"All right, Pinkard," Caleb Briggs replied. "Can't say I'm surprised." He knew about Emily. "I don't make any promises on the filibuster into the Mexican Empire, but the other… we'll find a way to get you over by city hall."

And they did. Pinkard worked a half day on Saturday. As soon as he got off, he hurried to the trolley and went downtown. He gathered with the other Freedom Party men at a little diner one of them owned. There he changed from his overalls into the white shirt and butternut trousers he carried in a denim duffel bag. There, too, he picked up a stout wooden bludgeon-two and a half feet of ash wood, so newly turned on the lathe it smelled of sawdust.

Along with the other Freedom Party men, he hurried up Seventh Avenue North toward the city hall. They naturally fell into column and fell into step. People scrambled off the sidewalk to get out of their way. Jeff made a horrible face at a little pickaninny. The boy wailed in fright and clung to his mother's skirts. She looked as if she might have wanted to say something, but she didn't dare. You better not, he thought.

In front of city hall, a Whig speaker with a megaphone was exhorting a crowd that didn't look to be paying too much attention to him. Eight or ten policemen stood around looking bored. "Outstanding!" Briggs exclaimed. "Nobody gave us away. They'd be a lot readier if they reckoned we were gonna hit 'em." His voice rose to a great roar: "Freedom!"

"Freedom!" Jefferson Pinkard bawled, along with his comrades. They charged forward, tough and disciplined as they'd been during the war. Whistles shrilling, the Birmingham policemen tried to get between them and the suddenly shouting and screaming Whigs. If the cops had opened fire, they might have done it. As things were, their billy clubs were no improvement on the Freedom Party bludgeons. Jeff got one of the men in gray in the side of the head.

Then he was in among the Whigs, yelling, "Freedom!" and "Damnyankee puppets!" at the top of his lungs. His bludgeon rose and fell, rose and fell. Sometimes he hit men, sometimes women. He wasn't fussy. Why fuss? They were all traitors, anyway. A few of them tried to fight back, but they didn't have much luck. The Whig rally smashed, their enemies bloodied, the Freedom Party men withdrew in good order. Jeff had a hard-on all the way back to the diner. Those bastards, he thought. They got just what they deserved.

S ylvia Enos wasn't used to being a celebrity. She wished people wouldn't stop her on the streets of Boston and tell her she was a hero. She didn't want to be a hero. She'd never wanted to be one. All I wanted was to have George back again, she thought as she hurried back toward her block of flats.

But she'd never see her husband again. George Enos had been aboard the USS Ericsson when the CSS Bonefish torpedoed her-after the Confederate States yielded to the USA. Roger Kimball, the captain of the Bonefish, had known the war was over, too. He'd known, but he hadn't cared. He'd sunk the destroyer that carried George and more than a hundred other sailors, and then he'd sailed away.

He'd tried to cover it up, too. No one could prove a British boat hadn't done the deed-till the Bonefish 's executive officer, in a political fight with Roger Kimball, broke the story in the papers to discredit him. The story said Kimball was living in Charleston, South Carolina.

And so Sylvia had taken a train down to Charleston. Customs at the border hadn't searched her luggage. Why should the Confederates have bothered? She looked like what she was: a widow in her thirties. That she also happened to be a widow in her thirties with a pistol in her suitcase had never crossed the Confederates' minds.

But she was. And when she got to Charleston and found out where Kimball lived, she'd knocked on his door and then fired several shots into him. She'd expected to spend the rest of her life in jail, or to hang, or to cook in an electric chair-she hadn't known how South Carolina disposed of murderers.

Instead, thanks to politics and thanks to an extraordinary woman named Anne Colleton, she found herself free and back in Boston. The CSA couldn't afford to be too hard on someone who killed a war criminal, she thought. And why? Because the United States are stronger than they are. That was heady as whiskey. Till the Great War, the CSA and England and France had called the tune. No more.

But, no matter how strong the United States were, they weren't strong enough to give her back her husband. The hole in her life, the hole in her family, would never heal. She had no choice but to go on from there.

A tall, skinny man in an expensive suit and homburg stopped in front of her, so that she either had to stop, too, or to run into him. "You're Sylvia Enos," he exclaimed. "I've been looking for you. Give me a moment of your time."

He didn't even say please. Sylvia's patience had worn thin. "Why should I?" she asked, and got ready to push past him. She reached up to fiddle with her hat. She had a hat pin with an artificial pearl at one end and a very sharp point at the other. Some men were interested in her for the sake of politics, others for other, murkier, reasons.

But this fellow proved one of the former sort. "Why? For the sake of your country, that's why." He had the map of Ireland on his face; the slightest hint of a brogue lay under his flat New England vowels.

"Look, whoever you are, I haven't got time for anything except my children, so if you'll excuse me-" She started forward. If he didn't get out of the way, maybe she'd use the hat pin whether he had designs on her person or not.

"My name is Kennedy, Mrs. Enos, Joe Kennedy," he said. "I'm the head of the Democratic Party in your ward."

No hat pin, then, except in an emergency. If she got on the wrong side of a politician, he could make life hard for her, and life was hard enough already. With a sigh, she said, "Speak your piece, then, Mr. Kennedy-though I don't know why you're bothering with me. After all, women can't vote in Massachusetts."

His answering smile was forced. The Democrats had always been less eager for women's suffrage than either the Socialists or what was left of the Republican Party. But he quickly rallied: "Do you want us weak, too weak to take our proper place in the world? If you do, the Socialist Party's the perfect place for you. They're trying to throw away everything we won in the war."

That did hit home. "What do you want from me, Mr. Kennedy? Tell me quickly, and I'll give you my answer, but I have to get home to my son and daughter."

Something glinted in his eyes. It made Sylvia half reach for the pin again. Kennedy wore a wedding ring, but Sylvia had long since seen how little that meant. Men got it where they could. George, she made herself remember, had been the same way. But all the ward leader said was, "An hour of your time at our next meeting would be very fine, to show you stand with us on the issues of the day."

He acted as if it were a small request, something where she wouldn't need to think twice before she said yes. But she shook her head. "You must be rich, to have hours you can throw around. When I'm not working, I'm cooking or minding the children. I'm sorry, but I've got no time to spare."

Kennedy's mouth tightened. He drummed the fingers of his right hand against his trouser leg. Sylvia got the feeling he wasn't used to hearing people tell him no. The vapor that steamed from his nostrils as he exhaled added to the impression. It also made him look a little like a demon.

But then, as suddenly as if he'd flipped the switch to an electric light, he gave Sylvia a bright smile. "If you like, my own wife will watch your children while you come. Rose would be glad to do it. She knows how important to the country winning the next election is."

That couldn't mean anything but, My wife will watch your children if I tell her to. Whatever it meant, it did put Sylvia in an awkward position. She said, "You know how to get what you want, don't you?"