Blood and iron ae-1

by Harry Turtledove

  "I love you, too," Agnes answered, raising up a little to kiss him on the cheek. "And I love-this. And I would love you to get off me so I can get up and go to the bathroom, if that's all right."

  "I think so," he said. Agnes laughed and poked him in the ribs. When she came back to bed, he was nearly asleep. Agnes laughed again, on a different note. She put on her nightgown and lay down beside him. He heard her breathing slow toward the rhythms of sleep, too. Feeling vaguely triumphant at staying awake long enough to notice that, he drifted off.

  Anne Colleton had always fancied that she had a bit of the artist in her. Back before the war, she'd designed and arranged the exhibition of modern art she'd put on at the Marshlands mansion. Everyone had praised the way the exhibit was laid out. Then the world went into the fire, and people stopped caring about modern art.

  Now Anne was working with different materials. This Freedom Party rally in Columbia would be one of the biggest in South Carolina. She was bound and determined it would also be the best. She'd done her best to get permission to hold the rally on the grounds of the State House, but her best hadn't been good enough. The governor was a staunch Whig, and not about to yield the seat of government even for a moment to Jake Feather-ston's upstarts. She'd hoped for better without really expecting it.

  Seaboard Park would do well enough. Neither the governor nor the mayor nor the chief of police could ban the rally altogether, though they would have loved to. But the Confederate Constitution guaranteed that citizens might peaceably assemble to petition for redress of grievances. The Freedom Party wasn't always perfectly peaceable, but it came close enough to make refusal to issue a permit a political disaster.

  Tom Colleton touched Anne's arm. "Well, Sis, I've got to hand it to you. This is going to be one devil of a bash."

  "Nice of you to decide to come up from St. Matthews and watch it," Anne replied coolly. "I didn't expect you to bother."

  "It's my country," Tom said. "If you remember, I laid my life on the line for it. I want to see what you and that maniac Feather-ston have in mind for it."

  "He's not a maniac." Anne did her best to hold down the anger in her voice. "I don't deal with maniacs-except the ones I'm related to."

  "Heh," her brother said. But then he surprised her by nodding. "I suppose you're right-Featherston's not a maniac. He knows what he wants and he knows how to go after it. You ask me, though, that makes him more dangerous, not less."

  Anne wondered and worried about the same thing herself. Even so, she said, "When he does win, whether it's this year or not, he'll set the Confederate States to rights. And he'll remember who helped him get to the top." Tom started to say something. She shook her head. "Can't talk now. The show's about to start."

  Gasoline-powered generators came to life. Searchlights began to glow all around Seaboard Park. Their beams shot straight up into the air, making the park seem as if it were surrounded by colonnades of bright, pale light. Anne had come up with that effect herself. She was proud of it. Churches wished they made people feel the awe those glowing shafts inspired.

  More electric lights came on inside the park. Tom caught his breath. They showed the whole place packed with people. Most of the crowd consisted of the ordinary working people of Columbia in their overalls and dungarees and cloth caps and straw hats, with a sprinkling of men in black jackets and cravats: doctors and lawyers and businessmen, come to hear what the new man in the land had to say.

  At the front, though, near the stage a team of carpenters had spent the day running up, stood neat, military-looking ranks of young men in white shirts and butternut trousers. Many of them wore tin hats. If the Whigs and the Radical Liberals tried imitating Freedom Party tactics and assailing the rally, the protection squads would make them regret it.

  The foremost rows of Party stalwarts carried flags-some Confederate banners, some C.S. battle flags with colors reversed, some white banners blazoned with the red word FREEDOM. The tall backdrop for the flag-draped stage was white, too, with FREEDOM spelled out on it in crimson letters twice as tall as a man.

  "You don't need to worry about investing money," Tom said. "You could make billions designing sets for minstrel shows and vaudeville tours. Christ, you might make millions even if Confederate dollars were really worth anything."

  "Thank you, Tom," Anne Colleton said. She wasn't altogether sure whether he offered praise or blame, but took it for the former. "Look-here comes Featherston." Her own vantage point was off to the right, beyond the edge of the crowd, so she could see farther into the left wing than any of the regular audience. She tensed. "If those spotlight men have fallen asleep on the job, God damn them, they'll never work in this state again."

