The Center Cannot Hold ae-2

by Harry Turtledove

  And when Scipio got back to his roominghouse, he heard splashes and squeals from the bathroom at the end of the hall. He also heard Bathsheba's voice, rising in ever-growing exasperation and wrath. He smiled to himself. Antoinette was going on two years old now, and an ever-growing handful to bathe.

  A few minutes later, Bathsheba carried the baby into the room. Antoinette, swaddled in a towel, saw Scipio and said, "Dada!" in delight. Scipio's wife looked wetter than the baby did. She also looked a lot less happy.

  "What de matter, sweetheart?" Scipio asked. "Givin' 'Toinette a bath ain't dat hard. I even done it my ownself a time or two." He spoke as if that were some enormous accomplishment. In his mind, it was. He hadn't heard many fathers talk about giving their children even that much in the way of care.

  But Bathsheba's baleful stare made him stop with his mouth half open. "The baby shit in the damn tub," she said bleakly.

  "Oh," Scipio said. "Aw… golly." The first expression of sympathy that came to mind wouldn't have been to Bathsheba's liking, not just then.

  Instead of saying anything, Scipio went to a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of moonshine. Georgia was officially dry, but contraband liquor wasn't hard to come by. He poured his wife a stiff drink, and a smaller one for himself. Holding out the glass to Bathsheba, he said, "Here you is. Reckon you done earned dis here."

  "Reckon I did." She poured down half of it. Then she puffed out her cheeks and exhaled violently. "Whew! Dat's nasty stuff." Scipio was inclined to agree. He'd always preferred rum even to good whiskey, and the murky yellowish fluid in his glass bore a closer relationship to paint thinner than it did to good whiskey.

  Antoinette saw her parents drinking something, and naturally wanted some, too. Bathsheba fixed her a bottle. Then she started making supper. Since the room had only a hot plate for cooking, everything took a while. Scipio was glad for the chance to sit down and play with his little girl and talk with his wife and drink the moonshine and let it relax him.

  "Buckra ladies I was cleanin' for, they all talkin' 'bout the election today," Bathsheba said. "Dunno why. They can't vote any more'n us black folks kin."

  Bills allowing women's suffrage showed up in the Georgia Legislature almost every session. They got tabled or voted down with monotonous regularity. Even so, Scipio asked, "Who dey say dey husbands vote fo'?"

  "Whigs, mostly." Bathsheba knew why he was worried, and added, "That Featherston fella, don't reckon he gwine go nowhere much."

  "Do Jesus, hope you right," Scipio answered.

  Bathsheba took lamb chops out of the pan and started frying potatoes in the grease they'd left behind. "Got me somethin' more important to tell you, anyways."

  "What dat?" Scipio asked as he stuck a little bite of lamb in Antoinette's mouth. The baby made a face, but ate the morsel. Scipio gave her another one.

  Bathsheba pointed at her. "Reckon she gwine have herself a little brother or sister come summertime."

  "I was wonderin' about dat my ownself," Scipio said as he got up to give her a hug. "Didn't t'ink you monthlies, dey come." Her breasts had been tender lately, too, and she'd started falling asleep early in the evening.

  As if to prove he was right, Bathsheba yawned. She laughed a moment later. "Better sleep now. When the new young 'un come, ain't never gwine sleep again."

  "We gots to find a bigger place, too," Scipio said. The room they had was intended for one. It was tolerable for two, provided they got on well-which Scipio and Bathsheba certainly did. With three in it, there wasn't room to swing a cat. With four… Scipio thought about that. With four people in this room, there wouldn't have been room to bring in a cat, let alone swing it.

  "What you reckon Antoinette make o' the new baby?" Bathsheba asked.

  "She ain't gwine like it," Scipio answered. "Young chillun, dey don' never like no new baby in de fambly. But she git over it. She have to. Dey allus does. Jus' sometimes take longer, is all."

  Bathsheba nodded. "Reckon you's right." She yawned again. "I gots to get to sleep. Come here, 'Toinette. Time we both go to bed."

  The baby didn't want to. She was convinced she'd miss something. Some evenings she was right, others wrong. Tonight, she fussed and fumed-and then got up the following morning not just ready but eager to play. Scipio was the one who, yawning, went out to face the day.

