“So what does happen?”
“You get sent to a reorientation camp near Seattle. If we like you and you like us, you go back to being ordinary Americans. If you can’t or won’t fit in, you lose your citizenship. Then you move to any country that’ll take you.”
“Exile? You’ve got to be kidding!”
Lessing smiled at the antiquated turn of phrase. “Nope. Go wherever you’re wanted. If you’re a communist, you can live happily ever after in what’s left of the People’s Republic of China; they need workers to build their Marxist paradise. Blacks have a choice of sixteen settlements in Africa, a half-dozen Caribbean islands, or one of the Black-majority nations in South America. Jews are welcome in the Izzie colonies in Russia. They’re looking for skilled, educated people to build a new ‘Chosen People,’ Jews-only, religious-racist Eretz Israel there. As for Southeast Asians and Latins, they can go back to their native lands as soon as the war is over. Any other unreconstructed lib-rebs… of whatever persuasion… go to whoever lets ‘em in: the communes in Russia, our own settlements around the oil fields in the Persian Gulf, Europe, Australia, Canada… wherever. If nobody wants you, we’ll set up some sort of isolated enclave for you here, where you can do your own thing by yourselves.”
“Lies!” the woman interrupted in a sharp, fierce voice. “Another Holocaust… a free ticket to the gas chambers!”
“Sorry, no gas chambers. Resettlement abroad. Like Germany before World War II, though that’s not how you people want it remembered. Take your families and go!” Lessing was too cold to wrangle; he could no longer feel his ears, and his forehead ached. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
The woman got unsteadily to her feet. Stan’s machine gun swiveled to track her. “Why should we go? Why us? We’ve contributed so much to this country… doctors, lawyers, musicians, scientists, artists… every profession, every walk of life! We won’t go! It’s you… you pogging fascists… who ought to go! You’re not Americans! You don’t belong!”
“Wrong. We are the majority. We’ve been a silent majority for too long. Now we’re taking control. We, the American majority, say that you don’t fit We don’t want your music, your art, your science… we’ve got our own, and we’re satisfied. We can’t assimilate you, and we won’t let you run us. So you go. No argument, no discussion, no high-buck lawyers!” His checks were numb in the bitter wind. “I promise you decent treatment: no gas chambers and no concentration camps. We’ll treat you a helluva lot better than you would’ve done us.”
He shut off his mind. Wrench had given him a list of things to say for the benefit of the TV cameras, and he said them without enthusiasm, without caring whether he believed them or not. For all he knew, that camp up near Seattle might offer a full complement of gas chambers, ovens, torture machines, and sado-pom queens dressed in black leather and waving whips. It might — but he didn’t think so. He had come to trust Mulder, Liese, and Wrench, at least. It would be stupid to lie to him, moreover; he’d find out, and then he would become an enemy. Alan Lessing did not let people lie to him.
“The ambulances are here,” Stan called up to him. “These dinkers can move their wounded into that clearing for pickup.”
The return trip was a triumphal procession. Lessing didn’t like it, but he understood. Starak’s victims had no more worries. It was the survivors who suffered, mourned, endured shortages and social upheavals, and woke sweating from nightmares of invisible death. They needed good news. Morale was the object here.
Lessing resigned himself to being a military hero. He took Wrench’s advice, patched in over their radio to Home-Net headquarters in Kansas City, and rode into camp standing up in the hatch, like a Panzer commander on parade. Too bad he hadn’t brought tanker goggles to go with his peaked cap! There was no martial music either, just the soughing of the wind high up in the evergreens, a dirge to the dead. Wrench could add suitable oom-pa-pa to the broadcast, together with wild cheering and a play-by-play commentary.
The mess hall and hospital were both housed in the big, bam-like garage the National Park Service had built for its maintenance vehicles back during the era of the Born-Agains. They had done a good job with parks and historical monuments, but the administrations that followed were too preoccupied with the Middle East, pollution, farm riots, labor unrest, the national debt, the failure of Social Security and Medicare, and getting stroked by their P.A.C.s to pay attention to lesser matters.
Lessing met Mullet and Jennifer at the door, greeted Timothy Helm, his second-in-command, and waved away the bundle of dispatches Ken Swanson pushed at him. First things first: the lib-reb wounded had to be admitted into the hospital; those suffering from minor frostbite and injuries were lined up to await their turns; and the rest were shepherded into the mess hall, where Lessing’s staff searched and processed them before sending them on to the cafeteria. Some slumped down at the tables without eating; others had to be warned against gobbling too much too fast. The room stank of unwashed bodies, wet wool, and cooking. The combination was not unpleasant; it reminded Lessing of noon recess in his grade school lunchroom during winters in Iowa long ago.
He sat down at one of the tables and accepted a bowl of lumpy, grey chicken soup from Jennifer. He still had a headache, but now he could blame it on the stuffy, overheated room instead of the cold outside. The soup helped. Mullet laid a roll of maps captured from the rebel stronghold beside his plate and announced that Tim Helm wanted to discuss them Swanson was also hovering nearby, clutching his dispatches and picking his nose. Did it have to be a Universal Truth that corn-men were invariably nose-pickers?
“Your guys checking for holdouts?” Lessing asked of Helm. “Snipers?”
“Nobody. We got hoppy-choppics flying search circles back into the beds, but some of them lib-reb smart-asses got deflector blankets that block heat sensors and plastic weapons that don’t trigger our search beams. There’re miles of lava caves down south by Indian Well, too. A guy could hide anywhere. We’ll get most of them sooner or later, though, and any we miss’ll freeze their yarbles off. Oh, we scanned the prisoners you brought in. They’re clean. See you when you’re done.” He scooped up his maps and left
Lessing ate soup, methodically and without interest. By now Home-Net would be telling the world of his splendid victory, this feat of personal valor, this Great Step Forward for the Forces of Righteousness, Home, Mother, and Apple Pie.
The heat was making him drowsy. He needed Liese.
“You Mistadet?” a voice impinged muzzily upon his thoughts. He opened his eyes and saw a little girl, the one with the teddy bear.
“What?” The clash and clatter of cutlery made it hard to understand her.
“Mista Det. You Mista Det?” The child wiped her nose with grubby fingers. She wore a dress made from a patchwork quilt, and her feet were shapeless blobs of U.S. Army sacking and burlap.
Mullet laughed. “She’s asking if you’re ‘Mister Death,’ sir.” He pointed to the black uniform and silver insignia Wrench had designed for Cadre officers. The troops still wore U.S. Army camo.
She held out the stained, brown-plush teddy bear. “Unca Jase said to show Teen to Mista Det.”
“That’s nice, but I’m not….” Oh, the hell with it.
The girl plucked at a plastic ring at the back of the bear’s furry head. “Teen talks, y’know.”
Dandy. Now he would be treated to a bad tape of “cuddle me, mommy!” Lessing had never had much to do with kids, but he could sympathize with this one: it wasn’t her fault she was here.
Another little girl flickered against the shadow-curtain of his memory, a silent and pitiful creature in the back of some sort of vehicle. Was she a dream? It seemed so very far away. He heard sobbing and felt her stick-like body in his arms.