In At the Death

XV

People in the United States said Washington, D.C., had Confederate weather. Armstrong Grimes' father, who was from Ohio, said so all the goddamn time. Armstrong had always believed it. Why not? His old man wouldn't waste time and effort lying about anything so small.

But now Armstrong was stuck in southern Alabama in the middle of summer, and he was discovering that people in the USA didn't know what the hell they were talking about. He'd already found that out about his father-what guy growing up doesn't? — but discovering the same thing about the rest of the country came as a bit of a jolt.

Every day down here was like a bad day back home. It got hot. It got sticky. And it never let up. U.S. soldiers gulped salt tablets. When the sweaty patches under their arms dried out-which didn't happen very often-they left salt stains on their uniforms. He itched constantly. Prickly heat, athlete's foot, jock itch…You name it, Armstrong came down with it. He smeared all kinds of smelly goop on himself. Sometimes it helped. More often, it didn't.

And there were bugs. They had mosquitoes down here that could have doubled as fighter-bombers. They had several flavors of ferocious flies. They had vicious little biting things the locals called no-see-'ems. They had chiggers. They had ticks. They had something called chinch bugs. The Army sprayed DDT on everything and everybody. It helped…some. You would have had to spray every square inch of the state to put down all the nasty biting things.

Local whites hated the men in green-gray who'd whipped their armies and made them stop killing Negroes. Bushwhackers shot at U.S. soldiers. You looked sideways at every junked motorcar by the side of the road. It could go boom and take half a squad with it.

The U.S. Army didn't waste time fighting fair, not after the surrender. Every time a U.S. soldier got shot, ten-then twenty-Confederates faced the firing squad. The number for an auto bomb started at a hundred and also quickly doubled.

Armstrong hadn't been on any firing squads while the war was going on. Now, with three stripes on his sleeve, he frequently commanded one. The first couple of times he did it, it made his stomach turn over. After that, it turned into routine, and he got used to it.

So did the soldiers who did the shooting. They went about their business at the same time as they argued about whether it did any good. "Just makes these motherfuckers hate us worse," Squidface opined.

"They already hate us," Armstrong said. "I don't give a shit about that. I just don't want 'em shooting at us."

"If we don't get the assholes who're really doin' it, what do we accomplish?" Squidface asked. "Shootin' little old ladies gets old, you know?"

"We shoot enough little old ladies, the ones who're left alive'll make the trigger-happy guys knock it off," Armstrong said.

"Good fuckin' luck." Squidface was not a believer.

Armstrong trotted out what he thought was the clincher: "'Sides, we kill all the whites down here, nobody'll be left to go bushwhacking, right?"

"Shit, now you're talkin' like a Confederate nigger," Squidface said. "We do that, won't be anybody left alive down here."

"Wouldn't break my heart." Armstrong wiped his face with his sleeve. The sleeve came away wet-big surprise. "Best thing they could do with this country is give it back to the possums and the gators."

Squidface laughed, but he wouldn't give up on the argument-what better way to kill time? He suggested a reason to leave some Confederates alive: "Nobody gets laid any more if we kill all the women. Some of the ones we grease are cute. That's a waste of good pussy."

"How come you haven't come down venereal yet?" Armstrong asked.

"Same reason you haven't, I bet," Squidface answered. "I'm lucky. And when I figure maybe I won't be lucky, I'm careful. The broads down here, they're nothin' but a bunch of whores."

"They lost," Armstrong said, which went a long way towards explaining things. He added, "A lot of 'em, their husbands or boyfriends aren't coming back, either."

He supposed he had been lucky. He'd got an education down here that was a hell of a lot more enjoyable than anything they'd tried to cram down his throat in high school. He hadn't cared about English lit or medieval history or practical math. This-this was stuff he wanted to learn.

The one thing he was glad about was that none of the women who'd enlightened him had come before his firing squad. That would have been worse than embarrassing, and it might have landed him in trouble. Orders against what the brass called fraternization had gone out. Getting anyone to listen to them was another story.

"Far as I'm concerned, it's the same now as it was when we were shooting at each other," he said. "I just want to serve out my hitch, take off the goddamn uniform, go back home, and figure out what the hell to do with the rest of my life."

"Want to hear somethin' funny?" Squidface said.

"I'm all ears," Armstrong answered.

"Me, I'm thinkin' about turning into a lifer."

"Jesus Christ! C'mon with me, buddy. I'm taking you to the aid station. You're down with something worse than the clap. You've got softening of the brain, damned if you don't."

"Nah. I been thinkin' about it," Squidface said. "Thinkin' hard, too. Say I go back to Civvy Street. What's the best thing that can happen to me?"

"You get out of the Army," Armstrong answered at once.

"Yeah, and then what? Best thing I can see is, I spend the next forty years working in a factory, I find some broad, we have some kids and get old and fat together. Big fucking deal, pardon my French."

That was, in broad outline, the future Armstrong saw for himself, too. It didn't seem so bad-but, when Squidface laid it out, it didn't seem so good, either. But when the other choice was staying in…"Would you rather get your balls shot off instead? I already got one Purple Heart. That's about five too many."

"It won't be as bad now as it was," Squidface said. "What I figure is, if I stay in, I can end up a top kick pretty goddamn fast. They're gonna lose all kinds of senior noncoms-some of those sorry assholes are Great War retreads, and they ain't gonna stick around. People'll call me First Sergeant Giacopelli, not Squidface. I'll get to tell lieutenants where to head in. Even captains won't look at me like I'm dogshit on the bottom of their shoe. I'll have more fruit salad on my chest than the mess hall has in cans."

"You're gonna do what you're gonna do," Armstrong said. "Don't figure I can talk you out of it. Hell, I wish you luck, if it's what you really want. But I'm not gonna go that route."

"You'll end up in an office somewhere, with a secretary to blow you if your wife won't. You're a smart guy," Squidface said. "I'm just a sap from the wrong side of the tracks. Army's the first place I ever got anything like a square deal."

"If I'm so smart, what am I doing here?" Armstrong asked. Squidface laughed. Armstrong wished he hadn't made the crack about secretaries. His own father had worked in a Washington office since time out of mind. Armstrong didn't have any reason to think his old man was unfaithful, but now he'd wonder. That wasn't so good.

Then somebody let out a yell, and Armstrong and Squidface both jumped up to see what was going on. The guy who yelled was a captain. Seeing Armstrong, he said, "Gather up your platoon, Grimes, and take 'em into Hugo. We've got trouble there."

"Yes, sir," Armstrong said, and then, "Can you tell me what kind of trouble, so they know what to look out for?"

"There's a gal says a nigger raped her. He says she gave it up, and she only started yelling when somebody saw him leaving her house. All the white folks in town want to hang him up by the nuts. Before we got down here, they'd hang a coon for whistling at a white woman, let alone fucking her."

"What are we supposed to do, exactly?" Armstrong asked.

"He's in the town jail. Don't let 'em haul him out and lynch him. We're still figuring out what really happened-trying to, anyway. So that's what's going on. Go deal with it. Do whatever you have to do to hold the jail. White folks here have to know we're the law in these parts nowadays. They aren't. Got it?"

