The Center Cannot Hold

XVIII

Spring in Dakota was a riot of burgeoning green and of glorious birdsong. It was one of the most beautiful things Flora Blackford had ever seen. She would have given a great deal not to be seeing it now. If Hosea had won the election… But he hadn't. He'd got trounced. How badly he'd got trounced still ate at Flora.

The shock of President-elect Coolidge's death, less than a month before he was to take office, had jolted her no less than the rest of the American political world. After that, though, the pain returned. Her husband had to go down to Washington to hand over the reins of power to a man who hadn't even beaten him in November-one more humiliation piled on all the rest.

As soon as Herbert Hoover took the oath of office, the Blackfords had gone on what the papers called an extended holiday. The papers, for once, were polite. Hosea Blackford had gone back to his home state to lick his wounds, and taken his family with him.

Flora turned away from the farm window that showed Great Plains spring to such good advantage. "When do you think we should go back East?" she asked.

Her husband set down his coffee cup. He managed a crooked smile. "Are the wide open spaces starting to get on your nerves?"

"Yes!" Flora's vehemence startled even her. Hosea had put it better than she'd managed to, even in her own mind. "I grew up in New York City, remember, on the Lower East Side. Even Philadelphia seems roomy."

"I'm so sorry for you." Hosea Blackford sighed. "And I'm sorry, but I really don't feel like going back yet. People here leave me alone. Nobody in Philadelphia or Washington leaves you alone. I think it's against the law there."

"But the country's in trouble. We need to do something," Flora said.

He sighed again. "I spent the last four years doing everything I knew how to do. None of it seemed to help much. I'm willing to let someone else worry about it for a while-especially since the people have shown they aren't willing to let me worry about it any more."

He sounded tired. Worse, he sounded old. Flora had seen how cruelly he'd aged in four hard years in Powel House. He was, she reminded herself, past his seventieth birthday. When they'd married, his being close to twice her age hadn't bothered her. It still didn't, not in most ways. But this loss of vigor, of resiliency, troubled her. She was sure that when she'd first come to know him, when she'd first fallen in love with him, he would have bounced back stronger and faster.

On the other hand, nobody who'd spent three years in the trenches during the Great War came out afterwards the same man he'd been when he went in. Hosea had spent four years in the presidential trenches, and he'd lost the war. She didn't suppose expecting him to stay unchanged was fair.

"When we do go back," she said, "I wonder if I ought to take a flat in the Fourteenth Ward."

"Aha!" her husband said, and smiled. "Something makes me think you want to go back to Congress."

"I'm thinking about it," Flora said. "I don't like seeing my old district in the hands of a Democrat. I don't like seeing a lot of our districts in the hands of Democrats."

"Neither do I." Hosea Blackford's smile was sour. "I don't think any of our candidates will ask me to hit the campaign trail for them next year, though. They'd probably want me on the stump for their opponents instead."

"It's not that bad," Flora insisted.

"No-odds are it's worse," Hosea answered. "I can't think of anything less welcome in a political party than a president who's just lost an election. After a while, I'll get to be an elder statesman, but right now I'm nothing but a nuisance." With a mournful shake of the head, he added, "By the the time I get to be an elder statesman, I'll probably be so elder, I'm dead."

"God forbid!" Flora exclaimed. No one in her family, no one among the immigrant Jews of the Lower East Side, spoke of death straight on like that. Words had power; to speak of something was to help bring it into being. The rational part of her mind knew that was nonsense, but the rational part of her mind went only so deep. Down underneath it, superstition still flourished.

"It's true," her husband said. "We both know it's true, even if you don't want to talk about it. I don't need to take out pencil and paper to know how old I am. I get reminded whenever I look in the mirror. I'd like to stay around long enough to see Joshua grow up, but how likely is that? I've already beaten the odds by lasting as long as I have."

"That's nothing but-" Flora began.

"The truth," Hosea finished for her. "You know it as well as I do, too. And if you don't, ask the next insurance salesman you happen to run into. He'll tell you what the actuarial tables say."

Flora wanted to tell him that was nonsense. She couldn't, and she knew it. The best she could do was change the subject: "Let's talk about something else."

"Fine." Now her husband's grin showed real amusement. "Do you think this new professional football federation's going to last?"

That wasn't what she'd had in mind. "I don't care," she said tartly. "What I think is, it's disgraceful to pay men so much to run around with a football when so many people can't find work at all. Talk about a waste of money!"

"It's an amusement, the same as an orchestra is an amusement," her husband said. "Nothing wrong with them. We need them. Especially in hard times, we need them."

"An orchestra is worthwhile," Flora said. "A football game?" She shook her head.

"A lot more people go to watch the Philadelphia Barrels than to the Philadelphia Symphony," Hosea said.

Since that was true, Flora could only stick out her chin and say, "Even so."

"Amusement is where you find it," Hosea said. "I'm not going to be elitist and look down my nose at anything."

To a good Socialist, elitist was a dirty word. Flora tried to turn it back on her husband: "When the top football players make more than the president of the United States-and some of them do-they're the elitists."

"They asked one of them about that two or three years ago. Did you happen to see what he said?" Hosea Blackford asked. Flora shook her head. She paid as little attention to sports as she could. One of her husband's eyebrows rose. "What he told the reporter was, 'I had a better year than he did.' All things considered, how could anyone tell Mr. Gehrig he was wrong?"

"A choleriyeh on Mr. Gehrig!" Flora said furiously. "Nothing that happened was your fault."

That eyebrow lifted again. "The Party told that to the voters. We told them and told them and told them. And Herbert Hoover is president of the United States today, and here I am in Dakota. If you're there, it's your fault."

"It isn't fair," Flora said.

Hosea laughed out loud, which only made her angrier. "Joshua might try to use an argument like that, but you shouldn't," he said. "It's the way politics works. 'What have you done for me lately?' is the question voters always ask-and maybe it's the question they should always ask. Teddy Roosevelt won the Great War. They didn't give him a third term, though, because of all the strikes and unrest that came afterwards. That's how Upton got to be president-and how I got to be vice president, if you remember."

"I'm not likely to forget," she answered. "I was so proud of you. And I'm still proud of you, and I still think you ought to be president, not that… that lump of a Hoover."

"As a matter of fact, I agree with you. I think you're sweet, too," he added. "Unfortunately, fifty-seven percent of the voters in the United States had a different opinion, and theirs counts for more than ours." He sighed. "It was even worse in the Electoral College, of course."

"Not right," Flora muttered.

"What's not right, Mama?" That was Joshua, still in his flannel pajamas. He was yawning. From somewhere on one side of the family or the other, he'd found a taste for sleeping late. On the Lower East Side-or, for that matter, on a Dakota farm-he would have had to get up early whether he wanted to or not. As the son of a man first vice president and then president, he could usually sleep as late as he wanted to. Privilege is everywhere, Flora thought.

But she had to answer him: "It's not right that your father lost the election."

"Oh." Joshua tried to frown, but a yawn ruined it. "Why not? The other guys got more votes, didn't they?"

Hosea laughed. "That's it in a nutshell, Josh. The other guys got more votes."

