In At the Death

XVIII

Clarence Potter took his place in the Yankee courtroom. The Yankee kangaroo courtroom, he feared it was. The judges had let his lawyer question witnesses and even bring in Irving Morrell, but how much difference would any of that make? He'd superbombed the town where they were trying him. Evidence? Who gave a damn about evidence? If they felt like convicting him, they bloody well would.

He nodded to Major Stachiewicz, who'd defended him. "You did what you could. I appreciate it."

"I didn't do it for you, exactly. I did it for duty," the damnyankee said.

"I understand that. I don't want to marry you, either. But you made an honest effort, and I want you to know I know it," Potter said.

"All rise!" said the warrant officer who doubled as bailiff and recording secretary.

Everyone in the courtroom got to his feet as the judges came in. As soon as the judges sat down, Brigadier General Stephens said, "Be seated." Potter sat. He didn't want to let the enemy know he was nervous. In the rows of seats in the spectators' gallery behind him, reporters poised pens above notebooks.

Verdict day today.

The chief judge fixed him with an unfriendly stare. "The defendant will please rise."

"Yes, Your honor." Potter stood at attention.

"Without a doubt, General Potter, you caused greater loss of life than any man before you in the history of the North American continent," General Stephens said. That was cleverly phrased. It ignored the hell the USA's German allies unleashed on Petrograd earlier, and it also ignored the hell the United States visited on Newport News and Charleston. All the same, it remained technically true.

"Also without a doubt," Stephens continued, "you were able to do what you did thanks to a ruse of war, one frowned on by the Geneva Convention. Carrying on the fight in the uniform of the foe skates close to the edge of the laws of war."

He looked as if his stomach pained him. "However…" He paused to pour himself a glass of water and sip from it, as if to wash the taste of the word from his mouth. Then he had to say it again: "However…" Another long pause. "It has also been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that U.S. forces utilized the identical ruse of war. Executing a man on the other side for something we also did ourselves strikes the court as unjust, however much we might wish it did not. This being so, we find you not guilty of violating the laws of war in bringing your superbomb to Philadelphia."

Hubbub in the courtroom as reporters exclaimed. Some rushed out to file their stories. No one paid any attention to the chief judge's gavel. Through the chaos, Potter said, "May I tell you something, sir?"

"Go ahead." No, Brigadier General Stephens was not a happy man. And, over at the prosecutor's table, Lieutenant Colonel Altrock looked as if he'd just found half a worm in his apple.

"I want to thank the court for its integrity, General," Potter said. "I have to say, I didn't expect it." Not from Yankees was in his mind if not on his tongue.

Stephens had to know it was there, too. His mouth twisted. "Your enemies are men like you, General," he said. "That, I believe, is the principal meaning of this verdict."

Potter inclined his head. "The point is well taken, sir."

"Happy day," Stephens said bleakly. "Please understand: we don't approve of you even if we don't convict you. You will be under surveillance for the rest of your life. If you show even the slightest inclination toward trouble, it will be your last mistake. Do I make myself clear?"

"Abundantly." Clarence Potter might have complained that he was being singled out for discriminatory treatment. He might have-but he wasn't that kind of fool, anyhow.

"Very well. I gather the men who debriefed you have now finished?"

"Yes, sir," Potter said. "They have squeezed me flatter than a snake in a rolling mill." He'd told them everything about his trip up from Lexington to Philadelphia. Why not? Come what might, he wouldn't do that again. He'd told them a lot about Confederate intelligence operations, too, but not everything. They thought he'd told them more than he really had. If they wanted to ferret out C.S. operatives up here, though, he thought they'd need more than he'd given them.

The U.S. brigadier general didn't laugh, or even smile. "You may collect the balance of the pay owed you as an officer POW under the Geneva Convention. And then you may…go." He drank more water.

Go where? Potter wondered. Nothing left of Charleston, not any more. And not much left of Richmond, either. Not much left of the CSA, come to that. He was a man without a country. Turning him loose might have been the cruelest thing the USA could do. All the same, he preferred it to getting his neck stretched.

"May I ask a favor of the court, sir, before I return to civilian life?" he said.

"What sort of favor?" If you needed a dictionary illustration for suspicious, General Stephens' face would have filled the bill.

"May I beg for a civilian suit of clothes? This uniform"-Potter touched a butternut sleeve with his other hand-"is less than popular in your country right now."

"There are good and cogent reasons why that should be so, too," the chief judge said. But he nodded a moment later; he was at bottom a fair-minded man. "I admit your request is reasonable. You will have one. If, however, you had asked for a U.S. uniform in place of your own, I would have refused you. You've already done too much damage in our clothing."

"My country is no longer at war with yours, General." My country no longer exists. "While our countries were at peace, I lived peacefully"-enough-"in mine. I intend to do the same again."

The suit they gave him didn't fit especially well. The wide-brimmed fedora that went with it might have looked good on a twenty-five-year-old…pimp. The kindest thing he could say about the gaudy tie was that he never would have bought it himself. He knotted it without a murmur now. The less he looked like his usual self, the better he judged his chances of getting out of Philadelphia in one piece.

Green banknotes-no, they were bills up here-filled his leatherette wallet. He wondered what the economy was like down in the ruins of the CSA. Would inflation run mad, the way it had after the Great War? Or were the Yankees ramming their currency down the Confederacy's throat this time? Either way, a wallet stuffed with greenbacks looked like good insurance.

They even gave him a train ticket to Richmond. That settled where he would go, at least for the time being. If he didn't have to pay for the ticket, he could hang on to some more of his POW pay.

That seemed a good thing, because he had no idea how to make more money. All his adult life, he'd been either a soldier-and the bottom had been blown out of the market for Confederate soldiers-or a private investigator-and he was, at the moment, one of the least private men on the continent.

His chuckle was sour, but not sour enough to suit one of the U.S. MPs keeping an eye on him. "What's so damn funny?" the Yankee asked.

"I may be reduced to writing my memoirs," Potter answered, "and that's the kind of thing you do after you don't expect to do anything else."

The MP's glance was anything but sympathetic. "You want to know what I think, Mac, you already did too goddamn much."

"That only shows I was doing my job."

"Yeah, well, if I was doing my job…" The U.S. sergeant swung his submachine gun toward Potter, but only for a moment. Discipline held. A good thing, too, Potter thought.

They hustled him out of the courthouse through a back door. A crowd of reporters gathered at the front of the building. None of them paid any attention to the aging man in tasteless clothes who went by in the back seat of a Ford.

U.S. train stations didn't work exactly the same way as their C.S. equivalents did, but they were pretty close. Potter found the right platform at the Broad Street station and waited for the train to come in.

Some of the men on it turned out to be released Confederate POWs. Some looked like Yankee hotshots on their way down to the CSA to see what they could make by picking the corpse's bones. Some just looked like…people. Potter wondered what they thought of him. In his present getup, he thought he looked pretty shady.

He got to Richmond late in the afternoon. A U.S. first lieutenant stood on the platform holding a sign with his name on it. He thought of walking by, but why give the United States excuses to land him in trouble? "I'm Clarence Potter," he said.

