Alternate Generals II

Doheny sca

" 'A terrible beauty is born. Aye, but that's a good line, and true." He nodded. "Many fine lines."

The sky was lightening, the ruddiness of the sun playing over the glass shards by their feet.

"More light for their gu

The door below shook with heavy pounding. Joyce edged to the window, unslinging his rifle and edging it out before him.

"It's Ned Daly's men!" bellowed a voice below. "Let us in."

"Reinforcements," Joyce said. Yeats bent back to his writing. The sound of heavy boots broke his concentration and a draft of cold dawn air caused him to look up for his coat. His eyes met the black stare of a hard-featured, lean figure, erect in bearing and not the vainglorious lout Yeats wanted him to be.

"MacBride," he said, and felt sick.

"Yeats."

This was too much. Yeats knew quite well that though it was Ireland that he was fighting for, it was also the shade of the professional soldier-personified in his life by Sean MacBride-that he was fighting against. Or at least trying to outdo in his own head and perhaps in the affections of Maud Go

But MacBride was no shade. He was here, very much alive and very much-so it seemed-a comrade in arms.

Yeats turned away to face the night editor.

"When can you go to press, Mr. Doheny?"

Doheny's answer was drowned in the explosion of an artillery shell's immediate impact. Yeats' eardrums felt like bursting as the explosion rocked the room. The shock knocked him to the floor, plaster and lath caving down on him from the ceiling above. A wave of heat followed behind. Men screamed.

"The paper rolls! The bastards have hit the newsprint!"

"Everybody out!" MacBride ordered, his body outlined by the inferno behind him. The smoke was roiling before the flames, turning the air black. Yeats crawled, then stumbled to the front door, MacBride behind him.

Yeats looked up at a squad of soldiers, khaki clad not green, rifles ready and bayonets deployed not six feet from him.

"Put up your hands," MacBride said softly behind him. "Or we'll be dead before your next breath."

"A visitor, Major," Banks said. His voice held a softer and even awed tone, one that Yeats had not heard before from the jailer. He looked toward the door.

A figure in black, taller than Banks, stood in the shadows by the jamb. A priest, perhaps?

"Maud!" MacBride whispered hoarsely.

"Sean, Willie," Maud Go

"They let you in," MacBride said. A silly remark, Yeats thought, saved from fatuity only by the heaviness of the situation.

"They've let me little else," Maud said, throwing her cape aside in a careless but graceful gesture. Stage ma

She moved between the two men and took the hand of each.

"Still your friend, Sean. And yours always, Willie." She paused. "You bold, foolish men."

Yeats nodded. "That we are."

"They're going to shoot you." Yeats felt Maud's grip tighten. She let drop her hands and turned away.

"I expected no less, Maud," MacBride said. "This is my second go at them. They've not forgotten the first."

"That I know, Sean, and little could I do for you. And I tried for you, Willie. So did our friends in England-Wilde, Pound, Shaw. They've tried to get the Prime Minister's ear."

"I've lunched with Asquith," Yeats said. "Little good that will do me."

"They fear the power of your pen, Willie. They'll take the heat of public indignation to your ongoing threat to rally Eirea

"Bad news but expected. I'd rather hear it from your lips than any other's."

Maud took a step back to better survey them. Dark hair a helmet to that fairest of faces. Beautiful still and always.

"I come to deliver more than news. Ireland's love and mine. It's yours and always will be." She looked at Yeats. "And some words to water it down the years? Have you that for us?"

Yeats reached to the table behind him.

"Two poems."

Maud took the papers, turned away to read.

"They're grand, Willie. 'Easter 1916. That will hold the day green. But this second one. And what do you know of Irish airmen?"

"Little enough. But I know something of foreseeing my death. I learn more each minute."

Maud looked at him. "Ah, Willie-the poems you might have written! What a bargain you have made!"

Yeats focused on the pin at Maud's breast, Ireland's green and gold. He moved his eyes up to see in hers a respect and regard he'd not seen before.

"A good bargain, Maud." He paused. "The best."

Labor Relations

Esther M. Friesner

It was in the Month Without Gods, in the third year of the great invasion of the three Korean kingdoms, that Old One's great-great-granddaughter Snow Moon went out to fetch water and came home with a Japanese soldier. She found him slumbering behind some thorn bushes that grew on the mountain where Old One's special seeing-spring leaped forth from the rocks. He wore atanko over his clothes-the short-bodied iron cuirass favored by the invaders-with his helmet and spear laid out on the ground beside him. It would have been an easy thing for even a child to grab the spear and spit him through the throat, then and there, but he was young and handsome and, since the war had begun, Snow Moon had come to an age when such things mattered.

So it was that Old One looked up from her iron tripod through the open doorway of her hut to see the child of her grandson's daughter come walking along the village path, prodding a shamefaced Japanese soldier along before her with his own spear, his bronze shortsword thrust awkwardly into the sash of her jacket.

"Now what?" she muttered. She rose from her stool, shook the wrinkles from her seer's robes, and came out into the sunlight, blinking like a toad.

The girl's route home from the mountainside took her and her prisoner through most of the village, so that by the time they reached her great-great-grandmother's house their progress was attended by every woman, child, gaffer, dog, pig, and chicken with time to spare and curiosity to waste. The young man's face grew pale as he trod the narrow path between rows of hostile faces. The war had gone on for long enough to drain the village of all its able-bodied males, leaving behind wives and sweethearts whose patriotism had soured more and more with every winter's night when all they had to occupy their minds was needlework. There was only so much embroidery a woman could do before she realized there were some itches that a dainty little needle was insufficient to scratch.

It was one such badly deprived lady who threw the first clod of pig manure. Others soon followed her example.

To his credit, the young man did not flinch from that less-than-refreshing rain. Instead, he turned in his assailants' direction and allowed his face to melt into the most charmingly regretful smile anyone in the village had ever seen. On so handsome a face, such a tender expression was utterly devastating. The village filled with the echoing plops of manure balls dropping from nerveless hands and of many women crying out to the young man in pity, apology, and invitation.

Old One saw all this and shook her head. "Idiots. First they threaten his life one way, then another. Can't they see he's one of our enemies? He may know things that will prove priceless to our own armies." She hastened forward, bulling her way through the sea of clamoring females, all the while shouting, "Fools! Headless chickens! This man is valuable! Will you kill him and waste what good he can do us?"