Harry Turtledove Crosstime 04 The Disunited States of America (v1.0)

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

of mud. Nobody fell, which Justin took for a minor miracle. The sheriff
started to open the back door to the bright red car, then changed his mind and
opened the front door instead.
"Crowd in beside me," he said. "If I put you in back, everybody who sees you
in there'll figure I've jugged you, and I've got no call to do that." As with
most police cars, this one had a fine metal grill between front seat and back
to make sure prisoners didn't kick up any trouble.
The front seat was crowded with three people in it. Justin, in the middle,
didn't mind getting squeezed against Beckie.
Sheriff Cochrane was a different story. He smelled of tobacco, and the pistol
on his right hip was an uncomfortable lump. Justin was glad it wasn't more
than a couple of minutes' ride back to Elizabeth.
Cochrane stopped the car at the corner of Route 14 and Prunty. "Guess I'll let
the two of you out right here, if that's okay," he said.
"Sure," Beckie said, and got out in a hurry. Justin slid out after her. The
sheriffs car headed on up toward the courthouse. "Shall we go back to the
Snodgrasses'?" Beckie asked.
Justin shook his head. "Let's just wait here for a little bit." She looked
puzzled, but she didn't say no.
Inside of ten minutes, the sheriffs car raced down Route 14 toward Jephany
Knob again. This time, Sheriff Cochrane had his deputy along with him. "Oh,"
Beckie said. "Is that what you were looking for?"
"Yeah," he answered. "Weren't you?"
"I guess," she said. "I'm not from here, so I don't know for sure how much
trouble is what we found going to cause?"
Even though Justin wasn't really from this alternate's Virginia, either,
answering that was easy as pie. "Lots," he said.
"Charlie?" Mrs. Snodgrass said. "Charlie up there on the knob with a rifle? I
don't believe it."
"I don't want to believe it," Mr. Snodgrass said, which wasn't the same thing
at all. "If Charlie could do a thing like that. . ."
"Ungrateful, is what it is," his wife said. "Everybody in town treated him
almost like he was one of us."
That almost was the problem. Beckie could hear it, and could hear that it was
wrong. By all the signs, nobody born and raised in Virginia could. She thought
about saying something, but she was sure nobody would listen to her. She'd
hoped her grandmother might, but Gran was nodding along with what Mrs.
Snodgrass said for once, she'd found something she agreed with. You could take
the young woman out of Virginia, but taking Virginia out of the young woman
Page 48
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
was much harder. Virginia's attitudes stayed in Gran even though she wasn't
young any more.
"If things are like that here," Mr. Snodgrass said, "what's it like places
where they have lots of colored people?"
"The TV hasn't talked about anything bad," his wife said.
"It wouldn't, not unless things are so bad it can't pretend they're good," he
said darkly.
"Maybe the sickness has something to do with keeping everything else quiet,"
Beckie said.
"Maybe it does. I wouldn't be surprised," Mr. Snodgrass said. "And when you've
got to go and thank a disease for something, you know you're in a pile of
trouble." Beckie wished she could think that was wrong, too, but she feared it
was much too right.
Late that afternoon, somebody rang the doorbell. When Mrs. Snodgrass opened
the door, she exclaimed in surprise it wasn't Mr. Brooks and Justin, and it
wasn't any of her neighbors, either. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice a
startled squeak.
"We're from the Virginia Bureau of Investigation," one of the men at the door
said in a hard, flat voice. "Here is my identification."
"And mine," another man said.
"We're here to see a Miss, uh, Rebecca Royer. Is she staying at this address?"
yet another man added.
"Yes, she is," Mrs. Snodgrass answered. She turned and raised her voice:
"Beckie! Three men from the VBI to see you!"
Beckie wanted to see men from the VBI, or even one man from the VBI, about as
much as she wanted to lose her appendix without anesthetics. Nobody cared what
she wanted, though. She was just a foreigner here, and Virginia, as Sheriff
Cochrane had reminded her and Justin, was at war. If she gave these people
trouble, they could give her more and worse. "Here I am," she said.
In came the men from the Virginia Bureau of Investigation. They weren't quite
so alike as three peas in a pod, but they came close. They wore sober suits,
two of gray, one of navy. Their hair was cut short, military style. They were
about the same size, and they all had serious expressions. The one in the blue
suit said, "Miss Royer, I am Senior Agent Jefferson. With me are Agent Madison [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Wątki