A state of disobedience

'Who said anything about limiting the expansion to only the existing agencies?' demanded Rottemeyer.

'What?' asked Vega, incredulously. 'You want to create . . . oh . . . the Surgeon General's Riot Control Police?'

'Tell me why not, Jesse? Does the Surgeon General's office not have an interest in controlling demonstrations that get out of hand at, say, abortion clinics? Do they have a bureaucracy capable of administering an additional force of several hundred or even a thousand? Can they hire people to train the new officers? Yes, to all. So why not?'

Vega stood somewhat dumbly, the effect enhanced by a certain rotundity and a face gone slightly slack from a stroke some years past.

'Well,' she continued, contemplatively, 'there has been a certain amount of expansion of federal law enforcement in places you would not expect. Maybe that's the way to go. I mean, we already do have armed turkey inspectors with the Food and Drug Administration, armed agents of the Environmental Protection Agency. Maybe . . .'

'Yes,' said Rottemeyer with an air of logical triumph.

* * *

Later that night, in a bed in fact chaste, Caroline McCreavy asked, 'Willi, I understand your goals and ideals. I even share many of them . . . most of them. But this . . . this . . . creation of a police state. I just don't get it. We don't need this.'

Rottemeyer snorted. 'Goals I have, love. Ideals? I don't have any ideals. Just ask the Republicans.'

'Bu—'

Rottemeyer, interrupting, smiled from where her head rested on a pillow. 'All right then. Goals? I believe in power, Caroline. Since I was a helpless little girl and boys were mean to me I have believed in power . . . and sworn to get it. That's my goal.

'And now I have it. And I will never let it go.'

'But you have to. In eight years anyway.'

Rottemeyer smiled indulgently. 'Oh, Caroline, you're so innocent. After these eight years the party will run the country . . . and I will run the party. I will never give it up.

'I'll never give you up, either, Caroline,' Rottemeyer added softly.

The other woman smiled back, warmly but with a troubled expression. 'Don't tell me you don't have ideals, Willi.'

'Ideals,' mused the other. 'Beliefs. I believe that you can make people better than they are. I believe that people are basically good until the system makes them bad. I believe that there is too much untrammeled economic power in the United States and the world. I believe that if someone has to have power, I can also use it more wisely, more benevolently, than anyone else I know.'

'Then why the police state, Willi? And why split it up the way you are planning?'

'I'll split it up because I do not trust power that isn't in my hands. As long as there are fifty law enforcement agencies competing with and suspicious of each other then my power is safe. The police state? A lot of people are not going to like what I think I have to do. And I do not want them able to fight me on it.

'Now come here. . . .'

Chapter Two

From the transcript at trial: Commonwealth of

Virginia v. Alvin Scheer

DIRECT EXAMINATION, CONTINUED

BY MR. STENNINGS:

Q. And how did you feel about the President at that time, Mr. Scheer?

A. The President? Sure talked like she meant well. I mean, she was out there in front of the cameras all the time. Checking schools, visiting old folks. Seemed like she really cared, really felt our pain.

I never made much money in life. Used to have to hunt to help feed the family. Couldn't pay the tax on my rifles though, let alone buy the ammunition to hunt with the thing; not at three dollars and fifty cents per round . . . for the tax alone.

When they came and took away my neighbor after his kids let slip to a teacher that their daddy still had a gun at home? Give him five years for tax evasion? Put his family on welfare? I couldn't face that. So I had to give up one of my two guns. The other? Well, you know by now I buried—

Q. MR. STENNINGS: Stop right there, Alvin. The Court doesn't need to hear about any of that.

A. Okay if you say so. Anyway, I never could get the hang of bow hunting.

Q. So you gave up hunting, Mr. Scheer?

A. Well, sure. Though it made it a lot harder to feed my family, like I said. Anyway, sure and some of them new programs did help. When my factory closed, moved down Mexico way . . . trying to run away from the taxes, I reckon . . . and my missus got sick? She could go to the doctor right off, and I didn't have to pay for it. Mind, she had to wait in line for a while, half a day maybe . . . maybe a little more, and the doctor didn't have much time to see her. But he gave her some medicine. And she was okay for a while.

I did get work again, eventually. Didn't make so much as I had been. But they raised the 'minimum wage,' which seemed to help, a little.

Though, why prices kept going up every time they raised the income tax on the big companies and the rich folks, I don't rightly know.

Weren't for charity, that and welfare food parcels, don't reckon we'd a made it.

* * *

Dei Gloria Mission, Waco, Texas

'Sergeant Montoya, post!'