Josh. Flora didn't like the one-syllable abridgement of a perfectly good name. Joshua Blackford was rolling, majestic. Josh Blackford sounded like someone who wore overalls and a straw hat. And if that's elitist, too bad, she thought. Hosea didn't see the problem.

"The point is, the other guys"-she used her son's phrase as if it had quotation marks around it-"shouldn't have got more votes."

Joshua muttered something under his breath. Flora thought she heard, "Stinking Japs." Without a doubt, the Japanese bombing of Los Angeles had been the last straw-or rather, the last nail in the coffin. If Joshua wanted to think his father would have won without that, he could. Flora wanted to think the very same thing. The only problem was, she knew better. Looking at the last nail in the coffin meant ignoring all the others, and there were a lot of them.

"You'll win again in four years, though, won't you, Father?" Joshua had a boy's boundless confidence in his father. He also had a boy's strange notions about the way time worked.

Neither of his parents said anything. Hosea Blackford would be too old to nominate in 1936, even if he'd never lost an election in his life. Since he'd lost the way he had, the Socialists would be trying their best to forget he'd ever existed.

"Won't you?" Joshua asked again.

"I like to think I would win against Mr. Hoover," Hosea said slowly. "He doesn't seem to me as if he's moving things in the right direction. But I don't know if I would want to run again, and I don't know if the Socialist Party would nominate me if I did. We would have to see how things look in 1936 before we could know."

Flora added, "The next election for president is almost four years from now. That's a long time."

"Especially in politics," her husband added.

Joshua nodded. He'd just turned seven; to him, four years were a very long time indeed. He said, " I think you still ought to be president."

"Thank you, son," Hosea Blackford said.

"I think the very same thing," Flora said, and ruffled Joshua's hair. He was dark like her, but otherwise looked more like his father, with a long face, prominent cheekbones, and a straight, pointed nose. He also had more of his father's temperament: he was steadier than Flora, and not given to sudden enthusiasms that took control of him for days or weeks at a time.

"Who do the Socialists have that could be any better than you, Dad?" he asked. He couldn't imagine anyone better. Flora ruffled his hair again. Neither could she. But she knew the practical politicians in the Socialist Party would have a different opinion-and Hosea really would be too old to run again in 1936. He probably would have been too old to run in 1932 if he hadn't been the incumbent.

"One way or another, everything will work out fine," she said. Joshua believed her. He was still only a little boy.

T he Remembrance steamed west across the Pacific, accompanied by three destroyers, a light cruiser, a heavy cruiser, and two battleships. Sam Carsten wished one of the battlewagons would have been the Dakota, but no such luck. His old ship was off doing something else; he had no idea what.

Repairs in Seattle had been as quick as the Navy yard there could make them. He did his best not to worry about that. Back during the Great War, the Dakota had been hastily repaired after battle damage-and her steering had never been reliable again. Her steering probably still wasn't reliable. So far as Sam knew, the Japanese torpedo hadn't damaged the Remembrance 's steering-but what had it damaged that hasty repairs might not discover? He hoped he-and the ship-wouldn't find out the hard way.

Commander van der Waal wasn't aboard. Broken ankles healed at their own pace; you couldn't hurry them. A new damage-control officer, a lieutenant commander named Hiram Pottinger, was nominally in charge of antitorpedo work. But Pottinger's previous service had been in cruisers. Sam knew the Remembrance backwards and forwards and inside out-literally inside out, after the torpedo hit off the Canadian coast. Most of the burden fell on his shoulders.

He'd led the sailors in the damage-control parties when things looked black. That had earned him respect he could have got no other way. It had also earned him thin new gold stripes on his cuffs; he'd been promoted to lieutenant, junior grade, for what he'd done. Glad as he was of the promotion, he could have done without some of the respect. He feared he would end up trapped in an assignment he'd never wanted.

Martin van der Waal had always insisted it was an important assignment. Even had Sam been inclined to argue, the experience of getting torpedoed would have changed his mind. But he agreed with his injured superior. Important, antitorpedo work definitely was. That still didn't mean he cared to make a career of it.

He spent as much time as he could on deck. That meant more tinfoil tubes of zinc-oxide ointment, but he did it anyhow. Watching aeroplanes take off and land never failed to fascinate him. He got plenty of chances to watch, for the Remembrance flew a continuous air patrol. The Japanese Navy had ships out here, too, and who found whom first would have a lot to do with how any fight turned out. The way the arrester hook caught the cables stretched across the deck and brought a landing aeroplane to an abrupt halt still fascinated him.

One perfect morning, he was taking the air on the flight deck after breakfast when alarms began to sound. Klaxons hooting in his ears, he ran for his battle station, wishing it weren't deep in the bowels of the aeroplane carrier. He wanted to be able to see what was going on. As usual, the Navy cared not at all for what he wanted.

"What's the word, sir?" he panted as he came up to Lieutenant Commander Pottinger.

"Nothing good," his superior answered. "One of our machines spotted a whole flight of aeroplanes with meatballs on their wings heading this way."

"There's no Jap base within a couple of thousand miles of where we're at," Sam said. The light went on in his head before Pottinger needed to enlighten him: "We've found a Japanese aeroplane carrier or two."

The other damage-control officer shook his head. "Not quite. Their aeroplanes have found us, but we haven't found them yet."

"Heading back along their bearing would be a pretty good bet," Carsten said.

Lieutenant Commander Pottinger nodded. He was a tall, lean man with a weathered face, hollow cheeks, a long, narrow jaw, and a pointed nose. He looked like a New Englander, but had a Midwestern accent. "I expect you're right," he said. "This is liable to be a damn funny kind of naval battle, you know? We're not even in sight of the enemy's fleet, but our aeroplanes are going to slug it out with his."

As if to underline his words, one machine after another roared into the sky, the noise of the straining engines loud even several decks below the one from which the aeroplanes were taking off. "Long-range artillery, that's what they've turned into," Sam said. "They can hit when our battleships can't."

Pottinger nodded again. "That's right. Battleships are probably obsolete, though plenty of men will try and run you out of the Navy if you say so out loud." He made a disdainful noise. "Plenty of men likely tried to run people out of the Navy if they spoke up for steam engines and ironclads, too."

"I wouldn't be surprised." Sam had known more than a few officers who never stopped pining for the good old days.

Something burst in the water not far from the Remembrance. He felt the carrier heel into the sharpest turn she could make, and then, a moment later, into another one in the opposite direction. More bombs burst around her.

Hiram Pottinger might have been talking things over back on shore, for all the excitement he showed. "Zigzags," he said approvingly. "That's what you do against submersibles, and that's what you do against aeroplanes, too."

"Well, yes, sir," Carsten said. "That's what you do, and then you hope like hell it works. You get hit by a bomb, that could put a little crimp in your morning." He did his best to imitate his superior's nonchalance.

One-pounders and other antiaircraft guns on the deck started banging away at the attacking aeroplanes. So did the five-inch guns in the sponsons under the flight deck. The noise was terrific. They could reach a lot farther than the smaller weapons, but couldn't fire nearly so fast.

"I wonder what's going on up there," Sam said. "I wonder how nasty it is."

"It's no walk in the park," Pottinger said.

