"Nothin' dumb about him," Jeff answered. "You show him somethin' once, you tell him somethin' once, you don't need to do it twice, on account of he remembers it and does it right his own self."

"Uh-huh," Fitzcolville grunted, as if Pinkard had said something alto gether damning.

Mulcahy kept on with his questions, steadily, imperturbably: "He ever talk about anything political while the two of you was working together?"

"Political?" Pinkard paused for a bite of cornbread. "What the hell kind of politics is a nigger supposed to have? It ain't like he can vote or nothin'."

"Oh, niggers have politics, all right," Mulcahy said. "Red politics, too damn many of 'em. This Pericles, he ever talk about how the war was going or how the war was changing things here back at home?"

Red politics. Emily had said something like that, and he hadn't taken it seriously. The Birmingham police did. Jeff said, "We was talkin' one time about how, after Herb Wallace got hisself killed in the war, the Sloss folks threw his widow out of factory housing here. Pericles didn't reckon that was fair."

"Uh-huh," Fitzcolville said again, and scrawled more notes.

"You gonna call him a Red for that?" Pinkard demanded. "You better call me a Red right at the same time, 'cause I think it stinks like shit, too, what they done to Daisy. Here her husband's gone and got killed for the sake of the fat cats up in Richmond, and they throw her out of her place like a dog. You call that the way things oughta be?"

He'd gone too far. He could see it by the way the two policemen stared at him-stared through him, really. "Maybe you are a Red," Mulcahy said, "but I doubt it. Most of the ones who are have too much sense to run off at the mouth like you do. 'Sides, white men can pretty much say what they please- it's a free country. Niggers, now, we gotta watch niggers."

"I been watchin' this crazy damnfool nigger Leonidas every goddamn minute of the mornin' shift," Pinkard said. "You give me a choice between him and Pericles, I'll take Pericles every goddamn time. When he's here, he does his job. I don't know what he does when he ain't here, and I don't care."

"That's not your job," Mulcahy said. "It is our job, and we've found this nigger tied up in all sorts of stuff niggers got no business sticking their noses into."

"Whatever else he is, he's a steel man," Jeff answered. "Steel he's helped make, I reckon it's done more to hurt the damnyankees than anything else he's done has hurt us."

The two policemen looked at each other. Maybe they hadn't thought of it like that. Maybe, too, they just didn't care for the idea of a white man speak ing up for a black. That second maybe soon proved the true one, for Mulcahy said, "You like that nigger pretty well, don't you?"

Pinkard surged to his feet. "Get out of here," he said, his voice thick with anger and cornbread both. Both policemen gave back a step, too. The foundry floor was no place for anyone unused to it to feel comfortable, either. Jeff had an advantage, and he used it. "You got a lot o' damn nerve, you know that? Callin' me a nigger-lover like I ain't a proper white man. Go on, get the hell out."

"Didn't mean it like that, Pinkard," Bob Mulcahy said. "Just trying to get to the bottom of who all this damn nigger's been messing with."

"He ain't messed much with me, and he know what he's doin', too, not like this lamebrained halfwit they saddled me with now that you took him away," Pinkard said. "Pretty soon, way things look, they're gonna drag my ass off to war -hell of a lot o' white men gone already. You want to keep makin' steel, it's gonna be niggers doin' the work, mostly. Maybe you ought to think about stuff like that a little more often, 'fore you start haulin' hard-workin' bucks off to the jailhouse for no reason at all."

"We've been thinking about it," Bill Fitzcolville said, proving he did have more words in him than ub-bub. "Don't like the answers we get, neither."

"But this here Pericles, we got him dead to rights," Mulcahy said. "Found all kinds of subversive literature at his house: Marx and Engels and Lincoln and Haywood and I don't know who all else. Niggers ain't allowed to have that kind of stuff. He'll spend a while cooling off in jail, that's for damn sure. We're trying to track down how much damage he's done, is what we're doing here."

"Like I said, he ain't done me any damage I know of," Pinkard said. The policemen shrugged and left. But he didn't think that meant he was going to get Pericles back any time soon. He'd just have to go and see if he couldn't turn Leonidas into something a little bit like a steelworker. The odds were against him; he could see that much already. He sighed. Life could be a real pisser sometimes, no two ways about it.

C aptain Elijah Franklin stuck out his hand. "We're going to miss you here, Moss," he said. The pilots and observers in Jonathan Moss' squadron all nodded. So did the mechanics. Moss knew why Lefty would miss him: no more easy pickings at the poker table.

"I'll miss you, too, sir, and everybody else here," he said. "But I've been sort of a fifth wheel ever since Percy got hurt, and when this chance to transfer came along, it looked too good to pass up."

"Fighting scouts? I should say so," Stanley McClintock said. He twiddled with one of the waxed spikes of his mustache. "You never did like the idea of company in your aeroplane, did you?"

"Why, darling, I didn't know you'd miss me that way," Moss said archly. The laugh he got let him slide over the fact that McClintock had a point. He'd been the one who'd complained longest and hardest about the introduction of the two-seater Wright 17s. In the old Super Hudsons, you had nobody but yourself to blame if you made a mistake up there. The new fighting scouts were like that, too. You did what you did and, if you did it right, you lived and you got to keep on doing it. If not, it was your own damn fault, no one else's.

People crowded round him, pressing chocolate and flasks of brandy and whiskey into his pockets. They slapped him on the back and wished him luck. McClintock wasn't the only one who looked jealous. If you did your job in a two-seater, your observer took his pictures and you came home and got them developed. If you did your job in a fighting scout, you shot down enemy aeroplanes, and soldiers in the trenches shouted their heads off for you. So did reporters. If you shot down enough enemy aeroplanes, people back home shouted their heads off for you.

"Come on, let's go," Lefty said. Moss shouldered his duffel bag and climbed into the Ford that did duty as squadron transport. Unlike models that came off the assembly line, this one had been modified to boast an electric starter button on the dashboard. Lefty mashed it with his thumb. The engine thundered to life. As they rolled away from the aerodrome, Lefty handed Moss a pair of dice. "You ever get in a hot crap game where you need some sevens in a hurry, these are the babies to have."

Moss stared down at the ivory cubes in the palm of his hand. Lefty doubt less meant them for a thoughtful going-away present. They made him thoughtful, all right. He thought about what a profitable time Lefty had had ever since the squadron went into Canada.

As if reading his mind, the mechanic said, "I never use 'em myself, and nobody'll ever be able to prove I do. Same goes for poker, Lieutenant, in case you're wondering. Know what you're doing and you'll never need to cheat."

By which, he was saying Moss didn't know what he was doing at cards or dice. He probably knew what he was talking about, too.

The Ford rattled along. The road was nothing to boast about, which made the motorcar's big wheels and high ground clearance all the more valuable. Nothing in American-held Ontario was anything to boast about, though. Every inch had been fought over, every inch wrecked. What had been little farms by the side of the road were now cratered ground and rubble, with hardly a house standing. Here and there, skinny people came out of ruins to glower at the automobile as it rolled past.