The Center Cannot Hold ae-2

by Harry Turtledove

  Her husband nodded. "Before President Sinclair's term is up, it'll be back to its full height. No mark on the sides to show how much of it the Confederates knocked down, either. I think that's good."

  "So do I," Flora agreed. "No matter what the Democrats say, there can be such a thing as too much remembrance."

  "Yes." Hosea sighed. "Some people just can't see that. Why anyone would want to remember all the horror we went through during the Great War… Well, it's beyond me."

  "Beyond me, too," Flora said. "Try not to get into an argument with my brother tomorrow."

  "I won't argue if David doesn't," her husband said. "I'll try not to argue even if he does." David Hamburger had lost a leg in the last year of the war. In spite of that-or maybe because of it-he'd gone from Socialist to conservative Democrat since. Having paid so much, he couldn't, wouldn't, believe that payment hadn't been worthwhile.

  During President Sinclair's-and Vice President Blackford's-first inauguration, Flora had been a Congresswoman, yes. But she hadn't been Blackford's wife, and hadn't been fully swept up into the social whirl surrounding the occasion. Now she went from one reception to another. She found it more wearing than enjoyable.

  When she said as much, Hosea Blackford laughed. "Are you sure you're a New York Jew, and not one of those gloomy Protestants from New England? No matter what they say, there's nothing in the Bible against having a good time."

  "I didn't say there was," Flora answered. "But it all seems so-excessive."

  "Oh, is that all you're worrying about?" Hosea laughed again. "Of course it's excessive. That's the point of it."

  She gave him a disapproving look. "I'm sure Louis XVI said the same thing just before the French Revolution."

  "Not fair," Hosea said.

  "Maybe not." Flora didn't want to argue with her husband, any more than she wanted him quarreling with her brother. But she wasn't altogether convinced, either.

  She found believing him easier when Inauguration Day came. When the Socialists won the election in 1920, electricity had filled the air. The Democrats had dominated U.S. politics since the election of 1884. Some people had feared proletarian revolution. Some had looked for it.

  It hadn't come. Politics had gone on as usual-the same song, but in a different key. Flora supposed that was a good thing. She still sometimes had a sense of opportunity missed, though.

  This second Socialist inauguration seemed different. Now no one acted astonished the day had ever come. People took it for granted, in fact. Flora didn't know whether that was good or bad, either. She did know that, up on the reviewing stand in front of the White House, she wondered if she'd freeze to death before her husband and President Sinclair took the oaths of office for their second terms.

  But having her family up on the stand with her made up for a lot. Her older sister Sophie's son Yossel was very big now-he was almost ten. He'd never seen his father, who'd been killed in action before he was born. Flora had hardly seen her younger sister Esther's new husband, a clerk named Meyer Katz. She was also startled at how gray her parents were getting.

  She wished her brother David hadn't worn his Soldiers' Circle pin, with a sword through the year of his conscription class. Only reactionaries did. But he wore his Purple Heart next to it. That and the stick he used and the slow, rolling gait of a man who made do with an artificial leg after an above-the-knee amputation meant no one near him said a word about it. His younger brother, Isaac, had gone through his turn in the Army after the Great War. His tour had been quiet, uneventful. He didn't wear a pin on his lapel.

  In President Sinclair's second inaugural address, he talked about justice for the working man, old-age pensions, and "getting along with our neighbors on this great continent." The first two drew fierce applause from the crowd, the third rather less.

  "Memories of the war are still too fresh," Hosea Blackford said when all the speeches and parades were over. "In another ten years, people will look more kindly on the Confederate States."

  "Not everyone will," David Hamburger said. He was only a tailor talking to the vice president of the United States, but he spoke his mind.

  His brother-in-law frowned. They were going to argue after all. "Would you want your children to go through what you did? Do you think the Confederates are mad enough to want their children to go through it again?"

  "I hope there's never a war again," Flora said.

  "I hope the same thing," David answered. "But hoping there won't be and staying ready in case there is are two different animals."

  "We'd do better if we'd made a just peace, not the harsh one Teddy Roosevelt forced the CSA to swallow," Hosea Blackford said. "And we're still trying to figure out what to do with Canada."

