I
IT WAS SHEER bad luck, or maybe their Intelligence was better than we knew, but the last raid, breaking past our air defenses, had spattered the Weather Corps tent from here to hell. Supply problems being what they were, we couldn’t get replacements for weeks, and meanwhile the enemy had control of the weather. Our only surviving Corpsman, Major Jackson, had to save what was left of his elementals to protect us against thunderbolts; so otherwise we took whatever they chose to throw at us. At the moment, it was rain.
There’s nothing so discouraging as a steady week of cold rain. The ground turns liquid and runs up into your boots, which get so heavy you can barely lift them. Your uniform is a drenched rag around your shivering skin, the rations are soggy, the rifles have to have extra care, and always the rain drums down on your helmet till you hear it in dreams. You’ll never forget that endless gray washing and beating; ten years later a rainstorm will make you feel depressed.
The one consolation, I thought, was that they couldn’t very well attack us from the air while it went on. Doubtless they’d yank the cloud cover away when they were ready to strafe us, but our broomsticks could scramble as fast as their carpets could arrive. Meanwhile, we slogged ahead, a whole division of us with auxiliaries‑the 45th, the Lightning Busters, pride of the United States Army, turned into a wet misery of men and dragons hunting through the Oregon hills for the invader.
I made a slow way through the camp. Water ran off tents and gurgled in slit trenches. Our sentries were, of course, wearing Tarnkappen, but I could see their footprints form in the mud and hear the boots squelch and the tired monotonous cursing.
I passed by the Air Force strip; they were bivouacked with us, to give support as needed. A couple of men stood on guard outside the knockdown hangar, not bothering with invisibility. Their blue uniforms were as mucked and bedraggled as my OD’s, but they had shaved and their insignia‑the winged broomstick and the anti‑Evil Eye beads‑were polished. They saluted me, and I returned the gesture idly. Esprit de corps, wild blue yonder, nuts.
Beyond was the armor. The boys had erected portable shelters for their beasts, so I only saw steam rising out of the cracks and caught the rank reptile smell. Dragons hate rain, and their drivers were having a hell of a time controlling them.
Nearby lay Petrological Warfare, with a pen full of hooded basilisks writhing and hissing and striking out with their crowned heads at the men feeding them. Personally, I doubted the practicality of that whole corps. You have to get a basilisk quite close to a man, and looking straight at him, for petrifaction; and the aluminum‑foil suit and helmet you must wear to deflect the influence of your pets is an invitation to snipers. Then, too, when human carbon is turned to silicon, you have a radioactive isotope, and maybe get such a dose of radiation yourself that the medics have to give you St. John’s Wort plucked from a graveyard in the dark of the moon.
So, in case you didn’t know, cremation hasn’t simply died out as a custom; it’s become illegal under the National Defense Act. We have to have plenty of old‑fashioned cemeteries. Thus does the age of science pare down our liberties.
I went on past the engineers, who were directing a gang of zombies carving another drainage ditch, and on to General Vanbrugh’s big tent. When the guard saw my Tetragrammaton insigne, for the Intelligence Corps, and the bars on my shoulders, he saluted and let me in. I came to a halt before the desk and brought my own hand up.
“Captain Matuchek reporting, sir,” I said.
Vanbrugh looked at me from beneath shaggy gray brows. He was a large man with a face like weathered rock, 103 percent Regular Army, but we liked him as well as you can like a buck general. “At ease,” he said. “Sit down. This’ll take a while.”
I found a folding chair and lowered myself into it. Two others were already seated whom I didn’t know. One was a plump man with a round red face and a fluffy white beard, a major bearing the crystal‑ball emblem of the Signal Corps. The other was a young woman. In spite of my weariness, I blinked and looked twice at her. She was worth it‑a tall green‑eyed redhead with straight high‑cheeked features and a figure too good for the WAC clothes or any other. Captain’s bars, Cavalry spider . . . or Sleipnir, if you want to be official about it.