Blood and Iron

by Harry Turtledove

  George, Jr., tugged at Sylvia’s skirt. “What’s the pro—prole—prolewatchamacallit, Ma?”

  “Proletariat. It means the people who do all the work in factories and on farms,” Sylvia answered. “Not the rich people who own the factories.”

  “Oh.” Her son thought about that. “People like us, you mean.”

  “That’s right, people like us.” Sylvia smiled. Painting red rings on galoshes was about as proletarian a job as you could get. If she didn’t come in tomorrow, the foreman could replace her with just about anyone off the street. And, the day after that, Frank Best would no doubt be trying to get the new ring-painter into bed with him.

  Up on the platform, concerned with bigger things, Theodore Roosevelt was winding up his speech: “I love this country. I have served this country all my adult life, and with every fiber of my being. If it please you, the citizens, that I continue to serve the United States, that will be the greatest honor and privilege you have in your power to grant me. I hope it will. I pray it will. Let us go forward together, and make the twentieth century be remembered forevermore as the American century. I thank you.”

  “Is he finished?” Mary Jane asked as the crowd applauded. Sylvia nodded. Her daughter found another question: “Can we go home now?”

  “All right, dear.” Sylvia didn’t quite know how to take the question. She wondered whether Mary Jane really would remember the day as long as she’d hoped. As they were heading toward the trolley stop, she asked, “What did you think of the president?”

  “He talked for a long time.” By the way Mary Jane said it, she didn’t mean it as a compliment.

  “He had a lot of things to talk about.” Sylvia gave credit where it was due, even if she didn’t care for all the things Roosevelt had said. “Running the country is a big, complicated job.”

  “Huh,” Mary Jane said. “I bet more people would vote for him if he didn’t talk so much.” Sylvia tried to figure out how to answer that. In the end, she didn’t answer at all. Her best guess was that Mary Jane had a point.

  Jake Featherston had never imagined he’d end up working out of an office. He had one now, though, paid for with Freedom Party dues. He had a secretary, too, whose pay came from the same source. Without Lulu endlessly tapping away on the typewriter, he wouldn’t have got done a quarter of what needed doing. As things were, he got done half of what needed doing, sometimes even more.

  Lulu couldn’t handle everything by her lonesome. Featherston studied the snapshot on his desk. It showed a British- or Confederate-style rhomboidal barrel in the middle of some dry, rough-looking country. The letter that had come with the photo was from a Party member fighting for the Emperor of Mexico against rebels who had Yankee backing.

  We’re not really here at all, the letter read. Neither is our friend. The friend in question was the barrel. Only a couple of us ever used these critters in the war against the USA. Now we all know how to handle them. Some of us are going to try and see if we can’t get some stronger engines, too, so they’ll go better. You bet we’ll bring home what we’re learning. Freedom!

  Slowly, Featherston nodded to himself. The Confederate States weren’t allowed to have barrels of their own. So the United States said, and the United States were strong enough to make their word stick. But Confederate mercenaries in Mexico, in Peru, and in Argentina were getting practice fighting in barrels and in aeroplanes and on the sea, and were figuring out improvements for the machines they used. A lot of those mercenaries belonged to the Freedom Party. Jake figured he knew as much about clandestine Confederate military affairs as the War Department did—and the War Department didn’t know how much he knew.

  Lulu stopped typing. She came into his private office: a thin, gray-haired woman, competent rather than decorative. “Mr. Kimball is here to see you, Mr. Featherston.”

  “Bring him right on in,” Jake said. “We’ve got some things to talk about, sure enough.” His secretary nodded, left, and returned a moment later with Kimball. Jake rose and shook his hand. “Good to see you. Glad you could get up to Richmond.”

  “I hadn’t planned to,” Roger Kimball answered, “but things have a way of coming up when you don’t expect them, eh?”

  Featherston nodded. After Lulu went out and started typing again, he said, “Just when you thought you had everything sunk down out of sight for good, you find out you were wrong. That fellow who went and saw Anne Colleton isn’t by any chance lying, is he?”

