The Victorious Opposition

by Harry Turtledove

  “A new shipment of prisoners?” The guard proved he could repeat what he’d just heard, too. Then he exploded, much as Jeff wanted to do. “Jesus H. Christ! Where the hell we gonna put ’em? We already got niggers swingin’ from the rafters. Shit, we got niggers comin’ out our assholes, is what we got.”

  “You know that, Wes, and I know that, and anybody who knows one goddamn thing about this here camp knows it, too,” Pinkard said. “But you know what else? The folks in Richmond don’t know it. Either that or they just don’t give a fuck.” He looked around more than a little frantically. “Where am I gonna put all them nigger bastards? How am I gonna stop ’em from runnin’ away? Christ! How are we gonna feed ’em? This here don’t say word one about extra rations.”

  Wes frowned. Then he shrugged. “Split up what you get with as many mouths as we got inside. What the hell else can you do?”

  “Damfino.” Jefferson Pinkard shook his head in deep discontent. “Prisoners we got are already hungry as can be on what we’re feeding ’em. Nothin’ left to scrounge off the countryside. If they got to make do with three-quarters as much—or maybe only half as much: how can I guess?—they’re gonna start starving to death in jigtime.”

  “You don’t need to get your bowels in an uproar about it, boss,” Wes said. “They’re only niggers, for Chrissake. Ain’t like you was starvin’ Uncle Henry and Aunt Daisy.”

  “Oh, hell, I know that,” Pinkard said. “But this is all just a bunch of crap.” His sense of order, of propriety, was offended. “If they send us extra men, they oughta send us the extra rations to go with ’em. Ain’t fair if they don’t. It’s like in the Bible where old what’s-his-name—Pharaoh—made the Jews make bricks without straw.” He wanted things to work the way they were supposed to.

  “Reckon the sheenies had it coming to ’em, same as the coons do now,” Wes said.

  But Pinkard shook his head. “No. You give somebody something to do, you got to give him the chance to do it, too. And Richmond ain’t.”

  “Send ’em a wire back,” the guard suggested.

  “Maybe I will.” But Jeff doubted he would. If the big boys got the idea he couldn’t handle whatever they threw at him, they’d toss him out on his ear and put in somebody who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful.

  As promised—threatened?—the new shipment of colored prisoners did come in that afternoon. Pinkard had his clerks as ready as they could be. They got swamped anyway. It would have been worse if they hadn’t been braced. That was the most Jeff could say for it. The shipment was even larger than he’d expected. For a little while, he feared he wouldn’t be able to shoehorn everybody inside the barbed-wire perimeter.

  He did manage that, though he had prisoners curled up on bare ground between barracks without a blanket to call their own. The cooks served out the supper ration, share and share alike. The new prisoners ate like starving wolves. Pinkard wondered how long they’d gone with even less, or with nothing. By their gaunt faces and hollow cheeks, some of them had gone quite a while. The men already inside Camp Dependable grumbled at what they got. They didn’t grumble too loud, though; if they had, they would have offended people who’d been through worse.

  About midnight, a thunderstorm loosed an artillery barrage of rain on the prison camp. The new prisoners struggled to get into the barracks: it was either that or sink into what rapidly became a bottomless gumbo of mud. Not all of them could. The buildings simply would not hold so many men.

  We’ll see pneumonia in a few days, Jeff thought, lying in bed while lightning raved. They’ll die like flies, especially if nobody ups the ration.

  He shrugged. His initial panic had receded. What could he do about this? Nothing he could see, except ride herd on things the best way he knew how. It wasn’t as if the prisoners hadn’t done plenty of things that made them deserve to be here. Anybody who came here deserved to be here, by the very nature of things. Jake Featherston had got Kentucky and Houston back for the Confederate States. If that didn’t prove he knew what was what, nothing could. Nodding to himself—figured that one out—Pinkard rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Hipolito Rodriguez had always been better at saving money than most of his neighbors. That Magdalena had the same sort of thrifty temperament certainly helped. Some of the people around Baroyeca thought of him as a damned judio. He didn’t lose any sleep about those people’s opinions. In general, he didn’t think much of them, either.

