"What is your name?" Anne demanded. "I'm going to report you to your commanding officer."

"Jenkins, ma'am. Rudy Jenkins," the soldier answered. "And you can report as much as you please, but I won't lose any sleep over it."

She thought about telling him where to go and how to get there in the sort of language he would use himself-thought about it and decided it would do no good. Oh, she intended to give his name to that stuffed pork chop in a brigadier general's uniform, but she was sure that would do her no good, either. Jenkins might get a public slap on the wrist, but he was bound to get some private congratulations along with it.

She turned to the driver. "Just take us on to the next stop. This fellow can laugh as much as he pleases, but he'll be leaving soon, and we're going to stay."

The driver fumed. But Rudy Jenkins fumed even more. Anne nodded to herself. She'd done that right.

Before she left the colored district, the auto picked up a couple of more dents. The driver plainly wanted to curse some more; her presence in the motorcar inhibited him. "To hell with these goddamn bastards," she said, her voice crisp. "From now on, no one will give a shit what they think. Right?"

"Uh, yes, ma'am." He sounded scandalized. She smiled; she'd heard a lot of men sound that way. On they went, to a new polling place in the white part of town. There, Freedom Party stalwarts waving Party flags paraded just outside the hundred-foot electioneering limit. The U.S. soldiers by the polling place looked as if they wanted to shoot the men in white shirts and butternut trousers. The stalwarts were careful not to give them an excuse.

Anne went from one polling place to another till the polls closed at eight o'clock. Then the driver took her to the Covington city hall, where the votes would be counted. As at the polling places, both the USA and the CSA had observers present to make sure the count went straight.

Watching it progress, Anne found more people in Covington voting to stay in the United States than she would have liked: certainly more than the Negro vote-and what a mad notion that was!-accounted for. Some of the whites who'd grown up in the USA must have been too lazy to want a change. Even so, returning to the Confederacy took an early lead in Covington, and never lost it.

Wireless sets blared in the white-painted, windowless, smoke-filled room where the ballots were tallied. They let the counters and the observers keep track of what was going on in the rest of Kentucky and in the other states where there were plebiscites. Return to the CSA held the same sort of lead in Kentucky as a whole as it did in Covington-less than Anne would have liked, but plenty to win. Houston was going for the CSA in a rout: better than three to one. Sequoyah… Sequoyah gave the damnyankees something to smile about, because the people there seemed to be choosing to stay in the United States.

The tally in Covington finished about half past one. By then, Anne's driver had fallen asleep in a folding chair. She eyed him in some admiration; she didn't think she could have done that in a quiet room, let alone in the noisy chaos at city hall. He jerked and almost fell out of the chair when she shook him awake again. She was sorry about that, but not sorry enough to keep from doing it.

Noisy chaos roiled through the rest of Covington, too, as she saw on the short trip back to her hotel. Freedom Party stalwarts and others who backed the CSA danced in the streets, waving Party flags, the Stars and Bars, and the Confederate battle flag. A lot of them were drunk. They cheered the Confederate flag on the aerial of Anne's battered auto. Somehow, the cheers turned into a rousing chorus of "Dixie."

Anne wondered if the celebrants would go into the colored district and take their revenge on Covington's Negroes for voting to stay in the USA-or for having the nerve to vote at all. Maybe the U.S. soldiers who still patrolled the town would keep them from doing that. But any Negroes who stayed in Covington after Kentucky changed hands wouldn't have a happy time of it. Anne supposed a lot of them would go while the going was good. The United States are welcome to them, she thought.

She snatched a few hours' sleep. When she came downstairs for breakfast, she got a copy of the Covington Chronicle. The banner headline summed things up:

A smaller subhead below gave the details:

After bacon and eggs and lots of coffee, Anne paid a call on the U.S. commandant in Covington. "The people have spoken, Brigadier General," she said-and if she was gloating, she thought she had good reason to.

A cup of coffee steamed on the fat officer's desk. He looked to have had even less sleep than she had. "The people are a bunch of damned fools," he said. "They elected Featherston, didn't they?"

"I don't talk about your president that way," she said.

"Why not? I do." The commandant swigged from the coffee cup. He got down to business: "Under the agreement, we have thirty days to withdraw our men. Yours are not to follow. Kentucky will stay demilitarized. U.S. citizens wishing to leave the state may do so until it passes under Confederate sovereignty. A lot of them, I expect, will already have made plans to do so."

"Collaborators and niggers," Anne said scornfully. "You can have 'em."

"They'll do all right for themselves in the United States," the U.S. general predicted. "And I'll give you-and your president-some free advice, too."

"Free advice?" Anne didn't laugh in his face, but she came close. "I'm sure it's worth every penny you charge for it."

She hoped that would make him angry. If it did, he didn't show it. He just nodded, setting his chins in motion, and said, "Oh, no doubt. Well, I'll give it to you anyway, mostly 'cause I know you won't listen to it."

Anne could simply have turned her back and walked out the door. Instead, with ill-concealed impatience, she said, "Go ahead, then. Get it over with."

"Thanks a lot." The U.S. officer wasn't bad at sarcasm, either, even if he was built like a zeppelin. "If you people are smart, you won't land on this state too hard. You won the plebiscite, yes. But you didn't win it by as much as you thought you would, and you can't tell me any different. If you come down on Kentucky with both feet, you'll have about as much fun holding it down as we have since the last war."

That made more sense than Anne wished it did-enough that she decided to mention it in her report to President Featherston. She wouldn't suggest that he follow the fat man's advice; she knew better. But noting it as an item of intelligence wouldn't hurt.

She also decided she would note the way-Rowling? she had to check that-had spoken of the last war. Unless she altogether misread his tone, he was already thinking about the next one.

As had been his habit since the days of the Mexican civil war, Jefferson Pinkard prowled the barracks in the prison camp he ran in Louisiana. Camp Dependable wouldn't boil over while his back was turned.

It might boil over anyway. He knew that. The black prisoners in the camp had little to lose. They'd been captured in arms against the Confederate States. Nothing good was going to happen to them. They only thing that kept them in line was the certain knowledge that they would die if they rose up against the guards. Jeff's endless prowling was designed not least to make sure they stayed certain of that.

Whenever he stepped into a barracks, he had a pistol in his hand and half a squad of guards with submachine guns at his back. The Negro captives jumped down from their bunks and sprang to attention as soon as he came in. They were certain of what would happen if they didn't show him that courtesy, too.