In the Tri-states, public schools operated ten months a year. Every student over the age of fifteen was given five hours of weapons training each week, forty weeks a year, and studied the fundamentals of guerrilla warfare. Military service was mandatory.
Physical education was rigid in the schools, from organized sports to PE. Everyone took part, including the teachers still young enough to take rough physical training. But it was done with an equality that is seldom seen in any other public or private schools.
For in sports, Ben stressed that games were just that—games, and no one should take them too seriously. They were not life-or-death matters, and in reality, accomplished very little. And anyone who would fight over the outcome of a game was tantamount to being a fool. He told the young people that games were meant to be fun, win or lose, and when, or if, he sensed games were becoming more important than scholastic efforts, he would put a stop to them, and the schools would have intramural activities only.
Although Ben had been a fine athlete in high school, he despised the jock mentality and would not tolerate it in the Tri-states. Coaches walked a narrow line in Tri-states’ schools.
The young people needed someone to look up to, and they found that person in Ben and his philosophy. After the war, the young were confused as to what was right and wrong—and what had happened to cause such a tragedy.
Ben, sitting on a desk in the classroom where he was conducting an impromptu question-and-answer session, laughed. “That is probably the most difficult question you could ask me, but I’ll try to give you an answer.
“Perspectives got all out of order, not only in America, but around the world. People demand freedom, and if they have to do it, they’ll fight for freedom taken from them—real or imagined.
“Our country, I believe, began to parallel the Roman Empire in many ways. Historians saw it, warned of it, but too few listened—until it was too late.
“The Romans had great, unworkable, and expensive social programs. So did we. The Romans built superhighways. So did we. The Romans began to scoff at great teachers, philosophers. So did we. They had social unrest. So did we. They built great arenas so the citizens could go on weekends and watch sporting events. So did we. The Roman government became top-heavy with bureaucracy. So did ours. The Roman government became corrupt. So did ours. Right on down the line. And as theirs came to an end, so did ours.
“Here in the United States, such things as patriotism, love of God, duty, honor, became the objects of ridicule. A day’s work for a fair day’s pay was replaced by greed; and if the product was faulty, the worker didn’t care. Strikes became the rule instead of the exception. Craftsmen became a thing of the past when the assembly line took over and goods were thrown together with no regard for the consumer. Those responsible forgot that we are all consumers.
“Morals sank to an all-time low. The sixties and seventies were times of great liberalism in America. It got out of hand and we went off the deep end, sinking more and more into debt. We came off the gold standard and began printing more money—without anything to back it. Just paper.
“We had great tax reforms in the Senate and House in the mid-eighties, greatly lessening the burden on the lower and middle classes. But most of them never got out of committee. Money backed many members of Congress, big business. When they spoke, Congress listened. So instead of the wealthy paying the brunt of the taxes, the lower and middle classes paid them. It was wrong, but Congress refused to correct it.
“On the world scene, the unions in Britain must share much of the blame for the country’s downfall. Massive land reforms came much too late in Central and South America. Russia’s economy finally collapsed. Guerrilla warfare spanned the globe.
“Here at home…” Ben sighed and thought for a moment. “The central government became too powerful, moving into every facet of public and private lives. Big Brother came out of fiction to become reality. Our laws became so vague and so left-leaning, the average citizen did not even have the right to protect what was his or hers.
“Anytime a government takes away the basic liberties of its citizens, it will inevitably lead to war. And it did.”
“Will we have to fight for what we have here, Governor?” a teen-age girl asked.
“Yes,” Ben said. “And probably very soon.”
“Why don’t other people just leave us alone?” another asked. “What business is it of theirs, anyway?”
“Dear,”—Ben smiled sadly—“people have been asking that of government since the first government was formed. And government has yet to come up with a satisfactory reply.”
Ben and Salina took two kids into their home, twins, a boy and a girl. They were handsome, well-mannered, and intelligent. Of course, all parents think that of their children.
Tina and Jack originally had come from Arizona. In hiding, they had watched their father shot to death by a gang of thugs and their mother raped repeatedly, then killed as she tried to run away, in the opposite direction from where her kids were hiding. But she bought them enough time to get away. Neither Jack nor Tina had any love or compassion for the lawless.
Their story was similar to that of almost every adopted child in the Tri-states. The young who lived through the holocaust, like their elders, needed very little prompting to demand harsh penalties for criminals. They had seen firsthand what permissiveness in a society can produce, and they wanted no part of it.
Jimmy Deluce, Jane Dolbeau, Jerre Hunter, and Badger Harbin remained single. Jimmy flew for the Tri-states’ small air force; Jane and Jerre worked as nurses at one of the many free clinics in the Tri-states; and Badger became Ben’s bodyguard.
That was not something Ben wanted, or really felt he needed, but after the assassination attempt, Badger announced his new job and moved in. He lived with the Raineses and became a constant shadow wherever Ben went.
Badger idolized the governor, as did most of the Rebels and residents of the Tri-states, and would have jumped through burning hoops had Ben suggested it. He was also devoted to Salina, but not in any overt sexual manner. That thought had occurred to him, but once he had become so preoccupied about it he had walked into a wall and broken his nose.
