But there were no words. Carlotta, who had tactfully left the Brazilian"s
money on the table, thinking it would look a little better not to pocket it
until after the interview, began to wish now that she had taken it right
away.
The silence became very long indeed.
She reached down and gave the old man a little spurt of
heptocholinase through the IV line. That seemed to do it.
"-the invasion," Uncle James said, as if he"d been speaking silently
for some time and only now was bothering to come up to the audible
level. And then words poured out of him as she had never heard them come
before, bubbling nonstop spew. It was like the breaking of a dam. "We were
dug into the trenches, you understand, and the Boche infantry came
sneaking up at us from the east, under cover of mustard gas-oh, that
was awful, the gas-but we called in an air strike right away, we hit them
hard with napalm and antipersonnel shrapnel, and then we came ash.o.r.e
with our landing craft, hit them at Anzio and Normandy both. That was
the beginning of it. Our entire strategy, you understand, was built around
a terminal nuclear hit at Bull Run, but first we knew we had to close
the Dardanelles and knock out their command center back of Cam Ranh
Bay. Once we had that, we"d only need to worry about the Prussian
cavalry and the possibility of a Saracen suicide charge, that wasn"t a real big
risk, we figured, all the Rebels were pretty well demoralized already
and it didn"t make sense that they"d have the b.a.l.l.s to come back at us
after all we"d thrown at them, so-"
"What is he saying, please?" the Brazilian asked softly. "He speaks so
quickly. I am not quite understanding him, I think."
"He does sound a little confused," said Carlotta.
"Well, we drove the Turks completely out of the Gulf of Corinth, and
were heading on toward Lepanto with sixty-four galleys, full steam
ahead. Then came a message from Marlborough, get our a.s.ses over to
Blenheim fast as we knew how, the French were trying to break
through--or was it the Poles?-- well, h.e.l.l, it was a mess, the winter was
coming on, that lunatic Hitler actually thought he could take out