“We soldiers like to loot,” Solomos said. “All, that is, except the soldiers of my own country—we regard any art save our own as an aberration.” He laughed.
There was a cherry in the bottom of Peters’s glass, and he ate it. He said to Solomos, “You’re a soldier, then?”
“Oh, no. No more.”
A third man joined them; he was tall, and had a mustache. He said, “You are Mr. Peters, I take it. Where do you feel the sympathies of the American people lie, Mr. Peters?”
Peters said, “With the government, unquestionably.”
“But since May,” the tall man began, “there has been so little government left, and so little of the will to rule in what is left—”
“One knows what he intends,” Solomos said.
A fat man who had been talking to another group turned (it was a little, Peters thought, like watching a globe revolve in a library) and said, “In the science of realpolitik the sympathies of the population do not matter except insofar as they are nationalistic sympathies. In the event of a civil war the concept of nationalistic sympathy is inapplicable because to the popular mind the nation claiming allegiance is perceived to have vanished. A charismatic leader—”
Peters said, “In the Civil War regional sympathies—”
“Wait,” the tall man said. “Something is happening.”
Peters turned around and saw that Lowell Lewis was now standing facing the dark screen and rapping (though the sound was inaudible over the hum of talk) with a long pointer on the glass surface.
“He should shoot off a gun, hahaha,” Solomos said. “That would quiet them.” Peters said, “I think he’s afraid of guns,” then realized he should not have, then that no one had heard him anyway. A beautiful dark-haired girl in an evening gown, one of Tredgold’s girls, gave him a martini.
The fifteen-by-thirty-five-foot screen behind Lewis flashed with light, showing Lewis’s own face, immensely magnified so that every pore could be seen as though through a microscope. It glowered at them, all eyes and nose and mouth, the forehead and chin lost in ceiling and carpet; so magnified it assumed a new quality, like the giants in fairy tales, who are not merely big men but monsters. “Gentlemen,” Lewis said. “Your attention, please.”
The room fell silent.
“I’m afraid we are not quite all here yet, but we have a definite appointment with General Virdon, and it would be best if I began your orientation now.”
Someone said, “Will there be a period for questions?”
The giant answered, “There will be all evening for questions—I want that understood. You may interrupt any speaker—including myself—whenever you have questions. We’re not trying to sell you a pig in a poke.”
“If the attack tonight succeeds, what benefits do you anticipate?”
“I should think the benefits are obvious.”
“I will put it in another way,” the questioner continued. “Do you not feel that the real struggle is taking place on your coasts? That they are the important theaters of operations?”
From beside Peters the tall man called, “Some believe we have been brought here to witness a show victory—a Potemkin village of war.” Peters had been trying to guess the tall man’s nationality, thus far without success.
Lewis disappeared, replaced by a map of America. The real Lewis, seeming suddenly diminutive, tapped Detroit with his wand. “This city may not be known to many of you,” he said, “as it is not a cosmopolitan city, but it is a manufacturing center of great importance. Please observe that it is virtually impossible to isolate it without infringing upon Canadian sovereignty.”
The man with the mustache said, “Canada cannot allow the passage of war matériel.”
“I am speaking of industrial goods, whose passage Canada has guaranteed— machine tools and electronics. Not supplies for the troops in the east. Our aim in this campaign is to restore American productivity.”
Someone near Peters said, “And American credit.” There was a ripple of laughter.
“Precisely.” Lewis’s flat voice came loudly, cutting through the amusement. “Credit, as you know, is a matter of confidence, of trust. Ours is still a country of great natural resources, with a wonderful supply of skilled labor and unmatched management know-how. I don’t have to tell any of you gentlemen that U.S. is one of the world’s leading manufacturers, or that we are trying to obtain, currently, financing overseas, but—”
The man standing next to Peters said, “You are having difficulties. What is it you call management if you have such difficulties?”
Peters turned, expecting to see Solomos, but it was a man he had not met, a short, fat man of fifty or so. Peters said, “We mean business management. Maximizing the return on invested capital.”
“Management,” the fat man said firmly, “is management.”
Peters turned back to listen to Lewis.
“End,” the fat man continued, “you do not any longer have these resources you speak of, not so much more as other peoples.”
Peters said, “There is a great deal left.”
“Not so much for each person as Western Europe. Different, yes, but not so much.”
Lewis had a map of Detroit on the screen now, stabbed by arrows from the south and west.
On the other side of Peters someone asked, “Do you have a master plan for retaking the country?” And the tall man with the mustache said, “They surely must, but I doubt if this young man knows it, or could confide in us if he did.”
Peters recalled a conversation he had had with Lewis earlier in which he had asked much the same question. Lewis had said, “Top management knows what it’s doing,” and Peters had felt better until he remembered that Lewis was top management. One of Tredgold’s girls brushed against Peters, her back arched, her hands and a tray of hors d’oeuvres above her head; he was acutely conscious of the momentary warmth and pressure of her hips; General Virdon was talking on the wall-sized screen, a gray-haired, square-faced man whose hard jaw was betrayed by nervous eyes. Peters had seen the face before, the face of a frightened middle-management man whose career had topped out in his forties, driving his subordinates from habit and his fear of his many-faced, ever-shifting superiors. Donovan edged up to Peters and said, “He looks like old Charlie Taylor, doesn’t he? Runs the Duluth plant.”
Peters nodded. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
“I was out there two years ago,” Donovan continued. “You know, go around, see what the boys back home were doing. . . .”
Mentally Peters tuned him out. Someone new, a major, was on the screen. He said, “I regret that Colonel Hopkins was unable to return as scheduled to address this group. He left our headquarters here at fourteen hundred hours and was due back quite some time ago. I don’t know just what he had intended to tell you, but I’ll answer your questions as well as I can.” The major wore paratrooper wings; they went well with his impassive, almost Indian, face.
Someone asked, “If your colonel does not return, will you direct the attack?”
“If you mean Force Wolverine,” the major said, “I’ll lead it. General Virdon will direct it.”
From another part of the room: “Isn’t it true that you have put clerks and cooks into the fighting ranks?”
“Not as much as I’d like to.” Unexpectedly the major smiled, the boyish smile of a man who has gotten his way when he did not expect it. “They’re usually the most able-bodied soldiers we’ve got, especially the clerks. Now that the government’s out and the companies have taken over, all the goofballs with political connections can’t write their damn letters anymore.”
“Don’t you find it difficult to get recruits when you cannot pay?”
“Hell, that would be impossible,” the major said. “But we can pay something— the companies have bankrolled us to some extent, and they buy up some of the stuff we liberate.”