In at the Death

by Harry Turtledove

  “Nope.” If Jeff admitted that, he admitted he’d done something wrong. No matter what the damnyankees thought, he was damned if he believed it. “We were just taking care of what we had to do, that’s all.”

  The U.S. officer sighed. “You don’t give me much to work with, but I’ll do what I can.”

  He sounded as if he meant it, anyhow. “Thanks,” Jeff said grudgingly.

  “Right.” Moss put papers back into the briefcase, closed it, pushed back his chair, and got up. “We’ve done about as much as we can today, looks like.”

  He left. He could leave. Guards took Jeff back to his cell. He wasn’t going anywhere, not until the damnyankees decided it was time to try him and hang him. The unfairness of it gnawed at him. When you won the war, you could do whatever you goddamn well pleased.

  He imagined the Confederate States victorious. He imagined Jake Featherston setting up tribunals and hanging Yankees from Denver to Bangor for all the nasty things they’d done to the CSA after the Great War. There’d be Yankee bastards dangling from every lamppost in every town. Well, he could imagine whatever he pleased. Things had worked out the other way, and the sons of bitches from the USA were getting a brand new chance to work out on the Confederacy.

  Where was the justice in that? Nowhere, not as far as he could see.

  Of course, he couldn’t see very far, not where he was. He could see lots and lots of iron bars, a forest of them. They weren’t even damnyankee iron bars. They came to his eyes courtesy of the city of Houston. What mattered, though, was his own cell. It boasted a lumpy cot, a toilet without a seat (God only knew what kind of murderous weapon he could have come up with if they’d given him a toilet seat), and a coldwater sink. He knew why he didn’t get hot water—that would have cost money, heaven forbid.

  And he was an important prisoner, too. He had the cell to himself. Most cells held two men. He wouldn’t have minded the company, but worrying about what he wanted wasn’t high on anybody’s list. Well, his own, but nobody gave a rat’s ass about that any more. He’d been a big wheel for a long time. He’d got used to shoving Army officers around and arguing with the Attorney General. Now he might as well have been a coon himself, up on a drunk-and-disorderly rap.

  Except they wouldn’t hang a coon for that. They were going to hang him higher than Haman.

  An attendant brought him a tray of food. He’d gone to jail in Birmingham a few times in his younger days. The chow then had been lousy. It still was.

  “Sorry, buddy,” the attendant said. “If it was up to me, I’d give you a fuckin’ medal for what you did with the nigs.”

  “A medal doesn’t do me a hell of a lot of good,” Jeff said. “Can you get me out of here instead?”

  The attendant shook his head. “Nope. No chance. Too many Yankees around. They’d hang me right alongside of you, and I got five kids.”

  Jeff could see the fear in his eyes. He would have said no if he were a fairy with no kids and no hope of any. The attendants were locals. Even though Texas was calling itself the Republic of Texas these days, they loved blacks no more than any other white Confederate did. But they loved their necks just fine. Nobody would help an important prisoner, nobody at all.

  My name is Clarence Potter,” Potter told the U.S. interrogator in Philadelphia. “My rank is brigadier general.” He rattled off his pay number. “Under the Geneva Convention, that’s all I’ve got to tell you.”

  “Screw the Geneva Convention,” the interrogator answered. He was a major named Ezra Tyler, a real Yankee from New England. “And screw you, too. You blew up half of Philadelphia. And you did it wearing a U.S. uniform. You get caught after that, the Geneva Convention won’t save your sorry ass.”

  “You won. You can do whatever you want—who’s going to stop you?” Potter said. “But you know you used U.S. soldiers in C.S. uniforms in front of Chattanooga—other places, too. And you dropped two superbombs on my country, not just one. So who do you think you’re trying to kid, anyway?”

  Major Tyler turned red. “You’re not cooperating.”

  “Damn straight I’m not,” Potter agreed cheerfully. “I told you—I don’t have to. Not legally, anyway.”

  “Do you want to live?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t? Are you people going to let me? Doesn’t seem likely, whether I cooperate or not.”

