The War That Came Early: The Big Switch by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page B

put out, he tried again. This time, he captured it. He made a check mark on one of the papers. “Get your things. We’ll put you in a
panje
wagon and haul you off to the nearest railhead.”
    “I serve the Soviet Union!” Mouradian said, and then, “Comrade Colonel, where am I going? What will I be doing when I get there?” It still might be Kolyma, despite the blather about whether he could fly the plane. Some Russians were sheeplike enough to report to the gulag even without guards to make sure they got there. If Borisov thought Mouradian grew that kind of wool, he would soon discover that men from the Caucasus weren’t so naive.
    “You will report to Far Eastern Aviation. They’re screaming for pilots there,” Borisov told him. “I don’t
know
what you’ll be doing, but fuck your mother if it’s not likely to be dropping rocks on the little yellow monkeys’ heads.”
    So it would be Siberia, then. But he’d go there as a free man, a soldier, not as a disgraced prisoner. Mouradian suddenly felt ten degrees warmer, even if Colonel Borisov’s tent remained cold as a hailstone. “I serve the Soviet Union!” he said yet again, this time gladly. “Ah, you have written orders for me?” Without them, he’d never get aboard the local train, let alone the Trans-Siberian Railway.
    Borisov blinked owlishly. “Oh, sure. They’re here somewhere.” He fumbled through papers, then thrust one at Mouradian. “Here.”
    Mouradian eyed it. “Sir, this is a scheme for winning at dice.”
    “What? Give it back to me!” The wing commander snatched it out of his hand. He did some more shuffling. “This is the one you need.”
    The other one, no doubt, was the one Borisov needed himself.Mouradian carefully examined the new document. Sure enough, it showed that Borisov was duly providing the pilot he’d been ordered to furnish. However … “Will you please put my name on it?”
    “Oh, all right.” By the way Borisov sighed, Anastas was asking for the sun, the moon,
and
the stars. The colonel scribbled. Mouradian checked again. It would do. Borisov had remembered who he was.
    He went out to collect his things. The submachine-gun-toting sergeant still accompanied him. Sergei was in the tent waiting for him. “What are they doing to you?” the pilot asked, alarm in his voice.
    “Siberia,” Mouradian answered as he threw this, that, and the other thing into a duffel bag.
    “Bozhemoi!”
Yaroslavsky said. “I tried to tell you—”
    “No, not the camps.” Anastas’ joke had worked almost too well. “Far Eastern Aviation. They’ll make me a pilot so the Japanese can shoot me down.”
    “Oh.” Yaroslavsky kissed him on both cheeks and gave him a hug. “Well, stay as safe as you can, you crazy bastard. I hope I see you after the war.”
    “That would be good. Or maybe we won’t have to wait so long. Who knows? Who knows anything nowadays?” Mouradian slung the duffel over his shoulder and went out into the cold again.
    The stone-faced noncom drove the
panje
wagon, too. With its boatlike body and big wheels, the wagon could get through winter snow and spring and autumn mud that stymied fancier transport.
    For a wonder, the Germans hadn’t hit the railway station. The young lieutenant who’d taken over for the civilian stationmaster gave Mouradian a seat in a second-class compartment. Mouradian shrugged. He could have got a hard bench instead. “You’ll go out at twenty-three minutes past nine,” the lieutenant told him.
    He was impressed at the precision. The train actually rattled out of the station a little past noon. That left Mouradian and the other officers in the compartment resigned but hardly surprised. Only a fool or a German would expect a schedule and reality to have much to do with each other.
    They shared bread and sausages and cigarettes and vodka. They told dirty jokes. Most of them were going on leave. They sent Mouradianpitying glances when they found out he wasn’t. “Siberia!”