"I didn't figure it was, sir," Sam said, a little reproachfully. He'd seen plenty of nasty action-it didn't come much nastier than what he'd been through in the Battle of the Three Navies. A moment later, he realized Pottinger, if he'd ever been in a battle before, had probably gone through it down here.

Maybe this was harder. Carsten wouldn't have believed it beforehand, but it might have been true. When he was fighting a gun, he had some idea, even if only a small one, of what was going on. Here

… Here it might have been happening in a distant room. The only difference was, what happened in that distant room might kill him.

Later, he wished he hadn't had that thought at that moment. The Remembrance shuddered when a bomb burst on her flight deck. Lieutenant Commander Pottinger said, "Oh, shit," which summed up Sam's feelings perfectly. Then Pottinger added, "Well, time for us to go to work."

"Yes, sir," Carsten agreed.

That was how he got up to the flight deck in the midst of combat. He wanted to be there, but not under those circumstances. The flight crew were already doing what they had to do: manhandling steel plates across the hole the bomb had torn in the deck and doing everything they could to flatten out the torn lips of steel.

"Well done," Pottinger shouted. "We have to be able to land aeroplanes and get them in the air again."

"Yes, sir," Sam said again. His boss might be new to carrier duty, but he'd just proved he understood the essence of it. Sam went on, "They could have done a lot worse if they'd fused the bomb differently."

"What do you mean?" Lieutenant Commander Pottinger asked.

"If they'd given it an armor-piercing tip and a delayed fuse, it would have gone through before it blew up," Sam answered. "Then we'd really be in the soup."

"Urk," Pottinger said, which again matched Sam's thought.

Sam said, "They're like us: they're still learning what all they can do with aeroplanes and carriers, too."

An aeroplane with the red Rising Sun of Japan painted on wings and fuselage roared overhead, machine guns in the wings blazing. The engine was even louder than the guns; the fighter couldn't have been more than fifty feet above the deck. Bullets struck sparks from the new steel plates. Others smacked flesh with wet thuds. Men shrieked or crumpled silently. Streams of tracers from the Remembrance 's antiaircraft guns converged on the Japanese machine. For a dreadful moment, Sam thought it would get away in spite of all the gunfire. But then flames and smoke licked back from the engine cowling toward the cockpit. The fighter slammed into the sea.

"Scratch one fucker!" Sam shouted exultantly.

A sailor next to him was down and groaning, clutching his leg. Red spread over his trousers. "It hurts!" he groaned. "It hurts bad!"

"George!" Sam's exultation turned to dismay in the space of a heartbeat. He'd known George Moerlein ever since first coming aboard the Remembrance. Seeing him down with a nasty wound made Sam's stomach turn over. By the way the petty officer was bleeding, he needed help right away. Sam tore off his belt and wrapped it around Moerlein's thigh above the bullet wound, tight as he could. "Give me a hand over here!" he yelled.

"Let's get him down to sick bay, sir," a sailor said. He helped Carsten haul George Moerlein up. Moerlein moaned and then, mercifully, passed out. As they hauled the petty officer towards a passageway, another Japanese fighter strafed the Remembrance. Bullets cracked past Sam and clattered off the flight deck. He breathed a sigh of relief when he had steel between him and the deadly chaos overhead.

As soon as he saw a sailor, though, he said, "Here, take over for me. Get this man below. I've got duty topside." He hurried back up to put his life on the line again, though he did his best not to think of it like that.

Off to starboard, one of the American destroyers was on fire from bow to stern and sinking fast. Boats and men in life jackets bobbed around her. Even as Sam watched, the destroyer rolled over and went to the bottom. In these waters, the bottom was a long, long way down. Sam shivered at how far down it was.

A bomb burst in the sea not far from the Remembrance, drenching Carsten and most of the others on deck. Even so, a sailor with wigwag signals guided an aeroplane to a landing. Maintenance men fueled it. Its prop started spinning again. Down the flight deck it rolled, bumping over the hasty repairs, and up into the air again.

"Didn't think we could do that," Sam said to Lieutenant Commander Pottinger.

"He must have been flying on fumes, or he never would have tried coming in," Pottinger agreed. "Lucky the Japs have let up a little."

"I wonder what we're doing to them," Sam said. "Worse than this, I hope. We'd better be, by God."

"Yes, we'd better be. But how can we know?" Pottinger said. "They're over the horizon. The only ones who have any real idea how the fight's going are our pilots."

"No, sir-not even them," Sam said. His superior raised an eyebrow. He explained: "They don't know what the Jap pilots are doing to us, just like the Japs can't be sure what we're doing to them. Maybe the fellows in the wireless shacks-ours and theirs-have the big picture. Maybe nobody does. Wouldn't that be a hell of a thing?"

Lieutenant Commander Pottinger laughed. "We won't know who won till day after tomorrow, when we read it in the newspapers."

"Yeah." It wasn't exactly funny, but Carsten laughed, too. "As long as we live through it, we've come out all right." A Japanese aeroplane and an American machine both splashed into the Pacific within a quarter of a mile of the Remembrance. Sam hoped somebody would live through the fight.

T he Kansas City Star was the daily published closest to Leavenworth that was actually worth reading. Irving Morrell had discovered that during his last stay in Kansas. Now, of course, the wireless supplemented the paper. Back then, wireless had only started passing from Morse code to voice. Even now, the newspaper gave him a far more detailed picture than the quick reports on the wireless could.

"I don't think anybody knows who won this stupid battle, Agnes," he said two days after reports about the sea fight north of the Sandwich Islands started coming in. "I really don't. If you look at our claims, we sank the whole Jap fleet and didn't take a scratch. If you look at theirs, they did it to us."

His wife shrugged and poured him another cup of coffee. "My bet is, both sides are lying as hard as they can."

"My bet is, you're right," Morrell answered. "I suppose we'll sort it out in time for Mildred's children to study about it in school."

Hearing her name made his daughter look up from her scrambled eggs. "Study what in school?" she asked.

"A big naval battle in the Pacific," her father said.

She rolled her eyes. "For heaven's sake, who cares?"

Agnes laughed. "If everybody felt that way, we wouldn't have to fight any more wars. That wouldn't be so bad, would it?"

"That would be wonderful," Morrell said with the deep conviction of a man who'd seen-who'd taken part in-the worst man could do to his fellow man. He gulped the scalding coffee. "That would be wonderful, but it's not going to happen any time soon, no matter how much I wish it would. Speaking of which, I'm off to the Barrel Works."

"All right, dear." Agnes got up, too, and came over to give him a kiss. "I'll see you when you get back. Some more things should be out of boxes by then."

"Good." Morrell was convinced he could no more escape from boxes than a bug could get out of a spiderweb. He wondered how many times he'd moved in the course of his military career. He didn't try to count them all up. That way lay madness.

Barbed wire enclosed a field in which sat the experimental barrel he'd been working with ten years earlier. The machine hadn't been in the field all those years; it would have been a rusted, useless hulk if it had. Even though the Socialists had stopped work on new barrels for so long, the Army had carefully greased this one and stored it in a garage, in case it was ever wanted again. Morrell gave the General Staff-not his favorite outfit-reluctant credit for that. He didn't know what he would have done if he'd had to start altogether from scratch.

