In at the Death (81 page)

She sat down. A waiter came up. “
Nu?
” he said. She ordered corned beef on rye and a bottle of beer. David chose lox and bagels with his beer. The waiter scribbled, scratched his thick gray mustache, and went away.

“How are you?” Flora asked. “How’s your family?”

“Everybody’s fine. Me, I’m not too bad,” her brother answered. “How’s Joshua doing?”

She told him what Joshua had said about not being able to give anyone the finger with his left hand. David laughed an old soldier’s laugh. Flora went on, “He’s lucky, I know, but I still wish it never happened.”

“Well, I understand that,” her brother said. “I’ve had a pretty good life, taking it all in all, but I sure wish I didn’t stop that one bullet.” David sighed. “I’m lucky, too. Look at poor Yossel—the first Yossel, I mean. He never got to see his son at all.”

“I know,” Flora said. “I was thinking about that every minute after Joshua got conscripted. But he wanted to join. What can you do?”

“Nothing,” David answered. “Part of watching them grow up is figuring out when to let go. When Joshua got old enough for conscription, he got too old for you to stop him.”

“He told me the same thing,” Flora said ruefully. “He wasn’t wrong, but what did it get him? A stretch in the hospital.”

“And an idea of what the country’s worth,” David said. The waiter brought the food and the beer. David piled his bagel high with smoked salmon and Bermuda onion and ignored the cream cheese that came with them. Flora thought that was perverse, but no accounting for taste. David Hamburger proved as much, continuing, “Now that he’s bled for it, he won’t want to let it get soft.”

Flora had seen reactionary signs in Joshua since he got wounded, and didn’t like them. Tartly, she answered, “You don’t have to get wounded to love the United States or be a patriot.”

Her brother was busy chewing an enormous mouthful. He washed it down with a swallow of beer. “I didn’t say you did,” he replied at last. “But you sure don’t see things the same way after you catch one.”

Now Flora was eating, and had to wait before she could say anything. “Putting on the uniform doesn’t turn everybody into a Democrat. Plenty of Socialist veterans—quite a few of them in Congress, in fact.”

“I know, I know,” David said. “Still, if they’d sat on that Featherston
mamzer
before he got too big to sit on—”

“Who was President when Featherston took over?” Flora asked indignantly, and answered her own question: “Hoover was, that’s who. The last time I looked, Hoover was a Democrat.”

“Yeah, yeah.” David did his best to brush that aside. “Who gave away Kentucky and Houston? Al Smith was no Democrat, and he handed the Confederates the platform they needed to damn near ruin us.”

“That was a mistake,” Flora admitted. “The trouble was, nobody here really believed Featherston wanted a war. The Great War was so awful for both sides. Why would anybody want to do that again?”

“He didn’t. He wanted to win this time. And he almost did,” her brother said. “He wanted to get rid of his
shvartzers
, too. Who would have believed
that
? You were ahead of everybody there, Flora. I give you credit for it.”

“Sometimes you don’t want to be right. It costs too much,” Flora said. “Nobody in the USA wanted to let C.S. Negroes in when he started persecuting them. The Democrats were worse about it than the Socialists, though.”

“All right, so we didn’t have things straight all the time, either,” David answered. “Dewey’ll do a better job of holding down the CSA than La Follette would have.”

“That’s the plank he ran on. We’ll see if he means it,” Flora said.

David laughed. “Was there ever a politician you wouldn’t say that about?”

“I can think of three,” Flora replied. “Debs, Teddy Roosevelt, and Robert Taft. When they said they’d do something, they meant it. It didn’t always help them. Sometimes it just left them with a bull’s-eye on their back.”

After a moment’s thought, David nodded. “And two more,” he said: “you and Hosea.”

“Thank you,” Flora said softly. “I try. So did Hosea—and he never got the credit for it he deserved.” He never would, either, and she knew it, not when the economic collapse happened while he was President. After a pull at her beer, she went on, “I’ll give you another one: Myron Zuckerman.”

“He was an honest man,” her brother agreed.

Flora nodded. “He was. And if he didn’t trip on the stairs and break his neck, I never would have run for Congress. My whole life would have looked different. I would have stayed an organizer or worked in the clothing business like the rest of the family.”

“Zuckerman’s bad luck. The country’s good luck.”

“You say that, with your politics? You’ll make me blush. It’s only because I’m your sister.” Flora tried not to show how pleased she was.

“Hey, I disagree with you sometimes—well, a lot of the time. So what? You
are
my sister, and I’m proud of you,” David answered. “Besides, I know I can always borrow money from you if I need it.”

He never had, not a penny. Flora had always shared with her parents and sister and younger brother, but David stubbornly made his own way.
I’m doing all right
, he would say. It seemed to be true, for which Flora was glad.

He grinned at her. “So what does it mean, what we’ve been through since the Great War started? You’re the politician. Tie it up for me.”

“You don’t ask for much!” Flora exclaimed. Her brother laughed. He picked up his beer bottle, discovered it was empty, and waved for another one. Flora drank from hers. If she was going to try to answer a question like that, she needed fortifying. “Well, for starters, we’ve got the whole United States back, if we can ever stop the people in the South from hating us like rat poison.”

“Since when do they like us that much?” David said: a painfully true joke. He went on, “We can hold them down if we have to, them and the Canadians.”

“A Negro who got out of the CSA before the Great War said that if you hold a man down in the gutter, you have to get into the gutter yourself,” Flora said. “Do we want to do that?”

