American Front gw-1

by Harry Turtledove

  A couple of other soldiers came running up and helped Mantarakis extin guish Hinshaw. More kerosene-filled bottles kept dropping all around. More men screamed those horrid screams, too.

  Captain Hinshaw was still smoking, but he didn't seem to be burning anywhere, not any more. He sat up. That gave Mantarakis and the other two men the first look at his face they'd had since the bottle hit him. Mantarakis wanted to look away. "Jesus," one of the other soldiers said softly. It wasn't a live man's face any more, but a skull covered here and there with bits of charred meat.

  In a voice eerily calm, Hinshaw said, "Will one of you please take your weapon and kill me? Believe me, you'd be doing me a favour."

  "We can't do that, sir," Mantarakis answered through numb lips. He raised his voice to shout for stretcher-bearers. Trying to sound soothing, he went on, "They'll have morphia for you, sir."

  "Morphia?" Hinshaw's laugh made Paul's hair stand on end. The officer groped for his own pistol, and got it out of the holster. Mantarakis knew he ought to stop him, but crouched, frozen. Neither of the other two soldiers moved. Hinshaw's hand was burned, too, but not too burned to pull the trig ger. He fell over, mercifully dead.

  A few minutes later, artillery stopped pounding Brigham Young College and started hammering the Mormons in the front-line positions. A couple of shells fell short, too, ploughing up the ground too close to Paul for comfort.

  Whistles shrilled. For once, Mantarakis was glad to go over the top, glad to struggle through paths in the wire that weren't paths enough-anything to get away from the roast-meat horror Captain Hinshaw had become. Beside that, the bullets cracking past him were nuisances, distractions, nothing more. By the way his men were shouting as they rushed the Mormon lines, they felt the same as he did.

  He sprang down into a length of trench. The Mormons fought hard. They always fought hard. Hardly any of them threw down their rifles, even in the face of death. That didn't matter, not today it didn't. He hadn't planned on taking prisoners, anyhow.

  From an upstairs bedroom came the insistent clanging of a bell. "I'll speak further to you later, Griselda," Scipio said. The servant, who'd given Anne Colleton rancid butter, looked suitably downcast, but he hadn't quite turned away before she stuck out her tongue at him.

  She would have to go, he realized as he hurried up the staircase. Whether that meant another situation indoors somewhere else or work out in the fields, he didn't know, but such insubordination could not be tolerated. And then, around three steps higher, he remembered he was part of a revolutionary movement that, if it succeeded, would sweep away Negro servitude forever. Until it succeeded, though, the most he could do to help it was to make everything seem as normal as he could. Yes, Griselda would have to go.

  "Coming, Captain Colleton," he called, for the bell went on and on and on. He had been too well-trained ever to look like someone in a hurry, but he was walking very fast by the time he got to Jacob Colleton's bedroom.

  "Took you long enough," Colleton said in a slurring rasp. That didn't spring from the effects of the gas alone; he was drunk, as he was most of the time: a cut-glass whiskey decanter, nearly all the whiskey it had once held now decanted, sat on a table by the chair in which he perched.

  "I am sorry to have inconvenienced you, sir," Scipio said. He had to fight to keep his air of servile detachment around Jacob Colleton. You knew people came back from war wounded, even maimed. You didn't think they could come back ruined this particular way, though, condemned to maybe a full life's worth of hell.

  Chlorine gas… that was stuff more appalling than anyone had imagined back before the war. If the Confederates had thought of it, they wouldn't have used it against the USA, not at first they wouldn't. They'd have used it to keep their own blacks in line. He had a sudden, horrid vision of black men and women lined up and made to breathe the stuff. A lot more efficient than just shooting them…

  In that choking wreck of a whisper, Jacob Colleton said, "I want to see Cherry. Bring her here to me. She can tell me a story, one of those Congaree yarns you niggers spin, take my mind off how wonderful the world is for me these days." He coughed. His face, already the color of parchment, went paler yet, to the shade milk had once you'd skimmed off the cream.

  "You understand, sir, that she is in the fields at present," Scipio said. Colleton nodded impatiently. Face not showing any of what he was thinking, Sci pio said, "I shall fetch her here directly."

