Harry Turtledove: The Guns of the South

“No, I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t matter anyhow. Genera! Lee—” Three guards growled at the same time. Lang looked briefly nonplused, then realized his mistake. “Sorry. President Lee, if you want me to build you a bloody computer, you may as well hang me now. I can’t do it, or rather, you can’t do it. You not only lack the technology you need, you lack the technology to make the technology you need, and likely a couple of more regressions before that, too. Give me electricity and I’ll show you how to use however many computers you’ve captured. You can do that until they break down. When they do, they’re gone for good.”

“But you repair computers,” Lee objected. “You just said as much.”

“So I do, when I have the proper tools and parts. Where am I to come by those in 1868?”

“And if repairing one becomes a condition for your continued freedom—for your survival?”

Benny Lang stared bleakly at him. “Then I’m dead.”

Lee liked the answer; it bespoke a certain basic honesty. If any Rivington men ever saw the outside of Libby Prison, he resolved that Benny Lang would be one of them. For now, though, he said only, “Tell your comrades what I have said to you, Mr. Lang. Before long, you will be furnished paper and pens. I want a complete listing of the types of knowledge each of you possesses. Warn the rest not to lie; you have lied to the Confederacy far too much, and any claim one of you proves unable to substantiate will result in his being considered a full-fledged traitor once more. Do you understand that and agree to it?”

“I understand it. As for agreeing, what choice have I?”

“None,” Lee said implacably. “Be warned also that your crimes and your likely trustworthiness will be weighed against what you know when we consider whether to release any of you. Also, Mr. Lang, do pass on to your friends the vote of the House of Representatives. If you are set at liberty, you shall not be permitted to meddle in politics. Is that quite clear?”

The resentment that flared in Lang’s eyes showed it was. “You give us few choices.”

“Would you, in my position?” Lee said, and Lang would not meet his gaze. He turned to the prison guards. “Take him back upstairs.”

As they marched off with Benny Lang, Lee walked back down to the street. His bodyguard said, “Sir, if it was up to me, the only time those bastards ever saw the sun again except through iron bars would be the day we took ‘em out to hang ‘em.”

“Believe me, Lieutenant, I sympathize with you there,” Lee said, “but they may yet prove of great value to our country. And it is our country, Lieutenant. We shall shape it to our ends, not theirs, I promise you that.”

“But if they do meddle, sir?”

“Then we hang them,” Lee said. Satisfied at last, the bodyguard raised his repeater in salute.

“Ain’t gonna be easy, Nate,” Mollie Bean said. The closer the wedding day came, the more nervous she got. She stooped down, tossed a pebble into Stony Creek.

“We’ll do fine,” Caudell said stoutly, watching the ripples spread. “Your hair is growing out nice as you please; pretty soon you’ll be able to pack away your wig and just say you’ve changed your style.”

“My hair’s not what I’m fret tin’ about, an’ you know it perfectly well. Ain’t gonna be easy livin’ in this town with some of the people knowin’ I used to be a whore.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be so blunt,” Caudell muttered.

“How come? Don’t you like bein’ reminded, neither?”

“You know it’s not that,” he answered quickly; they’d had this discussion before. He continued, “Once we’re married, do you want to move back to Rivington, then?”

“God almighty, no!” Mollie threw up her hands. A startled blue heron leaped into the air with a loud whuff, whuff, whuff of wings. “In Rivington, everybody knows I was—doin’ what I was doin’—till first part o’ this year. Hereabouts, it’s only some of the men who remember back to the war—leastways, I hope that’s how it is.”

“Nobody’s ever given me a hard time about it.” Caudell made a fist. “Anyone who tried, I’d give him this. Now you tell me straight out, Mollie, have you ever had any trouble from the women in town, any at all?”

“No-o,” she said; he judged she was telling the truth but didn’t quite trust it. As if to confirm that, she went on, “sometimes, though, I just don’t feel like I can look them fine ladies in the eye.”

“They’re no finer than you are,” he insisted, and meant every word of it. “Come to that, do you want me to tell you which ones had great big babies six or seven months after they said their ‘I do’s’? I can name three or four right off the top of my head.”

That won a giggle from her. “Can you? It don’t surprise me. “

“There, you see?” he said triumphantly.

“Ain’t gonna be easy,” she said again, brief confidence deserting her.

He took a deep breath. “How’s this, then? We’ll stay here as long as everything is good, as long as everybody treats us the way they’re supposed to. The first time anybody doesn’t, we’ll Pack up whatever we happen to have and move someplace where nobody’s ever heard of either one of us, and we’ll make ourselves a fresh start.”

“You don’t want to do that, Nate.” Mollie sounded worried. “Hard pullin’ up stakes when you’ve been somewheres a long time, An’ you like Nashville; you know you do.”

“I like you more,” he said, and intended to add, “And I want you to be happy, too.”

Before he had the chance, Mollie pulled his face down to hers and kissed him. Her eyes were shining as she said, “Nobody never told me nothin’ like that before.” Some of her fear seemed to leave her once more, for she looked around and then waved, and this time she surprised no birds. “It’s right pretty here—the willow there, the jasmine just across the creek that’ll be all full o’ sweet flowers tonight…Nate! Whatever is the matter, Nate?”

“Nothing, really, I reckon.” But Caudell still felt as though he’d seen a ghost; the sensation was almost as strong as when he’d fired through the Rivington man on the time machine platform. After a moment to steady himself, he explained: “I was fishing under that willow when poor Josephine—remember Josephine?—stuck her head out through the jasmine. Piet Hardie had the hounds out after her.”

“Him.” Mollie’s face changed; her voice needed only the one word to turn flat and hard. “I’ve prayed more than once that he didn’t get away when we took Rivington. It ain’t Christian, but I done it. ‘Fraid I’ll never know, though.”

“Oh yes, you will.” Caudell told how he’d huddled behind Hardie’s body after Henry Pleasants touched off the mine outside Rivington.

Mollie clapped her hands together when he was done. “He got what was comin’ to him, by God.” Caudell felt as if he were a bold knight who’d slain the Rivington man in single combat, not just stumbled upon (almost stumbled over) his corpse. By the way Mollie flushed and pressed herself against him, she had something of that same feeling herself. She looked up and down the creek. Her voice went low and throaty. “Don’t seem to be anybody around, Nate”

“So there doesn’t.” Grinning, he laid her down on the thick, soft grass, then quickly stooped beside her. With practiced fingers, he undid the buttons and eyelets that held her dress closed; the process would have gone even faster than it did had he not paused every few seconds to kiss the flesh he exposed. But soon she lay bare, and he as well. Their sweat-slick skins slid against each other. “Oh, Mollie,” he said. She did not answer, not in words.