  He paid his five cents for a copy of the Constitutionalist on his way to Erasmus' place. Newsboys shouted of Burton Mitchel's victory as president of the Confederate States. "President Mitchel reelected!" they yelled. A Confederate president wasn't supposed to get reelected, but the Supreme Court said this didn't count. No matter what the Supreme Court said, the newsboys knew what was what.

  The Whigs had won easily this time, nothing like their razor-thin victory in 1921. The Freedom Party took Tennessee, Mississippi, and Texas, the Radical Liberals Arkansas and Chihuahua. Sonora still looked too close to call. Everywhere else, the people had voted Whig.

  Scipio read that with more relief than he'd felt for a long time. Life in the CSA was hard enough for a black man any time. He imagined going to bed one morning and waking up to discover Jake Featherston was president. The mere idea chilled him worse than the cool November morning.

  He methodically worked his way through the election stories below the headlines. The Freedom Party hadn't taken quite so many lumps as he would have liked to see. It had lost one Senator, but gained a pair of Congressmen-maybe three, because one of the races in Texas remained very tight.

  "I may not be going to the Gray House next March," the Constitutionalist quoted Featherston as saying, "but we'll make ourselves heard in Congress, and in state houses all over the country. We aren't about to go away, no matter how much the Whigs wish we would. We're just reloading for the next round of the fight."

  He'd lost. He hadn't come close to winning. But he still sounded confident right was on his side, and that he'd win one of these days. He reminded Scipio of nothing so much as Cassius and the other colored Reds who'd formed the ill-fated government of the Congaree Socialist Republic and dragged him into it. Their faith in the dialectic had kept them going through thick and thin. Jake Featherston sounded like a man with the same kind of faith.

  He'd kill me if I could tell him so, Scipio thought. The Reds would kill me, too-if they weren't already dead themselves. No, neither side here would see its resemblance to the other. That didn't mean the resemblance wasn't there.

  The Reds had proved wrong-dead wrong-about the dialectic. With any luck, the Freedom Party would prove just as wrong. That thought heartened Scipio. He tossed the Constitutionalist into a trash can and hurried to work. Erasmus would skin him if he was late.

  T he first time Sam Carsten had seen the Remembrance — going on ten years ago now, which struck him as very strange-he'd thought her the ugliest, funniest-looking ship in the U.S. Navy, or, for that matter, in anyone else's. She'd started out life intending to be a battle cruiser, but had had her design drastically revised while she was a-building. Back in those distant days not long after the Great War, nobody had seen a ship with a flight deck so she could launch and land aeroplanes.

  Now, as Sam returned to the Remembrance, she still looked strange. He shook his head as the boat neared the carrier. No, that wasn't right. She looked strange all over again, but for different reasons this time. By now, the Navy had three aeroplane carriers that had been built for the purpose from the keel up. They were a lot more capable than the Remembrance, which looked like the hybrid she was.

  She may not be pretty, but she gets the job done, he thought. The boat from the O'Brien came alongside. Sailors up on the Remembrance lowered a rope ladder. Carsten shouldered his duffel bag.

  "Good luck, sir," one of the sailors said. "You're going from a little fish to a big one."

  "Thanks, Fritz," Carsten answered. He grabbed the ladder and swarmed up it, as if boarding with intent to take the ship rather than to serve in her. He knew a lot of eyes were watching him. If he acted like a gouty old man
on the way up from the boat, they'd treat him with less respect than if he did his best impression of a pirate.

  As he scrambled up onto the Remembrance 's broad, flat deck, a sailor leaped forward and grabbed the canvas duffel bag. "Let me take that for you, sir," the fellow said. By his tone, Carsten had passed his first test.

  A lieutenant commander strolled up at a more leisurely pace. Sam stiffened to attention and saluted. "Permission to come aboard, sir?" he said formally.

  "Granted." The other officer returned his salute. Then he smiled. "My name is Watkins, Ensign. Michael Watkins. Do I understand this is your second tour aboard the Remembrance?"

  "Pleased to meet you, sir. Yes, sir, I've spent some time on her before," Carsten answered. "But that was a while ago-I was just thinking about how long it seems-and I was only a petty officer in those days."

  "Oh, really? I didn't know that." Watkins' voice gave no clue as to what he thought about it, either. "So you're a mustang, eh? Up through the hawse hole?"