  He did believe that working hard and hanging on to as much cash as he could paid off sooner or later. Sooner or later often simply meant later. He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t about to get rich any time soon. But he didn’t mind living more comfortably when the chance came along.

  And it was coming. He could see it coming, in the most literal sense of the words: a row of poles stretching out along the road from Baroyeca that ran alongside his farm. Every day, the Freedom Youth Corps planted more of them, as if they were some crop that would grow.

  Electricity had come to the town a few years earlier. That it should come to the farms outside of town . . . Rodriguez hadn’t been sure he would live to see the day, but here it was, and he was going to take advantage of it. He’d had the money to pay an electrician to wire the house before the poles reached it. He’d had enough to buy electric lamps and the bulbs that went with them, too. And he’d had enough for a surprise for Magdalena. The surprise waited in the barn. (He also dreamt of buying an automobile, and a tractor to take the place of the mule. He knew that was and would stay a dream, but savored it anyhow.)

  The day came when the poles reached and marched past his house. That turned out to be something of an anticlimax, for the wires that made the poles anything more than dead trees hadn’t yet come so far. Still, looking out at the long shadows the poles cast in the low January sun, he nodded to himself. Those poles were the visible harbingers of a new way of life.

  Three days later, the electrical wires arrived. Freedom Youth Corps boys strung them from pole to pole under the supervision of a foul-mouthed electrician from Hermosillo. Even Rodriguez, who’d done his time in the Army, heard some things he’d never run into before. For the boys from the Freedom Youth Corps, this had to be part of their training that they hadn’t expected.

  Baroyeca’s electrician was a moon-faced man named César Calderon. He never swore. The day after the wires passed the farmhouse, he came out on a mule that made the one Rodriguez owned seem like a thoroughbred by comparison. He ran a wire from the closest power pole to the fuse box he’d installed on the side of the house. He tested the circuits with a device that glowed when the current was flowing. Seeing it light up made Rodriguez swell with pride.

  “¿Todo está bien?” he asked.

  Calderon nodded. “Oh, yes. Everything is fine, exactly how it should be. If you like, you can plug in a lamp and turn it on.”

  Fingers trembling, Rodriguez did. He pushed the little knob below the light bulb. The motion felt strange, unnatural, unpracticed. The knob clicked into the new position. The light came on. It was even brighter than Rodriguez had expected.

  Magdalena crossed herself. “Madre de Dios,” she whispered. “It’s like having the sun in the house.”

  Rodriguez solemnly shook hands with the electrician. “Muchas gracias.”

  “De nada,” Calderon replied. But it wasn’t nothing, and they both knew it. Calderon packed up his tools, climbed onto the mule, and rode away. Rodriguez turned off the lamp and turned it on again. Yes, the electricity stayed even after the electrician went away. Rodriguez had thought it would, but he hadn’t been quite sure. When he lit a kerosene lamp, he understood what was going on: the flame from the match made the wick and the kerosene that soaked up through it burn. But what really happened when he pushed that little knob? The light came on. How? Why? He couldn’t have said.

  But even if he didn’t know how it worked, he knew that it worked. And knowing that it worked was plenty. He turned out the lamp again—they didn’t really need it right t
his minute—and headed out to the barn, telling Magdalena, “I’ll be back,” over his shoulder.

  The crate was large, heavy, and unwieldy. He’d brought it to the farm from Baroyeca in the wagon. Now it rested on a sledge. He’d been warned to keep it upright; bad things would happen, he was told, if it went over on its side. He didn’t want bad things to happen, not after the money he’d spent. He dragged the crate out of the barn and toward the farmhouse.

  Magdalena came outside. “What have you got there?” she asked.

  Hipolito Rodriguez smiled. He’d made a point of coming back from town after sundown, so she wouldn’t see what was in the wagon. “It’s—a box,” he said.

  “Muchas gracias,” Magdalena replied with icy sarcasm. “And what is in the box?”

  “Why, another box, of course,” he replied, which won him a glare from his wife. By then, he’d hauled the crate to the base of the steps. He went back to the barn for a hammer, which he used to pull up the nails holding the crate closed. “You don’t believe me? Here, I’ll show you.”

