"Gardner Dozois - Counterfactual" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

Counterfactual by Gardner Dozois
Since he left his position as editor of Asimov's magazine, Gardner Dozois has been busily editing a
variety of anthologies, including Galileo's Children, Nebula Awards Showcase 2006, and One Million
A.D.

To our good fortune, he has also been writing more fiction. His last story, "When the Great Days
Came," appeared in our December 2005 issue. His new one is a very different sort of tale, an
inquiry into What Might Have Been that is sure to interest longtime fans of science fiction who are
likely to find an old friend or two herein...
****
"If we reach the Blue Ridge Mountains, we can hold out for twenty years."
--General Robert E. Lee
****
Cliff's fountain pen rolled across the pull-out writing shelf again, and he sighed and reached out to grab it
before it tumbled to the floor. The small ink bottle kept marching down the shelf too, juddering with each
vibration of the car.

Writing on a train wasn't easy, especially on a line where the rail-bed had been insufficiently maintained
for decades. Even forming legible words was a challenge, with the jarring of the undercarriage or a
sudden jerk all too likely to turn a letter into an indecipherable splat or to produce a startled, rising line
across the page, as if the ink were trying to escape the mundane limitations of the paper.

Scenery was a distraction too. Cliff had always loved landscapes, and he had to wage a constant battle
against the urge to sit there and just look out the window, where, at the moment, pale armies of fir trees
slowly slid by, while the sky guttered toward a winter dusk in washes of plum and ash and sullen red. But
he'd be sharing this room tonight with three other reporters, which meant lights-out early and a night
wasted listening to them fart and snore, so if he was going to get any writing done on the new
Counterfactual he was working on for McClure's, it'd better be now, while his roommates were down in
the bar with the rest of the boys.

Cliff opened his notebook, smoothed it, and bent over the page:
****
General Robert E. Lee put his hands on the small of his back and stretched, trying to ease some of the
tension out of his aching spine. He had never been so tired, feeling every one of his fifty-eight years sitting
on his shoulders like bars of lead.

For days, days that had stretched into an unending nightmare of pain and fatigue, he had struggled to stay
awake, to stay erect in the saddle, as they executed a fighting retreat from the trenches and earthworks of
Petersburg westward along the Appomattox River toward Lynchburg, Grant's Army of the James, which
outnumbered his own forces four to one, snapping at their heels every step of the way. Thousands of his
men had died along the way, and Lee almost envied the fallen--at least they could stop. But Lee couldn't
stop. He knew that all eyes were on him, that it was up to him to put on a show of being indefatigable
and imperturbable, tall in the saddle, regal, calm, and wholly in command. His example and the pride it
inspired, and the love and respect the men felt for him, was all that was keeping his ragged and starving
army going. No matter how exhausted he was, no matter how bleak and defeated were his inner
thoughts, no matter how hopeless he knew his position to be, no matter how much his chest ached (as it
had been aching increasingly for days), he couldn't let it show.

They had stopped for the night in the woods near Appomattox Court House, too tired even to pitch
tents. There had been almost nothing to eat, even for the staff officers. Now his staff huddled close to him