“Do we want the Confederate States back in business? Do we want them building superbombs again?” David asked, adding, “The one they used almost got you.”

“I know,” Flora said. “Don’t remind me.”

“Well, then.” By the way David said it, he thought he’d proved his point.

But Flora answered, “Do we want our boys down there for the next fifty years, bleeding a little every day? It would be like a sore that won’t heal.”

“Better that than worrying about them blowing us off the map,” David said. “And they would, too. We’ve fought them four times in the past eighty years. You think they don’t want to try to get even because we won the last two?”

“No, I don’t think so, not for a minute.” Flora knew some Socialists had thought such things after the Great War. It was unfortunate, but it was true. Nobody thought that way any more, though. Once bitten, twice shy. Twice bitten…“Still, if we can’t turn them into people who belong in the United States, what are we going to do with them?”

“Do we want people like that in our country? People who murdered eight or ten million Negroes? Even when the Tsar turns loose a pogrom, it’s not as bad as that.”

“A
choleriyeh
on the Tsar.” Flora hated the idea of Russia with a superbomb, too. Germany would have to deal with Russia, though; the USA just didn’t have the reach. She got back to the business at hand: “They didn’t kill
all
the Negroes.”

“No, but they didn’t try to stop the Freedom Party goons, either. They cheered them on, for crying out loud,” David said. “And you know what scares me?”

“Nu?”
Flora asked.

“If it happened down there, it could happen here. It could happen to Negroes here, or, God forbid, it could happen to Jews. If you get enough people hot and bothered, anything can happen. Anything at all.”

“God forbid is right,” Flora said. “I like to think we wouldn’t do anything like that…”

“Yeah. Me, too. And how many
shvartzers
thought their white neighbors wouldn’t do anything like that? How many of them are left to think anything now?” Her brother answered his own question: “Not many.”

“Maybe seeing what the Confederates did will vaccinate us against it,” Flora said. “We can hope so, anyway.”

“
Alevai
,” David said.

“
Alevai omayn
.” Flora nodded. “But can you imagine a politician saying, ‘I want to do the same thing Jake Featherston did. Look how well it worked down there’?”

“Mm, maybe not—not for a while, anyway.” David smiled crookedly. “Let’s hear it for bad examples. I always aimed to be one for my children, but massacring people goes a little too far.”

“A little. Sure.” Flora reached out and set her hand on his. He looked astonished. She realized she hadn’t done that in—oh, much too long. “And some bad example you are.”

“Hey, I’m a Democrat. How can I be anything but a bad example?”

“You’ll have to work harder than that.” Flora hoped he wouldn’t get angry. He
had
worked hard, all his life.

He didn’t. “Here. I’ll give it my best shot.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. “How am I doing?”

“I think you need to try something else.” Flora fought not to laugh.

“Don’t know what. I already drink. Don’t want to chase women—I’m happy with the one I caught. And you’re the family politician.”

“Well! I like that!”

David’s smile got crookeder yet. “You know what? Me, too.”

Flora pointed to the pack. “Give me one of those.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“So what? Right now I do.”

He handed her a cigarette, then leaned close to light it from his. She thought it tasted terrible, but she didn’t care, not just then. They blew out smoke together.

About the Author

H
ARRY
T
URTLEDOVE
is an award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy. His alternate-history works have included several short novels such as
The Guns of the South; How Few Remain
(winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the Worldwar saga:
In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance,
and
Striking the Balance;
the Colonization books:
Second Contact, Down to Earth,
and
Aftershocks;
the Great War epics:
American Front, Walk in Hell,
and
Breakthroughs;
the American Empire novels:
Blood & Iron, The Center Cannot Hold,
and
Victorious Opposition;
and the Settling Accounts series:
Return Engagement, Drive to the East, The Grapple,
and
In at the Death
. He is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.

BOOKS BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE

Every Inch a King

The Guns of the South

THE WORLDWAR SAGA

Worldwar: In the Balance

Worldwar: Tilting the Balance

Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance

Worldwar: Striking the Balance

COLONIZATION

Colonization: Second Contact

Colonization: Down to Earth

Colonization: Aftershocks

Homeward Bound

THE VIDESSOS CYCLE

The Misplaced Legion

An Emperor for the Legion

The Legion of Videssos

Swords of the Legion

THE TALE OF KRISPOS

Krispos Rising

Krispos of Videssos

Krispos the Emperor

THE TIME OF TROUBLES SERIES

The Stolen Throne

Hammer and Anvil

The Thousand Cities

Videssos Besieged

Noninterference

Kaleidoscope

A World of Difference

Earthgrip

Departures

How Few Remain

THE GREAT WAR

The Great War: American Front

The Great War: Walk in Hell

The Great War: Breakthroughs

AMERICAN EMPIRE

American Empire: Blood and Iron

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold

American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

SETTLING ACCOUNTS

Settling Accounts: Return Engagement

Settling Accounts: Drive to the East

Settling Accounts: The Grapple

Settling Accounts: In at the Death

Settling Accounts: In at the Death
is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by Harry Turtledove

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY
is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Turtledove, Harry.
Settling accounts. In at the death / Harry Turtledove.
p. cm.
1. United States—History—20th century—Fiction. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. 3. Confederate States of America—History—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: In at the death.
PS3570.U76S477 2007
813'.54—dc22 2007007439

www.delreybooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50051-9

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