  "You try giving away anything Roosevelt won and you'll lose the next election quicker than you ever thought you could," David said.

  "I don't think so," Flora said. "If we aren't a just nation, what are we?"

  "A strong one, I hope," her brother answered. They eyed each other. They both used English, but they didn't speak the same language.

  No one questioned the Socialist Party's agenda at any of the inaugural banquets and balls that night. Even the Democratic Congressmen and Senators who made their appearance were smiling and polite. They wouldn't show their teeth till Congress went back into session up in Philadelphia.

  Flora was just as well pleased to return to the de facto capital. Over the past eight years, it had become home to her. Her husband teased her as the train pulled into Broad Street Station: "You'll be busier than I will. The vice president's main job is growing moss on his north side."

  "You knew that when you accepted the nomination the first time," Flora said.

  He nodded. "Well, yes. Even so, these past four years have really rammed it home."

  But Flora had trouble charging into the new session as she was used to doing. She found herself sleepy all the time, without the energy she usually took for granted. Before long, she was pretty sure she knew why. When she no longer had room for doubt, she said, "Hosea, I'm going to have a baby."

  His eyes grew very wide. After a moment, he started to laugh. "So much for prophylactics!" he blurted. Then he gave her a kiss and said, "That's wonderful news!"

  Flora wished he'd said that before the other. "I think so, too," she said. "The world he'll see…"

  "I know. That's astonishing to think about." Hosea Blackford ran a hand through his hair. It was thick, but gray. "I only hope I'll see enough of it with him for him to remember me. This is one of those times that reminds me I'm not so young as I wish I were."

  "You're not too old," Flora said slyly. Her husband laughed again. Even so, the moment didn't quite turn out the way she wished it would have.

  T he McGregors' wagon plodded toward Rosenfeld. The horse's tail switched back and forth, back and forth, flicking at the flies that came to life in the springtime. Mary McGregor felt like a turtle poking its head out of its shell. All through the harsh Manitoba winter, she'd stayed on the farm. Going into town then wasn't for the fainthearted. Her mother had done it, for kerosene and other things they couldn't make for themselves, but she hadn't wanted to take Mary or Julia along.

  A Ford whizzed past them. The horse snorted at the dust the motorcar kicked up. Mary coughed, too. "Those things are ugly and noisy," she said. This one had been particularly ugly-it was painted barn red, so anyone could see it coming, or going, for miles.

  "They go so fast, though," Julia said wistfully. "You can get from here to there in nothing flat. And more and more people have 'em nowadays."

  "People who suck up to the Yankees," Mary said.

  Her older sister shook her head. "Not all of them. Not any more."

  From the seat in front of them, their mother looked back over her shoulder. "We're not getting one any time soon," Maude McGregor said, and brushed a wisp of hair back from her face. Her voice was harsh and flat, as it so often was these days. "Hasn't got anything to do with politics, either. They're expensive
, is what they are."

  That silenced both Mary and Julia. The farm kept them all fed, but it could do no more than that-or rather, they could make it do no more than that. If Pa were alive, and Alexander, we'd be fine, Mary thought. But there was always too much work and not enough time. She didn't know what to do about that. She didn't think anybody could do anything about it.

  "We ought to be coming up to the checkpoint outside of town pretty soon," Julia said.

  "We've passed it by now," Maude McGregor said, even more flatly than before. "It's not up any more."

  Mary felt like bursting into tears. Two or three years before, she would have. Now she faced life with a thoroughly adult bleakness. "The rebellion's all over, then," she said, and nothing more lived in her voice than had in her mother's.

  "It never had a chance," Julia said.

  That was enough to rouse Mary, whose red hair did advertise her temper. "It would have," she said, "if so many people hadn't sat on their hands. And if there hadn't been so many traitors."

  For some little while, the clopping of the horse's hooves, the squeak of an axle that was getting on toward needing grease, and the occasional clank as an iron tire ran over a rock in the roadway were the only sounds. "Traitors" is an ugly word, Mary thought. But it was the only one that fit. The Americans had known the uprising was coming before it really got started. The Rosenfeld Register — the weekly newspaper-had even said a Canadian woman with a name famous for patriotism helped with information about it because she was in love with a Yank. The only famous woman patriot Mary could think of offhand was Laura Secord. Did she have descendants? Mary wouldn't have been surprised. She didn't think the uprising would have had much of a chance anyhow. With such handicaps, it had had none. All that was left now was punishing those who'd done their best for their country.

