want to build aeroplane carriers, they are not forbidden to do so. When the agreements were framed, no one took this class of ship seriously.'
'That's too bad,' Carsten said.
'I think so, too,' Grady repeated. 'Nothing I can do about it, though. Nothing you can do about it, either.'
Carsten looked southwest, in the direction of the Confederacy. 'Wonder how long it'll be before the Rebels have one of these babies.' Then he looked east. 'Wonder how long it'll be before England and France do, too.'
'It'll take the Rebs a while, and the frogs, too, I expect,' Commander Grady said. 'We're sitting on the CSA, and Kaiser Bill is sitting on France. England… I don't know about England. They didn't have the war brought home to them, not the way the Confederates and the French did. Yeah, they got hungry, and the Royal Navy finally ended up fighting out of its weight, but they weren't whipped-you know what I mean?'
'Yes, sir,' Sam said.
Grady went on as if he hadn't spoken: 'And from Australia through India and Africa, they're still cocks o' the walk. If they decide they want to get even and they find some friends…' His laugh was anything but mirthful. 'Sounds like the way we won this last war, doesn't it, Carsten? We decided we were going to get even, and we cozied up to the German Empire. I hope to God it doesn't work for them ten years down the line, or twenty, or thirty.'
'Yes, sir,' Sam said again. 'I guess we just have to do our best to keep ahead of them, that's all.' He sighed. 'I wonder where all this ends, or if it ever ends.'
'Only way I can see it ending is if we ever figure out how to blow a whole country clean off the map,' Grady said. He slapped Sam on the back. 'I don't figure that'll happen any time soon, if it ever does. We'll have work to do for as long as we want it, the two of us.'
'That'd be good, sir,' Carsten said equably. 'That's the big reason I wanted to transfer to the Remembrance. As soon as they bombed us off Argentina, I knew aeroplanes were going to stay important for a long, long time.'
'You're a sharp bird, Carsten,' Grady said. 'I was glad to see you get that promotion at the end of ' 16. You're too sharp to have stayed an able seaman for as long as you did. If you were as pushy as you're sharp, you'd be an officer by now.'
'An officer? Me?' Carsten started to laugh, but Commander Grady wasn't the first person who'd told him he thought like one. He shrugged. 'I like things the way they are pretty well. I've got enough trouble telling myself what to do, let alone giving other people orders.'
Grady chuckled. 'There's more to being an officer than giving orders, though I don't suppose it looks that way to the ratings on the receiving end. I think you've got what it takes, if you want to apply yourself.'
'Really, sir?' Sam asked, and Commander Grady nodded. Sam had never aspired to anything more than chief petty officer, not even in his wildest dreams. Now he did. He'd known a few mustangs, officers who'd come up through the ranks. Doing that wasn't impossible, but it wasn't easy, either. How much did he want it? Did he want it at all? 'Have to think about that.'
Jake Featherston rubbed brilliantine into his hair, then combed a part that might have been scribed with a ruler. He looked at himself in the tiny mirror above the sink in his room. He wasn't handsome, but he didn't figure he would ever be handsome. He'd do.
He put on a clean shirt and a pair of pants that had been pressed in the not too impossibly distant past. Again, he didn't look as if he were about to speak before the Confederate Congress, but he didn't want to speak before the Confederate Congress, except to tell all the fat cats in there where to go. He grinned. He was going to tell some fat cats where to go today, too, but they weren't so fat as they wanted to be, nor so fat as they thought they were.
He donned a cloth workingman's cap, put his pistol on his belt, and left the room. Fewer people bothered wearing weapons on the streets in Richmond than had been true in the first desperate weeks after the Great War ended, but he was a long way from the only man sporting a pistol or carrying a Tredegar. Nobody could be sure what would happen next, and a good many people didn't care to find out the hard way.
