The Disunited States of America ct-4 Read online

  "Unless you get shot in it," Beckie said.

  "There is that," he agreed. "You're just as dead if you get shot in an uprising as you are any other time. Shall we go find out how bad things are?" Neither Beckie nor Gran said no. He drove southwest toward Charleston.

  He passed several military checkpoints coming into the city. Two things got him through: everybody in the car was white, and he had a genuine Virginia driver's license. Soldiers checked it with their laptops. It came up green every time.

  "Oh, my," Beckie said when they got into Charleston.

  "It wasn't like this when I left," Mr. Brooks said.

  "I sure hope not," she told him.

  "It's not this bad on the news," Gran said, looking around in disbelief. This was without a doubt a city that had been fought over, and fought over hard. Buildings were knocked flat. Bullet holes scarred wooden fences and walls. The stink of smoke filled the air and stung Beckie's eyes. Under it lay another, nastier stink: the stink of death.

  "On the news, Gran, they don't want you to think it's bad," Beckie said, as gently as she could.

  "But the news is supposed to show you what's what," Gran said.

  Beckie wondered how Gran could have got to be an old lady while staying so innocent. Mr. Brooks said, "The news shows what the people in charge want you to think is what." No, he didn't come to town on a load of turnips.

  He passed up a couple of motels and hotels that had taken battle damage, and a couple of more that hadn't. "What's wrong with this one?" Beckie asked when he drove past yet another.

  "Didn't look good," he answered, and left it there. "Ah, here we go," he said a minute or so later, and pulled up at one across the street from a police station. "You ought to be safe here. I'll come back and check on you later today."

  "Thank you very much," Beckie said.

  "I want a room with a TV with better news," Gran said. When you got right down to it, that didn't sound like such a bad idea.

  Twelve

  Justin had been wondering how to get away from his squad. Once he decided to risk it, it turned out to be the easiest thing in the world. He just walked off, looking as if he knew where he was going and what he was doing.

  He'd come a couple of blocks when he got to a checkpoint. "What's up?" one of the soldiers there asked him.

  He pointed ahead. "I'm supposed to patrol down that way."

  "Okay." The soldier didn't ask any more questions. Justin was white and he was in uniform, so the fellow figured he had to be all right. He'd counted on that. The soldier at the checkpoint did say, "Keep your eyes peeled. Still may be a few holdouts running around loose."

  "Thanks. I will." That was the last thing Justin wanted to hear. He tramped on. Other soldiers went here and there, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups. Except for that one sentry, nobody challenged him. If you seemed legit, people assumed you were. Most of the time, they were right. Every once in a while, you could take advantage of them.

  He heard scattered gunshots, but none very close. The civilians on the street were all white. African Americans were lying low. How much good would that do them? Sooner or later—likely sooner—the white Virginians would take their revenge for the uprising. That would make the Negroes hate them even more, and would light some sparks to help kindle the next revolt.

  How could Virginia break the cycle? The only way Justin saw was for whites to treat blacks the same way they treated each other. He also saw that that was something no local whites wanted to do. They feared, and with some justice, equality wouldn't seem like enough. They looked fearfully toward black-ruled Mississippi, the way slaveowners in the home timeline once looked fearfully toward black-ruled Haiti.

  That wasn't his worry, for which he thanked heaven. It might be Crosstime Traffic's worry one of these days. The company would have to figure out what to do here, and whether it could do anything. Sometimes slipping the right idea to the right people at the right moment made all the difference in the world. Sometimes it didn't change a thing. You never could tell till you tried.

  He turned on to the street on which Mr. Brooks' coin and stamp shop lay. His heart pounded in his chest. Was everything all right? Was anything left? He didn't want to think anything bad could happen to his mother. But he'd seen enough horror the past couple of days to know anything could happen to anybody.

  There'd been fighting here. Several buildings had bites taken out of them. Bullets pocked walls and shattered windows. The donut house across the street from the shop, the one where he'd seen the car pull up when he first got into Charleston, was nothing but a pile of rubble. Did somebody make a point of knocking it flat, or was it just unlucky? He'd probably never know.

