The Victorious Opposition

by Harry Turtledove

  “No, sir,” the officer said. “I have my orders. A motorcar is waiting outside.” He turned and marched, machinelike, toward the stairs. Potter followed at a more human amble.

  The motorcar was a Birmingham painted butternut. It flew a Freedom Party flag, though, not the Confederate battle flag an Army vehicle would have sported. Potter and the stone-faced chief assault leader got in. The driver, also a Freedom Party guard, whisked them away from the War Department and up Shockoe Hill to the presidential residence.

  A bodyguard there relieved Potter of his pistol. That was routine these days. If the guard knew Potter had once carried a pistol intending to use it on the president, he gave no sign.

  “Reporting as ordered, sir,” Potter said when the captain—no, the chief assault leader—took him into Featherston’s office. Formality helped. If he spoke to the president of the CSA, he wouldn’t have to think—so much—about the fiery, foul-mouthed artillery sergeant he’d known during the war, wouldn’t have to think that the sergeant and the president were one and the same.

  “Good to see you, Colonel. Sit down,” Jake Featherston replied, returning the salute. Maybe he was using formality to suppress memory, too. As soon as Potter was in the chair, Featherston waved to the Party officer. “That’ll be all, Randy. You just run along. Close the door on your way out.” Randy looked unhappy, but he did what everybody seemed to do around Featherston: he obeyed. The president turned back to Clarence Potter and got straight to business: “I need more from your people in Kentucky.”

  “Sir?” Potter needed a moment to shift gears.

  Featherston’s scowl made him look like an angry, hungry wolf. “Kentucky,” he repeated impatiently. “Things are heating up there, and I’m going to want to know more about what’s going on. I’m going to want to be able to make things happen there, too.”

  “I haven’t got but a handful of men in Kentucky, Mr. President,” Potter said. “My specialty is people who talk like Yankees, and that’s not what we mostly use there, because the accent is closer to our own. Men from Tennessee don’t stand out in Kentucky the way they would in Pennsylvania or Kansas.”

  “I know what you’ve got in Kentucky.” Featherston reeled off the names and positions of almost all of Potter’s men in the state. He wasn’t looking at a list. He knew them, knew them by heart. Those names and supporting details had surely gone to him in one report or another, but that he’d remembered them. . . . Clarence Potter was more nearly flabbergasted than impressed at that grasp of detail. I didn’t know he had it in him, he thought. The president went on, “The point is, three or four of your people are in slots with the state government or a city government where they can be useful to us because everybody reckons they’re Yankees.”

  “They can do some of that,” Potter said cautiously, “but not too much. If they don’t act like what they’re supposed to be, they’ll make the real Yankees wonder why they don’t. That wouldn’t be good. The last thing we want is to make the United States suspicious.”

  This time, Featherston’s scowl was of a different sort. Potter had no trouble identifying it, though: it was the scowl of a man who wasn’t used to people telling him anything he didn’t want to hear. Well, too damn bad, the intelligence officer thought. You’re the one who brought me back into the Army. Now you have to take the consequences. I’m not one of your Party hacks, and you’d better remember it.

  “You telling me you can’t do what I need?” The president’s voice was harsh and dangerous.

  Potter shook his head. “No, sir. That’s not what I said at all. But I am asking you to make sure in your own mind that what you get now is worth the risk of losing a lot later on. If the damnyankees start looking hard for Confederate spies, they’re bound to find some. And if they find some, they’ll look for more, and. . . .”

  “All right.” Featherston held up a hand. “I see what you’re saying. But what’s the point of having all these goddamn spies in place if we can’t get any use out of ’em?”

  “We do get use out of them,” Potter said; for all his grasp of detail, Jake Featherston was missing the big picture here. “We get information. Without it, we’re blind. That’s really what they’re there for, as far as we’re concerned. If they step out of their roles, they may give themselves away.”

  Featherston grunted. His eyes showed his own hard suspicion. Regardless of whether his guards did, he remembered the pistol in Clarence Potter’s pocket, and he had to know why Potter had had it there. “If we can’t use our people to nudge things along there, how the hell do we do it?” he snapped.