"My name is Constantine Palaiologos," the U.S. officer said. "Call me Costa-everybody does." His rueful smile probably told of lots of childhood teasing. "Since I got word you'd be coming here, I found an apartment for you."

"How…efficient," Potter murmured.

Lieutenant Palaiologos didn't even try to misunderstand him. "We do intend to keep an eye on you," he said. "The building wasn't badly damaged during the war, and it's been repaired since. It's better than a lot of people here are living."

"Thanks…I suppose," Potter said.

He smelled death in the air as the lieutenant drove him through the battered streets. He'd smelled it in Philadelphia, too; it was part of the aftermath of war. It was stronger here, not surprisingly. People looked shabbier than they did in the USA. They walked with slumped shoulders and downcast eyes-they knew they were beaten, all right. For the first time since the early days of the Lincoln administration, the Stars and Stripes flew all over the city, not just above the U.S. embassy.

The apartment building didn't look too bad. Some of its neighbors still showed bomb damage, but it even had glass in the windows again. Freshly painted spots of plaster probably repaired bullet holes, but there weren't a whole lot of buildings in Richmond that a bullet or two hadn't hit.

"So-is this where you keep all the old sweats?" Potter asked.

"No, General," Palaiologos answered seriously. "We try to separate you people as much as we can. The further apart you are, the less you'll sit around plotting and making trouble."

In the USA's shoes, Potter probably would have arranged things the same way. He let the young lieutenant show him his new digs. It was…a furnished apartment. He could stand living here. Once he got a wireless and a phonograph and some books, it might not even be too bad.

"Did I see a stationery store around the corner?" he asked.

"I think so," Lieutenant Palaiologos said.

"As long as you've got a motorcar, will you take me over there and run me back?"

"All right." Palaiologos spoke without enthusiasm, but he didn't say no.

Potter bought a secondhand typewriter, a spare ribbon, and two reams of paper not much better than foolscap. He got the U.S. officer to lug the typewriter up to the flat, which was on the second floor.

"I said I might write my memoirs," Potter told him after he put it on the kitchen table. "I may as well. Maybe the book'll make me enough money to live on." Palaiologos' grunt was nothing if not skeptical (and weary-the typewriter weighed a ton). Potter didn't care. He ran a sheet of paper into the machine. HOW I BLEW UP PHILADELPHIA, he typed in all caps. By Clarence Potter, Brigadier General, CSA (retired). He took out the title page and put in another sheet. I first met Jake Featherston late in 1915…

O ne more Election Day in New York City. One more trip to Socialist Party headquarters over the butcher's shop. One more tray of cold cuts from the Democrat downstairs.

Flora Blackford put corned beef and pickles on a bagel. "One more term, Flora," Maria Tresca said.

"Alevai." Flora knocked wood. One reason she kept getting reelected was that she never took anything for granted. She wasn't too worried this time around, not for herself. She hadn't been worried about the national ticket, either, not till the past couple of weeks. Now…"I hope Charlie La Follette does what he ought to."

On paper, the President of the USA had the world on a string. The war was over. He'd been at the helm when his country won it. The United States bestrode North America like a colossus: the Stars and Stripes flew from Baffin Island to below the Rio Grande. Surely people would be grateful for that…wouldn't they?

Not if they listened to the Democrats, they wouldn't. Tom Dewey and his running mate were saying the war was all the Socialists' fault in the first place. If Al Smith hadn't given Jake Featherston his plebiscite, the Confederate States wouldn't have got Kentucky and the state of Houston back. How could they have gone to war without Kentucky?

Nobody now seemed to remember there'd been guerrilla war in Kentucky and Houston and Sequoyah before the plebiscite. Flora agreed that Al Smith might have chosen better. But what he did choose wasn't halfway between idiocy and treason, no matter how the Democrats made it sound.

They were saying they could have fought the war better, too. And they were saying the United States went into it unprepared because the Socialists spent years gutting War Department budgets. Those budgets hadn't been exactly luxurious when Democrat Herbert Hoover ran things, either. Because of the economic collapse, nobody'd had much money to spend on guns…nobody but Jake Featherston.

The Democrats blamed the collapse on the Socialists, too. More to the point, they blamed it on Hosea Blackford. That made Flora see red. Yes, her husband was President when it happened. That didn't make it his fault. Except, in too many people's minds, it did. Hosea was a one-term President.

Herman Bruck looked at his watch. Every two years, he seemed a little plumper, a little grayer. Oh, and I haven't changed at all, Flora thought. That would have been nice if only it were true.

"Seven o'clock," Herman said ceremoniously. "The polls are closed." He turned on a wireless set.

None of the results from the East Coast would mean anything for a while. That wouldn't stop the broadcasters from reporting them and pontificating over them. It wouldn't stop inexperienced people from flabbling over them if they were bad or from celebrating too soon if they were good.

"Dewey jumps out to an early lead in Vermont!" a reporter said breathlessly. Flora had to fight the giggles. Of course Dewey led in Vermont. The sky would have to fall for him to do anything else. Vermont had been a rock-ribbed Democratic stronghold for years.

"Do you think we can hold New York?" Maria asked. That was a more important question. New York had a ton of electoral votes. It went Socialist more often than not, but Dewey the Democrat was a popular governor. How many people would vote for him for President because of that? Enough to swing the state?

"I hope so," Flora said. She didn't know what she could say past that. Polls called the race close, but she didn't have much faith in them. Pollsters had proved spectacularly wrong before.

Maine held its elections early, and had already gone for Dewey. A moment later, New Hampshire also fell into his column. Again, none of that was too surprising; only in landslide years did upper New England fall out of the Democratic camp.

But when early returns showed Dewey with a substantial lead in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Flora began to worry. Both states were in play in most elections. Herman Bruck said, "All depends on where the returns are coming from," which put the best possible face on things. He wasn't wrong, but they shouldn't have needed to fret so soon.

New Jersey seemed to be going Socialist, and by a solid majority. That made Flora breathe a little easier, anyhow. Any year the Socialists lost New Jersey would probably not be a year where they held on to the Presidency.

To drive her crazy, returns from Pennsylvania started coming in before any from New York. Those showed the race there neck and neck. How many people in western Pennsylvania were blaming the Socialists for the Confederate invasion two years earlier? Flora thought that would have happened regardless of who was running the country at the time, but she could see how others might see things a different way.

"Here is some of the early tally from New York," the newsman said. Everybody yelled for everybody else to hush. "These results show Governor Dewey with 147,461 votes to President La Follette's 128,889. In the race for Senator-"

"Where are they coming from?" This time, Bruck wasn't the only one to ask the question. Several people shouted it at the same time. The newscaster? He went blithely on to results from West Virginia.

"I'll find out," Herman Bruck said, and got on the telephone with the canvassing headquarters downtown. When he hung up, he might have been a balloon that had sprung a slow leak.

"What's the matter?" Flora asked, seeing his face.

"Those are city returns, not upstate," he answered. The news felt like a blow in the belly to Flora. New York political battles centered on whether Socialist New York City could outvote the Democratic hinterland. If New York City leaned Democratic…

If New York City leaned that way, it was liable to be a long, unhappy night.