  Muggy heat smote him when he went outside. He felt himself starting to sweat. It was, for once, honest sweat, sweat having nothing — well, only a little- to do with fear. The kinds of stories Cherry told Jacob Colleton had nothing to do with words. Colleton, of course, had no notion Cherry was anything but one more Negro wench to distract him and keep his mind off his pain.

  What she thought about him was harder for Scipio to unravel. She gave Colleton what he wanted from her; the butler was sure of that much. He wouldn't have kept asking for her if she didn't. Understanding why she did was harder. Come the revolution, Jacob Colleton, like every other white aristocrat in the CSA, was fair game.

  Maybe he told her things, when they were in there together with the doors closed. Cassius might know about that; Scipio didn't. He didn't have the nerve to ask the hunter, either. Maybe Cherry revelled in making herself feel worse now so revenge would be all the sweeter when it came. And maybe, too, revo lutionary sentiments or not, she also felt something akin to pity for Jacob Col leton. People weren't all of a piece, not whites, not blacks, not anybody. Scipio was sure of that.

  He sent a little boy who wore nothing but a grin and a shirt that came halfway down to his knees out to find Cherry. That meant he'd have to give the little rascal a couple of pennies when he came back, but going out into the fields after a particular woman was beneath a butler's dignity.

  While he waited for the boy to return with Cherry, he looked back at the Marshlands mansion. Halftone photographs in the newspapers showed what towns looked like after the rake of war dragged through them. He tried to imagine Marshlands as a burnt-out shell. Horror ran through him when he did. He loved and hated the place at the same time himself.

  Here came Cherry, a plain cotton blouse over an equally plain cotton skirt, but a fiery red bandanna tied over her hair. Scipio gave the boy three pennies, which was plenty to send him capering off with glee. "Why fo' you wants me?" Cherry asked.

  "Ain't me." Scipio shook his head in denial. "Marse Jacob, he want you. Say he want you to tell a story to he."

  "He say dat?" Cherry asked. Scipio nodded. Now he was sweating from nerves. If Cherry told Jacob Colleton the wrong story, he himself was a dead man. He hoped she didn't truly care for Miss Anne's brother. If she did, she was liable to talk more than she should. That was the last thing Scipio wanted. She said, "Well, he gwine like de story he get."

  Scipio wouldn't have doubted that. She was a fine-looking woman, with high cheekbones that said she had some Indian in her. You'd have never a dull moment between the sheets with her; of that much Scipio was sure. All the same, knowing what he knew, he would sooner have taken a cougar to bed.

  Cherry walked on toward Marshlands. Scipio followed her with his eyes. Any man would have, the roll she put to her hips. She opened the door, closing it after her as she went inside. Something else occurred to Scipio, something he hadn't thought through before. Cherry was going up to that bedroom to do what Jacob Colleton wanted. Colleton probably didn't care much about whether it was what she wanted. If the uprising of which she dreamt ever came off, Scipio wouldn't have cared to be in the shoes Miss Anne's brother was — or, at the moment, most likely wasn't-wearing.

  Well, that was Jacob Colleton's lookout, not Scipio's. The butler had enough to worry about, keeping Marshlands going with servants constantly leaving for better-paying jobs, and with the threat of revolt from the field hands growing worse every day.

  And, he remembered, with insolence from the servants he did have. Deal ing with Griselda came within the normal purview of his du
ties. That it was normal made it all the more attractive to him now. Straightening up until he looked as stiff and stern as the Confederate sergeant on the recruiting poster pasted to every other telegraph pole, he marched back to the mansion.

  Griselda, predictably, screamed abuse at him when he told her she had to go. "That will be enough of that," he said, using his educated voice: he was speaking as Anne Colleton's agent now, not as himself. "If you comport yourself with dignity, I will prevail upon the mistress to write you a letter that will enable you to find a good situation elsewhere. Otherwise-"

  But that was not so effective as it would have been a year earlier. "Fuck yo' letter, an' fuck you, too," Griselda shouted. "Don' need no letter, not these days I don't. Take myself to Columbia, git me work at one o' the factories they got there. Don' have to lissen to no nigger talkin' like white folks what needs to go take a shit, neither." She stormed out of Marshlands, slamming the door behind her.

