"You're a New York writer, then?"

"I correspond for the Spark."

The Spark was a New York City newspaper. I had never seen a copy-of the Spark, or any other newspaper-but Julian had mentioned it once or twice as a popular if vulgar daily journal.

"Is that what you're doing now-corresponding?"

"No! Just at the moment I'm passing the time with every idle infantryman who happens to wander by; but I was working, curiously enough, before you began hovering at the tent-flap."

Since Theodore Dornwood came from Manhattan I was tempted to ask whether he had met Julian Comstock there, or passed him on the streets; but I remembered that any careless identification of Julian as a Comstock might attract the attention of Julian's murderous uncle.* Therefore I left Julian's name out of the discussion and said, "Well, I wish I had a machine as fine as that one. Do all New York writers own one?"

"The privileged few."

"How does it work?"

"You push the keys-like this, see?-and the letters are impressed on the paper-at least when the operator is allowed sufficient privacy in which to work."

"Isn't it a slow process, compared to handwriting?"

"Faster, if you're trained to it, and the finished manuscript is easier to set as copy ... Hazzard, you said your name was? Are you the soldier who's been teaching these country boys their letters?"

The lessons I gave Lymon Pugh had been so successful that a few other infantrymen had begged to be included. I was pleased that Mr. Dornwood had heard of me. "I'm the one."

"And you write, too?" He inhaled from his pipe and gave out a Vesuvius-load of smoke. The pungent air in the tent was beginning to make me feel light-headed, though it seemed to have no such effect on Dornwood, who must have saturated himself in his vices so long that he had acquired an immunity to them. (He wasn't old, in the sense that Sam Godwin was old, but he was at least ten years older than myself-old enough to be hardened to his own bad habits.) "What are you working on at the moment, Adam Hazzard?"

I blushed at the question and said, "Well, I do keep paper and pencils handy ... though I don't have a writing-machine with springs and levers ... I mark down a word or two from time to time ..."

"No modesty between scribblers," said Dornwood. "Fiction, is it?"

"Yes-a story about a Western boy kidnapped by Chinese traders, and taken to sea against his will, and when he escapes his captors he falls in with pirates, but what they don't know is-"

"I see. And how many pirates have you met, Adam Hazzard?"

The question took me by surprise. "In life? Well-none."

"But you must have studied them extensively, from a distance?"

"Not exactly-"

"Well, are you absolutely sure pirates exist-since they're so foreign to your experience? No, don't answer that; I'm making a point. Why write about pirates, Adam, when you're embedded in an adventure at least as momentous as anything C. C. Easton ever imagined?"

"What are you saying-that I should write about the war? But I've only seen a little of it."

"No matter! Write what you know: it's one of the abiding principles of the trade."

"The worse for me, then," I said ruefully, "for I don't know much at all, when you come down to it."

"Surely everybody knows something. The Battle of Mascouche, for instance. Weren't you in the thick of it?"

"Yes, but it was my first."

"Wouldn't it be a sensible exercise to set down in pencil what happened on that day? Not what happened to the Army of the Laurentians-leave that to the historians-I mean what happened to you-your personal experience."

"Who would be interested?"

"It would be an exercise in writing, if nothing else. Adam," he exclaimed, standing up from his desk, and flinging an arm around my shoulders in a surprising display of conviviality, "why are you wasting your time here? A writer must write, first and last! Don't squander precious minutes gazing at my typewriter-or worse, touching it-now is the time to hone your literary skills, while the Dutch are quiet and the weather's fair! Take up your humble pencil, Adam Hazzard, and set down in all the detail you can remember the events of a few days past."

This made immediate sense to me-in fact I was excited by his suggestion, and reproached myself for not having thought of such an exercise before. "And when it's done, shall I show it to you?"

He sat back down as if the wind had gone out of him. "Show it to me?"

"My account of the battle. So that you can point out what an experienced writer might have done differently."