  Kimball looked as if he wanted to say yes, but in the end he shook his head. “I sank the Yankee bastard, all right. So the war was over? Too damn bad.” He glared at Jake, defying him to make something of it.

  “Good,” Jake said. Kimball stared. Featherston went on, “I fought the damnyankees up to the very last second I could. You think I care if you waited till the cease-fire went into effect before you gave ’em one last lick? In a pig’s ass, I do. What matters to me is whether it’ll make trouble for the Party and trouble for the country. If I decide it will, I’m going to have to cut you loose.”

  He waited to see how Kimball would take that. The ex– submersible skipper said, “I’ll kill that son of a bitch of a Brearley if it’s the last thing I ever do. I knew he was a weak reed right from the start.”

  “You will not,” Jake Featherston said. “You will not, do you hear me?” He waited to see how Kimball would take the flat order.

  Kimball took it just the way he’d expected him to: he blew his stack. “The hell I won’t,” he snarled, going brick red. “I told that bastard I’d murder him if he ever started running his big mouth. He damn well has, and I damn well will.”

  “Then I damn well will cut you loose right this minute,” Featherston said. “Forget what I told you down in Charleston. I don’t want a man who can’t do what he’s told in the Freedom Party. I don’t want somebody who’s liable to blow up behind my back in the Party. If you want to kill Brearley after I told you not to, you can kindly wait till you don’t have any connection to me. Do whatever you please on your own hook. Don’t embarrass the Party.”

  He waited again. What would Kimball do? He’d been an officer. Would he get shirty about taking orders from an ex-sergeant? A lot of fellows who’d worn fancy uniforms couldn’t stomach anything like that. Or would he remember that, in the Freedom Party, he was still a mid-ranking officer and Jake was commander-in-chief?

  Kimball started to blow his stack once more. Featherston could see it begin…and, a moment later, could see Kimball ease off again. Jake eyed the former Navy man with respect he hoped he concealed. Not everybody could go into a rage and then clamp down on it. The people who could were apt to be very useful indeed.

  Slowly, Roger Kimball said, “All right, Sarge, suppose I let the son of a bitch live for a while? That means you’ve got a line on giving him what he deserves some other way, right?”

  “Not yet, it doesn’t,” Featherston answered. Yes, Kimball was worth keeping around, all right—he’d got one step ahead of Jake, which didn’t happen every day. “I’m not saying I will yet, either. Have to cipher out how I want to do it, if I decide to do it. Do I want it to look like the Party didn’t have anything to do with it? Or do I want the job to say, You screw around with the Freedom Party and you’ll end up good and dead?”

  All at once, instead of taking it personally, Kimball started looking at it as a tactical problem. Jake saw the change in his eyes. He smiled to himself, but only to himself—he didn’t want Kimball to know he could read him.

  “That’s a nice question, isn’t it?” Kimball said. “I guess the one to ask right afterwards is, If we let the world know the Freedom Party got rid of Brearley, can we do it without having anybody go to jail?”

  “There are places we could,” Jake answered. “South Carolina’s one of ’em, I reckon: Anne Colleton has big chunks of that state sewed up tight for us.”

  “I haven’t done too bad my own self, you don’t mind my saying so,” Kimball replied. Was that touchiness in his voic
e?

  It was, Jake decided. Was Kimball jealous of Anne Colleton? Damned if he wasn’t. That was a useful thing to know. Featherston filed it away. He couldn’t use it now, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to somewhere down the line. For the moment, he needed to stick to the business at hand: “I’m not so sure about Richmond. We’ve got a lot of cops in the Party here, same as most places, but they’ve got city hall and the state government and the Confederate government all sitting over ’em. They might have to go after us, whether they really want to or not.”

  “I can see that.” Kimball raised an eyebrow. He was cool and collected again. Yes, he would have made a formidable submarine skipper. Nothing fazed him for long. Jake could easily picture him stalking and sinking that U.S. destroyer after the war ended, and banking on success to keep him out of hot water. He went on, “The Whigs and the Radical Liberals don’t fancy the Freedom Party much these days, do they?”