"Yes, sir," Armstrong replied-the only possible answer. Go deal with it, he thought. Right. Turning to Squidface, he said, "Let's round 'em up."

"Sure, Sarge." Squidface said the only thing he could.

They tramped into Hugo in full combat gear, weapons loaded and ready. Finding the jail was the easiest thing in the world-it was the building with the mob in front of it. A squad of scared-looking U.S. soldiers in the jail looked as if they didn't think they could hold the mob out if it attacked. They might well have been right, too.

"Break it up there!" Armstrong yelled from behind the crowd of irate Alabamans. "Go home!"

They whirled, almost as one. For a second, he wondered if they would charge his men. The sight of so many more soldiers in green-gray-and so many automatic weapons-seemed to give the locals pause. "We want the nigger!" one of them yelled. Then they all took up the cry: "We want the nigger!"

"Well, you aren't gonna get him," Armstrong said. "He's ours to deal with, once we work out what really went on. You people go on home. First, last, and only warning: we start shooting, we don't quit."

"What he done to that white gal, just killin's too good for him!" shouted a man with a gray mustache stained by tobacco juice. "We're gonna-"

"You're gonna shut the fuck up and go home right now, or you're gonna end up dead," Armstrong broke in. "Those are the only choices you got. We'll deal with the colored guy, or maybe with the whore he was trickin' with." That caused fresh tumult. He silenced it by chambering a round. The harsh snick! cut through the crowd noise like a sharp knife through soft sausage. "Enough of this shit," Armstrong said. "Beat it!"

He wondered if they would rush him in spite of everything. He also wondered if he and his buddies could shoot enough of them to break the rush before they got mobbed. Then, sullenly, the crowd dispersed. They were willing to kill to defend Confederate womanhood, but less enthusiastic about dying for it.

"Whew!" Armstrong said.

"Yeah." Squidface nodded. "Ain't you glad the war's over?"

"Christ, we almost started it up again," Armstrong said. "And you want to keep on doing crap like this? You gotta be out of your tree."

"Hey, I won't be bored, anyway," Squidface made light of it, but he wasn't about to change his mind. "Got a butt on you?"

"Sure." Armstrong handed him a pack. "Wonder if that coon really did give her the old what-for?"

"Who cares?" Squidface paused to flick his Zippo, sucked in smoke, and went on, "Way I look at it is, all the shit these white Freedom Party assholes gave the spades, who gives a shit if they get some of their own back eight inches at a time?"

"Mm, you've got something there." Armstrong lit a cigarette, too. "Besides, I bet she's ugly." He and Squidface both laughed. Their side had won. They could afford to.

C assius had wondered about a lot of things in his life. Whether he would be famous never made the list. A Negro in the CSA had no chance at all of reaching that goal, so what point to wondering about it?

All he had to do, it turned out, was be a halfway decent shot. Knock one man over, and his own world turned upside down and inside out. No, he hadn't expected that. He hadn't even imagined it. None of which kept it from happening.

First, U.S. officers inside Madison grilled him. He told his story. There wasn't much of a story to tell: "Soon as I seen it was Jake Featherston, I shot the son of a bitch. Shot him some more once he was down so's he wouldn't get up no mo'."

"What'll we do with him?" one officer asked another over Cassius' head. They might as well have been talking about somebody in the next county.

"Hell, I don't know," the second Yankee answered. "If it was up to me, though, I'd put him up for a Congressional Medal of Honor."

"Can't," the first officer said.

"Why the hell not?"

"He isn't a U.S. citizen."

"Oh." The second officer laughed sheepishly. "Yeah. You're right. But he just did more for us than a fuck of a lot of guys who are."

One thing that happened because he'd shot Jake Featherston was that he didn't have to go out on patrol any more. He didn't have any more duties at all, in fact. He could eat as much as he wanted and sleep as late as he wanted. If they'd issued him a girl, he would have had the whole world by the short hairs. And if he'd asked, they probably would have. But he didn't think of it, and no one suggested it, so he did without.

A few days later, a newsreel crew filmed him. He told them the same story he'd given the Army officers. One of them asked, "Did you feel you were taking revenge for all the Negroes Jake Featherston hurt?"

"He didn't hurt 'em, suh-he done killed 'em," Cassius answered. "My ma an' my pa an' my sister an' Lord knows how many more. Can't hardly get even for all that jus' by killin' one man. He needed killin'-don't get me wrong. But it ain't enough-not even close."

"Why didn't you get taken with the rest of your family?" asked the white man from the USA.

"On account of I didn't go to church on Sunday. That's where they got grabbed."

"Do you think God was saving you for something else?"

"Beats me," Cassius answered. "Plenty of other times I could've got killed, too."

"What are you going to do now?"

Cassius spread his hands. "Suh, I got no idea."

Plenty of other people had ideas for him. Next thing he knew, he was on a train heading for the USA. He'd never ridden on the railroad before, and he would have gone hungry if one of the whites escorting him hadn't taken him to the dining car. The food was good-better than U.S. Army chow. It didn't measure up to what the Huntsman's Lodge or his mother had made, but he didn't figure anything ever would, not this side of heaven.

He took some satisfaction in seeing what the USA had done to the CSA-and the Carolinas had been a Confederate redoubt till late in the war. As he passed through Virginia, he saw what the United States had done where they weren't fooling around. He saw white people living in the midst of the rubble. They were filthy and grubby and scrawny. He'd gone through that himself. He might have been sorry for them…if he'd seen more than a tiny handful of blacks living alongside them. Since he didn't, he stifled whatever sympathy he would have felt.

Then he crossed into the USA. Another country! Not only that, a country where they just treated Negroes…not too well. His father had always been cynical about the United States. Compared to what Cassius had survived, though, being treated…not too well looked pretty goddamn good.

The United States didn't look so good. The part he saw, the stretch between the Maryland-Virginia border and Philadelphia, looked almost as bomb-pocked and trampled as the land farther south had. He wondered how any part of this poor battered continent would ever climb back to its feet again.

He saw the edges of what the superbomb had done to Philadelphia. The edges were bad enough. What were things like at the center, where the bomb went off? Maybe not knowing was better.

They put him up in a hotel not far from Congressional Hall. "Anything you want-anything at all-you just telephone and ask for it," a bright young lieutenant said. "They'll bring it to you."

"Thank you kindly," Cassius said, and then, "Show me how to work the telephone, suh, please."

"You never used one before?" The officer, who couldn't have been more than a year or two older than Cassius, blinked.

"No, suh," Cassius answered. "Weren't more than a couple in the Terry-where I come from-even before things got bad. After that, we didn't have nothin'."

"All right." The white man-he was blond and blue-eyed and handsome; in the CSA, he might have become a Freedom Party Guard-showed him what to do. "You know about hot and cold water taps, right?"

"Well, we always had to heat our own, but I can cipher out what's hot and what's cold. An' we had the bathroom down the hall. Mighty nice, puttin' it right here."

