A Few Good Men

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  The idea that these characteristics would outlive me, and continue in my body memory, even if someone else’s brain occupied my cranium made me shiver, but I had no reason to doubt it, not after my experience with my arm. And Nat had said that though he’d noticed a lot of things wrong with Not-Max, it had all been cast into doubt because so many of the movements and gestures remained so characteristic of Max, even if others weren’t. It was that which had kept him in a despair of doubt until he’d found physical proof of the transplant.

  Whatever reason those things had been drummed into me, they served me well that night. I might in fact be a self-centered pampered princeling who felt stung that the play-friend of his makeshift recapturing of youth over summer had more important things to do than cater to his pride; the self-involved Patrician—but it didn’t show. I saw that broadcast a few weeks later. In addition to the broadcast, someone rigged a camera for pickup and recording of the holo. And I looked good and calm and responsible—in fact better, calmer and more respectable than I had looked at any time in the past fifteen years.

  I was not aware, at the time, of how my appearance had changed again. The Longs didn’t have anything against mirrors. At least I don’t believe so. They probably had them in their freshers, and possibly even in Mrs. Long’s bedroom and almost certainly in Jane’s. I’m sure if I’d asked to use a mirror, they would have let me, of course. And if I’d had any reason to do so, I’d have done it. But since beard-growth inhibitor came into common use, men have lost all need for a mirror in their freshers. Unless a fashion comes in for men to wear makeup as it did in the seventeenth and again in the late twenty-second centuries, the only freshers and bathrooms with built-in mirrors will be the ones that have female users.

  Nat’s and my bedroom in the farmhouse didn’t have a mirror, nor did the bathroom—little more than a fresher unit—next to it. I didn’t mind, as I’d combed and tied my hair by touch for years. And it never occurred to me to find a mirror.

  Which was why my first view of the recorded holo of that broadcast was such a shock. I looked . . . well. I hadn’t looked well when I’d first seen myself in the mirror of that flophouse on Liberte. I’d looked grown-up, sure, and muscular. But I’d been much, much paler than anyone who hadn’t spent fifteen years indoors would be. Which made sense, since I had in fact spent fifteen years indoors. And I looked . . . not exactly gaunt, but haunted. Which also made sense, I supposed, since Ben had been my constant companion for those fifteen years, dead as much as alive.

  On the broadcast, I looked tanned, with the reddish-gold tan of a fair man who spends a lot of time outside. The sun that had beat down on us while helping with the harvest or taking long broom rides into the outskirts of populated territories had left not-unbecoming lighter streaks in my hair. I’d put on weight, too, though I was a long way from being fat, partly because I’d spent most of the time away involved in activities that demanded physical effort. But my face, while not as broad as Max’s in his grown-up portraits, had filled in a bit with flesh, making my prominent cheekbones less skeletal-looking, and giving the whole the look of a man in his thirties who might not have had a precisely easy life—my scars were still visible even if less livid in the tanned face—but who also hasn’t slept out in the elements and been chased down the street by beggars afraid he’ll make the neighborhood look bad.

  The address I read can be watched. It can also be read, but if you read it be aware it is the version first put in front me, and not what I actually said. Why both versions persist is one of those things I can’t explain except by saying that the Daughters of Liberty were planning ahead. They knew history is not in fact written by the victors, and history is not even a coherent compilation of the facts that someone thought made a better story. History is, instead, a hodgepodge of the various stuttering versions of what someone thought happened, as full of holes as witness accounts of any accident are, as my account of my small role in the beginning of the revolution that ignited the Earth is. In fact, in the rare occasions when a coherent narrative emerges, it is almost always wrong. And when a convenient and easily believable narrative emerges, told by someone who tries to tell you that he or his ancestors were always and without fail on the right side of history, someone is trying to sell you something, and chances are the price is more than you’re willing to pay.

