[What Might Have Been 03] Alternate Wars Read online

  “This is not a weapon,” said Edward. “It was a symbol sometimes used by an obscure religious cult. For many centuries, in fact, a mark of shame. Said to have magic properties. It’s called a cross.”

  Falon fingered his talisman. The sense of the horn’s power was reassuring. “The mark is strange to me.”

  “Only Constantine ever used it.”

  “You said something else was buried in there with him.”

  Edward picked up his bag. An old man’s idle dream, perhaps. I wonder whether everything we might have been does not lie inside this vault.”

  Brilliant Sirius was framed within the cupola atop the tomb. “It’s getting colder,” he said after a moment. “I suggest we retire to my camp and restart the fire.”

  TURPENTINE

  Barry N. Malzberg

  The sociologist was defiant all the way to Kirk’s office, but when he saw the scene, when he got what you could call a sociological perspective of the ordnance, his mood changed right quick. What is this? he said. What the fuck is this? Trust a sociologist to toss a fuck in when he is talking to the troops. That’s what they teach them in the schools now, get down, get right, be relevant, talk out of that hip side of your mouth. Saying fuck puts everybody at his or her ease, like the sociologist and you, you are on the same side of the party, fighting the establishment. Except we don’t really go along with that shit anymore, there is our side and there is the rest of them and the line is not to be crossed by sociologists, white sociologists from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in population, as the catalog we had researched put it. Give us the plans, Richard said, just give us the plans. We know you have them.

  The sociologist stared, little guy, maybe five and a half feet, still gripping the satchel he had snatched when we grabbed him from his office. What are you talking about? he said. He took in the scene pretty good; we could see him making sociological calculations behind that forehead of his. I should have gotten out of here, he said. That was my mistake. When the going was good, I should have got. We had trashed Kirk’s office pretty good by then, although nothing as to what the press was going to say later. I could figure out what the press would say. By the time the Rosenthals were through with us, they would have the dung piled feet deep; as they say would be talking about the jism on the carpets instead of into the Barnard girls, where it had been properly aimed. But there was no way to put off that kind of crap; as Richard said, you took your shot and you aimed it and the rest of it was establishment blues, that was all. The plans, he said again. The underground reactor, the tunnels, the way in. We know you have them. They were planted in your office a month ago when the stuff started getting serious. I want them now.

  The sociologist stared at Richard. You’re crazy, he said. You’ve got to be crazy. What are you talking about, nuclear reactors, tunnels? That’s for the Department of Physics, not for me. I’m in the soft sciences.

  You in soft sciences, mother, Richard said, going into his deep Panther act. Maybe I should explain that we were a mixed crowd—heavily mixed, as they say, boys and girls, black and white—but Richard in shades and full regalia had asked for the whole show and we had fallen back against the walls. If there was one thing he knew, Richard had said, it was how to put the screws to a white sociologist. Watch me jive, he had said, lean back and learn how we’re going to deal with the rest of these mothers from the point of revolution on. We had laughed then but it didn’t seem so funny now, Richard himself being carried away a bit with the shades and the chain act. But we were deep in by then and no arguing it. You real soft, Richard said. Let me explain to you, he said, coming up to the sociologist and giving him the finger in the gut, one, two, three, the rhythm boys. Back when things started moving around here about a month ago, foxy old Administration whose very offices you will note we now occupy thought that it would be best to get the plans, the secret plans for the underground tunnels out of the head offices and to some place relatively innocent. Inno-cent you get that, you understand the frame? We’re just trying to be helpful and refresh your memory.

  I don’t know what’s going on here, the sociologist said. Believe me, you have me at a loss. I am willing to help, but I never heard of anything like this. You have me at a loss, I told you, I want—

  You see my friend Ronald X here? Richard said. Ronald X is my security consultant, my comrade-in-arms, you dig? He is a desperate man.

  That is right, I said, I am a desperate man.

