Hitler's War by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

up after a few steps.
    A belt of trees lay ahead. Did Germans lurk there? Sure as hell, they did. A spatter of rifle fire came from the woods. After the first bullet cracked past him, Luc needed no urging to flatten out. Prone, he fired back. His MAS36 slammed against his shoulder. In between rounds, he dug a scrape for himself with his entrenching tool.
    Very cautiously, the French advanced. They took a few casualties, which made them more cautious yet. The Germans didn’t make much of a fight, though. They melted back toward their fancy Westwall. It wasn’t supposed to be as good as the Maginot Line—nothing was, not even the Czech forts—but everybody said it was tough even so.
    When Luc finally reached the woods, he found several countrymen exclaiming over a dead German. The redheaded guy in field-gray had taken one in the chest. He didn’t look especially unhappy—just surprised. Luc wondered if he’d killed the
Boche
himself. Not likely, but not impossible, either. He felt like a warrior and a murderer at the same time.

I t was six in the morning in Peking, which meant it was yesterday afternoon back in New York City. Corporal Pete McGill and several of the other Marines at the American Legation clustered in front of a shortwave set, listening to the World Series. The Yankees were up on the Cubs, two games to none. They were leading in game three, too. Joe Gordon had already singled with the bases loaded and homered, and Hoot Pearson was cruising along on the mound.
    “Cubs are history,” McGill said happily—he was from the Bronx. “Three straight Series for the Yanks, it’s gonna be. Nobody’s ever done that before.”
    None of the other leathernecks argued with him. He would have liked to see them try! When the Cubs got done losing today (or yesterday, or whatever the hell day it really was), they would have to sweep four to take the championship. Nobody did that, not against the Bronx Bombers!
    A Polack named Herman Szulc—which he insisted was pronounced
Schultz
—said, “I bet they won’t be as good next year.”
    “Oh, yeah, wise guy? How come?” McGill had brick-red hair, freckles, and the temper that went with them. And if you affronted his team, you affronted him, too.
    “Only stands to reason. Shit, look at Gehrig,” Szulc said. “He didn’t even hit .300 this year. He’s getting old, wearing out.”
    “Nah, he’ll be back strong. You wait and see,” McGill said. “Sheesh! A little bit of an off year for one guy, and you want to write off the ball-club.”
    Before the argument could go any further, a Chinese servant brought in a tray with coffee and sausages and rolls stuffed with this and that for the Marines. None of it except the coffee was what McGill would have eaten in the States, but it would all be tasty. Duty at the Legation was as sweet as it got.
    “Sheh-sheh
, Wang,” Szulc said as the servant set the tray down on a table. That meant
thank you
in Chinese. McGill had learned a few phrases, too. They came in handy every once in a while.
    Wang grinned a toothy grin. Several of his front teeth were gold. A twenty-four-carat smile meant you were somebody here. “Eat,” he said—he knew bits of English, the way the Marines knew bits of Chinese. He waved at the tray.
“Hao.”
That meant it was good.
    And it was. “Wonder what’s in the sausages,” somebody said with his mouth full.
    “Your mother,” somebody else came back, which almost made Pete squirt coffee out his nose.
    “The Missing Link,” Szulc suggested. That wasn’t even so far-fetched. They’d found prehistoric human bones in these parts that were God only knew how old.
    It also wasn’t so far-fetched for another reason. Chinamen would cook and eat damn near everything. You could get snake. It was supposed to be good for your one-eyed snake. You could get dog, whichwas also supposed to make John Henry perk up. You could get fried grasshoppers. McGill had eaten one once, on a bet. It wasn’t even