The Disunited States

by Harry Turtledove

  "Oh, my. The called shot," Mr. Brooks murmured. So he knew something about George Herman, too.

  "I've heard that," Beckie said. "Is it really true? Is there video to prove it? I've never seen any in California."

  "Well, I don't reckon I have, either." Mr. Snodgrass sounded as if he didn't want to admit it. "But everybody says it's so."

  Beckie started to laugh. Everybody else looked at her— everybody except Gran. That only made it funnier, as far as she was concerned. They say was an article of faith with her grandmother. They said this, that, and the other thing. Gran never quite knew who they were, but they said it, and she believed it, no matter how dumb it was.

  "George Herman must have been one ruthless player, all right." Now Justin sounded like somebody trying to make up for lost time.

  Mr. Snodgrass nodded politely. As for Mr. Brooks . . . Mr. Brooks turned red and wheezed and choked, for all the world as if he was trying so hard not to laugh that he was hurting himself. Beckie wanted to scratch her head. Justin hadn't made a joke— or not one she got, anyway.

  In the laundry room, the drier beeped to show the clothes in it were finally done. Mr. Brooks went in and loaded them into a duffel bag. He said, "We can pick up the game tomorrow, Ted, if that's all right with you."

  "I suppose," Mr. Snodgrass said. "You just want to wait a spell before you see what I'm going to do to you, that's all."

  "In your dreams," Mr. Brooks said sweetly. They both laughed.

  After Mr. Brooks and Justin left, Beckie said, "I'd swear Justin never heard of George Herman."

  "How could you not have?" Mr. Snodgrass said. "It's like not hearing of Stephen Douglas or Franklin Delano Truman. You'd have to come from Mars not to."

  "Mars," Beckie echoed. "A couple of things he said make me wonder if he's from even farther away than that."

  Justin kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk as he and Mr. Brooks walked back to the motel with their clean laundry. "Well, I blew it again," he said, angry at himself. "Who'd figure that a girl would like sports? I mean really like sports, so she knows more about 'em than most guys do."

  "Life is full of surprises," Mr. Brooks said, which didn't make Justin feel any better.

  He kicked at another pebble. "She made me look like a jerk. She made me sound like a jerk," he said. "People I never heard of—but I'm supposed to, if I'm a proper fan."

  "Ruthless," Mr. Brooks muttered. "I ought to punt you for that, except it's the wrong game."

  They turned the corner onto State Route 14, then both stopped in their tracks. Red lights flashing, an ambulance was parked in front of the diner across from the motel. Justin's stomach did a slow lurch, the way it would have when an intercontinental shuttle went weightless.

  He glanced over at Mr. Brooks. The older man licked his lips. Was he paler than he had been a moment before? Justin thought so. But then, he was probably paler than he had been himself. "That doesn't look so great," he said.

  "No, it doesn't." Mr. Brooks tried not to sound worried. That only made him sound more so.

  "Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with . . . stuff like that," Justin said. "Maybe somebody got burned or something."

  "Maybe." Mr. Brooks didn't sound as if he believed it. Justin bit his lip. He didn't believe it, either, no matter how much he wanted to.

  The paramedics or whatever they called them here brought somebody out on a wheeled cart. Justin bit his lip harder. That was Irma, all right. And the men taking care of her wore gas masks and orange rubber gloves.

  Mr. Brooks and Justin both took half a step back before they knew they'd done it. Justin laughed at himself, not that it was really funny. As if half a step could make any difference in whether they came down with whatever it was.

  "She always seemed fine," Mr. Brooks said. "I thought we were worrying over nothing."

  "I hoped we were worrying over nothing," Justin said. Amazing how changing one word in a sentence could change the whole meaning.

  Siren wailing, the ambulance zoomed away—back up Highway 14 toward Parkersburg. Justin and Mr. Brooks both watched and listened till the flashing lights vanished in the distance and the siren dopplered away into silence. Then the coin and stamp dealer kicked a pebble of his own. "Well, not much use pretending we haven't been exposed," he said. "Now we see what happens next."

  "Yeah." Justin didn't see what else he could say. He took his phone off his belt. "I'd better let Mom know what's going on."