Salina noticed his attention, however, was amused by it, and finally mentioned it to Ben one night.
“Yes, honey,” Ben said, laying aside the book he was reading, “I’ve noticed it a couple of times. But I don’t know what to do about it. Has he made any advances?”
“Oh, Ben!” She laughed. “For heaven’s sake—no. I just think he needs a girl, that’s all.”
Ben smiled.
“A wife, Ben.” She returned his smile. “I’m talking about a nice girl for Badger to marry.”
“Badger’s shy, that’s all. I know he… ah… visits a lady—or ladies—at the… ah… house just outside of town.”
“Along with several hundred other men,” Salina remarked dryly.
“But it’s Jerre and Jane I can’t figure out.” Ben carried on as if his wife had said nothing. The communities in the Tri-states were small, deliberately so, and everybody knew everybody else. “Both of them young, good-looking, smart. Yet, they both seem so detached from everybody. Neither of them date. I mentioned both of them to Badger the other day, and he looked at me as if I were an idiot. Is something going on I need to know about?”
Salina smiled at her husband. Years back Ben had told her about Jerre and the relationship they had had for a few weeks. But Ben believed all that was past. Salina knew better. What good would it do to tell him Jerre was hopelessly in love with him? And Jane had also developed an enormous crush on Ben. She wondered if they had discussed their feelings with each other? What good would it do to tell him the entire Tri-states knew about it? That both of them knew Salina knew? She shook her head.
“No, darling—nothing going on that I know of.”
“Ummm.” Ben picked up his book and resumed his reading. The subject was closed.
Salina laughed at the man she
loved and rose to check on the twins. Tina had a friend over that night and they were in the bedroom, discussing, of all things, karate. Ben insisted that all Rebels and dependents become at least familiar with some form of self-defense—the killing kind, preferably—and Tina had taken to karate and the other forms of gutter-fighting that were taught to Tri-states’ regular army. She had now advanced to the dangerous state, and the seventeen-year-old was considered by her instructors to be a rather mean and nasty fighter.
Jack, on the other hand, had two left feet when it came to weaponless, hand-to-hand fighting. He just could not master the quickness of unarmed combat. But he loved weapons, spending as much time as possible on the firing ranges. At seventeen, he was an expert with a dozen weapons, and a sniper in his unit of the reserves.
There had been much discussion, some of it heated, between Ben and Steven Miller as to the advisability of teaching war in public schools. In the end, however, the professor had acquiesced to Ben’s demands, agreeing, not too reluctantly, that it was, for the time being, essential in the Tri-states’ schools. The professor conceded that if the Rebel way of life was to flourish, the young had to be taught to defend it.
Jack was cleaning Ben’s old Thompson SMG when Salina entered his room. The young man looked up and smiled. “Hi, Salina.” He held up the Thompson. “Great, huh?”
Salina smiled, nodded at the weapon’s “greatness.”
“Yes, I know, Jack,” she said, her voice soft.
“Yeah. I forget sometimes, Salina. You saw combat, didn’t you?”
Her face changed expression, hardening. All the memories came rushing back to her, filling her brain with remembrances she had tried very hard to suppress: the horror of the killing and raping in Chicago; the running in pure terror for days afterward.
She blocked it out, sealing it away, shutting the memory door.
She looked at the young man she loved as her son. She looked at the gun in his hand. “Yes, Jack. I know what combat is.” She closed the door and walked back into the den to be with her husband.
“Talk to me, Ben! Put down that damned book and talk to me!”
Her outburst startled him and he choked on the smoke from his pipe. Ben was trying to give up cigarettes—they were very scarce and stale—and had turned to a pipe. That wasn’t much better. He looked at his wife, hands on her hips, glaring at him. “What’s going on, Salina?”
“Ben, is there going to be another war? Is everything we’ve worked so hard to build going to be destroyed?”
“What? Huh?” Ben looked confused, having gone from Tara in Georgia to his wife yelling at him in about one second. Quick trip. “You’ve lost me, honey.”
She sat down on the hassock in front of his chair, taking his hands in hers. “Will there be more war? Are we going to have to defend what we have here? Is Logan going to send troops in here? And is it worth it, Ben?”
He leaned forward, putting his arms around her, loving the feel of her. Not an emotional man, Ben seldom told her he loved her. But he did love her, very much.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Logan hates me—us—and he’ll try to smash us. As for the worth; are you happy here?”
“You know I am,” she murmured, face pressed into his shoulder. “Happier than I’ve ever been. But I do wonder about our life here, if what we’re doing is the right thing for the young people. Tina is an expert in killing with her hands; Jack is playing with your old Thompson. It just upsets me. These kids have seen enough in their young lives. More war for them, Ben?”
“Honey, if it upsets you, I’ll take that old Thompson away from Jack. I’ll—”
She abruptly pushed away from him. “Damn it, Ben! You’re missing the point.” She stood up, pacing the den. “Is there no middle ground for us? Can’t we compromise with Logan?”
