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XI

Mary Pomeroy didn't like going to the post office in Rosenfeld any more. Wilf Rokeby knew too much. He never said anything, not after the first time, but he knew. Sooner or later, she was going to have to do something about that. She hadn't figured out what yet. Whatever it was, it had to be something that didn't draw suspicion down on her.

She wished she didn't see the need. But he had a hold on her. He could use it to blackmail her, or he could go to the occupying authorities. He'd got along with them ever since 1914. He'd had to get along with them if he wanted to stay postmaster-and, as far as Mary could tell, being postmaster had been his whole life, even if he was finally retiring at the end of the year. He'd never married. He lived by himself. Maybe because he was so fussy and precise, some people wondered if he was a pansy, but nobody had anything even resembling proof of that. It was just something to gossip about when folks were in a more scandalous mood than usual.

A bomb? Bombs were always Mary's first thought. She was, after all, her father's daughter. Arthur McGregor had hit back hard at the Yanks for years till his luck ran out. But Wilf would surely be alert to anything that came in the post. As far as Mary could see, the only thing worse than not trying to get rid of him was trying and failing. That would surely send him off to the authorities.

Poison? Similar objection. She could bake an apple pie, lace it with rat poison, and smile sweetly while she gave it to him. No matter how sweetly she smiled, though, would he eat any of the pie? Would he eat more than one bite if it tasted even the least bit funny? Not likely.

Pretending the brakes on the auto failed and running him down in the street? She could do it, but she didn't see how she could keep from going to jail once she did. That wasn't what she had in mind.

Frustration gnawed at her. What she really wanted was to plant bombs on the railroad tracks outside of town. Canadian railroads were suddenly a lot more important to the USA than they had been before the war. The Yanks couldn't ship through their own country, because the Confederates had split it in two (and the Mormons were also sitting astride one of their transcontinental routes). If they wanted to move things from west to east or from east to west, they had to go through Canada. Damaging the railroads could really hurt them now.

But damaging the railroads would also make Wilf Rokeby sit up and take notice. And what would he do if he did take notice? Mary couldn't tell. She couldn't very well ask him, either. He wouldn't give her a straight answer, and the question would only put his wind up.

That left… waiting and seeing what happened next. Mary didn't like that. It meant the ball was in Wilf's hands. What happened next might be U.S. soldiers-or, worse, Quebecois soldiers-banging on her door in the middle of the night. If they searched the apartment building, they would find her bomb-making tools. Everything would be all over then. She wondered if she could die as bravely as her brother, Alexander, had during the Great War. She had her doubts. Alexander hadn't been old enough to believe death could really happen to him. Mary knew better.

The irony was, Canada had started seething like a pot coming to the boil since the war broke out. Fresh signs had gone up in the post office, warning not just of Japanese spies (a ridiculous notion in Rosenfeld) but also of British agents (perhaps not so ridiculous after all). The Rosenfeld Register trumpeted out the same warnings.

Pointing to one of those stories in the weekly, Mary said, "Seems some of us remember the mother country after all."

"Does look that way." Mort Pomeroy eyed her from across the dining-room table. "You don't want to say that kind of thing outside the apartment, though, or to anybody but me."

Such were the lessons of occupation. Mary had learned them, too. She nodded. "I know, Mort. You didn't marry a fool." You married a bomber's daughter. You knew that. You still don't know you married a bomber, too.

He smiled. "I wouldn't have married a fool. That's not what I was looking for."

And Mary found what she was looking for a few days later, in Karamanlides' general store. She didn't realize what she'd found, not at first. It was a folded piece of cheap pulp paper stuck between cans of tomatoes. She pulled it out, wondering why anyone would have wasted time sticking an advertising circular there.

When she unfolded it, she found it wasn't an advertising circular-not one of the usual sort, anyway. A cartoon at the top showed a Satanic-looking Uncle Sam with a scantily clad maiden labeled canada slung over his shoulder. He was heading up a stairway, plainly intending to visit a fate worse than death upon her when he got to the room at the top. A nasty little dog with a Frenchman's face-labeled quebec-bounded along behind him. God only knew what the dog would do up there. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be pretty.

FIGHT FOR YOUR COUNTRY! FIGHT FOR THE MOTHER COUNTRY! shouted the headline below the cartoon. The text under that was as vicious a denunciation of the USA as Mary had seen since the Yanks came into Rosenfeld in the first place.

Automatically, she tucked the flyer into her handbag. She had no idea what she'd do with it, not right then. But it encouraged her even so. Somebody in town besides her couldn't stand the Yanks. That was plenty to make her feel good all by itself. British agents, indeed!

She got what she needed and brought it up to the counter. Karamanlides added it up. "Eight dollars and eighteen cents," he said, his accent part Yank and part Greek. She gave him a ten and waited for her change. The storekeeper had come up from the USA and brought out Henry Gibbon, who'd run this place for years and years. No wonder the person with the flyer had stuck it here-this was one place where what had happened to Canada was obvious. It was the same reason Mary had planted a bomb here.

Karamanlides wasn't a bad fellow, not as an individual. He was honest enough. He carried a wide variety of goods, probably even more than Henry Gibbon had. He didn't give anybody any trouble. But he was a Yank. If Canada were a free country, he never would have come up here. That made all the difference in the world.

Mary carried the groceries and sundries back to her apartment building and up the stairs. Alec was still busy with the fortress of blocks and toy soldiers he'd been playing with when she went to the general store. He was getting bigger; she didn't need to keep an eye on him every minute of every day.

After she'd put things away, she pulled the delicious flyer out of her purse and reread it. It was just as wonderful the second time through. The Yanks and the Frenchies would have kittens if they saw it. She suspected it did come from Britain. A couple of turns of phrase weren't quite Canadian. It was good to see that the British hadn't forgotten their colony, even if it lay in enemy hands.

And then, all at once, Mary started to laugh. "What's so funny, Mommy?" Alec called from the front room. "Tell me the joke."

"It's for grownups, sweetheart," Mary answered. Alec made a disappointed noise. A minute later, though, he was blowing things up again. He had quite a war going on here. Mary decided to take advantage of that. She said, "I'm going over to the post office. Do you want to come along?"

Had he said yes, she would have had to bring him. But he shook his head. She'd hoped he would, and thought so, too. He didn't like it there; he always fidgeted. And he really was engrossed in the lead-soldier war.

"I won't be too long," she said. He hardly heard her. She closed the door behind her and went out again.

The post office was only a five-minute walk. Nothing in Rosenfeld was more than a five-minute walk from anything else. Mary nodded to several people on the street as she strolled along. No point to acting as if she were in a hurry.

As usual, Wilf Rokeby had a fire going in the potbellied stove in one corner of the post office. It made the room too warm on a mild summer day. It also seemed to bring out the spicy smell of his hair oil.

"Good morning, Mrs. Pomeroy," he said, polite as usual. "Please excuse me for just one moment, if you'd be so kind." He ducked into a back room, closing the door behind him. No one else was in the building.

Better and better! Mary hurried behind the counter. She took the subversive flyer out of her purse and stuffed it into a drawer with the words POSTAGE FOR FOREIGN COUNTRIES neatly stenciled on the front. She was back on her side before the toilet flushed.

Rokeby came out and nodded briskly. "Sorry to keep you waiting there. What can I do for you today?"