  “If they did, I’d reckon I was doing something wrong,” Featherston said. “Pack of damn fools, want to keep on doing things the same old way. That’s real sly, ain’t it? That’s how we got into the mess we’re in. That’s how we’ll get into more messes, too, sure as the devil.”

  “I don’t reckon you’re wrong there.” Kimball leaned forward, Brearley almost forgotten. “What the hell are you going to do about the niggers if we ever get the chance?”

  “Smack ’em down and make sure they don’t have the chance to get back up on their feet and stab us in the back again,” Jake answered: the reply he usually gave. He had more in mind, but he still didn’t know if he could do, if anybody could do, everything he really wanted. What he’d told Kimball would suffice for the time being. “Let’s get back to this business here. There’s no paper, nothing in your log or anything, that says you sank this Yankee ship too late, right?”

  To his relief, Kimball nodded. “I made sure there wouldn’t be. Brearley can’t prove anything like that. But I didn’t sink the Ericsson all by myself, either. If the rest of the crew start blabbing, they could give me a hell of a hard time.”

  “Would they do that?” Jake asked.

  “Most of ’em wouldn’t, I’m sure of it,” Kimball said, again the reply Featherston wanted to hear. “They were howling like a pack of wolves when we sent that damn destroyer to the bottom. But even on a little boat like the Bonefish, there’s a couple dozen sailors. I can’t tell you nobody would chime in with my exec, because I don’t know that for a fact.”

  “All right.” Jake scratched his head and thought for a while. “Here’s what we’re going to do for now: sit tight and see what happens. If Brearley goes to the papers, he damn well does, that’s all. I don’t reckon it hurts the Party. You weren’t in the Party during the war, on account of there wasn’t any Party to be in during the war.”

  “Fair enough,” Kimball said: yes, he was ready to take orders. “What do we do if he does go to the papers?”

  “You don’t do anything,” Featherston said, “not to him, anyhow. You go back down to South Carolina and stay there. If reporters start asking questions, tell ’em…tell ’em you can’t talk about it, that’s what you say.” He grinned. “You got to remember, Roger, our only big worry is getting the USA riled at us when we’re not strong enough to hit back. Most of the people in the CSA—hell, in your shoes, they’d’ve done the same thing.”

  “By Jesus, they would’ve. You’re right about that. You’re dead right about that, Sarge,” Kimball said. “I’ll do just like you say. I’ll tell the snoops I can’t talk about it. And if they ask why I can’t, I’ll tell ’em I can’t talk about that, either.”

  “There you go,” Jake said, nodding. “Make it sound mysterious as all get-out. That’ll drive the whole raft of reporters crazy, same as a girl who plays hard to get drives the guys crazy. Reporters are used to people who put out. Most folks love to talk—nothin’ they love better. You keep your mouth shut and you’re a long ways ahead of the game.” He studied Kimball. “You reckon you can do that?”

  “I can do it,” the ex–Navy man said, and Jake thought he could. Kimball went on, “Be kind of fun, matter of fact, leading ’em around by the nose.”

  As far as Jake was concerned, very little was more fun than leading reporters around by the nose. Much more often than not, reporters wrote the stories he wanted them to write about the Freedom Party. They usually thought they were slamming the Party—but they were slamming it the way he wanted them to, a way that let them feel clever about themselves but at the same time made the Party look appealing to a lot of their readers.

  He didn’t tell Kimball that. Maybe Kimball was smart enough to figure it out for himself. If he was, he also needed to be smart enough to keep it to himself.

  “Anything else on your mind?” Jake asked him.

  “I don’t reckon there is,” Kimball said after a little thought. “We’ve got things squared away here, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, we do,” Featherston said. “I’m right glad you came up—glad we had the chance to talk about a few things.” He was even gladder Kimball had proved sensible, but the other man didn’t need to know that, either. Having used the stick before, Jake threw him a carrot now: “Looks to me like you’re going places in the Freedom Party. I’ve said that before, haven’t I? Still looks like it’s so.”

  “I aim to,” Kimball said. “Yes, sir, I aim to.” Jake studied him again. How high did he aim? The trouble with ambitious men was their nasty habit of aiming straight for the top.