"I bet. My folks grew up in a place like that. I'm lucky I didn't have to. They'll be delivering a dress uniform for you tonight, too. You go up to Congress tomorrow, so they can thank you for getting rid of Featherston."

"Oh, my," Cassius said.

He tried the telephone, and ordered a steak and fried potatoes. Fifteen minutes later, somebody knocked on the door. A white man in a fancy getup a lot like what Cassius' father had worn brought in a tray. "Here you are, sir," he said in a funny foreign accent. Cassius understood tips. They'd given him pocket money, so he handed the waiter fifty cents. With a nod and a smile, the man left. I did that right, Cassius thought.

Again, the food reminded him Army cooks didn't know everything there was to know. Was it as good as what the Huntsman's Lodge made? Pretty close, if it wasn't.

He'd just finished eating when the uniform arrived. It fit perfectly. How did they do that? Did they measure him while he wasn't looking? The fabric was buttery soft. The only differences from a real U.S. Army uniform were plain brass buttons and no U.S. on his collar. He had an auxiliary's armband instead. Well, he was one.

His visit to Congress passed in a blur. Dozens of people shook his hand. One of them, he realized just after it happened, was the President of the USA. Charlie La Follette didn't look nearly so fierce as Jake Featherston. But he'd won. And I helped, Cassius thought dizzily.

He got dizzier a moment later. Along with a resolution expressing the Thanks of Congress, they gave him a reward-$100,000, tax-free. The Congresswoman who made a speech about that was Flora somebody. Afterwards, she told him, "If you like, I'll find someone you can trust to help you look after the money. You don't want to waste it." Then she smiled. "Or maybe you do-I don't know. But it would be a shame."

"Thank you, ma'am. Reckon I take you up on that." Cassius had never imagined so much money. But he remembered how his folks always squeezed every penny to get by. He didn't think he wanted to waste this, not when it could set him up for life. Maybe waste a little, he thought.

He gave wireless interviews. He talked to Bill Shirer and Eric Sevareid and Walter Winchell. He could hardly understand Winchell's rapid-fire, slang-filled New York accent. If he hadn't heard a few soldiers talking that way, he probably wouldn't have been able to follow at all.

Each broadcaster asked the question a different way, but they all wanted to know the same thing: what did killing Jake Featherston feel like? The more he told the story, the further from the reality of it he felt.

A few days later, as if remembering it had overlooked something, Congress voted Cassius a fresh honor: it declared him a citizen of the United States. He felt more excited than someone from, say, the Empire of Mexico might have. Up till now, he'd never been a citizen of any country. Negroes in the CSA were residents, but they didn't have the rights citizens did.

The Congresswoman who'd offered to help him sent over an accountant: a thin, quiet man named Sheldon Klein. He always wore a glove on his left hand. Cassius watched it and saw only his index finger and thumb move, so he probably had some kind of war wound there.

"Yes, if we invest in bonds and some carefully chosen stocks, we can provide you with a very decent income without touching your principal at all," he said.

"My what?" Cassius asked.

"Your principal. That means the basic amount of money you have now. It will still be there, and you can live off what it earns," Klein answered. He didn't say, You dumb nigger. He didn't even act as if he thought it.

"Any chance I can make more money?" Cassius asked.

"I'm sure you will," the accountant said. "There will probably be a book about you, and a film as well. The fees from those you can either spend as they come in or add to the nest egg and make your investment income larger. And nothing stands in the way of your pursuing an education and having a career like anyone else."

Cassius hadn't even thought about that. "What about-?" He brushed a couple of fingers across the black skin on the back of his other hand.

"A difficulty. Not an impossible difficulty, not in this country," Sheldon Klein replied. "If you work hard, you can overcome it. And, if I may speak frankly, even people who dislike most Negroes will go out of their way for the man who rid the world of Jake Featherston."

That wasn't fair, which didn't mean he was wrong. "Don't like to take advantage," Cassius said slowly.

"If you can, if you aren't hurting anybody-why not?" Klein said. "You spent your whole life up till now disadvantaged, didn't you? You were a Negro in the Confederate States, so of course you did. Do you even read and write?"

"Yes, suh. My pa, he learned me. He knew…all kinds of things." Cassius realized he had no idea just how much his father knew. He'd never had the chance to find out. Even having his letters made him stand out in the Terry.

He also saw he'd surprised Klein. "All right. That will help you, then," the white man said. "The stronger your foundation, the bigger the house you can build on it."

"Reckon you're right." Something else occurred to Cassius. "What do you make out of this?"

"Off of you? Not a dime. Congresswoman Blackford would skin me if I charged you," Klein answered. "I may get some extra business when people find out I work for you, but that's a different story. Oh, and just so you know-it's easy for an accountant to steal from you. Every so often, you should pay somebody else to check up on what I do."

Cassius started to say he was sure he wouldn't need to. Then he saw Klein was telling him he shouldn't be sure of things like that. And the accountant wouldn't be the only one who could screw him if he wasn't careful. So he nodded back and said, "Thanks. Reckon I will." By the way Sheldon Klein nodded, he'd passed a small test-or maybe not such a small one.

Sam Carsten remembered coming home after the last war. He'd been a petty officer on the Dakota then, and eager to learn more about the strange and exciting new world of naval aviation. He'd been on the Remembrance when the new airplane carrier launched. After some detours, he'd been aboard her when she got sunk, too.

Coming home with the Josephus Daniels was different. She was his. He wondered what the Navy would do with her after the war. She'd done everything they asked of her while the country needed ships. When you got right down to it, though, she couldn't do any one thing very well.

And he wondered what the Navy would do with him after the war. A middle-aged lieutenant up through the hawse hole…He might have had a better chance of hanging on if he'd stayed a CPO. The Navy needed grizzled old chiefs. Grizzled old midgrade officers? That was a different story, too.

Since he couldn't do anything about it, he tried not to worry. He steered the destroyer escort to her berth in the Boston Navy Yard himself. By God, he could get the job done. As sailors on the pier caught lines and made her fast, he nodded to Lon Menefee and said, "Well, we made it."

"Yes, sir." The exec nodded. "In style, too."

"As much as the old beast has." Was Sam talking about the ship or himself? Even he wasn't sure.

Men who'd got leave happily hurried off the destroyer escort. A lot of them wouldn't stay in the Navy much longer. They would pick up the threads of the lives they'd led before they put on the uniform. Sam couldn't very well do that. He'd cut those threads thirty-five years before. But if they put him on the beach he'd have to find something else to do.

He wished he had any idea what.

"She's in your hands for a bit, Lon," he said. "I get to go talk to a board."

"All things considered, I think I'd rather have a tooth pulled," Menefee said judiciously. "Matter of fact, I'm sure of it."

"Ha! Your time will come, and soon, too." Sam wasn't kidding. The exec was still in his twenties. He had plenty of time to climb the links in the chain of command. Carsten wished he did himself.

That was one wish he wouldn't get. At least he had sense enough to know it. He set his cap at the proper angle, left the bridge, and then left the Josephus Daniels. A commander who couldn't be much older than Lon Menefee started to salute him, then jerked his arm down. Without smiling, Sam did salute the younger man. That kind of thing happened all the time when you had more wrinkles than stripes.