Mr. Dornwood knotted his brows and looked uncomfortable; then he said, "Well, all right ... I suppose you can bring it to me next Sunday, if neither of us is killed by then."

"That's very generous!"

"I'm a well-known saint," said Dornwood.

I meant to go straight to my tent and practice my literary skills as Dornwood had suggested, but on the way back I was distracted by a crowd of men who had gathered around the tent of Private Langers.

Langers, the reader will remember, was a passenger on the Caribou-Horn Train: a colporteur, as he pleased to call himself, who had been in the business of selling religious pamphlets on delicate topics to lonely men, who enjoyed the printed illustrations for reasons not necessarily allied to piety or faith. Private Langers had been put out of that trade by conscription, and he was just another infantryman now. But his entrepreneurial instincts had survived the transformation, and it seemed like he was back in business-some kind of business-judging by the eager crowd around him.

I asked another soldier what was going on.

"Langers was on burial duty," the man said.

"Surprising that that should have made him so popular."

"He collected all sorts of things from the bodies of dead Dutchmen. Jackets and hats, badges and wallets, eyeglasses and glass eyes, brass buckles and leather holsters ..."

Enemy armaments had to be handed over to the Quartermaster, but everything else, I gathered, was fair game for the burial detail. I knew that men were often tempted to take a souvenir or two from their fallen foes, if their stomachs were strong enough for the treasure-hunt. But he had gone far beyond that modest impulse. He had harvested the fields of the fallen with a bushel basket, and put the culled trinkets on display. Dozens of Dutch prizes were arrayed on a blanket in front of his tent, under a sign which read: EVERYTHING $1.

It seemed to me an odd price. A few of the objects were obviously worth more than that, such as the collections of Dutch coins, which could be traded in Montreal for legal tender. But most were worth much less. The jackets almost all had bullet-holes in them, for instance; and even the glass eye, though lifelike, was cracked. But there was a trick to it, the soldier next to me explained.

"It don't mean you pay a dollar and take what you like. Everything has a number beside it, written on those scraps of paper. And Langers has a jar, with similar scraps inside it. When you pay your dollar he says, 'Reach into the jar,' and you do so, and you pull out a number and find out just what it was you bought. It might be something good, like that mermaid buckle there. But it might be a sad little leather bag, or a shoe with a hole in it."

"Isn't that Gambling?"

"Hell no," the soldier said, "it's not half as much fun."

I had been warned against gambling all my life, both by my mother and by the Dominion Reader for Young Persons, though the only gambling I had ever seen first-hand was the kind the indentured folks indulged in, betting tobacco or alcohol on dice or cards. Most of those games ended in fist fights, and I was never tempted by them. But Private Langers's pick-a-number enterprise was more difficult to resist. I was curious about the Dutch, and felt that I ought to know a thing or two about the people I had been shooting at and, occasionally, killing. To own one of their possessions seemed almost a religious act (if I can be excused that small apostasy), like the custom primitive peoples have of eating their enemy's hearts-a more Christian enactment of the same urge.

So I pushed to the front of the crowd, and took a Comstock dollar from my pocket, and paid it over for the privilege of reaching into Private Langers's Lucky Mug. The number I retrieved was 32, which corresponded to a small leather satchel, much-scuffed and disappointingly slender. This was not, by any standards, a valuable thing to have bought-and Langers smiled with satisfaction as he tucked away my dollar and handed over the satchel. But my disappointment didn't last; for the satchel, when I opened it, contained a letter, apparently written by a Dutch soldier shortly before his death. Again, this had no monetary value, and Langers had every reason to crow over the bargain; but as a souvenir of a man's life, and a glimpse into the habits of the Mitteleuropan infantry, the letter interested me terrifically.

I unfolded the two closely-written pages I had bought, and thought about that deceased Dutchman putting his pen to paper, little suspecting that his words would become the property of a Williams Ford lease-boy (much less the booty of a corpse-looting colporteur). I took the letter to my tent and stared at it for nearly an hour, thinking about fate, and death, and other weighty and Philosophical subjects.