"I need twenty stamps, please," Mary said.

"Coming right up." Rokeby counted them off a roll. "That'll be one dollar."

"A dollar!" Mary said. "Aren't they still three cents apiece?"

"New surcharge-I just got these in." The postmaster tapped one of the stamps with a fingernail. Sure enough, it had 12 printed in black over President Mahan's face. Rokeby went on, "It's to help pay for the war, I expect."

Mary expected he was right. Now that she thought back on it, she remembered her father grumbling about such things during the Great War. She sighed as she reached into her purse. "They get you every which way, don't they?"

"Seems like it sometimes, that's for sure." Wilf Rokeby put the dollar bill in the cash box. "I thank you very much."

Waiting six days after that was one of the harder things Mary had done. If Rokeby happened to reach into that drawer in the meantime… But how many people in sleepy little Rosenfeld needed postage for foreign countries-especially these days, when a censor was bound to take a long, hard look at any letters bound for distant lands?

At the end of the wait, Mary went to Rosenfeld's only telephone booth, which stood beside one of the town's three gas stations (all run by Americans). She folded the glass door shut behind her and put a nickel in the coin slot. When the operator came on the line, she said, "Occupation headquarters, please." She made her voice squeakier than usual so Maggie McHenry, who ate at the diner about three times a week, wouldn't recognize it.

"Yes, ma'am," was all the woman at the switchboard said.

"Allo? Who is this?" a Frenchy said in accented English when he picked up the call.

Again, Mary did her best not to sound like herself. She also did her best to sound as if she was very excited. And so she was, but not in the way she was pretending. "Horrible treason!" she gasped. "Wilf Rokeby! At the post office! Filthy pictures! Hid it when I came in, but- Oh, my God! Horrible!"

"Who is this?" the Quebecois demanded. "What do you say?"

"Treason!" Mary repeated, and then, "I've got to go. They're looking." She was proud of that. It could have meant anything at all. She hung up and left the phone booth in a hurry.

She strolled home as calmly as if she had nothing in the world on her mind. The Frenchies probably wouldn't have the brains to question Maggie. Even if they did, she hadn't sounded as if she knew Mary's voice. And now whatever happened with Wilf Rokeby would happen. Mary nodded and kept walking.

"Hear the news?" Mort asked at supper that night.

Mary shook her head. "I've been here almost all day. Just stepped out once for a second. Didn't talk to anybody." That should forestall Alec, who might have given her the lie if she said she hadn't been out at all. She looked interested, which wasn't hard-not a bit. "What's up?"

"Frenchies hauled Wilf Rokeby off to jail," Mort said solemnly. "Story is, they found subversive literature at the post office, if you can believe it. Wilf Rokeby! My God! Who would've figured him for that kind of thing? What was he going to do when he retired-start shooting at Frenchies and Yanks for the fun of it?"

"That's terrible. Terrible!" Mary knew she had to sound dismayed. Once she'd done it, she took another bite of meat loaf.

Hipolito Rodriguez was as happy as a man with a son in the Army could be during time of war. Everything else in his life was going well, and nothing had happened to Pedro. This war, from what the wireless said and from the way the front moved, was a different sort from the one he'd known. You weren't stuck in trenches all the time, waiting for enemy machine-gun bursts to knock over anyone careless enough to show even a bit of himself. A war of movement, people called it.

Did it mean it was a war in which ordinary soldiers were less likely to get killed? So far, it seemed to. Rodriguez sometimes lit candles in the hope that would go on. At Freedom Party meetings, Robert Quinn kept telling everybody how well things were going. The wireless said the same thing, over and over again. Every day, it seemed, the men who read the news announced some new triumph.

Most people who heard the news believed every word of it. Why not? Nothing else in the Confederate States challenged the reporting. One evening after a Freedom Party meeting, though, Rodriguez went to La Culebra Verde for a few drinks. If Magdalena yelled at him when he got home, then she yelled at him, that was all. He didn't feel like standing at the bar; he spent too much time on his feet in the fields. He and Carlos Ruiz took a table against the wall. When the barmaid came up and asked what they wanted, they both ordered beers.

Away she went, hips swinging in her flounced skirt. Rodriguez's eyes followed her-in a purely theoretical way, he told himself. Magdalena, no doubt, would have had another word for it. He shrugged. He was a dutiful enough husband. He hadn't done more than look at another woman since coming home from the war. If he'd gone upstairs with a few putas while he wore butternut… well, he'd usually been drunk first, and he'd been a lot younger, and he'd been a long way from home, with no assurance he'd ever see his wife again. What she didn't know and couldn't find out about wouldn't hurt her.

He noticed Ruiz wasn't watching the barmaid. "Are you all right?" he asked his old friend. "She's pretty."

Ruiz started. His laugh sounded embarrassed. "I wasn't even thinking about her. I was thinking about the war." He had two sons in the Army.

"Oh." Rodriguez couldn't tease him about that. He said, "Gracias a Dios, everything goes well."

His friend made the sign of the cross. "I hope so. By all the saints, I hope so. They tell us about victory after victory-heaven knows that's true."

"That proves the war is going well, si?" Rodriguez said. The barmaid came back and set two foam-topped mugs on the table. He smiled at her. "Thank you, sweetheart."

Her answering smile was a professional grimace that showed white teeth. "You're welcome." She hurried away, her backfield in motion.

Rodriguez raised his mug. "Salud." He and Carlos Ruiz both drank. Rodriguez sucked foam off his upper lip. "Why aren't you happy about the war, then?"

Ruiz eyed his beer. "If it's going as well as they say it is, why haven't los Estados Unidos given up?"

"They're the enemy," Rodriguez said reasonably.

"Well, yes." Ruiz finished his beer and waved to the barmaid for a refill. Rodriguez hadn't intended to pour his down, but he didn't want to fall behind, either. He gulped till the mug was empty. Ruiz, meanwhile, went on, "But in 1917 they beat us over and over. They beat us like a drum." He'd fought in Kentucky and Tennessee, where the worst beatings had happened. "And when they'd beaten us hard enough and long enough, we had to give in. Now everyone says we're beating them like that. So why aren't they quitting, the way we had to?"

Rodriguez shrugged. "We'd been fighting for three years then. We couldn't fight any more. This war is hardly even three months old yet."

"And if it goes on for three years, we will probably lose again," Carlos Ruiz said gloomily. "If a little man fights a big man, sometimes he can hit him with a chair right at the start and win like that. But if the big man gets up off the floor and keeps fighting, the little man is in trouble."

"Countries aren't men," Rodriguez said.

Ruiz shrugged again. "I hope not. Because we've knocked the United States down, but we haven't knocked them out."

The barmaid set fresh beers on the table and took away the empty mugs. Her smile might have been a little warmer-or maybe Rodriguez's imagination was a little warmer. He was pretty sure she did put more into her walk this time. She's just trying to get a bigger tip out of you, he told himself. He enjoyed watching her even so. Thinking about the war took a real effort. "We've cut the United States in half," he said.

"Si, es verdad," Ruiz said. "But even if it is true, so what? Why did we cut los Estados Unidos in half? To make them quit fighting, yes? If they don't quit fighting, what good does it do us?" He started emptying his second mug of beer as methodically as he'd finished the first.