  "She won't be happy," Mr. Brooks said.

  "I'm not real happy myself," Justin said. "I'm especially not real happy 'cause we're stuck here." Any of the locals who overheard him would think he meant stuck in Elizabeth. And he did. But he also meant stuck in this whole alternate. And he and Mr. Brooks were stuck, because no transposition chamber would take them back to the home timeline, not with a genetically engineered disease loose here.

  He punched in Mom's number. The phone rang—once, twice. "Hello?" Mom said.

  "Hi. It's me."

  "Hi, you. What's up?"

  "An ambulance just took Irma the waitress away. She may have it." There. Justin had said it. He waited for his mother to pitch a fit.

  She just said, "Oh," in a strange, flat voice. Then she said, "I was hoping you'd miss it in a little town where nothing ever happens. It's here in Charleston, too."

  "It is?" Justin said in dismay. But he wasn't only dismayed—he was angry, too. "They haven't said anything about it on TV or anything."

  "They wouldn't," Mom answered. "They don't want to make people jump up and down and worry or anything. But it's here, all right."

  "That's ... too bad," Justin said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. Mr. Brooks raised a questioning eyebrow. He pointed south, toward Charleston. Justin nodded. The older man clapped a hand to his forehead.

  "Stay well, you hear me?" Mom said.

  "I'll try." Justin didn't want to tell her that someone who'd come down with it had been breathing into his face every morning for the past week. "You stay well, too," he said. What kind of things was Mom not telling him? Did he really want to know? He didn't think so.

  "I'll do my best. The doctors say they're getting close to a cure." Mom spoiled that by adding, "Of course, they've been saying the same thing since it broke out, and there's no cure yet. Dummies." Anyone who overheard her would think she was complaining that the local doctors weren't as smart as they thought they were. And she was. But she was also complaining that they knew less than their counterparts in the home timeline. She was right about that, too.

  Sometimes being right did you no good at all. This felt like one of those times. "Love you, Mom," Justin said. Some things you didn't want to leave unsaid, not when you might not get another chance to say them.

  "Love you, too," she answered. "Be careful."

  "Sure," he said. "You do the same."

  They were both whistling in the dark. Justin knew it. No doubt his mother did, too. They both did it anyhow, to make each other feel better. Justin didn't feel much better. He hoped Mom did.

  "It's really in Charleston?" Mr. Brooks asked as Justin put his phone away.

  "Uh-huh." Justin nodded. No, he didn't feel very good about the way things were going, not even a little bit. He glanced over at Mr. Brooks, hoping the older man would do or say something to cheer him up.

  Mr. Brooks was looking south, toward the city where he lived and worked. His face usually wore a smile, but now his mouth was set in a thin, hard, grim line. "A lot of nice people down there," he said. "Oh, plenty who aren't so nice, too, but I can't think of anybody who deserves to come down with a mutated virus."

  Justin, by contrast, was looking around Elizabeth. By now, it was more familiar to him than Charleston ever got the chance to be. "I can't think of anybody here who does, either," he said. "Including you and me."

  Mr. Brooks managed a smile for that, but it was a halfhearted one, not one his face really meant. The corners of his mouth curled up and he showed
his teeth, but his eyes. . . . Behind his glasses, his eyes didn't brighten at all. "Well," he said, "if you're going to fuss about every little thing . . ."

  "I don't think you ought to let them in the house any more," Gran said to Mrs. Snodgrass. 'That woman has it, and they've been eating where she works."

  "You know the saying about locking the barn door after the horse is gone?" Mr. Snodgrass said. "Well, Myrtle, you're trying to lock the horse out after he's already got his nose in the barn."

  "Are you sure, Ted?" Mrs. Snodgrass said. "Maybe they weren't catching yet, and now they are."

  "Maybe." In Mr. Snodgrass' mouth, it came out, Mebbe. "Don't reckon it's what you'd call likely, though."

  Beckie didn't reckon it was, either. She laughed at herself for even including the word in her thoughts. She didn't think she'd ever heard it in California, even if it seemed natural as could be here. She almost said what she thought, but at the last minute kept quiet. These people were four times her age. They wouldn't pay any attention to her no matter what she said. The only people Gran ever paid attention to were her mysterious they.