  “Show me what?” Magdalena demanded. But then she gave a little gasp, for, just as Rodriguez had planned, the front panel of the crate fell away. She stared at him. “Is that—?”

  He nodded. “Sí, sweetheart. It’s a refrigerator.”

  She crossed herself again. She did that several times a day. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Then she started to cry. That made him hurry up the stairs and take her in his arms, because she hardly ever did it. She sobbed on his shoulder for a few seconds. At last, pulling away, she said, “I never thought we would have electricity. Even when we got electricity, I never thought we would have one of these. And I wanted one. I wanted one so much.” She suddenly looked anxious. “But can we afford it?”

  “It wasn’t as much as I thought it would be,” he answered. “And it isn’t supposed to use that much electricity. Look.” He wrestled off the rest of the crate. That done, he opened the refrigerator door. “In the freezer compartment, it even makes its own ice in little trays.”

  “What will they think of next?” Magdalena whispered. “A few years ago, I don’t think there was any ice in all of Baroyeca. Who in the whole town had ever seen ice?”

  “Anyone who’d gone north to fight los Estados Unidos.” Rodriguez shivered at the memory. And he’d only been in Texas. The men who’d fought in Kentucky and Tennessee had had it worse. “I have seen ice, por Dios, and I wish I hadn’t.”

  “You’d seen God make ice,” Magdalena said with a snort. “Had you ever seen people making ice?”

  “Even the people had it up there,” he said. “They’re richer than we are. But we’re gaining. I know we are. I didn’t used to think so, not before the Freedom Party won. Now I’m sure of it.”

  “Electricity,” his wife said, as if the one word proved everything that needed proving. As far as Rodriguez was concerned, it did.

  He went back and closed the refrigerator’s door. Then, grunting with effort, he picked up the machine and carried it up the stairs. It wasn’t any taller than his navel, but it was plenty heavy. He’d found that out getting the crate into the wagon in the first place. When he set it down on the porch, the boards groaned under the weight. “Open the door for me, please,” he said, and Magdalena did.

  The kitchen wasn’t far. A good thing, too, Rodriguez thought. He set the refrigerator against the wall near an outlet and plugged it in. It started to hum: not loudly, but noticeably. He hadn’t known it would do that. He cocked his head to one side, listening and wondering how annoying it would be. Would he get used to it, or would it start to drive him crazy? He didn’t know, but he expected he’d find out.

  Magdalena came in to stare at the new arrival in the kitchen. “Is it cold yet?”

  “I don’t know.” Rodriguez opened the door and stuck his hand inside. “It feels cooler, anyhow, I think.” He took out the ice-cube trays. “Fill these with water. We’ll see how long they take to freeze.”

  “All right.” Magdalena did. Carefully, she put the trays back into the freezer compartment, closed its door, and closed the refrigerator door. The hum, which had got louder with the door open, quieted down again. “Not too bad,” Magdalena murmured, and Hipolito nodded; he’d been thinking the same thing. She went on, “We have lamps. We have this wonderful refrigerator.” She pronounced the unfamiliar word with care. “Do you know what I would like next, when we can afford it?”

  “No. What?” Rodriguez hadn’t begun to think about what might come after the refrigerator.

  But Magdalena had. “A wireless set,” she said at once. “That has to be the most wonderful invention in the whole world. Music and people talking here inside our own house whenever we want them—what could be more marvelous?”

  “I don’t know.” Rodriguez hadn’t heard the wireless all that often himself. It had brought returns from the last election to Freedom Party headquarters. The cantina had a set, too, one that usually played love songs. He shrugged. “If you want one, I suppose we can do that one of these days. They aren’t too expensive.”

  “I do want one,” Magdalena said emphatically. “If we have a wireless set, we can hear everything that happens as soon as it happens. We wouldn’t be on a farm outside a little town in a state most of los Estados Confederados don’t care about. We would be in New Orleans or Richmond itself.”

  Rodriguez laughed. “Now I understand,” he said. “You want the wireless set so you can catch up on gossip all over the world.”