Sentries at the gate saluted. "Good morning, Colonel," they chorused.

"Morning, boys." Morrell pointed into the field. "Who's working on the barrel?"

"Sergeant Pound, sir," one of the sentries answered.

"I might have known." Morrell opened the gate and went inside. One of the sentries closed it after him. As he hurried toward the barrel, he called, "You're up early today, Sergeant."

"Oh, hello, sir." Sergeant Michael Pound was a broad-shouldered, muscular man with close-cropped brown hair and a neat mustache showing the first silver threads. "The carburetor still isn't what it ought to be, you know."

"I'm not surprised, seeing how long the whole vehicle's been sitting there doing nothing," Morrell answered. "How are you going to get it clean?"

Sergeant Pound held up a coffee can. "There's this new solvent called carbon tetrachloride. It gets grease off of anything," he said enthusiastically. He was wild for any new invention; that was what had drawn him into barrels in the first place. "It's wonderful stuff-nonflammable, a really excellent cleaner. Only one drawback." He plopped the carburetor into the can.

"What's that?" Morrell asked, as he was surely supposed to.

"If you use it indoors, it's liable to asphyxiate you," Pound replied. "Some people are fools, of course. Congressmen get excited about that sort of thing. They want to ban the stuff. If you ask me, anyone who's dumb enough not to read the label deserves whatever happens to him." He had no patience with incompetent people, no doubt because he was so all-around competent himself.

Morrell slapped him on the back. "It's damn good to see you again, Sergeant, to hell with me if it's not."

"Thank you very much, sir," Michael Pound replied. "I felt I was wasting my time these past few years in the artillery. Of course, the Army would have thrown me out on my ear if I'd tried to stay in barrels, but the men in charge of things aren't exactly the smartest ones we've got, are they?"

"I believe I'll plead the Fifth on that one," Morrell said, laughing. "Do you think you could do a better job of it?"

"Sir, I'm sure I could." Pound wasn't joking. Because he did so many things well, he thought he could do anything. Sometimes he turned out to be right. Sometimes he was disastrously wrong. Occasional disasters did nothing to damage his self-confidence.

"How did you put up with going back to the artillery after the Barrel Works closed down?" Morrell asked.

"Well, for one thing, sir, like I said, if I hadn't they would have found something else even worse for me to do-or they would have thrown me out altogether, and that wouldn't have been good, not when the collapse came," Pound said. "And besides, I always thought the politicians would eventually come to their senses. I just never imagined they'd take so long."

"Who did?" Morrell said. He'd asked for Sergeant Pound by name when he came back to Leavenworth. The man was worth his weight in gold-which, considering his massive frame, was no mean statement. If he occasionally suffered delusions of omnipotence… well, nobody was perfect.

"Knaves. Fools and knaves," he said now: one of his favorite phrases.

"You'd better be careful," Morrell warned him. "You're starting to sound like you belong in the Freedom Party."

"Oh, no, sir. I didn't say they were a pack of traitors who need to be lined up against a wall and shot." Pound had no trouble imitating the Freedom Party's impassioned rhetoric. He added, "Besides, that Featherston is a dangerous lunatic. If he gets elected this fall, he's liable to show just how dangerous he is."

"I wish I could tell you you were wrong," Morrell said.

"He's liable to prove as troublesome to us as those Action Francaise people are to the Kaiser," Pound said. "What can you do about a government that hates you if a majority voted it into office?"

"Get ready to fight," Morrell answered. "That's what we're doing here."

"How soon before we have a real barrel with specifications based on the experimental model here?" Sergeant Pound asked, taking the carburetor out of the carbon tetrachloride and setting it down on a rag.

"They're saying six or eight months in Pontiac," Morrell replied. "That's what they're saying, but I'll believe it when I see it. Bet on a year, maybe longer."

"Disgraceful," Pound said. "So much time not even frittered away- thrown away, for heaven's sake." He rubbed the carburetor with the rag, then passed it to Morrell. "This thing is better, though. I think it's really clean now, clean enough to work the way it's supposed to."

"I hope you're right," Morrell said. "Put it back in the engine, Sergeant. We'll gas up the beast and see if it runs."

"Right, sir." Pound opened the louvers on the engine compartment-one improvement over Great War barrels the experimental model did boast was a separate engine compartment, which drastically reduced noise and noxious fumes for the crew. As Pound turned a wrench, he went on, "You know, we really ought to have a diesel engine in here, not one fueled by gasoline. A fire starts, gasoline goes up like a bomb. Diesel fuel just burns quietly. The men in the fighting compartment have a much better chance to get away."

"That's a good idea," Morrell said. Pound was full of ideas, good, bad, and indifferent. "Model after next, we ought to think about incorporating it." He pulled a notebook from his breast pocket and scribbled a few lines so the idea wouldn't be lost.

"Why waste time, sir?" Sergeant Pound asked. "Why not put it right into the model they're working on now? That way, we'd have it."

"We'd have it-eventually," Morrell answered. "How many plans would they have to change to put a new engine in that compartment? How many dies and stamps and castings would they have to revise? I don't know the exact number, but it's bound to be a big one."

"We ought to do this right," Pound insisted.

"We will-eventually." Morrell used that word again. "Right now, that we're doing it at all is miracle enough, if you ask me. Just remember, I was in Kamloops a few weeks ago, and you were an artilleryman. Let's get something finished, and then we can set about improving it."

"Everything ought to be right the first time," Pound muttered.

"Not everything is. That's why they put erasers on pencils," Morrell said. "Or are you one of those people who fill out crossword puzzles in ink?" He was fond of those puzzles himself. Their popularity had exploded since the collapse. They gave people something interesting to do, and you could buy a book of them for a dime.

Michael Pound looked puzzled. "Of course, sir. Doesn't everybody?" He sounded altogether innocent. Was that sarcasm, or did he really believe people were so generally capable? Morrell suspected he did. Like most men, he judged others by his own standards, and those standards were pretty high. After bending to get a better look at the connection he was making, he said, "I've got a question for you, sir."

"Go ahead," Morrell told him.

"Where do you suppose we could be if we hadn't spent all this time lying fallow, and how big a price will we pay because we did?"

"We'd be a lot further along than we are now, and we'll have to find out. There. Aren't I profound?"

"That's hardly the word I'd use, sir," Michael Pound replied.

He didn't say what word he would use, which might have been just as well. Morrell said, "Shall we see if this miserable thing actually runs now?"

"It had better," Pound said.

He was properly a gunner by trade, but he could drive. He slid down through the turret-an innovation when the experimental model was new, but a commonplace in barrel design nowadays-and into the driver's seat at the left front of the vehicle, next to the bow machine gun. When he stabbed the starter button, the engine wasted no time roaring to life.

"You see, sir?" he said in his best I-told-you-so tones.

"I see," Morrell answered. "All right, shut it down for now. We're not ready to go anywhere, not with a two-man crew."

"We could if we were at war," Pound said.

"We could if we were but we aren't so we won't." Morrell had to listen to himself to make sure that came out right. "Actually, we are at war, but barrels won't do much against the Japs. Now we have to revive some more of the old machines, to have opponents to practice against." He wished real barrels, modern barrels, would be so easy to face.