  But the coin and stamp shop was still standing. Even if it weren't, the room in the subbasement where the transposition chamber came and went wouldn't be damaged. But could Mom have got down there fast enough? Even if she could have, would Crosstime Traffic have let her leave this alternate with a genetically engineered disease on the loose? It seemed unlikely.

  Justin hoped that was all wasted worry. He looked up and down the street. No other soldiers in sight. Nobody to notice if he went in here. He pulled at the door. It was locked. He muttered—he should have known it would be. He still had a key. He put it in the lock and turned, then tried the door. It opened.

  Nobody stood behind the counter. Justin took a couple of steps forward into the shop, letting the door click shut behind him. The sharp little noise brought his mother out from the back room. She looked alarmed—she looked terrified—at seeing a large soldier with an assault rifle in the shop. But her voice was brisk and didn't wobble as she asked, "What do you want, Private?"

  She didn't recognize him. He was wearing a grimy uniform she didn't expect, a helmet that changed the shape of his face, and a couple of days' worth of filth and stubble. He grinned. "Hi, Mom," he said.

  Her jaw dropped. "Justin?" she whispered. Then she said, "Justin!" at something not far from a scream and threw her arms around him. When she finally let go, she said, "I never thought I'd hug anybody carrying a gun."

  That reminded him of what he'd seen and done while he wore the uniform and the helmet and the dirt and stubble. With a shudder, he set the rifle down and said, "If I never see this . . . this thing again, it'll be too soon."

  "Oh." She looked at him again—for real this time. "You weren't just carrying ME! You used it, didn't you?"

  "Yeah." He grimaced. "If I didn't, one of the rebels would have used one on me. I lost my lunch right after that."

  "I believe you," his mother said. "How come you had it in the first place?"

  "It was the only way I saw to get back here from Elizabeth," Justin answered. "It worked, too." He wasn't exactly thrilled that it had. People said you could buy something at too high a price. He'd understood that with money before, but no other way. He did now.

  Mom must have seen as much on his face. "Well, you are here," she said. "That may not be the only thing that matters, but I'm awful glad to see you—now that I'm not scared to death any more, I mean. Is Randy all right?"

  "He was fine the last time I saw him, a couple of days ago," Justin said. "But how have you been? You were in the middle of everything."

  "More like on the edges," Mom said. "If this place were in the middle, it wouldn't still be standing."

  She was right about that. "Can they cure the disease the Ohioans turned loose?" he asked. "Can they get us out of here?"

  "They already have a vaccine. They're getting close to a cure," his mother answered.

  "A vaccine's just as good," Justin said, and then, remembering Irma and Mrs. Snodgrass, "Well, unless you've already got it, anyway."

  "Unless," his mother agreed. "The problem now, the way I understand it, is getting the vaccine to the Virginians without making them suspicious. Last I heard, we were thinking of mailing it to Richmond as if it came from a lab in Pennsylvania or Wabash." The state of Wabash wasn't too different from Indiana in the home timeline. "T
he hope is they'll be so glad to get it, they won't ask many questions."

  "What about getting us back to the home timeline?" Justin asked. That was the thing that was uppermost in his mind.

  "They . . . aren't quite ready yet," Mom said. "We've been exposed to the virus. The air the transposition chamber picks up when it opens for us may have the bug floating around in it, too. They don't want to bring it back to the home timeline."

  "But they've got the vaccine! You said they're close to a cure!" Justin had come back to Charleston wanting to get home. If he couldn't, if he was still stuck in this alternate, he might almost have stayed in Elizabeth—though it was nice to be sure Mom was okay.

  "They've got 'em, and they don't want to have to use 'em," she said. "That would be expensive, and if they start having cases anyway. . . . Well, can you imagine the lawsuits? They really—I mean really—don't want another black eye so soon after the slavery scandal."