"Well…" Rodriguez thought for a little while. "If they're cut in half, they can't send men and supplies from one part to the other. That's what Senor Quinn says, and the wireless, too. How can they fight a war if they can't do that? They'll run out of men and food and guns."

"They still have men on both sides. They still have food on both sides, and factories, too." Carlos Ruiz seemed determined to be glum. "We've made it harder for them, si, sin duda. But also without a doubt, we haven't beaten them unless they decide they're beaten. It isn't like it was with us at the end of the last war, when we couldn't stand up any more. They can go on for a long time if they decide they want to, and it looks like they do." He tilted back his mug. His throat worked. He set the mug down empty and waved to the barmaid again.

Rodriguez had to gulp to get his mug dry, too, by the time she walked over. He said, "At the rate we're going, you're not going to be able to stand up any more, and neither am I." But he nodded when his friend ordered refills for both of them.

Ruiz said, "I'll be able to get home. I'm not worried about that. But if I get drunk tonight-so what? I don't do it very often any more. If I have a headache tomorrow, I'll have a headache, that's all. That's tomorrow. Tonight, I'll be drunk."

Magdalena would have something besides so what? to say to getting drunk. Rodriguez suspected Carlos' wife would, too. That didn't make the idea any less tempting. Rodriguez didn't get drunk very often any more, either. Did that mean he couldn't do it every once in a while if he felt like it? He didn't think so. The two beers he'd already drunk argued loudly that they ought to have some company.

Here came the barmaid. She had company for those beers in her hands. "Here you are, senores," she said, bending low to set the fresh mugs on the table. Rodriguez tried to look down her ruffled white blouse. By the way Carlos Ruiz craned his neck now, so did he. By the way the barmaid giggled, she knew exactly what they were doing, and knew they wouldn't-quite-have any luck.

They drank. The barmaid brought over a plate of jalapenos. Those were free, but they made the two men thirstier. They drank some more to put out the fire. They weren't the only ones doing some serious drinking tonight, either. Somebody at the bar started to sing. It was a song Rodriguez knew. Joining in seemed the only right thing, the only possible thing, to do. He'd never sounded better, at least in his own ears. And the rest of the audience wasn't inclined to be critical, either.

It was two in the morning when he and Carlos staggered out of La Culebra Verde. "Home," Rodriguez said, and started to laugh. Everything was funny now. It might not be when Magdalena saw the state he was in, but he wasn't going to worry about that. He wasn't going to worry about anything, not right this minute. He embraced his friend one last time. They went their separate ways.

The long line of power poles pointed the way home. They went straight across the countryside. Hipolito Rodriguez didn't, but he did go generally in the same direction. And he found the power poles convenient in another way, too. He paused in front of one of them, undid his trousers, and got rid of a good deal of the beer he'd drunk. A couple of miles farther out of Baroyeca, he did the same thing again.

The night was cool and dry. Days here in late summer kept their bake-oven heat, but the nights-growing longer now-were much more tolerable. Crickets chirped. Moths fluttered here and there, ghostly in the moonlight. Bigger flying shapes were bats and nightjars hunting them.

A coyote trotted past, mouth open in an arrogant, almost-doggy grin. Have to look out for my lambs, Rodriguez thought, wondering if he'd remember when he got home. Farmers around here shot coyotes on sight, but the beasts kept coming down out of the mountains and stealing stock.

There was the house, a light on in the front window. He approached with drunken caution; if the light was on, Magdalena might be waiting up for him. And if Magdalena was waiting up, she wouldn't be very happy.

He tiptoed up the steps. Somehow, he wasn't so quiet as he wished he would have been. He managed to slam the front door behind him. Even that didn't bring out his wife. Maybe she'd stayed up till an hour or so ago, and was deep asleep now. That would save him for the time being, but she'd be twice as angry in the morning, and he'd be hung over then. He didn't look forward to that.

He didn't want to be very hung over in the morning. He knew it was too late to block all the aftereffects of what he'd drunk tonight. Maybe he could ease the pain to come, though, at least a little. He went into the kitchen and flipped on the light in there. He didn't have to fumble around lighting a lamp. A flick of the switch was all it took. A good thing, too; he might have burned down the house fooling around with kerosene and matches.

In the refrigerator were several bottles of beer. Rodriguez let out a silent sigh of relief; Magdalena might have thrown them all away. He reached for one. It might take the edge off the headache he'd have in the morning. He was still drunk, and proved it by knocking over a pitcher of ice water next to the beer on the top shelf.

A desperate, drunken, miraculous grab kept the pitcher from crashing to the floor and bringing Magdalena out with every reason to be furious. It didn't keep the whole pitcher's worth of water from splashing down onto the floor and all over everywhere. He jumped and cursed. The cold water froze his toes. He'd hardly felt them for quite a while, but they announced their presence now.

Still swearing under his breath, he fumbled for rags. He did a halfhearted-a very halfhearted-job of cleaning up the mess, or at least that part of it right in front of the refrigerator. Puddles still glittered on the floor in the light of the electric lamp. He started to go after some of them, then shook his head. It was only water. It would dry up. And getting down on his hands and knees was making his head hurt. He didn't just want that beer. He needed it.

He opened it. He drank it. It wasn't just delicious, though it was that. It was medicinal. His headache retreated. He started to smile. Maybe he would get away with this after all. He set the bottle on the counter. Then he smiled a sly smile and put it in the trash instead. Magdalena wouldn't have to know. He wasn't as sly as he thought, though, and he was drunker than he thought.

As he reached for the light switch, his sandal splashed in one of the puddles he hadn't bothered sopping up. The instant he touched the switch, he realized he'd made a dreadful mistake. Current coursed through him, stinging like a million hornets. He tried to let go, and discovered he couldn't. Just a stupid mistake, he thought over and over. Just a stupid…

Honolulu. The Sandwich Islands. Paradise on earth. Warm blue water. Tropic breezes. Palm trees. Polynesian and Oriental and even white women not overencumbered with inhibitions or clothes. Bright sunshine the whole year round.

Every paradise had its serpent. The bright sunshine was Sam Carsten's.

He'd had duty in Honolulu before. It had left him about medium rare, the way bright sunshine always did. He was too fair to stand it, and he wouldn't tan. He just burned, and then burned some more. He wished the Remembrance were charged with protecting Seattle or Portland, Maine, or, for that matter, Tierra del Fuego. At least then he could stick his nose out on deck without having it turn the color of raw beef.

Staying below in warm weather was no fun, either. The ship's ventilators ran all the time, but heat from the sun and from the engine room combined to defeat them. Sometimes that drove him topside. He stayed in the shade of the carrier's island when he could, which helped only so much. Even the reflection of the sun off the Pacific was plenty to scorch him.

The exec noticed his suffering. "Are you sure you want to stay aboard?" Commander Cressy asked. "If you want to transfer to a ship in the North Atlantic-one that's out to keep the British from sneaking men and arms to Canada, say-I'll do all I can to put your transfer through."

"Sir, I've been tempted to do that a few times," Sam answered. "I've been tempted, but I'd rather stay here. This is where the action is."

"Plenty of action everywhere, I'd say," Cressy observed. "But I do take your point. And if you don't want to leave us, well, you'd better believe we're glad to have you. You're a solid man. You've proved that plenty of times-and you may get the chance to do it some more."