  Scipio stared out the window as she flounced down the path that led to the road. She hadn't even bothered going to her room and getting her belong ings. Maybe she'd be back for them later, or maybe she'd have somebody send them on to her when she found a place in town. Wherever the truth lay there, she never would have behaved that way before the war made it possible for her to find a job without worrying about her passbook or a letter of recommendation or anything past a strong back and a pair of hands.

  "The war," he muttered. It had dislocated everything, including, God only knew, his own life.

  Anne Colleton came out of her office and looked down at him from the second floor. "What was that all about?" she asked. "Or don't I want to know?"

  "One of the house staff has seen fit to resign her position, ma'am," Scipio answered tonelessly.

  Miss Anne raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know an artillery accompaniment was required with resignations these days," she remarked, but didn't seem inclined to take it any further, for which Scipio was duly grateful.

  The mistress of Marshlands was turning away from the railing when an other door opened upstairs. Cherry walked by Anne Colleton, nodding to her almost, although not quite, as an equal. Miss Anne looked at her, looked back to the door from which she had emerged, and went back into her office, shak ing her head as she went.

  Cherry paused by Scipio. "I hear one of the house niggers up an' leave?" she asked. When the butler nodded, she said, "How about you give de job she was doin' to me? I kin do it better dan she could, I bet you."

  Scipio licked his lips. She might well have been right, but — "I gwine ask Cassius, see what he say." Using that dialect inside the mansion, even speaking quietly as he was now, made him nervous. Cassius would probably be glad to have an extra set of eyes and ears inside Marshlands, but if for some reason he wanted his followers to stay as inconspicuous as possible, Scipio didn't want to cross him. Scipio didn't want to cross Cassius for any reason. The hunter was altogether too good with a gun or a knife or any other piece of lethality that came into his hands.

  Cherry tossed her head. "Cain't ask Cassius. He ain't here."

  "What do you mean, he isn't here?" Scipio asked, returning to the form of English that seemed more natural-or at least safer-to him inside Marshlands. "Has he gone hunting in the swamps for a few days?"

  "He gone, but not in de swamp," Cherry agreed. She too dropped her voice, to a throaty whisper. "Who know what kind o' good things he bring back wid he when he come home?"

  What the devil was that supposed to mean? Scipio couldn't come right out and ask: too many ears around in a place like Marshlands, and not all of them — none of the white and too few of the black-to be trusted. He focused on what lay right before him. "Very well, Cherry," he said starchily. "We shall try you indoors for a time, and see how you shape in your new position. Have you anything more suitable for wear inside Marshlands?"

  "Sho' do." Her eyes flashed deviltry. "Jus' axe Marse Jacob." She slipped outside, laughing, while Scipio was still in the middle of a coughing fit.

  Chester Martin scratched his head. The gesture, for once, had nothing to do with the lice that were endemic in the front lines near the Roanoke — and everywhere else. "Sir, these are the craziest orders I ever heard," he said.

  Captain Orville Wyatt said, "They're the craziest orders I ever heard, too, Sergeant. That hasn't got anything to do with the price of beer, though. We got 'em, so we're gonna obey 'em." But behind the wire-rimmed spectacles, his eyes were as puzzled as Martin's.

  "Oh, yes, sir," Martin said. "But how are we supposed to pick out this one particular nigger? Those bastards do a lot of deserting." He scratched his head again. You had to want in the worst way to get out of your country if you were willing to crawl through barbed wire, willing to risk getting shot, to escape. And it wasn't as if the USA were any paradise for colored people, not even close. What did that say about the CSA? Nothing good, Martin figured.

  Captain Wyatt said, "He'll let us know who he is. And when he does, we're supposed to treat him like he's whiter than the president." He spat down into the mud of the trench. That stuck in his craw, the same as it did for Martin.

  The sergeant sighed. "Son of a bitch would have to pick our sector for whatever he's up to. I'll pass the word on to the men."

  Specs Peterson, who was cleaning his eyeglasses on a rag that looked likelier to get them dirty, looked up, his gray eyes watery and unfocused. His voice was very clear, though: "What a lot of fuss over one damn nigger." The rest of the soldiers in the squad nodded.

  So did Chester Martin, for that matter. But he answered, "When the order comes down from Philadelphia, you don't argue with it, not if you know what's good for you. Anybody who shoots that fellow when he's coming through the wire is gonna wish he'd shot himself instead."