Lymon Pugh came by as I was deep in these reveries, and I showed him the letter.

He puzzled over it a moment. "My lessons in reading don't seem to have advanced this far," he said.

"Of course you can't read it. It's written in Dutch."

"Dutch? They don't just speak that noise, they also write it down?"

"That's their habit, yes."

"But you know all your letters, Adam: can't you decipher it?"

"Oh, I can read the letters all right-so can you, though you might not be accustomed to cursive script. This word here, for example: L-I-E-F-S-T-E-those are all familiar letters."

"I can't make out what they spell, though."

"It looks like it might be pronounced leafst. Or leaf-stee, depending on how they use their terminal vowels."

Lymon Pugh looked scornful. "That's not a word."

"It's certainly not a word in English; but in Dutch-"

"If they're going to write out letters, why can't they do it decently? No wonder we have to fight them. But I suppose it's not meant to be understood. Not by the likes of us, at least. Perhaps it's a code. Maybe what you have there is a plan of action, written from one Dutch General to another."

That had not occurred to me. The suggestion was troubling, and I determined to show the letter to Major Ramsden of our regiment. Major Ramsden spoke a little Dutch, since his father had been a stranded Dutch sailor, and it was Ramsden who interrogated captured prisoners in their own language.

I found him dozing in his tent, taking advantage of the Sabbath calm, and he was not delighted to see me; but he agreed to look at what I'd brought him.

When I handed him the letter he turned it half-sideways, and squinted at it, and ran his fingers over it, and hummed to himself at length. He was so reluctant to render a translation that I wondered whether he might be illiterate-able to speak Dutch but not read it. But when I hinted at that possibility he gave me a venomous look, and I let the matter drop.

I have preserved the letter through many years, and it sits beside me as I write, and this is how it looked, though the ink is faded now and some of the letters are uncertain: Liefste Hannie (it began), Ik hoop dat je deze brief krijgt. Ik probeer hem met de postboot vanuit Goose Bay te versturen.

Ik mis je heel erg. Dit is een afschuwelijke oorlog in een vreseleijk land-ijzig koud in de winter en walgelijk heet en vochtig in de zomer. De vliegen eten je levend, en de bestuurders hier zijn tirannen. Ik verlang er zo naar om je in mijn armen te houden!

"What does that mean?" I asked.

Major Ramsden frowned some more, and looked at me resentfully; then he said, "It's all about how he hates America."

"He hates America?"

"They all do-the Dutch."

"What does he hate us for?"

Major Ramsden squinted at the text.

"For our freedoms," he said.

This had been the subject of today's Dominion Service, by coincidence: our God-given freedoms, enumerated, and the enemy's instinctive hatred for them. "Does he say which freedoms upset him so? Is it the Freedom of Pious Assembly? The Freedom of Acceptable Speech?"

"All those."

"And what about this?"

I pointed out the second sheet of the letter, on which the Dutchman had committed a drawing. The pen sketch was ambiguous: it appeared to show some sort of animal, or perhaps a sweet potato, with spots and a tail. Under it was written: Fikkie mis ik ook!

"It says, 'All Americans are dogs,' " the Major explained.

I could only marvel at the fanaticism of the Mitteleuropans, and at the unreasoning hatred their rulers had instilled in them.

* And Deklan Conqueror must be uniquely sinister, I had lately thought, if he was more dangerous to confront than a legion of armed and angry Dutchmen. The difference, Sam explained, was that our enlistment would only last a year or so, while the threat from Julian's uncle would persist throughout his reign.

5.