Two younger but senior officers did salute him before he got to the meeting room where he supposed he would hear his fate. As was his habit when they did that, he returned the salutes with an admiral's dignity. If one of his stripes were of thick gold…If I had an admiral's pay! he thought. You couldn't get rich in the service no matter what, not if you were honest, but if you won flag rank you did pretty well for yourself.

He laughed, which made a passing sailor give him a funny look. A lieutenant's pay was nothing to speak of, but he had a fair bit of money sitting in one account or another. When had he had time to spend any of it?

When he walked in to face the board, one of the men on it was a rear admiral and two were captains, all about his age. The last fellow was also a four-striper, but of much more recent vintage, his handsome face unlined, his brown hair unfrosted with gray. He grinned, jumped to his feet, and held out a hand. "Hello, Sam!" he said. "How are you?"

"Mr. Cressy!" Sam exclaimed. "Good to see you!" He shook hands with the former exec of the Remembrance. "You're going up as fast as I thought you would, sir. Is that the ribbon for a Navy Cross?"

Dan Cressy looked embarrassed. "I was lucky."

"You're lucky you're alive. That's one of the ways you get a Navy Cross," the rear admiral said. He turned back to Sam. "Take a seat, Lieutenant Commander Carsten."

"Lieut-" Sam blinked. "Thank you, sir!" Two and a half stripes! He'd made it at last! Wonder filled him as he sat down. He'd climbed about as high as a mustang could hope to get. But he couldn't relax even now. The Navy might be giving him a pat on the back at the same time as it was giving him a kick in the ass. A promotion on the way out the door was anything but unheard of.

"You had yourself a busy war," the rear admiral observed. "Captain Cressy's told us part of the story, and your record since you got a ship of your own speaks for itself."

"I took her where I got sent, sir," Carsten answered. "I did what my orders told me to do. I'm just glad we didn't get cut up too bad doing it."

"Your attitude does you credit," one of the senior captains said. "Captain Cressy predicted you would tell us something like that."

"He should talk. 'I was lucky'!" Sam glanced toward Cressy. "No offense, sir, but you sandbag like a son of a gun."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Cressy said, deadpan. Everybody laughed.

The rear admiral returned to business. "You had a little trouble with your previous exec, Carsten. How does Lieutenant Menefee suit you?"

"He's a fine officer, sir," Sam said quickly-he didn't want to screw Menefee. "I recommend him without reservation. That's the short answer. Details are in his fitness reports, but it all boils down to the same thing."

"Short answer will do for now." The rear admiral nodded to one of the captains, who wrote something down. The admiral's sea-gray eyes swung back to Sam. "Where do you see yourself going from here?"

"As long as it's in the Navy, sir, I'll take a shot at whatever you want to give me," Sam replied.

"We've heard that before," said the captain, who was taking notes.

"Haven't we just?" the rear admiral agreed. "I don't think the Navy's going to shrink the way it did after the last war. We've got the Japs to keep an eye on, God only knows how friendly Germany will stay, and we really are going to sit on the Confederates-and the damn Canucks-this time around. We won't leave you on the beach."

"That's mighty good to hear, sir," Sam said. "Will Congress give us the money we need to do all that good stuff?"

The rear admiral glanced over to Captain Cressy. "Well, you were right. He's plenty sharp."

"I said so, didn't I?" Cressy returned.

"You sure did." The flag officer gave his attention back to Sam. "They will for this year, anyhow, because we're still running on war appropriations. What happens after that…I've never believed in borrowing trouble. Have you?"

"Only when I worry about my ship," Sam answered.

All the senior officers sitting across from him nodded. "There is that. Yes, indeed. There is that. You understand what command's all about, all right. Suppose we give you a choice. You can keep the Josephus Daniels and go on occupation patrol in Confederate waters. Or, if you'd rather, you can have a real destroyer out in the Sandwich Islands. I don't know what kind of duty that would be. Technically, we're still at war with the Empire of Japan, but it looks like we'll let things peter out on the status quo ante bellum, same as we did the last time around. You may end up gathering moss out there. If you go down to the Confederacy-to the South, I suppose I ought to call it, since we're going to try to hold on to it…"

"If I go down there, it won't be dull, whatever else it is," Sam finished for him.

"Well, yes," the rear admiral said. "That's how it looks."

"I'll hang on to the DE, sir," Sam said. "If I were Captain Cressy's age, I'd take the bigger, newer ship. It'd look spiffier in my service jacket. But I figure I can do more good keeping the Confederates in line. The Pacific war…" He shook his head. "The supply lines are just too damn long to let either side fight a proper war out there."

"That's how it's been so far, anyhow," Captain Cressy said. "If we get airplanes that can carry a superbomb from Midway, say, to the Philippines-"

"Or if they get one that can carry a superbomb from Guam to Honolulu," the rear admiral broke in.

"Or if either side gets a bomber that can fly a superbomb off an airplane carrier," Sam said.

"There's a cheerful thought. With these new turbos, it'll probably happen in the next few years," the rear admiral said. "Or else the smart boys'll make the bombs smaller, so the prop jobs we've already got can carry them. Interesting times, interesting times." However interesting they might be, he didn't sound as if he looked forward to them.

Sam understood that, because he knew he didn't. "Sir, how the heck is the Navy going to fight a war when one airplane with one bomb can knock out a flotilla?"

"You want the straight dope?" the rear admiral asked.

"Yes, sir!" Sam said eagerly.

"All right. The straight dope is, right now nobody has the faintest idea in the whole wide world. If you've got any hot suggestions, put 'em down in writing and send 'em to the Navy Department. They'll go into the mix-you bet your sweet ass they will."

"The only idea I've got about a superbomb is, being under it when it goes off is a bad plan."

"You're even with everybody else, Sam," Captain Cressy said. "Hell, you're ahead of some people. There are officers and civilians in Philadelphia who think the Kaiser is our buddy and the Japs don't know how to build superbombs, so why worry?"

"I believe you. Even though it's Philadelphia, I believe you," Sam said. "Some people don't believe things are real till they happen to them. And if a superbomb happens to you, it's too late."

"Sometimes you can talk till you're blue in the face, and it doesn't do you one damn bit of good. Makes you wonder." The rear admiral shook his head. "All right. We'll cut orders for you, and we'll get your ship refitted. And congratulations again, Commander."

"Thank you, sir!" Sam got to his feet and saluted. Hearing it that way sounded even better. It was as if he'd got the whole third stripe, not just half of it. Most of the time, people didn't bother calling you Lieutenant Commander, any more than they bothered calling you Lieutenant, Junior Grade. Sam knew all about that. He'd been a j.g. for a long time.

Two and a half stripes! And they still had a slot for him! He really hadn't expected the one, and he'd flabbled about the other. Once he got back to his ship, he owed all the officers drinks. Well, he could take care of that. He could tie one on if he felt like it-he'd earned the right. Maybe I will, he thought. When am I ever going to have another promotion party? The answer to that was all too plain. Never.

