Harry Turtledove

“We’re in a race, and we’d better win.”

Eight words. As far as Flora could see, they said everything that needed saying.

“Got any rations you don’t need?” one of them asked, stretching out his hands imploringly to Cassius.

“You feed me if I was in there?” Cassius asked.

“Well, I hope so,” the man answered after a perceptible pause for thought. “I’m a Christian, or I try to be.”

“Reckon Jake Featherston’s a Christian, too?”

“Sure he is,” the POW said, this time without hesitation. “He loves Jesus, same as you’n me. Jesus loves him, too.

“Fuck you, you ofay asshole.” Cassius turned away. “You can starve.”

“You ain’t no Christian,” the Confederate called after him.

“If Jake Featherston is, I don’t want to be.”

It was like trying to kill a butterfly with an axe.

That was true, but, like a lot of true things, didn’t tell the whole story or even most of it.

“We can beat the enemy,” he said to nobody in particular, “but God help us against our own side.”

“Headquarters being stupid again?” Scullard asked sympathetically.

“They’d have to wise up to get to stupid.” Warming to his theme, Pound added, “They’ve got their headquarters in the their hindquarters.”

“Shit!” Pound said, without originality, but with great sincerity.

The landing craft was as graceful as a fat man waddling along with an anvil. But a fat man lugging an anvil would sink like a stone if he went into the water. The landing craft didn’t. God and the engineers who designed it no doubt knew why it didn’t. Irving Morrell had no idea. He took the notion on faith. Somehow, believing in the landing craft was easier than his Sunday-school lessons had been.

“I’m not afraid,” Edith said. “God will watch over all of us. I know He’s on our side.” Everybody in every war since the world began was convinced God was on his side. Half the people in every war since the world began ended up being wrong.

I’ve always tried to be a rational man. I don’t have much use for the idea of miracles. Things are what they are, that’s all.

He could speak clear English when he wanted to. Why didn’t he want to more often?

Well, what was life but the difference between what you planned and what you got?

They smelled of old sweat and leather and tobacco and mud: like soldiers, in other words.