And it was. The air in Socialist district headquarters went blue with tobacco smoke, and bluer with profanity. State after state fell to the Democrats. The Republican candidate, the energetic young Governor of Minnesota, stole his home state and Wisconsin from the Socialists in three-cornered races, and also took traditional Republican strongholds like Indiana and Kansas.

Flora held her own seat. Her margin was down from the last election, but she still won upwards of fifty-five percent of the vote. All the same…"I don't think we're going to do it," she said somewhere around one in the morning.

"How could they be so ungrateful?" Herman Bruck said. "We won the war for them. What more could they want?"

A country too strong for the Confederates even to think of attacking, that's what. Flora looked around in the gloomy, smoky headquarters. No, the ghost of Robert Taft wasn't sitting right behind her. But it might as well have been. The old Democratic stalwart had an answer for the Socialist cri de coeur.

After another hour, the newsman said, "Governor Dewey and Senator Truman are going to claim victory."

The Vice President-elect spoke first. His high, twangy voice full of good humor, he said, "I'm holding in my hands a copy of the Chicago Tribune. The headline reads, LA FOLLETTE BEATS DEWEY! I don't know where they got that headline from, but tonight Tom Dewey and the Democratic Party are winners!" Cheers interrupted him. He went on, "And tonight the American people are winners, too!" More cheers. "It is now my privilege to introduce the new President of the United States, Tom Dewey!"

"Thank you, Harry," the President-elect said. "I am humbled and honored to be chosen to lead the United States in these tense and trying times. I call on all people-Democrats, Socialists, and Republicans-to unite behind me to bind up the wounds of war and help guide the country into an era of peace and one of renewed prosperity and hope."

Applause almost drowned him out. He said all the right things. Charlie La Follette could have used his speech without changing more than a couple of words. Flora would rather have heard it from La Follette than Dewey.

La Follette had gone back to Wisconsin to vote. He didn't even carry his home state. A few minutes after the Democrats, he came on the wireless. "The people have spoken," he said. "I congratulate Governor Dewey-President-elect Dewey, as he is now-and wish him the best of luck in the next four years. I did not expect to be President of the United States during the most profound crisis of the twentieth century. Under Jake Featherston, the Confederate States aimed not merely at beating us but at crushing us and subjecting us so we could never rise again. Instead, we triumphed in the hardest war ever fought on this blood-soaked continent.

"Perhaps we did not do everything as well as we might have. That is easier to see in hindsight than it was through foresight. But the people have called us to account for it, as is their right. May the new President fare well in ruling the territories we have gained, and in the complex field of international relations. With superbombs, everyone is suddenly everyone else's nearest neighbor. I will serve President Dewey in whatever capacity he may find useful, or in none if that be his pleasure. Serving the people of the United States has been the greatest privilege of my life. Thank you, God bless you, and good night."

"That was Charles La Follette, the outgoing President of the United States," the announcer said unnecessarily.

"A good good-bye," Herman Bruck said as the wireless started catching up on races that remained close.

"I wanted a good victory speech, dammit," Flora said. All through the crowded Socialist headquarters, heads bobbed up and down.

"Changeover time," Maria Tresca remarked, and it would be. It looked as if the Democrats would also capture the House, though the Senate would stay in Socialist hands. But an earthquake would hit the executive branch. Since 1920, only Herbert Hoover's single term had broken the Socialists' hold on the Presidency. Lots of new and untested officials would try out lots of new and untested policies.

Flora might have been in line to chair the House Judiciary Committee. Not now. Back to the minority. That hadn't happened very often since the end of the Great War. If the Democrats proposed foolish laws now that they ruled the roost, she would do her best to keep them from passing.

"Why are the people so ungrateful?" Bruck wondered out loud.

"There's a story," Maria said. "Back in the days when Athens held ostracisms to get rid of politicians they didn't like, an illiterate citizen who didn't recognize Aristides the Just came up to him and asked him to write 'Aristides' on a potsherd. He did, but he asked why. The man answered, 'I'm tired of hearing him called "the Just." ' And that's what happened to us, or something like it."

Flora found herself nodding. She said, "Still, it's a shame to run on a platform where the main plank is 'Throw the rascals in.'"

She got a laugh. If it was tinged with bitterness-well, why wouldn't it be? She thought the Socialists deserved better than they'd got from the people, too. No matter what she thought, though, she couldn't do anything about it. Every so often, the government turned over. The world wouldn't end. The country wouldn't go down the drain-even if the party in power always tried to make the voters think it would if the opposition won.

She'd lost a brother-in-law to war. Her own brother had lost a leg. Her son lost only a finger. Other than that, Joshua was fine, and it wouldn't much affect the rest of his life. Next to important things like that, how much did elections really matter?

A ll the arguing was over. Jonathan Moss had done everything he could. He'd tried his damnedest to convince the U.S. military court that Jefferson Pinkard had followed his own superiors' legal orders when he ran his extermination camps in Louisiana and Texas. He'd done his best to persuade them that the USA had no jurisdiction over what the Confederates did to their own people.

Now the military judges were deliberating. Pinkard sat in the courtroom, large and blocky and stolid. Only the way his jaw worked on some chewing gum showed he might be nervous.

"You gave it everything you had," he told Moss. "I thought that Jew who got hurt was hot stuff, but you're good, too. Don't reckon he could've pulled any rabbits out of the hat that you didn't."

"Thanks," Moss said. If he'd satisfied his client, his own conscience could stay reasonably clear. That was just as well, because he had no doubt in his own mind that Pinkard was guilty. If they didn't hang him, would they-could they-hang anybody?

"All rise!" the warrant officer who transcribed the proceedings intoned as the panel of judges entered the courtroom.

Moss stood and came to attention. Jeff Pinkard stood but didn't. He'd loudly denied that the court had any jurisdiction over him. That wouldn't endear him to the men who judged him. Everyone sat down again.

"We have reached a verdict in United States vs. Jefferson Davis Pinkard," the chief judge said.

Beside Moss, Pinkard stiffened. His jaw set. He might claim he was ready for the Army to convict him, but he wasn't, not down deep. Who could be? No one was ever ready to face his own death.

"The defendant will please rise," the chief judge said.

Pinkard did. This time, without being asked, he did come to attention. Maybe the solemnity of the moment pressed on him in spite of himself. He'd fought in the Great War. Nobody said he'd been anything but brave. Nobody said that about Jake Featherston, either. Bravery wasn't enough, not by itself. The cause for which you showed courage counted, too.

"Jefferson Davis Pinkard, we find you guilty of crimes against humanity," the chief judge said. Pinkard's shoulders sagged. The breath hissed out of him, as if he'd been punched in the gut. The officer pronouncing his fate continued, "We sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, at a date to be set by competent military authority. May God have mercy on your soul."

Jonathan Moss jumped to his feet. "Your Honor, I appeal this conviction and the sentence you've imposed."

"You have that privilege," the chief judge said. "Appeals will be heard by the Secretary of War and, no doubt, by the President of the United States. I do not believe the upcoming change in administrations will affect the process."

He was bound to be right. The outgoing Socialists wouldn't show mercy to someone like Jeff Pinkard. They were the ones who'd brought him to justice in the first place. And the Democrats had campaigned by saying, If we were running things, we would have been even tougher. Still, you had to go do everything you could.

