How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove Page A

had known when to urge his brother to decline the throne of a united Germany after the revolutions of 1848, and had known when to accept it himself a generation later.
    From the Kaiser’s portrait, Schlieffen’s eyes fell briefly to thesmall photograph of a pretty young woman on his desk: the one bit of sentiment he permitted himself in a room otherwise utterly businesslike. Anna had been his cousin as well as, for four wonderful years, his wife. In the nine years since her death in childbed, he’d found it easier to care for the ideal of Germany than for any merely human being.
    He inked his pen and wrote the last few sentences of the report he’d been working on. After scrawling his signature at the bottom, he checked his pocket watch: a few minutes past ten. He had a ten-thirty appointment at the War Department.
    Precise as always, he signed the daybook in the front hall, noting his departure time to the minute. The guards outside the door saluted as he left the embassy. He punctiliously returned the courtesy.
    He walked half a block southeast on Massachusetts, then turned right onto Vermont, which cut diagonally across Washington’s square grid and led straight toward the White House and the War Department building just west of it. Civilians waved to him, mistaking his light blue uniform for one belonging to the U.S. Army. He’d had U.S. soldiers make the same mistake and salute him.
    He ignored the misdirected greetings, as he ignored most human contact. Then a fat man on a pony that didn’t seem up to bearing his weight recognized the uniform for what it was. “Hurrah for the Kaiser!” the fellow called, and tipped his hat. Schlieffen acknowledged that with a polite nod. The Kaiser was popular in the United States, not least because his army had beaten the French.
    Newsboys hawked papers on every corner. Headlines screamed of coming war. Schlieffen’s glance lifted toward the Arlington Heights on the far side of the Potomac. Buildings screened most of his view of them, but he knew they were there. He also knew the Confederate States had guns mounted on them, and on other high ground along the southern bank of the river. If war came, Washington would suffer.
    More soldiers were on the streets than usual, but not many more. Unlike Germany, the United States had no conscription law, relying instead on volunteers to fill out the relatively small professional army once war was declared. That struck Schlieffen as the next thing to insane, even if the Confederacy used the same system.
Mobs
, he thought scornfully.
Mobs with rifles, that’s what they’ll be
.
    The War Department was a four-story brick building with a two-story entranceway fronted by half a dozen columns. To Schlieffen’s way of thinking, it would have been adequate for a provincial town, but hardly for a national capital. The Americans had talked for years of building something finer: talked, but spent no money. Still, the soldiers on duty at the entrance were almost as well drilled as the guards in front of the German embassy.
    “Yes, Colonel,” one of them said. “The general is expecting you, so you just follow Willie here. He’ll take you to him.”
    “Thank you,” Schlieffen said. The soldier named Willie led him up to the third-floor office where the general-in-chief of the U.S. Army carried out his duties.
“Guten Tag, Herr Oberst, “
said the general’s adjutant, a bright young captain named Saul Berryman.
    “Guten Tag,”
Schlieffen answered, and then, as he usually did, fell back into English: “How are you today, Captain?”
    “Ganz gut, danke. Und Sie?”
Berryman kept up the German for the same reason Schlieffen spoke English—neither was so fluent speaking the other’s language as he would have liked, and both enjoyed the chance to practice.
“Der General wird Sie sofort sehen.”
    “I am glad he will see me at once,” Schlieffen said. “He must be very busy, with the crisis in your country.”
    “Ja, er ist.”
Just