  The speech was this, the bits about my past and the hints about possible Mule origins of the Good Men removed by yours truly while reading. I didn’t judge it to be a good time to create that kind of doubt. I didn’t know who had written the speech, or what they meant by those hints—perhaps no more than to create the seeds for an eventual revelation. But I remembered what Nat had said about its being much easier to get people to revolt if one pushed their loathing or their fears. And I didn’t particularly want their loathing or their fears activated against me. Not then. So I elided them, and instead said this: “People of Olympus, I am, as most of you know or will have heard, the Good Man Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva. I come before you tonight to explain that though my people have ruled the island for generations, I have in recent months become a Usaian. I know most of you have been taught to fear and hate my religion, but there are any number of you who don’t, because you are in fact also secret devotees of it. To those who have never heard of us, or our beliefs, or who have heard only accounts that distort and debase our principles, let me assure you we are guided by three major rules: that the individual has a right—or should have a right—to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. From these descend several other rights, including the right of self-determination; the right of creating and owning what you create; the right to self-defense, even if the state determines you should die; the intrinsic value of the individual, even the individual who for whatever reason doesn’t quite fit into the mold of the community in which he resides.” I paused to let that sink in, then allowed a little levity to show in my eyes, and allowed my mouth to form a quasi-smile. “You will notice that nowhere there does it say that we sacrifice babies, nor that we believe our war goddess can curse you. That is because those and various other fables are myths and do not apply to anyone I know, in my religion or out of it. In fact, to my knowledge, we do not have a war goddess. We simply believe humanity’s destiny is freedom and prosperity, and that the two go hand in hand.” Another pause. “I know in recent weeks you’ve been introduced to my people as an occupying force. I was away, unavoidably detained by other business, and not aware of what was happening at home. Let me assure you what happened—what has now stopped—was an aberration. Over the centuries of secrecy and proscription some of our members got so . . . zealous, that they were willing to impose freedom by force, from above. Most of us know that this is not possible. And while it is true that our seacity is or soon will be facing a concerted attack from forces that oppose us, I refuse to treat every Olympian who disagrees with me as an enemy. Unless you actively work against us, we shall leave you alone, to pursue your own happiness. We might have to temporarily curtail some of your activities, like your ability to communicate with people outside the isle, and your ability to visit friends and relatives in other seacities. These will be temporary hobbles on your freedom, which we hope to lift as soon as your activities can no longer be a danger to our cause. Until then, allow your Usaian neighbors to talk to you. No one will force you to believe anything, and no one will treat you differently if you don’t, save for those minor hobbles mentioned above. But perhaps if you know who we are and what we are trying to do, you will feel less apprehensive about the future. After all, in the future we wish to construct, every Olympian will have a right to his opinion, and a right to vote for and pursue the form of governance he thinks best.” I’d given them the kind of warm smile I’d been trained to give, the kind that let them know that while I was above them by birth and raised as such, and though my responsibilities were far above them, I considered them my family and my bosom buddy, each and every grubby one, down to the last broomer hopped up on oblivi
um, and the last whore on her back in the cheapest flophouse in the seacity.

  And then the transmission ended and I slumped in nerveless relief on the chair, only to be called back by Royce, gingerly handing me a link. When I pressed Accept Call, I found myself—in blinking disbelief—facing my butler. “Sir,” he said, “we need another half hour to finish cleaning your room and changing the sheets. Will sir want it before that?”

  I laughingly assured him I didn’t. For one, it took me longer than that to get home, because first a small flyer had to come pick me up, and then we had to fly blind, in the dark, so that I would never, ever, ever know where the larger flyer had landed or where I’d given my speech.

  When I finally made it home, I noticed no signs of vandalism, and nothing broken or dirtied by the People’s Committee, or whatever it was they called themselves, occupying my home for the last three weeks. At the time I thought perhaps their depredations would be more visible in the full light of day.

  But it turned out that they weren’t. They weren’t because there weren’t any. Other than sleeping in my—and several other—beds, using my chairs and desk, and stealing a few—very few—of the showiest artifacts, they’d left the house alone. They were not vandals, after all, but idealists. Idealists convinced of all the wrong ideals, but idealists nonetheless.

  Once the sheets had been changed, and my room had been cleaned, the home was, in fact, as far as I cared—I had never really noticed, much less cared for my father’s collection of twentieth century paintings—back to being my home.

  I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, feeling only the lack of Goldie who, for the last few months, had slept with his muzzle resting somewhere between my shoulder and neck. And I woke up with a footstep in the room, and a burner in my hand and pointed at the person.

  The end of a cigarette glowed in the night. “Peace, Luce, it’s me.”

  I pushed the safety on the burner and threw it under my pillow again. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “What? Come to sleep across your door, of course.”

  “You know that’s not needed. Now I’m not the most important target. And besides, you have other duties. You’re in charge of the strike force, or whatever they are.”

  “Whatever they are, they are quartered in the merchant guild for the night, pending someone more intelligent than me figuring out where to park them permanently, come morning. Probably in another seacity, at that.”

  “And Liam Chen?” I said.

  “Liam Chen what?”

  “Did he survive the fighting?”

  “All of them survived the fighting, Lucius. We had no casualties. Well, a few burns, but nothing serious. And I don’t know about Liam particularly, didn’t see him, as he was in another part of the city. Why? Do you have a particular interest? I can call someone and ask.”

  Was that a dangerous tone in Nat’s voice? Poor Liam. I realized that if the Usaians had a hell, I was going to burn in it forever because the suspicion in his voice was balm to my soul. “Not really,” I said. “I just knew he had taken on as your second-in-command and feared he was peculiarly exposed. I . . . we recruited him, so I felt responsible, but I don’t really care.”

  “You’re a strange man, Lucius Keeva,” Nat said, and I heard him spread his blanket and lie down across the door.

  When I woke up he was gone. I wouldn’t see him again for three months.

  The Wheel

  When my dog was taken away when I was ten, my mother consoled me by getting me a hamster. It didn’t live very long, and I never got very attached to it. I mean, I had nothing against it. I like almost all animals. But I never felt for him—or her. I never figured it out—as I would have for a cat, a dog, or another creature who could join in the games Ben and I played as children.