"Thank you very much, sir," Sam said. The exec's good opinion mattered to him, probably more than that of any other officer on the ship. Cressy was a man who would soon have a ship of his own, if not a fleet of his own. Hoping to take advantage of his friendly mood, Sam asked, "When do we go into action against the Japs?"

"Damn good question," Cressy told him. "What I haven't got for you is a damn good answer. Right now, I'd say it's more up to Tokyo than to us. We're playing defense here, trying to make sure they don't take the Sandwich Islands away from us. We've got the Remembrance for mobility, and we've got as many land-based airplanes as we could ferry over here. We've got submersibles-oh, and battleships and cruisers, too. The enemy won't have an easy time if he comes."

"Yes, sir," Sam said. Back during the Great War, the battlewagons and cruisers would have taken pride of place. He knew that full well; he'd served aboard the Dakota back then. In this fight, Commander Cressy tossed them in as an afterthought, and that was only fitting and proper. They could still hit hard-if they ever got close enough to do it. But airplanes, either land-based or flying off carriers, were likely to sink them before they got the chance. Even in the Pacific War, airplane carriers had attacked one another without coming over the horizon.

"The other thing we've got is Y-ranging," Cressy said. "That gives us early warning. We don't think the Japs do. Most of their engineering is pretty good; their ships and airplanes measure up to anybody's."

"Oh, yes, sir," Carsten agreed. "We've found that out the hard way."

"So we have," the exec said. "But they're just a little bit slow in electrical engineering. Most of their gear is like what we were using, oh, five years ago. They get the most out of it-never underestimate their skill. It's one place where we know a few tricks they don't, though."

"That could be a big edge," Sam said.

"It could be, yes. Whether it will be…" Commander Cressy shrugged. "It's like anything else: it's not only what you've got, it's how well you use it." He nodded. "I always enjoy passing the time of day with you, Lieutenant. But now, if you'll excuse me…" He hurried away. He always hurried. That added to the impression that nothing ever got by him.

When Sam got leave, he took the trolley from Pearl Harbor east to Honolulu. Hotel Street was where the ratings congregated: an avenue full of bars and dance halls and brothels, all designed to make sure a sailor out on a spree didn't leave any money in his wallet and had a good time with what he spent. Shore patrolmen tramped along in groups of three or four; traveling in pairs wasn't enough. Men called them names behind their backs, and sometimes to their faces.

Sam sighed. Being an officer meant he was slumming here. He didn't really belong, the way he had during the Great War. There were some quieter, more discreet establishments an officer could visit without losing face. Carsten liked rowdiness as much as the next sailor on leave. But he was conscious that, as a mustang, he couldn't get away with certain things other officers might have. His superiors had warned him against acting as if he were still a CPO. Mustangs had the deck stacked against them anyhow. They made things harder for themselves if they remembered what they had been and forgot what they were.

He was walking toward one of those discreet establishments when a plump blond woman not far from his own age came up the street toward him. He started to go past her, then stopped and did a double take. "I'll be a son of a gun," he said. "You're Maggie Stevenson, aren't you?"

"Hello, Lieutenant," she said, pronouncing it Leftenant in the British way. A wide, amused smile spread across her face. "I take it we've met before?"

"Just once," he replied with genuine regret. "That was the only time I could scrape so much cash together back in the last war. But you see I never forgot."

Her smile got wider yet. "I always wanted satisfied customers," she said. "Every so often, a man who was here back then recognizes me. It's flattering, in a way." During the Great War, she'd been the undisputed queen of Honolulu's women of easy virtue. She'd charged thirty bucks a throw, ten times the going rate for an average girl, and she'd made sailors think they got their money's worth, too. She eyed Carsten's shoulder boards. "You've come up in the world a bit since then."

He shrugged. "Maybe a bit. How about you?" She couldn't be in the business any more, but she didn't look as if she'd missed any meals. She'd made money hand over fist back then. Had she managed to hold on to any of it?

She laughed. "Lieutenant, I own about half of Hotel Street. Every time some horny able seaman gets a piece, I get a piece of his piece. I get a piece of what he drinks, too, and of what he eats, whatever that is." She laughed again. "I haven't done too badly for myself."

"Good," he said. Broken-down, penniless whores who'd got too old to turn tricks any more were a dime a dozen. Whores who'd made a killing in real estate, on the other hand… Well, now he'd met one. "Good for you, by God!"

"You really mean it," Maggie Stevenson said wonderingly.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Plenty of reasons, starting with that boring text about the wages of sin. For me, the wages of sin turned out to be pretty good, I had a lot of fun earning them, and I don't regret a goddamn thing. What do you think of that?"

"You sure gave a lot of fun," Sam said. "I'm glad you had some, too. I've known quite a few working girls who didn't-don't."

"So have I." She nodded. "I'm lucky. I have been lucky, most ways. So where are you headed, Lieutenant?"

"I was going to the Excelsior Hotel."

She made a face at him. "That's not one of mine. Would you rather visit the Oceanview?"

From what he'd heard, the Oceanview was the best officers' place in Honolulu. It was also the most expensive. "Sure," he said, "or I would if I could afford it."

"Don't worry about that." She took a business card and a pen from her purse. She wrote on the card, then handed it to Sam. "Show them this at the door. On the house. For old times' sake, you might say."

"Thanks very much." He eyed the card. She'd written, Anything-Maggie in a bright purple ink. The printed card described her as a caterer. She catered to all kinds of appetites. "Thanks very much."

"You'll pay me back. Just keep the Japs away. They'd be hell on business. Good luck, Lieutenant." Off she went, the same determination in her stride as when she'd gone on to the next eagerly waiting sailor after leaving Sam. He looked down at the card again, smiled, and shook his head in wonder.

The bouncers at the door to the Oceanview could have played professional football. They were used to seeing commanders and captains and even admirals, not an overage lieutenant, junior grade. "Help you, sir?" one of them rumbled. Help you get lost? he no doubt meant. Sam displayed Maggie Stevenson's card, wondering what would happen next.

"Oh," the bouncer said. He actually came to attention, and nudged his even beefier pal so he did the same. "Didn't know you knew the owner." He handed back the card, nothing but respect on his blunt-featured face. "Have a good time, sir."

"I do believe I will," Sam said, bemused. He walked in. The place wasn't whorehouse gaudy. Everything had an air of quiet elegance. You could see the money, but it didn't shout. And the purple ink on that card was a potent Open, Sesame.

With that card in hand, his own money was no good in there. No one would take it, not even for tips. The food was good. The booze was better. After a while, he picked himself a girl. Just making the choice wasn't easy; the Oceanview had girls to match anyone's taste, as long as that taste was good.

Sam finally settled on a blue-eyed brunette named Louise. She did whatever he wanted, and smiled while she was doing it. He didn't ask for anything fancy or jaded; his own habits didn't run that way. He didn't think he warmed her, but she was pleasant all the way through.

She didn't throw him out of bed so she could go on to her next customer right away, either, the way girls in houses usually did. Instead, she lay beside him for a lazy cigarette and a brandy. "How did you get to know the Boss?" she asked; he could hear the capital letter.

"Same way I just got to know you," he answered, patting her round behind. He wondered if he could manage a second round. He'd been at sea a long time.

Louise's eyes widened. "She gave you that card for a roll in the hay years ago?" She didn't say, You must have been better with her than you were with me. Even if she didn't, Sam could tell what she was thinking.

