The Victorious Opposition Read Online Free PDF

That’s what eats at me.”
    “I don’t blame you a bit, sir,” Pound said. “What happened to the barrel program was a shame, a disgrace, and an embarrassment. And if the Japs hadn’t gone and embarrassed us, too, it never would have started up again.”
    “I know.” Morrell couldn’t wait any more. He climbed up onto the new barrel, opened the hatch at the top of the commander’s cupola, and slid down into the turret.
    It didn’t smell right. He noticed that first. All it smelled of was paint and leather and gasoline: fresh smells, new smells. It might have been a Chevrolet in a showroom. The old machines and the experimental model stank of cordite fumes and sweat, odors Morrell had taken for granted till he found himself in a barrel without them. He sat down in the commander’s seat. Before long, this beast would smell the way it was supposed to.
    Clankings from up above said somebody else wanted to investigate the new barrel, too. Michael Pound’s voice came in through the open hatch: “If you don’t get out of the way, I’m going to squash you . . . sir.” Morrell moved. Pound slithered down—his stocky frame barely fit through the opening—and settled himself behind the gun. He peered through the sights, then nodded. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
    “No, not bad at all,” Morrell agreed. “They’re going to name the production model after General Custer.”
    “That’s fitting. It’s a pity they fiddled around too long to let him see them,” Pound said, and Morrell nodded. The gunner asked, “How many are they going to make?”
    “I don’t know that yet,” Morrell answered. “What they think they can afford, I suppose. That’s how it usually works.” He scowled.
    So did Sergeant Pound. “They’d better make lots if they name them after Custer. He believed in great swarms of barrels. Anyone with sense does, of course.” Having served with Custer, Morrell knew he’d often been anything but sensible. He also knew Pound meant
anyone who agrees with me
by
anyone with sense
. Even so, he nodded again.
    C olonel Abner Dowling opened the
Salt Lake City Bee
. The Army published the paper. It put out what the U.S. authorities occupying Utah wanted the people there to see. As commander of the occupying authorities in Salt Lake City, Dowling knew that did only so much good. The locals got plenty of news the paper didn’t print and the town wireless outlets didn’t broadcast. Still, if you didn’t try to keep a lid on things, what was the point of occupying at all?
    On page three was a picture of a very modern-looking barrel—certainly one that seemed ready to blow any number of hulking Great War machines to hell and gone. NEW CUSTER BARREL PUT THROUGH PACES IN KANSAS, the headline read. The story below praised the new model to the skies.
    “Custer,” Dowling muttered—half prayer, half curse. He’d been Custer’s adjutant for a long time—and it had often seemed much longer. Naming a machine intended to smash straight through everything in its path after George Armstrong Custer did seem to fit. Dowling couldn’t deny that.
    He went through the rest of the paper in a hurry—there wasn’t much real news in it, as he had reason to know. Then he pushed his swivel chair back from his desk and strode out of the office. He was a hulking machine himself, and built rather like the desk. Custer had been in the habit of twitting him about his heft. Custer hadn’t been skinny himself, but Dowling hadn’t lost any weight since they finally forced the old boy into retirement. On the contrary.
    It’s good, healthy flesh,
he told himself. Plenty of people had worse vices than getting up from the supper table a little later than they might have. Take Custer, for instance. Dowling’s jowls wobbled as he shook his head. He’d escaped Custer more than ten years before, but couldn’t get him out of his mind.
    That’s how people will remember me a hundred years from now,
he thought, not for the