Return Engagement by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online

Freedom Party stalwart said. “You can’t change things now.”
    “No?” Back at the start of the Great War, the glance Anne sent him would have melted him right out of his shoes. Now it only made him shrug stolidly. Her blond good looks hadn’t altogether left her, but they slipped away day by day. She could still hope for vengeance against Scipio and against the United States. Nobody got even with time. She sighed. “I want to have another look at the hall, if that’s all right.”
    “Sure enough, ma’am. I’m here to do what you need me to do,” Walker said. He made himself a liar without even knowing he was doing it. What she needed him to do was acknowledge her as the beauty she had been. That wouldn’t happen. She knew it wouldn’t, couldn’t. Knowing was an ulcer that ate at her and would not heal.
    It was, perhaps, just as well that Clarence Potter would not know where this rally was being held. The hall had belonged to the Whigs for generations. Clarence had gone to God only knew how many meetings here himself. It wasn’t far from the harbor, and it was right across the street from a bar: a good location. These days, nobody but the Freedom Party held meetings. The hall had stood vacant for quite a while. It wouldn’t stay vacant long. And the Freedom Party, unlike the Whigs, did meetings
right.
    Stalwarts and Freedom Party guards and ordinary Party members started filling the place more than an hour before the scheduled meeting time. Everyone wore a Freedom Party pin: the Confederate battle flag with red and blue reversed. Most of the pins had a black border. That showed that the people who wore them had joined the Party after March 4, 1934, when Jake Featherston became President of the CSA. Members who’d belonged before that day looked down their noses at the johnny-come-latelies and opportunists, which didn’t keep them from using the newcomers whenever they needed to.
    A young Congressman named Storm or something like that was the first one up to address the meeting. Anne had heard him before. He was very good on the Negro question, weaker elsewhere. Here, he didn’t get to show his paces. He’d barely started his speech when air-raid sirens outside began to wail.
    “You see?” he shouted. “Do you see?” He shook a fist at the sky. “The damnyankees don’t want you to hear the truth!”
    People laughed and cheered. “Go on!” somebody shouted. “Who cares about a damned air raid?”
    And the Congressman
did
go on, even when the antiaircraft guns around the harbor started pounding and bombs started falling. The Freedom Party men in the audience clapped their hands and stomped their feet to try to drown out the din of war. That made the Congressman shout to be heard over them and over the fireworks not far away.
    Anne thought they were all insane. She’d been through a bombing raid in the last war. Sitting here in this exposed place was the last thing she wanted to do now. But she knew what would happen if she yelled,
Take cover, you damned idiots!
The Freedom Party stalwarts would think she was nothing but a cowardly, panicky woman. They wouldn’t listen to her. And they wouldn’t take her seriously any more afterwards, either. That was the biggest part of what kept her quiet.
    Resentment burned in her all the same.
Because you’re so stinking stubborn, I’m liable to get killed.
    More bombs burst. Windows rattled. Not all the Yankees’ presents were falling right on the harbor. Maybe that meant the antiaircraft fire was heavier than the enemy had expected. Maybe it meant his bombardiers didn’t know their business. Either way, it meant more of Charleston was catching hell.
    Finally, a man about her age whose Party pin showed he’d been a member before 1934 and who wore the ribbon for a Purple Heart just below it, stood up and bellowed, “Time to get the hell out of here, folks, while the getting’s good!”
    They listened to him. Anne saw that with a mixture of relief and