He shrugged. "Maybe she was feeling sentimental." That sent Louise into gales of laughter. Well, Maggie Stevenson didn't strike Sam as the sentimental type, either. But what other explanation made sense?

And, in the end, what difference did it make? With Louise on top the second time, Sam did succeed again. He went back to the Remembrance thinking there were worse places to fight a war than Honolulu in spite of the tropical sun.

Jefferson Pinkard always dreaded telephone calls from Richmond. When people in Richmond phoned Camp Dependable, it was usually to tell him to do things he didn't want to do. Some things they didn't want to put in writing, even in something as ephemeral as a telegram.

"Hello, Pinkard." Ferdinand Koenig sounded almost offensively cheerful this morning. Why not? The Attorney General gave orders. He didn't have to take them. "How are you today?"

"Fine, sir," Jeff answered. Hopefully, he added, "Connection isn't real good."

"No? I hear you just fine," Koenig said-so much for that. "There's something you need to take care of for me."

"What's that?" Jeff asked, trying to hide the resignation he felt.

"You still have Willy Knight there, right? Nothing's happened to him or anything?"

"No, sir. Nothing's happened to him. We've still got him right here," Pinkard said. He'd never included the former Vice President of the CSA in a population reduction. What you once did, you couldn't undo. "How come? You need him again?" If they were crazy enough to want to use Knight to rally the country, or some small part of it, they could. Pinkard didn't think it would work, but nobody'd asked his opinion, and nobody was going to, either.

"Need him? Jesus Christ, no!" Ferd Koenig hadn't lost all of his mind, then. "He's never going to have any use for anybody again. Time to dispose of him."

"Dispose of him?" Pinkard wanted to make sure he had that right before he did anything. "Shall I expect something in writing that tells me the same thing? You people change your mind about that, whose ass is in a sling? Mine."

"Nobody's going to put anything in writing about this," Koenig said. "I'll call you back tomorrow, that's all." He hung up.

"Shit." Jefferson Pinkard hung up, too. The Attorney General hadn't said what would happen if he called back and found Willy Knight still breathing. Pinkard didn't need anybody to draw him a picture, though. He could figure it out for himself. Somebody else would do Knight in-and he'd trade his uniform for prison coveralls, if the powers that be didn't decide to dispose of him instead.

It had to be done, then. And he had to see it done. You never could tell which guard was a secret Knight sympathizer. If the man got loose, especially now with a war on… Pinkard supposed that was why Richmond had decided it didn't want to keep him around any more. If he ever escaped, the damnyankees could use him against the CSA. Or he could rally the black rebels, maybe even join them to white troublemakers. No wonder the Freedom Party didn't want to take the chance of letting him keep breathing, even in a place like Camp Dependable.

When Jeff walked out of the office compound and into the very different world of the camp itself, he wasn't surprised to have Mercer Scott come over to him within a couple of minutes. "What's up?" the guard chief asked.

He knew Pinkard had got a call from Richmond. He didn't even bother hiding that. But he didn't know, or didn't let on that he knew, what the call was about. Maybe he was sandbagging. Jeff didn't think so. He hoped not, anyway. He said, "Have Atkins and Moultrie and McDevitt bring Willy Knight here right away. Those three, nobody else. Anybody fucks this up, Mercer, it may cost me my ass, but I promise you you'll go down with me."

Again, Scott didn't bother pretending he didn't know what Jeff was talking about. He said, "You want to come along with me, see I don't talk to nobody else?"

"Yeah," Jeff said after a moment's thought. "I guess maybe I do. No offense, Mercer, but this here's important."

"Soon as you said it was about Willy, I reckoned it was," Mercer Scott answered. "His clock finally run out?"

Pinkard didn't answer that, not in so many words. "Let's just go get him, separate him off from the rest of the prisoners." He laughed. "One thing-he won't be hard to find." Except for the guards, Knight was still the only white man in the camp.

Braxton Atkins, Clem Moultrie, and Shank McDevitt were guards personally loyal to Pinkard. Mercer Scott had his own favorites, too. A guard chief would have been a damn fool not to. But Jeff was going to stand and fall with his people on this. Things still might go wrong, but they wouldn't go wrong because he hadn't done everything he could to make them go right.

All five white men carried submachine guns with big, heavy snail-drum magazines when they went after Willy Knight. If anybody tried to give them trouble, they could spray a lot of lead around before they went down. The Negroes in the camp had been taken in arms against the Confederate States. They knew what sort of weapons the guards had, and no doubt why. They also knew the men in uniform wouldn't hesitate to start shooting, not even a little bit. They gave them a wide berth.

Pinkard and his followers found Knight coming back from the latrine trenches. When the former Vice President realized they were heading his way, he straightened into a mocking parody of attention. "Well, gents, what can I do for you?"

"Got a message for you from Richmond," Pinkard answered stolidly. "It's waiting back at the compound."

"A message? What kind of message?" Hope warred with fear on Knight's scrawny, care-worn face. Did any part of him really imagine Jake Featherston would ever let him off the hook? Maybe so, or the hope wouldn't have been there.

"I don't know. A message. They wouldn't let me look at it." Pinkard lied without compunction. This had to go smoothly. The way to make sure that happened was to keep Knight soothed, keep him eager, till the very last instant.

And it worked. He believed because he wanted to believe, because he had to believe, because not believing meant giving up. "Well, lead me to it, by God," he said, more life in his voice than Jeff had heard there for years.

"No, Mr. Knight. You go first. You know the way," Pinkard said. That Mister sealed the deal. Knight hurried on ahead of the guards. Behind his back, Mercer Scott gave Jeff a look filled with reluctant respect. He brought his free hand up to touch the brim of his juice-squeezer hat, as if to say, You know what you're doing, all right.

Once Pinkard had Willy Knight away from the rest of the prisoners, he knew things would go the way he wanted them to. He nodded to his three loyalists. They all raised their weapons and shot Knight several times each. He died hopeful, and he died fast. There were worse ways to go out-plenty of them. The camp gave examples every day.

"Good job," Jeff told the guards. His ears still rang from the gunfire. "Take what's left here and get rid of it." They dragged Willy Knight's body away by the feet. That way, they didn't get their uniforms so dirty. The corpse left a trail of red behind it. Flies started settling on the blood and buzzed round the body.

"Well, there's one loose end taken care of," Scott said.

"I was thinking the same thing," Jeff answered. He was also thinking that another one had just shown up. Now the guard chief knew for sure who three of his chief backers were. He didn't see what he could have done about that, but he knew he would have to get some less obvious followers, too.

"Just complicated our lives, having him around," Mercer Scott added.

"You think I'm gonna tell you you're wrong, you're nuts," Jeff said. "Now I'm gonna go call the Attorney General back, tell him it's been taken care of." He didn't aim to wait for Ferdinand Koenig to telephone him again. He would have liked to call Koenig something worse than his formal title. He would have liked to, but he didn't, not where Scott could hear. The guard chief had his own channels back to Richmond. Giving him dirt to report was just plain stupid.

"I liked the way you handled that. Slick as hell," Scott said.

"Thanks," Pinkard said. Maybe good reports could go back to the capital, too. Maybe. He wouldn't have bet anything much above a dime on it.

He placed the call to Koenig's office. Hisses and pops and clicks on the telephone line said it was going through. Every once in a while, Jeff could hear operators talking to each other. They sounded like faraway ghosts. And then, also from some considerable distance but not quite from the Other Side, the Attorney General said, "Koenig here."

