Her anger spent, Mary nodded grudgingly. “I know,” she sighed. “You’re sincere enough.” She laughed shortly. “Heaven protect the human race from the sincere idealist”
“And what’s Ted?”
Mary winced. “Touche.”
Bob shook his head. “No, not touche. It’s not a new point. What makes it hurt is that you’ve been driving yourself insane with it all along.”
This time, Mary’s face went white, and a mask slipped tightly down over her features as she fled into the shelter of herself.
“Look, Mims, you know what I believe—what I’ve believed ever since I can remember. We were born equal. We were born with a heritage of personal weapons to enforce our equality, and it is the personal weapons, in the hands of free men, which should ensure that each man will not be trespassed against—that no one, ever, will be able to regiment, to demand, to tithe, to take from another man what is rightfully his. If we are each equally armed, what man is better than his neighbors? If we are all armed, who dares to be a thief, whether he steals liberty or possessions?
“And what is Ted Berendtsen’s belief? That men should band together in a group for the purpose of forcing other men to serve that group. How can I compromise to such a man? How can I sit still and let him enforce his tyranny upon us? How can I let him, or his beliefs, live in the same world with myself and my beliefs?”
For once, Bob’s cynical self-possession had deserted him. He found himself on his feet, his palms resting on the edge of the table, staring fiercely down at Ted Berendtsen’s wife.
Mary raised her head, her face blanched completely white.
“Have you been campaigning on that platform?” she demanded.
Bob Garvin shook his head. “No. Not yet.”
The Army of Unification took Richmond, Atlanta and Jacksonville. Berendtsen’s men moved south.
Someone threw a rotten cabbage at Mary Berendtsen in the street.
Newly-elected City Councilman Robert Garvin sat at one end of the long desk—at the head. Brent Mackay, Mayor of the City of New York, sat at the other end, at the foot.
Merton Hollis, the police chief, sat next to Bob Garvin.
“All right, then, boys,” Garvin was saying, “in this matter of the upcoming national elections, it breaks down like this. Under the Voters’ Eligibility Statute, any one specific member of the family can cast the vote of an absentee member of the Army of Unification, in addition to his own. Right?”
The City Council nodded.
“Okay. Now, technically speaking, that extra vote is to be cast in accordance with the expressed wishes of the absentee.”
He spreads his hands in a helpless gesture. “But with the Army on the move like it is, with no one knowing for sure exactly what it’s doing…Why, without casualty lists, no one even knows who’s dead and who isn’t.”
“But Robert, we do know—” Mackay began.
Garvin stopped him with a patient smile. “Please, Mr. Mayor. We’ve got radio reports, true. But they’re vague, and they’re garbled, and who’s to say Berendtsen isn’t concealing setbacks by ordering his operators to give false locations?”
He shook his head. “No, we can’t go by hearsay. We’ll simply have to accept those votes as if they’d been directed by the absentees. After all, we can’t prove they aren’t.”
There was a low chorus of suppressed chuckles of appreciation from the members of the City Council.
“But suppose those votes aren’t cast?” Mackay protested. “After all, the families know they haven’t been in touch with the men. How can they cast those votes, in all conscience?”
Garvin looked at him in cold amusement. “Mr. Mayor—have you ever heard of anyone, once he’s ready to vote at all, who wouldn’t vote as hard as he could?”
This time the chuckles were louder.
“What’s more,” Garvin said softly, “while the voters will not be able to get individual directions, I’m sure they can be made to know how the Army as a whole feels about Berendtsen, and his theories.”
Several heads along the table snapped to sudden attention.
“As you know,” Robert Garvin went on, still softly, “the garrison commander at Philadelphia, Commander Willets, is a staunch follower of Theodore Berendtsen’s. He has distinguished himself in following Berendtsen’s methods and policies exactly. His administration of the garrison, too, has been identical with the pattern laid down by his chief. In short, we have, in Philadelphia, a miniature Berendtsen, with a miniature Army of Unification, administering a miniature Republic. It follows that the reaction of the garrison, and of the people of Philadelphia, to Commander Willets, will be identical with the reaction of the Army as a whole to Theodore Berendtsen. There will also be the close parallel between the condition of the Philadelphians and the condition the citizens of the Republic may expect for themselves should Berendtsen ever become head of the Republic.”
Those members of the City Council who were closest to Garvin laughed aloud and looked at each other with triumphant grins on their faces.
Mackay looked down the length of the table in shock. “But—but that isn’t an AU garrison any more!” he protested. “Hollis took a draft of City policemen down there last year, and rotated the original garrison home.”
Garvin nodded. “Quite so. And the original garrison is now on constabulary duty in Maine. We know that. What’s your point, Mayor?”
Mackay licked his lips in confusion. “Well—” He shot a glance at Hollis, hesitated, but then pressed on. “You know what kind of men we sent down there. And you know we haven’t given Willets any support from here, when he’s demanded replacements and support. Good God, man, he’s been a virtual prisoner down there! Even his communications with Berendtsen are monitored. He’s no more responsible for what’s been going on down in Philadelphia than—than—”
He stopped, at a loss for a comparison.
“—Than Berendtsen is, Mr. Mayor?” Garvin smiled. “Of course. But who knows that, outside of ourselves?”
“Nobody. But it isn’t right! You can’t just rig something as cold-bloodedly as this!”
“And what did you think we were doing in Philadelphia, Mr. Mayor? Conducting an interesting social experiment?”
“No, no, of course not! But this—”
Garvin sighed and ignored him from that point on. He turned to the other members of the city’s government—and thereby, the Republic’s.
“Commander Willets will be recalled home to answer charges of oppression, misadministration, and treason. His trial will take place a week before elections. Our slate of candidates is as follows: for Commander-In-Chief, Merton Hollis.” There was a light spatter of applause from the Council, and Garvin shook the steely-eyed man’s hand vigorously. Then he continued: “For First Citizen—a new office, as you know, in place of the old designation of ‘President’: Robert Garvin.”
The applause was violent this time, and Hollis solemnly shook Garvin’s hand.
“And, for Mayor of the City of New York—” Garvin looked down the table at a smiling Councilman, “William Hammersby.”
Garvin’s look shifted, and Mackay found himself staring helplessly into the eyes of the end.
The man in the vaguely army-ish clothes clambered to the top of the wall in Union Square, gripping a lamp post for support. He waved the Army of Unification’s blue-and- silver pennant wildly over his head.
“Listen!” he shouted. “Listen, citizens! I was in Philadelphia. I was with Berendtsen for over three years! And I say to hell with the madman, and to hell with his flag!” He ripped away the silver stripe. “I’ve had enough of the color of bayonets!” He threw the tattered pennant away and waved another one over his head, this one colored blue and red. “This is the flag for me! Blue for honor, and red to remember the blood that Berendtsen has
