The Victorious opposition ae-3 Read online

  Fuming, Morrell left Brigadier General Ballou's office. Fuming still, he had thirty-two barrels ready to load onto flatcars at the required time. Daniel Mac-Arthur's cigarette and holder twitched in his mouth when he counted the machines. He said not a word.

  The trains left on time. People started shooting at them as soon as they passed from Kansas to Sequoyah, which had also belonged to the CSA before the war. Sequoyah had been a Confederate state; it was not a state in the USA. It was occupied territory. The United States did not want it, and the feeling was mutual.

  Before long, Morrell put men back in the barrels as the train rattled south and west. They could use the machine guns to shoot back. More shots came their way in the east, where the Five Civilized Tribes had dominated life in Confederate times. The United States weren't soft on Indians, as the Confederate States had been-especially not on Indians who'd looked to Richmond rather than Philadelphia.

  But, bad as Sequoyah was, it didn't prepare anybody for Houston. The train was two days late getting into Lubbock because of repeated sabotage to the tracks. Signs screamed out warnings: saboteurs will be shot without trial! "Maybe they can't read here," Sergeant Pound suggested after one long, long delay.

  Then they passed a trackside gallows with three bodies dangling from it. One of the bodies had a Confederate battle flag draped over it. That was what Morrell thought at first, anyhow. Then he realized the colors were reversed, which made it a Freedom Party flag, not one from the CSA.

  He'd seen plenty of yanks out! graffiti when he was stationed up in Kamloops, British Columbia. Those were as nothing next to the ones he saw as the train slowed to a stop coming into the Lubbock railroad yard. leave us alone! was a common favorite. csa! was quick and easy to write. So were the red-white-red stripes and the blue X's that suggested Confederate flags. let us go back to our country! was long, and so less common; the same held true for Houston was a traitor! But the one word seemingly everywhere was freedom!

  "Good Lord, sir!" Sergeant Pound said, eyeing the graffiti with much less equanimity than he'd shown rolling past the hanged Houstonians. "What have we got ourselves into?"

  "Trouble," Morrell answered. That was the only word that came to mind.

  "We will advance into downtown Lubbock," Brigadier General MacArthur declared as the barrels came down off their flatcars. "I have declared full martial law in this state. That declaration is now being published in newspapers and broadcast over the wireless. The citizens of Houston are responsible for their own behavior, and have been warned of this. If anyone hinders your progress towards or through the city in any way, shoot to kill. Do not allow yourselves to be endangered. Is that clear?"

  No one denied it. Daniel MacArthur climbed up onto the turret of one of the modern barrels (to Morrell's relief, MacArthur didn't choose his). He struck a dramatic pose, saying, Forward! without words. The barrels rumbled south, toward central Lubbock.

  They couldn't advance at much above a walking pace, because most of them were slow, flatulent leftovers from the Great War. Morrell knew the handful of modern machines could have got there in a third the time. Whether that would have done them any good was another question.

  Lubbock didn't look like a town that had seen rioting. It looked like a town that had seen war. Blocks weren't just burnt out. They were shattered, either by artillery fire or bombardment from the air. The twin stenches of sour smoke and old death lingered, now weaker, now stronger, but never absent.

  Not many people were on the streets. The eyes of the ones who were… In Canada, plenty of people had hated and resented American soldiers for occupying the country. Morrell had thought he was used to it. But, as with the graffiti, what was on the faces of the people here put Canada in the shade. These people didn't just want him gone. They didn't even just want him dead. They wanted him to suffer a long time before he died. If he ever fell into their hands, he would, too.

  No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than a shot rang out from an apartment building that hadn't been wrecked. A bullet sparked off the barrel Daniel MacArthur was riding, about a foot from his leg.

  At the sound of the shot, all the men and women on the street automatically threw themselves flat. They knew what was coming. And it came. Half a dozen barrels opened fire on that building, the old ones with their side-mounted machine guns, the new with turret cannon and coaxial machine guns. Windows vanished. So did a couple of big stretches of brick wall between the windows as cannon shells struck home. Glass and fragments of brick flew in all directions. People on the street crawled out of the way; they knew better than to get up and expose themselves to the gunfire.

