The War That Came Early: The Big Switch by Harry Turtledove

Nazis would have agreed with the embassy personnel about that.
    Now, though, a big, beautiful Swissair DC-3 sat on the runway outsidethe terminal. It was going to fly from Stockholm to London, and she had a seat on it. The foreign-ministry official’s gaze clouded, ever so slightly. “Now that Denmark and southern Norway are no longer considered a war zone, air traffic by neutrals has resumed,” the man said, no expression in his voice or on his face.
    Now that the Germans have sat on the Danes and Norwegians and driven the English and French way the hell up into the frozen north
. That was what he meant. How did he feel about it? Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes might as well have been brothers. This fellow probably wasn’t happy about being the only brother left free and independent. Then again, Sweden did a lot of business with Germany. Quite a few Swedes admired Hitler—one of Peggy’s more alarming discoveries in what otherwise seemed a civilized country. So she didn’t ask the official what he thought of the foreign situation. He could think whatever he damn well pleased. She was getting out of here.…
    Wasn’t she? He handed back her passport. Nervously, she asked, “Is there anything else?”
    “No, Madame. May you have a safe and pleasant journey.” He opened the door that led out from the terminal. Freezing air rushed in. Would winter
never
give up? He continued, “You are still very early, but you may board the airplane if you wish.”
    “Yippee!” Peggy said, and charged toward the American-built airliner. There was an expression the fluent diplomat likely hadn’t heard before. Or did they show cowboy movies here? The mere idea was plenty to set Peggy giggling.
    Speaking of accents, she could barely follow the Swiss steward’s German when he asked for her ticket and passport. Seeing that he was talking to an American, though, he switched to pretty good English: “Yes, everything seems to be in order. You may be seated. We will take off in about an hour.”
    “You bet I’ll be seated, Charlie!” Peggy said. The steward blinked. She didn’t care. The DC-3 had two seats on one side of the aisle and one on the other. Peggy discovered hers was on the single side. She didn’t care.
    More passengers boarded, speaking several different languages. She recognized English, Swedish, French, and the Swiss dialect of German.And two young Oriental men took the pair of seats across from her and jabbered at each other. Japanese? Chinese? Something else altogether? There she had no idea. When the steward tried German on them, they answered readily enough.
    The steward closed the door and dogged it tight. The twin engines rumbled to life. The DC-3’s cabin was soundproofed, but they were noisy even so. They got noisier, too, as the airliner sped down the runway and took off. Clunking noises from under the fuselage were the landing gear retracting. The wheels didn’t stay down through the whole flight. A DC-3 was
modern
.
    Flying through clouds was bumpy. It also made looking out the window a waste of time. She had a copy of
Gone with the Wind
a secretary at the embassy had given her. She’d read it back in the States, of course, but it was fine for a flight—nice and thick. They’d made a movie of it while she was stuck in Europe! That, she wanted to see. Would anybody still be running it by the time she got home?
    Bump, bump … 
bump
. She was glad she wasn’t afraid of flying. She was also glad she had a strong stomach. If you got seasick, you could also get airsick, especially when the plane bounced all over the sky like this. Somebody noisily lost whatever he’d eaten before takeoff. He must have used the bag, because the stink wasn’t bad.
    Food on the plane proved as good as what Peggy’d had on dining cars in trains. Drinks flowed freely. If you needed not to think about flying, or about the war, they would lubricate your brain.
    And then, out of nowhere, the lean shark shape of a Messerschmitt