  “Professor FitzBelmont doesn’t have that attitude.”

  “Professor FitzBelmont isn’t a soldier. Professor FitzBelmont knows things you can really use. And Professor FitzBelmont is kind of a twit.” Potter sighed. “None of which applies to me, I’m afraid.”

  “A twit?” One of Tyler’s eyebrows rose. “Without him, you wouldn’t have had a superbomb.”

  “You’re right—no doubt about it,” Potter said. “Put a slide rule in his hands and he’s a world beater. But when he has to cope with the ordinary world and with ordinary people…he’s kind of a twit. You didn’t have much trouble getting him to open up, did you?”

  “That’s none of your business,” the interrogator said primly.

  Henderson V. FitzBelmont, in his tweedy innocence, wouldn’t have known what Tyler meant, but Potter did. “Ha! Told you so.”

  “He…appreciates the delicacy of his position. You don’t seem to,” Tyler said.

  “My position isn’t delicate. In international law, I’m fine. Whether you care about international law may be a different story.”

  “We’re treating you as a POW for the time being. You weren’t captured in our uniform. You’ll have a trial,” Major Tyler said. “But if we charge you with crimes against humanity—”

  “Will you charge the Kaiser? What about Charlie La Follette? Like I said, you used two superbombs on us. We only had one to use on you.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Sure it is. You won. I already told you that, too.”

  “Not what I meant, dammit.” Tyler went red again. “We dropped ours out of airplanes, the way you would with any other bomb. We didn’t sneak them over the border under false pretenses.”

  “Over, under, around, through—so what?” Potter said. “Shall I apologize because we didn’t have a bomber that would carry one of the goddamn things? I’m sorry, Major—I’m sorry we didn’t have more, and I’m sorry we didn’t have them sooner. If we did, I’d be interrogating you.”

  Ezra Tyler changed the subject, which was also the victor’s privilege: “Speaking of crimes against humanity, General, what did you know about your government’s extermination policy against your Negroes, and when did you know it?”

  Fear trickled through Potter. If the Yankees wanted C.S. officials dead, they could always throw that one at them.

  “All I knew was that I was involved in sniffing out the Negro uprising in 1915—which really did happen, Major, and which really did go a long way toward losing us that war. And I know there was a black guerrilla movement—again, a real one—before the start of this war. Those people were not our friends.”

  “Do you think your government’s policy had anything to do with that?”

  Of course I do. You’d have to be an idiot not to. I’m not that kind of idiot, anyway. Aloud, Potter said, “I’m a soldier. Soldiers don’t make policy.”

  “Yes, you are a soldier. You returned to the C.S. Army after the 1936 Richmond Olympics, where you shot a Negro who was attempting to assassinate Jake Featherston.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Before that time, you opposed Featherston politically.”

  “Yes, I was a Whig.”

  “You traveled to Richmond for the Games. You had a gun. You were close to a President you opposed. Did you go there intending to shoot him yourself?”

  “It’s not illegal to carry a gun in the CSA, any more than it is here. The language in our Constitution comes straight from yours.” For the past eight years, Potter had been automatically saying no to that question whenever it came up. Saying yes would have got him killed—an inch at a time, no doubt. He ne
eded a deliberate effort of will to tell the truth now: “Scratch that, Major. Yes, I went up there with that in mind. Maybe things would have gone better if I did it, or if I let the coon do it. They couldn’t have gone much worse, could they? But it’s a little late to worry about it now.”

  Major Tyler grunted. “Well, maybe. After all, of course you’d make that claim now. Amazing how many Confederates always hated Jake Featherston and everything he stood for—if you ask them, anyhow…What’s so funny?”

  Potter’s laughter was bitter as wormwood. He’d lied convincingly enough to make a connoisseur of liars like Jake Featherston believe him. All the other Confederate big shots had, too. Now he was telling the truth—and this damnyankee wouldn’t take him seriously. If he didn’t laugh, he would cry.