  He comes from a greatly deprived background, Richard said. You know all about cultural deprivation, they give out Ph.D.‘s in that subject. Your guy Alinsky in Chicago, he runs seminars on the streets about people like my friend Ronald X. There is capital funding from the government to study the deprivations in the head of this desperate man over here.

  The sociologist stared at Richard as if he had never seen anyone like him before. Possibly this is true. It is possible that Richard was a new experience for the sociologist, just as he had been for me back in those times when we were sharing backgrounds down at the Union. You can see what a desperate man he is from the look in his eyes, Richard said.

  He is from CCNY, which makes him even more frantic because he does not have that fine education and potentially prestigious degree behind him. He is just your basic nigger, Ronald X, and he is very angry.

  I want your help, I said, I want you to find me the plans. That is a simple request and then I will not be so desperate. I will leap over my cultural background and be as solid and reasonable as you. But right now I am strictly speaking not civilized.

  The sociologist seemed tormented, or perhaps the word was abstract. These shades of meaning are more for Richard than me. Clear to us, though, no part of Chicago population studies seemed to have prepared him for this, or at least he had not taken the course. That had been an elective, dealing with mad up-against-the-wall niggers in the president’s office at 2:00 A.M. with about twenty-five hundred police ringing the campus and the place going crazy. Maybe if he went back to school for some postpostgraduate work he would remember to take that course next time. But right now he was flat out of luck. That out-of-luck expression seemed to filter through all of his hard little features and then he said, I still don’t know what the deal is. But I’ll go back with you and look through desk drawers. I don’t care.

  That is a righteous cooperative attitude, Richard said, we can praise that motherfucking attitude. Richard always leaves the g on when he uses the big word. He says that it makes them more terrified, proper grammatical perspective in a brute scheme, something like a doctor explaining the logistics of testicular cords just before he cuts your balls off. Brings it all home. We’ll just send you on your way then, Richard said, and soon you’ll be back.

  I stayed behind to help you, the sociologist said. I didn’t want to run out of the buildings, I wanted to show solidarity.

  Well, you showing it, Richard said. Ain’t he showing it, Ronald? Let’s go.

  I take the sociologist by the arm in a deep Muslim squeeze and propel him through the door. Some of the brothers separate themselves from the wall and follow us, but this is our party and I know it. Richard has left it all up to me, this part, and I would say I were proud if I did not have so much else on my concentrated and busy mind.

  They got reactors, Richard had said to me a few hours earlier, while we were working the plan, this just after we had crashed through into Kirk’s office and sent them running. We’re going to get hold of them. We’re going to get the nukes.

  It’s a dumb plan, Jonathan said. Look at me. Listen to me. We can’t get at reactors.

  They got a motherfucking atomic pile under this place, Richard said. Everybody knows that. Had it for years. You can feel the little heat, the explosions bouncing through the grass when you cut across the quad. Once I was taking a leak in the physics building, I could feel atomic heat pass through my generous organ.

  I didn’t say they weren’t there, Jonathan said. Everyone knows it, all right. But messing with
nukes is high-caliber business. They get wild, we get hold of atomic shit.

  Your trouble, Richard said, you a gentle-ass white guy from the suburbs of Mahopac or somewhere, you’re interested in symbolic gestures, in radicalization, in heavy rioting in dress gear. Both me and Ronald, though, we got a different background, we got a somewhat different grasp of the situation. We’re here, we’re going to take it all the way.

  This is not the answer, Jonathan said. He took out a handkerchief, shook it, removed his glasses, began to wipe them. We’re doing just what we should. We got the buildings clear, we got the campus secure. The campus is ours tonight. They’re afraid to come in, and we can get out anytime we want. Now we press the nonnegotiable demands.

  You white boys amuse me, Richard said. He took the glasses from Richard’s hand, gave them a few strokes with his fingers. You think this is display, you with your nonnegotiable demands, your symbolic gestures, your liberating the president’s office. You’re full of shit, that’s what you are. You’re playing and they’re playing. But we’re not, that’s the whole difference. Ronald and I, we’re in this for keeps. Wake up in the morning, you can go back to Mahopac. Wake up in the morning, Ronald and I are still black. He’s humping for dollars at CCNY, I’m kissing ass down here in the department of stripes and ribbons, but they put the lights on and we’re niggers. So we’re serious. We got to be serious, that’s our condition.