Featherston hurried down Seventh toward the James River. The back room in the saloon where the Freedom Party had met wasn't big enough these days, but a rented hall a couple of doors down still sufficed for their needs. After meetings, the Party veterans would repair to the saloon and drink and talk about the good old days when everyone had always stood shoulder to shoulder with everyone else.
Sometimes Jake was part of those gatherings, sometimes he wasn't. After tonight, either he would be or he wouldn't have anything to do with the Party any more. He saw no middle way- but then, he'd never been a man who looked for the middle way in anything he did.
A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the meeting hall: men in caps and straw hats crowding around the doorway, jostling to get in. They parted like the Red Sea to let Jake by. 'Tell the truth tonight, Featherston!' somebody called. 'Tell everybody the whole truth.'
'Don't you worry about that,' Jake answered. 'I don't know how to do anything else. You wait and see.'
Several people clapped their hands. But somebody said, 'You don't want to be Party chairman. You want to be king, is what you want.'
Whirling to turn on the man, Jake snapped, 'That's a goddamn lie, Bill Turley, and you know it goddamn well. What I want is for the Freedom Party to go somewhere. If it wants to go my way, fine. If it doesn't, it'll go however it goes and I'll go somewhere else. No hard feelings.'
No matter what he'd said a moment before, that was a thumping lie. Hard feelings were what made Jake Featherston what he was. If the Freedom Party rejected him tonight, he would never forget and never forgive. He never forgot and never forgave any slight. And this rejection, if it came, would be far worse than a mere slight.
Inside, people buzzed and pointed as he walked up the aisle toward the long table on the raised stage at the front of the hall. Anthony Dresser already sat up there, along with several other Party officials: Ernie London, the treasurer, who was almost wide enough to need two chairs; Ferdinand Koenig, the secretary, a headbreaker despite his fancy first name; and Bert McWilliams, the vice chairman, a man who could be inconspicuous in almost any company.
Dresser, London, and Mc Williams all wore business suits of varying ages and degrees of shininess. Koenig, like Jake, was in his shirtsleeves. As Jake sat down at the table, he looked out over the audience. It was a shirtsleeves crowd; he saw only a handful of jackets and cravats and vests. He smiled, but only to himself. Dresser and his chums no doubt thought they looked impressive. The crowd out there, though, would think they were stuffed shirts.
'And they are,' Jake muttered to himself. 'God damn me to hell and gone, but they are.'
Anthony Dresser rapped a gavel on the tabletop. 'This meeting of the Freedom Party will now come to order,' he said, and turned to Ferdinand Koenig. 'The secretary will read the minutes of last week's meeting and bring us up to date on correspondence.'
'Thank you, Mr. Chairman,' Koenig said in a rumbling baritone. Jake Featherston listened with half an ear as he droned through the minutes, which were approved without amendments. 'As for correspondence, we've had a good many letters from North and South Carolina and from Georgia concerning joining the Party and forming local chapters, this as a result of Mr. Featherston's speaking tour. We've also had inquiries from Mississippi and Alabama and even one from Texas, these based on newspaper stories about the speaking tour.' He displayed a fat sheaf of envelopes.
Dresser gave him a sour look. 'Kindly keep yourself to the facts, Mr. Koenig. Save the editorials for the papers.' He nodded to Ernie London. 'Before we proceed to new business, the treasurer will report on the finances of the Party.'
'Thank you, Mr. Chairman.' London's voice was surprisingly high and thin to be emerging from such a massive man. 'As far as money goes, we are not in the worst situation. Our present balance is $8,541.27, which is an increase of $791.22 over last week. I would like that better if it were in dollars from before 1914: then we would have ourselves a very nice little piece of change. But even now, it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.'
'Question!' Jake Featherston said sharply. 'Where did all that new money come from?'
Dresser brought the gavel down sharply. 'That doesn't matter now. Only thing that matters is how much money we've got.' He banged the gavel again. 'And now, if nobody else has got anything to say, we'll get on with the new business. We-'