  "I don't want to turn them away," Mr. Snodgrass said firmly. "I just don't. It wouldn't be neighborly. How could I do business with Randolph Brooks again if I told him he wasn't welcome inside my house? I'd be ashamed to, I would."

  That got through to his wife. "Well, you're right," she said. She didn't sound happy about it, but she didn't argue any more, either.

  Neighborly, Beckie thought. That was another word you didn't hear much in California—certainly not in enormous Los Angeles. In little towns in the mountains or the desert? She supposed so, but she wasn't from one. She'd never stayed in one till now.

  She'd never stayed anywhere with a tailored virus loose, either. She could have done without the honor. Only trouble was, it didn't look as if she had a choice.

  "How is the woman, anyway?" Gran asked. "Does anybody know?"

  "The hospital in Parkersburg doesn't want to say anything," Mrs. Snodgrass said. "You know how hospitals are."

  "But we need to find out," Gran said, as if that made all the difference.

  "Good luck," Mrs. Snodgrass said. You could tell she and Gran were cousins, all right—she was ready to argue about anything, too.

  "Maybe somebody could call and say they're a relative."

  Gran actually had an idea. Beckie blinked. She couldn't remember the last time that happened. It wasn't even a bad idea.

  Mrs. Snodgrass turned to her husband. "Take care of it, Ted," she said in tones that brooked no argument. "Tell 'em you're Irma's husband."

  He didn't look thrilled about getting drafted—or maybe about the idea of being Irma's husband. "And what'U I tell 'em when they ask how come I'm not there with her?" he asked.

  Mrs. Snodgrass had all the answers. "Tell 'em you weren't with her when she came down sick. Tell 'em you're hoping you don't catch it yourself. Heaven knows that's true."

  "I don't reckon they'll talk to me," Mr. Snodgrass said dolefully. But he looked up the number and called the hospital. The longer he talked, the less happy he looked. He clicked off the phone with more force than he really needed. "They said I'm the fifth different husband she's had, by the phone numbers from incoming calls. She's had two mothers, three sisters, and five daughters, too—oh, and two sons."

  "Okay, you tried," his wife said, unabashed. "So they wouldn't tell you anything, then?"

  "Oh, I didn't say that," Mr. Snodgrass answered.

  "Well?" Mrs. Snodgrass and Gran and even Beckie all said the same thing at the same time.

  By the way Mr. Snodgrass shook his head, it wasn't well or okay or anything like that. "She died last night, a little before midnight."

  The diner had a sign on the door: SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED. PLEASE COME BACK SOON. Justin and Mr. Brooks eyed it in identical dismay. "Is there any other place to eat in Elizabeth?" Justin asked.

  "If there is, they've hidden it someplace where I haven't found it," the coin and stamp dealer answered. "And I don't reckon this town is big enough to have any places like that."

  Justin didn't think so, either. "What are we going to do?" he asked.

  "We could go down to Palestine." As soon as the words were out of Mr. Brooks' mouth, he shook his head. "No, by now they'll have heard Irma's sick. Anybody from Elizabeth will be as welcome as ants at a picnic. I think we'll have to go to the grocery store and pick up whatever we can find that we don't have to cook much."

  "Oh, boy," Justin said in a hollow voice. "Junk food and sandwiches and frozen dinners. Yum, yum." Some of what this alternate's Virginia used for junk food grossed him out. Mr. Brooks had had to explain where pork rinds came from. Once Justin knew, he didn't want to eat them any more, even if he didn't think they were bad before. Mr. Brooks said people in the home timeline ate them once upon a time. People in the home timeline had done all kinds of disgusting things once upon a time. They'd kept slaves. They'd worn furs. Pork rinds probably weren't that bad, but they weren't good, either.

  Mr. Brooks understood his expression perfectly. "If you see something in the deli section called 'head cheese,' chances are you don't want that, either," he said.

  Even the name was enough to make Justin gulp. "You're so helpful," he said.

  The grocery was a mom-and-pop. Even in Charleston, there weren't many chain stores here. Because this North America was split up into so many states, corporations couldn't get enormous the way they did in the home timeline. Things were more expensive than in the home timeline, but there was more variety here.

