air with the spice of gunpowder.
* * * * *
"The high-school kids come home from their Potlatch Parties ..."
"Wreckage and mayhem," MacHenery grunted. "We used to throw the samekind of parties when I was a tad, but they were against the law, backthen. We called 'em chicken-runs."
"But nowadays, sir, those Potlatch Parties contribute to the generalprosperity," Winfree explained. "Used-car lots used to border all thedowntown streets, anchors on progress. Now those dated cars aresmashed, and used for scrap. The high-school drivers work off theiraggressions ramming them together. And there's no mayhem, Mr. MacHenery;the BSG-man assigned to Potlatch Parties strap the kids in safe and makesure their crash-helmets fit tight. It's all clean fun."
"Morally," MacHenery said, "Potlatch Parties are still chicken-runs."
* * * * *
Peggy came back, as sleek and crisp as though cooking were an expensivesort of beauty treatment. "Supper will be ready in five minutes," shesaid. "If you tigers will wash up ..."
"We'll drink up, first," her father said. "This man of yours has beenfeeding me BSG propaganda. I'm not sure I have any appetite left."
"What started you hating the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities, Mr.MacHenery?" Winfree said.
MacHenery poured them each a drink. "You ever read Suetonius, Wes?" heasked.
"No, sir."
"Yours is a generation of monoglots," MacHenery sighed. "It figures,though. There's no profit in having today's youth read the clinicalrecord of another civilization that died of self-indulgence, that wentroistering to its doom in a carnival of bloat."
"Doom?" Winfree asked.
"Doom richly deserved," MacHenery said. "Old Suetonius describes, forexample, an instrument that accompanied dinner-parties during the reignsof the last few Caesars. It was a device that accomplished, two thousandyears ago, the function of our proud Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities. Afeather, my boy. A simple goose-quill."
"I don't understand," Winfree said.
"I'd be hurt if you did, Captain," MacHenery said. "I've set my mind onexplaining the point. Now you see, Wes, the late Caesars were prettygood consumers of everything but petroleum, we having that edge on them.They spread a mighty fine table. A gourmet would bring to Rome caviarfrom the Caucasus, peaches from Majorca, and, for all I know, kippersfrom Britain. Picture it, Wesley: cherries served in golden bowls,heaped on the snow trotted down from mountain-tops by marathons ofslaves. A dish called The Shield of Minerva was one of their greatestdelights; this being an Irish stew compounded of lamprey-milt,pike-livers, flamingo-tongues, and the tiny, tasty brains of pheasantsand peacocks; eaten while viewing the floor-show of strip-teasingCircassian girls or--Galba's invention, this--elephants walkingtight-rope. Grand, Wes. No meals like that at the supermarket; no showslike that even on the television."
"But the feather?" Winfree prompted.
"Ah, yes," MacHenery said. "The moment our noble Roman had eaten hisfill he'd pick up the feather next to his plate and, excusing himself,adjourn to the adjoining vomitorium. A few tickles of the palate, andhis first meal would be only a lovely memory. He'd saunter back to hisbench by the table again, ready to set to with another helping ofMinerva's Shield."
"Disgusting," Winfree said.
"Yes, indeed," MacHenery agreed, smiling and fitting his fingertipstogether. "Now attend my simile, Captain. Unlike those feathered Romansof the Decadence, we moderns settle for one meal at a sitting, and letit digest in peace. We have instead our more sophisticated greeds,whetted by subtle persuasions and an assurance that it's really quitemoral to ransom our future for today's gimmicks."
"Prosperity requires the cooperation of every citizen," Captain Winfreesaid, quoting an early slogan of the BSG.
"Your artificial prosperity requires us, the moment we're sated withchrome chariots and miracle-fiber dressing-gowns and electronic magics,the minute our children have toys enough to last them through the age offranchise, to take in hand the feather forced upon us by regulation ofthe Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities and visit the parish Potlatch Pyre,our modern vomitorium, to spew up last year's dainties to makebelly-room for a new lot," MacHenery said.
"Daddy!" Peggy MacHenery protested from the living-room doorway. "Whatsort of table-talk is that?"
"Truth is the sweetest sauce, Peggy," MacHenery said, getting up fromhis chair. "What delights have you cooked up for us, child?"