  Maude McGregor drove around a muddy crater in the road. This one was new; it didn't date back to the days of the Great War. Mary hoped it had blown up something large and American.

  Before long, Julia pointed ahead and said, "There it is! I see it."

  Mary McGregor saw Rosenfeld, too. Like her sister, she couldn't help getting excited. Rosenfeld had perhaps a thousand souls. If two railroads hadn't come together there, the town would have had no reason for existing. But there it was. It boasted a post office, a general store, the weekly newspaper, a doctor's office, and an allegedly painless dentist. He'd filled a couple of Mary's teeth. It hadn't hurt him a bit. She wished she could say the same.

  "I suppose Winnipeg's bigger," Mary said, "but it can't be much bigger."

  "I wouldn't think so," Julia agreed. Neither of them had ever seen a town bigger than Rosenfeld. Up in front of them, Maude McGregor chuckled quietly. Mary wondered why.

  Regardless of whether there were towns bigger than Rosenfeld, it was quite crowded and bustling enough. Wagons and motorcars clogged its main street. Locals in city clothes-white shirts, neckties, jackets with lapels-and U.S. Army men in green-gray shared the sidewalk. Women wore city clothes, too. Julia pointed again. "Will you look at that?" she said, deliciously scandalized. Mary looked-and gaped.

  "Disgraceful," her mother said grimly. Maude McGregor's skirt came down to her ankle, as her skirts had done for as long as Mary could remember. But this woman showed off half her legs, or so it seemed.

  "If it's the style, Ma-" Julia began, her voice hesitant.

  "No." Her mother hesitated not at all. "I don't care what the style is. No decent woman would wear anything like that. No daughter of mine will." Several women in Rosenfeld wore dresses and skirts that short. Were they all scarlet? Mary didn't know, but she wouldn't have been surprised.

  Her mother had to pull off the main street to find a place to hitch the wagon. As Maude McGregor got down to give the horse the feed bag, Mary pointed to a signboard plastered to a wall. "Ma, what's a Bijou?" She knew she was probably mispronouncing the unfamiliar word.

  "It's a motion-picture house," her mother answered after reading some of the small print under the big name.

  "A motion-picture house? In Rosenfeld?" Mary and Julia exclaimed together. Julia went on, "This is the big city," while Mary asked, "Can we go see something, Ma? Can we, please?" She knew she sounded like a wheedling little girl, but she couldn't help it.

  "I don't know." Here her mother wavered, where she'd been very sure about skirts. "The flyer says it costs a quarter each to get in, and seventy-five cents is a lot of money."

  "We'd only do it once, Ma. It's not like we come here every day," Mary said, wheedling harder than ever.

  Julia added, "It's a new business in town. It's not like those start up every day, either."

  "Well-all right," Maude McGregor said. Mary clapped her hands. "But only this once, understand? You pester me about it every time we come to town and you'll find out your backsides aren't too big to switch."

  "We promise, Ma," Mary and Julia chorused. They looked at each other and winked. They'd won! That didn't happen very often.

  A line snaked toward the Bijou's box office. A lot of the people in the line were American soldiers. Mary ignored them. The soldiers ignored her, too, though they plainly noticed her older sister and her mother. Julia and Maude McGregor paid no attention to the men in green-gray.

  Three quarters slapped down on the counter. Mary heard her mother sigh. The fellow behind the counter peeled three tickets off an enormous roll and handed them to her mother. Another young man at the door importantly tore the tickets in two. Inside the theater, the smell of buttered popcorn almost drove Mary mad. Along with the popcorn, the girl behind the counter sold lemonade and more different kinds of candy than Henry Gibbon carried in his general store.

  Maude McGregor led Mary and Julia past such temptations and into the theater itself. Both her daughters let out pitiful, piteous sighs. She took no notice of them. She was made of stern stuff.

