Two copperskins led a skinny white man up to Frederick. One of them said, "This fella says he's a preacherman. He wants to say a prayer over the dead white men once they go in the graves."

"Oh, he does?" Frederick eyed the volunteer minister. "You ain't gonna do nothin' stupid, are you?"

"I hope not," the skinny man answered. "What do you mean, stupid?"

"Goin' on about how white folks're better than niggers and mudfaces, for instance," Frederick said. "Or about how they're sure to go to heaven 'cause they were fighting on God's side. You come out with shit like that, you're gonna end up in one of those trenches, not preachin' over it."

"That'd be just what you got coming, too, for bein' a fool," Lorenzo put in.

"I was going to recite the Twenty-third Psalm and the Lord's Prayer," the white man said. "I don't see how that can offend anybody."

Frederick thought about it, then nodded. "All right. Fair enough. Long as you stick to those, you can talk. I don't know that it'll do the white folks any good, but I don't see how it'll hurt, either."

His lack of zeal seemed to offend the would-be preacher, but the man had the sense not to open his mouth about it-a good thing, too. Lorenzo said, "As long as you stick to that kind of stuff, you won't get our fighters mad at you, neither. You do, it's the last dumb mistake you'll ever make."

"I understand," the prisoner said.

"You better," Frederick warned.

Most of the white captives turned out to hear the memorial service for their fallen friends. So did some of Frederick's Negroes and copperskins-more than he'd expected, really. One of the most successful tools whites had used to hold their slaves in line was a religion where God came down to earth as a white man. Frederick had taken years to realize that was what was going on. In spite of realizing it, he still thought of himself as a Christian more often than not. A lot of his fighters evidently felt the same way.

Still in a dirty gray uniform, the preacher stood in front of one of the filled-in trenches that scarred the meadow. Looking out over his audience, he said, "Let us pray."

Whites, blacks, and copperskins bowed their heads. Some of them clasped their hands or pressed palms together. As he'd promised, the preacher recited the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm. Everybody knew those. If you were going to draw comfort from a prayer, you'd find it in one or both of them.

Frederick thought the man would stop there. Had he stopped, he would have done well enough in an ordinary way. Instead, the fellow looked out over his audience and went on, "These soldiers gave their last full measure of devotion fighting for their country. And they will be repaid, for the House of God is a House of Universal Devotion, one where those who believe truly shall be made glad throughout all eternity-not just some eternity, mind you, but all of it!"

"What kind of shit is he going on about now?" Lorenzo asked.

All Frederick said was, "Uh-oh." He knew what the preacher was going on about. The House of Universal Devotion hadn't attracted many slaves, but he'd heard of it. He thought the Preacher and his followers were a flock of loons.

He wasn't the only one who did, either. A white prisoner threw a clod of dirt at the man preaching over the graves. "Shut your lying mouth!" the prisoner yelled.

"That's right!" another white man shouted. "The House of Universal Devotion is the doorway to hell!"

"Liar!" yet another captive said. "God talks to the Preacher, and the Preacher tells his people the truth!"

The preacher-without a capital letter ornamenting his calling-standing by the mass grave tried to go on, but his audience didn't want to listen to him any more. The white prisoners shook their fists at one another and bawled out curses and catcalls. They might have started brawling if not for the bemused insurrectionists standing guard over them.

"White folks are crazy. Crazy, I tell you." Lorenzo spoke with great sincerity. "Only one who cares which church you go to ought to be God. He's the only one with the answers, anyways."

"Of course white folks are crazy," Frederick answered. "They reckon they can keep slaves and keep 'em like beasts, and they reckon God loves 'em. You believe both those things at the same time, you got to be nuts."

"Yeah. Hadn't looked at it like that, but yeah." Lorenzo pointed at the angry prisoners. "What are we gonna do about those sorry bastards?"

"Long as they're just yelling, it doesn't hurt anybody. It's like a waddayacallit-a safety valve-on a steam engine," Frederick said. "They blow off steam against each other, they won't give us so much trouble."

One of the white men chose that moment to decide he didn't care whether the Negroes and copperskins were carrying guns. Full of crusading zeal, he decked another white who presumed to hold an opinion different from his about the House of Universal Devotion. A few seconds later, another enthusiast flattened the first fellow who'd used fists to make his point.

Frederick drew his eight-shooter and fired a round into the air. Nothing got people's instant, undivided attention like a gunshot. Christians who'd been about to swing on their fellow Christians suddenly had second thoughts.

"That will be enough of that," Frederick said into the pool of silence that spread as the echoes of the shot died away. "What you think about God is your business. When you punch somebody in the nose on account of what he thinks about God, that's my business. You leave other folks alone, and hope like hell they leave you alone, too. You start acting like mad dogs, you get what mad dogs deserve." Whites called slaves who dared rebel mad dogs. Frederick enjoyed throwing the phrase back in their faces. He pulled the trigger again. Another tongue of flame spat from the revolver's muzzle.

To his amazement, some of the prisoners wanted to argue with him. "I'm trying to save that ignorant fool's soul from hell," one white protested earnestly.

"He reckons you're headed that way yourself," Frederick answered. "What makes you so sure you're right and he's wrong?"

"Why, the Bible says so," the white man replied, as if to a fool.

"Suppose he reads it some different way? Or suppose he doesn't care about it at all?"

"Then he's surely bound for hell. And you'd better look to your own soul, too." The captive edged away from Frederick, as if afraid God would strike the Negro dead for presuming to ask such questions-and might singe him, too, if he stayed too near.

"I will. I do. I look to mine. You look to yours. Let that other fella look to his," Frederick said. "I promise you one thing: you start that kind of stupid trouble, we'll be the ones who end it."

Some of the prisoners thought the Preacher and the House of Universal Devotion were the fount of true doctrine. Many more were of the opinion that everything about them came straight from Satan. Frederick had heard that the Preacher opposed slaveholding. That inclined him toward giving the House of Universal Devotion the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, he had a hard time caring one way or the other.

His main goal was to keep the captives from quarreling among themselves. Sooner or later, he hoped to exchange them for fighters captured by the white Atlanteans. Under the laws of war, both sides got treated the same way. What color a combatant was didn't matter. (The Europeans who put those laws together hadn't imagined fighting people of a different color. But that was all right-the laws had more stretch to them than their framers figured.)

Just by treating with Frederick and his fighters under the laws of war, the white Atlanteans granted them more equality than they'd ever enjoyed here before. If the whites won, that equality would vanish. Both sides recognized as much.

And, up till lately, neither side had seriously wondered what would happen if the Negroes and copperskins won. The whites hadn't dreamt it was possible. Neither had Frederick, not really. But dreaming time was over. Reality was here. Now both sides had to try to make the best of it.