The Victorious opposition

"What is your name?" A

"Jenkins, ma'am. Rudy Jenkins," the soldier answered. "And you can report as much as you please, but I won't lose any sleep over it."

She thought about telling him where to go and how to get there in the sort of language he would use himself-thought about it and decided it would do no good. Oh, she intended to give his name to that stuffed pork chop in a brigadier general's uniform, but she was sure that would do her no good, either. Jenkins might get a public slap on the wrist, but he was bound to get some private congratulations along with it.

She turned to the driver. "Just take us on to the next stop. This fellow can laugh as much as he pleases, but he'll be leaving soon, and we're going to stay."

The driver fumed. But Rudy Jenkins fumed even more. A

Before she left the colored district, the auto picked up a couple of more dents. The driver plainly wanted to curse some more; her presence in the motorcar inhibited him. "To hell with these goddamn bastards," she said, her voice crisp. "From now on, no one will give a shit what they think. Right?"

"Uh, yes, ma'am." He sounded scandalized. She smiled; she'd heard a lot of men sound that way. On they went, to a new polling place in the white part of town. There, Freedom Party stalwarts waving Party flags paraded just outside the hundred-foot electioneering limit. The U.S. soldiers by the polling place looked as if they wanted to shoot the men in white shirts and butternut trousers. The stalwarts were careful not to give them an excuse.

A

Watching it progress, A

Wireless sets blared in the white-painted, windowless, smoke-filled room where the ballots were tallied. They let the counters and the observers keep track of what was going on in the rest of Kentucky and in the other states where there were plebiscites. Return to the CSA held the same sort of lead in Kentucky as a whole as it did in Covington-less than A

The tally in Covington finished about half past one. By then, A

Noisy chaos roiled through the rest of Covington, too, as she saw on the short trip back to her hotel. Freedom Party stalwarts and others who backed the CSA danced in the streets, waving Party flags, the Stars and Bars, and the Confederate battle flag. A lot of them were drunk. They cheered the Confederate flag on the aerial of A

A

She snatched a few hours' sleep. When she came downstairs for breakfast, she got a copy of the Covington Chronicle. The ba

UNTIED STATES!

A smaller subhead below gave the details:

After bacon and eggs and lots of coffee, A

A cup of coffee steamed on the fat officer's desk. He looked to have had even less sleep than she had. "The people are a bunch of damned fools," he said. "They elected Featherston, didn't they?"

"I don't talk about your president that way," she said.

"Why not? I do." The commandant swigged from the coffee cup. He got down to business: "Under the agreement, we have thirty days to withdraw our men. Yours are not to follow. Kentucky will stay demilitarized. U.S. citizens wishing to leave the state may do so until it passes under Confederate sovereignty. A lot of them, I expect, will already have made plans to do so."

"Collaborators and niggers," A

"They'll do all right for themselves in the United States," the U.S. general predicted. "And I'll give you-and your president-some free advice, too."

"Free advice?" A

She hoped that would make him angry. If it did, he didn't show it. He just nodded, setting his chins in motion, and said, "Oh, no doubt. Well, I'll give it to you anyway, mostly 'cause I know you won't listen to it."

A

"Thanks a lot." The U.S. officer wasn't bad at sarcasm, either, even if he was built like a zeppelin. "If you people are smart, you won't land on this state too hard. You won the plebiscite, yes. But you didn't win it by as much as you thought you would, and you can't tell me any different. If you come down on Kentucky with both feet, you'll have about as much fun holding it down as we have since the last war."

That made more sense than A

She also decided she would note the way-Rowling? she had to check that-had spoken of the last war. Unless she altogether misread his tone, he was already thinking about the next one.

As had been his habit since the days of the Mexican civil war, Jefferson Pinkard prowled the barracks in the prison camp he ran in Louisiana. Camp Dependable wouldn't boil over while his back was turned.

It might boil over anyway. He knew that. The black prisoners in the camp had little to lose. They'd been captured in arms against the Confederate States. Nothing good was going to happen to them. They only thing that kept them in line was the certain knowledge that they would die if they rose up against the guards. Jeff's endless prowling was designed not least to make sure they stayed certain of that.

Whenever he stepped into a barracks, he had a pistol in his hand and half a squad of guards with submachine guns at his back. The Negro captives jumped down from their bunks and sprang to attention as soon as he came in. They were certain of what would happen if they didn't show him that courtesy, too.