"Do you have any statement for the record, Mr. Pinkard?" the chief judge asked.

"Damn right I do," Pinkard said-he had no quit in him. "You can hang me. You won, and you caught me, so you can. But that don't make it right. I was doing a job of work in my own country, following orders from the Attorney General of the CSA-"

"Ferdinand Koenig has also been sentenced to death, among other things for giving those orders," the chief judge broke in.

Jeff Pinkard shook his head. He was furious, not bewildered. "It's none of your goddamn business what we did. It wasn't your country, and they weren't your people."

"We made it our business," the chief judge replied. "We want people everywhere to get the message: doing things like this is wrong, and you will be punished for it. And besides, Mr. Pinkard, you know as well as I do-if you'd won the war, you would have started in on us next."

Pinkard didn't even waste time denying it. He just said, "Yeah, and you'd've had it coming, too. Fuck you all, assholes."

"Take him away," the chief judge said, and several burly soldiers did just that. With a weary sigh, the chief judge used the gavel. "This court is now adjourned."

Major Goodman came over to Moss. "You did everything you could, Colonel. You had a losing case and a losing client. He's a cold-blooded, hard-nosed son of a bitch, and he deserves everything he's going to get."

"Yeah, I know," Moss said. "You still have to try. He's got courage. I was just thinking that a minute ago."

"Courage is overrated. How many brave butternut bastards did we just have to kill?" the military prosecutor said. "You have to understand what you're fighting for. Otherwise, you're an animal-a brave animal, maybe, but an animal all the same."

"I won't argue with you. I feel the same way," Moss said.

"He can't complain he wasn't well represented," the chief judge said. "You did a fine job, Colonel. You did everything we let you do, and you would have done more if we'd left more in the rules."

"Not letting me do more will be part of the appeal," Moss said. "The question of jurisdiction still troubles me."

"You saw the evidence," the chief judge said. "Did you go to Camp Humble and see the crematoria and the barracks and the barbed wire? Did you go out to Snyder and take a look at the mass graves?"

"No, sir. I didn't want to prejudice myself against him any worse than I was already," Moss said.

"All right. I can understand that. It speaks well of you, as a matter of fact. But what are we supposed to do with him? Tell him not to be naughty again and turn him loose? I'd break every mirror in the house if we did."

"Well, so would I, when you put it that way," Moss said. "One of the reasons I don't feel worse about defending him is that I knew he wouldn't get off no matter what I did. Still, technically…"

The chief judge made a slashing motion with his right hand. "The law is about technicalities a lot of the time. Not here. We aren't about to let quibbles keep us from making Pinkard and Koenig and the rest pay for what they can. I hear we were going to shoot Featherston without trial if we caught him, but that got taken care of."

"Didn't it just?" Moss said. "That colored kid's got it made. He'll be a hero the rest of his life. Too damn bad all the other blacks had to pay such a price." He suspected one reason the United States were making so much of Cassius was to keep from noticing their own guilty conscience.

"What about you, Colonel?" the chief judge asked. "You're going through the motions with the appeal, and we both know it. What are you really going to do once this case winds down?"

"Looks like private practice," Moss answered without enthusiasm. "In wartime, the Army didn't mind using pilots with gray hair. I even got to fly a turbo in combat, and that was something, no two ways about it. But they don't want to keep me in that slot now, and I can't even say I blame 'em. Fighter pilot is really a young man's game."

"I was impressed with the way you handled yourself here," the judge said. "Are you interested in joining the Judge Advocate's staff full time? This is one of those places where you can count on skill to beat reflexes. Look at me, for instance." His hair was grayer than Moss'.

"Huh," Moss said: an exclamation of thoughtful surprise. "Hadn't even thought of that, sir. Don't know why not. Probably because I got this assignment taking over from the poor guy in the motorcar crash. It always felt temporary to me."

The chief judge nodded. "I take your point. And if you've had enough of living on an officer's salary, I can see that, too. You'll eat steak more often if you go civilian."

Moss started to laugh. "I'll tell you another reason you took me by surprise: I spent my whole career between the wars, trying to kick military justice in the teeth up in Canada."

"I know. I checked up on you," the chief judge said calmly. "If you wanted to, you could do the same thing here. Lord knows you'd have plenty of business."

"That crossed my mind, sir," Moss said. "Can't say it thrills me, though. Far as I can see, the Canucks got a raw deal. I think I'd say the same thing if I didn't fall in love with a Canadian girl. But the white Confederates? I was on the ground in Georgia for a couple of years, remember. Those people deserve everything they're getting, and another dollar's worth besides."

"Think about switching sides, then," the chief judge said. "Plenty more trials coming up. Not all of them will be as cut-and-dried as Jefferson Pinkard's, either. We do need people who can conduct a good defense, and you've shown you can do that and then some. But we need prosecutors, too."

He was bound to be right about the upcoming trials. How many people had helped shove Negroes into cattle cars? How many had run up barbed wire and put brick walls around colored districts in the CSA? How many had done, or might have done, all the things the Confederacy needed so it could turn massacre from a campaign promise to reality?

And what would they say now? I was at the front or I was working in a factory or I never liked the Freedom Party anyway. Some would be telling the truth. Some would be telling some of the truth. Some would be lying through their teeth. Sorting out who was who and giving the ones who deserved something what they deserved would take years. God only knew it would take plenty of lawyers, too.

"I don't think I'd want to defend Vern Green, say, any time soon," Moss said. The guard chief at the Texas camps Pinkard had run was on trial here, too, and it was a sure thing his neck would stretch along with his boss'. "One of these is about as much as I can stomach, at least from this side. Somebody where there really was some doubt about what he did…That might be a different story."

"Nobody wants to do many of these," the chief judge said. "I don't think you can do many of these, not if you're going to stay sane. We try not to drive our staff members loopy…on purpose. Think about it. You don't have to make up your mind right away. In fact, if you want to think about it over a drink down in the officers' club…God knows I need one, and I bet you do, too."

"Sir, that is the best idea I've heard in a long time," Moss said.

Whiskey probably didn't do much for the thought process. It worked wonders on Moss' attitude, though. And attitude mattered here at least as much as actual thought. Was this what he wanted to do with the rest of his working life?

Halfway down the second drink, he asked, "Will the Judge Advocate's staff handle claims by Negroes against whites in the CSA?"

"I don't know." The chief judge looked startled. "There'll sure be some, won't there?"

"Only way there'd be more was if more Negroes lived," Moss answered. "But if you're involved in that, count me in. And if you're not, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I can't think of anything down here that needs doing more."

"Now that you mention it, neither can I," the chief judge said.

He'd sentenced Jefferson Pinkard to hang. That was his-and the USA's-obligation to the dead. That the USA might also have an obligation to the living didn't seem to have crossed his mind till now. Moss wondered how many other important people's minds it also hadn't crossed. Too many-he was sure of that. People in the USA kept doing their best not to think about Negroes or have anything to do with them, the same as they had ever since the CSA seceded.

Moss finished that second drink and waved for another one. He was also sure of something else. He was sure he'd found himself a new cause.