  So what are you going to do? Jonathan said. You’re going to hold up the university, that’s it? You’re going to go nuclear on them? That’s heavy shit, heavy water down there, you fuck around with it, you’ll blow all of us up.

  I got techniques, Richard said, I got plans. Me and my ringleader, Ronald, we got big plans. We get access to the atomics, they’re not going to be so quick to rush in.

  Jonathan put the glasses back on his nose. He looked like what he was going to become, a professor of literature, the glasses flashing clean bright white light now In that angle I could see Richard’s point, finally, and the answer that went through me was as clean as the light. That’s about it, I said, the man has just about put it right.

  They’re not coming in anyway, Jonathan said. They’re ringing the buildings but they’re not going anywhere. I tell you, it’s a triumph, we got them paralyzed. We’re getting our story out to the press and they’re listening.

  You white fool, Richard said, you think they’re listening? They’re just holding off, letting the little boys and girls play. Three days from now, they can’t tear-gas us out, they’ll come in with grenades and clean out the place. You’re in a playpen, boy, you don’t understand anything. But it’s a lot more serious for us and that’s the fucking truth. The confab is over. Split. We’re going to get us a sociologist and some directions.

  Jonathan looked at me. Can’t you understand? he said. If we go for the reactor, that’s a whole different gig. That changes the rules on them and they’ll come in and kill us.

  You never understood, did you? I said. I grabbed him by neat handfuls of his shirt, pulled him toward me. We not interested in symbolic gestures, I said, we not interested in little white boys’ and girls’ game, playing around in the toilets, making the nursery school mad. We are in this for keeps now and you just opened the door to that.

  You let us in, you wanted a collaboration, you wanted a multiracial movement, you wanted a national protest—well, that’s what you got. And now it’s time to stand aside and let the men work this out.

  Jonathan looked at me and then away, stared at Richard. The stare was a good preparation for what we would see from the sociologist a little bit later. I can’t believe it, he said, you are serious. You really think that this is going to work.

  We don’t care if it works, Richard said, it’s just something we do, dig? We go all the way. You want multiracial, you got it. You want up against the wall, this is it. We not talking about humping in the president’s chair, leaving Kirk a little white stuff on the walls. We talking about power, about possession. So that’s it. You understand the situation?

  He surely do, I said to Richard. He surely does. I do not think that it is necessary to discuss it with the stud anymore.

  Oh one more thing, Richard said. You staying with us, you understand? Of course I’m staying with you, Jonathan said. I wouldn’t—

  You think you sneak out of the building about 4:00 A.M., you turn to white in the morning sun and go back to Mahopac, you got it wrong. You in it all the way, just like us. We got fifteen bloods with carbines and serious intentions, you change your mind on that.

  He’s not changing his mind, I said. His mind is visibly unchanged.

  Richard laughed. I did some laughing, too. Then we went back into the main room and announced that there would be a continuation of the plan, there being no need to tell the boys and girls in the outer echelon anything more at this point, and then we went hunting for a sociology professor. Jonathan had been very good at getting hold of the secret plans and administration fallback positions. We had to give him credit for that. Before our little disagreement, so thoroughly resolved, Jonathan had been a real worker for the cause. Of course, he had had a different name for it.

  In the concrete it was just Richard and me, looking at the dials, watching the dials do their little dance, hearing the thunder of the machines, smelling all of those compressors and atom splitters and heavy isotopic remedies. The sociologist had come across like a hooker, and the plans had been airtight. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be, us and the place together. Now, Richard said, adjusting his weapon and rubbing his hands, now we show them some real nonnegotiable demands. Nonnegotiable isn’t a slip of paper and four little white girls screaming and shaking their tits. Nonnegotiable is here it is baby or we blow up Riverside Park and the West End tavern and the place where Kirk’s asshole sits, too. How about that? He giggled, higher-pitched than I’ve ever heard him. Can a CCNY guy dig it? he said.