  “We can use our people. The ones I run just aren’t the right set of tools for the job,” Potter answered. “Demonstrations, riots, stories in the papers, wireless shows . . . We can do all that. About the most my men can do is pretend they haven’t seen telegrams, things like that. If they try to do much more, the fellows they work for will start giving them fishy stares. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  He waited for Jake Featherston to blow. As long as he’d known him, Featherston had had a short fuse. Now the president of the CSA didn’t have anybody set above him to make him pull back. If he wanted to lose his temper, he could, and who would say boo?

  But Potter had been as cool and dispassionate as he could, and the president seemed to respond well to that, or at least not to take it as a threat. “All right, then,” he said. “We’ll try that, and see how it works. I do want to leave your people in place, on account of we’re not done with Kentucky. Oh, no. We’re not done, not by a long shot. That state is ours, and I aim to get it back.”

  Clarence Potter could have found any number of things about which to disagree with the president of the Confederate States. Not about getting Kentucky back, though. He stood, came to attention, and saluted. “Yes, sir!” he said.

  Flora Blackford remembered when going out on the floor of Congress had been a thrill. It wasn’t any more. Not these days. The Freedom Party Congressmen from Houston and Kentucky made sure of that. They weren’t there to do the nation’s business. They were there to disrupt it, and they were good at that. The pair of Representatives Utah had elected after the end of the military occupation weren’t much better. They seemed more interested in complaining about what had happened over the past twenty—sometimes, over the past sixty—years than in trying to make the next two better.

  Congressman Nephi Pratt was complaining even as Flora took her seat. “I accept your correction with all due humility, Mr. Speaker,” he was saying. “I would have been more fully abreast of these matters had the government not labored so long and hard to suppress my creed and oppress my state, thereby depriving me of the opportunity to participate in the decisions made by this august body since the end of the war.”

  Up jumped a young pepperpot Democrat from New Mexico. “Perhaps the distinguished gentleman will state on the record in which direction he pointed a gun during the war: at the foes of the United States or at her soldiers.”

  Pratt was a portly man with a mane of white hair. He tossed it angrily now. “I need not answer that—”

  “You just did, seems to me,” the Democrat shot back.

  “Mr. Speaker, I resent the imputation,” Pratt said.

  “Mr. Speaker, I resent having to share the chamber with a damned traitor,” the Congressman from New Mexico said.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! The Speaker’s gavel descended like the crack of doom. “Mr. Pratt, Mr. Goldwater, you are both out of order,” he said. “Any further outbursts from either of you, and I will have the sergeant-at-arms remove you from the floor.”

  “The United States hanged my grandfather,” Nephi Pratt said. “I see things have not changed much since.”

  “He had it coming, by God,” Congressman Goldwater snapped.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! “Sergeant-at-arms!” Congressman Cannon of Missouri said. The Speaker looked thoroughly disgusted as he continued, “You and your assistants are to escort the two contentious gentlemen to separate waiting rooms
, in which places they shall remain until they see fit to comport themselves in civilized fashion.”

  Congressman Pratt left the room with majestic dignity. Congressman Goldwater shouted, “Defense of the truth is no vice! I should not be removed.” He scuffled with the men who tried to take him away, and landed one solid blow before they did.

  All the Freedom Party men stood up and cheered at the chaos they, for once, had not created. That made Flora signal to the Speaker, a fellow Socialist. He pointed back, intoning, “The chair recognizes the distinguished Congresswoman from New York, Mrs. Blackford.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Speaker.” She waited till the din died down a little, then said, “In my opinion, the Freedom Party has been the source of most of the problems and most of the bad manners in both houses of Congress, even if members of other parties have caught the disease from it. The Freedom Party—”

  She couldn’t go on, not right away, for the House chamber echoed with angry shouts from the Freedom Party Congressmen and cries of “Hear! Hear!” from Socialists, Republicans, and even a good many Democrats. Speaker Cannon again plied the gavel with might and main. At last, something like quiet returned.

