... The story behind all of this is simple enough. The takeover Gogarty and Ramsbotham have been trying to pull is interfering with practical business. Frankly, AMP'S competitors are happy enough to jump in and stir the pot: I think they've been buying up Senators here and there (for which there is, God knows, enough precedent; the entire Senate hasn't been bought since the Dedrick mutiny forty years back but you don't need the entire Senate if you have a few key men, and I've always thought Dedrick's lawyers were wasteful), and beyond what the competition's been active in, there are always the fanatics. Freedom for allyou know the sort of thing.
Cadnan made a guess. "The trees make the sound.""Do ye s'pose the fight's really over?" whispered Pete to Alf Russell, who was just behind him. "Don't you think the rebels just let go to get a fresh hold?"
ONE:"Don't go, Pap," pleaded Si. "Some of the boys on the skirmish-line 'll find him soon, and settle him. Don't expose yourself. Stay behind the wagon."
ONE:Albin grinned wryly. "I told somebody else that, last night," he said. "Man named Doddhell, you know Johnny Dodd. Told him he needed some fun. Holy jumping beaversfun."
There was a way."Holy smoke! bigger men than youlots biggerhave squared up their accounts that way. Didn't all the Captains in the rijiment, and the Quartermaster and Commissary, and, for what I know, the Chaplain and the Colonel, git clean bills o' health after the battle o' Stone River, by reportin' everything that they couldn't find 'lost in action?'"That was certainly human: centuries of bloody experience proved it. But the Confederation didn't want to recognize human nature. The Confederation didn't like slavery.Somewhere his mind continued to think, but the thoughts were powerless and very small. He felt the girl's hands on his shoulders, trying to hold him, and masked by the sounds of his own weeping he heard her voice, too:
