“All right.” Featherston surprised himself by how mildly he spoke. Every once in a while, somebody who looked and sounded like a nut turned out not to be one after all. This felt like one of those times. “If the damnyankees are interested in this uranium stuff, too, there must be something to it. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, sir, not for sure. I don’t know whether we can isolate U-235, how long doing it would take, or how much it would cost. There also seems to be a possibility that U-238 can be transmuted-”

“Can be what?” Jake wished the prof would stop talking like a prof.

“Changed,” FitzBelmont said patiently. “Maybe it can be changed into another element that will also explode. Theory seems to suggest the possibility. I know less about this than I do about U-235. There is much more U-238, so the second possibility would be advantageous to us. But I am certain of one thing.”

“Oh? And what’s that?” Jake asked, as the physics professor surely wanted him to do. Usually, he manipulated. Not today; not right now.

Henderson V. FitzBelmont moved in for the kill, an intellectual tiger on the prowl: “If the enemy succeeds in acquiring this weapon and we do not, I fail to see how our cause can avoid disaster.”

Jake thought about it. Twenty thousand times as strong as TNT? One bomb and no more city? The USA with eight or ten of those bombs and the CSA with none? A fleet of Yankee bombers had done horrible things to Fort Worth and Dallas, catching the Texas towns by surprise. That wouldn’t happen again. The officer who’d been asleep at the switch now made his reports in hell; those bombers had made him pay for his mistake. But if the USA didn’t need a fleet of bombers, if one airplane would do the job… Nobody could stop every single goddamn airplane.

“Figure out what you need, Professor,” Jake said heavily. “Money, machinery, people-whatever it is, you’ll get it. I want the list as fast as you can shoot it to me. No more than two weeks, you hear?”

“Uh, yes, sir.” FitzBelmont sounded more than a little dazed. He lost a point in Jake’s book on account of that. If he’d really believed in this, he would have pulled that list out of his briefcase now. Maybe he hadn’t believed he could persuade the President of the CSA. Featherston hoped that was it.

He accompanied FitzBelmont out of his subterranean sanctum, as he had Ferd Koenig a little while before. After the physics professor left, Jake turned to Lulu and said, “Get on the horn to General Potter. Tell him I want to see him here ten minutes ago.”

“Yes, Mr. President.” She didn’t bat an eye. She never did. “Can I tell him what this is in reference to?”

“Nope. I’ll take care of that when he gets here.”

“Yes, Mr. President.” Lulu knew what was always the right answer.

Featherston endured a delegation of Freedom Party officials from Alabama and Mississippi going on about how they needed more men and more guns to help keep their smoldering Negro rebellions from bursting into flames. Since Jake couldn’t possibly give them more men, he promised them more guns, and hoped he wasn’t crossing his fingers on the promise. They seemed satisfied as they went away. Whether he could keep them satisfied… I’ll do my goddamnedest, that’s all.

Clarence Potter came in next. Somebody in the waiting room down the hall was bound to be madder than hell. Too bad, the President thought. Without preamble, he barked, “What do you know about Henderson V. FitzBelmont and uranium?” Sweet Jesus Christ, he thought. Till FitzBelmont came here last year, I’d never even heard of the shit. I wish I still hadn’t.

“Ah,” Potter said. “Has he convinced you?”

“He sure as hell has,” Jake answered. “How about you?”

“I’m no scientist,” Potter warned. Jake made an impatient noise. Potter made an apologetic gesture. “Yes, sir, he’s convinced me, too. Sooner or later, somebody’s going to be able to make a hell of a bang with that stuff. If it’s sooner, and if it’s the damnyankees, we’ve got us some big worries.”

“That’s how it looks to me, too,” Featherston said unhappily. He pointed at Potter. “How the hell did you find out about that place in Washington? That’s as far from here as it can be.”

“It’s in the U.S. budget-a lot of money, and no details at all about what the Yankees are spending it on,” the Intelligence officer replied. “Spotting the combination sent up a red flag.”

“Good,” Jake said. “Nice to know somebody in your outfit wouldn’t blow his brains out if he farted, by God. Now the next question is, how did you get the pictures of that place for FitzBelmont to look at? I didn’t think our spy airplanes could fly that far, and I reckon the USA’d shoot ’em down most of the time even if they could.”

“Yes, Mr. President, I agree with you-that’s what would have happened if we’d taken off from Texas or Sonora,” Potter said. “And we would have given away our interest in the area, too. So we didn’t do that. Our man in western Washington rented a crop duster at a local airstrip. Nobody paid any attention to him, and he got his photos.”

Jake Featherston guffawed. “Good. That’s goddamn good. But we won’t be able to do it again anytime soon, though.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Potter said, nodding.

“We found out what we need to know, so we don’t have to worry about putting the damnyankees’ backs up by trying it again,” Jake said, and Clarence Potter nodded once more. The President aimed his finger like a rifle. “We’ve got to keep the USA from finding out that we know what they’re up to, and from finding out we’re up to the very same thing ourselves. Whatever your super-duper top-secret security business is, use everything you’ve got and then some on whatever has anything to do with uranium.”

“I’ve already given those orders, sir,” Potter said. “Minimum possible in writing, and code phrases all through instead of the name of the metal. No telephone discussion at all-never can tell who might be listening. You did that just right when you had your secretary call me.”

“Thanks,” Jake said. “Uranium! Who would’ve thunk it?” He would have bet money Henderson V. FitzBelmont was a nut. He would have bet big-and he would have lost his shirt.

Scipio felt like a ghost, rattling around in a nearly empty part of the Terry. His family wasn’t the only one in the area to have survived the cleanout, but there weren’t many. A few others had got advance warning, but only a few-the ones that had good connections with white folks one way or another.

Nobody knew where the people who’d been evacuated had gone-or rather, had been taken. They’d just… vanished. No cards, no letters, no photographs came back to Augusta. Maybe the deportees who could write didn’t have the chance. Maybe the C.S. authorities weren’t letting them. Or maybe they were simply dead.

For the handful who remained, life got harder. The authorities shut off electricity and gas in the depopulated areas. The water still ran. Maybe that was only an absentminded mistake, or maybe the people who ran Augusta kept it on so they could put out fires if they had to. Scipio had nobody he could ask.

He did ask Jerry Dover where the deportees went. The white man looked him in the eye and said, “I have no idea.”

“Could you find out, suh?” Scipio asked. “It do weigh on my mind.”

The manager of the Huntsman’s Lodge shook his head. “No, I’m not about to ask. Some answers are dangerous. Hell, some questions are dangerous. Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“No, suh,” Scipio answered unhappily. “Don’t reckon you do.”

“All right, then.” Dover hesitated before adding, “Sometimes finding out is worse than wondering. You know what I mean?”

Had the white man not told him to bring his family when he came to work that one night, they would have found out. Scipio didn’t think the answer would have made them happy. They might yet learn from the inside out, and so might he. He didn’t want to.