Missing links…His memory went back to biology classes in college, in the dead, distant days before the Great War. He remembered pictures of low-browed, chinless, hairy brutes: Neanderthal Man and Java Man and a couple of others thought to lie halfway between apes and Homo laughably called sapiens. He imagined ape-men in green-gray uniforms with stars on their shoulder straps and black-and-gold General Staff arm-of-service colors.
The picture formed with frightening ease. "Ook!" he muttered. Sergeant Lord sent him a curious look. O'Doull's cheeks heated.
He also imagined hulking subhumans in butternut, with wreathed stars on their collars. Confederate Neanderthals also proved easy to conjure up. A good thing, too, O'Doull thought. We'd lose if they weren't as dumb as we are.
And wasn't Jake Featherston the top Pithecanthropus of them all? "Ook," Leonard O'Doull said again, louder this time. Then he shook his head, angry at himself for swallowing his own side's propaganda. Sure, Featherston had made his share of mistakes, but who in this war hadn't? The President of the CSA had come much too close to leading his side to victory over a much bigger, much richer foe. If that didn't argue for a certain basic competence, what would?
"You all right, sir?" Goodson Lord asked, real concern in his voice.
"As well as I can be, anyhow," O'Doull answered. What worried him was that Jake Featherston could still win. The Confederates had come up with more new and nasty weapons this time around than his own side had. The fragments Lord was cleaning up-another one clanked into the bowl-showed that. If the enemy pulled something else out of his hat, something big…
"Hey, Doc!" That insistent shout from outside drove such thoughts from his mind. No matter what the Confederates who weren't Neanderthals came up with, all he could do was try to patch up the men they hurt.
"You all right by yourself?" he asked Lord.
"I'll cope," the senior medic said, which was the right answer.
The new wounded man had had a shell fragment slice the right side of his chest open. The corpsmen who brought him in were irate. "It was a short round, Doc," Eddie said. O'Doull could all but see the steam coming out of his ears. "One of ours. It killed another guy-they'll have to scrape him up before they can bury him."
"That kind of shit happens all the time," another stretcher-bearer said.
"Happens too goddamn often." Yeah, Eddie was hot, all right.
"I think so, too." O'Doull had also seen too many wounds on U.S. soldiers inflicted by other U.S. soldiers. He hated them at least as much as Eddie did. All the same…"Let's get to work on him. The less time we waste, the better."
Collapsed lung, lots of bleeders to tie off, broken ribs. O'Doull knew what to expect, and he got it. The wound was serious, but straightforward and clean. O'Doull knew he had a good chance of saving the soldier. By the time he finished, he was pretty sure he had. If the war lasted long enough, the man might return to duty.
"Won't he be proud of his Purple Heart?" Eddie was a little rabbity guy. Somehow, that only made his sarcasm more devastating.
"He's here to get one, anyway," O'Doull said. "You told me he had a buddy who bought the whole plot, right?"
"Yeah." Eddie nodded.
"Well, this is better. This guy'll probably end up all right," O'Doull said. Eddie didn't answer, which might have been the most devastating comeback of all.
VII
W hen Cassius walked down the street, white people scurried out of his way. That still thrilled him. It had never happened before he started this occupation duty. His whole life long, he'd been taught to move aside for whites. Dreadful things happened to colored people who didn't.
Now he had a Tredegar in his hands and the U.S. Army at his back. Anybody who didn't like that-and there were bound to be people who didn't-and was rash enough to let him know it could end up suddenly dead, and no one would say a word. Other members of Gracchus' band had shot whites in Madison for any reason or none, and then gone about their business. Oh, the ofays in town flabbled, but who paid attention to them? Not a soul.
White women were particularly quick not just to get out of the way but to get out of sight. Cassius had seen that ever since he got here. Shooting wasn't the only revenge Negroes could take on their former social superiors. Oh, no-not at all.
Cassius scowled when he saw blue X's painted on walls. Those would come down or get painted over in a hurry-they were shorthand for C.S. battle flags. If a property owner didn't cover them up, U.S. soldiers would assume he was a Confederate sympathizer. They'd probably be right, too. Right or wrong, they'd make him sorry.
More than a few whites had already disappeared from Madison. The U.S. Army said they'd gone into prisons farther from the front. Negroes loudly insisted the U.S. soldiers had shipped them to camps. Cassius had done it himself. He wanted the ofays quivering in their boots. They'd made him quiver too damn long.
They'd made him fight back, too. Tales of horror like that were liable to make the local whites fight back. Cassius didn't care. If the ofays wanted to try, they could. He figured the U.S. Army would start massacring them then.
And he would get to help.
He came to a street corner at the same time as another Negro marching from a different direction. "Mornin', Sertorius," he said. "How you doin'?"
"I's tolerable," his fellow guerrilla replied. "How 'bout yourself?"
"Could be worse," Cassius admitted. "We got us plenty o' grub, we got warm places to sleep, an' we got all the Yankees on our side. Yeah, sure enough could be worse."
"Amen," Sertorius said, as if Cassius were a preacher. "Couple months ago, things was worse." He wore a U.S. helmet, and made as if to tip it. Cassius returned the gesture with the cap he had on. "See you," Sertorius added, and went on marching his assigned route.
"See you." Cassius also walked on. Odds were they would see each other at the end of the day. They weren't living in fear, the way they had when they skulked and hid in the countryside. The ofays feared them now. Cassius liked that better. Who wouldn't?
And sometimes the ofays were starting to treat them with respect. A kid maybe eight or nine years old came up to Cassius. "Got any rations you can spare?" he asked, his voice most polite.
Cassius would have told a grown man to go to hell. A skinny kid, though, was a skinny kid. Cassius started to reach for one of the ration cans in his belt pouch. Then he took another look at the boy. His hand stopped. "You called me a goddamn nigger before," he said. "You said I sucked the damnyankees' dicks. Far as I'm concerned, you kin starve."
The white boy looked almost comically astonished. "I didn't mean it," he said, and smiled a winning smile.
How dumb was he? How dumb did he think Cassius was? That was the real question, and Cassius knew the answer-dumb as a nigger, that was what he thought. "Now tell me one I'll believe," Cassius said scornfully.
If looks could have killed, he would have fallen over dead on the spot. The white kid started to say something-probably something as sweet and charming as the insults he'd dealt out the last time he ran into Cassius. Then he glanced at the Tredegar and went away instead. That was the smartest thing he could have done. Cassius likely would have shot him if he'd run his mouth twice.
An old man came up behind him. "You won't even feed a little boy?" the geezer asked. "What's the world coming to?"
"I ain't gonna feed that little bastard no matter what the world's comin' to," Cassius answered. "Some other kid, maybe, but not him."
"Why not?"
"On account of he done called me a nigger and a cocksucker."
Well, you are a nigger. Cassius could see it in the old white man's shrewd gray eyes. The fellow had sense enough not to say it, though. And cocksucker was an insult to anybody. "Oh," was all that came out of the ofay's mouth. He walked on past Cassius, careful not to come close enough to seem threatening.