done here didn’t matter any more. He’d had his life rearranged for him. The sooner he got out of Canada now, the happier he’d be.

The wireless crackled again. The other fighter pilot said, “I’m going back to the airstrip now, Major. Over.”

“I’ll follow you,” Moss answered. “Over and out.” He’d put the uniform back on as soon as he’d buried Laura and Dorothy. He hadn’t asked for the promotion from the rank he’d held in the Great War. They’d seemed eager to give it to him, though, and acted afraid he wouldn’t come back to flying. The way things were looking along the border with the CSA and out in the Pacific, they were anxious to grab all the warm bodies they could.

He wondered what he would have done had Laura lived. Chucking his practice to fly for the USA might have meant chucking his marriage, too. Well, he didn’t have to worry about that now.

There was the airstrip, with the snow bulldozed off it. Some airplanes here landed on skis instead of wheels during the winter, but his didn’t have them. He lowered his landing gear and bumped to a stop.

Groundcrew men came up to take charge of the fighter. Wearily, Moss pushed back the canopy and got out. The fur and leather of his flying gear kept him warm on the ground in wintertime. He remembered the way that had worked from the days of the Great War. Ever since he’d lost Laura and Dorothy, those days seemed more real, more vivid, more
present
in his mind than much of what had happened since.

A young lieutenant emerged from one of the buildings flanking the airstrip and struggled through the snow till he got to the cleared runway. Then he could hurry, as young lieutenants were supposed to do. Saluting, he told Moss, “The base commandant’s compliments, sir, and he’d like to see you in his office right away.”

“Well, then, I’d better get over there, hadn’t I?” Moss said.

Ambiguity permeated his relations with Captain Oscar Trotter. He’d got on fine with Major Finley, Trotter’s predecessor. They’d both been Great War veterans, and understood each other. The new commandant was a younger man. He’d never seen combat, never drunk himself blind three or four nights in a row so he wouldn’t have to think about friends going down in flames three or four dreadful days in a row, never drunk himself blind so he wouldn’t have to think about going down in flames himself. And, of course, Trotter was only a captain. Even though he was in charge of the field outside of London, he had trouble giving Moss orders now that Moss had put the uniform back on and wore golden oak leaves on his shoulder straps.

Moss saw no point in making things worse than they were already. “Reporting as ordered,” he said when he walked into Trotter’s office. That let the commandant know he was willing to take his orders, even if he didn’t call him
sir
or salute first.

Trotter nodded. He didn’t salute, either. “Have a seat, Major,” he said, acknowledging Moss’ rank that way so he also didn’t have to say
sir
. He waved the older man into the chair in front of his desk. It creaked when Moss sat down in it. It always did.

“What’s up?” Moss asked.

Trotter lit a cigarette before he answered. He shoved the pack of Raleighs across the desk so Moss could have one, too. As Moss lit up, the commandant pushed a sheet of paper across the desk after the Raleighs. “Your orders have come through.”

Was that relief in his voice? Moss wouldn’t have been surprised. Base commandants didn’t like ambiguity, and with reason: it weakened their authority. If Trotter got Moss out of his hair, he could go back to being senior officer here in every sense of the term.

The cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, Moss reached for the paper. It bore the embossed eagle in front of crossed swords that had symbolized the USA since the revival after the Second Mexican War. He read through the orders, then looked up at Captain Trotter. “You have an atlas of the United States here, sir? Where the hell is Mount Vernon, Illinois?”

“I thought you were from Illinois,” Trotter answered, pulling a book off a shelf behind his chair.

“I’m from Chicago,” Moss replied with dignity. “Downstate is all the back of beyond, as far as I’m concerned.” He might have been talking about darkest Africa.

Captain Trotter opened the atlas, then pointed. “Here it is.” He turned the book around so Moss could see, too. “Right in the middle of the pointy end that goes down to where the Ohio and the Mississippi meet.”

“Uh-
huh,
” Moss said. “Hell of a nice place to fly missions into Kentucky from, looks like to me.”

“Or to defend if the Confederates start flying missions out of Kentucky,” Trotter agreed.

“I don’t want to defend. To hell with defending,” Moss said savagely. “If those bastards think they can start a new war, I want to go out and tear ’em a new asshole so they’ll goddamn well think twice.”

That made Captain Trotter grin. “No wonder you’re still a good pilot. You’ve got the killer instinct, all right.”

Moss knew he should have smiled, too. Try as he would, he couldn’t. Yes, he had a killer instinct. He’d been thinking about that while he was up in the fighter. But he hadn’t thought about it in terms of the Confederates then. He’d thought about Canadians, people he’d been dealing with—hell, people he’d liked, people he’d loved—for more than twenty years.

Trotter might have picked that out of his head. “Maybe getting away from these parts will do you good,” he said.

“Will it? I have my doubts,” Moss answered. “It won’t bring Laura and Dorothy back to life. It won’t make me stop wanting to blow Canada to hell and gone.”

The commandant shifted uneasily in his swivel chair. He didn’t seem to know what to make of that. Moss could hardly blame him. He hadn’t known what an explosive mixture grief and rage and hate could be till it overwhelmed him. For a moment, he wondered if the damned Canuck who’d sent Laura the bomb had had that same hot, furious blend blazing in him. Only for a moment. Then Moss shoved the thought aside. To hell with what the damned Canuck had been thinking.
If I knew who it was . . .
Regretfully, Moss shoved that thought aside, too. He didn’t know. From what U.S. investigators said, it wasn’t likely he ever would.

“Well,” Trotter said, “any which way, you will be going back to the States. Your orders say, ‘as quickly as practicable.’ How soon can you be on a train?”

If Moss hadn’t had tragedy strike him, he knew he wouldn’t have got that much consideration. The other officer would have said,
Be on the train at seven tomorrow morning,
and off he would have gone. Here, though, even if he didn’t think getting away would do much for him, he was far from sorry to put Canada behind him. “I don’t have much left to do here,” he said. “I’ve been settling affairs ever since . . . since it happened. After my apartment got blown to hell, it’s not like I’ve got much left to throw in a suitcase. If it wasn’t for your kindness, I wouldn’t have a suitcase to throw my stuff in, either.”