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she'd doubted him? Or that, a long time ago, he'd seen and done some things
he'd likely tried to forget ever since?Both, maybe.
He shook himself, almost like a dog coming out of cold water. "Well, as a
matter of fact, so am I," he said. "But I'm afraid I'm not half as sorry as
Justin's going to be. The question is, will he be sorry because he did
something dumb and got caught, or will he be sorry 'cause he did something
dumb and got killed?"
"K-Killed?"Beckie had trouble getting the word out.
"Killed," Mr. Brooks repeated. "If he's going back toCharleston . . . Well,
there's still fighting there. Those soldiers weren't doing much up here. The
powers that be might have decided to get some use out of them after all. You
learn to fight same as you learn anything else: you practice, and then you do
it for real. Justin's never had any training. He knows how to load a gun, and
that's about it. If he doesn't give himself away, he's liable to stop a bullet
because he doesn't know how not to."
"What can you do?" Beckie asked.
"Good question. If I had a good answer, I'd give it to you, I promise," Mr.
Brooks said bleakly. "He's been gone since some time in the night. I don't
know when I was asleep. He could be inCharleston already. Or he could be in
the stockadealready, if they figure out he's no more a soldier than the man in
the moon. I hope he is. If he's in the stockade, I have time to figure out
what happens next. If they just throw him into afirefight. . . Nobody can do
anything about that."
"Why would they even think he was only pretending to be a soldier?" Beckie
asked. "Nobody would look for anyone to try something like that. Most people
don't want to be soldiers, and the ones who do join their state's army for
real."
"Right the first time.Right the second time, too. You're a smart kid, Beckie.
Only thing is, I wish you weren't," Mr. Brooks said. "Because if you are
right and I'm afraid you are Justin's in a lot more trouble than if you're
wrong."
"We've got to be able to do ... something." Beckie wished she hadn't faltered
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there at the end. It showed she didn't know what that something might be.
"Yeah," Mr. Brooks said."Something." His tone of voice and the worried look
on his face said he didn't know what, either.
The convoy of trucks and armored fighting vehicles from aroundElizabeth was
getting close toCharleston . They'd already been waved through two checkpoints
outside of town.The sergeant in charge of this squad? was listening on an
earpiece and talking into a throat mike. He wore three chevrons on his sleeve,
the way a U.S. Army sergeant would have. So what if they were upside down?
Justin still knew what they meant.Virginia officers' rank badges were a
different story. But if an officer told him what to do, he knew he had to do
it.
"Okay, guys here's what's going on," the noncom said. Everybody leaned toward
him. "Those miserable people are still making trouble inCharleston . We're
going to help make sure they stop."
He didn't really say people. The word he used was one nobody in theU.S.A. in
the home timeline could say without proving he was a disgusting racist. People
in the home timeline cussed a lot more casually than they did here. But words
that showed you were a racist or a religious bigot or a homo-phobe . . .
Nobody in the home timeline, not even people who really were racists or
fanatics or homophobes, used those words in public. The taboos were different,
but they were still taboos.
That thought was interesting enough to make Justin stop paying attention to
the sergeant for a few seconds. If he were a real soldier, he didn't suppose
he would have done that. Then I can't do it now, he told himself.
"We're going down toFlorida ," the sergeant said. That confused Justin till
he remembered it was the name of a street inCharleston . The Virginian went
on, "Stinking people have a barricade there." Again,people wasn't the word he
used. "We'll be part of the infantry force that flanks 'em out, and the guns
with us'll help blow 'em to kingdom come.Any questions?"
Justin had about a million, but nobody else said anything, so he didn't see
how he could. The real soldiers probably knew the answers to most of them. One
of those real soldiers, a guy named Eddie, tapped Justin on the leg and said,
"Stick close to Smitty and me. I know you're out of your unit and everything.
We'll watch your back, and you watch ours.Deal?"
"Deal."Justin didn't know exactly what kind of deal it was, but he'd find
out. Any kind of deal seemed better than getting ignored.
Was he supposed to be excited now or scared? The other guys in the truck just
seemed to be doing a job. Were they hiding nerves? How could they help having
them?
They got intoCharleston a few minutes later. The town, as Justin remembered
from his brief acquaintance with it, had a funny shape. It stretched for
several miles along the northern bank of theKanawhaRiver , but it never got
very far from the stream. It didn't seem as big as theCharleston of the home
timeline. It probably wasn't. ThatCharleston was a state capital, and the
center of all the bureaucracy that went with being one. ThisCharleston was
just a back-country town.
And it was, right this minute, a back-country town in trouble. Automatic
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weapons sounded cheerful. Pop! Pop! Pop! That brisk crackle might have been
firecrackers on the Fourth of July. It might have been, but it wasn't. The
occasional boom of cannon fire had no counterpart in the civilian world.
Whump! Justin wondered what that was, but not for long. A hole appeared, as
if by magic, in the canvas cover over histruck's rear compartment. No, two
holes one on each side, less than a meter above soldiers' heads. Those
were couldn't be anything but bullet holes.
He wanted to yelp, but nobody else did, so he kept quiet, too. How much of
courage was being afraid to embarrass yourself in front of your buddies?A lot,
unless he missed his guess.
"Hope one of the bad guys fired that," Smitty said. Justin stared at him,
wondering if he'd heard straight. Smitty went on, "You feel like such a jerk
if you get hit by a round from your own side."
"Hurts just as much either way," somebody else said. The soldiers' helmeted
heads bobbed up and down.
The sergeant had the earpiece in one ear again, and a finger jammed in the
other to keep out background noise. "Listen up," he said when he heard
whatever he needed to hear. "When we get out, we go right two blocks. Then we
turn left and go down five or six blocks something like that, depending on
what things look like. Then we turn left again, and we come in behind the
people's position. Got it?"
"Right, left, left," Eddie said. "We got it, Sarge."
"Okay. Don't foul it up, then," the noncom said, or words to that effect. The
truck stopped stopped short, so that Justin got heaved against the guy in
front of him. "Out!" the sergeant screamed."Out! Out! Out! Move! Move!Move!"
Justin jumped out. So did the other soldiers. They all started running as
soon as their boots hit the asphalt. The crackle of gunfire was a lot closer
now, and didn't sound nearly so cheerful. Those are real bullets, Justin
thought as he pounded after Eddie and Smitty. If one of them hits me, it'll
really mess me up.
The African Americans firing those bullets had a genuine grievance
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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