  Sam nodded. "That's me." Not a whole lot of men jumped from rating to officer. He supposed he should have been proud of himself. Hell, he was proud of himself, when he had time to think about it.

  "I'm going to ask you one question, Carsten, and I hope you won't take it the wrong way," Lieutenant Commander Watkins said. Sam nodded. He had a pretty good idea what the question would be. And, sure enough, Watkins asked, "You do remember you are an officer now, I hope?"

  Carsten nodded again. "I do my best, sir." He'd seen a couple of other mustangs-both of them men fifteen or twenty years older than he was-who'd been promoted during the war for bravery too conspicuous to ignore. Both of them acted as if they were still CPOs. He understood that-they'd got set in their ways long before their promotions-but he didn't try to imitate it.

  He seemed to have satisfied Watkins. "Fair enough, Ensign," the Remembrance 's officer said. "I'll take you to your quarters. Dougherty, follow us."

  "Aye aye, sir," said the sailor who had Sam's duffel bag. He was redheaded and freckled and very fair.

  "Pharmacist's mate still carry plenty of zinc-oxide ointment and such?" Sam asked him.

  Dougherty gauged his pale blond hair, blue eyes, and pink, pink skin. "Well, yes, sir," he answered. "Don't know how much you'll need it, though, in January off Baltimore." He jerked his chin toward the gray, cloudy sky.

  "You never can tell. I'll burn damn near anywhere," Carsten said. The sailor smiled, Sam thought in sympathy. Dougherty certainly looked as if he too would burn under any light brighter than a kerosene lantern's.

  Lieutenant Commander Watkins opened a steel door. "Here you are, Ensign," he said, flipping on a switch to turn on the lamp inside the cabin. As he stepped back to let Sam see in, he apologetically spread his hands and added, "Sorry it's so small, but it's what we've got."

  "That's all right, sir," Sam said. "It's a lot more room than I had my last tour aboard her. They still triple-deck the bunks, don't they?" He waited for Watkins to nod, then went on, "And I served in one of the five-inch gun sponsons, so I didn't have any room there, either."

  "Ah." Watkins started to nod and let that go, but then his gaze sharpened. "Were you aboard Remembrance when she took fire off Belfast?"

  "I sure as hell was, sir," Carsten answered. "A shell killed two men in my crew. Only dumb luck none of the fragments got me."

  "Well, well," Lieutenant Commander Watkins said. "I wonder if we have any men still aboard who served with you."

  "Been five years, sir. I haven't seen any yet, not that that proves anything," Sam said. "I'd like to say hello if I do, but I don't suppose I could do much more than that, could I?"

  "I wouldn't think so, Ensign," Watkins told him. "This is part of what I meant when I asked if you remembered you were an officer." Sam nodded; he'd figured that out for himself. Watkins stepped back. "I won't keep you any more-you'll want to get settled in, I'm sure. I hope to see you and talk with you more later on."

  "Thank you, sir." Carsten saluted.

  "My pleasure." Watkins returned the salute. "Come along, Dougherty," he said, and walked on down the corridor.

  Sam closed and dogged the door to his cabin. He'd been telling the truth when he said it was spacious compared to his previous accommodations on the Remembrance. That didn't mean he had much room. If he stood with arms outstretched, he could touch the gray-painted metal walls with his fingertips. The cabin held a bunk, a steel chest of drawers bolted to the opposite wall, a steel desk, a chair, and a tiny washbasin with a steel mirror above it. All that left him just about enough room to put his feet down, provided he was careful doing it.

  Stowing his worldly goods, such as they were, didn't take long. Then he went out on deck once more. The O'Brien, having delivered him, steamed away, smoke pouring from her four stacks. The Remembrance pushed south through heavy seas. The rolling and pitching didn't bother Sam. He'd always had good sea legs and a calm stomach; his Achilles' heel was his pale skin.

  Back toward the stern, a couple of mechanics worked on an aeroplane. The machine looked sleeker and more powerful than the modified Great War-vintage aeroplanes that had flown off the Remembrance during Carsten's last tour aboard her. I'd better bone up on what the differences are, he thought.

