Return Engagement (81 page)
Authors: Harry Turtledove
Brooding or not, she was drifting toward sleep when someone knocked on the door. She looked at the clock on the nightstand. The glowing hands told her it was a quarter to three. Like anyone else with an ounce of sense, she was convinced nothing good ever happened at a quarter to three. But the knocking went on and on.
She got out of bed and went to the door. “Who is it?” she called without opening up. Robbers prowled blacked-out Philadelphia.
“It’s Sydney Nesmith, Congresswoman—assistant to the House Sergeant at Arms.” And it was; she recognized his voice. He went on, “Please come with me to Congress right away. Someone would have telephoned, but the lines to this building are down, so I came in person.”
Flora did open the door then, saying, “Good heavens! What’s happened?”
“Everything will be explained once you get there, ma’am,” Nesmith answered, which told her nothing—but if it weren’t important, he wouldn’t have been here.
“Let me change,” she said, and started to turn away.
“People aren’t bothering,” he said.
“What is it, Mom?” Joshua asked from behind her.
“I don’t know,” she answered, thinking,
Nothing good, all right.
She nodded to Nesmith. “I’ll come.”
“Thank you, ma’am. An auto is waiting down below.” Nesmith started to turn away, then checked himself. “Beg your pardon, but I’ve got a couple of more to get up in this building.”
“Do what you have to do.” Flora closed the door. If he was going to wake others, she had a minute, no matter what he said. She threw on a dress and a topcoat.
“Something terrible has happened, hasn’t it?” Joshua said as she did start out into the hallway.
“I’m afraid it has. I’ll let you know what it is as soon as I can. Try to go back to sleep in the meantime.” That sounded foolish as soon as Flora said it, but what else was her son supposed to do? She hurried downstairs.
The waiting motorcar was an enormous Packard. It had room for the driver, for Sydney Nesmith, and for all the members of Congress from her building. Some of the others had put on clothes, as she had, but a couple were still in pajamas. “Step on it, Fred,” Nesmith said as the auto pulled away from the curb.
Stepping on it in a blacked-out city just after an air raid struck Flora as a recipe for suicide. Fortunately, Fred paid no attention to the Sergeant at Arms’ assistant. The only lights in Philadelphia were the ones from fires the bombing had started. Their red, flickering glow seemed brighter and carried farther than it would have without pitch darkness for a backdrop.
Flora and the other members of Congress tried to pump Nesmith about why he’d summoned them. He refused to be pumped, saying, “You’ll find out everything you need to know when you get there, I promise.” By the time the Packard pulled up in front of the big, slightly bomb-battered building that took the place of the Capitol here, he’d said that a great many times.
They all hurried inside. Flora blinked several times at the bright electric lights. They too seemed all the more brilliant because of the darkness from which she’d just emerged.
Sydney Nesmith shepherded his charges toward the House chamber. Flora would have gone there anyway; it was her natural habitat. She saw Senators as well as Representatives in the large hall. That was nothing too far out of the ordinary. When Congress met in joint session, it met here: the hall had room for everybody.
Vice President La Follette and the Speaker of the House, Joe Guffey of Pennsylvania, sat side by side on the rostrum. Again, that didn’t surprise Flora; it was where the two presiding officers belonged. But Charlie La Follette, normally a cheerful man, looked as if a bomb had gone off in front of his face, while the Speaker seemed hardly less stunned. When Flora spotted Chief Justice Cicero Pittman’s rotund form in the first row of seats in front of the rostrum, ice ran through her. All at once, she feared she knew why all the Senators and Representatives had been summoned.
“
Alevai omayn,
let me be wrong,” she murmured. At the same time, an Irish Congressman from another New York City district crossed himself. That amounted to about the same thing.
Members of Congress kept crowding in. By the look of things, not everyone had figured out what might be going on. Some people couldn’t see the nose in front of their face. Some, perhaps, didn’t want to.
At 5:22—Flora would never forget the time—the Speaker nodded to the Sergeant at Arms. He in turn waved to his assistants, who closed the doors to the chamber. The Sergeant at Arms banged his gavel to call Congress to order, then yielded his place to the Speaker.
Guffey approached the microphone like a man approaching the gallows. “Ladies and gentlemen, I would give anything I own not to be where I am right now and not to have to make this announcement,” he said heavily. He needed a moment to gather himself, then went on, “The President of the United States—Al Smith—is dead.”
Gasps and cries of horror rang through the hall. Yes, some had been caught unawares. Flora gasped, too, but only in dismay to find her fears confirmed. Swallowing a sob, Guffey continued, “He took shelter from the raid as he should have, but three bombs hit the same place in Powel House—a million-to-one shot, the War Department assures me. The first two cleared obstructions from the path of the third, which . . . which destroyed the shelter under the Presidential residence. There were no survivors.”
More cries rose. Men wept as unashamedly as the handful of women in Congress. Speaker Guffey paused to take off his reading glasses and dab at his streaming eyes. “But, while the loss to our nation is incalculable, we must go on—and we shall go on. Here to administer the oath of office to the new President is Chief Justice Pittman.”
Flora saw what looked like the collar of bright red pajamas peep out from under the Chief Justice’s judicial robes for a moment. She swallowed a tear-filled giggle. Charles La Follette—he wouldn’t be Charlie any more, she supposed—towered over Pittman. He set his left hand on a Bible, raised his right hand, and took the oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Very solemnly, he shook hands with the Chief Justice, and then with the Speaker of the House. That done, he looked out to the Senators and Representatives staring in at him. “As Speaker Guffey said, all I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today. When they told me what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me. Al Smith was the leader this country chose, and he did well to the very last instant of his life. Even when days looked darkest, he never gave up hope. While we are not where we would wish to be in this war, neither are we where the enemy would have us. The road to victory may be long, but we will walk it. With God’s help, we will walk it to the end.”
Applause thundered through the sobs. Flora clapped till her palms burned. The United States were bigger than any one man. Were the Confederate States? She had her doubts.
BOOKS BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE
The Guns of the South
THE WORLDWAR SAGA
Worldwar: In the Balance
Worldwar: Tilting the Balance
Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance
Worldwar: Striking the Balance
COLONIZATION
Colonization: Second Contact
Colonization: Down to Earth
Colonization: Aftershocks
THE VIDESSOS CYCLE
The Misplaced Legion
An Emperor for the Legion
The Legion of Videssos
Swords of the Legion
THE TALE OF KRISPOS
Krispos Rising
Krispos of Videssos
Krispos the Emperor
THE TIME OF TROUBLES SERIES
The Stolen Throne
Hammer and Anvil
The Thousand Cities
Videssos Besieged
Noninterference
Kaleidoscope
A World of Difference
Earthgrip
Departures
How Few Remain
THE GREAT WAR
The Great War: American Front
The Great War: Walk in Hell
The Great War: Breakthroughs
American Empire: Blood and Iron
American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold
American Empire: The Victorious Opposition
Settling Accounts: Return Engagement
Settling Accounts: Return Engagement
is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey
®
Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2004 by Harry Turtledove
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Del Rey Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon
is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-345-47859-7
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