“No. I was only making a joke.”
“Nobody laughed,” she reminded him. She backed away, thinking: are the people of this state humorless? Or have they just returned to the values my generation tossed aside?
Barney shook his head. “No way. You people must be crazy.”
The camera rolled, silently recording.
Roisseau smiled, then looked at Tina. “Miss Raines, the… gentleman is all yours. No killing blows, girl. Just teach him a hard lesson in manners.”
Tina put her left hand on the desk and, in one fluid motion, as graceful as a cat, vaulted the desk to land on her tennis-shoe-clad feet.
She stood quietly in front of the man who outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. She offered a slight bow. Had Barney any knowledge of the martial arts, he would have fainted, thus saving himself some bruises.
Tina held her hands in front of her, palms facing Barney, then drew her left hand back to her side, balling the fist. Her right foot was extended, unlike a boxer’s stance. Her right hand open, palm out, knife edge to Barney. Her eyes were strangely void of expression. Barney could not know she was psyching herself for combat.
Barney did notice the light ridge of calluses that ran from the tips of her fingers to the juncture of wrist. He backed away.
Almost with the speed of a striking snake, Tina kicked high with her foot, catching Barney on the side of the face. He slammed backward against a wall, then recoiled forward, stunned at the suddenness of it all. With no change in her expression, Tina lashed out with the knife edge of her hand, slamming a blow just above his kidney, then slapped him on the face with a stinging pop. Barney dropped to his knees, his back hurting, his face aching, blood dripping from a corner of his mouth. He rose slowly to his feet, his face a vicious mask of hate and rage and frustration, mingled with disbelief.
“You bitch,” he snarled. “You rotten little cunt.”
Roisseau laughed. “Now you are in trouble, hotshot.”
Barney shuffled forward, in a boxer’s stance, his chin tucked into his shoulder. He swung a wide looping fist at Tina. She smiled at his clumsiness and turned slightly, catching his right wrist. Using the forward motion of his swing against him, and her hips for leverage, she tossed the man over her side and bounced him off a wall. Quickly reaching down, her hands open, positioned on either side of his head, Tina brought them in sharply, hard, slamming the open palms over his ears at precisely the same moment. Barney screamed in pain and rolled in agony on the floor, a small dribble of blood oozing from one damaged ear.
Tina smoothed her hair. She was not even breathing hard. She looked at Roisseau. “Did I do all right, Sergeant?”
The reporters then noticed the flap of Roisseau’s holster, lying on the desk, open, the butt of the .45 exposed. And all were glad no one tried to interfere.
Then, from the floor of the reception center, came the battle cry of urbane, modern, twentieth-century man. Unable to cope with a situation, either mentally or physically, or because of laws that have been deballing the species for years, man bellowed the words:
The room rocked with laughter. News commentators, reporters, camerapeople and soundpeople; people who, for years, had recorded the best and worst of humankind, all laughed at the words from their sometimes reluctant colleague.
Roisseau spoke to the girl behind the desk. “Judy, get on the horn and call the medics and tell them we have a hotshot with a pulled fuse.” He faced the crowd of newspeople.
“You’re all due at a press conference in two hours. Meanwhile, I’d suggest you all help yourselves to coffee and doughnuts and soft drinks and study the pamphlets we have for you.” He glanced at Barney, sitting on the floor, moaning and holding his head. “As for suing anyone, I’d forget about it. Our form of government discourages lawsuits. You’d lose anyway.”
“I’ll take this to the Supreme Court!” Barney yelled.
“Fine. Governor Raines is someday going to appoint one for us. Next twenty or thirty years. We don’t recognize yours.”
Several reporters indicated they thought that to be perfectly ridiculous.
Roisseau shrugged. “Works for us,” he said, then walked back into his office, closing the door.
The medics said Barney’s only serious injury was a deflated ego. They sat him in a chair, patted him on the head, and left, chuckling.
“Very simple society we have here,” a reporter observed. “Live and let live, all the while respecting the rights of others who do the same. Very basic.”
“And very unconstitutional,” another remarked.
“I wonder,” Judith said aloud. She would be the only one of the press corps to stay in the Tri-States, becoming a citizen. “I just wonder if it is?”
“Oh, come on, Judith,” Clayton said, shaking his head. “The entire argument is superfluous. There is no government of Tri-States. It doesn’t exist. The government of the United States doesn’t recognize it. It just doesn’t exist.”
Several Jeeps pulled into the parking area. The reporters watched a half-dozen Rebel soldiers—male and female, dressed in tiger-stripes—step out of the Jeeps. The soldiers were all armed with automatic weapons and sidearms.
“Really?” Judith smiled. She pointed to the Rebels. “Well, don’t tell
Ben allowed several of the citizens to shout at one another for a time, then the majority quieted the few unruly ones down. The general mood of the crowd was good; many had had little to be happy about for years. Most had rejected the present government as soon as it took power, viewing it as a society based on fear rather than respect. They were ready for a change for the better.
But some were thinking: can we really change something we don’t like? Can we do that? After all, the government’s always told us what to do; how to drive our vehicles; how to run our lives; how to run our schools; how we may and may not treat criminals… my goodness! what are we going to do with all this freedom?
“Now, just hold on a minute,” the mayor shouted the crowd into silence. “Radford is a part of the state of Virginia and a part of America. Regardless of what we think of our present form of government—and I’ll be the first to admit it’s got a lot of bad points—we can’t just break away and form our own little society, independent of the central government. We have to…”
“Ah, hell, Ed!” a man stood up. “Shut up and sit down,” he said good-naturedly. “We know there are laws we can’t change; most of us wouldn’t want to change them. But there’s just a whole bunch of laws on the books we can change—that need to be changed. There are laws that might apply to some far-off city that just don’t apply to us. Let’s kick it around some. Won’t hurt to do that.”
There was an unquestioned roar of approval from the crowd. The crowd talked all at once for several minutes, then, as if all of one mind, they turned to face the stage.
Ben said, “I think you people are just like ninety percent of the population: you just want to live as free as possible and obey the law. You work for what you have, and work hard for it. You’d like to see as much of your tax dollar stay at home as possible; you’d like to respect your government, and not—as is now the case—live in fear of it.
“That nine people dressed in black robes, sitting on a bench in some city, have the right to tell millions what is best for them is ridiculous—and most of us know it. But until only recently, we were powerless to change it. It was bad before the bombings—borderlining on asininity; I don’t have to tell you what has happened since the world exploded; you’ve all had the misfortune to live under the rule of a madman and his police state.
“The price of real freedom never comes cheaply—it is, in fact, very high. Sometimes, in order to gain real freedom, one must break some laws—as we are doing. But I believe—and I think you all agree with me—the end will justify the means. If I didn’t believe that, I would not be asking my men and women to lay their lives on the line