  Through it all, Daniel MacArthur never moved a muscle. He had nerve and he had style. Based on what Morrell remembered from the Great War, none of that surprised him. Did MacArthur have brains? Morrell wasn't so sure there.

  Only after the front of the apartment building was wrecked did the brigadier general wave the barrels forward once more. They make a desert and they call it peace, Morrell thought. But no one fired any more shots before the armored detachment reached its perimeter in the center of town.

  Once they got there, MacArthur summoned reporters from the Gazette and the Statesman, the two local newspapers. He said, "Gentlemen, here is something your readers need to know: if they interfere with the U.S. Army or disobey military authority, they will end up dead. And, having died, they will be buried in the soil of the United States, for they cannot and will not detach this state from this country. All they can do is spill their own blood to no purpose. Take that back to your plants and print it."

  They did. The same message went out over the wireless, and in the papers in El Paso and other towns in Houston. Contingents of Morrell's barrels, along with infantrymen and state police, reinforced it. The rioting eased. Morrell was as pleased as he was surprised. Maybe Brigadier General MacArthur was pretty smart after all. Or maybe someone on the other side of the border had decided the rioting should ease for the time being. Morrell wished like hell that hadn't occurred to him.

  Miguel and Jorge Rodriguez stood side by side in the farmhouse kitchen. They both looked very proud. They wore identical broad-brimmed cloth hats, short-sleeved cotton shirts, sturdy denim shorts, socks, and stout shoes. They also wore identical proud smiles.

  Hats, shirts, and shorts were of the light brown color the Confederate Army, for no reason Hipolito Rodriguez had ever been able to understand, called butternut. On the pocket above the left breast of each shirt was sewn a Confederate battle flag with colors reversed: the emblem of the Freedom Party.

  "I will miss your work," Rodriguez told his two older sons. "I will miss it, but the country needs it."

  "That's right, Father," Jorge said. "And they'll pay us money-not a lot of money, but some-to do the work."

  "I'll help you, Father," Pedro-the youngest son-said. He wasn't old enough to join the Freedom Youth Corps yet, and had been sick-jealous of his brothers ever since they did. Being useful on the farm wasn't much consolation, but it was what he had, and he made the most of it.

  "I know you will." Rodriguez set a hand on his shoulder. "You're a good boy. All of you are good boys."

  "Sн," his wife said. She probably hadn't followed the whole conversation, most of which was in English, but she got that. In Spanish, she went on, "I'll miss you while you are gone." The tears in her eyes spoke a universal language.

  "Father was right," Miguel said importantly. "The country does need us, so you shouldn't cry. We'll do big things for Sonora, big things for Baroyeca. I hear"-his voice dropped to an excited whisper-"I hear we are going to put in the poles to carry the wires to bring electricity down from Buenavista. Electricity!"

  Instead of being impressed, Magdalena Rodriguez, was practical: "We already have poles to bring the telegraph. Why not use those?"

  Miguel and Jorge looked at each other. Plainly, neither one of them knew the answer. Just as plainly, neither one wanted to admit it. At last, Jorge said, "Because these poles a
re special, Mother." He might not even have noticed switching back to Spanish to talk to Magdalena.

  "Come on, boys," Hipolito said. "Let's go into town." His sons had grumbled that they were almost grown men, that they were going off to do men's work, and that they didn't need their father escorting them to Baroyeca. He'd explained he was proud of them and wanted to show them off. He'd also explained he would wallop them if they grumbled any more. They'd stopped.

  Before they left, he made sure his own Freedom Party pin was on his shirt. They trooped out of the farmhouse together. Neither the crow that fluttered up from the roof nor the two lizards that scuttled into a hole seemed much impressed. Before long, Rodriguez's sons were less delighted, too. "My feet hurt," Miguel complained. Jorge nodded.

  "This happened to me when I went into the Army," Rodriguez said. "Shoes pinch. Up till then, I hadn't worn anything but sandals." He looked down at his feet. He wore sandals now. They were more comfortable than shoes any day. But comfort wasn't always the only question. "For some of what you do, for working in the mountains, sandals won't protect your feet. Good shoes like those will."

