"Could," Scipio said. "Mebbe could. Dunno dat I gots it in me to give no orders, though, not no way." He hadn't even liked giving orders as a butler, when Anne Colleton was the ultimate authority behind them. Doing it on his own hook? No, he wasn't sure about that at all.

"Well, you don't want to do what you kin do, that's your business," Erasmus said. "Like I told you, I ain't sorry you works for me. But you is wastin' yourself, you wants to know what I think."

How many Negroes in the Confederate States aren't wasting themselves? Scipio wondered. He'd got himself an education as good as any white man's. What could he do with it? Sound impressive as the butler at Marshlands during the war. Now, wait tables. If he'd tried to set up as a businessman-not in the sense Erasmus meant, but as an investor, a capitalist-he would have been lucky if whites here only laughed at him. More likely, they would have lynched him.

And most blacks? Besides having whites hate them, most blacks never got the education that would have let them make the most of their abilities-that would have let them discover what abilities they had. And then whites called them stupid and inferior because they didn't succeed.

"Sometimes I reckons dem Red niggers, dey knew what dey was doin'," he said. He'd never dared say anything like that to Erasmus before.

The older man studied him, then slowly shook his head. "Them Reds, they was about tearin' down, not buildin' up. Tearin' down don't do no good. Never has, never will." He sounded very certain.

Before Scipio could answer, the day's first customer came in: a fat black man dripping rain from the brim of his homburg and from the hem of his rubberized-cotton raincoat. "Bacon an' a couple eggs over medium an' grits an' coffee," he called to Erasmus.

Erasmus already had the eggs and bacon on the stove. "Like I don't know what you has for breakfast, Sophocles," he said reproachfully.

Scipio poured coffee for Sophocles and brought it to him. As soon as Erasmus had the rest of the man's breakfast ready, he carried that over, too. "Half a dollar, all told," he said.

"Here y'are." Sophocles slapped down sixty cents. "Things is up a little from last year," he remarked.

"But only a little," Scipio said. "Do Jesus, when dey was playin' games wid de money, breakfas' cost you fifty million dollars, maybe fifty billion dollars. I's powerful glad dey fix it-dey pretty much fix it, anyways."

Sophocles and Erasmus both nodded. Inflation had almost destroyed the CSA. How could anybody do business when money might lose half its value between the morning when you got it and the afternoon when you found a chance to spend it? Prices were higher now than they had been when the currency was restored; the C.S. dollar didn't trade at par with its U.S. counterpart. But it was still close, and didn't seem to be sinking very fast.

Erasmus said, "The white folks don't go runnin' to the Freedom Party fast as their legs can take 'em when their money worth somethin'."

Sophocles nodded again, chewing a mouthful of bacon. So did Scipio. "De Freedom Party buckra, dey scares me plenty," he said. "Dey wish we was all dead. Dey he'ps we along, too, case we don' feel like dyin'." More nods.

More customers came in. On such a miserable morning, business was slower than usual. Scipio kept hopping even so. When he wasn't carrying food out to hungry men and women, he was washing dirty dishes or making fresh coffee or stirring the big pot of grits. Erasmus didn't let him do much real cooking, but did give him jobs like that. He also wrapped fish for people who didn't come in to eat there.

However much he did, he would have felt like a fool complaining about it, for Erasmus did more. Erasmus worked harder than anybody he'd ever seen, save possibly John Oglethorpe. Maybe their both owning their businesses had something to do with that.

Erasmus certainly worked harder than any other black man Scipio had ever seen. And he'd been born a slave; he'd spent more time in bondage than Scipio had. A lot of Negroes still held to the slave's pace of labor, doing just enough to satisfy an overseer, even though they were free now. Erasmus worked to satisfy an overseer, too, but his lived inside his head. He had a harsher straw boss than any cursing, whip-wielding, tobacco-chewing white man. His boss whipped him on from within.

Could I do that? Scipio wondered. He had his doubts. He wanted things done properly, yes; Anne Colleton had made sure to instill that into him. But did he have the driving need to get things done, even when he was the only one urging himself on? He'd rarely seen it in himself. He'd rarely had to look for it, either. If he ever got his own place, he'd have to.

After the breakfast rush, such as it was, eased, Erasmus put on a wide-brimmed hat of no known make and a rain slicker. "Mind the store a spell, Xerxes," he said. "I gwine buy some more fish. One of the boats was late, and I reckon I kin git some prime deals, on account of most folks ain't comin' back."

"I do dat," Scipio said. Erasmus hurried out into the rain. Would I do the same? Scipio wondered. He was honest enough to admit to himself he didn't know.

T he closing whistle shrilled in the Toledo steel mill. Chester Martin pushed his helmet up onto the top of his head. He blinked against the glare as he hurried to clock out. He'd been looking at molten steel through smoked-glass rectangles all day. Now he saw all the light there was to see. It was almost too much to bear.

As he stuck his card in the time clock, he spoke up to anyone who'd listen: "Election day today. Don't forget to vote, dammit. Only way you should forget to vote is if you want the Democrats back in Powel House."

That made most of the men around him grin and wave and call out agreement. Socialists filled the Toledo steel mills, as they filled so many factories. After the postwar strikes, the Socialist Party had gained more ground than at any time since the 1880s.

Funny, Martin thought as he hurried out of the big building to catch a streetcar to his polling place and his home. I saved Teddy Roosevelt's life when he came into the trenches to see what the war was like. Well, maybe I did-I sure made him get down when the Confederates started shelling us. He had a letter from Roosevelt, written after he got wounded. He intended to keep that letter forever. But he was a Socialist all the same.

A streetcar clanged to a stop. That wasn't his route. Then the right one came. He climbed aboard, throwing five cents in the fare box. A lot of the passengers looked like him: tired, grubby men in overalls and heavy shoes and collarless shirts and cloth caps. He had sandy hair and a pointed nose to distinguish himself from most of the rest. The odor of perspiration filled the streetcar. Even in November, Toledo factory workers had no trouble breaking a sweat.

The American flag flew in front of the elementary school that housed his polling place. The new stars in the canton that represented Kentucky and Houston gave it a pattern he still hadn't got used to. The polling place itself was in the school auditorium, which was full of seats too small for grown-up backsides. Martin smiled, remembering the days when he'd sat in chairs like that. I'd never killed anybody then, he thought, and the smile slipped.

He had to wait in line to get his ballot. Lots of men-and women, who could vote in presidential elections in Ohio-lined up to get their ballots. "Here you are," the clerk said when he came to the front of the line. "Take the first available voting booth." He sounded bored. How many times had he said those identical words since the polls opened this morning? Too many, by all the signs.

A pretty woman a few years younger than Chester Martin pushed aside the curtain that kept her ballot secret and came out with the folded paper in her hand. They did a little accidental dance, each trying to get around the other, and were laughing by the time she went past him and he made his way into the booth.