“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lupe said. “Where you go, I go. That’s what a Camp Follower does.”
Vargas had been fighting in Italy before Gatt ordered him to airlift his army to California for the showdown with Wiedermayer, so he hadn’t much idea of the level of destruction of America. His flight by Air Force jet from San Francisco to Ground Zero, Texas, showed him plenty of burned-out cities and displaced populations.
But Ground Zero itself looked all right. It was a new city which Gatt had created. In the center of it was a big sports palace, larger than the Coliseum or the Astrodome or any of those old-world sports palaces. Here warrior-athletes and cheerleaders from all over the world could assemble for the sports rituals of the military.
Vargas had never seen so many generals (and generals’ ladies) in his life. All of General Gatt’s field commanders were there, men who had been fighting the good fight for military privilege all over the world. Everybody was in a good mood, as may be imagined.
Vargas and Lupe checked into the big convention hotel which had been especially built for this occasion. They went immediately up to their hotel room.
“Eh,” Lupe said, looking around at the classy furnishings of their suite, “this is ver’ nice, ver’ nice.”
Actually she could speak perfectly good English, but in order to be accepted among the other Camp Followers who hadn’t been raised with her advantages, she had decided that she had to speak with a heavy accent of some sort.
Lupe and Vargas had had to carry up their own luggage to the room since the hotel was so new that the bellboys didn’t have security clearances yet.
General Vargas was still dressed for combat. He wore the sweat-stained black khaki uniform of the 30th Chaco campaign, his most famous victory, and with it the lion insignia of a Perpetual Commander in the Eternal Corps.
He set down the suitcases and dropped into a chair with a moue of annoyance: he was a fighting general, not a luggage-carrying general. Lupe was standing nearby gaping at the furniture. She was dressed in her best pink satin whore’s gown. She had a naughty square crimson mouth, a sexy cat’s face, snaky black hair, and legs that never stop coming above a torso that would not let go. Yet despite her beauty she was a woman as tough in her own way as the general, albeit with skinnier legs.
Vargas was heavyset, unshaven, with a heavy slouchy face and a small scrubby beard that was coming in piebald. He had given up shaving because he didn’t think it looked sufficiently tough.
Lupe said to him, “Hey, Xaxi (her own pet name for him), what we do now?”
Vargas snarled at her, “Why you talk in Russian accent? Shut up, you don’t know nothing. Later we go to meeting room and vote.”
“Vote?” Lupe said. “Who’s going to vote?”
“All the generals, dummy.”
“I don’t get it,” Lupe said. “We’re fascists; we don’t need no stinkin’ votes.”
“It’s lucky for you that I love you,” Vargas said, “because sometimes you’re so stupid I could kill you. Listen to me, my baby vulture, even fascists have to vote sometime, in order to arrive fairly at the decision to keep the vote away from everyone else.”
“Ah,” Lupe said. “But I thought that part was understood.”
“Of course it’s understood,” Vargas said. “But we can only count on it for sure after there’s been a vote among ourselves agreeing that that’s how things are going to be. Otherwise we might lose everything we’ve worked for. The vote is necessary to secure our beloved revisionist counterrevolution.”
“I guess that’s true,” Lupe said, scratching her haunch, then, remembering her manners, quickly scratching Vargas’ haunch. She went to the refrigerator and got herself a drink of tequila, champagne, and beer, her favorite mixture.
“Is that all this vote’s about?” she asked Vargas.
Vargas was sitting in the living room with his spurred heels up on the coffee table. The coffee table scratched nicely. Vargas knew that they probably put in new coffee tables for each new group of generals who came through. But he enjoyed scratching it anyway. He was a simple man.
“We got also other things we got to vote about,” he told her.
“Do I have to vote too?” Lupe said.
“Naah,” Vargas said. “You’re a woman. Recently we voted to disenfranchise you.”
“Good,” Lupe said, “voting is a bore.”
Just then there was a knock at the door.
“Come in!” Vargas called out.
The door opened and a tall goofy-looking guy, with droopy lips and narrow little eyes, wearing a gray business suit came in. “You Vargas?” he said.
“Yeah,” Vargas said. “And try knocking before you come in next time or I break your back.”
“This is business,” the guy said. “I’ve brought you a bribe.”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Vargas asked. “Sit down, have a drink.”
The goofy-looking guy took a thick envelope out of an inside jacket pocket and handed it to Vargas. Vargas looked into the envelope. It was stuffed with a thousand eagle double simoleon bills.
“Hell,” Vargas said, “you can barge in any old time. What is this for, or shouldn’t I ask?”
“I told you; it’s a bribe,” the guy said.
“I know it’s a bribe,” Vargas said. “But you haven’t told me what, specifically, I’m being bribed for.”
“I thought you knew. Later, when the voting starts, we want you to vote yes on Proposition One.”
“You got it. But what is Proposition One?”
“That civilians should henceforth be barred from the vote until such time as the military high command decides they are reliable.”
“Sounds good to me,” Vargas said.
After the guy left, Vargas turned to Lupe, grinning. He was very happy about the bribe, even though he would have voted yes on Proposition One anyhow. But bribes were traditional in elections—he knew that from the history books, to say nothing of the oral tradition. Vargas would have felt unliked and neglected if General Gatt had not thought him worth the bother to bribe.
He wanted to explain this to Lupe but she was a little dense, tending not to understand the niceties. But what the hell, she looked great in her pink satin whore’s nightgown.
“Come in, old boy, come in!” That was Gatt’s voice, booming out into the anteroom. Vargas had just arrived and given his name to the prune-faced clerk in the ill-fitting Battle Rangers uniform, clerical division.
It was gratifying to Vargas that Gatt asked for him so soon after his arrival. He would not have liked to cool his heels out in the waiting room, even though he would have been in good company. General Lin was there, having just secured China and Japan for Gatt’s All-Earth Defensive League. General Leopold was there, plump and ridiculous in his complicated uniform copied from some South American general’s fantasy. He had completed the conquest of South America as far south as Patagonia. Below that, who cares? Generalissimo Ritan Dagalaigon was present, the grim-faced Extremaduran whose Armada de Gran Destructividad had secured all of Europe west of the Urals. These were famous men whose names would live in history. Yet he, Vargas, was ushered into Gatt’s private office before all the rest of them.
John Odoacer Gatt was tall with flashing eyes and a charismatic manner. He showed Vargas to a seat and poured him a drink and laid out two lines for him without even asking. Gatt was known as an imperious entertainer.
“We’ve won the war, buddy,” Gatt said to Vargas. “The whole thing. All of it. Everything. It’s the first time in the history of mankind that the entire human race has been under a single command. It is an unprecedented opportunity.”
Vargas blinked. “For what?”
“Well,” Gatt said, “for one thing, we are finally in a position to bring peace and prosperity to the human race.”
“Wonderful ideals, sir.”
“Actually,” Gatt said, “I’m not so sure how we can turn a profit on this.”