  "But, Sarge, what if this is all some kind of scheme the Rebs cooked up and they sneak a raiding party through? We won't shoot at them, neither, not till too late," Joe Hammerschmitt protested.

  "You ought to be writing for Scribner's instead of what's-his-name, that Davis," Martin said. "Maybe you can make a gas attack sound exciting instead of nasty, too. But if the Rebels are that smart, they're probably going to overrun us. You ask me, though, they ain't that smart, or if they are, they sure haven't shown it."

  With that the men-and Martin himself-had to be content. It turned out to be enough, too, for two nights later Hammerschmitt shook Martin awake. As he always did when he woke up, he grabbed for his Springfield, which lay beside him. "Don't need to do that, Sarge," the private said. "I think I got that nigger with me you were talking about the other day."

  "Yeah?" Martin sat up, rubbing his eyes. It was dark in the trench; the Confederates had snipers watching for any light and anything it showed, same as the USA did. The man beside Hammerschmitt wasn't much more than a shadow. Martin peered toward him. "How you going to prove you're the one we've been waiting for?"

  "'Cause I de one gwine bring de uprisin' o' de proletariat to de white folks o' de CSA," the Negro answered. "Gwine end de feudal 'pression, gwine end de capitalis' 'pression, gwine end all 'pression. De dictatorship o' de prole tariat gwine come, down in de CSA." His eyes glittered as he peered toward Martin. "An' de revolution gwine come in de USA, too, you wait an' see." His accent was thick as molasses, but if anything it added to the grim intensity of what he was saying.

  "Jesus Christ, Sarge," Hammerschmitt burst out, "he's a fuckin' Red."

  "He sure is," Martin answered. Plainly, the Negro wasn't just a Socialist. Martin voted Socialist as often as not, though he'd favoured TR in the last elec tion. The Negro was an out-and-out bomb-throwing Red, Red as a Russian Bolshevik, probably Redder than an IWW lead miner or fruit picker out West.

  Martin scrambled to his feet. "I'll take you to the captain, uh — What's your name? They didn't tell us about that."

  "I is Cassius," the Negro answered. "You sho' you got to waste time wid de captain? I got 'portant things to do up here in Yankeeland."

  "Think a good bit of yourself, don'
t you, Cassius?" Martin said dryly. "Yes, you have to go see Captain Wyatt. You satisfy him, he'll pass you on up the line. And if you don't — " He didn't go on. Cassius sounded like a man with a head on his shoulders. He could work that out for himself.

  Cassius picked his way over and around sleeping men and avoided holes in the bottom of the trench with an ease a cat would have had trouble matching and Martin couldn't approach. The Negro couldn't have acquired that sense of grace and balance chopping cotton all day. Martin wondered what he had done.

  Captain Wyatt, as it happened, was awake, studying a map under the tiny light from a candle shielded by a tin can. He looked up when Martin and Cassius drew near. "This the man we're looking for, Sergeant?" he asked.

  "I think so, sir," Martin answered. "His name's Cassius, and he's a Red." He wondered how the Negro would react to that. He just nodded, matter-of-factly, as if he'd been called tall or skinny. He was a Red.

  Wyatt frowned. Martin knew he was a Democrat, and a conservative Democrat at that. But after a moment his face cleared. "If the Rebs have them selves a nice Red revolt in their own backyards, that won't make it any easier for them to fight us at the same time." He swung his eyes toward the black man. "Isn't that right, Mr. Cassius?" Martin had never heard anybody call a Negro Mister before.

  Cassius nodded. "It's right, but we make dis revolution fo' our ownselves, not fo' you Yankees. Like I tol' you' sergeant here, one fine day you gits yo' own revolution."

  "Yes, when pigs have wings," Wyatt said crisply. The two men glared at each other in the gloom, neither yielding in the least. Then the captain said, "But it's the CSA we're both worried about now, eh?" and Cassius nodded. Wyatt went on, "I still don't know if it was them or the Canucks who set Utah on its ear, but your people will do worse to them than Utah ever did to us." He pointed to Martin. "Take him back to the support trenches and tell them to pass him on to divisional headquarters. They'll see he gets what he needs."