  But they hadn't. As soon as Jake advanced far enough to be visible to the crowd, twin spotlight beams speared him. One of the Freedom Party bigwigs from Columbia rushed to the microphone and cried, "Let's hear it for the next president of the Confederate States, Jaaake Featherstonl"

  "Free-atom! Free-atom! Free-atom!'' The rhythmic cry started among the stalwarts in white and butternut. At first, it had to compete with the unorganized cheers and clapping and the scattered boos from the larger crowd behind them. But the stalwarts kept right on, as they'd been trained to do. And, little by little, the rest of the crowd took up the chant, till the very earth of Seaboard Park seemed to cry out: "Free-c/om! Free-atom! Free-c/om!"

  The two-syllable beat thudded through Anne. She'd orchestrated this entire performance. Thanks to her, Jake Featherston stood behind the microphone, his hands raised, soaking up the adulation of the crowd. Knowing what she knew, she should have been immune to what stirred the thousands of fools out there. But, to her own amazement and rather to her dismay, she found she wasn't. She wanted to join the chant, to lose herself in it. The excitement that built in her was hot and fierce, almost sexual.

  She fought it down. The farmers and factory hands out there didn't try. They didn't even know they might try. They'd come to be stirred, to be roused. The ceremony had started that work. Jake Featherston would finish it.

  He dropped his hands. Instantly, the Freedom Party faithful in white and butternut stopped chanting. The cries of "Freedom!'' went on for another few seconds. Then the people in the ordinary part-much the bigger part-of the crowd got the idea, too. A little raggedly, the chant ended.

  Jake leaned forward, toward the microphone. Anne discovered she too was leaning forward, toward him. Angrily, she straightened. "God damn him," she muttered under her breath. Tom gave her a curious look. She didn't explain. She didn't want to admit even to herself, let alone to anyone else, that Jake Feather-ston could get her going like that.

  "Columbia," Jake said. "I want you all to know, I'm glad-I'm proud-to set foot in the capital of the first state of the Confederacy." He talked in commonplaces. His voice was harsh, his accent none too pleasing. Somehow, none of that mattered. When he spoke, thousands upon thousands of people hung on his every word. Anne was one of them. She knew she was doing it, but couldn't help herself. Featherston was formidable in a small setting. In front of a crowd, he was much more than merely formidable.

  Through cheers, he repeated, "Yes, sir, I'm proud to set foot in the capital of the first state of the Confederacy-because I know South Carolina is going to help me, going to help the Freedom Party, give the Confederate States back to the people who started this country in the first place, the honest, hard-working white men and women who make the CSA go and don't get a dime's worth of credit for it. Y'all remember dimes, right? That'd be a couple million dollars' worth of credit nowadays, I reckon."

  The crowd laughed and cheered. "He's full of crap," Tom said. "The people who started this country were planters and lawyers, just about top to bottom. Everybody knows that."

  "Everybody who's had a good education knows that," Anne said. "How many of those folks out there do you figure went to college?" Before Tom could answer, she shook her head. "Never mind now. I want to hear what he's going to say."

  "Now I kno
w the Whigs are running Wade Hampton Y and I know he's from right here in South Carolina," Featherston went on. "I reckon some of you are thinking of voting for him on account of he's from here. You can do that if you want to, no doubt about it. But I'll tell you something else, friends: I thought this here was an election for president, not for king. His Majesty Wade Hampton the Fifth." He stretched out the name and the number that went with it, then shook his head in well-mimed disbelief. "Good Lord, folks, if we vote him in, we'll be right up there with the Englishmen and George V"

  "He is good," Tom said grudgingly as the crowd exploded into more laughter. Anne nodded. She was leaning forward again.

  "Now, Hampton V means well, I don't doubt it for a minute," Jake said. "The Whigs meant well when Woodrow Wilson got us into the war, too, and they meant well when a War Department full of Thirds and Fourths and Fifths fought it for us, too. And you'd best believe they meant well when they stuck their heads in the sand instead of noticing the niggers were going to stab us in the back. If you like the way the war turned out, if you like paying ten million dollars for breakfast-this week; it'll be more next Wednesday-go right ahead and vote for Wade Hampton V You'll get six more years of what we've been having.