"Hello, sir. This is Pinkard. Wanted to let you know it's all done."

"Good. That's good," Koenig said. "You didn't waste any time, did you?"

"Didn't reckon I ought to," Jeff answered. "Never can tell what'll happen if you dick around on something like this."

"Well, you're right about that." The Attorney General paused. "You're sure about it?"

Jeff had expected that. He found himself nodding, even though Ferd Koenig was a thousand miles away. "Sir, I saw it with my own eyes. I made sure I did. Can't take chances on something so important."

"All right. I reckon you know why I have to make certain," Koenig said. Pinkard nodded again. That meant the Attorney General would also check with Mercer Scott, and maybe with some other people at Camp Dependable, too, people about whom neither Pinkard nor Scott knew anything. Jeff didn't know Koenig had people like that here, but he would have in the other man's shoes. The Attorney General went on, "I'll let the President know what a good job you did."

"I thank you kindly." Jeff meant that. "How do you want me to put it in the books, sir?, 'Shot while attempting to escape' or, 'natural causes'?"

", 'Natural causes,' " Koenig answered after a bare moment's hesitation. "His heart stopped, didn't it?"

"Sure as hell did."

"All right, then. Leave it at that. The less we stir up those waters, the better off everybody'll be," Ferdinand Koenig said.

Jeff found himself nodding one more time. "That's how it'll be, then." There were still more than a few people who liked Willy Knight. They mostly kept their mouths shut if they wanted to stay healthy, but they were out there. No point getting them all hot and bothered, not if you could help it. Natural causes could mean anything.

"All right." Koenig paused once more. "Sounds like it went off smooth as can be. I'll let the President know about that, too."

"Thanks. Thanks very much." Pinkard beamed. Most of the time, nobody ever gave a jailer the respect he deserved.

After a few more polite noises-ones that didn't matter nearly so much-Koenig hung up. Jeff let out a long sigh. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. But he'd handled it.

He nodded to himself. If it wasn't one thing, it was another, all right. And he had a pretty good notion of what the next thing would be: a new population reduction. How many more of those could the guards take and still keep their marbles? He didn't want them blowing out their own brains or finding other ingenious ways to kill themselves, the way Chick Blades had.

What could he do about it, though? He didn't have the room or the food to keep all the blacks who flooded into Camp Dependable. If he tried, he'd touch off an explosion here. He couldn't do that, not when the Confederate States were fighting for their lives. He had to make things here run as well as he could. He wasn't supposed to cause trouble. He was supposed to stop it.

At least he didn't have Willy Knight to worry about any more. No more bad dreams about Knight escaping, either. That was something, anyhow.

When Cincinnatus Driver went to a drugstore to buy himself a bottle of aspirins, he had to wait till the druggist took care of every white customer in the place before he could give the man his money. Back before the Great War, he'd taken such humiliations for granted. After a quarter of a century of living as a citizen rather than a resident, though, they galled him. He couldn't do anything about that, not unless he wanted to get his population reduced, but he was muttering to himself as he made his slow, halting way out the door.

He'd been lucky, after a fashion. Another white man came in just as he was going out: a tall, jowly fellow, still vigorous despite his white hair, with a mournful face and the light brown eyes of a hunting dog. He held the door open for Cincinnatus, saying, "Here you go, uncle."

"Thank you kindly, suh," Cincinnatus said. That uncle still grated, too. But it wasn't the reason he leaned against the sooty brickwork of the drugstore's front wall. Nobody bothered him there. Why would anyone? He was just a decrepit, broken-down nigger soaking up some sunshine. He could have been sprawled on the sidewalk with a bottle in his hand. Nobody would have bothered him then, either, unless a cop decided to beat on him or run him in for being drunk.

A pigeon strutted by, head bobbing. It could walk about as fast as Cincinnatus could. He opened the bottle of aspirins and dry-swallowed a couple of them. They wouldn't get rid of all his aches and pains, but they would help some. And the sun did feel good on his battered bones.

After five or ten minutes, the man with the white hair and the hunting-hound eyes came out of the drugstore. He was carrying a small paper sack. He would have walked past Cincinnatus without a second glance, but the Negro spoke in a low voice: "Mornin', Mistuh Bliss."

The man stopped dead. Just for a moment, his eyes widened. Surprise? Fear? Cincinnatus would have bet on surprise. Luther Bliss was a first-class son of a bitch, but nobody'd ever said he scared easy. Cincinnatus wondered if he'd deny being who he was. He didn't; he just said, "Who the hell are you? How do you know who I am? Speak up, or you'll be sorry."

Sorry probably meant dead. His voice still held the snap of command. When Kentucky belonged to the USA, he'd headed up the Kentucky State Police-the Kentucky Secret Police, for all intents and purposes. He'd battled Negro Reds and Confederate diehards with fine impartiality, and he'd got out of the state one jump ahead of the incoming Confederates. If he was back now…

Cincinnatus said, "I holler for a cop, we see who's the sorriest." That brought Luther Bliss up short. Cincinnatus went on, "I spent time in your jail. Your boys worked me over pretty good."

"You probably deserved it." No, nobody'd ever said Bliss lacked nerve.

"Fuck you," Cincinnatus said evenly.

That made Bliss jump; no Negro in his right mind would say such a thing to a white man here. But the former-or not so former-secret policeman was made of stern stuff, and shrewd as the devil, too. "You want to holler for a cop, go ahead. You'll help the CSA and hurt the USA, but go ahead."

"Fuck you," Cincinnatus said again, nothing but bitterness in his voice this time. Luther Bliss had found the switch to shut him off, all right.

Seeing as much, Bliss managed a smile that did not reach his eyes. "This time, I reckon we're on the same side. Any… colored fellow who isn't on the USA's side, he's got to have something wrong with him." He didn't say nigger, but his hesitation showed he didn't miss by much.

He wasn't wrong, either. Cincinnatus wished he were. And sure as hell he wasn't a coward. If the Confederates caught him here, they'd take him apart an inch at a time. "What the devil you doin' in Kentucky again?" Cincinnatus asked him.

Bliss gave back that unamused smile once more. "Raising Cain," he answered matter-of-factly. Those light brown eyes-an odd, odd color, one that almost glowed in the sunlight-measured Cincinnatus like a pair of calipers. "I remember you. That Darrow bastard sprung you. Old fool should have kept his nose out of what was none of his business."

"I hoped to God I'd never see you again," Cincinnatus said.

"Well, you're about to get your wish," Bliss replied. "Like I say, you want to yell for a cop, go right ahead." He didn't bother with a farewell nod or anything of the sort. He just walked away, turned the corner, and was gone, as if he were a bad dream and Cincinnatus suddenly awake.

Shaking his head, Cincinnatus walked to the corner himself. When he looked down the street, he didn't see Luther Bliss. The ground might have swallowed up the secret policeman. Cincinnatus shook his head again. That was too much to hope for. "Do Jesus!" he muttered, shaken to the core. Ghosts kept coming back to life now that he was here in Kentucky again.

He made his slow return to the colored part of town. No drugstores operated there. A couple had been open while Kentucky belonged to the USA, run by young, ambitious Negroes who'd managed to get enough education to take on the work. The Confederates had made them shut down, though. The Freedom Party didn't want capable colored people. As far as Cincinnatus could tell, the Freedom Party didn't want colored people at all.