  He didn't get to stand around watching for very long. A respectful petty officer soon came up to him and whisked him over to the office of a gray-haired commander named van der Waal. "What do you know about minimizing damage from torpedo hits?" the other officer demanded.

  "Sir, I was aboard the Dakota when the Japs put a fish into her off the Sandwich Islands, but I didn't have anything to do with damage control there," Sam answered.

  "All right, that's a little something, anyhow," van der Waal said. "You've experienced the problem firsthand, which is good. That's more than a lot of people can say. Does it interest you?"

  "No, sir. Not a whole lot," Carsten said honestly. "I served a gun before I was an officer, and I'm interested in aeronautics, too. That's how I came aboard the Remembrance during my first tour here."

  "Naval aeronautics is important. I'd have a hard time telling you anything different, wouldn't I, here on an aeroplane carrier?" Commander van der Waal's craggy face creased in unaccustomed places when he smiled. But he quickly turned serious again. "But so is damage control. The Japs aren't the only ones who've got submersibles, you know." He looked south and west, in the direction of the CSA.

  "The Confederates aren't supposed to have 'em!" Sam blurted.

  "I know that. And I know we send inspectors up and down their coast to make sure they don't," van der Waal told him. "But I'd bet they've got a few anyhow-and we haven't been inspecting as hard as we might have the past few years. The budget keeps going down, and President Sinclair wants to get along with everybody. And the British still have some boats, and the French might, and we know perfectly well that the Japanese do. And so does the German High Seas Fleet. And so, Ensign…"

  "I see your point, sir," Sam said, knowing he couldn't very well say anything else. "If that's what you want me to do, I'll do it." He couldn't very well say anything but that, either. Then he dredged up a childhood expression: "But if I had my druthers, it's not what I'd do."

  Van der Waal chuckled. "Haven't heard that one in a while. You gave up your druthers, you know, when you put on the uniform."

  "Really, sir? I never would have noticed." Some men would have wound up in trouble after talking back to a superior officer that way. Carsten did have a knack for not getting people angry at him.

  Commander van der Waal said, "Well, we'll see what happens. You'll start out in my shop, because I do need a man to back me up. If another opportunity comes along and you want to take it, I don't suppose I'd stand in your way. Fair enough?"

  "More than fair enough, sir. It's damn white of you, matter of fact." Sam saluted. Most officers would have grabbed him and held on to him, and that would have been that. "Thank you very much!"

  "I don't want a badly disaffected man servi
ng under me. It's not good for me, it wouldn't be good for the officer in question, and it's not good for the ship." Van der Waal nodded briskly. "For now, you're dismissed."

  Sam saluted again and went out on deck. He spied a knot of sailors at the starboard bow. They were all pointing in the direction van der Waal had-toward the Confederate States. Carsten looked that way himself. He had no trouble spotting the Confederate coast-defense ship steaming along between the Remembrance and the shore.

  Like one of the U.S. Navy's so-called Great Lakes battleships, the Confederate warship was only about half the size of a real battlewagon. She'd carry a battleship's guns, but only half as many of them as, say, the Dakota. She wouldn't have the armor or the speed to take on a first-class battleship, either. And she and her three sisters were the biggest warships the C.S. Navy was allowed to have.

  What does her skipper think, looking at the Remembrance? Carsten wondered. He could sink her if they fought gun to gun; the aeroplane carrier had nothing bigger than five-inchers aboard. But they wouldn't fight gun to gun, not unless something went horribly wrong. And how would that Confederate captain like to try shooting down aeroplanes that could drop bombs on his head or put torpedoes in the water running straight at his ship?

  He wouldn't like it for hell, Sam thought. His grin stretched wide as the Atlantic. He liked the idea just fine himself.

  N ellie Jacobs was keeping one eye on the coffeehouse and the other on Clara's arithmetic homework when Clara's half sister, Edna Grimes, burst into the place. That Clara was going on eight years old, and so old enough to have homework, surprised Nellie. That Edna should come bursting in astonished her.

  Then Nellie got a look at her older daughter's face, and astonishment turned to alarm. "Good heavens, Edna! What's wrong?" she asked. "Are you all right? Are Merle and Armstrong?"

  "Armstrong is a brat," Clara declared. Anything might have distracted her from the problems in her workbook. The mention of her nephew-who was only a couple of years younger than she was-more than sufficed.