this under protest.'
The paymaster shrugged. 'Take it and like it or take it and stick it up your ass.' He had a couple of bully boys with pistols behind him to make sure the payroll stayed safe. He could afford to talk tough-or thought he could, anyhow.
Martin thought he was playing into the workers' hands. Several other men said, 'I'm taking this under protest,' too. The paymaster went right on shrugging. He didn't see the resentment he was raising-either that or, secure in his power, he just didn't care.
That evening, when Chester told Rita what had happened, she looked at him for a long time before asking, 'Are you sure you want to go through with this?' He knew what she meant; now that he had a child, he'd given fortune a hostage.
He sighed. 'Do you want me to knuckle under?'
His wife bit her lip. After half a minute's silence, she said, 'No. They'll own you if you do.' He kissed her. He'd thought-he'd hoped-she would say that. She was a stronger Socialist than he was.
He spent the next few weeks working his shift during the day and agitating during his free time. He talked with workers. He talked with Socialist Party officials. The Socialists gained seats in the House and Senate-and in the California legislature-in the off-year elections. That strengthened his hand. He hoped it did, anyhow.
One morning early in December, he got to the construction site at the same time as a pickup truck. Instead of going in to work, he grabbed a sign from the back of the truck. He wasn't the only one who did. Inside of two minutes, three dozen unfair! signs went up in a picket line. Picketers were hitting other sites all over town, too. 'On strike!' Chester and the other men shouted. 'Join us!' They cursed a worker who crossed the picket line. Another worker thought better of it.
'You sons of bitches!' Mordechai shouted. 'You'll pay for this!'
'We've paid too much for too long already,' Chester answered, wondering how much he would have to pay from here on out.
As soon as the engineer waved and the red light in the studio came on, Jake Featherston leaned toward the microphone like a lover toward his beloved. 'I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth.' He wondered how many times he'd said that over the years. He always believed it, at least while he was talking.
'Truth is, for the past twenty years and more, the United States of America have been holding on to what doesn't belong to them. At the end of the war, the USA stole Kentucky and Sequoyah and what they call Houston. The people in those states don't want to belong to the USA. They've made it plain every way they know how that they don't want to belong to the USA, but the United States government doesn't want to listen to them.'
He paused to let that sink in, then went on, 'If they held fair and honest elections in those places, the people there would show what they wanted. They would show they want to come home to the Confederate States of America. President Smith knows that as well as I do. He's a clever man, and I reckon he's an honest man.'
He didn't think Smith was anything close to clever, and couldn't have cared less whether he was honest. He did want to butter up the president of the United States. He had his reasons: 'I challenge President Smith to allow plebiscites in Kentucky and Sequoyah and what they call Houston. I challenge him to abide by the results of those plebiscites. I challenge him, after the Confederate States win those plebiscites, to let those states come home.'
Featherston banged his fist down on the table. The microphone jumped a little. He loved sound effects like that. They made people pay attention to what he was saying. 'President Smith has talked big about what he'd do to restore peace in the stolen states. He's talked big, but he hasn't done anything much. He's even said he'd come to Richmond to hash things out. He's said that, but he hasn't done it. I tell him he's welcome here, and I'd like to talk to him.
'And I tell him one more thing, something he'd better listen to. Back during the war, the USA helped our niggers when they rose up against us. Well, that was wartime, and maybe we can let bygones be bygones on account of it was. But the blacks still don't know their proper place, and the United States are still sneaking weapons down across the border to 'em. That has got to stop. It's cost us a lot of lives and it's cost us a lot of money to keep the niggers in check. We've had to bump up the size of the Army. We've even had to put guns and bombs on our aeroplanes. It's been expensive. We could have done better things with that money. We could have, but we didn't get the chance. And that's the USA's fault.'
Inside, he was laughing. Here he was, blaming the United States for what he'd most wanted to do anyhow. The black guerrillas had given him the perfect excuse for rearming. Even the USA hadn't squawked much about it. Had the guerrillas been white, he thought the USA would have. But the United States loved Negroes hardly more than the Confederate States did. They'd made it very plain they didn't want the ones who tried to flee to the north.
He didn't know whether the United States were arming the guerrillas. He knew he would have if he were in charge in Philadelphia. But coming up with U.S.-made weapons and putting them in the hands of dead Negroes so photographers could snap pictures of them was the easiest thing in the world.
'President Smith says the United States want peace. They act like they want trouble. We would rather have peace, too. But if they think we can't handle trouble, they had better think again.'
That was a bluff, nothing else but. If the United States pushed hard against the Confederate States, he hadn't a prayer of resisting. But the USA had seemed ever more reluctant to hang on to their conquests. If they couldn't even manage that, they weren't very likely to do anything more.
In the control room, the engineer held up a hand, fingers spread: five minutes. Jake nodded to show he'd seen the signal. He'd had a good notion of what the time was, but he wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly. 'North America is a big place,' he said. 'We're not all crowded together, the way they are in Europe. There's room on this continent for two great countries-maybe even for three, if the United States ever bother to recollect what they've done up in the north.' A smile that was half snarl flitted across his face. He enjoyed nothing more than sticking a needle in the USA. 'If the United States think the Confederate States can't be great again, if they think we shouldn't be great again, then they had better think again about that, too.
'All we really want is for them to take their noses out of our affairs, to take them out and to keep them out. That's what good neighbors do. Bad neighbors get doors slammed in their faces, and they deserve it, too. But I don't really expect we'll have any trouble. If they're just reasonable, we'll get on fine.'
To Featherston, if they're just reasonable meant if they do what I want. That the phrase could mean anything else never occurred to him. He'd just said the last word when the engineer drew a finger across his throat and the red light went out. Jake got to his feet and stretched. As usual, Saul Goldman waited for him right outside the studio door. Goldman's title-director of communications-didn't sound like much, any more than the little Jew looked like much. But it meant that Goldman was in charge of the way the Freedom Party and the Confederate States presented themselves to the world.
'Good job, Mr. President,' he said now.
'Thank you kindly, Saul,' Jake answered. He spent more politeness on Goldman than on most people, a recognition of how valuable he thought the other man was. The Party and the CSA could get by without a lot of fellows who brought only fanaticism. Losing somebody with brains would have hurt much more. Brains were harder to come by.
Goldman said, 'You do remember you've got the rally tonight? That's going to be the speech about agriculture and about the dams and electricity.'
'I remember,' Jake said indulgently. 'Got to talk about what's going on inside the country. That's what most folks worry about first. Wouldn't want anything to go wrong with my reelection.' He laughed. Nothing would go wrong. But saying the word felt good. Up till now, no elected Confederate president had, or could have, been reelected. Now that the amendment had repealed those seven nasty words, though, Jake could go on about his business without worrying about leaving office after only six years. He clapped Goldman on the back. 'You did real good with the campaign for the amendment, too.'
'Thank you, Mr. President,' Goldman said. 'You're the one who will have to make it worthwhile.'
'And I intend to,' Featherston said.
He was feeling pretty cocky as he strode out of the studio and got into his armored limousine. 'Back to the Gray House?' the driver asked.
'That's right, Virgil,' Jake answered. Virgil Joyner had been driving him for years-ever since the Party