  Justin could see that. It made good sense in terms of what Crosstime Traffic needed. In terms of what he and his mother and Mr. Brooks needed, though, it wasn't so great. "They can't just strand us here . . . can they?"

  "I don't think they'll do that," Mom said.

  "If they do, well sue them," Justin said fiercely.

  "Well, no." His mother shook his head. "We signed liability waivers before we came here. This isn't company negligence or anything. This is part of the risk we take when we come to a high-tech alternate. No lawyer will touch this one, and we'd get thrown out of court if we found one who would."

  "Oh." Justin didn't think he'd ever made a gloomier noise.

  "They're working on it," Mom said. "I don't know the details—they haven't told me. But they don't want to leave us here. That wouldn't look good, either."

  "Well, hooray." Getting saved because it helped Crosstime Traffic's image wasn't exactly what Justin had in mind, either.

  "You ought to be glad they've got some reason to want to bring us back," Mom said. "Otherwise, they wouldn't try so hard."

  "How hard are they trying now?"

  "I think something is happening. I hope so, anyway."

  "It had better be," Justin said, though he had no idea what he could do if it weren't.

  A car pulled up in front of the shop. Justin wasn't very surprised when Mr. Brooks got out. If he'd managed to get down to Charleston himself, that had to be the boot in the behind the coin and stamp dealer needed. Justin opened the door for him. Mr. Brooks greeted him with, "You dummy."

  "I made it," Justin said.

  "Oh, boy." He didn't impress the older man. Mr. Brooks pointed to the assault rifle leaning against the wall. "Did you have to use that?"

  "Yeah," Justin admitted in a small voice.

  "How did you like it?"

  Justin didn't say anything. His face must have said it all, though, because Mr. Brooks set a hand on his shoulder. Justin managed a shaky nod. "Thanks," he muttered.

  "It's okay," Mr. Brooks answered. "If you did like it, that would worry me. It's not a game out there. Whoever you shot, he was real. You always need to remember that. Sometimes it happens. If he's gonna shoot you, you take care of yourself and worry about it later. But you always have to take it seriously, because the other fellow wants to live just as much as you do."

  "I... found that out." Justin wondered if finding it out would set him apart from everybody he knew back in the home timeline. Knowing things your friends didn't couldn't help but isolate you from them . . . could it?

  "You've joined a club nobody wants to belong to." Mr. Brooks was scarily good at thinking along with him. The older man went on, "Chances are you'll meet more members than you know about, because the others won't talk about it any more than you will." He turned to Justin's mother. "What's going on here?"

  "I'm still alive. Nobody's robbed the place," she answered. Then she filled him in on the bigger picture, the way she had with Justin.

  He nodded. "Okay. Thanks. It could be worse. It could be better, too, but it could always be better."

  He was asking Mom more questions when Justin went into the back room. He got out of Adrian's uniform as fast as he could and put on the clothes he had in the pack. They were wrinkled as anything, but he didn't care. He didn't care about going upstairs for a different outfit, either. He wanted to turn into himself again, as fast as he could, not a Virginia soldier any more. Anything but a Virginia soldier, in fact.

  When he came out again, Mr. Brooks nodded to him. "Took the whammy off, did you?"

  "Yeah!" Justin said.

  "Don't blame you a bit."

  Justin nodded now. He was glad the coin and stamp dealer didn't blame him. But, all things considered, how much difference did that make? He'd blame himself for the rest of his life. If he hadn't put on the uniform . . . what?

  He started to think, That African-American kid would still be alive then. But was that true? Was it even likely? Wouldn't Smitty or one of the other real Virginia soldiers have shot him instead? Or, if they hadn't, wouldn't the self-propelled guns have killed him? How could you know? You couldn't, not for sure. He wondered if he was looking for an excuse to feel less guilty. He hoped not. He would stay a member of Mr. Brooks' unhappy club no matter what. He'd just have to figure out how to live with it, and that wouldn't happen overnight, either.

  He had the rest of his life to worry about it. The kid he'd shot didn't, not anymore. And that was exactly the point.

