Harry Turtledove

Anne saw his attention focus on her. It still wasn’t the look a man gave an attractive woman: more like the look a sniper gave a target.

“Has anyone ever told you, sir, that you may be too damn smart for your own good?”

“A whole raft of people, Colonel Landis,” Morrell answered cheerfully. “Once or twice, they’ve even been right.”

You can’t get along with somebody who’s bound and determined not to get along with you.

Agnes might know what she was doing heading into this marriage, but he didn’t. He had no clue; marriage wasn’t part of the curriculum at West Point. Maybe it should be, he thought. It might not produce better officers, but was very likely to produce happier ones.

“Something wrong, sir?” Lieutenant Jenkins asked.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Morrell answered.

“What’s Guinness?” Hirskowitz asked Carsten.

“It’s what they make in Ireland instead of beer,” Sam said helpfully. “It’s black as fuel oil, and almost as thick. It tastes kind of burnt till you get used to it. After that, it’s not so bad.”

“Oh.” Hirskowitz weighed that. “Well, I’ll see. They make real beer, too?”

When he came up for air, he gasped, “You never kissed me like that before.”

“Well, you never asked me to marry you before, either,” Rita answered.

He laughed. They kissed again. Heart pounding, he asked, “What else don’t I know?”

“You’ll find out,” she said. “After the wedding.”

“I never knew any Sonorans before you. You’re a good fellow. You ever get tired of trying to scratch out a living down where you’re at, you bring your family on up to Alabama. Plenty of good farm country there. You’d live high on the hog.”

“Thanks, amigo, but no thanks.” Rodriguez’s smile was sweet and sad. “I want to go home. I want to talk español, to see my friends and family. And in Sonora, I am a man. In Alabama, I am a damn greaser.” He tapped a brown hand with a brown finger to remind Pinkard of what he meant.

In the trenches, Jeff had long since stopped worrying about their being of different colors. Hip was right, though; it would matter in Alabama.

“Do I tell you how to arrange your life, Carlton?” he demanded.

“Only when you open your mouth,” Ben answered. “Sir.”

Proclaiming they had the answers was the easy part. Really having them, and making them work—that looked harder. That looked a hell of a lot harder to him. But some people would buy castles in the air because they were short of beans on the ground.

“I’ve been thinking,” George Enos said….

Beside him, Carl Sturtevant was panting more than a little. “Probably won’t do you any lasting harm,” he said.

Anne took her own attractiveness so much for granted, a man who showed he wasn’t completely in her grasp often succeeded in piquing her interest by sheer contrariness.