you'll be killed before the war ends!"

"We can't take any chances this time, General," said Adjaha. "Should events be thrown back into a path that leads to war again, this time you might be killed before I could reach you. Piquette's parents must never have met. She must never have been born!"

Suddenly, Beauregard believed. This quiet little black man could do what he said.

"I won't permit it!" he roared, starting to his feet. "Damn the South! Damn the world! Piquette is mine!"

But Adjaha, moving like lightning, was in the staff car. Its motor roared, it swung in a cloud of dust and accelerated toward the south.

"Sergeant! Colonel! Get that stolen staff car!" Beauregard bellowed. He whipped out his service pistol and fired two futile shots after the diminishing vehicle.

The general's staff boiled out of the tent. They milled around a minute, shouting questions, before piling into two command cars and giving chase to the disappearing staff car.

Beauregard glowered after them. Then he took Piquette's hand and they walked together into the empty tent.

"... Here's a late flash," said the radio on the ground. "Birmingham has been H-bombed. Our planes are in the air against the Rebels...."

Beauregard imagined the ground trembled. Instinctively he looked toward the south for the radioactive mushroom cloud. Then he swung back to Piquette.

"Quette, he can't do it," said Beauregard. "He's a voodoo fraud."

She looked at him with great, dark eyes. Her lips trembled.

"Gard," she whispered like a frightened child. "Gard, aren't there other worlds than this one...?"

She crept into his arms.

Colonel Beauregard Courtney sat on the terrace of his home in the suburbs of Nashville and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his grey head. The steady hum of automobiles on the superhighway half a mile away was a droning background to the songs of birds in the trees of his big back yard.

The "Colonel" was an honorary title bestowed on him by the governor, for Beauregard never had worn a uniform. He had been Governor Gentry's representative at the fateful Memphis Conference 

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