Breakthroughs by Harry Turtledove Page B

man—of sorts) or perhaps by that of poultry. The latter, it proved. He did not haggle so well as his housekeeper; Lucien roundly cheated him. Angelique, bless her, stood by and said never a word.
    Feeling mellow with an extra thirty cents in his pocket, Galtier said, “Do I understand you are to be congratulated, Father?”
    The priest looked too modest to be quite convincing. “They honor me above my humble deserts.”
    “How did it happen that you were raised to this dignity?” Lucien asked.
    Before Father Pascal answered, his eyes flicked for a moment to the sidewalk close by the market square. Then, still smooth, still modest, he said, “My son, in truth I have no idea. I felt, when I heard the news, as if a thunderbolt had struck me, I was so astonished.”
    But that brief glance had given him away. Along the sidewalk, his green-gray uniform neat as if it had just been issued, strode Major Jedediah Quigley, who administered Rivière-du-Loup and the surrounding area for the U.S. Army. Somehow or other, Lucien was sure, Quigley had pulled the wires behind Father Pascal’s promotion. That might even have involved moving Rivière-du-Loup and the rest of eastern Quebec south of the St. Lawrence out of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the archbishop of Quebec City, who assuredly would never have raised a collaborator to the episcopal dignity.
    Major Quigley saw Lucien look toward him. The American officer waved, as if he had not been the man who confiscated the land that had been in Lucien’s family for more than two hundred years to build the military hospital on it. “I hope all goes well with you,
Monsieur
Galtier,” he called in fluent, Parisian-accented French that seemed almost as out of place in Rivière-du-Loup as English did.
    “Assez bien,”
Galtier answered grudgingly. Quigley waved again and walked on.
    “You will excuse me,” Father Pascal—soon to be Bishop Pascal—said. Off he went, carrying the chicken by its feet. Angelique went off with him. Their heads were close together as they chatted. Watching her walk away was more interesting than eyeing Father Pascal’s backside, even if she too was a collaborator of sorts—
a horizontal collaborator,
Galtier thought, and smiled at his own wit.
    He looked longingly at the Loup-du-Nord. Beer or whiskey or applejack would have helped chase away the cold. But no. The Loup-du-Nord, these days, was an American soldiers’ saloon. He might get his drink and get out without trouble. On the other hand, a tableful of drunken Yanks might decide to stomp him into the floor. “When I get home,” he told the horse, “I can have a drink.”
    On his way back to the farmhouse, down the fine paved road the Americans had built, he had to pull off a couple of times to let ambulances race past. Far more than that of the big, stolid trucks, their speed made him wonder what traveling in a motorcar was like. He’d taken train rides, but this seemed as if it would be different—as if he would be riding in a wagon somehow equipped with wings.
    When he got to the farm, he drove the emphatically unwinged wagon into the barn. He unharnessed the horse, brushed it down, and fed it before going into the farmhouse. He did not begrudge the delay; it gave him the chance to think of more uncharitable things to say about Father Pascal’s elevation.
    And then, when he went inside, he found he could not say most of them. Nicole had brought Dr. Leonard O’Doull home for supper. O’Doull, a skinny, sandy-haired man with eyes as green as a cat’s, was a good fellow, but he was also, to some degree, an outsider.
    “Your leg, it goes well?” he asked Galtier after they shook hands. He spoke Parisian French like Major Quigley; unlike the major, he tried to adapt his tongue to that of the folk among whom he found himself.
    “It goes very well, thank you.” Lucien walked around to show how well he could move. “I have not even a limp, not unless I am on it for the whole day. When