grow on trees, but that it didn’t prune or water or pick or pack itself, and they’d all been doing hard work since they were old enough to scare birds out of a grain field or carry water to their parents during harvest.
“The guards haven’t been rough on anyone who didn’t try to escape, either; some’ve made breaks for it and they got shot or mauled by those fucking dogs when they were chased down and recaptured, but that’s by the book if you take a chance on it. Mostly it’s just sort of boring. We play a lot of baseball and football and that thing the Mackenzies play, hurley they call it in English, sometimes our team against the guards. They’ll even let parties go hunting, if we give our word to come back by sundown, and we get to keep the meat.”
“Nobody did that and then ran?”
“Nossir. We, ummm, sort of made sure of that. A promise is a promise and anyway it would screw things up for everybody. Someone wants to try to escape, fine, but no breaking the rules.”
“Good to hear it,” Fred said sincerely, and asked no more; there were times when an officer was well-advised not to pry. “OK, you’re off the hot spot, Sergeant.”
Rudi had told him that his mother had strongly suggested that the Boise prisoners be kept in the Clan’s territories. There were fewer grudges, and Mackenzies were simply less likely to do harm than some of the rougher barons up in the PPA lands. His eyes went along the line of faces, some angry, a few smiling, more wary and neutral. They all knew who he was; most of the ones who hadn’t met him would have seen him at a distance at one time or another. The US of Boise was a very big country, over a million people and that outnumbered even the PPA, but he’d still gotten around. For that matter, he took after his father though he wasn’t as dark, and people who were visibly of part-African descent weren’t all that common in what had once been Idaho.
He stood at what wasn’t quite parade rest and went on: “All right, I’m not a damned fool. There’s only one real question: that’s who killed my father. Killed the President. My brother Martin says it was me. I say it’s him; and I saw it. OK, what about proof? I can’t give you any. The nitty-gritty is that you’re going to have to decide who you believe. But here’s a couple of things to think over.”
He squared his shoulders. “Martin wanted to be President. That was something everyone knew. And now he’s running things back home. Dad was getting ready to call elections, and since then… well, Martin says he may regularize things when the emergency’s over. Want to bet that’s going to be about the Fourth of Never?”
There were some nods at that, but it wasn’t all that important to these men. They were all Changelings. They could read and write, his father had been insistent on keeping the schools going even in the terrible early years, but the old world wasn’t really real to them. Few of them had the visceral commitment to the old ways his father had had; he didn’t himself, though he was closer to it. They’d grown up in a benevolent despotism, thinking of General Thurston as the one who’d saved their families’ lives, the stern wise father figure who brought order out of chaos and let every man reap what he sowed. And not least, the one who’d put down the pretensions of budding land-rich would-be patricians.
Not that Dad wanted to be a despot. But at first it was just a struggle for survival and doing what he had to do day by day, and then he thought he could put enough of the country back together first so he could have real elections that would give him legitimacy as something more than a local warlord, and it turned out to be a lot tougher proposition than he thought. By the time he admitted that, a lot of water had gone under the bridge; Dad was stubborn as a granite butte. Martin could probably have won real elections if he’d been old enough to be a candidate under the old system, but he didn’t want that anyway. He wanted to be Emperor or something like it, and hand it down to his son. And that was before he started getting involved with the CUT.
“OK, Martin’s behind this alliance with the Church Universal and Triumphant. Does anyone here like the idea of that? Those people have slaves, and they don’t even bother calling them Registered and assigned Refugees like Pendleton… which Martin also allied us with. Dad declared war on the CUT when they trashed New Deseret and he fought his last battle against them at Wendell. Fought them and beat them, I was there. Now they’re supposed to be allies working for national reunification alongside the United States. Does anyone here really believe that? Is there one single man here who’ll get up and say it with a straight face?”
This time the silence was deeper.
Fred went on: “Dad broke up some of the big ranches so guys like you could have their own farms after the Change.”
