He could smell himself, too, and the other soldiers. He'd been in this uniform for more than a day, and done plenty of sweating. How long before he could shower or change clothes? He had no idea. Nobody'd told him anything about stuff like that. People told you what to do. They didn't bother with why. You were supposed to know, or else not to care. That didn't strike Justin as the best way to do things, but nobody cared what he thought. Getting ignored by the people set over you also seemed to be part of soldiering.
An officer came forward with a white flag on a stick. He stood out in the open and waited to be noticed. Justin wouldn't have wanted that job for anything in the world. Little by little, though, the firing petered out.
Along with the flag of truce, the Virginia officer carried a bullhorn. He raised it to his mouth. "You people!" wasn't quite what he shouted. Hearing the hateful word he did use made Justin grit his teeth. It wasn't as bad a word in this alternate. He understood that. But understanding it didn't take the sick feeling out of his belly. And that word was no endearment here, either. The officer used it again: "You people! You want to listen to me or what?"
"We'll listen. Say your say," a Negro called from the rubble ahead. He didn't show himself.
The Virginia officer didn't seem to expect him to. "Okay," he boomed. "You better pay attention, on account of this is your last chance. You surrender now, you come out of your holes with your hands high, we'll let y'all live. You keep fighting, we won't answer for what happens after that. You're whupped. No matter what the fancy talkers from Ohio told you, you are whupped. Give up now and keep breathing. Otherwise ..." He paused ominously. Looking at his watch, he went on, "You've got fifteen minutes to make up your minds. You make us come and get you, that's all she wrote."
"You'll get your answer," the black man shouted back. "Hang on."
No rebels showed themselves. They had to scurry back and forth somewhere out of sight, deciding what to do. Was the officer even telling the truth? Would Virginia authorities spare the Negroes' lives? Probably, Justin judged. If they didn't, and other bands found out, it would make them fight to the death. But would you want to go on living with what the authorities were likely to do to you? Justin wasn't so sure about that.
"Time's up!" the officer blared. "What's it gonna be?"
"Reckon we'd sooner die on our feet than on our knees," the rebel answered. "You want us, come an' get us."
"Your funeral," the officer said. "And it will be. You asked for it."
He turned and walked away. Some self-propelled guns like the ones west of Elizabeth—maybe they were the same ones— rumbled into place. Instead of hurling their shells twenty kilometers, they blasted away at point-blank range, smashing the buildings in which the Negro rebels were hiding.
After they finished wrecking one block, they ground forward to start on the next. The foot soldiers went with them. They got rid of the men the bombardment didn't kill or maim. They also kept the rebels from harming the guns. Justin wondered why they needed to do that—the guns seemed plenty able to take care of themselves.
Then a Negro jumped up on top of one. Justin didn't see where he came from. He yanked open a hatch and threw a burning bottle of gasoline into the fighting compartment. Somebody shot him before he could leap down again. But horrible black smoke poured from the hatch. Shells started cooking off in there. So did machine-gun ammo, which went pop! pop! pop! happy as you please.
Nobody got out of the self-propelled gun. One Molotov cocktail—not that they called them that in this alternate— took out an expensive machine and several highly trained soldiers. One Molotov cocktail and one brave man, Justin reminded himself.
Even Smitty said, "That took guts." Then he swore at the Negro who did it. Was he angry because the man hurt his comrades? Or was he angry because the black showed himself to be a man? Justin didn't know and couldn't ask without giving himself away. He wondered if Smitty knew.
Another Negro with a Molotov cocktail got gunned down before he could come close enough to a serf-propelled gun to use it. The flaming gasoline set him on fire. He screamed for much too long before he died.
Justin was pretty sure he shot somebody else. The black man popped up from behind a bus bench, just like a target in a video game. Justin aimed and squeezed the trigger. The rebel went down, and didn't do anything else after that. It bothered Justin much less than shooting the first kid had. That it bothered him much less bothered him much more. He didn't want to get hardened to killing people.
He didn't want to do any of what he was doing. The people he was doing it with were no prizes, either. They didn't bother taking many prisoners. The rebels didn't try to surrender. They fought till they couldn't fight any more, and then, grimly, they died.
"They've risen up before. They've got squashed every time," he said to Smitty as they both crouched in a doorway. "They must have known they couldn't win this time, too. So why try?"
"Some folks are natural-born fools," Smitty answered. "And the Ohioans sent 'em guns and filled their heads with moonshine." He spat. "Look what it got 'em."
"Maybe if we'd treated them better beforehand, they wouldn't have wanted to rebel no matter what the Ohioans did," Justin said.
Smitty looked at him as if he were nuts. "Don't let an officer catch you talking that way," the real soldier warned. "You'll get in more trouble than you know what to do with." He wouldn't say any more than that. Plainly, though, Justin had disappointed him. You couldn't even talk about racial equality here. If you so much as opened your mouth, they thought you came from some other world.
And Justin did.
By the time evening came, there weren't many rebels left to kill. There wasn't much still standing in the part of Charleston they'd held, either. They make a desert and call it peace. Some Roman historian said that. It was just as true now as it had been back in the days of the Empire. The Romans had actually got peace—for a while—by winning their wars like that. Maybe the Virginians would, too ... for a while.
And will I ever find any? Justin wondered. The chances didn't look good.
No Virginia soldiers arrested Beckie and her grandmother and Mr. Brooks. No suspicious military doctor asked him about how to treat Twonk's Disease. All that made getting to Charleston a little easier, but not much. The real problem was the road itself. It kept disappearing, usually at spots where going around involved something interesting—falling off a cliff, for instance.
"Cruise missiles. Terrain-mapping technology." Mr. Brooks sounded as if he admired the fancy technology that was causing him endless delays. Maybe he did. It wouldn't have surprised Beckie. He seemed a man who admired competence wherever he found it, because he didn't think he'd find it very often.
As Mr. Brooks admired the Ohioans who'd wrecked the road, so he also admired the Virginian military engineers who repaired it and let him go forward again. Beckie also couldn't help admiring them. They were busy with hard, dangerous work. They had no guarantee more cruise missiles wouldn't fly in and wreck everything they were doing—and maybe blow them up, too. But they kept at it.
Gran admired nothing and nobody. She complained whenever the road was blocked. And she complained that the military engineers weren't fixing it fast enough. When Mr. Brooks drove over one of the newly repaired stretches, she complained it was bumpy. When it wasn't bumpy, and saying it was would only make her look silly, she complained he was driving too fast instead.
Mr. Brooks took it all in stride. At one point, when Gran was going even better than usual, he looked over at Beckie and said, "This is fun, isn't it?"