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to me inside the waterspout," said Alvin. "He doesn't know what it means any more than I do. But we both saw it, a city made of glass, filled with people, and the city itself taught them everything."

"Amid all that seeing," said Verily, "did you perhaps hear a hint of what we're supposed to tell people to persuade them to come and help us build it?"

"I take it that means you didn't accomplish what you set out to do, either," said Alvin.

"Oh, I perused the Congressional Library," said Verily. "Found many references to the Crystal City, but most of them were tied up with Spanish explorers who thought it had something to do with the fountain of youth or the Seven Cities of the Onion."

"Onion?" asked Arthur Stuart.

"One of the sources misheard the Indian name 'Cibola' as a Spanish word for 'onion,' and I thought it was funny," said Verily. "All dead ends. But there is an interesting datum that I can't readily construe."

"Wouldn't want to have anything constroodled redly," said Alvin.

"Don't play frontiersman with me," said Verily. "Your wife was a better schoolteacher than to leave you that ignorant."

"You two leave off teasing," demanded Arthur Stuart. "What did you find out?"

"There's a post office in a place that calls itself Crystal City in the state of Tennizy."

"There's probably a place called Fountain of Youth, too," said Alvin.

"Well, I thought it was interesting," said Verily.

"Know anything else about it?"

"Postmaster's a Mr. Crawford, who also has the titles Mayor and - I think you'll like this, Alvin - White Prophet."

Mike Fink laughed, but Alvin didn't like it. "White Prophet. As if to set himself against Tenskwa-Tawa?"

"I just told you all I know," said Verily. "Now, what did you accomplish?"

"I've been in Philadelphia for two weeks and I haven't accomplished a thing," said Alvin. "I thought the city of Benjamin Franklin would have something to teach me. But Franklin's dead, and there's no special music in the street, no wisdom lingering around his grave. Here's where America was born, boys, but I don't think it lives here anymore. America lives out there where I grew up - what we got in Philadelphia now is just the govemment of America. Like finding fresh dung on the road. It ain't a horse, but it tells you a horse is somewhere nearby."

"It took you two weeks in Philadelphia to find that out?" said Mike Fink.

Verily joined in. "My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you."

"If we can take a break from all of this philosophy," said Alvin, "I got a letter from Margaret." He was the only one who called his wife by that name - everyone else called her Peggy. "From Camelot."

"She's not in Appalachee anymore?" asked Mike Fink.

"All the agitation for keeping slavery in Appalachee is coming from the Crown Colonies," said Alvin, "so there she went."

"King ain't about to let Appalachee close off slavery, I reckon," said Mike Fink.

"I thought they already settled Appalachee independence with a war back in the last century," said Verily.

"I reckon some folks think they need another war to settle whether Black people can be free," said Alvin. "So Margaret's in Camelot, hoping to get an audience with the King and plead the cause of peace and freedom."

"The only time a nation ever has both at the same time," said Verily, "is during that brief period of exhilarated exhaustion after winning a war."

"You're sure grim for a man what's never even killed anybody," said Mike Fink.

"Iffen Miz Larner wants to talk to Arthur Stuart, I'm right here," said Arthur with a grin. Mike Fink made a show of slapping him upside the head. Arthur laughed - it was his favorite joke these days, that he'd been given the same name as the King of England, who ruled in exile in the slave shires of the South.

"And she also has reason to believe that my younger brother is there," said Alvin.

At that news Verily angrily looked down and played with the last scraps of food on his plate, while Mike Fink stared off into space. They both had their opinions of Alvin's little brother.

"Well, I don't know," said Alvin.

"Don't know what?" asked Verily.

"Whether to go there and join her. She told me not to, of course, because she has some idea that when Calvin and I get together, then I'll die."

Mike grinned nastily. "I don't care what that