W hat happened to your legs?" By the way the girl at Miss Lucy's eyed Michael Pound, he might have come down with a horrible social disease.

He shrugged. "I got caught in a burning barrel."

"Oh." She was about twenty-five, cute enough even if she wasn't gorgeous, and plainly not long on brains. "That must not have been much fun."

"Sweetheart, you said a mouthful. And speaking of which…" Pound gestured. With a small sigh, the girl dropped to her knees.

He liked officers' brothels a hell of a lot better than the ones enlisted men had to use. The girls were prettier. Nobody hurried you here, either. That was best of all. He could take his time and enjoy it. He could, and he did.

Afterwards, he left the girl-her name was Betty-a couple of dollars for herself. "You don't need to say anything to Miss Lucy about 'em."

"Well, I'll try. But when it comes to cash, that old bitch has a Y-ranging set like you wouldn't believe." Betty spoke with more resignation than rancor.

Pound got back into his uniform. "See you again, maybe," he said. She nodded. If she was enthusiastic, she hid it very well. She didn't mind his money, but she sure wasn't thrilled about him.

Well, he was old enough to be her father. And he was a damnyankee. And she was a whore and he was a trick. That left it fourth down and time to punt.

Miss Lucy's had a bar, too-one more amenity enlisted men's brothels didn't enjoy. Maybe the assumption was that officers wouldn't get plastered and smash whiskey bottles over each other's heads. From everything Pound had seen, whoever made that assumption was an optimist.

Things seemed peaceable enough in there now. Pound stepped in and asked for a whiskey over ice. "Comin' up," said the woman behind the bar. She was one of the working girls; maybe she had her monthlies or something.

"Thanks," he said when she gave it to him. "Did this place have a regular bartender back before the war?"

"Sure did. But Hadrian, he, uh, don't work here no more."

"Right." Pound knocked back the drink. The booze wasn't bad, but it tasted foul in his mouth. With a name like Hadrian, the ex-bartender had probably been colored. And the odds that he was dead now were pretty damn good. Pound set the glass on the bar. "Let me have another one."

"Sure will." The woman poured whiskey into a fresh glass and added a couple of ice cubes. "Boy, you drank that last one in a hurry."

"Yeah," Pound said. She didn't know what was eating him. She didn't have the faintest idea, as a matter of fact. That she didn't was a measure of the CSA's damnation.

Two good knocks of whiskey made Pound a little less graceful on his burned legs than he would have been without them. He walked back to BOQ through deepening twilight. There was a nip in the air. Tallahassee lay in the northern part of Florida; it got cool in the wintertime, unlike places farther south.

But the weather wasn't the biggest thing on his mind. His head kept going back and forth. He wished he had an eye that would let him see to the rear. This was the time of day when U.S. soldiers got knocked over the head. By the time anyone found them, the bushwhackers were long gone. That didn't keep hostages from being taken and shot, but killing innocent people also made the guerrillas have an easier time recruiting.

He got back to BOQ without any trouble. Most people did, most of the time. Anything that could happen, though, could happen to you. Anybody who didn't understand that never went to war. Being careless-being stupid-made living to a ripe old age less likely. Pound aspired to getting shot by an outraged husband at the age of 103.

When he went to breakfast the next morning, he realized something was up. He didn't know what; Colonel Einsiedel wasn't letting on. Something was cooking, though. A few people in the know were all excited about it, whatever it was. Pound and the others who noticed that tried to get it out of them. The rest of the officers shoveled in bacon and eggs, oblivious to the drama around them.

The double-chinned major sitting next to Pound was one of those. "Dammit, they should have had hash browns," he complained. "I don't like grits." He might not have liked them, but he'd put away a good-sized helping.

Pound didn't like them, either. He also hadn't taken any. He'd doubled up on toast instead. To him, that was simple common sense. It seemed beyond the major.

Dear God! How did we win the war? he thought. That answer seemed only too obvious. There were just as many thumb-fingered, blundering idiots on this side of the former border as on the other one. No matter where you went, you couldn't escape the dullards. Life would have been easier and happier if you could.

That afternoon, the other shoe dropped. Harry Truman was coming to Tallahassee to talk to the troops and to any locals who wanted to listen to him. An officer who was with Pound when the news got out knew exactly what he thought of that: "They better frisk these bastards before they let 'em within rifle range of the guy."

"Amen!" Pound said, and then, a beat later, "Dibs on the girls." He held out his hands as if he were cupping breasts. The other officer laughed.

Truman arrived by airplane two days later. That was judged safer than traveling by train. Sabotaging railroad tracks was easy, but Confederate diehards didn't have much in the way of antiaircraft guns. Pound's barrel was one of the machines guarding the airport as the Vice President-elect's airliner touched down on the runway.

Pound stood up in the cupola and peered at Truman through binoculars. The Senator from Missouri wasn't young, but he walked with crisp stride and straight back: an almost military bearing. Fair enough-he'd been an artillery officer in the Great War. Not many healthy men in the USA had missed military service in one war or the other. Even fewer in what had been the CSA.

The Vice President-elect spoke in front of the state Capitol. They set up a podium and lectern for him by a palm tree on the lawn in front of the Italian Renaissance building. Sure enough, military policemen and female auxiliaries searched people in civilian clothes before letting them past rope lines half a mile from the podium. They also searched uniformed personnel. The war had shown that people had no trouble getting their hands on uniforms that didn't belong to them and doing unpleasant things in the other side's plumage.

What sort of Floridians would listen to the Vice President-elect of the USA? Michael Pound eyed them curiously. Some he recognized-collaborators. They figured they knew which side their bread was buttered on. There'd been some of that flexible breed north of the Ohio a couple of years earlier. They caught hell when they turned out to have guessed wrong. These plump fellows and their sleek women were less likely to be mistaken.

Others-more ordinary folks-seemed honestly curious. That gave Pound at least a little hope. If they could get used to the idea of being part of the USA…It'd take a miracle, and when was the last one you saw? the cynical part of his mind jeered. The rest of him had no good answer.

Colonel Einsiedel stepped up to the mike mounted on the lectern. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure and my privilege to present the Honorable Harry S Truman of Missouri, Vice President-elect of the United States of America."

Along with the other soldiers, Pound clapped till his palms stung. Applause from the local civilians seemed much more measured. Well, that was no surprise. Metal-framed eyeglasses gleaming in the sun, Truman looked out over the crowd. "If anybody would have told me ten years ago that I would come to Florida to speak to my country's soldiers here, I would have said he was crazy." To Pound's ear, shaped in the northern Midwest, Truman's Missouri twang had more than a little in common with the local drawl.

"Didn't Jake Featherston say, 'Give me five years, and you won't recognize the Confederate States'?" the Vice President-elect went on. His jaunty grin invited soldiers and locals alike to see the bitter joke. "Well, the man was right, but not quite the way he expected to be.

"And now the United States have to pick up the pieces. The buck stops with us. If we do this wrong, our grandchildren will be down here fighting guerrillas. If we do it right, maybe we can all remember that we started out as one country. We have a lot of things to put behind us before we're one country again, but we can try."

