He was reaching for his comm switch when it occurred to him: What was the source of this Peace Front line? Could some Jerrie have come up with it independently? It seemed doubtful.

The good weather had broken near midday. Then Joseph Switzer had worked in the rain, piling slabs. The rain had turned to thick wet snow-a rarity at Sagenwerk-as wet as the rain but colder. Switzer's blanket-lined jacket had soaked up about five pounds of ice water, or so it seemed. At the end of the shift he headed home without stopping at the tavern. His nose had begun to run. His heavy work shoes were saturated. He'd have to dry them by the stove, and grease them in the morning. He'd stay home tomorrow, sleep, and nurse whatever he was coming down with.

He looked around him and grimaced. He had never, he'd decided, hated any place as much. Sagenwerk was a backwater without any backwater charms. In general, Mennonites liked flowers, liked to grow things, kept their buildings and yard fences painted. But Sagenwerk-ugly, weedy, and filled with truculent, narrow-minded people-Sagenwerk, he told himself, was where the mean and spiteful were reincarnated as punishment. Even sunny and warm he didn't like it. And in weather like this…

He shut out the surroundings he slopped through-rain, slush, weed-edged streets, slab fences… A chill shook him, and he wiped his runny nose on a sleeve. But as much as he'd like to, he didn't feel free to leave. Not yet. Private Moses Wheeler had arrived at their third meeting not only with his mind made up, he'd arrived with a plan! His own plan, and therefore the only plan he'd consider: work through the speakers. They had influence, and authority in religious matters.

Actually it made sense-except that Wheeler had telescoped it. He wanted to build Rome in a day.

Maybe he could. Joseph Switzer hoped devoutly that he could. If confidence-positive thinking-meant much, he might. For Moses Wheeler was a maverick, and a bomb waiting to go off. The problem was his fuse. Once lit, there was no way that he, Switzer, could do anything about it-control, guide, or even advise. If he'd realized, when they'd first met, what an arrogant asshole Wheeler was, he'd have made his pitch to someone else. But Wheeler made a good first impression. He was big, fearless, and had an aura of power. And he'd seen what Switzer was leading up to while Switzer was still feeling him out. Had taken over and made the mission his own.

In a way, Switzer told himself, he'd suffered from Wheeler's problem-one of Wheeler's problems-overconfidence. Now, though, he wasn't confident at all. Wheeler, on the other hand-he couldn't imagine Wheeler losing confidence. And if Wheeler showed more patience than seemed probable-if he let the speakers do their thing in their own time-the Jerrie army might be compromised enough that War House would be unwilling to send it to New Jerusalem. That was the theory. It was what he'd intended, and what the Front had financed him to do.

The only reason he was hanging around was to learn the results. The Front would expect him to. Word might well never get to North Fork, and almost certainly wouldn't surface on Terra except through him. And quite a few civilian workers at Camp Nafziger came into Sagenwerk on their days off, full of gossip.

Through gray rain and gray introspection, Switzer reached his shack near the tracks at the east edge of town. Stepping onto the rough stoop, he dug his house key from a pocket. With red trembling hands, he got it into the keyhole and turned it. Pushed the door open, then closed and locked it behind him. That was another thing about Sagenwerk: there were thefts.

Inside it was half warm. The single room was small enough to heat with the cookstove, which he'd banked with coal before work, then closed both damper and draft to hold fire. After stripping off his sodden jacket, he dug coal from a sack and put it on the embers.

Someone knocked on the door. Switzer's guts knotted; he had no friends here. "Who is it?" he asked.

"Nockey Brant."

Brant? The constable? "What do you want?"

"You. You going to let me in, or do I kick the door down?"

Switzer thought of the pistol in his bag. But if he shot Brant, and they caught him… Maybe it was about that tool theft at the sawmill. He was an outsider; maybe they thought he'd done it. Brant would search the place, and when he didn't find the tools, that would be the end of it. Then he could fix his supper, eat and go to bed.

"Just a minute."

He stepped to the door, turned the key, then the knob, and pushed. As it opened, Nockey Brant grabbed and held it. He was broad and extremely strong, a veteran of the green chain. Behind him were two MPs from Camp Nafziger. Brant grinned a stained, spade-toothed grin. "Couple of soldiers want to talk to you," he said. "About conspiracy, and being an accomplice before the fact of murder."

With his other hand, the constable gripped Joseph Switzer by his wet shirt and pulled him out onto the stoop. One of the MPs brought forth a pair of handcuffs and secured Switzer's wrists behind his back. Then they pushed him ahead of them in the direction of the depot. No one locked his door. He supposed his stuff would be stolen before the night was over.

Not, he realized, that it would make any difference.

A Change of Plans

General Pyong Pak Singh finished reading the summary of evidence, then cleared it from the screen. The case was cut and dried, he told himself: simple, nicely tied together, and unbeatable. He'd send Switzer back to Terra tomorrow, via an embassy courier craft, for a civil trial in Kunming.

Ignorant, well-intentioned Switzer. In the "theology" of the Gopal Singh Dispensation, the evolution-genetic, social, and spiritual-of the human species grew from the interplay of individuals of every type. Remote interplay, and direct, immediate interplay. Joseph Switzer was part of it, and was not-was not faulted for that by THE ONE. Persons like Switzer were not only inevitable, but necessary to that evolution. But it was entirely valid for him to be tried and punished by social authority, also as part of that interplay.

Intellectually, Pyong Pak Singh knew and accepted all that. Emotionally, however, he felt offended by what he considered gratuitous troublemaking like Switzer's. He always had, he thought ruefully, and probably would throughout this lifetime.

The nature of the charges made Switzer subject to the court system on Terra. And when informed, the Luneburgian chief magistrate had declined to claim him. Though born on Luneburger's, Switzer held resident rights on Terra, and had come to his birth-world on a visitor's visa. He hadn't applied for more. On a world as loosely administered as Luneburger's, a visitor's visa might be overstayed forever.

On Terra, according to Coyote, Switzer would almost surely be imprisoned but not executed.

Here on Luneburger's, the courts-martial of the division's fifteen defectors would begin, and no doubt end, next Threeday, the day after the officers of the court returned from the Maple Mountain maneuvers. The trial of the five conspirators would have to wait till the day after, as three of them were among the defectors. That trial might require two, or possibly three days of argument and deliberation.

The murder trial would start the day after the conspirators' trial ended, because Wheeler was a defendant in both. Considered with other evidence, the used M-6 power slug found folded in a towel in Wheeler's footlocker would probably clinch a murder conviction, even if none of his coconspirators testified against him. Actually his mouth had killed any chance he had.