If Chattanooga had held, they still might have had a chance. Chattanooga was the cork in the bottle. U.S. paratroopers had yanked the cork. Now the damnyankees could spill out into the heart of the Confederacy, into country that hadn’t seen Yankee invaders even in the War of Secession.

And the enemy knew it, too. It didn’t do any more to expect U.S. generals to stay half a step behind their opposite numbers in butternut. The United States banged through the improvised C.S. lines in northwestern Georgia…oh, not with the greatest of ease, but not with the kind of effort that ruined them, either. They could bang some more whenever and wherever they chose to.

Meanwhile, General Patton was trying to piece together another line. This one, of necessity, was longer than the one centered on Snodgrass Hill. It was also weaker. Fewer men and barrels were doing their damnedest to cover more ground. Their damnedest, Potter feared, wouldn’t be good enough.

His own brigade was stationed near Calhoun, Georgia, defending the line of the Oostanaula and Coosawattee Rivers. He wished the rivers were as wide as their names were long. But even if they were, how much difference would it make? The Yankees had crossed the Ohio and the Cumberland. They would be able to deal with obstacles like these.

Right now, they weren’t trying very hard. Their artillery and his fired at each other across the rivers. Not a half hour went by when his brigade didn’t take at least one casualty. Replacements trickled in more slowly. He would have bet the commander of the U.S. outfit to the north didn’t have that worry.

His stomach started to knot up when General Patton paid him a call. He feared he knew what Patton would want, and he was right. “How soon do you think your brigade can be ready to strike a blow for-”

“Freedom?” Potter interrupted, turning the Party slogan into a jeer.

Patton turned red. “You still don’t have the proper attitude, Potter.”

“That’s a matter of opinion, sir,” Potter replied. “I don’t think we can win the war any more, not on the battlefield.” He thought about U-235 and Professor FitzBelmont. If the Confederacy still had hope, it lay there. Did Patton know about uranium bombs? Potter hoped not. He went on, “Seems to me what we ought to do now is try not to lose it on the battlefield.”

“You’re a defeatist. I’ll report you to the President,” Patton snarled.

Such a threat would have chilled the blood of ninety-nine percent of the officers in the Confederate Army. Potter yawned in Patton’s face. “Go ahead. He knows how I feel.”

Patton stared at him. “Then why doesn’t he throw you in irons, the way you deserve?”

“Because he knows I think with my head, not with my heart or my balls,” Potter answered. “It’s really a useful technique. You ought to try it one of these days…sir.”

“You can go too far, General,” Patton warned. “Watch yourself.”

“Sir, you can do whatever you please to me, and I really don’t care. I’m Clarence Potter, and I’m here to tell you the truth.” Potter appropriated President Featherston’s phrase with malicious glee. Patton gaped at him. Smiling a chilly smile, Potter went on, “We can’t afford the head-knocking style you’ve been using. What will it take to make you see that? The damnyankees in Atlanta? In Savannah, on the ocean? In Mobile, on the Gulf of Mexico? From where I sit, you’re greasing the skids to get them there.”

“How dare you say such a thing to me?” Patton thundered. “How dare you? I’ll have you court-martialed and drummed out of the Army, so help me God I will!”

“Good luck,” Potter said. “I’ve got a Stonewall in my pocket that says you can’t do it.” He took out the goldpiece and tossed it up and down. “Worse thing that’ll happen is that the President’ll overrule the court and order me back to Richmond. My bet is, he’ll overrule the court and keep me right here.”

His calm voice must have held conviction. Patton stood there breathing hard, his cheeks a mottled and furious red. Then, suddenly, he lashed out and slapped Potter in the face. While Potter was grabbing-successfully-for his glasses, Patton ground out, “All right, you son of a bitch! Will you meet me on the field of honor tomorrow morning? Have you honor? One of us will go down in history as a casualty of war, and the other will be able to continue the campaign as he thinks best.”

He was dead serious. He was also deadly serious, his hands hovering near the fancy pistols he wore on each hip. He looked ready-more than ready-to plug Potter on the spot. Replacing his spectacles on his nose, Potter said, “As challenged party, I believe I have the choice of weapons, sir?”

Patton actually bowed. Did he imagine himself a knight in shining armor? Hadn’t he got that idiocy knocked out of him during the Great War? Evidently not, for he was courtesy itself as he replied, “That is correct, sir. Pistols, swords, rifles at long range if you prefer a contest of skill…I am entirely at your disposal in that regard.”

“I’d like to choose horse turds at five paces to show you what a fool you are,” Potter said.

“Do not make a mockery of this, General. I will not abide it,” Patton warned. “I have challenged; you have accepted. The weapons must be lethal.”

“I just said I’d like to. I didn’t say I would,” Potter answered. “Lethal, is it? All right, sir. I’ll give you lethal weapons, and see how you like it.” By the carnivorous smile on Patton’s face, he expected to like it very much. Then Potter said, “I choose flamethrowers at ten paces.”

General Patton’s jaw dropped. Some of the high color left his face. “You are joking,” he got out with some effort.

“Not me,” Potter said. “Isn’t that lethal enough to suit you? We’ll both be burnt meat in nothing flat. Well, sir? You wanted a duel. I goddamn well gave you one. Do you still want it?”

For a horrible moment, he thought Patton would say yes. His superior might be furious enough to immolate himself if he could take the man he hated with him. But Patton, though his lips drew back from his teeth in a furious grimace, shook his head. Nobody who’d ever seen what a flamethrower could do wanted one to do it to him. Back in gaslight days, a moth would sometimes fly into the flame of a lamp. That was about what jellied gasoline did to a man.

Then, to Potter’s amazement, George Patton started to laugh. “By God, General, you have more spunk than I gave you credit for!”

He admires me, Potter thought, more bemused yet. I made myself into a bigger jackass than he did, and he admires me for it. Some of the Austro-Hungarian alienists who were probing the shape of man’s psyche would probably have had some interesting things to say about that. Wearily, Potter said, “The United States are the enemy, sir. You’re not, and I’m not, either. They’re the ones we’ve got to lick-and the ones we’ve got to keep from licking us.”

“Well said! Very well said!” In a final surreal touch, Patton bowed again. “Please accept my apologies for the slap and the insult. While I was provoked, I see now that I was hasty.”

“I’ll let it go.” But Potter had enough of the old code in him-and enough pride-to go on resenting what Patton had done. Aiming a flamethrower at him would have been a treat. It would, unfortunately, have been a last treat.

Patton, perhaps still unnerved, made what was for him an astonishing choice: he condescended to ask, “Since you seem unhappy with my plans for engaging the Yankees, General, what would you do instead?”

“Fight for time,” Potter answered at once, thinking again of Professor FitzBelmont and U-235. How far were he and his crew from building a bomb that could give the CSA a fighting chance again? And how far were their U.S. counterparts from building a bomb that would end all the Confederacy’s chances?

“You will perhaps understand a campaign needs more detailed goals and objectives than that.” Patton could have sounded snotty. In fact, he did; that was part of his nature. But he didn’t sound anywhere near as snotty as he might have, and Potter gave him reluctant credit for it.