  "I don't feel good." Gran said it in a surprisingly matter-of-fact way. Most of the time, she was proud of her aches and pains. She used them to outdo other people around her who might have the nerve not to be well. But coming out and announcing something like this wasn't her usual style.

  Because it wasn't, Beckie paid more attention than she would have otherwise. "What's the matter?" she asked.

  "The light seems too bright. And I'm warm, even though I know the air conditioner is running," Gran said.

  Beckie walked over to her and put a hand on her forehead. She almost jerked it back in alarm. Her grandmother wasn't just warm. She was hot, much too hot. It could have been a lot of things. Beckie feared she knew what it was.

  "Can you get me some water?" Gran usually milked her symptoms for all they were worth, too.

  This time, Beckie didn't mind. As she went to the sink, she wondered what to do. Call the local emergency number? With fighting still going on in the city, would anybody pay attention? A long burst of machine-gun fire underscored her fears. Somebody screamed—not a short, frightened scream like the ones in the movies, but a shriek that went on and on and on. Anybody who screamed that way was dying as fast as he could, but not fast enough.

  But with people in Charleston making noises like that, how long would the emergency people take to get here if they came at all? What would they do when they did? Will they stick me in quarantine somewhere? Will I ever get out again? She and Gran were foreigners here. Did California even have a consulate in Charleston? She looked in the phone book and didn't find one. Especially during a rebellion, the Virginians could do anything they wanted.

  "Let me have some more," Gran said, so Beckie did.

  Then she looked in the phone book again. Sure enough, there it was: CHARLESTON COINS AND STAMP COMPANY. It gave an address along with the phone number. Beckie didn't know where that address was. She'd never expected to come to Charleston. But the room had a computer terminal. It was slow and clunky by California standards, but it worked.

  As she'd hoped, the coin and stamp shop was just a few blocks away. She'd figured Mr. Brooks would put her and Gran somewhere close to his shop. He and Justin were the only people she knew here. They could tell her what to do.

  Whatever it was, she needed to do it in a hurry. Gran was sitting there, sort of staring at the TV. She often watched without really knowing what was going on, but this was different. Her brain wasn't working right. She would have stared the same way if she were pointed in some other direction.

  Beckie tried using her cell phone to ca
ll the coin and stamp shop. No luck—all she got was static. The hotel room had no phone, any more than one in California would have. Land lines were dead, dead, dead. She wished she were in some backward part of the world where they still used them—Russia, maybe, or central Africa. She'd never imagined low tech could be better than high, but she'd never been in a war before, either. Phone service was probably out all over western Virginia and eastern Ohio. What a mess.

  If she couldn't call, she had to go. She didn't like leaving Gran by herself, but she couldn't see that she had much choice. Gran wasn't likely to wander off. If she got sicker . . . Beckie gnawed on the inside of her lower lip. She didn't like to think about that.

  I'm going to get help, she told herself. / won't be gone long. I hope I won't, anyway.

  Then she told Gran the same thing. Gran nodded vaguely. "I think the muffins are spoiled," she said, which meant she didn't hear or she was out of her head with fever or all of the above.

  Three blocks over and two blocks down toward the river. That was what the terminal said. It didn't say anything about what might be going on between here and there. Beckie wished it would have. She wasn't brave—not even close. But she knew she had to go, and so she left the hotel room before she gave herself much of a chance to think about it.

  The bellhops and porters were Negroes. So were the waiters and, she presumed, the cooks. In California, she wouldn't have paid much attention—and there would have been all kinds of people doing those jobs. Here, seeing black faces made her nervous. She knew it shouldn't have ... or should it? How much did they hate whites? How many good reasons for hating whites did they have?

  When a bellhop tipped his cap to her as she went out, she almost screamed. What was he thinking? How much did he despise himself—and her—because he had to make that servile gesture? How much did he wish he had a rifle in his hands and were fighting the soldiers from Virginia? Wouldn't paying them back almost be worth getting shot?