S omebody said you could never go home again. Back in Augusta, Georgia, Jerry Dover would have said that whoever it was had a point. The city he came back to wasn't the one he'd left when he joined the Confederate Army.

When he left, the war hadn't touched Augusta. Negro rebels had set off auto bombs in town, but that was different. So was the isolation of the Terry from the white part of town. Whites and Negroes had always lived apart. Barbed wire between them didn't seem to matter so much-not if you were white, anyhow.

Everything had got shabby even before he joined up. Nobody put any effort into keeping things neat; that all went into doing whatever it took to beat the damnyankees. Well, the whole damn country did whatever it took to beat the damnyankees, and that turned out not to be enough.

And now the whole damn country was paying for it.

Augusta sure was. The Stars and Stripes flew over city hall for the first time in more than eighty years. The Yankees had captured the town more or less by sideswipe in their drive down the Savannah River to the port of the same name. They'd bombed it a few times, but the Confederates didn't make a stand here. Jerry Dover had seen what happened to places where one side or the other made a stand. He thanked heaven Augusta wasn't one of them.

Incidental damage was bad enough. Streets had craters in them. Walls had chunks bitten out of them. Most windows stared with blind eyes. The smell of death was old and faint, but it was there.

His family had survived. His house was-mostly-intact. He supposed he ought to thank heaven for all that, too. As a matter of fact, he did. But he would have liked things better if the town and the way of life he'd liked so well had come through the war in one piece.

They hadn't. It wasn't just that U.S. soldiers tramped through the streets of Augusta now. The life, the energy, were gone from the city. Like the rest of the CSA, it had done everything it knew how to do. It didn't know how to do anything any more.

So many men were missing. A lot were dead. A lot were maimed. Some remained in U.S. POW camps, though every day more came back on the train. But even the ones who were there seemed missing in action. After a losing war, how could you give a shit about putting things back together and making a living again?

Jerry Dover was one of the most hardheaded, practical men around. He had a hell of a time giving a rat's ass about what happened next. And if he did, what about his countrymen? He saw what about them. They came back, and they had no idea what the hell to do after that.

A lot of them drank. Good booze was in short supply, and hideously expensive when you could find it. There was plenty of rotgut and moonshine, though. The Yankees didn't mind if taverns opened up. Maybe they figured drunks would be too bleary to bother them. And maybe they were right.

Maybe they weren't, too. Some of the drunken ex-soldiers didn't care what happened to them any more. They would pick a fight for the sake of picking it. The Yankees, who weren't ex-soldiers, had a simple rule: shoot first. Augusta crackled with gunfire. The U.S. soldiers often didn't bother burying corpses. They left them on the sidewalk or in the gutter to warn other hotheads.

Because the United States played by the Geneva Convention rules and paid him at the same rate as one of their officers, Dover had money in his pocket when he got home. Green money-U.S. money-was in desperately short supply in the conquered Southern states. No one knew what brown money-Confederate cash-was worth any more, or whether it was worth anything. In the bad days after the Great War, one U.S. dollar could have bought billions, maybe trillions, of Confederate dollars. It wasn't that bad now, but it wasn't good. Not even the occupying authorities seemed sure what to do about the currency of a defunct country.

Putting all that together made leaving the house an adventure every time Jerry did it. He needed to look for work; his greenbacks wouldn't last forever, or even very long. But he was lucky if he could get more than a couple of blocks before jumpy kids in green-gray challenged him.

On a typical hot, muggy afternoon, a Yankee corporal barked, "Hey, you!"

"Yes?" Dover stopped in his tracks. He didn't want to give the soldiers any excuse to do something he'd regret later.

"You fight in the war?" the corporal snapped.

"Yes," Dover said.

The noncom held out his hand. "Let's see your release papers."

"I'm going to reach into my left trouser pocket to get them out," Dover said. He waited till the U.S. soldier nodded before moving. When he did, he moved slowly and carefully. He showed the Yankee he was holding only papers. "Here."

"Gimme." The corporal examined the papers and then sent Dover a fishy stare. "You were a light colonel, and they let you go anyway?"

"No, not me. I'm still back in Indianapolis," Dover answered.

"Funny guy. I'm laughing my ass off," the U.S. soldier said. Dover's big mouth had got him into trouble before. When will I learn? he wondered unhappily. The soldier in green-gray went on, "How come they turned you loose? And don't get cute with me, or you'll be sorry."

"I was only in the Quartermaster Corps. And I signed the papers that said I wouldn't give any more trouble. Hell, I know we lost. You guys wouldn't be here if we didn't," Dover said.

"Bet your balls, buddy." The corporal scratched his bristly chin. "Doesn't seem like enough, somehow. Not a lot of officers released yet."

"Well, there is one thing more," Dover admitted reluctantly.

"Yeah?"

"The guy who shot Jake Featherston, his father used to work in the restaurant I managed. Maybe he said I wasn't a total bastard."

"Maybe he was lying through his teeth. Or maybe you are." The corporal gestured with his tommy gun. "C'mon with me. We'll get this shit sorted out."

"Right," Dover said, resignation in his voice. If he said no, he'd get shot. So they went to the corporal's superiors. Dover told his story over again. A U.S. second lieutenant with more pimples than whiskers called somebody on a field telephone. The kid-he had to be younger than the corporal-talked, listened, and hung up.

"They'll get back to us," he said.

"What am I supposed to do in the meantime?" Dover asked.

"Wait right here," the baby-faced officer answered. Dover didn't say anything, but he couldn't have looked very happy. The lieutenant said, "What's the matter, Pops? You got a hot date stashed somewhere?"

"No," Jerry Dover said with a sigh. His last "hot date," down in Savannah, had blackmailed him and was probably some kind of Yankee spy. That didn't mean sitting around in a green-gray tent made his heart go pitter-pat with delight. Since his other choices seemed to be the stockade and the burial ground, he sat tight.

After a while, they gave him a couple of ration cans. He ate without another word. He'd had U.S. rations plenty of times during the war and in the POW camp. Eating them in his home town added insult to injury.

After two and a half hours, the field telephone rang. The lieutenant picked it up and listened. "Really?" he squeaked in surprise. "All right-I'll take care of it." He hung up and eyed Jerry. "Your story checks out."

"It should. It's true," Dover said.

"I know that-now. I wouldn't've believed it before." The junior officer scribbled something on Dover's papers. "There. I've written an endorsement that should keep them from hauling you in again."

"That'd be nice," Dover said, and then, belatedly, "Thanks." Maybe the endorsement would do some good, maybe it wouldn't. But at least the kid with the gold bars made the effort. Dover supposed a lot of Yankees would have laughed to see him get in trouble time after time. He put the papers back in his pocket.

"You're done here," the lieutenant said. "You can go."

"Thanks," Dover said again, and ambled off.

He got stopped one more time before he made it to the Huntsman's Lodge. This U.S. patrol didn't haul him in, so maybe the lieutenant's endorsement really did help. Stranger things must have happened, though Dover had a hard time thinking of one.