For the next few months our Regiment was largely exempted from the war, though not from its consequences. It was explained to us in a series of general camp meetings that the Dutch attack on Montreal, as it turned out, had been little more than a feint by a few divisions of the Mitteleuropan army. The real action was at the Saguenay River where it entered the St. Lawrence east of Quebec City. That was where our freshwater navy under Admiral Bolen fought a pitched battle with a fleet of heavily-armored enemy gunboats, which had been assembled in Lake St. John by the stealthy Dutch. We had lost many a vessel in that encounter; and the burning wrecks, some still flying the Thirteen Stripes and Sixty Stars, had been seen floating down the St. Lawrence like the candled boats the Japanese launch in honor of their dead.* The Dutch proceeded to build fortifications near Tadoussac overlooking the river, and brought up their best artillery, including a Chinese Cannon, to harass Union traffic and strangle American trade, and it quickly became apparent that the purpose of the Campaign of 2173 would be to reduce these fortifications while maintaining a protective cordon around both Montreal and Quebec City.

Much of the Army of the Laurentians, therefore, was put aboard boats and shipped east to participate in the land battle. But Montreal itself must still be garrisoned, and that responsibility fell to the less seasoned troops, which included our Regiment of western conscripts.

I was sad not to be included in the summer action, but Julian scoffed at that sentiment, and said we were lucky, and that if our luck held we might be released from the military without seeing more bloodshed than the Battle of Mascouche, and that would be a fine thing. But my patriotism, or naivete, burned more brightly than Julian's, and I was occasionally distraught to think of all the Dutchmen being killed by other soldiers, creating a shortage for the rest of us.

And yet it was not all bad news, for we would be allowed many recreational leaves in the City of Montreal that summer, and I was eager for another chance to meet with Calyxa, and perhaps even to learn her last name.

Our first leave was nearly canceled, however, because of an event which involved Julian and cast a pall over the entire camp.

A new-fashioned Colonel, lately assigned from New York City, had decided our encampment ran too close to our breastworks, and I was assigned to help relocate the offending tents. The tents by this time had taken on all the qualities of Homesteads, however, with rude cooking-pits, flues made of mud, lines strung to dry laundry, and all such small domestic entanglements; thus the work had lasted well into the night, and I had not had very much sleep when I was awakened by Sam Godwin's hand on my shoulder the following morning.

"Wake up, Adam," he said. "Julian needs your help."

"What's he done now?" I asked, rubbing my eyes with hands still gritty from the night's work.

"Only the usual intemperate talk. But Lampret has got wind of it, and Julian has been called to the Major's headquarters for what Lampret calls 'a discussion.' "

"Surely Julian can handle a discussion all by himself? I would like to sleep an hour longer, and then go down to the river to bathe, if it's all the same."

"Bathe later! I'm not asking you to go with Julian and hold his hand. I want you to conceal yourself outside Lampret's tent and listen to their conversation. Take notes, if necessary, or just apply your memory. Then come and tell me what transpired."

"Can't you just ask Julian about it, after the thing's done?"

"Major Lampret is a Dominion officer. He has the power to assign Julian to some other company, or even send him off to the front, at any time he chooses. If Lampret is angry enough he might not give Julian time to pack-we might not see Julian again, in the worst case, or discover where he's been sent."

That made sense, and was alarming. I said (as a last wistful defense), "Can't you listen in on their conversation as well as I can?"

"A muddy young private who's been on work detail all night might be excused for dozing off among the ropes and barrels outside Lampret's tent. I have no such excuse, and my age makes me conspicuous. Go on, Adam: there's no time to lose!"

So I roused myself, and drank a little tepid water from a canteen to bring myself fully awake. Then I walked over to Major Lampret's headquarters, which was just a big square tent pitched next to the Quartermaster's warren of fresh supplies. It was this surplus of barrels, boxes, ropes, and loose equipment that provided my cover, as Sam had suggested. Three convoys had unloaded just yesterday, and our Quartermaster was overworked trying to distribute, store, and apportion the bounty. As a result I was able to saunter into a labyrinth of stacked goods and negotiate my way to the layer of provisions which happened to abut Major Lampret's tent. By some quiet and artful shifting I created a blind, and I curled up in it just adjacent to Lampret's canvas.