Short Stories by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

sir.” Muhammad Shabazz spoke with respect that didn’t come close to hiding the anger underneath. “I do, and Mr. Abdul-Rashid does, and Mr. Price does, too. Do you, sir? Does justice mean anything to you at all?”
    “It means I know better’n to call a lousy, lazy, no-account buckra Mister . Ain’t that right, Cecil?” When Price didn’t answer fast enough to suit the deputy sheriff, the man stuck the pistol in his face and roared, “ Ain’t that right, boy? ”
    Muhammad Shabazz had nerve. If he didn’t have nerve, he never would have ridden down to
Mississippi
from
Cleveland in the first place. “We didn’t do anything wrong, sir,” he told the deputy. “We didn’t even break any traffic laws. You have no good reason to pull us over. Why aren’t you investigating real crimes, like a firebombed church?”
    To Cecil Price’s amazement, the deputy smiled the broadest, nastiest, wickedest smile he’d ever seen, and he’d seen some lulus. “What do you reckon I’m doin’?” he said. “What the hell do you reckon I’m doin’? All three of you sons of bitches are under arrest for suspicion of arson. A charge like that, you can rot in jail the rest of your worthless lives. Serve y’all right, too, you want to know what I think.”
    “You’re out of your mind,” Muhammad Shabazz exclaimed.
    “We wouldn’t burn a church,” Tariq Abdul-Rashid agreed, startled out of his frightened silence. “That is crazy.”
    “We’ve got no reason to do anything like that. Why would we, sir?” Cecil Price tried to make the deputy forget his comrades didn’t stay polite.
    It didn’t work. He might have known it wouldn’t. Hell, he had known it wouldn’t. “Why? I’ll tell you why,” the Negro in the lawman’s uniform said. “So decent, God-fearing folks get blamed for it, that’s why. You agitators’ll try and pin it all on us, make us look bad on the TV, give the Federal government an excuse to stick its nose in affairs that ain’t none of its business and never will be. So hell, yes, you’re under arrest. Suspicion of arson, like I said. I’ll throw your sorry asses in jail right now. You drive on into
Philadelphia quiet-like, or you gonna do something stupid like try and escape?”
    Cecil Price didn’t need to be a college-educated fellow like the two blacks in the car with him to know what that meant. You do anything but drive straight to jail and I’ll kill all of you . “I won’t do anything dumb,” he told the deputy.
    “Better not, boy, or it’s the last fuckup you ever pull.” The big black man threw back his head and laughed. “Unless you already pulled your last one, that is.” Laughing still, he walked back to the black-and-white. He opened the door, got in—the shocks sagged under his bulk—and slammed it shut.
    “Let him jail us on that stupid trumped-up charge,” Muhammad Shabazz said as Price started the Ford’s engine. “It’ll do just as much to help the cause as the church bombing.”
    “I hope you’re right,” Price said, pulling back onto the highway, “but he’s a mean one. The Neshoba County Sheriff’s meaner, but the deputy’s bad enough and then some.”
    “You think he’s BKV?” Tariq Abdul-Rashid asked.
    “Black Knights of Voodoo?” Price shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes night-riding with a mask and a shield and a spear.”
    In
Philadelphia, a few people stared at the car with the white and the two blacks in it. Cecil Price didn’t care for those stares, not even a little bit. He didn’t care for any part of what was going on, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. He parked in front of the jail. The deputy’s car pulled up right behind the RACE wagon.
    Another black deputy sat behind the front desk when Price and Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid walked into the jail. “What the hell’s goin’ on here?” he asked the man who’d arrested the civil-rights workers.
    “Suspicion of