The Huntsman's Lodge was open for supper. That didn't surprise Jerry Dover; the fancy places always made it. Most of the customers were U.S. officers. Some of them were eating with pretty girls who definitely didn't come from the USA. That didn't surprise Jerry Dover, either. It was the way the world worked.

Most of the waiters and busboys were Mexicans. The ones who weren't were whites: a couple of sixteen-year-olds and a couple of old men. That was a revolution; in the prewar CSA, most whites would sooner have died than served anyone.

One of the Mexicans recognized Dover. The short, swarthy man came over and shook his hand. "Good to see you again, Seсor," he said.

"Good to be seen, by God," Dover answered. "Willard Sloan still running things here?"

"Sн-uh, yes. I take you to him."

Dover grinned. "You reckon I don't know the way, Felipe?"

All the same, he let the waiter escort him to the tiny, cramped office where he'd put in so many years. Seeing Sloan behind his battered desk was a jolt. The current manager of the Huntsman's Lodge was in his late forties, with a lean face, a bitter expression, and hard blue eyes. When he sat behind the desk, you could hardly tell he used a wheelchair. His legs were useless; he'd got a bullet in the spine during the Great War.

He eyed Jerry Dover with all the warmth of a waiter eyeing a patron sliding out the door without paying his check. "Think you can take my job away from me, do you?" he said.

"That's not what I came here for," Dover answered, which was at least partly true. "Just…wanted to see how things were. I spent a lot of years here, you know."

"Yeah," Sloan said glumly. "Owners know you're back yet?"

"No," Dover said.

"Maybe I ought to plug you now, then." Sloan sounded serious. Did he keep a pistol in a desk drawer? The way things had gone in the CSA, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. The cripple gave Dover another wintry stare. "Or maybe I just ought to shoot myself, save somebody else the trouble."

"Hey, I only want to get…started over." Dover didn't want to say get back on my feet again, not to a man who never would. "Doesn't have to be here."

"But this'd suit you best." Willard Sloan didn't make it a question.

"If you've done a halfway decent job since I left, the owners'll keep you on," Dover said. "I bet they're paying you less than they paid me." Would he work for less than he had before? Damn right he would. But he didn't tell Sloan that.

"Yeah, they jewed me down pretty good," the present manager agreed. "What can you do, though?"

"Not much," Dover said. What could he do? He could let the owners know he was around. He'd likely taken care of that just by showing up here. If they wanted him back, they'd get word to him-and too bad for Willard Sloan. If they didn't…he'd have to figure out something else, that was all.

T hick wire mesh in the Houston jail's visiting room separated Jefferson Pinkard from the new damnyankee officer the U.S. authorities had chosen to defend him. As he had with Isidore Goldstein, he growled, "Dammit, I didn't do anything in your country. I didn't do anything to anybody from your country. I didn't do anything the people in my country didn't want me to do, either."

The damnyankee-he was called Moss, and he was about as exciting as his name-shook his head. "None of that counts. They're charging you with crimes against humanity. That means you should have known better than to do that stuff even if they told you to."

"My ass," Jeff said angrily. "Goddamn coons always hated the Confederate States. They fucked us when they rose up in the last war.

Hell, first time I went into action, it wasn't against you Yankees. It was against Red niggers in Georgia. You reckon they wouldn't've done it again? Like hell they wouldn't. Only we didn't give 'em the chance this time around."

Moss shook his head again. "Women? Children? Men who never did anybody any harm? You won't get a court to buy it."

"Well, shit, tell me something I don't know," Pinkard said. "You assholes are gonna hang me. Anything I say is just a fuckin' joke, far as you're concerned. Why'd they even bother giving me a new lawyer when Goldstein got hurt? Just to make it look pretty, I bet."

"I wish I could tell you you're wrong," Moss replied, which took Jeff by surprise. "Chances are they will hang you. But I'll fight them as hard as I can. That's my job. That's what lawyers do. I'm pretty good at it, too."

Jeff eyed him through the grating. He still wasn't much to look at: a middle-aged man who'd been through the mill. He did sound like somebody who meant what he said, though. Jeff knew professional pride when he heard it. He thought Moss would do the best job he could. He also thought it wouldn't do him one goddamn bit of good.

"Can you give me anything to show there were Negroes you didn't kill when you could have?" Moss asked. "That kind of thing might help some."

"Nope." Pinkard shook his head. "I did what I was supposed to do, dammit. I didn't break any laws."

"How many Negroes went through your camps?" Lieutenant Colonel Moss asked. "How many came out alive? How many had trials?"

"Trials, nothing," Jeff said in disgust. "Trials are for citizens. Niggers aren't citizens of the CSA. Never have been. Never will be now, by God." He spoke with a certain doleful pride. He'd helped make sure of that.

"Even there, you're wrong," Moss said. "There were Negro citizens in the Confederate States-the men who fought for them in the Great War. They went into your camps just like the rest. U.S. authorities can prove that."

"Well, so what? They were dangerous," Jeff insisted. "You leave out the ones who learned how to fight, they're the bastards who'll give you grief down the line. When we take care of stuff, we do it up brown."

The Yankee sighed. "You aren't making it any easier for me-or for yourself."

"What the hell difference does it make?" Pinkard demanded. "You said it yourself-they're gonna hang me any which way. I'll be damned if I give 'em excuses. I did what I was supposed to do, that's all."

"Are you sorry you did it?" Moss said. "You might be able to persuade them to go a little easier on you if you make them believe you are."

"Easy enough to leave me alive?" Jeff asked.

"Well…" The military attorney hesitated. "You are the one who started using trucks to asphyxiate Negroes, right? And you are the one who started using cyanide in the phony bathhouses, too, aren't you?"

"How'd you know about the trucks?" Jeff asked.

"There's a Confederate official in Tennessee named…" The lawyer had to stop and check his notes. "Named Mercer Scott. He told us you were responsible for coming up with that. Is he lying? If he is, we have a better chance of keeping you breathing."

Jeff considered. So Mercer was singing, was he? Well, he was trying to save his neck, too. Chances were he wouldn't be able to do it, not when he ran Camp Dependable after Jeff moved on to Camp Determination. The trucks first showed up at Camp Dependable. They made life a lot easier for guards than taking Negroes out into the swamps and shooting them. Was the mechanic who'd made the first one still alive? Jeff didn't know. It probably didn't matter. Other guards back at the camp by Alexandria would be able to back Mercer up. As for the cyanide, he had plenty of correspondence with the pest-control company that made it. If he tried to deny things there, he was screwed, blued, and tattooed.

And so, with a heavy sigh, he shook his head. "No, I did that stuff, all right. I did it in the line of duty, and I don't need to be ashamed of it."

"You were trying to kill people as efficiently as you could," Moss said.

"I was trying to dispose of niggers as efficiently as I could, yeah," Pinkard said. "They were a danger to the Confederate States, so we had to get rid of 'em."

"Jake Featherston could have settled on redheads or Jews just as easily," the lawyer said.

"Nah." Jeff shook his head. "That's just stupid. Redheads never did anything to anybody. And Jews-hell, I don't have a lot of use for Jews, but they pulled for us, not against us. Look at Saul Goldman."