  "Mornin'," the grocer said when they walked in. He knew who they were. Everybody in Elizabeth knew who they were by now.

  "Mornin'," Justin and Mr. Brooks answered together.

  "You'll have heard Irma passed on day before yesterday?" The man's voice held a certain amount of doubt. They were strangers, so who could say for sure what they'd heard?

  "Yes," Mr. Brooks said. "We heard that." Justin nodded. You didn't just walk in and buy what you wanted in a place like this, the way you would in the home timeline. Oh, you could, but that would mark you as not just a stranger but a foreigner. People from states like Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York did abrupt, rude things like that. If you were a Virginian, you chatted with the storekeeper for a while.

  "Hope you gents are doing all right," the grocer said.

  "Well, now that you mention it, so do we," Mr. Brooks said dryly.

  "Just a little, yeah," Justin added.

  "I believe it," the grocer said, chuckling. "I ate over at the diner a couple of times myself the last two weeks, and Irma's been in and out of here, too."

  Why was he laughing, then? Justin had trouble understanding it. The only thing that occurred to him was that laughing at fear was better than giving in to it. Not needing to fear would have been better still.

  "You know what's worst about the whole thing?" Mr. Brooks said. "What with the travel ban and the worry about getting crowds together, there are no games on TV. If you're stuck in a motel the way we are, they help make the time go by."

  "Or even if you're not stuck in a room," said the man behind the counter. "I was a pretty fair rounders player in the old days, if I say so myself." Justin judged that would have been forty years, thirty kilos, and three chins ago. The grocer went on, "I know how the game's supposed to be played, and I like watching it when it's played right."

  "Sometimes, I bet, you like watching it when it's played wrong," Mr. Brooks said. "Then you can tell them what a bunch of fools they are, and how they don't deserve to wear the uniform."

  The grocer laughed again. "There is that. Yes, sir, there is that."

  Now that the social rituals were satisfied, Justin and Mr. Brooks could go on into the store and get what they wanted. They had an old microwave oven, a gift from the Snodgrasses, in their room so they could nuke frozen dinners. (Here, though, it was a radio range, and you zapped things instead of nuking them.) Frozen dinners in this alternate were even less exciting than th
ey were in the home timeline, but they did give the illusion of sitting down to something cooked instead of eating sandwiches all the time.

  Mr. Brooks was buying some bread and Justin was getting some canned chicken and canned fruit when another customer walked into the store. "Mornin', Charlie," the grocer said.

  "Mornin', Mr. Kerfeld," answered the janitor who was, as far as Justin knew, the head of the one and only black family in Elizabeth.

  "How are you today?" the grocer said.

  "Not too bad, sir. Not too bad," the black man answered.

  "Wife and kids doing well?"

  "Yes, sir. Thank you. Terrible thing, this sickness, isn't it?"

  "It really and truly is, Charlie. You heard Miss Davis died?"

  "I did. It's a shame, Mr. Kerfeld, and that's the truth. She was a nice lady, a mighty nice lady."

  "That's a fact."

  Their chat was almost the same as the chitchat Justin and Mr. Brooks had had with the grocer—almost, but not quite. Yes, there was the ritual of gabbing a while before getting down to business. But Mr. Kerf eld had spoken with Mr. Brooks and Justin as equals. They were whites, the same as he was. The janitor, by contrast, called him mister and sir, while the grocer used the African American's first name. The waitress was Irma to whites, but Miss Davis to Charlie.

  In the home timeline, racism lingered even after more than two centuries had passed since the Civil War. It didn't just linger here—it was alive and well. In most of the Southern states, whites still oppressed blacks, even if blacks were legally free. In Mississippi, where the black majority had risen in revolt, it was the other way around. And most of the states that had only a few Negroes didn't want any more. It seemed sad and scary to someone who'd grown up knowing better.

  Charlie seemed to accept things. But what else could he do? If he fussed, the law would land on him like a ton of bricks. Under his politeness, though, what was he thinking? In his shoes, Justin would have hated Mr. Kerfeld and every other white person he saw. If the janitor didn't, why not?