25 Short Stories and Novellas Part 60

But there were no words. Carlotta, who had tactfully left the Brazilian's

money on the table, thinking it would look a little better not to pocket it

until after the interview, began to wish now that she had taken it right

away.

The silence became very long indeed.

She reached down and gave the old man a little spurt of

heptocholinase through the IV line. That seemed to do it.

"-the invasion," Uncle James said, as if he'd been speaking silently

for some time and only now was bothering to come up to the audible

level. And then words poured out of him as she had never heard them come

before, bubbling nonstop spew. It was like the breaking of a dam. "We were

dug into the trenches, you understand, and the Boche infantry came

sneaking up at us from the east, under cover of mustard gas-oh, that

was awful, the gas-but we called in an air strike right away, we hit them

hard with napalm and antipersonnel shrapnel, and then we came ash.o.r.e

with our landing craft, hit them at Anzio and Normandy both. That was

the beginning of it. Our entire strategy, you understand, was built around

a terminal nuclear hit at Bull Run, but first we knew we had to close

the Dardanelles and knock out their command center back of Cam Ranh

Bay. Once we had that, we'd only need to worry about the Prussian

cavalry and the possibility of a Saracen suicide charge, that wasn't a real big

risk, we figured, all the Rebels were pretty well demoralized already

and it didn't make sense that they'd have the b.a.l.l.s to come back at us

after all we'd thrown at them, so-"

"What is he saying, please?" the Brazilian asked softly. "He speaks so

quickly. I am not quite understanding him, I think."

"He does sound a little confused," said Carlotta.

"Well, we drove the Turks completely out of the Gulf of Corinth, and

were heading on toward Lepanto with sixty-four galleys, full steam

ahead. Then came a message from Marlborough, get our a.s.ses over to

Blenheim fast as we knew how, the French were trying to break

through--or was it the Poles?-- well, h.e.l.l, it was a mess, the winter was

coming on, that lunatic Hitler actually thought he could take out