"He's under arrest, too," Moss said. "They'll hang him for all the lies he told and all the hatred he stirred up."

Jefferson Pinkard laughed. "You dumbass Yankees reckon we need to get talked to to hate niggers? We can take care of that on our own, thank you kindly. And so can you-all. Otherwise, you would've opened up the border and let 'em all in back before the war. Sure as hell didn't see that happening."

Moss wrote himself a note. "I'll bring it up at the trial. Some of the Negroes' blood is on our hands."

"Think it'll help?" Jeff asked.

"No," Moss said. "It'll just make the judges mad, because they'll aim to lay all the blame on you. But I'll get it on the record, anyhow."

"Hot shit," Jeff said.

The lawyer shrugged. "I can't promise to get you off the hook, not when I don't have a chance in church of delivering. They're going to do what they're going to do. I can slow them down a little and piss them off a little, and that's about it."

"It ain't fair," Jeff said. "You can't blame me for doing what my country wanted me to do. It's not like I broke any of my laws. You're changing the rules after the game is over."

"You're probably right, but so what?" Moss answered. "Millions of people are dead. Millions of people got killed for no better reason than that they were colored. The government of the USA has decided that that's a crime regardless of whether it broke Confederate law or not. I can't appeal against that decision-they won't let me. I have to play by the rules they give me now."

"Well, I had to play by the rules they gave me then. What's the goddamn difference?" Jeff said.

Moss reached into his briefcase and pulled out some photographs. He held them up so Pinkard could see them. They showed the crematorium at Camp Humble and some of the mass graves back at Camp Determination. "This is the difference," Moss said. "Doesn't it mean anything to you?"

"It means they're gonna fuck me," Jeff said. "That lousy crematorium never did work the way it was supposed to."

"I know. I've seen your letters to the company that built it," Moss said. "The people in charge of that company are also charged with crimes against humanity. The whole Confederacy went around the bend, didn't it?"

"Nope." If Jeff admitted that, he admitted he'd done something wrong. No matter what the damnyankees thought, he was damned if he believed it. "We were just taking care of what we had to do, that's all."

The U.S. officer sighed. "You don't give me much to work with, but I'll do what I can."

He sounded as if he meant it, anyhow. "Thanks," Jeff said grudgingly.

"Right." Moss put papers back into the briefcase, closed it, pushed back his chair, and got up. "We've done about as much as we can today, looks like."

He left. He could leave. Guards took Jeff back to his cell. He wasn't going anywhere, not until the damnyankees decided it was time to try him and hang him. The unfairness of it gnawed at him. When you won the war, you could do whatever you goddamn well pleased.

He imagined the Confederate States victorious. He imagined Jake Featherston setting up tribunals and hanging Yankees from Denver to Bangor for all the nasty things they'd done to the CSA after the Great War. There'd be Yankee bastards dangling from every lamppost in every town. Well, he could imagine whatever he pleased. Things had worked out the other way, and the sons of bitches from the USA were getting a brand new chance to work out on the Confederacy.

Where was the justice in that? Nowhere, not as far as he could see.

Of course, he couldn't see very far, not where he was. He could see lots and lots of iron bars, a forest of them. They weren't even damnyankee iron bars. They came to his eyes courtesy of the city of Houston. What mattered, though, was his own cell. It boasted a lumpy cot, a toilet without a seat (God only knew what kind of murderous weapon he could have come up with if they'd given him a toilet seat), and a coldwater sink. He knew why he didn't get hot water-that would have cost money, heaven forbid.

And he was an important prisoner, too. He had the cell to himself. Most cells held two men. He wouldn't have minded the company, but worrying about what he wanted wasn't high on anybody's list. Well, his own, but nobody gave a rat's ass about that any more. He'd been a big wheel for a long time. He'd got used to shoving Army officers around and arguing with the Attorney General. Now he might as well have been a coon himself, up on a drunk-and-disorderly rap.

Except they wouldn't hang a coon for that. They were going to hang him higher than Haman.

An attendant brought him a tray of food. He'd gone to jail in Birmingham a few times in his younger days. The chow then had been lousy. It still was.

"Sorry, buddy," the attendant said. "If it was up to me, I'd give you a fuckin' medal for what you did with the nigs."

"A medal doesn't do me a hell of a lot of good," Jeff said. "Can you get me out of here instead?"

The attendant shook his head. "Nope. No chance. Too many Yankees around. They'd hang me right alongside of you, and I got five kids."

Jeff could see the fear in his eyes. He would have said no if he were a fairy with no kids and no hope of any. The attendants were locals. Even though Texas was calling itself the Republic of Texas these days, they loved blacks no more than any other white Confederate did. But they loved their necks just fine. Nobody would help an important prisoner, nobody at all.

M y name is Clarence Potter," Potter told the U.S. interrogator in Philadelphia. "My rank is brigadier general." He rattled off his pay number. "Under the Geneva Convention, that's all I've got to tell you."

"Screw the Geneva Convention," the interrogator answered. He was a major named Ezra Tyler, a real Yankee from New England. "And screw you, too. You blew up half of Philadelphia. And you did it wearing a U.S. uniform. You get caught after that, the Geneva Convention won't save your sorry ass."

"You won. You can do whatever you want-who's going to stop you?" Potter said. "But you know you used U.S. soldiers in C.S. uniforms in front of Chattanooga-other places, too. And you dropped two superbombs on my country, not just one. So who do you think you're trying to kid, anyway?"

Major Tyler turned red. "You're not cooperating."

"Damn straight I'm not," Potter agreed cheerfully. "I told you-I don't have to. Not legally, anyway."

"Do you want to live?"

"Sure. Who doesn't? Are you people going to let me? Doesn't seem likely, whether I cooperate or not."

"Professor FitzBelmont doesn't have that attitude."

"Professor FitzBelmont isn't a soldier. Professor FitzBelmont knows things you can really use. And Professor FitzBelmont is kind of a twit." Potter sighed. "None of which applies to me, I'm afraid."

"A twit?" One of Tyler's eyebrows rose. "Without him, you wouldn't have had a superbomb."

"You're right-no doubt about it," Potter said. "Put a slide rule in his hands and he's a world beater. But when he has to cope with the ordinary world and with ordinary people…he's kind of a twit. You didn't have much trouble getting him to open up, did you?"

"That's none of your business," the interrogator said primly.

Henderson V. FitzBelmont, in his tweedy innocence, wouldn't have known what Tyler meant, but Potter did. "Ha! Told you so."

"He…appreciates the delicacy of his position. You don't seem to," Tyler said.

"My position isn't delicate. In international law, I'm fine. Whether you care about international law may be a different story."

"We're treating you as a POW for the time being. You weren't captured in our uniform. You'll have a trial," Major Tyler said. "But if we charge you with crimes against humanity-"

"Will you charge the Kaiser? What about Charlie La Follette? Like I said, you used two superbombs on us. We only had one to use on you."

"That's different."

"Sure it is. You won. I already told you that, too."