  I can dig it, I said. I can dig a lot. It is heavy business.

  I think we can do this, Richard said. I got five, six guys with heavy-tech brains and good mechanical aptitudes, I think they can really twist those dials and make this thing work. I thought it was a wild chance when we started, yes. Wild; I know it, he said, I thought Jonathan was crazy. But now it’s not so wild. I think it can work.

  What can work? I said. Anything?

  Anything at all. We’ll put a few demands, we’ll test them out. For openers, Richard said, I want New York City.

  What’s that? I said.

  Oh, not all of it, he said. They can keep Harlem. They can even keep Brownsville and Bed-Stuy, they so crazy for it. But they can hand me Park Avenue and Seventy-ninth and the stock exchange and we’ll go on from here. He gave me a gleaming smile. That’s what I think.

  Looking at Richard, it occurred to me—and not for the first time—that the boy was really crazy, that he was as crazy as the sociologist and maybe Jonathan thought he was. But that didn’t make him any less lovable, only a hell of a lot more dangerous, I thought. We better rejoin the troops, I said. The troops be getting anxious soon.

  Oh, we rejoin, Richard said. We rejoin and then we reup. How would you like Arpels? Me, I’m going to take Tiffany’s. We’re going to shake things up a little in this city. You know why? he said.

  Because we are desperate men, I said. Because we are the underclass, we are the natives right out of Congoland and we got nothing to lose. That’s right, Richard said. Oh, you is a righteous lad, all right.

  The white boys and girls aren’t going to take that too much to heart, I said.

  No, they ain’t, Richard said. But they let us in, didn’t they? You invite the piper, you buy the meal.

  The rumbling goes on and on as we draft our statement and then it is time to get back to the troops. But only for a while, I think. We have our battle plan now. We have our heads toward the situation. Soon enough, maybe, there will be no need for the troops. When they go through the stuff left in Kirk’s office, maybe they d
on’t necessarily find our names and pedigrees after all. It depends. It is, as they say, a fluid situation. It is closing in on the end of the sixties and everything is not as it was here in walrusland.

  The first communiqué meets silence and the second communiqué gets only a beat from whoever is on the phone at the other end. The third communiqué, however, setting a midnight deadline, does get some response. We’ll get back to you, they say. They do not believe it. Obviously they do not believe it. We have to begin reading off some coordinates and serial numbers on isotope containers before the tone of the responses changes.

  I think they believe us now, Richard said. I do believe that they believe we got nukes here and we are ready like the boys in Vietnam to die. I think midnight will see some interesting responses.

  We have asked them to withdraw all of their troops by midnight and also to issue a statement of capitulation. Otherwise the first reactor goes off. We have guarantees that this can be done although, of course, one can never be sure. The phone, dead for so long, is suddenly lively. They plead for more time, time to work things out. We read them a few more serial numbers. A senior physicist from the State Department, or that is what he says he is, gets on the line and we have to convince him, too. After a while he goes away.

  The sociology professor is crashed out on the floor, a couple of ladies around him, rubbing his shoulders. We tell him that we will not necessarily identify him as the collaborator but he will have to stay with us for a while. We will, however, make it as easy and pleasant for him as possible. The white girls are cooperative, as is so often the case with white girls and white men, also black men now that you asked.

  We sit and pass the time, Richard and I sharing some old stories. Our backgrounds may be different, me with my gentle middle-class thing and he on the harder rock, but they are also quite similar. We are both niggers, after all. They plead for another twelve hours’ extension and Richard gets on the horn this time and tells them this is the commander and they can fuck themselves. Two hours, that is it; 2:00 A.M. and their troops and dogs are off the campus or the first reactor goes on-line. We will talk about Tiffany’s later. They say they will get back to us.