American Empire : The Center Cannot Hold

by Harry Turtledove

  “Thank you, my son,” Lucien whispered. He felt his eyelids trying to freeze together, and rubbed at them with the handkerchief.

  Then he and his sons and Marie’s brother and Dr. Leonard O’Doull lifted the coffin and set it in the grave. What struck Lucien was how little it weighed, which had little to do with six men lifting it. After Dr. O’Doull found the mass in Marie’s belly, after the X ray and the operation that only confirmed the worst, the flesh had melted off her day by day, till she was little more than parchment skin wrapped around bones by the time the end finally, mercifully, came. Those were memories of his wife Galtier wished he wouldn’t carry into the future with him. No matter what he wished, though, he would have them till his turn to lie in a coffin came. He made himself go over to the priest and say, “Merci, Father Guillaume.”

  The young priest nodded soberly. “You are welcome, and more than welcome. This is a cup I wish had passed from me, and one I wish had passed from your wife as well. I would have hoped she might enjoy many more happy years.”

  “Yes. I would have hoped for the same.” Galtier looked up into the cloudy sky. More snow might start falling any time. “Better God should have taken me. Why did He take her and leave me all alone?” That thought had been with him since he first found out Marie was ill.

  “He knows the answer to that, even if He does not give it to us to know,” Father Guillaume said.

  “Marie knows now, too,” Lucien said. “If ever I see God face to face, I intend to ask Him about it, and His explanation had better be a good one.” The priest coughed and turned red. Galtier went on, “And if I don’t see Him face to face, if I meet the Devil instead, as could be, then I intend to find out from him.”

  Now Father Guillaume gravely shook his head. “Satan is the Father of Lies. Whatever he might tell you, you would not be able to believe it.”

  With Quebecois stubbornness, Lucien said, “I’ll hear what he says, and then I’ll make up my own mind.”

  Charles came up to him and asked, “Do you want me to drive you home, Papa?”

  “Why would I?” Galtier asked in honest surprise.

  “After this . . . I was not sure how you would be,” his older son answered.

  “I am not so very well,” Galtier agreed. “But if I am not so very well after burying my wife, are you so very well after burying your mother? It could be you would make a worse menace on the road than I, n’est-ce pas?”

  Charles looked surprised, but nodded. “Yes, it could be, I suppose.” He turned away. “I should have known you were too stubborn to take help from anyone.”

  “When I need it, I take it,” Lucien said. “When I don’t, I don’t. Don’t be angry at me, son. I am not angry at you. And the two of us, we’re not so very different, eh?”

  He knew that was true. Charles took after him in more than looks. His older son also had a character much like his own. After a moment’s thought, Charles gave him the same sort of grudging nod he would have used himself. “All right, Father. Yes, you’re right—I can be a stiff-necked nuisance, too. I’ll see you there, then?”

  “Certainly,” Galtier said. “Where else would I go, but to my own house?”

  But when he got out of the Chevrolet close by the farmhouse on the land that had been in his family for almost 250 years, he wondered. He didn’t want to go back into the house. Going in there had always—not literally always, but more than thirty years came close enough—meant going in to see Marie. Now she wasn’t there. She never would be there, not any more. And remembering that she had been there, remembering the life together the two of them had built, the life now forever sundered, forever shattered, was like knives to Lucien. He had to gather himself before he could go inside.

  Nicole and Leonard O’Doull were already there. So were Charles and his wife. One by one and in small groups, the rest of his children and his wife’s relatives and his friends came in. There was plenty to drink and plenty to eat; the womenfolk in the family had been cooking since Marie died.

  “Thank you all,” Lucien said. “Thank you all very much for coming. Thank you for caring for Marie.” His face twisted into a characteristically wry grin. “For I know you certainly would not have come for my sake.”

  “Certainly not, mon beau-père,” Dr. O’Doull said. “We all hate you.”