"Not what I meant, dammit." Tyler went red again. "We dropped ours out of airplanes, the way you would with any other bomb. We didn't sneak them over the border under false pretenses."

"Over, under, around, through-so what?" Potter said. "Shall I apologize because we didn't have a bomber that would carry one of the goddamn things? I'm sorry, Major-I'm sorry we didn't have more, and I'm sorry we didn't have them sooner. If we did, I'd be interrogating you."

Ezra Tyler changed the subject, which was also the victor's privilege: "Speaking of crimes against humanity, General, what did you know about your government's extermination policy against your Negroes, and when did you know it?"

Fear trickled through Potter. If the Yankees wanted C.S. officials dead, they could always throw that one at them.

"All I knew was that I was involved in sniffing out the Negro uprising in 1915-which really did happen, Major, and which really did go a long way toward losing us that war. And I know there was a black guerrilla movement-again, a real one-before the start of this war. Those people were not our friends."

"Do you think your government's policy had anything to do with that?"

Of course I do. You'd have to be an idiot not to. I'm not that kind of idiot, anyway. Aloud, Potter said, "I'm a soldier. Soldiers don't make policy."

"Yes, you are a soldier. You returned to the C.S. Army after the 1936 Richmond Olympics, where you shot a Negro who was attempting to assassinate Jake Featherston."

"That's right."

"Before that time, you opposed Featherston politically."

"Yes, I was a Whig."

"You traveled to Richmond for the Games. You had a gun. You were close to a President you opposed. Did you go there intending to shoot him yourself?"

"It's not illegal to carry a gun in the CSA, any more than it is here. The language in our Constitution comes straight from yours." For the past eight years, Potter had been automatically saying no to that question whenever it came up. Saying yes would have got him killed-an inch at a time, no doubt. He needed a deliberate effort of will to tell the truth now: "Scratch that, Major. Yes, I went up there with that in mind. Maybe things would have gone better if I did it, or if I let the coon do it. They couldn't have gone much worse, could they? But it's a little late to worry about it now."

Major Tyler grunted. "Well, maybe. After all, of course you'd make that claim now. Amazing how many Confederates always hated Jake Featherston and everything he stood for-if you ask them, anyhow…What's so funny?"

Potter's laughter was bitter as wormwood. He'd lied convincingly enough to make a connoisseur of liars like Jake Featherston believe him. All the other Confederate big shots had, too. Now he was telling the truth-and this damnyankee wouldn't take him seriously. If he didn't laugh, he would cry.

"You can believe whatever you want-you will anyhow," he said. "I believe plenty of people who yelled, 'Freedom!' when that looked like the smart thing to do will tell you now that they never had anything to do with anything. They know who's on top and who's on the bottom. Life is like that."

The major wrote something in his notebook. "You're so cynical, you could go any way at all without even worrying about it. Down deep, you don't believe in anything, do you?"

"Fuck you, Tyler," Potter said. The Yankee blinked. Potter hadn't lost his temper before. "Fuck you in the heart," he repeated. "The one woman I ever really loved, I broke up with on account of she was for Featherston and I was against him."

"Will she testify to that?" the interrogator asked.

"No. She's dead," Potter answered. "She was in Charleston when your Navy bombers hit it back in the early days of the war." He barked two more harsh notes of laughter. "And if she were there at the end, she would have gone up in smoke with the rest of the city because of your superbomb."

Major Tyler gave him a dead-fish look. "You're in a poor position to complain about that, wouldn't you say?"

"Mm, you may be right," Potter admitted. That made the Yankee blink again; he didn't know Potter well enough to know his respect for the truth. Who does know me that well nowadays? Potter wondered. He couldn't think of a soul. That bespoke either a lifetime wasted or a lifetime in Intelligence, assuming the two weren't one and the same.

"If we were to release you, would you swear a loyalty oath to the United States?" the interrogator asked.

"No," Potter said at once. "You can conquer my country. Hell, you did conquer my country. But I don't feel like a good Socialist citizen of the USA. I'd say I was sorry I don't, only I'm not. Besides, why play games? You aren't going to turn me loose. You're just looking for the best excuse to hang me."

"We don't need excuses-you said so yourself, and you were right," Tyler replied. "Let me ask you a slightly different question: would you swear not to take up arms against the USA and not to aid any rebellion or uprising against this country? You don't have to like us for that one, only to respect our strength. And if you violate that oath, the penalty, just so you understand, would be a blindfold and a cigarette-a U.S. cigarette, I'm afraid."

"Talk about adding insult to injury," Potter said with a sour smile. "Yes, I might swear that oath. There's no denying we're knocked flat. And there's also no denying that pretty soon I'll get too old to be dangerous to you with the worst will in the world. Things will go the way they go, and they can go that way without me."

"By your track record, General, you could be dangerous to us as long as you're breathing, and I think we'd be smart to make sure you don't sneak a telegraph clicker into your coffin," Ezra Tyler said.

"You flatter me," Potter told him.

"I doubt it," the U.S. officer replied. "If we were to release you, where would you go? What would you do?"

"Beats me. I spent a lot of years as a professional soldier. And when I wasn't, in between the wars, I lived in Charleston myself. Not much point going there, not unless I want to glow in the dark." Potter took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. It bought him a moment to think. "Why are you going on and on about turning me loose, anyway? Are you trying to get my hopes up? I've been on the other end of these jobs, you know. You won't break me like that."

If they started getting rough…He had no movie-style illusions about his own toughness. If they started cutting things or burning things or breaking things or running a few volts-you didn't need many-through sensitive places, he would sing like a mockingbird to make them stop. Anybody would. The general rule was, the only people who thought they could resist torture were the ones who'd never seen it. Oh, there were occasional exceptions, but the accent was on occasional.

Major Tyler shrugged. "Our legal staff has some doubts about conviction, though we may go ahead anyway. If you were captured in our uniform…But you weren't."

"Don't sound so disappointed," Potter said.

"What did you think when that colored kid shot President Featherston?" the Yankee asked out of a blue sky.

"I didn't know who did it, not at first," Potter answered. "I saw him fall, and I…I knew the war was over. He kept it going, just by staying alive. If he'd made it to Louisiana, say, I don't think we could have beaten you, but we'd still be fighting. And I'd known him almost thirty years, since he was an artillery sergeant with a lousy temper. He made you pay attention to him-to who he was and to what he was. And when he got killed, it was like there was a hole in the world. We won't see anyone like him any time soon, and that's the Lord's truth."

"I say, thank the Lord it is," Tyler replied.

"He damn near beat you. All by himself, he damn near did."

"I know. We all know," Tyler said. "And everybody who followed him is worse off because he tried. He should have left us alone."

"He couldn't. He thought he owed you one," Potter said. "He was never somebody who could leave anybody alone. He aimed to pay back the Negroes for screwing him out of a promotion to second lieutenant-that's how he looked at it. He wanted to, and he did. And he wanted to pay back the USA, too, and you'll never forget him even if he couldn't quite do it. I hated the son of a bitch, and I still miss him now that he's gone." He shook his head. Major Tyler could make whatever he wanted out of that, but every word of it was true.