  Flora resumed: “The Freedom Party, as I was saying before its Congressmen so neatly proved my point, differs from other parties in the United States in one particular: that its members do not truly wish to take part in the serious business of making this country a better place.”

  To her surprise—indeed, to her amazement—Congressman Mahon of Houston sprang to his feet, crying, “Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! If the distinguished Congresswoman from New York will yield . . .”

  The sight of a Freedom Party man following proper parliamentary procedure must have astonished Congressman Cannon as much as it did Flora. “Mrs. Blackford?” the Speaker asked.

  “I will yield for a brief statement or question,” Flora said. “Not for a harangue.”

  Even that didn’t upset Mahon. “I will be brief,” he promised. Flora nodded. The Speaker pointed to the Houstonian. Mahon said, “I would like to note that the Freedom Party Representatives do not wish to serve our states here in Philadelphia or in Washington. We—”

  This time, shouts of, “Shame!” drowned him out. The Speaker of the House rapped furiously for order. With some reluctance, he said, “The gentleman from Houston has the floor. He may continue.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Mahon said, willing to be courteous since the presiding officer of the House had ruled in his favor. “We don’t care to be here, I say, because we would rather represent our states in Richmond, since they rightfully belong to the Confederate States of America!”

  “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” his fellow Freedom Party members chanted, and, “Plebiscite! Plebiscite! Plebiscite!”

  Roars of, “Treason!” and, “Never!” came from Democrats, Republicans, and some Socialists. Again, Speaker Cannon had to ply his gavel with might and main to restore quiet—or at least lower the noise. He might have done better by firing a pistol round into the ceiling. But if he’d had a pistol, other Congressman would have, too, and they might have aimed them at one another. The Speaker said, “Mrs. Blackford has the floor. You may go on, Mrs. Blackford.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Flora said. “However much pleasure most of us would take from no longer having the company of the members from the Freedom Party, I am also certain more than a few of us would not care to give them the satisfaction of gaining anything they want, simply because they have made themselves so obnoxious to us.”

  That brought jeers from the Congressmen from Houston and Kentucky, jeers largely drowned out by a storm of applause from Representatives of other parties. Flora wasn’t particularly proud of herself despite the applause. She knew she’d sunk to the Freedom Party’s level in condemning it.

  Hosea wouldn’t have done that, she thought. When he’d been a Congressman, Hosea Blackford had got on well with everyone—he’d got on better with reactionary Democrats than Flora ever had. But the men from the Freedom Party weren’t just reactionaries. They were reactionaries on the march, in the same way as the Reds in the failed uprisings in the CSA and Russia had been radicals on the march. Up till the past few years, the world hadn’t had to worry about revolutionary reaction. It did now.

  Wearily, Speaker Cannon fought yet again for order. When he finally got it, he spoke in wistful tones: “Do you suppose we could possibly return to discussion of the trade bill before us at the moment?”

  They did go on. In due course, the Speaker let Congressman Pratt and Congressman Goldwater return to the floor. They started sniping at each other again, but within—sometimes narrowly within—the rules of House decorum. The Freedom Party Congressmen from Houston and Kentucky went back to ignoring the rules, as they usually did. They cared nothing for them, and admitted as much. They didn’t want to be here in the first place, and seemed to operate on the theory that, if they made all the colleagues hate and despise them, their states became more likely to leave the USA for the CSA. What worried Flora was that they might well prove right.

  Thanks to their unending shenanigans—and thanks to the basically uninspiring nature of trade bills—the day crawled past on hands and knees. Speaker Cannon didn’t look for a motion to adjourn till well past six that evening. When he did, a throng of Representatives tried to make it and another throng tried to second it. Wearily, the members left the floor.

  Competition for cabs outside was as fierce as anything that had gone on within the hallowed hall. Flora, normally polite and gentle, brawled with the best of them. She wanted to get home to Joshua as fast as she could. Thanks to a judicious elbow, she quickly won a ride.