His voice toughened. "That doesn't mean the USA will be soft down here. You people who spent your lives as Confederates have no reason to love us, not yet. And we have to be careful about trusting you, too. You stained yourself with the darkest crime a people can commit, and too many of you aren't sorry enough. So things won't happen in a hurry, if they happen at all.

"But, for the past eighty-odd years, people in the USA and people in the CSA have all called themselves Americans. Maybe, if we work together, one day that will mean what it did before the War of Secession. Maybe it will mean we really are all part of the same country once again. I hope so, anyhow. That's what President Dewey and I will work for. We'll be as firm as we need to be. But we won't be any firmer than that. If people down here work with us, maybe we'll get where we ought to go. God grant we do."

He stepped away from the lectern. This time, the applause from the soldiers was less enthusiastic, that from the civilians more so. Pound didn't think it was a bad speech. Truman was setting out what he hoped would happen, not necessarily what he expected to happen. If the survivors in the CSA got rambunctious, the Army could always smash them.

The Vice President-elect didn't just go away. He plunged into the crowd, shaking hands and talking with soldiers and locals alike. Reading the ribbons on Michael Pound's chest, he said, "You had yourself a time, Lieutenant."

"Well, sir, that's one way to put it," Pound said.

"I just want you to know that what you're doing here is worthwhile," Truman said. "We have to hold this country down while we reshape it. It won't be easy. It won't be quick. It won't be cheap. But we've got to do it."

"What if we can't?" Pound asked.

"If we can't, some time around the turn of the century the new Vice President-elect will come down here to tell your grandson what an important job he's doing. And they'll still search the locals before they let them listen."

Pound had no children he knew about. The Army had been his life. But he understood what Truman was talking about. "What do you think of our chances?" he asked.

"I don't know." Truman didn't seem to have much patience with beating around the bush. "We've got to try, though. What other choice do we have?"

"Treating these people the way they treated their Negroes." Michael Pound sounded perfectly serious. He was. He faced the possibility of massacring twenty-odd million people as a problem of ways and means, not an enormity. The Army had been shooting hostages since it entered the CSA. Now the whole Confederacy was a hostage.

But Truman shook his head. "No. Not even these people will ever turn me into Jake Featherston. I'd sooner blow out my own brains." He passed on to another officer.

Had Pound worried about his career, he would have wondered if he'd just blighted it. He didn't. He could go on doing his job right where he was. Even if they busted him down to private for opening his big mouth, he could still help the country. And they wouldn't do that. He knew it. He had his niche. He fit it well. He aimed to stay in it as long as he could.

W inter in Riviиre-du-Loup started early and stayed late. After close to three years in warmer climes, Leonard O'Doull had to get used to the weather in the Republic of Quebec again. He tried not to grumble too loud. People here would just laugh at him. They took month after month of snow in stride. They'd never known anything else.

O'Doull had to get used to a new office, too. He hadn't sublet the other one when he rejoined the Army; he'd just let it go. He reached for things in places where they had been, only to find they were somewhere else. Little by little, he made such mistakes less often.

And he had to get used to a practice that wasn't nearly so frantic as what he had been doing. A sty on the eye or a boil on the butt hardly seemed exciting, not after all the quick and desperate surgery he'd performed. In a way, that was heartening. In another way…He felt like a man who'd gone from ten cups of coffee a day to none, all at once. Some of the energy had leaked out of his life.

His wife was convinced that was a good thing. "You're home. You can relax," she told him-and told him, and told him. After a while, he got better at pretending to believe her.

One freezing morning in early December, his receptionist said, "A Monsieur Quigley is here to see you." She made a hash of the name, as any Francophone would have. O'Doull had had to get used to speaking French again, too. That came back fast. These days, he sometimes switched languages without noticing he was doing it.

"Send him in," he said at once.

Jedediah Quigley had to be well up into his seventies now. The retired U.S. officer was a little stooped, but still seemed spry. "Your country owes you a debt of gratitude, Dr. O'Doull," he said in elegant Parisian French. The back-country patois spoken here had never touched his accent, the way it had O'Doull's.

"That's nice," O'Doull replied in English. He waved to the chair in front of his desk, then pulled out a couple of Habanas. "Cigar?"

"Don't mind if I do," Quigley said. "Where'd you come by these?"

"Friend of mine-a sergeant named Granny McDougald-is a medic in the force occupying Cuba. He sent me a present," O'Doull answered. They both lit up and filled the air with fragrant smoke.

Quigley eyed the cigar with respect. "Smooth! That was mighty kind of him."

"I'll say." Leonard O'Doull nodded. "The box got here a few days ago. Granny and I worked together for a long time, till he took a bullet in the leg. He remembered the name of my home town, and so…Damn kind of him." O'Doull smiled. McDougald didn't have to do anything like that. If he did it, it was because he wanted to, because he thought the doc he'd worked with was a pretty good guy. Knowing somebody you thought well of figured you were a pretty good guy would make anybody feel good.

"I'm glad you came through in one piece," Quigley said. "I would have felt guilty if you stopped something."

O'Doull didn't laugh in his face, but he came close. "Tell me another one," he said. "You've got the conscience of a snappy turtle."

"Why, Doctor, you say the sweetest things." Damned if Jedediah Quigley didn't bat his eyes. It was as ridiculous as watching Michelangelo's David giggle and simper.

This time, O'Doull did laugh. "Well, what can I do for you, you old fraud?" he said. "Or what are you trying to do to me?"

"Do to you? If I hadn't taken Lucien Galtier's land for that hospital, you never would have met your wife. Is this the thanks I get?" Quigley said.

"Merci beaucoup. There. And you sent me off to war, and I almost got ventilated more times than I can count. I'd call that a push, or close enough," O'Doull returned. "And you never come around for no reason. What's your game this time?"

"Game?" Quigley was the picture of offended innocence. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"And then you wake up. Now tell me another one-one I'll believe." O'Doull blew a smoke ring.

"I never could do that," Jedediah Quigley complained. He tried, and blew out a shapeless cloud of smoke. He puffed again, and again managed only a smoke blob. O'Doull sat and waited, smoking his own Habana. Sooner or later, the retired colonel would come to the point. If he wanted to go slow, he could go slow. Maybe a patient would come in. That would give O'Doull an excuse to throw him out.

Time stretched. Quigley smoked his cigar down small. He eyed the glowing coal. O'Doull kept on waiting. Here in Riviиre-du-Loup, nothing was likely to happen in a hurry. Relearning that had taken O'Doull a while.

"If you were going to improve U.S. Army medical care, how would you go about it?" Quigley asked at last.

"Simple," O'Doull replied. "I wouldn't get in a war."

"You're not as funny as you think you are," the older man told him.

"Who's joking?" O'Doull said. "It's the God's truth. And I'm a citizen of the Republic. You can't do anything horrible to me unless I'm dumb enough to decide I'll let you."

"The way you were when you put on the uniform again?"

"Oui. Certainement. Just like that," O'Doull said. "And I damn well was dumb, too. Calisse! Was I ever!"

"How many lives did you save?" Quigley asked.

"A good many. But any other doc could have done the same. Hell, Granny McDougald could have saved most of them. An experienced medic gets to where he's just about as good as an M.D. He makes up in experience what he's missing in education."