  The maroon velvet chairs inside the theater swung down when you put your weight on them. That proved entertaining enough to take Mary's mind off candy, at least for a little while. A couple of rows in front of her, a little boy bounced up and down, up and down, up and down. She wanted to spank him. Before too long, his father did.

  Without warning, the lights went dim. A man at a piano-a man Mary hadn't noticed up till then-began to play melodramatic music. The curtains slid back from an enormous screen. Some sort of machine behind her began making noise: the projector. Then the screen filled with light, and she forgot everything else.

  "It's… photographs come to life," she whispered to Julia. Her sister nodded, but never took her eyes away from the screen. Mary didn't, either. Those enormous, moving black-and-white people up there held her mesmerized.

  NEWS OF THE WORLD, a headline read, briefly interrupting the motion. Then she saw a man in a silly uniform and an even sillier hat waving to soldiers marching past. KAISER WILHELM REVIEWS TROOPS RETURNING FROM OCCUPIED PARTS OF FRANCE, another headline explained.

  Swarthy men, many of them wearing big black mustaches, fired rifles and machine guns at one another in a country that looked dry and hot. SCENES FROM THE CIVIL WAR IN THE EMPIRE OF MEXICO, the caption said. Mary stared, entranced. She'd never been farther from the farm than Rosenfeld, but here was the whole world in front of her eyes.

  Two men in suits crossed a bridge from opposite sides and shook hands. That was labeled, PRESIDENT OF USA, PREMIER OF QUEBEC MEET IN FRIENDSHIP. All of a sudden, Mary wasn't so sure she wanted the whole world in front of her eyes.

  And then she saw ruined city blocks, explosions, diving aeroplanes with machine guns blazing, glum survivors, grim prisoners with hands in the air, overturned motorcars and dead bodies lying in the street, and other bodies swinging from a gallows. SCENES FROM THE REBELLION IN CANADA, the explanatory sign said. She hadn't seen much war. It had swept through Rosenfeld and stayed to the north. And she'd only been a little girl then. She gulped. This was what she wanted, was it?

  Not even the main feature, a melodrama with a car chase, a chase t
hrough and on top of the cars of a train, and an astonishingly handsome leading man who wed the astonishingly beautiful leading lady and gave her a tender kiss just before the lights came back up, could take all those images of devastation out of her mind.

  "That's what they're doing to our country," she said as she and her mother and sister filed out of the theater. "They want us to know it, too."

  "They want us to be afraid," Julia said.

  "They know how to get what they want, too," Maude McGregor said grimly. "Come on. Let's buy what we need and get back to the farm."

  They were on their way to Henry Gibbon's general store when Mary saw a SCENE FROM THE REBELLION IN CANADA that wasn't what the Americans who'd made and approved the moving picture had in mind. Through the streets of Rosenfeld came a column of prisoners, on their way to the train station from God only knew where. They were scrawny and hollow-eyed and wore only rags. They must have been some of the last men captured, for most of the rebels had given up weeks, even a couple of months, before. The McGregors bathed once a week or so, like most farm families; Mary was used to strong odors. The stench that came from the prisoners made her stomach want to turn over.

  One of the men started to sing "God Save the King." An American guard in green-gray hit him in the head with a rifle butt. Blood streamed down his face. The guard laughed. The prisoner stumbled on. Tears stung Mary's eyes. She didn't let them fall. She kept her face still and vowed… remembrance.

  A bner Dowling looked down at what had been a plate of ham and fried potatoes. "By God, that was good," he said.

  "Yes, sir," said his adjutant, a dapper young captain named Angelo Toricelli. He had only about half of Dowling's girth, but he'd worked similar execution on a beefsteak and a couple of baked spuds.

  "Nothing wrong with the way the Mormons cook," Dowling said, blotting his lips on his napkin.

  "No, sir," Captain Toricelli agreed.

  Having spent a lot of time as an adjutant, Dowling recognized the younger man's resigned tone, though he was resolved not to do so much to deserve resigned agreement as his own cross, General Custer, had done. Thinking of a cross made him suspect he knew what was bothering Toricelli. "Does it bother you that I eat so much, Captain?"