  For a moment, Galtier took him seriously, being too emotionally battered to recognize irony. But then even he saw the smile on his son-in-law’s face, and those on the faces of his other loved ones. He wanted to smile, too, but ended up weeping once more instead. He felt mortified all over again, and angrily turned away from Dr. O’Doull.

  “It’s all right,” said the American who’d become part of his family. “No one thinks less of you for it. Here. Drink this.” He gave Lucien a glass of applejack.

  The homemade spirits went down Galtier’s throat without his even noticing them. He had another glass, and another, all with scant effect. He felt too much already for applejack to make much difference. For the next half hour or so, he thanked everyone who’d come to his house to say good-bye to Marie.

  “What will you do now, Papa?” Georges asked him. “Do you know yet?”

  “What can I do?” Galtier answered. “I’ll go on as best I can. If I don’t feed the animals tomorrow, who will? If I don’t take care of the farm, who will? The work doesn’t do itself. You always thought it did, but it doesn’t. Someone has to do it. If no one does it, it doesn’t get done.”

  “But . . .” His younger son gestured. “How can you do all the farm work, and then do all the housework, too?”

  “Electricity helps,” Lucien said. “With electricity, everything is quicker and easier. And I was in the Army a long time ago. I know how to keep things tidy—unlike certain people I could name.”

  Georges didn’t rise to that, which proved how solemn an occasion this was. He just asked, “And while you were in the Army, Papa, did they also teach you how to cook?”

  “No, but then, who cares?” Galtier answered. “I am the only person I’ll be cooking for. I won’t starve to death. And if supper is particularly bad one night, I can always throw things at the clumsy fool who fixed it.”

  He made his son laugh at that, and thought he’d tricked Georges—maybe even tricked himself—into believing everything was, or at least soon would be, all right. A few minutes later, though, Georges sprawled in a chair, hands over his face, weeping with as much heartbreak as Lucien knew himself.

  What will I do? Galtier wondered. For all his glib talk, he had no idea. At the moment, he didn’t particularly want to go on living himself. Maybe that would change as time passed. He’d heard it did. He’d heard it, but didn’t particularly believe it. Why not me? he wondered, as he had ever since he’d found Marie in the kitchen with tears running down her face.

  He’d hoped Father Guillaume would have an answer for that, but no such luck. It would have to wait till he saw God, as Marie was seeing God now. If He doesn’t have a good answer, I’ll give Him a piece of my mind.

  Nicole came over to him. She looked achingly like her mother, though she was a few inches taller; Marie had been a little woman, not much over five feet. “She’s gone, Papa,” she said wonderingly. “I can’t believe it, but she’s gone.”

  “I know,” Lucien said.

  “I love you,” his oldest daughter said.

  He hadn’t heard that from her for years. He suspected it meant, I’m afraid I’ll lose you, too. “And I love you, my dear,” he said, as if to reply, I’m not going anywhere. But that wasn’t really for him to say. He looked up to, and past, the ceiling. Don’t You argue with me, he told God, and dared hope God was listening.

  “Another Inauguration Day,” Nellie Jacobs said. “Dear God, where do the years go? First one I can recollect is President Blaine’s, back in 1881. I was just a little girl then, of course.”

  “Well, I hope to heaven Hosea Blackford does a better job than James G. Blaine did,” her husband answered.

&nbs
p; “He’d better,” Nellie exclaimed. “A few months after Blaine got elected, the Confederates were shelling Washington. I’ve been through that twice now. It had better not happen again, that’s all I’ve got to say, because I don’t think anybody could be lucky enough to live through it three times.”

  “I don’t look for a war any time soon,” Hal Jacobs said. “I don’t see how we could have one. The Confederates aren’t very strong, and we’re prosperous. I still think the stock market is sound, even if the money trouble in Europe has set it hiccoughing.”

  “I’m glad it’s hiccoughing,” Nellie said. “It let us buy those shares of the Wireless Corporation for a lot less than they would have cost us a couple of months ago.”

  “Buy on the dips,” Hal said wisely. “Buy on the dips, and you can’t go wrong.”