T hese days, nobody around Baroyeca was likely to tell anybody how to vote. Hipolito Rodriguez hadn't been sure things would work out that way, but they had. The unfortunate accidents that happened to Don Joaquin's barn and stable-to say nothing of the even more unfortunate accidents that happened to Don Joaquin's guards-had quickly persuaded the prominent men in this part of Sonora not to push too hard against the Freedom Party.

"You understand what it is," Robert Quinn said at a Freedom Party meeting a couple of weeks after those unfortunate things happened. "It has been a very long time since anyone told a patron, 'No, senor, you may not do this.' They needed a lesson. Now they have had one. I do not think they will need any more."

"What could we have done if they had come after us with everything they have?" Rodriguez asked.

Quinn looked steadily back at him. "It is like this. The rich men around Baroyeca have so much. The Freedom Party has so much." He held his hands first close together, then wide apart. "If you put them in a fight, who do you think is going to win?"

"But suppose they talked to the governor," Rodriguez said stubbornly. "Suppose they said, 'Call out the state militia. We have to put down these Freedom Party men with guns.' "

" Muy bien — suppose they did that." The Freedom Party organizer sounded agreeable. "Suppose they did exactly that. How many soldados in this state, Senor Rodriguez, do you suppose are Freedom Party men?"

"Ahh," Rodriguez said, and his voice was just one in a small, delighted chorus of oohs and ahhs that filled Freedom Party headquarters. He went on, "You mean they cannot trust their own soldiers?"

"Did I say that?" Quinn shook his head. "I did not say that. Would I say anything that would go against the state government? Of course not."

"Of course not," Carlos Ruiz agreed in sly tones. "We don't want to go against the state government. We want to take it over."

"Ahh," Hipolito Rodriguez said again. He found winning a national election easier to imagine than toppling the state government. Richmond was far away, and wouldn't matter so immediately. A Freedom Party administration in Hermosillo would send shock waves rippling through Sonora.

Of course, a Freedom Party defeat in November would send shock waves of a different sort rippling through the state. Quinn said, "Remember, we have to win, or the lesson Don Joaquin learned goes for nothing."

He didn't say who had taught Carlos Ruiz's patron that lesson. He certainly didn't say the men who'd taught that lesson had got their rifles and ammunition from him. Some things were better unadmitted.

Quietly Hipolito Rodriguez said, "That lesson had better not go for nothing, whether we win or lose. If they push us too hard, we can still fight."

"You are a brave man, a bold man," Quinn said. "You are the sort of man we want, the sort of man we need, in the Freedom Party."

Rodriguez shrugged. "If a patron wants to stay a Radical Liberal, that is all right with me. I used to be a Radical Liberal myself. I changed my mind. They have no business telling me I may not change my mind. I would never try to tell them any such thing."

"Yes. You have reason. That is how it should be," Ruiz said. Several other men nodded.

But Robert Quinn said, "Once we win, well, other parties will just have to get used to that. The difference between the Freedom Party and the other parties in the Confederate States is that we have reason and they do not. If they are wrong, why should we let them pretend they are right?"

"They are political parties, too," Ruiz said. "One of these days, they will win an election."

"I do not think so," Quinn said. "I do not think one of them will win an election for a very, very long time once we take over."

"What do you mean?" Ruiz asked. "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That is how politics works."

"Not always," Rodriguez said. "How many times in a row have Whigs been presidents of the Confederate States? Every single time, that's how many. If the Freedom Party is good enough to win, it will win just as many elections. That's what you meant, isn't it, Senor Quinn?"

"Sure it is, Senor Rodriguez," Quinn said easily, with a small laugh. "That is exactly what I meant."

Rodriguez wondered why he laughed. Because he hadn't meant exactly that? If he hadn't, what had he meant? What could he have meant? Rodriguez shrugged. Whatever it was, he didn't think he needed to worry about it very much.

Someone asked, " Senor Quinn, how do we make certain the Freedom Party wins in Sonora this November?"

"That is a good question. That is a very good question." Now Robert Quinn sounded not only serious but altogether sincere. "We ourselves here can only make sure we win in Baroyeca." He waited for nods to show everyone understood that, then went on, "We have to do a few things. We have to let people know what the Party will do for them once it wins. We have to let them know what it will do for the country once it wins. We have to show them the other parties cannot do the things they promise, and that most of what they promise is not good anyway. And we have to do everything we can to keep them from having the chance to tell their lies."

Hipolito Rodriguez understood all of that but the last. "What do you mean, Senor Quinn?" he asked. "How do we keep them from doing that?"

"However we have to," the Freedom Party man said bluntly. "However we need to. Don Joaquin had a sad accident, verdad?" Again, he waited for nods. Again, he got them. Everybody here knew what kind of accident Don Joaquin had had. Nobody much felt like talking about details-better safe than sorry. Quinn continued, "When they come here to make speeches and stir up their followers, we do not let them. We shout, we heckle, we make enough of a disturbance to keep them from talking to an audience. If they cannot talk, they cannot get their message out, eh?"

"Si, senor." Several men said it together. Rodriguez wasn't one of them, but he nodded. If the Freedom Party got to talk and no one else did, that was surely a large advantage. But…

He held up his hand. Quinn pointed his way. " Senor, how do we keep them from talking on the wireless?" he inquired.

"Ah, Senor Rodriguez, you do ask interesting questions." As always, Quinn was scrupulously polite. He treated the men who'd joined the Freedom Party as if they were dons. Most white men thought of Sonorans and Chihuahuans as nothing but greasers. If Quinn did, he kept it to himself. That was another reason his following grew and grew. He continued, "We cannot stop that, not altogether-not yet. But it does not matter so much here in Sonora, because fewer places here have electricity than is true in most of the Confederate States."

Carlos Ruiz clicked his tongue between his teeth. "That is not fair. That is not right."

"I agree with you, Senor Ruiz," Quinn said. "It is one of the things the Freedom Party will fix once we have power. But, whether we like it or not, it is true, and we have to take it into account." He paused and looked around the room. "Are there any more questions? No? All right, then. This meeting is adjourned."

Rodriguez was the first one to start out of the Freedom Party headquarters. From across the street, a shot rang out. Whoever held that gun didn't really know what to do with it. The bullet cracked past Rodriguez's head and thudded into the planking of the building behind him. Automatic reflex made him throw himself flat. Another bullet sang through the air where he'd stood a moment before. Glass shattered. Chunks rained down on him.

He rolled back into the building. "Blow out the lamps!" he cried. The headquarters plunged into darkness.

"Here." Someone pressed a Tredegar into his hands. "If they want to play such games…"

He crawled up to the shot-out window. One of the men who'd fired at him was running across the street, straight toward the headquarters, a lighted kerosene lantern in hand. That made the fellow an even easier target than he would have been otherwise. He wanted to fight fire with fire, did he? The rifle leaped to Rodriguez's shoulder. He squeezed the trigger. The man with the lantern shrieked, whirled, and crumpled, clutching his belly. The lantern fell on his chest. Burning kerosene poured out and made him into a torch.

