They didn't meet at Marquard's house. That might have proved embarrassing to all concerned. A tavern and eatery that catered to Negroes, copperskins, and poor whites served better than well enough. Over fried fish and mugs of beer, Frederick asked, "What did you do?"

"Who, me?" Clarence might have borrowed that blank look from his master. "I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything at all, even the things I was supposed to do. You ever listen to a white man who has to find his own cravat and black his own shoes?"

A slow grin spread across Frederick Radcliff's face. "I like that!"

"Oh, it gets better, too," Clarence said. "It sure does. He had to give his own washing to the laundry gal, too. An' she made a mess of it-just by accident, of course."

"Of course," Frederick agreed. They both chuckled.

"Socks and drawers got starched. Shirts an' trousers didn't. A jacket got washed in hot water, so it shrank like you wouldn't believe. Such a shame!" Clarence rolled his eyes. "And I ain't even started on what the cook's been up to."

"No?" Frederick asked eagerly.

"No, sir." Clarence shook his head. "The bread was scorched one day. The next day, it didn't rise. The shrimp in the stew were a little off-just a little, but enough." He held his nose. "The master's were, anyhow. What we got was first-rate. Something in the salad gave the Senator the runs. After that, he got word things weren't goin' real well down on his plantation, neither. Soon as he heard that, he started wondering if something funny was goin' on."

"Now why would he think anything like that?" Butter wouldn't have melted in Frederick's mouth.

"Beats me. I haven't got the slightest idea." Anybody listening to Clarence would have been convinced he too was one of God's natural-born innocents. "But then he had a little talk with me. You hear him talk, he figures niggers and mudfaces, they never heard of Slug Hollow or what led up to it."

"Likely tell!" Frederick burst out.

"Uh-huh." Clarence nodded. "You can't believe how surprised he acted when I turned out to know as much about it as he did. 'Clarence,' he says, 'Clarence, you really want to be free and have all that trouble taking care of your own self?' And he looks surprised all over again when I go, 'I sure do, Master Marquard. An' I don't know me one single slave who don't. There may be some, but I don't know none.' "

"What did he say then?" Frederick asked eagerly.

"He says, 'If I want to live long enough to go home again once I'm done in the Senate, reckon I better go along with Slug Hollow, huh?' An' I say, 'Senator Marquard, sir, I hope you live a real long time. But if you want black folks an' copper folks to stay happy with you, you got to know we is all for Slug Hollow.' We had to get his attention, like, but we finally went an' done it."

"Good for you," Frederick said. "When he made out like I was a liar, looked to me like the only way to… to wake him up, like, was to hope his own people could getting him thinkin' 'bout things."

"We did that, all right. Don't reckon a white man would've thought of it, but you ain't no white man, even if your granddaddy was," Clarence said. "Takes a fella who was a slave hisself to know how things really work with a planter and his niggers. He votes for Slug Hollow, he gets his friends to do the same, we gonna be free for true?"

"For true," Frederick said firmly. "Don't know what happens after that. Don't know if there's any happy endings."

"You know what? Me, I don't care," Clarence said. "Long as there's a happy beginning, long as I got a chance, I'll make it some kind of way."

"You ain't the first fella who told me that kind of thing," Frederick said. "Lots of us're figurin' we can make it some kind of way."

"Some of us won't," Clarence predicted.

"Expect you're right. But some white folks don't make it, either, even with everything goin' for them," Frederick answered. "You said it-long as we've got the chance, that's what really counts."

"Yeah." Abel Marquard's butler nodded. His eyes went dreamy and far away. "A chance. Just a God-damned chance…"

"Honest to God, Clarence, I think it'll happen now," Frederick said. "And you've helped make it happen. You know that, an' I know that, an' the Senator, he sure knows that, too, but I bet you anything it never shows up in the history books."

"I ain't gonna touch that bet. I may be dumb, but not so dumb," Clarence said. "When did anything a nigger did ever show up in the history books?"

"One of these day, that may happen, too," Frederick Radcliff said. "One of these days-but not quite yet."

Leland Newton glanced over at Jeremiah Stafford, who nodded. Newton brought his gavel down smartly on the desk in front of him: once, twice, three times. "The Clerk of the Senate will call the roll," he said.

"Yes, your Excellency," the Clerk of the Senate replied. How often had the functionary called the roll? Hundreds-more likely thousands-of times. He'd held his post longer than Newton had been in New Hastings. Newton couldn't remember his ever acknowledging that command from a Consul before. But now poorly suppressed excitement filled his voice, as it filled Newton's.

New Hastings hadn't known a moment like this since… when? Since the Atlantean Assembly reconvened here after the redcoats went home, reconvened and hammered out the system of government the USA had used ever since? No doubt that was an important time, but Newton thought this one topped it. Wouldn't you have to reach all the way back to the fifteenth century, when the Battle of the Strand ensured that no local kings, no local nobility, would lord it over the populace? Newton thought so.

The Clerk of the Senate did his best to return to his usual emotionless tone: "The question before the Conscript Fathers is, Shall the Senate ratify the agreement made by the two Consuls with one Frederick Radcliff and his supporters in the village of Slug Hollow, state of New Marseille?" No matter how hard he tried to sound dull, he didn't quite succeed.

Avalon voted first: the state north of New Marseille headed the alphabetical list. Within each state's contingent, the Senators also voted in alphabetical order. One of Avalon's six Senators voted no. Slavery wasn't legal in Avalon, but it had been up until twenty-five years earlier. Some sympathy for slaveholding lingered yet.

Cosquer came next. It had more Senators than Avalon did, since it held more people; as far as Newton knew, every one of its Conscript Fathers owned slaves. Some of them defiantly voted against the Slug Hollow accord. Consul Newton waited tensely till Abel Marquard's name came up.

"Senator Marquard!" the Clerk of the Senate intoned at last.

"Aye," Marquard said. Newton and the Clerk might have failed to keep their voices emotionless, but the Senator from Cosquer succeeded. Could machines have been made to speak, his voice might have come from one of them.

He had opposed the agreement. Frederick Radcliff had claimed the two of them had an arrangement whereby, if the Negro brought peace to Gernika, Marquard would support Slug Hollow. The Senator denied everything. But, no matter what he'd denied, he'd changed his mind. He'd announced he would support the accord, and now he'd gone and done it.

Newton wondered how and why it came to pass that Abel Marquard had changed his mind. Nobody seemed to know. Or, if anyone-Frederick Radcliff, for instance-did know, he wasn't talking. Something out of the ordinary must have happened, but who could say what?

And, in the end, what difference did it make? As long as Marquard voted the right way (which he did) and as long as he brought some Senatorial colleagues with him (which he also did), everything else was a matter of details.

"The state of Croydon's delegation will now vote," the Clerk of the Senate declared after the last man from Cosquer spoke a defiant nay. One by one, the Clerk polled Croydon's Senators. All of them voted to accept the accord and make slavery a thing of the past. Leland Newton would have been horrified and astonished had they done anything else.