governor.
People of the Second Free American Republic, we bring you liberty.
Holland spat. “We bring you civil governors, rather than an army,” he said bitterly. “Please excuse the fact that these officers have been appointed by us. Didn’t we do it in the name of liberty? And who the hell do they think gave them their precious union in the first place?”
Jim grinned sadly. “I guess Ted always knew that when the people chose a new government, it wouldn’t be one that approved of Berendtsen.”
“Did you notice something, though?” Holland pointed out. “No mention of Ted. Just a couple of passing references. They’re not sure yet—not sure at all that it’s safe to really go all-out and call him names. They’re nervous.”
“I wonder what’s going on in New York?” Jim Garvin asked. What he felt about Bob, he kept to himself.
III
Robert Garvin sat easily in his chair, flanked by the other judges, looking down at the man who stood below their rostrum.
Garvin smiled thinly, and a little regretfully. He felt the weight of what he had done. But he had done it nevertheless, because in doing it he had fulfilled his greater duty to freedom, to liberty from oppression, to liberty from such as Berendtsen.
He leaned forward. “Theodore Berendtsen, you have been found guilty of treason against the human rights of the citizens of the Second Free American Republic. Have you anything to say before sentence is passed upon you?”
It did not matter what he said, now. Whatever words Berendtsen might have were weightless now. He had no Army. He had no weapons.
Garvin touched the carbine resting against his chair. Weapons were the mark of a man’s freedom, and all free men carried them now. To be sure, some of them looked ludicrous, but, nevertheless, the symbol was there. Touch me not!
Berendtsen seemed to be hesitating, as though undecided whether to speak or not.
Berendtsen had no personal weapons.
He began to speak:
“I did not come here to defend myself,” he said. “For I am indefensible. I have burned, killed, and looted, and my men have done worse, at times…”
Robert Garvin hardly heard the words. He sat patiently, not listening, but nevertheless watching the man. Berendtsen was standing with his hands hanging loosely at his sides, his head up. It was impossible to tell, from this angle, what he might be looking at.
Garvin felt a ripple of excitement sweep momentarily over the small audience, even reaching the judges’ bench. He shrugged inwardly. Undoubtedly, his brother-in-law had scored some emotional point or other.
But emotional points were things you could score all day, and still not change the facts. Garvin had built his way to power on emotional points—what counted was the cold logical ideal behind them. You could sway a crowd with semantics. Make it do things for you. But this was not a crowd. These were Berendtsen’s judges, their verdict already delivered, their sentence a foregone conclusion.
“Robert Garvin!”
Garvin’s head snapped up, and his eyes re-focused on Berendtsen.
“You have given the people personal weapons,” Berendtsen was saying. “You have told them that, from this day onward, they were free to bear arms; that they were equal, one and several, with all other men. That, henceforth, no man might tell him what was theirs and what was not. That each man was inviolable, and that no man is master.”
Garvin nodded automatically, realizing only later that there was no need for him to do so.
“Well, then, Bob,” Berendtsen said softly, as though they were once more across a dinner table from each other, “who gave you the right to confer the right?”
Something jumped behind Garvin’s eyes.
“We bore arms, once. Each and every one of us. We had to. Gradually, we began to live so that we no longer had to. Despite the theories, some of us bore our arms uncomfortably, and were glad to lay them down when there were no longer snipers in the streets. Some of us were free to enter peaceful pursuits—such as politics.”
Despite the time, and place, there was a ripple of laughter that grated at Robert Garvin’s nerves before it died down.
Berendtsen smiled thinly up at Garvin. “You are where you are today because you did not bear arms— because there was an organization of free men, ready to return to the weapons if need be, but glad to have laid them down, who were cooperating in a civilization which had time to support an individual such as yourself. Those who bear arms are their own administrators. Those who do not, need others to administer to them.
“So you are here, an administrator elected by an organization, and you have given them their weapons back. You have practically forced those weapons on them, distributing them on streetcorners willy-nilly. But, once more, I’d like to know—who gave you the right?”
Berendtsen smiled wryly. “It would seem that I did. I built the organization that supports you. I built it without knowing what sort of society it would evolve. I never for a moment thought that any one man could be so wise, so foresighted as to impose his personal concept of the ideal society. I simply built a union, and left its structure to the people.”
He looked squarely up at Garvin. “You have given the people rifles, and thought that you were giving them weapons. But people have a deadlier weapon than anything a gunsmith could design.
“People want to be safe, and comfortable. If safety and comfort are to be found in guns, then they will take up guns—of their own accord, in their own need. And when safety and comfort are found in libraries, then the guns rust.”
The quiet, troubled and yet somehow untroubled eyes bored away at Garvin’s foundations.
“You think that men like yourself direct the people. Undoubtedly, you grant me that status, as well. You are wrong. We exist—we find our way into the pages of those history books which are written from the wrong viewpoint—because, for however long or short a time it is, the people think there is safety and comfort in us.”
He laughed shortly and finished. “They are often wrong. But they repair their errors.”
Garvin felt every eye in the room on his face. Probably, he had turned a little pale. It was only natural, with the strain of what he had to do.
“Theodore Berendtsen, you have been convicted of treason, and the citizens of this Republic are aware of your crime. You are sentenced to go about whatever pursuits you choose, unarmed.”
Berendtsen bowed his head. Garvin saw, for the first, startling time, that he was far older than he seemed —that his stomach bulged a little, and that his face was completely exhausted.
Then Berendtsen looked up for one last time, and Robert Garvin saw the underlying expression of his face, always there, no matter what superficial mood might flicker across it. He understood what had been giving him the constant impression that Berendtsen was still the same calm, somehow unassailable man who had taken so many meals on the other side of the table.
A running series of directives came into the communications shack in New Jersey:
To all units, interim military command, SFAR: Be advised that the following former officers of the disbanded Army of Unification are enemies of the people:
Samuel Ryder