Never shoot twice in a row from the same place unless the cover is very good-one more lesson Rodriguez had absorbed during the Great War. Staying low, he wriggled over to the other side of the window. Another Tredegar banged, this one at the back of Party headquarters. No cry of anguish from outside, but a triumphant yell from inside the building: Robert Quinn shouting, in English, "Take that, you fucking son of a bitch!" For good measure, he added, "Chinga tu madre!"

Bang! Bang! Bang! Somebody emptied a pistol into the headquarters as fast as he could shoot. Behind Rodriguez, a man yowled. At least one of those bullets had struck home. Rodriguez fired at the muzzle flashes. He worked the bolt, fired again, and then rolled away from that spot. He didn't know whether he'd hit the enemy, but no more shooting came from that direction, so he hoped he had.

Running feet in the street, these from the direction of the alcalde's house. A sharp cry of "Vamonos!" came from behind Freedom Party headquarters. Rodriguez heard more running feet, these running away. Quinn's Tredegar barked again. The Freedom Party leader whooped again, the high, shrill cry English-speaking Confederates called the Rebel yell.

"Madre de Dios." An officer of the guardia civil — a policeman, in other words-stared at the burning corpse in the middle of the street. He crossed himself, not bothering to take the heavy pistol from his hand first. Then, pulling himself together, he strode up to Freedom Party headquarters. In a loud voice, he demanded, "What happened here?"

"I will handle this," Robert Quinn declared. To the policeman, he said, "They tried to murder us. They tried to burn down our building and roast us inside of it. They wounded one of our men-I do not know how badly poor Carlos is hurt. All we did was defend ourselves."

"Some defense," the officer muttered. "If you'd done any more defending, nothing would be left of Baroyeca. Come out here now, with your hands up, all of you." He sounded nervous, as well he might have. If the Freedom Party men felt like fighting instead of obeying, the alcalde — the mayor-probably didn't have enough force to make them follow orders.

But Quinn said, "We are law-abiding citizens. The Freedom Party is the party of law and order. And I told you, we have a wounded man. We will come out." In a low voice, he added, "Hip, stay behind and cover us in case this pendejo is not to be trusted."

"Si, senor," Rodriguez whispered. The other Freedom Party men strode past him and out into the street. Carlos Ruiz walked unsteadily, his right hand pressed tight to his left shoulder.

A couple of more men from the guardia civil came up. They spoke with Quinn and the rest of the Freedom Party men in low voices, then led them away. Nobody made any move to shoot anyone, not now. Hipolito Rodriguez set down his Tredegar. As quietly as he could, he crawled to the back door and left. No one waited for him there-no one living, anyhow. Two bodies lay in the alley behind the headquarters. Magdalena wouldn't be happy with him. He was happy just to be breathing. He expected he could deal with his wife. She argued much less than a bullet.

E arly summer in Nashville made a good practice ground for hell. Of course, that was true through most of the Confederate States. Jake Featherston had brought the Freedom Party nominating convention to the capital of Tennessee for a couple of reasons. Moving it off the Atlantic coast reminded people the Party was a national outfit. And looking just a little north into stolen Kentucky reminded them what was at stake.

Flash bulbs popped when Jake got off the train from Richmond. Purple and iridescent green spots danced before his eyes. Supporters on the platform shouted, "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" Others called his name, again and again: "Feather ston! Feather ston! Feather ston!" The two cries merged and blended in his ears. Together, they felt sweeter than wine, stronger than whiskey. Despite those spots before his eyes, he waved to the crowd.

Despite those shouts, his bodyguards formed up around him, protecting his flesh with their own. One bastard with a rifle had gunned down a Confederate president and sent the Freedom Party on a ten-year journey through hell. Another one now could wreck things again. If they put Willy Knight in the top spot instead of number two, could the Party win in November? Probably, Jake thought. This year, probably. But it wouldn't be the same. He was sure of that. Willy Knight had a handsome face and handled himself pretty well on the stump. Jake… Jake had plans.

Maybe, just maybe, Knight had plans, too. Maybe, just maybe, those plans involved a hero's funeral for Jake Featherston. That was another reason the bodyguards in their almost-Confederate uniforms didn't leave an assassin a clear shot.

"What will you do if you're elected, Mr. Featherston?" a reporter shouted through the din.

"Put this country back on its feet," Jake answered, as he had so many times before. "Settle accounts with everybody who's done us wrong."

"Who would that be?" the eager beaver asked.

"You know who. You know what we stand for. Traitors better run for the hills. Niggers better behave themselves. The Confederate States have been too soft for too long. We won't be soft any more."

"Would you-?" The reporter never got to finish the question. The phalanx of guards, with Featherston at its core, pushed off the platform and through the station towards a waiting limousine. Freedom Party men and women waving Confederate and Party flags surrounded them, hands reaching between the bodyguards to touch Jake, if only for an instant. He shook some of them. When he squeezed one woman's soft, plump fingers, she moaned as if she were coming right where she stood. He almost laughed out loud. He'd seen that before, and heard it, too.

The limousine took him to the Heritage Hotel. The lobby was full of painted scenes of Confederate victory in the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War; a plaque said they came from the brush of Gilbert Gaul. There were no scenes from the Great War, perhaps because Gaul died in 1919, but more likely because there were no victories to record.

The Hermitage Hotel had come through the war without much damage. Most of Nashville hadn't been so lucky when Custer's First Army seized it from the Confederate defenders in 1917. The Memorial Auditorium, across the street from the hotel, was a postwar building. What ever had stood there before wasn't standing when the damnyankees grudgingly gave the land south of the Cumberland back to the CSA in exchange for the bit of Kentucky they hadn't overrun. Jake reluctantly acknowledged that that was smart-with all of Kentucky in U.S. hands, no Confederate Senators and Representatives from the rump of the state could fulminate in Congress about how it needed to be redeemed.

His suite looked out at the Memorial Auditorium. Confederate flags and Freedom Party banners flew above it. Inside, delegates would be going through the motions of a political convention. Going through the motions was all they'd be doing. Unlike Whig and Radical Liberal conventions, this one was sewn up tight as a drum.

And I know who did the sewing. Featherston peered into a mirror with a gilt frame of rococo extravagance. His lean, leathery features suddenly lit up in a grin. "Me," he said aloud, and pointed at his own reflection.

He'd just fixed himself a drink when someone knocked on the door. He had guards in the hallway. They wouldn't let anyone dangerous past. He opened the door without hesitation. There stood Ferdinand Koenig, who'd come west from Richmond with him. "Come on in, Ferd," he said.

"Willy here yet?" Koenig asked as he stepped into the suite.

Featherston shook his head. But then another door down the hall opened. Out stepped Knight, dapper in a gray pinstriped suit with sword-sharp lapels. He waved and walked down the hall toward the two longtime Freedom Party men. "Pat him down, boss?" one of the guards asked out of the side of his mouth.

"No, it's all right," Jake whispered back. "Nothing to worry about." The guard looked dubious. So did Koenig. They both played it Jake's way, though. Everybody plays it my way from now on, he thought, and smiled. Everybody.

Maybe Willy Knight thought the smile was meant for him. He grinned back and stuck out his hand. Jake took it. The clasp turned into a quiet trial of strength. Knight was a little taller and a lot wider through the shoulders, but Featherston's rawboned frame carried more muscle than it seemed to. When the two men let go, Knight was the one who opened and closed his hand several times to ease the pain and bring it back to life.