  "They'll give us blisters," Jorge said. Now Miguel was the one who nodded in agreement.

  "For a little while, yes," Rodriguez answered. "Then your feet will toughen up, and you'll be fine." He could afford to say that. His feet weren't the ones suffering.

  When they came to Baroyeca-Jorge limping a little and trying not to show it, for his shoes pinched tighter than Miguel's-Rodriguez led them to the town square between the alcalde's house and the church, as he'd been instructed to do. There he found most of the boys in the area, all standing solemnly in ranks that weren't so neat as they should have been. One of the new members of the guardнa civil, a man who'd been a sergeant during the war, was in charge of them.

  "ЎLibertad, Hipolito!" he called. "These are your boys?"

  "My older ones, Felipe," Rodriguez answered. "ЎLibertad!"

  "They'll do fine," Felipe Rojas said. "They won't have too much nonsense to knock out of them. Some of these little brats…" He shook his head. "Well, you can guess which ones."

  "A lot of them will be ones whose fathers don't belong to the Party," Rodriguez predicted. Felipe Rojas nodded. Rodriguez eyed the youths. He couldn't tell by the uniforms; those were all the same. But the stance gave away who was who a lot of the time, that and whether a boy looked eager or frightened.

  The bell in the church struck nine. Rodriguez let out a sigh of relief. He'd been told to get here before the hour. He hadn't realized he'd cut it so close.

  A few minutes later, another boy tried to join the ranks in the square. Rojas ran him off, shouting, "You don't deserve to be here! You can't even obey orders about when to come. You're a disgrace to your uniform. Get out! Get out!"

  "But, seсor-" protested his father, who was not a Party man.

  "No!" Rojas said. "He had his orders. He disobeyed them. You helped, no doubt. But anyone who doesn't understand from the start that the Freedom Youth Corps is about obedience and discipline doesn't deserve to be in it. Get him out of here, and you can go to the devil with him." The boy slunk away, his face a mask of misery. His father followed, hands clenched into impotent fists. He was not the least important man in Baroyeca, but he'd been treated as if he were.

  Robert Quinn came into the square, pushing a wheelbarrow full of shovels. "Hello, boys," he said. "ЎLibertad!"

  "ЎLibertad!" they echoed raggedly. Some of them were still looking after the youngster who'd been sent away.

  "These are your spades," Quinn said in his accented but fluent Spanish. "You will have the privilege of using them to make Sonora a better place." Most of them smiled at that, liking the idea.

  "These are your spades," Felipe Rojas echoed. "You will have the privilege of taking care of them, of keeping them sharp, of keeping them shiny, of keeping their handles polished. You will take them everywhere you go in the Freedom Youth Corps. You will sleep with them, por Dios. And you will enjoy sleeping with them, more than you would with a woman. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? Answer when I talk to you!"

  "Sн, seсor," they chorused in alarm.

  Now Hipolito Rodriguez smiled, and he wasn't the only man his age who did. Rojas' rant sounded much like what sergeants had said at the training camp during the war, except they'd been talking about rifles, not spades. Rojas took a shovel from the wagon and tossed it, iron blade up, to the closest youth. The boy awkwardly caught it. Another shovel flew, and another, till every boy had one.

  "Attention!" Rojas shouted. They came to what they imagined attention to be. There were as many versions as there were boys. Rodriguez smiled again. So did the rest of the fathers and other men in the square. They'd been through the mill. They knew what attention was, even if their sons didn't.

  Felipe Rojas took a shovel from a youngster and showed the boys of the Freedom Youth Corps how to stand at attention, the tool lightly gripped in his right hand. More or less clumsily, the boys imitated him. He tossed the shovel back to the youth, who also came to attention.

  Another sharp command (all of these were in English): "Shoulder-spades!" Again, the boys made a hash of it. One of them almost brained the youngster beside him. Hipolito Rodriguez didn't laugh at that. He remembered what a deadly weapon an entrenching tool could be.

  Again, Rojas took the shovel from the boy. He stood at attention with it, then smoothly brought it up over his shoulder. After demonstrating once more, he returned it.

