Anyone who'd listened to the gunplay the night before would have known the resistance was more than minor. And anyone who'd walked through that part of the Terry could see the cops had cleared out everybody, not just people without the right stamps in their passbooks. But how many white men were likely to do that? And how many were likely to give a damn if they did?

When Scipio got to the Huntsman's Lodge, he wasn't surprised to find Jerry Dover in a state. "We're missing a waiter, a cook, and a busboy!" Dover exclaimed. "No word, no nothing. They just aren't here. Three at once! That's crazy."

"Reckon this here gots somethin' to do wid it." Scipio showed him the Constitutionalist.

"Well, shit!" Dover said. "How the hell am I supposed to run a restaurant? Got to get on the phone, get those boys back where they belong." Off he went, to use what pull he and the Huntsman's Lodge had. Because he was doing that, Scipio hardly even minded the boys. But Dover returned with a fearsome scowl on his face. Pull or no pull, he'd plainly had no luck.

Aurelius nodded to Scipio when they bumped into each other in the kitchen. "I was afraid I wasn't gonna see you no more, Xerxes," the other waiter said.

"I been afeared o' the same thing 'bout you," Scipio answered. They clasped hands. Still here, Scipio thought. We're both still here. But for how much longer, if they start cleaning out whole chunks of the Terry at a time?

"The Star-Spangled Banner" blared from the wireless set in Chester Martin's living room. The announcer said, "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!"

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," Al Smith said. It was nine o'clock back East, but only six here in Los Angeles-evening in the autumn, yes, but just barely, especially since summer time stayed in force all year around now that the war was on. The President continued, "Some of the things I have to tell you are less pleasant than I wish they were, but this has never been a country that lived in fear of bad news. Unlike our enemies, we don't need to lie every time we open our mouths to keep our people in the fight."

At the kitchen table, Carl wrestled with arithmetic homework. To him, that was more important than anything the President had to say. Who was to say he didn't have the right attitude, either? Chester lit a cigarette and held out the pack to Rita. She shook her head. He set the pack on the little table by the sofa.

"Things in Virginia haven't gone as well as we wish they would have," Smith said. "If they had, we'd be in Richmond by now. But we have moved down from the Rappahannock to the Rapidan, and we haven't given up. We still hold the initiative."

Chester blew out a plume of smoke. He'd heard officers talk that way on the Roanoke front in the last war. Add things haven't gone as well as we wish and we haven't given up together, and what did you get? The answer was easier to figure out than Carl's arithmetic problems. What you got was simple-a hell of a lot of dead soldiers.

"I'm not claiming any great victories down there," the President continued. "But we've hurt the Confederate States, and we aim to go right on hurting them. I said when we declared war that they might have started this fight, but we were going to finish it. I said it, and I meant it, and I still mean it." The jaunty New York rasp in his voice made him sound all the more determined.

He paused and coughed. "There's something else you need to know about, something I wish I didn't have to tell you. It says a lot about the people we're at war with, and what it says isn't very pretty. You may have heard this before, but it's the truth, and not the garbage Jake Featherston puts out with that label on it. Those Freedom Party maniacs and butchers really are massacring Negroes. There's no doubt about it, and they're doing more of it, and worse, than even the Confederates have ever before.

"We know this is true because we have photographs that prove it. Some were taken by Negroes who escaped or who came upon piles of bodies before they were buried. Others were taken by Confederate murderers who were proud of what they did. I know that seems incredible, but it's the truth, too."

Chester looked over at Rita. She was also looking his way. Almost at the same time, they both shrugged. Not many Negroes lived in Los Angeles. Come to that, not many Negroes lived anywhere in the USA. Dealing with the ones who'd fled Kentucky when it returned to the CSA had stirred enough hard feelings. He might have been listening to a report about a flood in China. It was too bad, certainly, but it didn't affect him much.

The President tried hard to persuade him that it did: "We can't let people who do these terrible things beat us. Who knows where they would stop? Who knows if they would stop anywhere? We must show them that no one in the world will tolerate even for a moment the crimes against humanity they are committing. We have to stop them. We have to, and with your help and God's we will. Thank you, and good night."

"That was the President of the United States, Al Smith," the announcer said, as if anyone could have imagined it was, say, the mayor of St. Paul. "We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming." Music came out of the speaker.

"He's done better," Rita said.

"He sure has," Chester agreed. "It was like he was saying things weren't going so well in Virginia, so he'd give us something else to get all hot and bothered about. Except I don't think very many people will start flabbling about this."

"Why should we?" his wife said. "It's going on in another country-and when was the last time you saw a Negro around here, anyway?"

"I don't know. I was trying to think of that myself while he was talking," Chester said. "I couldn't-not right away, anyhow."

"I think there was a colored woman at the grocery store a few weeks ago," Rita said. "But she wasn't buying much. She looked like she was just passing through, not like she really lived around here."

"Once during the last war, I passed a Negro through our lines," Chester said. "I expect he was one of the blacks who rose up against the Confederates a little later on. Served 'em right, the way they treated Negroes even back then."

His wife nodded. "I suppose so. But when the colored people down there keep on fighting against the government, why would anybody think the government would want to give 'em a kiss?"

"Beats me," Chester said. "The Confederates treat their Negroes like dirt, so the Negroes raise Cain, and that makes the Confederates treat 'em worse. Of course, the Freedom Party would treat 'em bad no matter how they behave-I know that. It's a mess, yeah. But is it really our mess? I don't think so."

Rita nodded again. "That's a better way to put it. It's terrible, like you say, but it isn't really anybody's fault. It's… one of those things that happen."

Carl looked up from his homework. "Can I have a snack?" The President might have been talking about the cost of cauliflower for all the attention he'd paid to the speech.

"How much have you done?" Rita asked-Carl had been known not to pay too much attention to the homework, too.

He held up the sheet of cheap pulp paper-so cheap it was closer to tan than white, with little bits of wood that hadn't quite been pulped embedded here and there-he'd folded to make individual squares for all twelve problems. "More than half. See?"

"Have you done them right?" Chester asked. Carl nodded vigorously. "We'll check," Chester warned. "Arithmetic comes in handy all sorts of places. A builder like me needs it every day. Go on and have your snack-but then finish your work."

"I will, Dad." And, after Chester had inhaled half a dozen chocolate cookies and a glass of milk, he did buckle down. Fortified, Chester thought. His son waved the paper in triumph to show he'd finished.