  “That’s what they say,” Nellie agreed. “It’s worked out pretty well for us so far. I just wish we’d been able to start out when we were a lot younger.”

  Hal shrugged. “For one thing, we didn’t have the money. For another, the market was a lot riskier in those days—it would crash every few years. And then the war came along, and we were too busy to worry about it for quite a while.”

  “Too busy? Well, yes, a little bit,” Nellie said. Hal pinned his Distinguished Service Medal on the breast pocket of his black jacket. With his white shirt, black cravat, and black homburg, the medal’s ribbon gave his outfit the only dash of color it had. Nellie nodded approval. “You look handsome,” she told him, and he did indeed look as handsome as he could.

  “Thank you, my dear.” He always seemed to glow a little when she paid him a compliment. And he returned the favor: “You are as lovely as always.”

  “Oh, foosh.” Nellie had heard too many compliments from men over the years to trust them or take them seriously. Men complimented women because they wanted something from them—most often one thing in particular. She put on her Order of Remembrance, then turned her back on her husband. “Fasten the ribbon at the back of my neck, would you, Hal?”

  “Of course,” he said, and did. Then he kissed the back of her neck, too. She’d more than half expected him to do that, and she let him get away with it. By his relieved expression, he’d wondered if she would.

  “Are you ready, Clara?” she called.

  “Yes, Ma,” her daughter answered from the room across the hall. “Is it time to go?”

  “Just about,” Nellie said. “And don’t forget your coat.”

  “Do I have to bring it?” Clara said. “It’s not cold out.”

  She was right. The weather was springlike, even though spring still lay two and a half weeks away. But Nellie answered, “Yes, take it. I’m bringing one, too. You never can tell what it’ll do.” Clara grumbled, but she couldn’t complain too hard, not if Nellie was also bringing a coat. And Nellie knew she was right. She also had an umbrella, though the sun shone brightly for now. No, you never could tell.

  They walked toward the Mall, for the parade of bands and companies of soldiers and—since this was another Socialist administration—gangs of workers who would precede the new President Blackford’s inaugural address. They had a spot picked out—right in front of the rebuilt National Museum of Remembrance, and not far from the platform where the new president would speak. Edna and Merle and Armstrong would meet them there if they could fight their way through the crowd.

  They wiggled forward till they stood in the second row in front of the museum. Nellie could see the platform, which was already filling with dignitaries. “We made good time,” she said.

  “Yes, we did,” Hal agreed. “We’ll be able to see everything, and we won’t have any trouble hearing the president talk.”

  Clara chose that moment to announce, “Mama, I have to go.”

  “You always have to go,” Nellie said in no small exasperation. She sighed. “I’ll take you into the museum. Hold our places, Hal. Do the best you can.” Her husband nodded. She took Clara’s hand. “Come along with me, young lady. Why didn’t you go before we left? That’s what I want to know.”

  “I did,” Clara answered with a child’s self-righteousness. “I have to go again.”

  The line for the women’s powder room at the Museum of Remembrance was as long as Nellie had feared it would be. She and Clara needed twenty minutes to work their way to the front. By then, Clara was fidgeting enough to convince Nellie she hadn’t said she needed to go just to be annoying.

  Many more people had come to the Mall by the time Nellie and Clara emerged from the museum once more. Nellie had to do some elbowing, and stepped on a couple of feet that didn’t get out of the way fast enough to suit her. “Watch where you’re going, lady,” an angry man said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Nellie answered, and stepped on him again, not in the least by accident.

  Hal Jacobs wasn’t a big man. Nellie began to wonder if she’d ever find him. She was starting to worry when Merle Grimes said, “Hello, Mother Jacobs.” He and Edna and Armstrong stood with Hal.

  “Hello, Merle,” she said. “I’d’ve gone right past the lot of you if you hadn’t spoken up, Lord help me if I wouldn’t.”

  “We’re all together now,” Hal said. “That’s the way things are supposed to be.”

