The Grapple

Flora Blackford hurried into the House chamber. She’d got the summons to the joint session of Congress only a little while before. Other Representatives and Senators were grumbling at having to change plans to get here on time. She understood why. The President wouldn’t ask for a joint session much in advance. That would give the Confederates-and maybe other enemies-more time to come up with something unpleasant.

The Speaker of the House rapped loudly for order. When he got something close to quiet, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have the distinct honor and high privilege of introducing the President of the United States, Charles W. La Follette!”

Applause rang through the hall. Charlie La Follette took his place behind the lectern. He was tall and ruddy and handsome, with a splendid shock of white hair the cartoonists loved. He’d been President for almost a year and a half now, but still didn’t seem to have stepped out from under Al Smith’s shadow. Maybe today was the day.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, my fellow Americans, 1943 has blessed our arms with victory,” he said. “When the year began, we were driving invaders from western Pe

More applause washed over him, loud and fierce. He gri

This time, the applause was more tentative, though Flora clapped till her palms hurt. Pictures of those enormous mass graves-the words hardly did them justice-had been in all the weeklies for a while. Even so, the furor was less than she’d hoped for. People either didn’t care or didn’t want to believe what they were seeing was true.

“Everywhere, Confederate forces are in retreat,” the President said. “Even Jake Featherston must see that he ca

“Though they do not deserve them, I promise him and his leading henchmen their lives. We will take them into exile on a small island, and will guard them there so they can no longer trouble North America and blight its hopes. Confederate soldiers will be disarmed and sent home. All Confederates, white and colored, will be guaranteed life, liberty, and property.

“Think well, President Featherston. If you reject this call, both you and your country will regret it. We will leave wireless frequency 640 kilocycles unjammed for your reply for the next forty-eight hours. You will be sorry if you say no.” He stepped away from the microphones on the lectern, putting notes back into an inside pocket of his jacket as he did.

Flora applauded again. So did most of the other members of Congress. If the war ended now…If it ends now, Joshua won’t get hurt, she thought. That alone gave her plenty of reason to hope. Hope or not, though, she feared Featherston would ignore the call.

The hall emptied as fast as it had filled. Now no one had a great big target to aim at. Flora hurried to her office. She tuned the wireless set there to 640. She didn’t know how long the President of the CSA would take to answer, but she wanted to hear him when he did.

He needed less than two hours. “Here is a statement by President Featherston of the Confederate States of America,” an a

“I’m Jake Featherston, and I’m here to tell you the truth.” That familiar, rasping, hate-filled voice snarled out of the wireless set. “And the truth is, people of the USA and President La Follette, we aren’t about to surrender. We’ve got no reason to. We’re going to win this war, and you’ll be laughing out of the other side of your mouth pretty damn quick.

“Philadelphia will get the message in just a few minutes. Philadelphia will get it twice, matter of fact. You wait, you watch, and you listen. Then you figure out who ought to be doing the surrendering. So long for now. You’ll hear more from me soon.”

Flora said something that would have shocked her secretary. It amounted to, The nerve of the man! He couldn’t have bombers that close to Philadelphia. U.S. Y-ranging gear would have picked them up. And there was bound to be a heavy combat air patrol above the de facto capital of the USA. Bombers-even captured U.S. bombers or C.S. warplanes painted in U.S. colors-might not get through. But Jake Featherston had sounded devilishly sure of himself.

Terrorists inside the city? People bombers waiting to press their buttons? Flora’s mouth tightened. She knew those were both possibilities. Could Featherston be so sure they’d do their job on short notice? Maybe that was why he hadn’t answered right after President La Follette’s speech. Or…

A loud explosion rattled Flora’s teeth and put ripples in the coffee in her half-full cup. Long experience told her that was a one-ton bomb going off not nearly far enough away. No air-raid sirens howled. It hadn’t fallen from an enemy bomber. Flora was sure of that.

Maybe three minutes later, another blast echoed through Philadelphia, this one a little farther from her office. “Vey iz mir!” she exclaimed. She didn’t know what Featherston and his minions had done, but no denying he’d kept his promise.

After about a quarter of an hour, he came back on the wireless. “I’m Jake Featherston, and I’m here to say I told you the truth,” he crowed. He must have waited till he got word his plan, whatever it was, had worked. “See how you like it, Philadelphia. Plenty more where those came from, and we’ll spread ’em around, too. Surrender? Nuts! We just started fighting.”

If anyone in Philadelphia knew what the Confederates had done, Franklin Roosevelt was likely to be the man. What point to having co

She did. “Hello, Flora!” Roosevelt still sounded chipper. As far as she could tell, he always did. But he went on, “Can’t talk long. Busy as the Devil after a fire at an atheists’ convention right now.”

“Heh,” Flora said uneasily. “You must know why I’m calling, though. What did the Confederates just do to us?”

“Well, it looks like a rocket,” the Assistant Secretary of War answered. “Two rockets, I should say.”

“Rockets? You mean they had them set up somewhere outside of town and fired them off when Featherston told them to?”

“No, I don’t think that’s what happened, not from the first look we’ve had at what’s left of them.” Franklin Roosevelt kept that jaunty air, but he sounded serious, too. And he wasted no time explaining why: “Our best guess is, they shot them up here from Virginia.”

“From Virginia? Gevalt!” Flora said. “That’s got to be-what? A couple of hundred miles? I didn’t know you could make rockets fly that far.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t. But Jake Featherston can, damn his black heart,” Roosevelt said.

“What can we do to stop them?” Flora asked.

“At this end, nothing. They get here too fast,” he said. “If they’ve got bases or launchers or whatever you call them, maybe we can bomb those. I hope so, anyway. But I don’t know that for a fact, you understand.”

“How much damage did they do?” Flora found one bad question after another.

“One blew a big hole in a vacant lot. The other one hit in front of an apartment building.” Now Roosevelt was thoroughly grim. “Quite a few casualties. But it would have been worse at night, with more people at home and fewer out working.”

“Do they aim them at Philadelphia? Or do they aim them, say, at the corner of Chestnut and Broad?” Yes, all kinds of nasty questions to ask.