"Your favorite dish, Daddy," Peggy said, grinning at him. "Peacockbrains on toast."
* * * * *
The next two weeks were too busy for Captain Winfree to partner KevinMacHenery on the fencing-mat. He was double-busy, in fact; planning thebiggest Potlatch Day in twenty years at the same time he started thewheels of his project to make birthdays Gratuity Days for every consumerin his District.
The girls, assisted by two of the male sergeants, had decorated theDistrict Headquarters till it glittered like a child's dream of theNorth Pole. Against one wall they'd placed the Xmas tree, its branchesbearing dozens of dancing elves, Japanese swordsmen, marching squads ofBSG-recruits, prancing circus-ponies; all watch-work figures busy withmovement, flashing with microscopic lights, humming little melodies thatmatched their motions. A giant replica of the Bureau's cap-emblem--theFederal eagle clutching between his talons a banderole bearing themotto, _'Tis More Blessed to Give Than Receive_--had been mounted on thecenter wall, the place of honor. Beneath the eagle stood a bandstanddraped in bunting, ready to accommodate the Bureau of SeasonalGratuities Brass-Band-and-Glee-Club, the members of which were to fly infrom Washington to grace the bridal day with epithalamiums and martialsong.
The big work, the eight-hours-a-day and after-supper-overtime work, wasthe preparation for Potlatch Day, the festival that meant to the BSGwhat April Fifteenth means to the Internal Revenue Service. Cases offireworks piled up in the brick warehouse next door to Headquarters.Sawdust-packed thermite grenades were stacked right up to the perforatedpipes of the sprinkler system. _No Smoking_ sign blossomed a hundredyards on every side. The blacklists, naming consumers who'd withhelddated gifts from the Potlatch Pyres of earlier years, were brought up todate and distributed to the Reserve BSG Officers in each township ofWinfree's District. These holdouts, it was safe to assume, would beunder surveillance on Potlatch Day. Cold-eyed sergeants and lieutenantswould make note of the material each of them consigned to the flames,and would cross-check their notes with Nearest-and-Dearest lists to makesure that all post-dated Mom's Day and Dad's Day gratuities, all of lastXmas's gifts, had been destroyed as required by BSG ordinance.
Meanwhile letters piled into Captain Winfree's office, thousands of themeach time the Post Office truck stopped outside Headquarters. Several ofthese were penned in a brownish stuff purported to be their authors'lifeblood; and all voiced indignation against Schedule 121B, Table 12,which set minimum levels of cost for the birthday gratuities they'd haveto give each of the fifteen persons on their Nearest-and-Dearest lists.Hundreds of protests were printed in the vox populi columns of Districtnewspapers, recommending every printable form of violence against agentsof the Bureau. BSG practice was to regard with benign eye public outcryof this sort. No consumer in Winfree's District, immersed as he was inthe debate over Birthday Gratuity Minima, could possibly plead ignoranceshould he be apprehended in violation of these new regulations.
* * * * *
Finally, it was two days before Xmas, Potlatch Day Minus One.Phone-calls had rippled out from District Headquarters, calling all BSGReservists to the colors, assigning them to Potlatch Duty in thetownships or patrol in the city; telling each officer and non-com whereand when to submit his requisition for pyrotechnical devices, gasoline,thermite bombs, and pads of BSG Form No. 217-C, "Incident of ConsumerNon-Compliance." And the day was even more than this. It was the dayCaptain Wesley Winfree was to wed Corporal Margaret MacHenery in thesight of God, man, and the glitteringest crowd of BSG
brass everassembled outside Washington.
By noon the typewriters in Headquarters were covered and shoved withtheir desks behind folding screens hung with pine-boughs. Every wheel inthe District motor pool was on the highway from the airport, shuttlingin the wedding-party. The bride, closeted in an anteroom with a gaggleof envious bachelor-girls, was dressing herself in winter greens, herchevrons brilliant against her sleeves. Peggy had pinned a tinypoinsettia to her lapel; strictly against Regulations; but who'd havethe heart to reprimand so lovely a bride? The minister who was toperform the wedding, a young captain-chaplain of BSG, paced