  “That’s right,” Edna said, a little louder than she had to. She clung to Merle’s hand. They both wore their decorations, too. From what Nellie could see, things between them weren’t quite the same as they had been before Merle found out about Nicholas H. Kincaid. They were tolerable, and Edna didn’t seem actively discontented, but they weren’t so lovey-dovey as before. Told you so, Edna, Nellie said, but only to herself.

  A band began to play. Nellie stopped worrying about her daughter and son-in-law—and even about her other daughter and her grandson, who got along no better than they ever did—and watched yet another inauguration, yet another passing of the torch from one president to another.

  This year, the passing was odd, as outgoing President Sinclair was about fifteen years younger than incoming President Blackford. It was as if the USA were moving backwards in time, something the country didn’t do very often. Chief Justice Holmes administered the oath to Hosea Blackford.

  Voice aided by a microphone, Blackford repeated the words that made him president of the United States: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

  A sigh ran through the crowd. Nellie had heard that oath every four years since 1881—not counting 1916. It made official what had happened five months before. Now the country had a new president. Now we see what happens next, she thought, as if it were a new chapter in a novel. And so, in a way, it was.

  The most immediate thing that happened next was Blackford’s inaugural address. Nellie got a good look at him up there on the stand. Behind him, his wife, who was much younger than he, tried to keep a little boy younger than Armstrong quiet. Robbing the cradle, Mr. President? Nellie thought.

  “I am pleased to tell you how well off our country is today, thanks to the inspired leadership given over the past eight years by my most distinguished predecessor, President Upton Sinclair.” Hosea Blackford owned a ringing baritone. Nellie thought she remembered hearing he’d been a lawyer before going to Congress. He certainly had the voice for it. He led the applause for the president leaving office. Sinclair rose one last time from his seat behind the podium to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd.

  As the new ex-president sat down again, Blackford went on, “We are at peace on our continent. We extend the hand of friendship to both the Confederate States and the Empire of Mexico. We share a common heritage with the CSA, and I am pleased to note that Confederate President Burton Mitchel, a civilized gentleman, shares this view. May we see no more war in North America, not ever again!”

  Nellie clapped as loud as she could. If war came, it would surely come to Washington, would surely
come down on her head. She wanted peace for her daughter, peace for her grandson. She’d seen too much of war ever to want to know it again.

  “To the north, the Republic of Quebec is our staunch ally,” Blackford declared. Even Nellie knew that meant the Quebecois would do as they were told. The president said, “English-speaking Canada continues to recover under our guidance.” Even Nellie knew that meant the rest of the Canucks would damn well have to do as they were told. “And Utah, long turbulent, looks toward the day when it shall be a state like any other.”

  That drew scattered boos even from a mostly friendly crowd. Few people outside of Utah had much sympathy for the Mormons, not after two uprisings.

  “Broad oceans protect us from foreign foes,” President Blackford said. “The Sandwich Islands serve as a bastion against the Empire of Japan, while the Atlantic shields us against Europe’s unending turmoil and danger. And let me note that I am completely confident the panics of the past ten days in Vienna, in Rome, in Paris, and in London will not affect the Empire of Germany in any important way, and that they cannot possibly cross the Atlantic and endanger our own well-being.”

  Everyone applauded vigorously there. So far, the Berlin and New York exchanges had avoided most of the jitters afflicting the smaller European markets, though Richmond also seemed nervous. Beside Nellie, Hal murmured, “If we can ride it out for another week, we’ll be fine. The Austro-Hungarians cause so much trouble. If they hadn’t called for repayment of that Russian loan . . .”

  “Hush,” Nellie told him. “I want to hear the president.”

  Blackford seemed to have said everything he was going to say about foreign affairs. He switched to what he hoped to accomplish within the United States: “We want no man hungry. We want no one able-bodied without work. We want no capitalists exploiting the workers of our great land. We want justice for all, and we intend to get it. We will not let the aged, who have worked hard all their lives, be discarded like so many worn-out cogs in our industrial machine.”