A Few Good Men (50 page)

At any rate, getting access to the energy shipments of Circum, as we now control access to the powerpods—even if the Good Men have managed to get sources of it going, enough to hold on against us, one can’t help but think the war has turned. And having new recruits pour into our ranks, fresh as new paint and raw as steak though they are, doesn’t hurt either.

After we cleaned Olympus, cremated our dead and bound our wounds, Nat went back to the war, and I went back to my work, and I won’t say there weren’t many days of perusing casualty lists ahead, but Nat was never on them. Somehow, through the next few months, he came through fire and hell alive and relatively intact. He says that, like Tom Sawyer in the book of ancient writer Mark Twain, he was born to hang and short of that nothing can kill him.

I’m sure the Good Men would gladly have hanged him, if they’d known, so I’ll be grateful they didn’t.

Oh, one other thing, which I’m not sure I should mention, as it has very little to do with the revolution and is purely personal, is that three nights after he came back from the Massacre of Broken River, Nat gave me a bracelet. It was a simple silver arc, open on the end, so it was adjustable. It had a stylized engraving of a tree with an ax resting against it. On the back it had my name, and underneath, Free Man, and the date I had joined the Usaians and the Sons of Liberty.

“I had it made,” he said. “I had one made for myself, after the raid, and when I was ordering I thought you might want one too, and at any rate I owe you my life.”

The ax and the tree were drawn by Nat and were supposed to symbolize George Washington, or something. I treasured it because Nat gave it to me, but later on, after they were noticed, a lot of people made up a whole story about it.

It appears that with my being the public face of the revolution, at least in broadcasts, and the whole thing being perceived as starting from my escaping Never-Never, a lot of the more fervent and prophecy-inclined Usaians have decided I am the foretold George who would come to restart the wheels of freedom.

It is no use at all telling them that my name was spelled Lucius and that none of my supposed ancestors had even been named anything with a
G
. And it is no use telling them I had done nothing except exist to start this pebble rolling. All they do is shake their heads and make some pronouncement about the mysterious ways of God.

I mention this because the bracelet is taken as corroboration of this ridiculous idea, and Nat finds himself greatly amused by it, though once he told me, “Has it ever occurred to you that you wouldn’t know if you were him?” I suppose he’s gotten a little loopy. It must be all the responsibility.

The Point Turns

I’ve been struggling to know how to finish this account. I’ve been told that my view of the war is important, since many people still think I was instrumental in starting the whole thing. I’ve been told that this might provide clues on how to avoid future tyrannies, how to create a revolution if needed, how to turn revolution gone wrong to revolution done right. I don’t think so. Looking back at this, it all seems intensely personal and particular and I don’t see how anyone can use it.

At any rate, after the raid on Circum Terra and the battle for Olympus, Nat went back to war, in command of a larger force than ever. He was in Herrera’s private staff by then, Herrera’s inner circle, who, like Wellington with his trusted men, he called his family. I didn’t find out Nat’s rank for sure till the next time he visited, and I don’t know when the promotion happened.

As for me, I went back to making broadcasts and propaganda, but this time seriously and not just trading on my image. I found that as well as the super speed trick, superhuman memory and correlating ability had been engineered into my ancestor. Or, at least, Doctor Dias told me so. So I used it. I studied all the revolutions, including the French, and I started tailoring broadcasts and arranging things to bring people to our cause. Somewhere along the line I found that I was in charge and that Betsy was working for me. Fortunately her devotion to the cause allowed her to ignore the personal demotion. If it was a demotion. Like her son, that woman can always make sure what she wants happens, and the rest is only incidental.

And Athena Sinistra came back to Earth yet again, and then there was all the mess with the juveniles of my kind. But none of that is mine to tell, and as for how I turned public opinion in my favor, I’ll eventually write about it. When the war is over. If the war is ever over.

And so, because this has turned into an intensely personal account, I’ll finish with an intensely personal moment.

It was the next time Nat came home, after the raid on Circum. We’d just captured Sea York, in the first indisputable victory for our side, and he got sent home for real rest and recreation. He hadn’t even gone to his parents’ house but came directly to the palace, where he found me presiding over a staff of ten people, each of whom did their best to help me and mostly succeeded in driving me insane.

He waited at the door to the office, which I kept meaning to have refurnished, but which still looked like my father’s, because it was a war and resources were scarce and I’d been divesting my attics of accumulated stuff to furnish other, more important offices than mine. After a while one of my secretaries, a timid young man from Liberte, had ventured to tell me that General Remy and “a big shaggy dog” were waiting for me. Yes, Nat had Goldie with him. And I managed not to make a spectacle of myself right there in the hall, because it had been almost a year since I’d seen Nat and every time I see him, truly see him, is a moment of wonder and joy that I haven’t missed his name in the casualty lists. As for Goldie, he leapt at me, put paws on my shoulders and forgot all the proper behavior Nat had taught him.

