"Amen!" Pound said, and then, a beat later, "Dibs on the girls." He held out his hands as if he were cupping breasts. The other officer laughed.

Truman arrived by airplane two days later. That was judged safer than traveling by train. Sabotaging railroad tracks was easy, but Confederate diehards didn't have much in the way of antiaircraft guns. Pound's barrel was one of the machines guarding the airport as the Vice President-elect's airliner touched down on the runway.

Pound stood up in the cupola and peered at Truman through binoculars. The Senator from Missouri wasn't young, but he walked with crisp stride and straight back: an almost military bearing. Fair enough-he'd been an artillery officer in the Great War. Not many healthy men in the USA had missed military service in one war or the other. Even fewer in what had been the CSA.

The Vice President-elect spoke in front of the state Capitol. They set up a podium and lectern for him by a palm tree on the lawn in front of the Italian Renaissance building. Sure enough, military policemen and female auxiliaries searched people in civilian clothes before letting them past rope lines half a mile from the podium. They also searched uniformed personnel. The war had shown that people had no trouble getting their hands on uniforms that didn't belong to them and doing unpleasant things in the other side's plumage.

What sort of Floridians would listen to the Vice President-elect of the USA? Michael Pound eyed them curiously. Some he recognized-collaborators. They figured they knew which side their bread was buttered on. There'd been some of that flexible breed north of the Ohio a couple of years earlier. They caught hell when they turned out to have guessed wrong. These plump fellows and their sleek women were less likely to be mistaken.

Others-more ordinary folks-seemed honestly curious. That gave Pound at least a little hope. If they could get used to the idea of being part of the USA…It'd take a miracle, and when was the last one you saw? the cynical part of his mind jeered. The rest of him had no good answer.

Colonel Einsiedel stepped up to the mike mounted on the lectern. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure and my privilege to present the Honorable Harry S Truman of Missouri, Vice President-elect of the United States of America."

Along with the other soldiers, Pound clapped till his palms stung. Applause from the local civilians seemed much more measured. Well, that was no surprise. Metal-framed eyeglasses gleaming in the sun, Truman looked out over the crowd. "If anybody would have told me ten years ago that I would come to Florida to speak to my country's soldiers here, I would have said he was crazy." To Pound's ear, shaped in the northern Midwest, Truman's Missouri twang had more than a little in common with the local drawl.

"Didn't Jake Featherston say, 'Give me five years, and you won't recognize the Confederate States'?" the Vice President-elect went on. His jaunty grin invited soldiers and locals alike to see the bitter joke. "Well, the man was right, but not quite the way he expected to be.

"And now the United States have to pick up the pieces. The buck stops with us. If we do this wrong, our grandchildren will be down here fighting guerrillas. If we do it right, maybe we can all remember that we started out as one country. We have a lot of things to put behind us before we're one country again, but we can try."

His voice toughened. "That doesn't mean the USA will be soft down here. You people who spent your lives as Confederates have no reason to love us, not yet. And we have to be careful about trusting you, too. You stained yourself with the darkest crime a people can commit, and too many of you aren't sorry enough. So things won't happen in a hurry, if they happen at all.

"But, for the past eighty-odd years, people in the USA and people in the CSA have all called themselves Americans. Maybe, if we work together, one day that will mean what it did before the War of Secession. Maybe it will mean we really are all part of the same country once again. I hope so, anyhow. That's what President Dewey and I will work for. We'll be as firm as we need to be. But we won't be any firmer than that. If people down here work with us, maybe we'll get where we ought to go. God grant we do."

He stepped away from the lectern. This time, the applause from the soldiers was less enthusiastic, that from the civilians more so. Pound didn't think it was a bad speech. Truman was setting out what he hoped would happen, not necessarily what he expected to happen. If the survivors in the CSA got rambunctious, the Army could always smash them.

The Vice President-elect didn't just go away. He plunged into the crowd, shaking hands and talking with soldiers and locals alike. Reading the ribbons on Michael Pound's chest, he said, "You had yourself a time, Lieutenant."

"Well, sir, that's one way to put it," Pound said.

"I just want you to know that what you're doing here is worthwhile," Truman said. "We have to hold this country down while we reshape it. It won't be easy. It won't be quick. It won't be cheap. But we've got to do it."

"What if we can't?" Pound asked.

"If we can't, some time around the turn of the century the new Vice President-elect will come down here to tell your grandson what an important job he's doing. And they'll still search the locals before they let them listen."

Pound had no children he knew about. The Army had been his life. But he understood what Truman was talking about. "What do you think of our chances?" he asked.

"I don't know." Truman didn't seem to have much patience with beating around the bush. "We've got to try, though. What other choice do we have?"

"Treating these people the way they treated their Negroes." Michael Pound sounded perfectly serious. He was. He faced the possibility of massacring twenty-odd million people as a problem of ways and means, not an enormity. The Army had been shooting hostages since it entered the CSA. Now the whole Confederacy was a hostage.

But Truman shook his head. "No. Not even these people will ever turn me into Jake Featherston. I'd sooner blow out my own brains." He passed on to another officer.

Had Pound worried about his career, he would have wondered if he'd just blighted it. He didn't. He could go on doing his job right where he was. Even if they busted him down to private for opening his big mouth, he could still help the country. And they wouldn't do that. He knew it. He had his niche. He fit it well. He aimed to stay in it as long as he could.

W inter in Riviиre-du-Loup started early and stayed late. After close to three years in warmer climes, Leonard O'Doull had to get used to the weather in the Republic of Quebec again. He tried not to grumble too loud. People here would just laugh at him. They took month after month of snow in stride. They'd never known anything else.

O'Doull had to get used to a new office, too. He hadn't sublet the other one when he rejoined the Army; he'd just let it go. He reached for things in places where they had been, only to find they were somewhere else. Little by little, he made such mistakes less often.

And he had to get used to a practice that wasn't nearly so frantic as what he had been doing. A sty on the eye or a boil on the butt hardly seemed exciting, not after all the quick and desperate surgery he'd performed. In a way, that was heartening. In another way…He felt like a man who'd gone from ten cups of coffee a day to none, all at once. Some of the energy had leaked out of his life.

His wife was convinced that was a good thing. "You're home. You can relax," she told him-and told him, and told him. After a while, he got better at pretending to believe her.

One freezing morning in early December, his receptionist said, "A Monsieur Quigley is here to see you." She made a hash of the name, as any Francophone would have. O'Doull had had to get used to speaking French again, too. That came back fast. These days, he sometimes switched languages without noticing he was doing it.