"That's something we'd want to know. Can you write it down, along with anything else you can think of?"

"Why are you picking me? Why are you picking on me?" O'Doull asked. "You've got lots of doctors down in the USA and CSA who still belong to the Army. Let them crank out the recommendations."

"Some of them will." If anything fazed Quigley, he didn't let on. "But we want you, too, exactly because you're an outsider. You don't have a military career to care about. You don't need to worry about stepping on toes."

"Who's 'we'?" O'Doull inquired. "You and your tapeworm? We've got some new medicines for that, too."

He couldn't get a rise out of his not especially welcome guest. "Come on, Doctor. don't be silly. You know I still have connections."

"Sure you do. You're the guy the USA uses to tell the Republic which way to jump," O'Doull said. "But I'm not the Republic, and you're not in Quebec City. So you can play nice or you can get lost."

"I am playing nice," Quigley said. "I could be much less pleasant than I am. But if I browbeat you, you wouldn't do a good job. You really would be helping here, if you'd take the time to do it."

How nasty could Jedediah Quigley be if he set his mind to it? O'Doull wasn't sure he wanted to find out. The thought reshaped itself. He was sure he didn't want to find out. Yes, that was a lot more accurate.

"You talked me into it," he said. Quigley didn't even look smug. He knew he was a power in the land, all right. Grumpily, O'Doull went on, "You know, you'll be making me remember some things I'd rather forget."

People here didn't understand what this war was like. They didn't understand how lucky they were to be ignorant, either. O'Doull would have been happy to let his memories slide down into oblivion, too. But Quigley, damn him, was going to make sure that didn't happen. Once you started putting things down on paper, they were yours forever-more.

All Quigley said was, "This is for your country's good."

O'Doull wasn't having that. "Guys get their balls blown off for their country's good. You think that makes them feel any better about it?"

"No, of course not," Quigley said. "I doubt this will hurt quite so much, though."

He was right, dammit. Sighing, O'Doull asked, "When do you want this report?"

"Two weeks?"

With another sigh, the doctor nodded. "You'll have it." And stay out of my hair after that.

"Thank you kindly." By the way Quigley said it, O'Doull was taking care of something he wanted to do, not something he'd been browbeaten into taking on. The older man rose, nodded, and went on his way.

Outside, snow would lie at least ankle deep. This was Riviиre-du-Loup, all right. O'Doull had grown up in Massachusetts. He was used to rugged weather. Riviиre-du-Loup outdid everything he'd ever known back in the States. It wasn't even close.

Half an hour later, he had a patient. "Hello, Doctor," said Martin Lacroix, a plump, prosperous baker whose shop lay down the street from O'Doull's new office.

"Bonjour," O'Doull replied. "What seems to be your trouble, Monsieur?"

"Well, I have this rash." Lacroix pulled up his shirt sleeve to display his left biceps. "I've tried home remedies on it, but they don't do much good."

"I'm not surprised-that's ringworm," O'Doull said. "You should keep it covered as much as you can, because it can spread. I'll give you a prescription to take to the pharmacy. Put it on twice a day, and it should clear things up in a month or so."

"A month?" the baker said in dismay. "Why not sooner? If you give me a shot or some pills, can't I get rid of it in a few days?"

People knew there were new medicines that could cure some ailments quickly and easily. Naturally, people thought the new medicines could cure any ailment quickly and easily. But things didn't work that way. O'Doull spent a while explaining the difference between microbes and fungi. He wasn't sure Lacroix got it. The baker left carrying the prescription but shaking his head.

After a case like that, writing about the work O'Doull had done during the war didn't seem so bad. That, at least, had mattered. This? While he was sewing and splinting and cutting, he'd looked forward to this with a fierce and simple longing. Now that he had it again, he discovered the danger of getting exactly what you thought you wanted. It could prove as unfortunate in real life as in fairy tales.

He was home with Nicole. That was as good as it always had been. But his practice…After you'd spent time as a battlefield surgeon, prescribing ringworm salve didn't seem the same.

Another patient came in. Franзoise Boulanger had arthritis. And well she might-she was seventy-seven, and she'd worked hard all her life. She hurt, and she had trouble moving. O'Doull didn't have much to offer her: aspirin to take the edge from pain and inflammation, heating pads and warm baths to soothe a little. He would have given her the same advice before the Great War. If he'd been practicing before the War of Secession, he would have substituted laudanum for aspirin. Franзoise might have got hooked on the opiated brandy, but it would have done as much for her pain as the little white pills did, maybe more.

Leaning on her cane, she shuffled out of the office. Is this what I've got to look forward to for the rest of my professional life? God! If he could have brought Nicole with him, he would have run for Alabama and a military hospital.

A little boy with strep throat made him feel happier. Penicillin would take care of that, and would make sure the kid didn't come down with rheumatic fever or endocarditis. O'Doull felt he'd earned his fee there and done some real good. All the same, he wasn't used to taking it easy any more. He wondered if he ever would be.

A corporal waited on the platform when Abner Dowling got off the train at the Broad Street station. Saluting, the noncom said, "I'll take you to the War Department, sir."

"Obliged," Dowling said. The corporal grabbed his suitcase, too. It wasn't heavy, but Dowling didn't complain. Ten years earlier, he knew he would have. He still wasn't as old as George Custer had been when the Great War broke out, but he needed only another six years.

Philadelphia looked better than it had the last time he was there. More craters were filled in. More ruined buildings were torn down. Of course, the superbomb hadn't gone off right here.

"How are things on the other side of the river?" he asked.

"Sir, they're still pretty, uh, fouled up." The corporal would have said something strong talking with one of his buddies. As he braked for a red light, he added, "That's such a big mess, God knows when they'll set it to rights."

"I suppose," Dowling said.

"Believe it, sir. It's the truth." The corporal sounded missionary in his zeal to convince.

Dowling already believed. He'd spent too much time talking with Henderson V. FitzBelmont to do anything else. FitzBelmont wasn't the most exciting man ever born-an understatement. But he'd put a superbomb together while the United States was doing their goddamnedest to blow Lexington off the map. Dowling didn't like him, but did respect his professional competence. So did the U.S. physicists who'd interrogated him. They were impressed he'd done as much as he had under the conditions in which he had to work.

The War Department looked a lot better than it had when the Confederates tried their best to knock it flat. Now repairmen could do their job without fighting constant new damage. The concrete barriers around the massive structure remained in place. No C.S. diehards or Mormon fanatics or stubborn Canucks-rebellion still flared north of the border-could grab an easy chance to auto-bomb the place.

Dowling walked from the barricades up to the entrance. He wheezed climbing the stairs. His heart pounded. He was carrying a lot of weight around, and he'd just reminded himself how young he wasn't. I made it through the war, though. That's all that-well, most of what-really counts.

Despite the stars on his shoulder straps, he got frisked before he could go inside. The soldiers who patted him down didn't take anything for granted. When Dowling asked about that, one of them said, "Sir, the way things are, we'll be doing this forever. Too many assholes running around loose-uh, pardon my French."

"I've met the word," Dowling remarked. The enlisted men grinned.