After my face was thoroughly licked, Nat said, “It’s as safe here as anywhere else, now, and most of the children are busy with the war, so I thought you could keep him.”

I dragged them both off to the terrace outside my room, and Nat and I sat on the wall facing the sea, while Goldie put his head on my knees and Nat talked to me of strategy, of victories, of troop movements, of some of the weapon caches they found, of bits of documentation the Good Men had suppressed and which would come to me in time.

It was a beautiful spring day, with a soft breeze blowing, warm and salty around us. I told him a little of what I was doing, and he said, “I know. You’re well on your way to becoming a living legend. Forget the generals and everyone who actually fights. When historians write about this period, it will all be Lucius Keeva. Lucius Keeva came up with the idea, created the revolution and fought the war singlehanded.”

I’d smiled at him and shrugged. “I just can’t wait till there are elections, and a legitimate representative of the people is elected to take over this place, and I can be just Lucius Keeva, without anyone associating me with being a Patrician or thinking I want to go on being the Good Man.”

“Ah. How goes the constitutional republic project?”

I made a face. “The convention is a howling mess. But I did manage to get them not to outlaw homosexuality . . . Which considering that’s been a crime in Earth’s code for so long, with death penalty attached many places, is a minor victory, and the only time I got involved . . . for cause.”

He grinned at me. “Minor victories, but personal.”

“Of sorts. I don’t like it, though, Nat. I don’t like getting involved in that sort of discussion. And I don’t want them to change their minds because it’s personal.”

He looked serious, again. “But it’s all personal, isn’t it? That is the whole point of individual liberties. The right and the duty to have it be personal, to have it count, to be the best person you can be, no matter how easy or difficult for you, particularly.” He sounded pensive. “I think the beginning of the end, for the republic, before, was dividing people into groups and buying into collective guilt and collective innocence. In the end, all each of us has is himself, and no regime will be perfect for everyone. But particularly for us, the odd ones that don’t quite fit in, the regime that respects the individual most is always the best.”

Silence fell and he smoked, quietly. After a long time, he cleared his throat. “So, you don’t want to go into politics? Because you’re quite good at it.”

“No. I don’t want to go into it. I hate it. I hate being on display, and my life observed from every angle.”

He was quiet a longer while. “What do you intend to do, after you pass on the governorship of Olympus and the North American territories, and the war is over?”

“I told you before,” I said. “I will take my money, if it’s still worth anything, since your father is flapping about fiat currencies and a gold standard—”

“Oh, yes, one of Father’s old hobby horses. Mind you, I haven’t studied it enough to say he’s not right, but . . .”

“Yeah, so if my money is still worth something, I’ll buy an awful lot of robots and go cut down some of those fast-growing trees and start a farm. Close enough to the Longs that I can go to the Fall Festival, if they still have those. And then grow chickens and pigs and cows, and maybe even a couple of kids, because there’re going to be a lot of them orphaned when this is over, and I’ve found I’m fond of reading bedtime stories.”

“Are you really?” Nat said. He looked at me, examining my face, as if he were looking for something. I didn’t know what, so I just looked back at him, waiting for him to say something like that I had a wart forming at the end of my nose. It was that sort of intent scrutiny.

But instead, after a long while, he flicked his spent cigarette out to sea and sighed. “And here, I’m a thoroughly urban man, but I don’t think I can let you go and settle in the wilderness all alone. For one, you’d be making coffee with socks rather than learn to use the proper appliance—” I started to open my mouth to protest, but he didn’t give me time. “For another, I remember you had the hardest time telling the cows from the bulls, and for yet another because even if you do adopt a couple of kids, eventually they will leave, and it’s a sad thought that you’ll end up like old Rogers, living with three pigs and talking to them as if they were people.”

“So,” I said, confused, “what are you saying?”

“When the war is over,
we
’ll go to the wilderness and start a farm,” Nat said, firmly. “And
we
’ll have an attic room with a window at either end, so the breeze can flow through in the summer. And
we
’ll raise chickens and pigs who don’t wear aprons, and cows, and kids if you insist, and a whole lot of golden-haired dumb dogs.” He took a deep breath. “And I’ll operate the kitchen machinery because, Lucius, honestly, you’re pitiful.”

I looked over at him, trying to determine if he was teasing me. But, even though his lips were curved in a smile, his eyes were deadly serious and a little anxious, as if he were afraid of what I might say. So I did what I had to do and tried not to look like I’d just won the lottery.

I said, “Yeah. Let’s do that. I’d like that.”