Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“If they don’t give up pretty soon, we’ll kill all of them.” Hrolfson sounded as if he looked forward to it.

So did Sam. Even so, he said, “Depends on how many of our guys they can take out before they go down. If they hurt us bad enough, then it’s not a bad bargain for them even if they do buy a plot.”

“Think they can do that, sir?” Lopatinsky asked anxiously.

“I hope not, and that’s the best answer I can give you.” Sam tapped the two broad gold stripes on his sleeve. He was proud he’d got them. He hadn’t dreamt of coming so far when he scrambled up the hawse hole into officers’ country. “I know a little something about what we do on the water. Land fighting-the only thing I know is, I’m glad I’m not in it. It’s a nasty, bloody business. When we go into action here, it’s usually over in a hurry, anyhow.”

“Yes, sir,” Lopatinsky said. “How long did we need to knock that limey out?”

“I didn’t look at my watch, but it wasn’t long.” Sam let it go at that. If one of the Karlskrona ’s big shells had hit the Josephus Daniels, the fight might have been over even quicker, with the wrong side winning. That bastard carried big guns, even if she had no armor and only a freighter’s engines.

“Could she have sunk us if she hit us?” Hrolfson asked, proving ignorance could be bliss.

“You bet your sweet ass she could,” Sam blurted. Hrolfson and Lopatinsky both stared at him. He laughed self-consciously. “You wanted a straight answer. You got one.”

“You usually give ’em, Skipper. That’s good,” Lopatinsky said. Hrolfson nodded. They made Sam almost as proud as knocking out the Karlskrona had done.

On the women’s side again. In a way, Hipolito Rodriguez had to be more careful there than he did on the other side of Camp Determination. He knew in his gut that the black men were dangerous. With the women, he and the other men in gray could let down their guard. They could regret it if they did, too.

The women tried to make the men set over them let down their guard. They dressed provocatively, and acted provocative. And it wasn’t just an act-a lot of them would deliver. They wanted more food, better food, better quarters. They wanted to stay out of the bathhouses. They hadn’t needed long to realize those were news as bad as it got. The trucks, by contrast, nobody seemed to mind. The mallates knew they would be leaving Camp Determination in them, so didn’t worry about climbing aboard. That the trips had no destination, they hadn’t figured out.

“Hello, Mistuh Sergeant, suh.” The black woman who spoke to Rodriguez was falling out of her blouse. “You takes care o’ me, I takes care o’ you. I takes care o’ you real good.” She had only her body to get what she wanted. She used what she had, striking a pose that would have got her arrested on any street corner in the CSA.

Rodriguez just kept walking. He’d found that worked best. If you stopped to talk it over and argue with every colored woman who made advances, you’d never go anywhere and you’d never get anything done all day.

Sometimes nothing worked. “You lousy fairy!” the woman snarled at his back. He ignored her. If he turned around, he could get her into whatever kind of trouble he wanted, up to and including a trip to the bathhouse.

He kept walking anyhow. With or without his help, she’d get hers soon enough any which way. Even if she latched on to some other guard as a protector, she’d get hers before long. Either he’d get bored with her or he’d find somebody else or he’d be off duty when she got picked in a cleanout. He might even be sorry afterwards. She wouldn’t be, not for long.

Another woman came up to him. “Mistuh Sergeant, suh?” None of them ever called him Troop Leader. They knew about Army ranks. The ranks Freedom Party guards used might have been in some foreign language for them. Since Rodriguez felt the same way about those ranks, he couldn’t blame the women-not for that, anyhow.

“What you want?” he asked. Unlike most, this one wasn’t trying to act like a slut. The novelty intrigued him. Because it did, he answered her instead of pretending she wasn’t there.

“Mistuh Sergeant, suh, my little boy, he powerful hungry. He only five year old. You got chilluns your ownself, suh?”

“I got children,” Rodriguez said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do nothin’.” Children died fast in the camp. Their mothers often died with them, from trying to share rations that weren’t enough for one.

The Negro woman sighed. “You find him some extra food, Mistuh Sergeant, suh, I do anything you want. Reckon you know what I mean. I don’t want nothin’ for me. But he too little to die like dat. He ain’t done nothin’ to nobody.”

“I don’t want nothing like that. I got a wife, too.” Rodriguez occasionally forgot about Magdalena-temptation would get the better of him. But he didn’t forget more than occasionally.

“You sound like you is a Christian man.” The colored woman sounded surprised.

Almost all mallates were Protestants. To Rodriguez, that meant they hardly counted as Christians themselves. He didn’t want to argue with the woman. The less he had to do with the prisoners, the less he had to think of them as people. The job went better when they were just-things-to him. So all he said was, “I try,” and he started to go on with his rounds.

“If you is a Christian man, suh, an’ if you loves Jesus Christ, what you doin’ here?” the woman asked.

He knew what he was doing: reducing population. As far as he was concerned, that needed doing. If it weren’t for the Negroes, the Confederate States wouldn’t have had so many troubles. He’d got his first taste of combat not against the USA but stamping out a Negro Socialist Republic in Georgia. Were blacks any more loyal to the Stars and Bars than they had been a generation earlier? If they were, would the country need camps now?

“Reckon I ax somebody else, then,” the woman said with another sigh. “You seemed like you was a decent fella, but I gots to do what I gots to do to keep my Septimius alive.”

Another raggedy-ass pickaninny with a ten-dollar name. Rodriguez almost asked the woman why she couldn’t have called him Joe or Fred or Pete or something sensible. In the end, he held his tongue. That little kid had nothing left but his fancy name. Why not let him make the most of it for whatever small span of days he had here?

When Rodriguez walked on, the woman didn’t try to stop him. He wondered what her chances of hooking up with some other guard were. She wasn’t anything special to look at. With so many women throwing themselves at the men in gray, it was a buyers’ market. The Freedom Party guards could pick and choose. Ordinary girls got left behind.

Off to the northwest, something that might have been distant thunder muttered. But it wasn’t thunder, not on a day that was fine and bright if chilly. It was artillery. Rodriguez knew the sound-he knew it at much closer range than this. Just the other side of Lubbock, Confederate and damnyankee gunners were doing their best to blow each other to hell and gone.

If the men in green-gray broke through, if they started down the highway toward Snyder and toward Camp Determination… That wouldn’t be so good. The guards had orders to get rid of as many Negroes as they could, and then to blow up the bathhouses and escape themselves.

More mutters in the distance. Would the prisoners know what those sounds meant? Some of the men would; Rodriguez was sure of that. Either they’d fought for the C.S. government or against it-maybe both. Any which way, they would know what artillery was. That could mean trouble.