A corporal in a uniform with creases sharp enough to shave with took Dowling down into the bowels of the earth to John Abell's office. These days, the more deeply you were buried, the bigger the wheel you were. And Abell was a bigger wheel-he now sported two stars on his shoulder straps.

"Congratulations, Major General," Dowling said, and stuck out his hand.

"Thanks." The General Staff officer's grip was stronger than his slender build and pallid face would have made you think. He'd been fair almost to the point of ghostliness even before he started impersonating a mole. But he had to be really good at what he did to rise as high as he had without a field command. Well, that was nothing Dowling hadn't already known.

"What's the latest?" Dowling asked.

"We finally have a handle on the rising in Saskatoon," Abell answered. "They surrendered on a promise that we'd treat them as POWs-and that we wouldn't superbomb the place."

"Good God!" Dowling said. "Were we thinking of it?"

"No-but the Canucks don't need to know that," the younger man replied.

"Well, well. A use for superbombs I hadn't thought of," Dowling said. "Just knowing we've got 'em on inventory is worth something."

"Indeed," Abell said. "Speaking of which, how is Professor FitzBelmont?"

Before answering, Dowling asked, "Am I allowed to talk about that with you?"

Abell's smile was cold, but his smiles usually were. "Oh, yes. That's one of the reasons you were ordered back here."

"He's a more than capable physicist, and he had some good engineers working under him," Dowling said. "That's the opinion of people who ought to know. What with as much of this town as he blew up, I'd say they're right."

"What do we do with him?" Abell asked.

"He's kind of like a bomb himself, isn't he? All that stuff he knows…Damn good thing Featherston didn't want to listen to him at first. Damn good thing. If the Japs or the Russians kidnapped him, I'd flabble," Dowling said. "And he'd sing. He'd sing like a nightingale. He'd probably think it was…interesting."

"Our German allies don't want the Russians getting a superbomb," Abell said. "Nobody wants the Japanese getting one."

"Except them," Dowling said.

"Yes. Except them." John Abell jotted something in a notebook. Even upside down, his script looked clear and precise. "Probably about time for him to have an unfortunate accident, don't you think? Then we won't have to worry about what he's up to and where he might go-or, as you say, might be taken."

What had he just written down? Kill Henderson FitzBelmont, the way someone else might have written eggs, salami, Ѕ pound butter? Dowling didn't know, but that was what he would have bet. And Abell wanted his opinion of the idea, too. What was he supposed to say? What came out of his mouth was, "Well, I think we've learned about as much from him as we're going to."

Abell nodded. "That was my next question."

"If we're going to do this, it really does have to look like an accident," Dowling said. "We give the diehards a martyr if we screw up."

"Don't worry about it. The people we use are reliable," Abell said. "Very sad, but if the professor tried to cross the street in front of a command car…"

"I see." Dowling wondered if he saw anything but the tip of the iceberg. "How many Confederates have already had, uh, unfortunate accidents?"

"I can't talk about that with you," the General Staff officer answered. "Some people we can't convict for crimes against humanity still don't deserve to live, though. Or will you tell me I'm wrong?"

Dowling thought about that. He thought about everything that had happened in the CSA since Jake Featherston took over. Slowly, he shook his head. "Nope. I won't say boo."

"Good. I didn't expect you would." Abell gave another of his chilly smiles. "Tell me, General, have you given any thought to your retirement?"

The question might have been a knife in Abner Dowling's guts. So this is the other reason they called me to Philadelphia, he thought dully. He didn't know why he was surprised. Not many men his age were still serving. But he thought he'd done as well as a man could reasonably do. Of course, when you got old enough, that didn't mean anything any more. They'd kick you out regardless. If it had happened to George Custer-and it had-it could happen to anybody.

With that in mind, Dowling answered, "Custer got over sixty years in the Army. I've had more than forty myself. That doesn't match him, but it's not a bad run. I'm not ready to go, but I will if the War Department thinks it's time."

"I'm afraid the War Department does," Abell said. "This implies no disrespect: only the desire to move younger men forward. Your career has been distinguished in all respects, and no one would say otherwise."

"If I'd held Ohio…" But Dowling shook his head. Even that probably wouldn't have mattered much. The only way you could keep from getting old was by dying before you made it. The past three years, far too many people had done that.

"It's not personal or political," Abell said. "I understand that you feel General Custer's retirement was both."

"Oh, it was," Dowling said. "I was there when the Socialists stuck it to him. There was blood on the floor by the time N. Matoon Thomas got done."

"I shouldn't wonder. Custer was a, ah, vivid figure." Abell wasn't lying. And the sun was warm, and the ocean was moist. The General Staff officer went on, "I repeat, though, none of those factors applies in your case."

"Bully," Dowling said-slang even more antiquated than he was. "I get put out to pasture any which way."

"If you'd been asked to retire during the war, it might have shown dissatisfaction with your performance. We needed your experience then. Now we have the chance to train younger men," Abell said.

He was putting the best face he could on it. He wasn't a hundred percent convincing, but he didn't miss by much. Even so…"How long before they put you out to pasture?" Dowling asked brutally.

"I may have a few more years. Or they may ask me to step down tomorrow," Abell answered with every appearance of sangfroid. "I hope I'll know when it's time to say good-bye. I don't know that I will, but I hope so."

"Time to say good-bye," Dowling echoed. "When I started, no one was sure what the machine gun was worth. Now FitzBelmont talks about blowing up Rhode Island with one bomb."

"Best thing that could happen to it," Abell observed.

"Heh," Dowling said. "Maybe it is time for me to go."

"Believe me, the Army appreciates everything you did," Abell said. "Your success in west Texas changed the whole moral character of the war."

Dowling knew what that meant. Not even U.S. citizens who didn't like Negroes could stomach killing them in carload lots. That was why Jefferson Pinkard would swing. Dowling's Eleventh Army had shown that the massacres weren't just propaganda. The Confederates really were doing those things-and a lot of them were proud of it.

"Well…thank you," Dowling said. It wasn't exactly what he'd hoped to be remembered for when he graduated from West Point, but it was better than not being remembered at all. As Custer's longtime adjutant, he'd been only a footnote. The one time he'd been important was when he lied to the War Department about what Custer and Morrell planned to do with barrels. That, he hoped, wouldn't go down in history. In this war, he'd carved out a niche for himself. It wasn't a Custer-sized niche. If anybody had that one this time around, it was Irving Morrell. But a niche it was.

"You might do worse than think about publishing your memoirs in timely fashion," Abell said. "A lot of high-ranking officers will be doing that. If you get yours out there before most of the others, it can only work to your advantage."

If I do that, Dowling thought, I will have to talk about lying to the War Department. A good many people would read a memoir of his precisely because he'd worked with Custer for so long. But work with Custer wasn't all he'd done-not even close. Didn't the world deserve to know as much?

"I'll think about it," he said.

"All right." Abell nodded briskly. He'd solved a problem. Dowling wouldn't be difficult, not the way Custer had. The General Staff officer went on, "Do you want to head over to the press office to help them draft a release about your retirement?"

"Do I want to?" Dowling shrugged. "Not especially. I will, though." What did Proverbs say? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever. He hadn't passed away yet, but he was passing. The United States, like the earth, would abide, and he'd helped make that so.