  "Or if you want a real change, you can vote for Mr. Layne. The Radical Liberals'll give you change, all right. I'll be… switched if they won't. They'll take us back into United States, is what they'll do. Ainsworth Layne went to Harvard, folks-Harvard! Can you believe it? It's true, believe it or not. And the Rad Libs want him to be president of the CSA1 I'm sorry, friends, but I've seen enough damnyankees come down on us already. I don't need any homegrown ones, thank you kindly."

  That drew more laughter and applause than his attack on Wade Hampton had done. The Radical Liberals, though neither very radical nor very liberal, had always been weak in hard-line South Carolina. Were Hampton not a native son, Anne would have thought Jake Featherston the likely winner here. Even with things as they were, she thought he had a decent chance to take the state.

  Featherston went on, "The Whigs and the Rad Libs both say we have to learn from the war, to take what the Yankees dish out on account of we're not strong enough to do anything else. What I say is, we have to learn from the war, all right. We have to learn that when we hit the United States, we have to hit 'em hard and we have to keep on hitting 'em till they fall down! They've stolen big chunks of what's ours. I give you my word, friends-one fine day, it's going to be ours again!"

  The crowd exploded. Anne caught herself shouting at the top of her lungs. She thirsted for revenge against the USA. She glanced over toward her brother. Tom was shouting, too, his fist pumping the air. Whatever he thought of Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party, he wanted vengeance on the United States, too. That yen for revenge brought together people in the CSA who had nothing else in common. With luck, it would bring them together under the Freedom Party banner.

  "Free-do/w! Free-doml Free-t/om!" The stalwarts began the chant as Jake stepped back from the microphone. It swelled until the whole huge crowd bellowed the word as if it came from a single throat. Anne looked at Tom again. He was shouting it, too. She'd been shouting it till she made a deliberate effort of will and stopped. All of Columbia could hear that furious roar. By the time November came, all of the Confederate States would hear it.

  XV

  Roger Kimball whistled cheerfully as he tucked his white shirt into a pair of butternut trousers. A lot of Freedom Party leaders didn't care to join in the brawling that had marked the Party's rise. Kimball shrugged. He'd never backed away from a fight, and he'd gone toward a good many. And Ainsworth Layne was speaking in Charleston tonight, or thought he was.

  "I need a tin hat," Kimball said, buttoning his fly. A helmet was useless aboard a submersible. It was a handy thing to have with clubs and rocks flying, though.

  He picked up his own club and headed for the door. He was about to open it when somebody knocked. He threw it wide. There stood Clarence Potter. The former intelligence officer eyed him with distaste. "If you don't agree with what I have to say, you could simply tell me so," Potter remarked.

  "I don't agree with what you have to say," Kimball snapped. "I don't have time to argue about it now, though. Can't be late."

  Potter shook his head. "When we first got to know each other, I thought better of you. You were a man who wanted to build up his country, not a ruffian tearing down the fabric of the republic. We used to talk about riding Jake Featherston. Now he rides you-and you're proud of it."

  "He doesn't ride me," Roger Kimball said. "We're both going the same way, that's all."

  "Toward riot and mayhem." Potter pointed to the stout bludgeon in Kimball's hand. Then he added, "Toward murder, too, maybe."

  "Clarence, I had nothing to do with Tom Brearley going up in smoke," Kimball said evenly. "I don't miss him, but I didn't have anything to do with it. Far as I know"-he carefully hadn't asked Featherston any questions-"the Freedom Party had nothing to do with it, either. The jury found those fellows up in Richmond innocent."

  "No, the jury found them not guilty, which isn't close to the same thing," Potter answered. "And if the jury had found anything different, how many out of those twelve do you suppose would be breathing today?"

  "I don't know anything about that. What I do know is, maybe you'd better not come around here any more." Kimball hefted the club.

  Potter had very little give in him. Kimball had seen as much when they first met in a saloon. The club didn't frighten him. "You needn't worry about that," he said. Slowly and deliberately, he turned his back and walked away.

