The Victorious Opposition by Harry Turtledove Page B

folder on the major’s desk. “Tell me what you think of these.”
    Lopat raised one eyebrow when Moss failed to come back with a gibe. He raised the other when he saw what the folder held. “Oh,” he said in a different tone of voice. “More of these babies.”
    “
More
of them, you say?” Moss didn’t know whether to feel alarmed or relieved. “Other people have got ’em, too?”
    “Hell, yes,” the military prosecutor answered. “What, did you think you were the only one?” He didn’t wait for Moss’ reply, but threw back his head and laughed. “You civilian lawyers think you’re the most important guys in the world, and nothing is real unless it happens to you. Well, I’ve got news for you: you aren’t the cream in God’s coffee.”
    “And you
are
—” But Jonathan Moss checked himself. He wanted information from Lopat, not a quarrel. “All right, I’m not the only one, you say? Tell me more. Who else has got ’em? Who sends ’em? Have you had any luck catching the bastards? I guess not, or I wouldn’t have got these.”
    “Not as much as we’d like,” Lopat said, which was pretty obvious. “We’ve torn apart the towns where they’re postmarked, but not much luck. You can see for yourself—all the Canucks need is a typewriter and a pen, and they could do without the typewriter in a pinch. If it makes you feel better, there’s never been a follow-up on one of these. Nobody’s got shot or blown up the day after one of these little love notes came.”
    “I’m not sorry to hear that,” Moss admitted. “You didn’t say who else got a—love note.” He nodded to Lopat, acknowledging the phrase.
    “I don’t have the whole list. Investigation isn’t my department, you know. I go into court once they’re caught—and then you do your damnedest to get ’em off the hook.” The military prosecutor leered at Moss, who stonily stared back. With a shrug, Lopat went on, “Far as I know, the other people these have come to have all been part of the occupation apparatus one way or another. You’re the first outside shyster to get one, or I think you are. Doesn’t that make you proud?”
    “At least,” Moss said dryly, and Lopat laughed. Moss tapped one of the notes with a fingernail. “Prints?”
    “We’ll check, but the next ones we find’ll be the first.”
    “Yeah, I figured as much. You would have landed on these fellows like a bomb if you knew who they were,” Moss said. Lopat nodded. Something else occurred to Moss. “You think this has anything to do with that telephone threat I got last year, where the guy told me not to start my auto or I’d be sorry?”
    The military prosecutor frowned. “I’d forgotten about that. I don’t know what to tell you. Pretty damn funny, you know? You’re the best friend—best American friend—the Canucks have got. You’re married to one of theirs, and I know what she thinks of most Yanks, me included. You’re the best occupation lawyer between Calgary and Toronto, anyway. Makes sense they’d want to get rid of me. I don’t like it, but it makes sense. But why you? Seems to me they ought to put a bounty on anybody who even messes up your hair.”
    “I’ve wondered about that, too. Maybe they’re angrier at Laura for marrying me than they are at me for marrying her.”
    “Maybe.” But Lopat didn’t sound convinced. “In that case, why aren’t they trying to blow her up instead of you?”
    “
I
don’t know,” Moss answered. “As long as this isn’t too much of a much, though, I won’t lose any sleep over it.” He redonned his cold-weather gear. “I’ll see you in court, Major, and I’ll whip you, too.”
    “Ha!” Lopat said. “You been smoking doped cigarettes, to get so cocky?”
    After a few more good-natured insults, Moss left occupation headquarters. By then, a wan sun had come out. His long shadow stretched out to the northwest as he walked back to the building where he practiced.
    He’d just set one foot