  Her son looked up from his homework in surprise when she came through the door. “Hello,” he said, his voice at fifteen as deep as a man’s. “I didn’t expect you back so soon. Weren’t you going to do some office work before you came here?”

  “The session ran long, so I came . . .” Flora’s voice trailed away, also in surprise—not at what he’d said but at what she smelled. “That’s cigarette smoke. When did you start smoking cigarettes?”

  “Last year, not long after Father died,” Joshua answered, resolutely nonchalant. “Everybody at school does it, and it doesn’t hurt anything.”

  “It hurts me that you’ve been sneaking cigarettes behind my back,” Flora said. “If you thought I wouldn’t mind, why didn’t you come out and tell me?”

  “Well . . .” Her son looked uncomfortable, but he finally said, “Mostly because you’re so old-fashioned about some things.”

  “Old-fashioned?” Flora yelped. If that wasn’t the most unkind cut of all for someone who’d always prided herself on her radicalism, she couldn’t imagine what would be. “I am not!”

  “Oh, yeah?” Joshua said, a colloquialism that made his mother incline more toward reaction than radicalism. He went on, “If you weren’t old-fashioned, you wouldn’t flabble about cigarettes.” As fifteen-year-old boys are wont to do, he acted monstrously proud of his own logic.

  Flora blinked at the slang, then figured out what it had to mean. “I don’t flabble about cigarettes—for grownups,” she said. Instead of seeming pleased that she’d understood him, Joshua merely looked scornful that she was trying to speak his language. She might have guessed he would. Suppressing a sigh, she forged ahead: “No matter what you think, you’re not a grownup yet.”

  “Father was smoking cigarettes when he was fifteen,” Joshua said.

  He was right about that, however much Flora wished he weren’t. “Your father grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere,” she answered. “When he was fifteen, he was going to the bathroom in a privy, bathing once a month, and eating food his folks had cooked over buffalo chips. Do you want to imitate him there, too?”

  For a moment, she thought he would say bathing once a month didn’t sound so bad. But he visibly changed his mind and changed the subject: “If cigarettes are so terrible, how come everybody smokes them?”

 
; “Not everybody does.”

  “Just about!” Joshua said, by which he doubtless meant three or four people he liked did.

  This time, Flora didn’t suppress her sigh. She knew a losing fight when she saw one, and she saw one here. Whether she liked it or not, Joshua was going to smoke. She said, “From now on, you don’t need to sneak any more.” That made him happy. She wished it would have made her happy, too.

  Sylvia Enos came out of the moving-picture theater with Ernie. She looked happy—she’d liked the film. He didn’t, and hadn’t. “What was wrong with it?” she asked. “It was exciting, and it had a good love story.”

  “What was wrong with it?” he echoed. “I will tell you what was wrong. The men who made it never saw war. They were boys in 1914. They had to be. Either that or they were cowards. Half the things in the film could not have happened. Soldiers would have gone to the guardhouse for the other half.”

  “It’s only a story,” Sylvia said. “It’s not supposed to be true.”

  “But it pretends to be true,” Ernie said. “That offends me.”

  She didn’t want him angry. When he got angry, he got angry at the whole world, not just at what had bothered him in the first place. She said, “Let’s go somewhere, and we’ll have a couple of drinks, and we’ll forget about it.”

  “All right,” he said. “That film deserves forgetting.”

  They ended up having more than a couple of drinks—considerably more, in Ernie’s case. Then they went back to Sylvia’s apartment. Mary Jane was out with friends, and wouldn’t be back till late. They had the place to themselves. Sober or drunk, Ernie made a conscientious lover. He did what he needed to do to make Sylvia happy. Then she tried to do the same for him. She’d had pretty good luck with that lately. Not tonight, though. Try as she would, nothing happened.

  She did her best to make light of it, saying, “See what those last couple of cocktails will do to you?”

  “My cock has more wrong with it than cocktails,” Ernie answered, which was unfortunately true. “Half-cocked,” he muttered. That was what Sylvia thought she heard, anyhow. He shook his head. “It is no good. It is no goddamn good at all.”