  The hamster never did much but run on a little wheel in its cage. Sometimes I’d wake up in the night and hear it running madly and feel very sorry for it, running, running and never getting anywhere.

  For the next few months, I was that hamster. My days were insanely busy, but not driven by any purpose I could understand. Betsy set my schedule. I’d become . . . a project, I think. It might have started as a way to make sure I wasn’t engulfed in whatever firestorm was to come, but it had become something else. I’d read, in one of those books that Sam had sent me in jail, that pilots, in one of the USA’s fights in the twentieth century, used to paint bosomy women on the nose of their planes to remind themselves what men fought for.

  If I’d been bosomy and female, I’d have felt like one of those. As it was, I was not sure what I was, except that there were speeches to deliver, statements to sign, and people needed to see me on the holo transmitter to feel reassured. Now, I don’t know about you, precisely, but when I want to be reassured, the thing that comes to mind is not seeing some oversized bastard with a cut across his face and the expression of a bull terrier that’s been baited beyond his endurance. It probably proves I’m not a normal man, who knows?

  Between that and the fact that Sam had me going through my patrimony, to decide what was mine and what belonged to the people of Olympus, I barely had time to eat and drink, much less to sleep. Mind you, for my part I’d told Sam my possessions were the stuffed giraffe and my bit of flag, but he’d looked at me as though I were out of my mind and told me you don’t right an injustice by starting another injustice and that there is no such thing as collective guilt or collective innocence—not that I remembered ever telling him there was—and that they wouldn’t strip me of all my possessions as the start of an era that granted people their property. They were not Sans Culottes, he said.

  Which was just as well, because if I remembered my old French that meant without pants, and if people started running about my house without pants that would get around and give a very odd impression of me and my retainers. Probably destroy my usefulness as a propaganda weapon. And no, I was not sighing and wishing someone would do just that. Well, not in front of Sam or Betsy, anyway.

  Apparently anything that had been brought into the family by one of the women my “father” had married and used as incubators was, of course, inherited by me. Which meant I still had considerably more money, jewels and propriety than I knew what to do with, and Sam was not about to let me donate any of it to the cause until “you understand more about money.” And when I’d bridled at that, I’d tamped it down quickly, because I realized he was right. My entire experience of life was based on being a child, who, by definition, used money but didn’t fully understand it, then being a prisoner whose most prized possession was a near-disposable reader. I didn’t understand money, didn’t know how to earn it, or what to do with it. Though in the back of my mind a vague project was forming of trading all of those trinkets, jewelry I never wore and property I’d never set foot in, for a few hundred acres in the North American backwoods, equipped with all the most sophisticated work robots money could buy. Maybe I’d even get three pigs and one would wear an apron. Or maybe Nat would let me have Goldie.

  But the important part of that work, and of going through centuries of snarled accounts and determining which of that property was still extant and could be claimed and liquidated, was to get money to finance the revolution.

  It’s something the history books rarely mention, among all the pomp, the blood and the glory, but revolutions and wars, like all human endeavors, run on money. There were troops that needed to be paid, however irregularly. They had to be fed too, and it turned out Nat was right, all our efforts for that had come to almost nothing. As our forces in the field grew, two seacities had experienced revolutions, the Good Men and, alas, their heirs having disappeared in mysterious circumstances and the seacities taken over by revolutionary committees.

  I didn’t like that above half, since the revolutionaries sounded much like the people that had been ousted in Olympus, but Sam told me we couldn’t make sure the entire world was on the right path. Yes, we co
uld look after Olympus and its territories. We could make sure here, at least, the principles were kept. But not all our allies in the fight were Usaians, and we needed them all. We couldn’t engage in internal squabbling while we took down the most dictatorial regime the world had ever known. He called them fellow travelers, a term I knew from reading about the beginnings of the communist religion, and told me that they would be welcome until the current enemy was put down. For now we needed as many allies as possible, to help liberate the Earth from the grip of the Good Men, and, more important, to help free people’s minds from the grasp of indoctrination.

  The fighting had started in earnest, though one of the things I rarely had time to do was look through the news holos. I read about the action in Syracuse, one of our major losses. They were all losses, followed by a huge list of casualties, and after them I’d be required to give a speech to the people of Olympus because Sam was always afraid they’d rebel. Our grip on their loyalty was, to put it mildly, unsteady. So I’d have to get in front of the broadcasters and say empty, ridiculous things like that we’d killed more of them than they’d killed of us and that I wished we could sell them a victory at such a price again.

  At that time, normally, we didn’t even have casualty lists, and in my mind were all the young men Nat and I had recruited to the fight, and their sisters, not a few of whom had streamed in after them. How many of them were dead by then? Was Nat even alive? I had no way of knowing.

  A day or two after these engagements, I’d finally get to peruse the casualty lists, and read name on name in mute horror at the number of them, in mute relief when I didn’t find any name I knew well enough to feel it. When I didn’t find Nat’s name.