“Y’all can have a real shower, too, if y’all want,” Jimmy Hub-bley said kindly. “Some folks need one. Or think they do.” He stood before me already dressed in clean jacks, not at all raggedy, indistinguishable from any other Liver except by his uncared-for teeth.

Abigail emerged from the water shower, unself-consciously naked, drying her hair. Her pregnant belly waggled slightly from side to side. A bell rang, high and sweet, and Campbell was sucked down onto the landing stage, which I saw now extended only a few feet under a low overhang. Two men immediately pulled Campbell off the stage, wiping his eyes and nose. Campbell stood, covered with the shiny muck, and lumbered into the sonar shower.

“Take off them gloves, boys, and help Mr. Arlen, here. Joncey, y’all just have to take your eyes off your lovely bride.”

One of the two men reddened slightly. Hubbley seemed to think this was funny, breaking into a guffaw, but I felt in my mind the shapes of Joncey’s anger. He said nothing. Abigail went on coolly drying her hair, her face expressionless. Joncey and the other man seized me under the armpits, carried me between them out of the sonar shower, and set me down in the middle of the room. Joncey handed me a set of clean jacks.

“What size boots you wear, you?” He was younger than Abigail, with black hair and blue eyes, handsome in a rough way that had nothing to do with genetic egnineering.

I said, “I’d like my own boots back.” They were Italian leather. Leisha had given them to me. “Put them in the sonar shower.”

“Better you wear our boots, you. What size?”

“Ten and a half.”

He left the room. I dressed. The lattice was back in my head, closed tight as one of Leisha’s exotic flowers.

She was really dead.

Joncey returned, with a pair of boots and a wheelchair. It wasn’t even grav-powered; it had actual wheels that apparently you turned by hand.

“An antique,” Jimmy Hubbley said. “Sorry, Mr. Arlen, sir, that here thing is the best we can do on such short notice. But y’all just give us a little time.”

He beamed at me, obviously expecting some surprise that this underground bunker was well enough equipped that an unexpected crippled captive could be provided with a wheelchair. I didn’t react. A faint disappointment shimmered over his face.

I had his shape, then. He wanted to be admired. James Francis Marion Hubbley. And he didn’t even know that at least two of his followers, Abigail and Joncey, already resented him.

How much?

I would find out.

Joncey and the other man lifted me into the wheelchair. I pulled on the Liver boots. Dressed, seated instead of flopping on the floor like a fish, I felt less hopeless. Leisha was dead. But I was going to destroy the bastards who’d killed her.

I studied the room. It was low, no more than six and a half feet high; Campbell had to stoop. Corridors radiated off in five directions. The walls were nanotech smooth. I knew from Miranda that the weak point of any shielded underground bunker is the entrance. That’s what’s most likely to be detected by GSEA experts. The lab in East Oleanta had an elaborate entrance shield created by Terry Mwakambe; no chance the GSEA would get through that. But these people were not Supers. They would have no more advanced technology than the government did. I guessed, however, that the swamp-pool entrance was a use of technology that the government hadn’t yet thought of, adapted by some crazy scientist who’d grown up in swamp country, and that it was virtually undetectable. So far.

How far did the underground tunnel system extend? With nanodiggers, additional construction could be going on even now, miles from here, without much disturbance on the surface. Hub-bley had said his “revolution” had been in progress for over five years.

And these people had loosed the duragem dissembler on the country. Without the GSEA ever figuring out that it was not Hue-vos Verdes.

Or did the GSEA know that, and nonetheless leak to the press that the Supers were responsible? Because it was all right to blame Sleepless, but embarrassing to admit you couldn’t catch a bunch of Livers with captured or renegade nanoscientists on their side.

I didn’t know. But I did know that in a war this advanced, these tunnels would contain terminals. Miri had made me memorize override codes for most standard programming. And even if the programming wasn’t standard, Jonathan Markowitz had made me memorize, over and over, access tricks that would get through to Huevos Verdes. And Huevos Verdes monitored everything. There had to be a way to reach them. All I needed was a terminal.

If Huevos Verdes monitored everything, wouldn’t they know about the underground movement?

They must know. I remembered Miranda bending over printouts at Huevos Verdes: “We can’t locate the epicenter of the duragem problem.” But the Supers must have at least been aware that the dissembler was being released by some nationwide, organized group. Their intelligence was too good not to know it.

And Miranda hadn’t told me.

“Are you hungry, you?” Joncey said. He spoke to Abigail, now dressed in green jacks, but Hubbley answered.

“Hail, yes. Let’s have at it, boys.”

He pushed my chair himself. I let him, passive, feeling the shapes in my mind hard as carbon-fiber rods. We all went down the left-hand tunnel, passing several closed doors. Eventually everyone else went through one door, Hubbley and I through another. A small white room was furnished with wood — not plas-tisynth — table and chairs. On the wall hung a large holo portrait of a big-nosed, dark-eyed soldier in some sort of antique uniform.

“Brigadier General Francis Marion himself,” Hubbley said, with satisfaction. “I always eat separate from the troops, Mr. Arlen. It makes for better morale. Did y’all know, sir, that General Marion was a fanatic on cleanliness? God’s own truth. He dry-shaved any soldier who didn’t appear neat and clean on parade, and he himself drank vinegar and water every day of his life, pretty near, for his health. Drink of the Roman soldiers. Did you know that, sir?”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. My hatred for him burned cold, sleek shapes in my mind. The room held no terminal.

“As early as 1775 one British general wrote, ‘Our army will be destroyed by damned driblets’ — and Francis Marion was the damndest driblet those poor redcoats ever saw. Just like this war will be won by damned driblets, sir.” Hubbley laughed, exposing his brown teeth. His pale eyes crinkled. He never took them off me.

“Will and idea, son. We got them both. Will and idea. You know what makes the Constitution so great?”

“No,” I said. A young boy entered, dressed in turquoise jacks, his long hair tied back with a ribbon. He carried bowls of hot stew. Hubbley paid him as much attention as a ’bot.

“What makes the Constitution so great is it brought the common man into the decision-making process. It let us decide what kind of country we want. Us, the common man. Our will, and our idea.”

Leisha had always said that what made the Constitution so great was its checks and balances.

She was dead. She was really dead.

“That’s why, sir,” Hubbley continued, “it’s so all-fired necessary that we take back this great country from the donkey masters who would enslave us. By driblets, if necessary. Yes, by God, by driblets.” He attacked his stew with gusto.

“In fact, preferably by driblets,” I said. “You wouldn’t like this war nearly as much if you fought it aboveground, in the courts.”

I had expected to make him angry. Instead he laid down his spoon and squinted thoughtfully.

“Yes, I do believe y’all are right, Mr. Arlen. I do believe y’all are right. We each have our God-given temperament, and mine is for fighting in driblets. Just like General Marion. Now, that’s a real interesting insight.” He went back to spooning stew.