  “You can believe whatever you want—you will anyhow,” he said. “I believe plenty of people who yelled, ‘Freedom!’ when that looked like the smart thing to do will tell you now that they never had anything to do with anything. They know who’s on top and who’s on the bottom. Life is like that.”

  The major wrote something in his notebook. “You’re so cynical, you could go any way at all without even worrying about it. Down deep, you don’t believe in anything, do you?”

  “Fuck you, Tyler,” Potter said. The Yankee blinked. Potter hadn’t lost his temper before. “Fuck you in the heart,” he repeated. “The one woman I ever really loved, I broke up with on account of she was for Featherston and I was against him.”

  “Will she testify to that?” the interrogator asked.

  “No. She’s dead,” Potter answered. “She was in Charleston when your Navy bombers hit it back in the early days of the war.” He barked two more harsh notes of laughter. “And if she were there at the end, she would have gone up in smoke with the rest of the city because of your superbomb.”

  Major Tyler gave him a dead-fish look. “You’re in a poor position to complain about that, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Mm, you may be right,” Potter admitted. That made the Yankee blink again; he didn’t know Potter well enough to know his respect for the truth. Who does know me that well nowadays? Potter wondered. He couldn’t think of a soul. That bespoke either a lifetime wasted or a lifetime in Intelligence, assuming the two weren’t one and the same.

  “If we were to release you, would you swear a loyalty oath to the United States?” the interrogator asked.

  “No,” Potter said at once. “You can conquer my country. Hell, you did conquer my country. But I don’t feel like a good Socialist citizen of the USA. I’d say I was sorry I don’t, only I’m not. Besides, why play games? You aren’t going to turn me loose. You’re just looking for the best excuse to hang me.”

  “We don’t need excuses—you said so yourself, and you were right,” Tyler replied. “Let me ask you a slightly different question: would you swear not to take up arms against the USA and not to aid any rebellion or uprising against this country? You don’t have to like us for that one, only to respect our strength. And if you violate that oath, the penalty, just so you understand, would be a blindfold and a cigarette—a U.S. cigarette, I’m afraid.”

  “Talk about adding insult to injury,” Potter said with a sour smile. “Yes, I might swear that oath. There’s no denying we’re knocked flat. And there’s also no denying that pretty soon I’ll get too old to be dangerous to you with the worst will in the world. Things will go the way they go, and they can go that way without me.”

  “By your track record, General, you could be dangerous to us as long as you’re breathing, and I think we’d be smart to make sure you don’t sneak a telegraph clicker into your coffin,” Ezra Tyler said.

  “You flatter me,” Potter told him.

  “I doubt it,” the U.S. officer replied. “If we were to release you, where would you go? What would you do?”

  “Beats me. I spent a lot of years as a professional soldier. And when I wasn’t, in between the wars, I lived in Charleston myself. Not much point going there, not unless I want to glow in the dark.” Potter took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. It bought him a moment to think. “Why are you going on and on about turning me loose, anyway? Are you trying to get my hopes up? I’ve been on the other end of these jobs, you know. You won’t break me like that.”

  If they started getting rough…He had no movie-style illusions about his own toughness. If they started cutting things or burning things or breaking things or running a few volts—you didn’t need many—through sensitive places, he would sing like a mockingbird to make them stop. Anybody would. The general rule was, the only people who thought they could resist torture were the ones who’d never seen it. Oh, there were occasional exceptions, but the accent was on occasional.

  Major Tyler shrugged. “Our legal staff has some doubts about conviction, though we may go ahead anyway. If you were captured in our uniform…But you weren’t.”

  “Don’t sound so disappointed,” Potter said.

  “What did you think when that colored kid shot President Featherston?” the Yankee asked out of a blue sky.

  “I didn’t know who did it, not at first,” Potter answered. “I saw him fall, and I…I knew the war was over. He kept it going, just by staying alive. If he’d made it to Louisiana, say, I don’t think we could have beaten you, but we’d still be fighting. And I’d known him almost thirty years, since he was an artillery sergeant with a lousy temper. He made you pay attention to him—to who he was and to what he was. And when he got killed, it was like there was a hole in the world. We won’t see anyone like him any time soon, and that’s the Lord’s truth.”