  His wife poked him in the ribs. He squirmed. He wasn’t usually ticklish, but she’d found a sensitive spot. She said, “And you never gossip at all when you visit La Culebra Verde.”

  “That’s different,” he declared. Magdalena didn’t say anything, which made him wonder how it was different. He tried his best: “Men talk about important things.”

  Magdalena laughed in his face. Evidently his best wasn’t good enough. But she let him down easy, asking, “Is it ice yet?”

  “Let’s find out.” He opened the refrigerator door. The air that came out was definitely chilly now. The water in the ice-cube trays was still water, though. He touched it with a fingertip. “It’s getting colder.”

  Magdalena touched it, too. She nodded and closed the door. They stood there in front of the refrigerator, listening to the soft hum of the future.

  XVII

  In the officers’ mess on the USS Remembrance, Commander Dan Cressy nodded to Sam Carsten. “Well, Lieutenant, you called that one,” the exec said.

  “Called which one, sir?” Sam asked. The carrier was rolling, but not too badly. He had no trouble staying in his chair.

  “There are reports of Confederate soldiers assembling near the borders of Kentucky and Houston,” Cressy answered. “What do you want to bet they’ll be marching in as soon as we finish pulling out, just the way you said they would?”

  “Sir, if you think I’m happy to be right, you’re wrong,” Sam said. “What happens if they do go in?”

  Commander Cressy shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope President Smith does. He’d better. Somebody had better, anyhow.”

  “If they go in, won’t it take a war to get them out?” That was Lieutenant Commander Hiram Pottinger, Carsten’s superior on the damage-control party.

  Nobody in the officers’ mess said anything for some little while after that. They knew what war meant. Not many of them besides Sam had served in the Great War, but they’d all been through the inconclusive Pacific War against Japan.

  “A lot will depend on what happens in Europe,” Commander Cressy said.

  “France is starting to whoop and holler about Alsace and Lorraine,” Sam said meditatively. “I saw an Action Française riot before those boys came to power. I don’t think they’ll take no for an answer. They’re just as sure they’ve got God on their side as Jake Featherston is.”

  “And the Russians are squawking about Poland, and they’re starting to squawk about the Ukraine, too,” Cressy said. “And the limeys
are growling at the micks, and ain’t we got fun?”

  Sam sighed. He wished for a cigarette, but the smoking lamp was out. “We’re going to hell in a handbasket all over again,” he said. “Didn’t anybody learn anything the last time around?”

  “I’ll tell you one thing we didn’t learn,” the Remembrance’s exec said. “We didn’t learn to make sure the sons of bitches who lost took so many lumps, they couldn’t get back up on their feet and have another try. And I’m afraid we’re going to have to pay for it.”

  Lieutenant Commander Pottinger said, “They’ve learned something in South America, anyhow. Argentina and the Empire of Brazil are cuddling up, even if Argentina and Chile are yelling again.”

  “Sir, that’s good news for Britain, not for us,” Carsten said. “If there is a war, it means Brazil will let Argentina ship food through its territorial waters and then make the short hop across the Atlantic to French West Africa, same as happened the last time.”

  “How do you know so much about that?” Commander Cressy asked, as if to say, You’re a mustang, so you’re not supposed to know much of anything.

  “Sir, I was there, in the Dakota,” Sam answered. Cressy was a young hotshot. He had more book learning and learned faster than anyone Sam had ever seen. If war did come, he would likely have flag rank by the time it was done, assuming he lived. But he did sometimes forget that people could also learn by good, old-fashioned experience.

  The other side of the coin was, Sam had only been a petty officer then. Officers also had the unfortunate habit of believing that men who weren’t didn’t know anything. (Petty officers, of course, were just as sure that officers’ heads either had nothing in them or were full of rocks.)

  “We can lick the Confederates,” Pottinger said. “We did it before, and this time we won’t have to take on Canada, too.”

  Everyone in the mess nodded. Somebody—Sam didn’t see who—said, “Goddamn Japs’ll try and sucker punch us in the Pacific when we’re busy close to home.”