"Come on in," Jake said genially. "Have a drink."

"Don't have to ask me twice." In spite of the hand that was surely throbbing, Willy Knight managed another grin. "You barely have to ask me once."

They all went into Jake's hotel room. He closed the door behind them. The guards looked even less happy. He still wasn't worried. Knight wouldn't plug him himself. That wouldn't just take Jake off the ticket-it would take him off, too. He didn't want that. He wanted to be number one, but he'd settle for number two.

Jake made himself another drink. Ferdinand Koenig and Willy Knight fixed whiskeys for themselves, too. He raised his glass in salute first to Knight, then to Koenig. "Mr. Vice President," he said. "Mr. Attorney General."

"Mr. President," the other two men said together. All three drank.

"It's going our way," Featherston said. "We've got what it takes, and the country finally knows it. What we have to do now is make sure the Rad Libs and especially the Whigs are whipped dogs long before November rolls around. I like what's happening down in Sonora-somebody hits you in the cheek, hit him back so goddamn hard, you knock his head off."

Koenig chuckled. "That's not quite what Jesus said."

"Yeah, and look what happened to him," Jake answered.

"Maybe we don't want to come on too strong," Willy Knight said. "We've spent the last ten years trying to live down that Grady Calkins son of a bitch."

"But now we've done it," Featherston said. "I want people to know-they'll be sorry if they even think about going the wrong way. We backed down ten years ago. We had to. We don't have to any more. We're going to win in November. You can take it to the bank. But even if we don't, by God, we're going into Richmond anyways."

Knight's bright blue eyes widened. "That's treason!" he said, and finished his drink with a gulp.

"It's only treason if you don't bring it off," Jake said calmly. "If we have to grab it, we'll win. We're getting things ready, all nice and quiet-like. Like I told you, I don't reckon we'll need it."

"We'd better not," Willy Knight said, still jolted. "Christ, you're talking civil war."

"Jeff Davis wasn't afraid of it. We shouldn't be, either," Jake answered. "I keep telling you and telling you, this is just in case. You've got to cover everybody who can carry the ball, and that's what I intend to do."

He almost hoped he would have to try to seize power by force. Storming the War Department would be as sweet as marching into Philadelphia would have been during the Great War.

"Once we're in, however we're in, we'll make everything legal," Koenig said. "If you're in, you make the rules, and that's just what we'll do."

Knight managed a sheepish smile, as if realizing he'd shown weakness. "You don't think small, do you, Jake?"

"Never have. Never will," Featherston replied. "As long as you can imagine something, you can make it real. That's what the Freedom Party's all about. We know the Confederate States can be great again. We know we can pay back all the bastards who held us while the damnyankees sucker-punched us. We can do it, and we're gonna do it. Right?"

"Right!" Willy Knight said. Jake was watching him. He seemed as hearty as he should have. Maybe he'd just had cold feet for a moment. Featherston shrugged. How much did it really matter? As vice president, all Willy'd do was make speeches, and Jake intended to make sure of what was in them before they came out of the handsome puppet's mouth. Knight still hadn't figured out he'd been condemned to oblivion. That only proved he wasn't so smart as he thought he was.

Jake and Ferdinand Koenig looked at each other. Koenig nodded, ever so slightly. The more he'd thought about it, the more he'd liked escaping the worthless number-two slot and being promised one where he could actually do things. Featherston had plans for the attorney general's office. Once I'm elected…

Three days later, he took another step toward the Gray House in Richmond. When he strode up onto the speakers' platform at the Memorial Auditorium to accept the Freedom Party nomination, the roar from the assembled delegates left his ears as stunned and battered as any artillery barrage ever had. The klieg lights blazing on him put the sun to shame. A thicket of microphones in front of him amplified his voice for the delegates, for people listening on the wireless web, and for the newsreels that would soon show his image all over the Confederate States.

"Hello, friends," Jake said to all the millions who would see and listen to him. "You know me. You know what I stand for. I've been up here in front of you before. I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you-"

"The truth!" the Freedom Party men bellowed.

Featherston nodded. "That's right. I'm here to tell you the truth. I've been doing that for a long time now. I think you're finally ready to listen. The truth is, this country needs to put people-white people, decent people-back to work, and we will. The truth is, this country needs to put the niggers who stabbed us in the back in their place, and we will. The truth is, Kentucky and Sequoyah and that joke the USA calls Houston still belong to the Confederate States. We ought to get 'em back-and we will."

He had to stop then; the applause was too loud and too long to let him continue. When at last it ebbed, he went on, "The truth is, the Whigs have had seventy years to run this country, and they've run it into the ground. Somebody else needs to do it, and do it right- and we will." Another great roar. He held up his hands. Silence fell, completely and at once. Into it, he said, "If you like the way things have gone the past few years, vote Whig. But if you want to tell those people what you really think of 'em, vote-"

"Freedom!" That cry outdid all that had gone before. And then the delegates began to chant, "Feather ston! Feather ston! Feather ston!" Jake stood tall on the platform, waving to the crowd, waving to the country, glorying in what he had and reaching out for what he wanted.

B ouncing around South Carolina, from Charleston to Columbia to Greenville and to the smaller towns in between, Anne Colleton felt more than a little like a table-tennis ball. When she got out of her Birmingham in St. Matthews, her brother greeted her with, "Hello. Didn't I know you once upon a time?"

"Funny, Tom," she answered, meaning anything but. "Very funny. For God's sake, fix me a drink." Her own flat looked unfamiliar to her. Maybe her brother hadn't been joking after all.

He mixed whiskey and a little water for her and plopped in a couple of ice cubes. After he'd made himself a drink, too, he said, "Well, you've got Jake Featherston, and it looks like he's going to win. Are you happy?"

"You bet I am." She would have said more, but a long pull at the whiskey came first. "Thank you. That's a lifesaver."

"I ought to go places with a little cask around my neck, like those St. Bernard dogs in the Alps," Tom Colleton said.

"I'd be glad to see you, that's for sure." Anne took another sip. "Yes, I'm happy. I've waited for this day ever since the end of the war, even though I didn't know what I was waiting for at first."

"You walked away from Featherston once," Tom said.

"I made a mistake," Anne said. "Aren't you glad you never made a mistake in all your born days?"

"Now that you mention it, yes." Tom was irrepressible. Anne snorted. Her brother went on, "I'll tell you one mistake I didn't make: once I got out of politics, I didn't get back in."

"You wouldn't have talked that way before you got married," Anne said. It made you soft, was what she meant. To anyone else, she would have said that, said it without a moment's hesitation. With Tom, she hesitated.

He understood what she meant whether she said it or not. With a shrug, he answered, "Maybe you wouldn't talk the way you talk if you had. Nothing to cure the fire in your belly like a little boy."

"Maybe," Anne said tonelessly. Some small part of her wished she had settled down with Roger Kimball or Clarence Potter or that Texas oil man or one of her other lovers. A husband, a child to carry on after her… Those weren't the worst things in the world. But they weren't for her, and never would be. "I'm on my own, Tom. Too late to change it now."