  "Now you try," he told the youths. "Shoulder-spades!" They did their best. Rojas winced. "That was terrible," he said. "I've seen burros that could do a better job. But you'll improve. We'll practice it till your right shoulders grow calluses. You'll find out." His voice, like the voice of any proper drill sergeant making a promise like that, was full of gloating anticipation.

  He showed them left face, right face, and about-face. He marched them, raggedly, across the square. No one hit anyone else with a shovel as they turned and countermarched. Why nobody hit anybody else Rodriguez couldn't have said. He thought he ought to go light a candle in the church to show his gratitude to the Virgin for the miracle.

  "I have one last piece of advice for you," Felipe Rojas said when the boys had got to their starting place without casualties. "Here it is. You've been fooling your fathers and talking back to your mothers ever since you found out you could get away with it. Don't try it with me, or with any other Freedom Youth Corps man. You'll be sorry if you do. You have no idea how sorry you'll be. But some of you will find out. Boys your age are damn fools. We'll get rid of some of that, though. You see if we don't."

  Some of them-most of them-didn't believe him. No boys of that age believed they were fools. They thought they knew everything there was to know-certainly more than the idiot fathers they had the misfortune to be saddled with. They'd find out. And, in the Freedom Youth Corps, they wouldn't have to bang heads with their fathers while they were finding out. That might make the Corps worthwhile all by itself.

  Robert Quinn drifted over to Rodriguez. "Two boys going in, eh, seсor? Good for you, and good for them. They're likely-looking young men."

  "They aren't young men yet," Rodriguez said. "They just think they are. That's why the Freedom Youth Corps will be good for them, I think."

  "I think you are right, Seсor Rodriguez," the Freedom Party organizer said. "This will teach them many of the things they will need to know if, for example, they are called into the Army."

  Rodriguez looked at the English-speaker who'd come from the north. "How can they be called into the Army, Seсor Quinn? There has been no conscription in los Estados Confederados since the end of the Great War."

  "This is true," Quinn said. "Still, the Freedom Party aims to change many things. We want the country strong again. If we are not allowed to call up our own young men to serve the colors, are we strong or are we weak?"

  "Weak, seсor, without a doubt," Hipolito Rodriguez replied. "But los Estados Unidos are strong now.
What will they do if we begin conscription once more?"

  "This is not for you to worry about. It is not for me to worry about, either," Quinn said. "It is for Jake Featherston to take care of. And he will, Seсor Rodriguez. You may rely on that." He spoke as certainly as the priests did of Resurrection.

  And Rodriguez said, "Oh, I do." He meant it, too. Like so many others in the CSA, he wouldn't have joined the Freedom Party if he hadn't.

  "Well, well," Colonel Abner Dowling said, studying the Salt Lake City Bee. "Who would have thought it, Captain?"

  "What's that, sir?" Angelo Toricelli asked.

  Dowling tapped the story on page three with his fingernail. "The riots in Houston," he told his adjutant. "They just go on and on, now up, now down, world without end, amen." He was not a man immune to the pleasure of watching someone else struggle through a tough time. Serving under General George Custer, he'd had plenty of tough times of his own. He'd come to savor those that happened to other people, not least because they sometimes ended up getting him off the hook.

  Captain Toricelli said, "Of course they go on and on. The Freedom Party in the CSA keeps stirring things up there. If we could seal off the border between Houston and Texas, we'd be able to put a lid on things there."

  "I wish that were true, but I don't think it is," Dowling said. Toricelli looked miffed. Dowling remembered looking miffed plenty of times when General Custer said something particularly idiotic. Now the shoe was on the other foot. He'd been stuck then. His adjutant was now. And he didn't think he was being an idiot. He explained why: "The way things are these days, Captain, don't you believe the Confederates could pull strings just as well by wireless?"

  "Pretty hard to smuggle rifles in by wireless," Toricelli remarked.

  "If not from Texas, Houston could get them from Chihuahua," Dowling said. "To stop the traffic, we'd really need to seal our whole border with the Confederate States. I'd love to, but don't hold your breath. There's too much land, and not enough people to cover it. I wish things were different, but I don't think they are."