“I’ve written to him, offering to meet and discuss a compromise. He didn’t respond. You know that.”
“Then war is inevitable?”
“That’s the way I see it.”
She lost her temper, pacing the den in a rage, pausing to pick up an ashtray to hurl it against a wall. She thought better of it.
“Shit!” she said; then put the ashtray back on the coffee table.
Ben, as millions of husbands before him, did not know what to do, or really, what he had done. “Honey,” he said, preparing to put his foot in his mouth, “let me call the clinic and the doctor will send Jane or Jerre over with a sedative. Or maybe you two can just chat. That ought to—”
Salina suddenly became very calm. Icy. She spoke through clenched teeth. “Oh, my, yes. By all means, call Jane or Jerre. Maybe one of them understands you better than I.” She whirled and marched to their bedroom, her back ramrod straight. She slammed the door so hard the center panel split down the middle.
Juno ran under a coffee table, overturning it, dumping ashtrays and bric-a-brac on the carpet.
The young people, who had gathered in the hall to listen to the adults argue, slipped back to their rooms and shut the doors… quietly and quickly.
Ben looked to his right and saw Badger standing in the foyer; the shouting had brought him out of his small apartment on the side of the house.
“What did I do?” the governor general of Tri-states asked his bodyguard. “What did I do?”
The young bodyguard shook his head. “Governor, with all due respect, sir; somebody ought to tell you the facts of life.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ben roared. “And who asked you in the first place?”
“Pitiful.” Badger frowned. “Just plain pitiful.” He turned and went back to his apartment.
Juno looked at him, showed Ben his teeth, then padded out of the room.
For several hours that night, Ben slept on the couch in the den. During the early morning hours, Salina slipped into the den to waken him. Together, they got into their own bed, Salina snuggling close to him.
“I’m sorry, Ben,” she whispered.
“I would have been the first to apologize,” he said, caressing her. “But I didn’t know what I’d done. Still don’t.”
“I know, Ben.” She moved under the stroking of his hands.
“I understand,” he said. But of course, he didn’t.
She smiled in the darkness as he touched a breast and she moved a slim hand down his belly.
At breakfast, Salina fixed Ben his favorite foods while he went into the yard to cut her a rose from the many flowering plants around the house. She did not mention to him that he whacked off half the bush to get one rose; merely laughed and thanked him, poured him more coffee, and wondered if she could graft the mangled part back on.
Jack, tactful for one so young, made no mention of his plans to visit the shooting range later that day, and Tina stayed home, helping her adopted mother around the house.
Juno viewed it all with an animal’s patience.
Life in the Tri-states was really not that much different from that in other states or countries.
THREE
The communications people in the Tri-states had the finest electronic equipment in America—perhaps the world—for they had commandeered only the very best during their searches. From listening posts high in the mountains of the Tri-states, they monitored dozens of broadcasts daily, not only in America, but around the globe. They listened to military chatter, broke the codes, and knew what was going down, when, and where. They knew the government in Richmond was watching and listening to their every move, as they were listening and watching them.
Kenny Parr’s mercenaries, fighting alongside the regular military, had swept through Louisiana and Mississippi, crushing Kasim’s small army of guerrillas. Kasim was dead, but he had killed the mercenary Parr before he’d died.
The nation was slowly, painfully, being pulled back together. The central government, under the direction of Hilton Logan and, Ben suspected, the military, was taking absolute control… again.
But they kept out of the Tri-states.
A sm
all town stood almost directly in the center of Tri-states. Its name was changed to Vista, and that became the capital. Their flag was a solid, light blue banner with three stars in a circle. A constitution had been drawn up during the first year, much like the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States, but going into detail and spelling out exactly what the citizens of Tri-states could receive and expect if they lived under that document.
Early on, Tri-states was broken up into districts and elections were held to choose spokespersons from each district. At the end of the second year, Ben was elected governor for life, running with no opposition and no campaign. The laws of the Tri-states were set by balloting, and were firm against amending.
The first session of the legislature (to be held one time each year, no more than two weeks in length) was probably among the shortest on record, anywhere. Major Voltan, a spokesman from the second district, summed it up.
“Why are we meeting?” he asked. “Our laws are set, they can only be changed by a clear mandate from the people. No one in my district wants anything changed.”
Nor in any of the other districts, it seemed.
“The Constitution states we must meet once a year in session.” Ben spoke.
“To do what?” a farmer spokesman inquired.
“To debate issues,” Cecil said.
“What issues?”
There were none.
“Like the Congress of the United States?” a woman asked. “We’re supposed to behave like they do?”
“More or less,” Cecil said.
“God help us all.”
Laughter echoed throughout the large room.
“I move we adjourn so we can all get back to work and do something constructive,” Voltan said.
“Second the motion.”
“Session adjourned,” Ben said.
Tri-states’ laws, the liberal press said, and even after a nuclear war the press was still controlled by liberals, constituted a gunpowder society.
Out of the Ashes ta-1 Page 30
