He was bound to be right about the upcoming trials. How many people had helped shove Negroes into cattle cars? How many had run up barbed wire and put brick walls around colored districts in the CSA? How many had done, or might have done, all the things the Confederacy needed so it could turn massacre from a campaign promise to reality?

And what would they say now? I was at the front or I was working in a factory or I never liked the Freedom Party anyway. Some would be telling the truth. Some would be telling some of the truth. Some would be lying through their teeth. Sorting out who was who and giving the ones who deserved something what they deserved would take years. God only knew it would take plenty of lawyers, too.

"I don't think I'd want to defend Vern Green, say, any time soon," Moss said. The guard chief at the Texas camps Pinkard had run was on trial here, too, and it was a sure thing his neck would stretch along with his boss'. "One of these is about as much as I can stomach, at least from this side. Somebody where there really was some doubt about what he did…That might be a different story."

"Nobody wants to do many of these," the chief judge said. "I don't think you can do many of these, not if you're going to stay sane. We try not to drive our staff members loopy…on purpose. Think about it. You don't have to make up your mind right away. In fact, if you want to think about it over a drink down in the officers' club…God knows I need one, and I bet you do, too."

"Sir, that is the best idea I've heard in a long time," Moss said.

Whiskey probably didn't do much for the thought process. It worked wonders on Moss' attitude, though. And attitude mattered here at least as much as actual thought. Was this what he wanted to do with the rest of his working life?

Halfway down the second drink, he asked, "Will the Judge Advocate's staff handle claims by Negroes against whites in the CSA?"

"I don't know." The chief judge looked startled. "There'll sure be some, won't there?"

"Only way there'd be more was if more Negroes lived," Moss answered. "But if you're involved in that, count me in. And if you're not, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I can't think of anything down here that needs doing more."

"Now that you mention it, neither can I," the chief judge said.

He'd sentenced Jefferson Pinkard to hang. That was his-and the USA's-obligation to the dead. That the USA might also have an obligation to the living didn't seem to have crossed his mind till now. Moss wondered how many other important people's minds it also hadn't crossed. Too many-he was sure of that. People in the USA kept doing their best not to think about Negroes or have anything to do with them, the same as they had ever since the CSA seceded.

Moss finished that second drink and waved for another one. He was also sure of something else. He was sure he'd found himself a new cause.

W hat happened to your legs?" By the way the girl at Miss Lucy's eyed Michael Pound, he might have come down with a horrible social disease.

He shrugged. "I got caught in a burning barrel."

"Oh." She was about twenty-five, cute enough even if she wasn't gorgeous, and plainly not long on brains. "That must not have been much fun."

"Sweetheart, you said a mouthful. And speaking of which…" Pound gestured. With a small sigh, the girl dropped to her knees.

He liked officers' brothels a hell of a lot better than the ones enlisted men had to use. The girls were prettier. Nobody hurried you here, either. That was best of all. He could take his time and enjoy it. He could, and he did.

Afterwards, he left the girl-her name was Betty-a couple of dollars for herself. "You don't need to say anything to Miss Lucy about 'em."

"Well, I'll try. But when it comes to cash, that old bitch has a Y-ranging set like you wouldn't believe." Betty spoke with more resignation than rancor.

Pound got back into his uniform. "See you again, maybe," he said. She nodded. If she was enthusiastic, she hid it very well. She didn't mind his money, but she sure wasn't thrilled about him.

Well, he was old enough to be her father. And he was a damnyankee. And she was a whore and he was a trick. That left it fourth down and time to punt.

Miss Lucy's had a bar, too-one more amenity enlisted men's brothels didn't enjoy. Maybe the assumption was that officers wouldn't get plastered and smash whiskey bottles over each other's heads. From everything Pound had seen, whoever made that assumption was an optimist.

Things seemed peaceable enough in there now. Pound stepped in and asked for a whiskey over ice. "Comin' up," said the woman behind the bar. She was one of the working girls; maybe she had her monthlies or something.

"Thanks," he said when she gave it to him. "Did this place have a regular bartender back before the war?"

"Sure did. But Hadrian, he, uh, don't work here no more."

"Right." Pound knocked back the drink. The booze wasn't bad, but it tasted foul in his mouth. With a name like Hadrian, the ex-bartender had probably been colored. And the odds that he was dead now were pretty damn good. Pound set the glass on the bar. "Let me have another one."

"Sure will." The woman poured whiskey into a fresh glass and added a couple of ice cubes. "Boy, you drank that last one in a hurry."

"Yeah," Pound said. She didn't know what was eating him. She didn't have the faintest idea, as a matter of fact. That she didn't was a measure of the CSA's damnation.

Two good knocks of whiskey made Pound a little less graceful on his burned legs than he would have been without them. He walked back to BOQ through deepening twilight. There was a nip in the air. Tallahassee lay in the northern part of Florida; it got cool in the wintertime, unlike places farther south.

But the weather wasn't the biggest thing on his mind. His head kept going back and forth. He wished he had an eye that would let him see to the rear. This was the time of day when U.S. soldiers got knocked over the head. By the time anyone found them, the bushwhackers were long gone. That didn't keep hostages from being taken and shot, but killing innocent people also made the guerrillas have an easier time recruiting.

He got back to BOQ without any trouble. Most people did, most of the time. Anything that could happen, though, could happen to you. Anybody who didn't understand that never went to war. Being careless-being stupid-made living to a ripe old age less likely. Pound aspired to getting shot by an outraged husband at the age of 103.

When he went to breakfast the next morning, he realized something was up. He didn't know what; Colonel Einsiedel wasn't letting on. Something was cooking, though. A few people in the know were all excited about it, whatever it was. Pound and the others who noticed that tried to get it out of them. The rest of the officers shoveled in bacon and eggs, oblivious to the drama around them.

The double-chinned major sitting next to Pound was one of those. "Dammit, they should have had hash browns," he complained. "I don't like grits." He might not have liked them, but he'd put away a good-sized helping.

Pound didn't like them, either. He also hadn't taken any. He'd doubled up on toast instead. To him, that was simple common sense. It seemed beyond the major.

Dear God! How did we win the war? he thought. That answer seemed only too obvious. There were just as many thumb-fingered, blundering idiots on this side of the former border as on the other one. No matter where you went, you couldn't escape the dullards. Life would have been easier and happier if you could.

That afternoon, the other shoe dropped. Harry Truman was coming to Tallahassee to talk to the troops and to any locals who wanted to listen to him. An officer who was with Pound when the news got out knew exactly what he thought of that: "They better frisk these bastards before they let 'em within rifle range of the guy."