A policeman in a gray uniform strode up to Cincinnatus on an almost visible cloud of self-importance. "What're you doing out of the quarter, boy?" he demanded. Boy was even worse than uncle.

"Got me some aspirin, suh." Cincinnatus displayed the bottle. "I'm crippled up pretty bad, an' they help-some."

"Let me see your passbook."

"Yes, suh." Cincinnatus handed him the all-important document. The cop studied it, nodded, and handed it back with a grudging nod. Like Luther Bliss, he walked away without a backward glance.

Cincinnatus stared after him, then slowly put the passbook in his pocket once more. He despised and feared Luther Bliss, but he was damned if he would tell a Confederate cop about him. One thing he'd learned and learned well was the vital difference between bad and worse. Bliss was bad, no doubt about it. Anything that had to do with the Freedom Party was bound to be worse.

Now that he was back in his own part of town, Cincinnatus had to be extra careful where he set his cane and where he put his feet. Sidewalks here were bumpy and irregular and full of holes. In the white part of Covington, they got repaired. Here? Not likely. This part of town was lucky to have sidewalks at all. The USA hadn't spent much more money here than the Confederate States had while they ran Kentucky.

One slow, painful step at a time, Cincinnatus trudged over to Lucullus Wood's barbecue place. As usual, the smell made him drool blocks before he got there. Also as usual, Lucullus had customers both black and white. Freedom Party stalwarts might hate Negroes on general principles. That didn't mean they didn't know good barbecue when they sank their teeth into it.

The heat inside was terrific. Pig carcasses and great slabs of beef turned on spits over glowing hickory coals. Cincinnatus recognized one of the men turning the spits. "Can I see Lucullus?" he asked.

"Sure. Go on back," the turner answered. "He ain't got nobody with him now."

"Come in," Lucullus called when Cincinnatus knocked on the door. The barbecue cook had a hand in the top drawer of his desk. If Cincinnatus had been an unwelcome visitor, Lucullus probably could have given him a.45-caliber reception. But he smiled and relaxed and showed both hands. "Sit yourself down. What you got on your mind?"

Sitting down felt good-felt wonderful, in fact. Cincinnatus didn't like being on his feet. Baldly, he said, "Luther Bliss is back in town."

"My ass!" Lucullus exclaimed. "If he was, I reckon I'd known about it. How come you got the word ahead o' anybody else? I don't mean no disrespect, but you ain't nobody special."

"Never said I was," Cincinnatus answered. "But he was goin'into Goldblatt's drugstore when I was comin' out. I ain't nobody special, but I ain't nobody's fool, neither. I seen him, I recognized him-you better believe I recognized him-an' I talked to him. He got white hair now, but he ain't changed much otherwise. Luther Bliss, all right."

Lucullus drummed his plump fingers on the desktop. "Confederates catch him, he take a looong time to die."

"I know. I thought o' that." Cincinnatus nodded. "Man's a bastard, but he's a brave bastard. I always figured that."

"What the hell he doin' here?" Lucullus asked. Cincinnatus could only shrug. Lucullus waved away this motion. "I wasn't askin' you. Ain't no reason for you to know. But I ought to have. I got me connections up in the USA. They shoulda told me he was comin' back."

"Back in the days when Kentucky belonged to the United States, Bliss cared more about chasin' your daddy than about workin' with him," Cincinnatus said.

"Well, that's so, but times is different now. You gonna tell me times ain't different now?" Lucullus sent Cincinnatus a challenging stare.

Cincinnatus shook his head. "Not me. I oughta know. Still and all, though, Bliss, he works with white folks. He likely come down here for some special nasty trick or another, an' he got his people all lined up an' ready to go. I don't reckon he wants nobody else to know he's here."

"You got to be right about that." Lucullus eyed Cincinnatus again, this time speculatively. "You got to be lucky he don't decide to dispose o' you for knowin' who he is."

"He thought about it," Cincinnatus said. The sun hadn't been the only thing glowing in Luther Bliss' eyes. "He thought hard about it, I reckon. He probably figured no nigger's gonna give him away."

"He a damn fool if he think like that. Plenty o' niggers sell their mama for a dime." Lucullus held up a hand, pale palm out. "I don't mean you. I know better. You is what you is. But a lot o' niggers is just plain scared to death-an' the way things is goin', to death is just about the size of it."

"I ain't gonna do nothin' to help the Confederates an' the Freedom Party," Cincinnatus said. "Nothin', you hear me?"

"I done said I don't mean you. I said it, an' I meant it. You got to listen when you ain't talkin'," Lucullus said. "Bliss was at Goldblatt's, was he? He likely ain't stayin' real far from there, then."

"Mebbe," Cincinnatus said. "Never can tell with him, though. That there man taught the Mississippi to be twisty."

"You ain't wrong," Lucullus said. "And I is much obliged to you fo' passin' on what you seen. I should know that sort o' thing. Luther Bliss!" He whistled mournfully. "Who woulda thunk it?"

The cook heaved himself to his feet and led Cincinnatus out of the office. At his shouted order, one of the youngsters behind the counter gave Cincinnatus a barbecued-beef sandwich so thick, he could barely get his mouth around it. He walked back to his father's house engulfing it like a snake engulfing a frog. But all the barbecue in the world couldn't have taken the taste of Luther Bliss from his mouth.

Just swinging a hammer felt good to Chester Martin. Watching a house go up, making a house go up, seemed a lot more satisfying than tramping along the sidewalk with a picket sign on his shoulder. He'd never been thrilled about taking on a general's role in the war against capitalist oppression.

So he told himself, anyhow-and told himself, again and again. With patriotic zeal, one big builder after another had made his peace with the construction workers' union. Nobody could afford strikes any more. Everyone from the President on down was saying the same thing. People were actually acting as if they believed it, too. Love of country trumped love of class. That was one of the lessons of 1914, when international solidarity of the workers hadn't done a damn thing to stop the Great War. A generation of peace had let memories grow hazy. Now the truth came to light again.

Martin found himself quietly swearing at Harry T. Casson as he rode the trolley home from work one hot afternoon. The building magnate had known him better than he knew himself. Try as he would to get back to normal, to return to being an ordinary working man, he missed the class struggle, missed heading the proletariat's forces in that struggle. Was ordinary work enough after such a long, bruising fight?

When he got off the trolley a few blocks from his place, a newsboy on the corner was hawking the Daily Mirror-Los Angeles' leading afternoon paper-with shouts of, "Sabotage! Treason! Read all about it!"

That was a headline Chester would have expected from the Times. In fact, half a block away another newsboy was selling the afternoon edition of the Times with almost identical cries. In the Times, they were usually aimed at union organizers and other such subversives. Chester bought a copy of the Daily Mirror. That way, he didn't have to give the Times any of his money.

He discovered that the Daily Mirror-and, presumably, even the Times for once-meant their headlines literally. A U.S. offensive against the Confederates in Ohio had been blunted because Confederate sympathizers blew bridges, took down important road signs, and otherwise fouled things up. One of them had been caught in the act. He'd killed himself before U.S. forces could seize him and, perhaps, squeeze answers out of him.