A youngish ranker spoke: “Seems like the Mackenzies did that too.”
Fred nodded. I wish I’d thought of making that comparison, but these men have been around the Clan longer than I have. The Clan at home earning a living, that is, and not just Rudi and Edain traveling through the wilds.
“Yes, they did.”
“They’re pretty good folks,” another said judiciously. “They remind me of my neighbors back home-except they’re so fucking weird, sorry, sir, but they are, and I don’t mean just that Juniper Lady who is deeply scary weird. They’re all weird, putting out milk for the fairies at the bottom of the garden and stuff and talking to trees and animals and going dancing through the woods buck-naked with antlers on their heads and I don’t know what else. But pretty damn friendly to us, considering everything, though.”
“Some of the girls are real friendly sometimes,” a man said dreamily, and that brought a general laugh.
“Right,” Fred agreed. “But back home, instead of keeping public land in reserve for new farms, Martin is handing out vacant tracts in great big chunks to his cronies and supporters. Not just grazing land like Dad let the ranchers keep, but good land that could support dozens of families. Your families, someday, if you’re not in line to inherit a farm from your parents.”
“Cronies and supporters like Hardass Hargood’s family,” someone muttered. “I actually heard the son of a bitch say they deserved it because of all they sacrificed to serve the Republic, like I’m here ’cause it’s so much fun? What the fuck are we, leftover mutton hash?”
He subsided at an elbow in his ribs, but there were nods at that too.
Fred struck the argument home: “And he’s assigning the Deseret refugees to work it for them. Temporarily… until the Fifth of Never, right? And there are these new laws about what women can do-that’s CUT stuff, and no mistake. He’s not using them, they’re using him. Right, now put all that together, and who is it who’s really likely to have killed Dad… the General?”
Another silence, deep and prolonged; men were exchanging looks, squads unconsciously drawing together. Squad deep was Boise slang for people you can trust. Another man spoke:
“Right, sir, what do you want?”
“I think I’d make a good President,” Fred said.
I really think I would. And I know for a fact that Virginia would dance on my face in her cowboy boots if I said otherwise. But I think I would… Dad was a great man but his head was stuck in the old world. This one’s a different place. Without the machinery, the people are different, and that’s not counting stuff like the CUT and the Sword of the Lady.
“But I’m not going to just take it. If we-Montival-win this war, I promise here and now, and I’ll repeat it whenever anyone asks, that there will be real elections within six months. Not ‘if circumstances permit’ or ‘when the emergency is over’ because circumstances are never right and life is one fucking emergency after another. Six months, come flood, war or forest fire. And everyone can pick whoever the hell they please, every four or six years or whatever we decide. If it’s me, fine. And we can work out a real constitution, because the old one wasn’t made with this world in mind and most of the old States don’t exist anymore. Folks changed when the world Changed, too.”
“And if they tell you and your new friends to take a hike?”
Fred smiled grimly. “If the people-which includes women and refugees-want someone else, well, Hell, I can live with it. I won’t starve and I’m not afraid of working for a living, and neither is my wife… this is her, Virginia Thurston, by the way. She comes from southeast of us, east of the Rockies on the High Plains. The CUT ran her out of her home; they’re doing their job there too, and their job is being evil sons of bitches.”
Rudi cut in: “And sure, I’ll give Fred a job like that if you don’t want him.” He snapped his fingers. “There aren’t so many good men who are true to their word about that I’d want to waste one. Carry on; just making that clear.”
The speaker nodded at him and turned back to Fred: “But you want us to be part of a kingdom?”
Fred nodded crisply in turn. “Yes. The High Kingdom of Montival. My Dad wanted to put America back together. He was a great man, he made a country out of chaos and plague and people terrified they were going to die. A lot of you wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t been that sort of man. Hell, I wouldn’t. He went back into Seattle to get my mom out when he came back from the scouting mission to Idaho and found things had gone to