Bombs Away by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page B

there, even if the boss Red greased it the way Jim said he should. He let the subject drop. You did better talking politics with Jim than you did if you talked with your dog, but not a whole lot.
    They drove east on Colorado Boulevard, then south on Hill Street past the California Institute of Technology. Jim Summers’ comment on that was, “Buncha Hebes with hair they forgot to comb playin’ with slide rules.” He wouldn’t have known what to do with a slide rule if it slid up and bit him in the leg. Aaron didn’t know much himself, but he’d picked up some when he got promoted to acting assistant engineer on one of the Liberty ships he’d crewed.
    The house that got the washer and dryer was of white-painted stucco with a red Spanish tile roof. Aaron was smoother than Jim at hooking up the water and gas connections, so he did that. He showed the housewife both machines were in good working order. “You have any trouble, you just call us,” he told her. “The number’s on the carbon for your form there.”
    “Thank you very much,” she said, and tipped each of them a dollar. Aaron didn’t like taking money for doing what he was supposed to do, but Jim pocketed his single with the air of a man who wouldn’t have minded a fin. Declining after that would have been awkward, so Aaron kept quiet. One look at the size of the house and at the furniture told him the lady wasn’t giving them anything she couldn’t afford.
    They brought the big blue truck back to the warehouse a few minutes before five-thirty. Herschel Weissman nodded to them and said, “Go on home, boys. I’ll clock you out at the bottom of the hour.”
    “Obliged,” Jim told him. And he’d resent being obliged, too. His mental circuits would have trouble with the notion of a Jew being generous, and that would make him angry.
    “Thanks, boss,” Aaron added. When they were by themselves, they sometimes talked to each other in Yiddish. Aaron would do that with Ruth, too—but, with her as with Weissman, never when anyone who spoke only English was around. You didn’t want to show American Americans you remembered old-country ways at all.
    He went out and got into his elderly gray Nash. The rented house on Irving was only a few blocks away. Aaron smiled as he lit another Chesterfield. He wondered what little Leon had been up to today.
    —
    Bill Staley parked his behind on a metal folding chair. The seat felt like what it was: steel painted Air Force blue-gray. The chairs must have been ordered by the carload lot, on a contract that put cheapness ahead of everything else—certainly a long way ahead of comfort.
    He had the bad feeling he knew what was coming. General Harrison wasn’t the sort to call all his aircrews together unless he had some urgent reason to do so. Urgent reasons did keep offering themselves, dammit. The Red Chinese went right on pushing forward. They spent men in gruesome heaps for every mile they advanced. The next sign they gave that that bothered them would be the first.
    An American commander who used, and used up, his troops like that would have been court-martialed. He would have won himself a newspaper nickname like “Butcher” before the brass landed on him, too. Bill figured even a Russian general in the last big war would have thought twice before he expended soldiers as if they were cartridges. The Chinese had men to burn, and burned them.
    General Harrison thwacked his lectern with a pointer, the way he had to open the last big meeting. “Gentlemen, I have important news,” he said as soon as the officers and noncoms quieted. “President Truman has authorized the use of atomic bombs against the Chinese inside China. He has not directly ordered us to use them, but he has given General MacArthur permission to send out such strikes if, in his view, the situation on the ground can be improved in no other way.”
    Sighs, whistles, and soft hisses floated up from the aircrews. Just like everyone else, Bill Staley