  “I say, thank the Lord it is,” Tyler replied.

  “He damn near beat you. All by himself, he damn near did.”

  “I know. We all know,” Tyler said. “And everybody who followed him is worse off because he tried. He should have left us alone.”

  “He couldn’t. He thought he owed you one,” Potter said. “He was never somebody who could leave anybody alone. He aimed to pay back the Negroes for screwing him out of a promotion to second lieutenant—that’s how he looked at it. He wanted to, and he did. And he wanted to pay back the USA, too, and you’ll never forget him even if he couldn’t quite do it. I hated the son of a bitch, and I still miss him now that he’s gone.” He shook his head. Major Tyler could make whatever he wanted out of that, but every word of it was true.

  XVI

  The doctor eyed Michael Pound with a curious lack of comprehension. “You can stay longer if you like, Lieutenant,” he said. “You’re not fully healed. You don’t have to return to active duty.”

  “I understand that, sir,” Pound answered. “I want to.”

  He and the doctor wore the same uniform, but they didn’t speak the same language. “Why, for God’s sake?” the medical man asked. “You’ve got it soft here. No snipers. No mines. No auto bombs or people bombs.”

  “Sir, no offense, but it’s boring here,” Pound said. “I want to go where things are happening. I want to make things happen myself. I needed to be here—I needed to get patched up. Now I can walk on my hind legs again. They can put me back in a barrel, and I’m ready to go. I want to see what the Confederate States look like now that they’ve surrendered.”

  “They look the way hell would if we’d bombed it back to the Stone Age,” the doctor said. “And everybody who’s left alive hates our guts.”

  “Good,” Pound said. The doctor gaped. Pound condescended to explain: “In that case, it’s mutual.” He held out his hospital-discharge papers. “You sign three times, sir.”

  “I know the regulations.” The medical man signed with a fancy fountain pen. “If you want a psychological discharge, I daresay you’d qualify for that, too.”

  “Sir, if I want a discharge, I’ll find a floozy,” Pound said. As the doctor snorted, Pound went on, “But you’ve even got things to really cure VD now, don’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact, we do. Curing stupidity is another story, worse lu
ck.” The doctor kept one copy for the file and handed back the rest. “Good luck to you.”

  “Thanks.” Pound took the papers and limped across the street to the depot there for reassignment.

  “Glutton for punishment, sir?” asked the top sergeant who ran the Chattanooga repple-depple. He was not far from Pound’s age, and had an impressive spread of ribbons on his chest—including one for the Purple Heart with two tiny oak-leaf clusters on it.

  “Look who’s talking,” Pound told him. The noncom chuckled and gave back a crooked grin. Pound asked, “What have you got for me?”

  “Armor, eh?” the sergeant said, and gave Pound a measuring stare. “How long did you wear stripes on your sleeve instead of shoulder straps?”

  “Oh, a little while. They finally promoted me when I wasn’t looking,” Pound said.

  “Thought that was how things might work.” The sergeant didn’t have to be a genius to figure it out. A first lieutenant with graying, thinning hair and lines on his face hadn’t come out of either West Point or the training programs that produced throngs of ninety-day wonders to lead platoons. Every so often, the school of hard knocks booted out an officer, too. The sergeant shuffled through papers. “What’s the biggest outfit you were ever in charge of?”

  “A platoon.”

  “Think you can swing a company?”

  Pound always thought he could do anything. He was right more often than he was wrong, which didn’t stop him from occasionally bumping up against a hard dose of reality. But, since he would never again be able to get back to the pure and simple pleasures of a gunner’s job, he expected he could handle a larger command than any he’d had yet. “Sure. Where is it?”

  “Down in Tallahassee, Florida,” the personnel sergeant said. “Kinda tricky down there. They didn’t see any U.S. soldiers during the war, so a lot of them don’t feel like they really lost.”

  “No, huh?” Pound said. “Well, if they need lessons, I can give ’em some.”