  But Jake was aiming for the top, too, for a different top, one high above anything to which he thought Roger Kimball could aspire. If everything went perfectly, he’d get there next year. He hadn’t imagined he could win even a couple of months before. Now he thought he just might. And if things went wrong, he’d take longer, that was all. Either way, he aimed to do it. “I’m glad we’ve got you settled,” he said, “on account of I don’t want anything getting in the way of that run for president when 1921 rolls around.”

  “No, sir!” Kimball said, and his eyes glowed.

  Colonel Irving Morrell and Agnes Hill hurried across Wallman Park toward yet another statue of John Brown—they seemed to be everywhere in Leavenworth. Decked with bunting as this one was, it looked far more festive than the dour old warrior for freedom had ever been in truth.

  “Everyone in town will be here today.” Agnes Hill pointed to the throngs of people crossing the foot bridges over Threemile Creek.

  “Everyone in town should be here today,” Morrell said. “Upton Sinclair drew a good crowd when he spoke a couple of weeks ago. Only right the president should draw a bigger one.”

  Agnes nodded. They shared a common faith in the Democratic Party. They shared a lot of things, including a great deal of pleasure in each other’s company. Morrell laughed at himself. He’d gone to that dance not intending to fall in love with the first woman he set eyes on, and here he’d gone and done it. And, by all appearances, she’d fallen in love with him, too.

  Not only was President Roosevelt a potent magnet for the crowd, but the day itself seemed to be summoning people outdoors. With September running hard toward October, the summer’s muggy heat had broken. The sun still shone brightly, and the oaks and elms and chestnuts in the park still carried their full canopies of leaves to give shade to those who wanted it. The blight spreading among the chestnuts back East hadn’t got to Kansas yet; Morrell hoped it never would. The air felt neither warm nor crisp. In fact, he could hardly feel the air at all.

  “Perfect,” he said, and Agnes Hill nodded again.

  A lot of the men in the crowd wore green-gray like Morrell’s, Fort Leavenworth lying just north of the town whose name it shared. That helped Agnes and him advance through the crowd: soldiers who spotted his eagles made way for his companion and him. “This is swell!” she exclaimed when they ended up only three or four rows from the rostrum at which Roosevelt would speak.

  “It is, isn’t it?” Morrell said, and squeezed her hand. T
hey grinned at each other, as happy as if alone together rather than in the middle of the biggest crowd Leavenworth had seen for years (Morrell did hope the crowd was bigger than the one Sinclair had drawn, anyhow).

  People whooped like red Indians when President Roosevelt ascended to the rostrum. Off to one side, a brass band blared away at “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Morrell wished the band had picked a different tune; that one rattled around in his head for days whenever he heard it, and it made noisy company.

  Roosevelt said, “By jingo, it’s always a pleasure for me to come to Kansas. This state was founded by men and women who knew a Southern viper when they saw one, even before the War of Secession.” He glanced back at the statue of John Brown. “There is a man who knew who the enemy was, and a man who hit our country’s enemies hard even when they still pretended to be friends. For that, I am proud to salute him.” He doffed his homburg and half bowed toward the statue.

  Morrell clapped till his hands ached. Beside him, Agnes Hill blew Roosevelt a kiss. “Should I be jealous?” Morrell asked her. She stuck out her tongue at him. They both laughed.

  “People say—newspapers say—I’m in the fight of my political life,” Roosevelt went on. “I say, bully!” He reveled in the new round of applause washing over him from the friendly crowd. “Maybe they’ll drag this old Democratic donkey down,” he shouted, “but if they do, I tell you this: they’ll know they’ve been in a fight, too.”

  “You won the war, Teddy,” somebody called. “You can win this fight.”

  Roosevelt, Morrell happened to know, did not care to be called Teddy. On the campaign trail, though, he endured it. His grin looked friendly, not forced. And then somebody else yelled, “The country needs you, Teddy!”

  “I don’t know whether the country needs me personally or not,” Roosevelt said, “but I do know for a fact that I take enormous pride in having served the country. And I also know for a fact that the country needs a Democrat in Powel House or the White House, and I seem to be the one the Democratic Party is putting forward this year.