"Fighting the enemy is hard enough. Fighting the enemy and our own people at the same time is ten times worse," an officer was quoted as saying. Right next to his bitter comment was a story about the secondary campaign in Utah. The Mormons were using lots of land mines against U.S. soldiers and U.S. barrels, making the advance toward Provo hideously expensive.

Chester almost walked past his own building. He folded the newspaper under one arm and thumped his forehead with the heel of his other hand. Then he went inside and went upstairs. He sniffed when he let himself into the apartment. "What smells good?" he called.

"It's a tongue," Rita answered from the kitchen. Chester smiled. When times were good, back in the 1920s, he would have turned up his nose at tongue. He and Rita had started eating it when times went sour. They'd kept on eating it afterwards because they both found they liked it. So did their son. Rita went on, "How did it go today?"

"All right, I guess." Chester did his best not to think about his discontent. To keep from flabbling about what he was doing, he flabbled about external things instead: "War news isn't very good."

"I know. I've been listening to the wireless," his wife said. "Not much we can do about it, though."

He walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a bottle of Lucky Lager. "Want one?" he asked. When Rita nodded, he opened the beer, put it on the counter by her, and got another one for himself. They clinked the brown glass bottles together before drinking.

Not much we can do about it. Rita knew he sometimes thought about putting on the uniform again. He wasn't afraid of getting shot at. Her knowing he might get shot at? That made him shiver.

"Ahhh! That hits the spot!" Chester said after a third of the bottle ran cold down his throat. Rita, who'd taken a smaller sip, nodded. Chester drank again, then went on, "At least it doesn't look like the Confederates are going to take Toledo away from us."

"Thank God for small favors." Rita's second swig was a hefty one. Chester understood that. They'd come to Los Angeles from Toledo after he lost his job at a steel mill there. Both of them still had family in the town. If the Confederates had decided to drive west after reaching Lake Erie at Sandusky…

But they hadn't. Chester added, "Last letter we got from my old man, he says even the bombers aren't coming over as often as they did."

"They don't need to so much, not any more," Rita said.

One more truth, Chester thought. Till the Confederates cut the USA in half, all sorts of cargoes rolled through Toledo, bound for points farther east. Now those cargoes couldn't go much farther east-not on land, anyhow. "I'll bet the docks are booming," Chester said.

His wife gave him a look. "Of course they are. That's why the bombers still come over at all: to make them go boom."

Chester groaned. "I didn't mean it like that." Whether he'd meant it or not, it was still so. He usually made the jokes in the family, but he'd walked right into this one. He said, "You can get rich sailing on a freighter in the Great Lakes today."

"You can get blown to kingdom come sailing in one of those freighters, too," Rita pointed out. Pay was high because the chances of running the Confederate gauntlet were low. Chester finished his beer with a last gulp and opened another one. Rita didn't say anything. He wasn't somebody who made a habit of getting smashed after he came home from work. He certainly wasn't somebody who made a habit of pouring down a few boilermakers before he came home from work. He'd known a few-maybe more than a few-steelworkers like that. Builders drank, too, but mostly not with the same reckless abandon.

"I'm home!" Carl shouted. The front door slammed. Feet thundered in the hall.

"Oh, good," Chester told his son. "I thought we were in the middle of an elephant stampede."

Carl thought that was funny. He also thought his father hadn't been joking. Rita said, "Go wash your hands and face. With soap, if you please. Supper's just about ready."

Despite the warning, Carl's cleanup was extremely sketchy. Like any boy his age, he was not only a dirt magnet but proud of it. When he came out of the bathroom with the dirt still there and not even visibly rearranged, Chester sent him back. "Do a better job or you won't have to worry about supper," he said. "And it's tongue tonight."

That got Carl moving-yes, he loved tongue. Nobody'd told him it was poor people's food. He just thought it tasted good. When he emerged this time, there was no doubt water had touched his face. Chester wasn't so sure about soap. But when he went into the bathroom himself to unload some of that beer, he found the bar of Ivory had gone from white to muddy brown.

"For Pete's sake, wash the soap after you use it," he told his son when he came out.

Carl giggled. "That's a joke, Daddy! You wash with the soap."

"If anybody washes with the soap after you've been anywhere near it, he'll get dirtier, not cleaner," Chester said. Carl thought that was funny, too. Chester wondered if anything this side of a clout in the ear would make him change his mind.

Along with the tongue, supper included potatoes and carrots and onions. Sometimes Rita made tongue with cloves, the way most of her cookbooks recommended. Chester liked it better with lots of salt and horseradish. Carl couldn't stand horseradish-it was too strong for him. Chester hadn't liked it when he was a kid, either. Too big a mouthful was like a dagger up into your head.

After supper, Rita washed dishes and Carl unenthusiastically dried. Chester turned on the wireless. He spun the dial, going from quiz show to comedy to melodrama to music. Not a football game anywhere. He muttered to himself, even though he'd known there wouldn't be. The war had put paid to football leagues strong and weak all across the country. Travel for nothing more important than sport seemed unpatriotic-and a lot of football players were wearing uniforms of green-gray, not some gaudier colors.

Chester missed the broadcasts even so. He'd played a lot of football when he was younger-not for money, but he knew the game. And listening to announcers describing far-off action was one of the best ways he knew to wind down after a long, hard day.

Without any games, he settled on an adventure story set in Canada. The hero was trying to forestall Japanese agents from touching off an uprising. The Japs sounded like characters from a bad imitation of Gilbert and Sullivan. The Canadians who stayed loyal to the USA were almost as good as real Americans; the ones who didn't were truly despicable. All in all, the show was pretty dumb, but it made half an hour go by and it sold shaving cream-to say nothing of selling the Stars and Stripes.

At the top of the hour came five minutes of news. Stations had to have some if they wanted the government to renew their broadcast licenses. This was a pretty bare-bones setup-the reader droned away, presenting copy plainly taken straight from the wire services: "U.S. pilots have pounded strategic targets in Richmond, Louisville, and Nashville for the third night in a row. Damage is reported heavy. Only a few Confederate raiders appeared over Philadelphia last night. Several of them were shot down, while those that escaped did little harm."

Chester wondered how much of that he could believe. All of it? Any of it? What were the people who could actually see what was happening hearing on the news? Was it so relentlessly upbeat? He wouldn't have bet anything on it.

"Confederate authorities have denied reports that former Vice President Willy Knight was killed while attempting to escape," the newsman said. "Knight has been imprisoned since failing in his attempt to overthrow President Featherston. When asked about his current whereabouts and condition, Confederate spokesman Saul Goldman declined comment."

Again, more questions than answers. Was Willy Knight still alive? Had he died not attempting escape? Chester Martin shrugged. He wished Knight had managed to get rid of Featherston. The CSA wouldn't have been so dangerous without that maniac in charge.

"President Smith has announced that the United States are preparing strong counterblows against the Confederate States., 'We are one people. We are strong and determined, and we will prevail,' the President said to war workers in a factory outside Philadelphia. Long and tumultuous applause greeted his remarks."

Well, Chester knew what that meant: nothing at all. It was only wind and air. Of course the United States were preparing counterblows. Whether any would work was a different question. So far, the Confederates had been ready for everything the United States threw at them.

After a couple of local stories, the announcer said, "Coming up next is the popular Marjorie's Hope. Stay tuned." Marjorie's Hope wasn't popular with Chester. He turned off the wireless.