Her brother eyed her. "And heaven help anybody who gets in your way?" he said.

Anne nodded. "Of course."

"What happens if Featherston decides you're in his way?"

She wished he hadn't asked that particular question. For a long time, she'd been a big fish in the small pond of South Carolina politics, and not the smallest fish in the much bigger pond of Confederate politics. Going from the Whigs to the Freedom Party, back to the Whigs and now back to Freedom had cut her influence down to size. So had getting older, as she was all too ruefully aware.

What if Jake Featherston decided she was in the way? What if President Jake Featherston decided she was in the way? She saw only one answer, and gave it to her brother: "In that case, I'd better move, don't you think?"

"You say that? You?" Tom looked and sounded as if he couldn't believe his ears. "You don't move for anybody."

"If it's a question of move or get squashed, I'll move," Anne said. "And Jake has more clout than I do. Jake has more clout than anybody does." She spoke with a certain somber pride. She might have been saying, Yeah, I got licked, but the fellow who licked me was the toughest one of the bunch. She shook her head. Might have? No. She was saying exactly that.

Tom shook his head, too, in wonder. "What's going to happen to the country, if a fellow who can make you pull in your horns starts running things?"

"We'll all go in the same direction, and it'll be the right direction," Anne said. "We've owed a lot of debts for a long time. Don't you want to pay them back? I know I do."

"Well, yes, but not if I have to go bust to do it."

"We won't," Anne said positively. "He'll do what needs doing, instead of fumbling around the way Burton Mitchel has ever since things went sour."

"Maybe. I hope so," her brother said. "Hell, I'll probably even vote for him myself. But that's all I intend to do. You can go running around the state if you want to. Me, I'll stay home and tend my garden."

Had he read Candide? She doubted it; she couldn't imagine a book that seemed less her brother's cup of tea. She said, "The whole Confederacy is my garden."

"You're welcome to it," Tom replied. "It's too big for me to get my arms around. South Carolina's too big. I think even St. Matthews is too big, but I can try that. My wife and my little baby boy, now- that I understand just fine."

He'd gone into the war a captain, and a boy himself. He'd come out a lieutenant-colonel, and a man. Now he was a family man, but that seemed a pulling-in, not a growing-out. It made Anne sad. "You've got a lot of time left," she said. "I hope you do, anyway. You can do whatever you want with it. What I'm going to do with mine is, I'm going to put this country back on its feet."

"I hope so." Tom got up and kissed her on the cheek. "What I'm going to do is, I'm going home to my family. Take care of yourself, Sis. I worry about you." He went out the door, taking her chance for the last word with him.

I'm going home to my family. Ever since they'd lost their parents when they were small, she'd been his family, she and their brother Jacob, who was dead. He didn't think that way any more. He didn't care about the country any more, either. Anne made herself another whiskey. Tom might have his wife and a little boy. She had a cause, and a cause on its way to victory.

She slept in her own bed that night. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept there. It had been weeks, she knew. Her own mattress felt as unfamiliar as any of the hotel beds where she'd lain down lately.

When morning came, she was on her way again, driving down to Charleston. Featherston was coming into town in a couple of days for a rally that should finish sewing up South Carolina for the Freedom Party. She hurled herself into the work of making sure everything went off the way it was supposed to. Things were more complicated than they had been when she first started planning rallies. Making sure the wireless web and the newsreels were taken care of kept her busy up until an hour and a half before Featherston's speech began. Saul Goldman did a lot of work with them-more than she did, in fact. She wondered if the head of the Freedom Party knew just what a smart little Jew he had running that part of his operation.

"Hello, there," Featherston said, coming up behind her as she peered out from the wings to make sure the lighting arrangements were the way she wanted them.

She jumped. She wasn't the sort of person who jumped when someone came up behind her, but Jake Featherston wasn't the ordinary sort of person coming up behind her. "Oh. Hello." She hated herself for how callow she sounded. No one had any business making her feel so unsure, so… weak was the only word that seemed to fit. No one had any business doing it, but Jake did.

He eyed the hall with the knowing gaze of a man who'd given speeches in a lot of different places. "Good to have you back in the Party," he said, his attention returning to her. "I wasn't even close to sure it would be, in spite of the pretty speeches you made me. But it is. You've given me a lot of help here, and I do appreciate it."

"Happy to do anything I can," Anne said: a great thumping lie. She knew she was doing things for Featherston, doing them as a subordinate. She wasn't used to being a subordinate, wasn't used to it and despised it. Once, she and Roger Kimball had thought they would guide Jake Featherston to power and then enjoy it themselves, with him in the role of puppet. The only small consolation she had was that they weren't the only ones who'd underestimated him. At one time or another, almost everybody in the CSA had underestimated Featherston.

He said, "There's a lot of people I owe, and I'm going to pay every single one of them back. But you, you owe me-you owe me plenty for walking out on me when I really needed a hand."

He hadn't forgotten. He never forgot a slight, no matter how small. Anne knew as much. And hers hadn't been small, not at all. She said, "I know. I'm trying to pay you back." Her gesture encompassed the hall where he'd speak.

The answer seemed to catch him by surprise. Slowly, thoughtfully, he nodded. "Well, you're doing better than a lot of folks I can think of," he said.

"Good." Anne didn't like the way he looked at her. He'd been an artilleryman during the war, not a sniper, but he eyed her as she thought a sniper would: all cold, deadly concentration. She was used to intimidating, not being intimidated. Being on the receiving end of a glance like that chilled her.

But Featherston sounded warm and lively when he went into his speech. "I never had a fancy name," he declared. "I was only one more Confederate soldier, with a stamped tin identity disk around my neck. But every great idea draws men to it. Every idea steps out before the nation. It has to win from the nation the fighters it needs, so one day it's strong enough to turn the course of destiny. Our day is here!"

The hall erupted. Anne found herself clapping as hard as anyone else in the building. When she listened to Jake on the stump, she always believed what he said while he was saying it. She might not believe it later, when she thought about it, but at the time… She shivered, though she also went on clapping. She hadn't met many people who frightened her. He did.

He thundered on: "Lots of people in the Confederate States think the Freedom Party can't do the job if we get in. They're fooling themselves! Today our movement can't be destroyed. It's here. People have to reckon with it, whether they like it or not. We recognize three principles-responsibility, command, and obedience. We've built a party-a party of millions, mind-based on one thing: achievement. And if you don't like it, we say, 'We'll fight today! We'll fight tomorrow! And if you don't fancy our rally today, we'll hold another one next week, even bigger!' "

He slammed his fist down on the podium. More applause interrupted him. Anne looked down at her carefully tended, carefully manicured hands. Her palms were red and sore. She'd broken a nail without even noticing.

"I'm not just here to ask you for your vote, or to ask you to do this or that for the Party," Featherston said. "I'm here to tell you the truth, and what I aim to do. What I've got to give is the only thing that can pull our country back on its feet again. If all you Confederates had the same faith in your country that our Freedom Party stalwarts do, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. We will pull ourselves together. We're on the way, and I know you'll help."

I'm already helping, Anne thought proudly. Not being in charge didn't bother her so much any more-not as long as she was listening to Jake, anyhow.