Read Online The Victorious Opposition by Harry Turtledove - Free Book Online Page B

them, too?”
    He didn’t know what to say to that. Bathsheba said, “Yes, but it don’t do us no good, sweetheart, on account of they’s stronger’n we is.”
    That
yes
had led directly to the Red uprisings during the Great War. The rest of her sentence had led just as directly to their failure.
What do we do?
Scipio wondered.
What
can
we do?
He’d wondered that ever since he’d seen his first Freedom Party rally, a small thing at a park here in Augusta. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to worry about it. That hope, like so many others, lay shattered tonight.
    “Kill the niggers!” The cry rang out again, louder and fiercer than ever. Screams said the rioters were turning words into deeds, too.
    Gunfire rang out from the building across the street from Scipio’s: a black man emptying a pistol into the mob. Some of the screams that followed burst from white throats.
Good!
Savage exultation blazed through Scipio.
See how you like it, you sons of bitches! Wasn’t keeping us cooped up in this poor, miserable place enough for you?
    But the white men didn’t and wouldn’t think that way, of course.
Cet animal est méchant. On l’attaque, il se defende.
That was how Voltaire had put it, anyhow.
This animal is treacherous. If it is attacked, it defends itself.
Thanks to Miss Anne (though she’d done it for herself, not for him), Scipio knew Voltaire well. How many of the rioters did? How many had even heard of him?
    A fusillade of fire, from pistols, rifles, and what sounded like a machine gun, tore into the building from which the Negro had shot. More than a few bullets slammed into the building in which Scipio and his family lived, too. Then some whites chucked a whiskey bottle full of gasoline with a burning cloth wick into the entryway of the building across the street. The bottle shattered. Fire splashed outward.
    The white men whooped and hollered and slapped one another on the back with glee. “Burn, baby, burn!” one of them shouted. Soon they were all yelling it, along with, “Kill the niggers!”
    “Xerxes, they gwine burn this here place next,” Bathsheba said urgently. “We gots to git out while we still kin.”
    He wished he could tell her she was wrong. Instead, he nodded. “We gits de chillun. We gits de money. An’ we
gits
—out de back way to de alley, on account o’ we don’ las’ a minute if we goes out de front.”
    Maybe the building wouldn’t burn. Maybe the white men rampaging through the Terry would go on to some other crime instead. But if the roominghouse did catch fire, his family was doomed. Better to take their chances on the streets than to try to get out of a building ablaze.
    Herding Antoinette and Cassius along in front of them, he and Bathsheba raced toward the stairway. A door flew open on the far side of the hall. “You crazy?” a woman in that flat said. “We safer in here than we is out there.”
    “Ain’t so,” Scipio answered. “Dey likely fixin’ to burn dis place.” The woman’s eyes opened so wide, he could see white all around the iris. She slammed the door, but he didn’t think she’d stay in there long.
    He and his family weren’t the only people going down the stairs as fast as they could. Some of the Negroes trying to escape the roominghouse dashed for the front entrance. Maybe they didn’t know about the back way. Maybe, in their blind panic, they forgot it. Or maybe they were just stupid. Blacks suffered from that disease no less than whites. Whatever the reason, they paid for their mistake. Gunshots echoed. Screams followed. So did hoarse bellows of triumph from the mob.
    They’ve just shot down people who never did—never could do—them any harm,
Scipio thought as he scuttled toward the back door.
Why are they so proud of it?
He’d seen blacks exulting over what they meted out to whites during the Red revolt. But that exultation had 250 years of reasons behind it. This? This made no sense at all to him.
    Out the door. Down the rickety