  Kimball pulled his watch out of his pocket. Good-he wasn't late yet. He frowned, then set the watch on a table by the door. Some of the Radical Liberals were liable to have clubs, too, and that could be hard on a timepiece.

  He passed a policeman on his way to Freedom Party headquarters. The gray-clad cop inspected him. He wondered if the man would give him trouble. But the cop called "Freedom!" and waved him on his way. Kimball raised the club in salute as he hurried along.

  Freedom Party stalwarts spilled out onto the sidewalk and into the street around the headquarters. They'd drawn a few policemen on account of that. "Come on, fellows, you don't want to block traffic," one of the policemen said. The men in white and butternut took no special notice of him. Yes, he had a six-shooter, but there were more than a hundred times six of them, combat veterans all, and some no doubt with pistols of their own tucked into pockets or trouser waistbands.

  "Form ranks, boys," Kimball called. The Freedom Party men did. They didn't just spill into the street then: they took it over, in a long, sinewy column that put Kimball in mind of the endless close-order drill he'd gone through down at the Naval Academy in Mobile. The comparison was fitting, because the stalwarts- mostly ex-soldiers, with a handful of Navy men-had surely done their fair share of close-order drill, too.

  "You can't do that!" a cop exclaimed. "You haven't got a parade permit!"

  "We are doing it," Kimball answered. "We're out for a stroll together-isn't that right, boys?" The men in butternut and white howled approval. Kimball waited to see if the policeman would have the nerve to try arresting him. The cop didn't. Grinning, Kimball said, "On to Hampton Park! Forward-march!'"

  The column moved out, the stalwarts raising a rhythmic cry of "Freedom!" Kimball had all he could do not to break into snickers. Here he was, leading Freedom Party men to attack Radical Liberals in a park named for the family of the Whigs' presidential candidate. If that wasn't funny, what was?

  Hampton Park lay in the northwestern part of Charleston, across town from Freedom Party headquarters. The column of stalwarts was ten men wide and a hundred yards long; it snarled traffic to a fare-thee-well. Some automobilists frantically blew their horns at the men who presumed to march past them regardless of rules of the road. More than a few, though, shouted "Freedom!" and waved and cheered.

  "What do you aim to do?" a nervous policeman asked Kimball as the stalwarts strod
e up Ashley toward Hampton Park. By then, a couple of dozen cops were tagging along with the Freedom Party men. Tagging along was all they were doing; they seemed shocked to find themselves such a small, shadowy presence.

  In Hampton Park, a couple of searchlights hurled spears of light into the sky. The Rad Libs hadn't adopted the glowing cathedral Anne Colleton had come up with, but they were doing their best to keep pace. Kimball pointed toward the searchlights. "We aim to have a talk with those folks yonder." The cop spluttered and fumed. He knew the Freedom Party aimed to do a hell of a lot more than that. But knowing it and being able to prove it were two different critters.

  Ainsworth Layne had provided himself with a microphone, too. His amplified voice boomed out from the park. "-And so I say to you, people of the Confederate States, that with goodwill we can be reconciled to those with whom we have known conflict in the past: with our American brethren in the United States and with the colored men and women in our own country." He sounded earnest and bland.

  "Are you listening to that crap, boys?" Roger Kimball asked. "Sounds like treason to me. How about you?" A low rumble of agreement rose from the men marching behind him. He asked another question: "What does this country really need?"

  "Freedom!'' The thunderous answer put Layne's microphone to shame. The Freedom Party men advanced into the park.

  Dark shapes rushed out of the night to meet them. The Radical Liberals had a cry of their own: "Layne and liberty!"

  "Freedom!" Kimball shouted, and swung his club. It struck flesh. A Rad Lib howled like a kicked dog. Kimball laughed. If the other side felt like mixing it up, he and his comrades were ready.

  Dozens of searchlights marked Freedom Party rallies these days. The Radical Liberals used only a couple. The Radical Liberals incompletely imitated the Freedom Party when it came to assembling a strong-arm force, too. They'd recruited a few dozen bullyboys: enough to blunt the first charge of the men in white and butternut, but nowhere near enough to halt them or drive them back.