How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove Page B

then, the general opened the door to the outer room where Berryman worked. Seeing him, his adjutant returned to English himself: “Go ahead, Colonel.”
    “Yes, always good to see you, Colonel,” Major General William Rosecrans echoed. “Come right in.”
    “Thank you,” Schlieffen said, and took a chair across the desk from Rosecrans. The military attaché’s nostrils twitched. He’d smelled whiskey on Rosecrans before, but surely at a time like this—He gave a mental shrug.
    “Good to see you,” Rosecrans repeated, as if he’d forgotten he’d said it the first time. He was somewhere in his early sixties, with graying hair, a fairly neat graying beard, and a nose with a formidable hook in it. His color was very good, but the whiskey might have had something to do with that. He looked shrewd, but, Schlieffen judged, wasn’t truly intelligent; he owed his position mostly to having come out of the War of Secession less disgraced than any other prominent U.S. commander.
    “General, I am here to present my respects, and also to conveyto you the friendly good wishes of my sovereign, the Kaiser,” Schlieffen said.
    “Of your suffering Kaiser?” Rosecrans said. “I hope he gets better, with all my heart I do. Germany has always been a country friendly to us, and we’re damned glad of that, believe me, considering the way so many of the other countries in Europe treat us.”
    Schlieffen gave him a sharp look, or as sharp a look as could come from the military attaché’s nondescript, rather pinched features. Rosecrans showed not the slightest hint of embarrassment, nor even that he noticed the glare. Schlieffen concluded the fault lay in his own accented English, which Rosecrans must have innocently misunderstood. Having concluded that, the colonel dismissed the matter from his mind. If no insult had been offered, he could not take offense.
    “I would be grateful, General, if you could make arrangements so that, in the event of war between the United States and the Confederate States, you might transport me to one of your armies so that I can observe the fighting and report on it to my government,” he said.
    “Well, if the war’s not over and done with before you catch up to it, I expect we’ll be able to do that,” Rosecrans said. “You’ll have to move sharp, though, because we ought to lick the Rebs in jig time, or Bob’s your uncle.”
    Although Schlieffen knew he was missing some of that—the English spoken in the United States at times seemed only distantly related to what he’d learned back in Germany—the root meaning remained pretty clear. “You believe you will win so quickly and easily, then?” He did his best to keep the surprise he felt out of his voice.
    “Don’t you?” Rosecrans made no effort to hide his own amazement. Very few Americans, as far as Schlieffen could see, had even the least skill in disguising their thoughts and feelings: indeed, they took an odd sort of pride in wearing them on their sleeves. When Schlieffen didn’t answer right away, Rosecrans repeated, “Don’t you, sir? The plain fact of the matter is, they’re afraid. It’s plain in everything they do.”
    “I am nothing more than an ignorant stranger in your country,” Schlieffen said, a stratagem that had often given him good results. “Would you be so kind as to explain to me why you think this is so?”
    Rosecrans swelled with self-importance. “It strikes me as anobvious fact, Colonel. The government of the United States told Richmond in no uncertain terms that there would be hell to pay if a single Confederate soldier crossed over the Rio Grande. Not a one of ’em has done it. Q.E.D.”
    “Is it not possible that the Confederate soldiers have not yet moved only because their own preparations remain incomplete?” Schlieffen asked.
    “Possible, but not likely,” Rosecrans said. “They put a large force of regulars into El Paso a couple of weeks ago—that was before we warned ’em we