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That was putting it simply, all right-a one-line summary of Marxist ideology with a contemporary spin, managing to combine the words motherfuckers and masses.

“And the solution?” Monks said.

“What you got to do with any kid that gets out of line. A good old-fashioned spanking.”

Monks was startled. “Spank America?”

“Tough love,” Freeboot agreed. He smiled again, and this time it seemed to have a leering, even sadistic edge. And yet Freeboot’s brand of tough love seemed to have captivated Glenn, while Monks’s own attempts had failed miserably. Was that the key-some mixture of cruelty and submission?

Freeboot abandoned the philosophic pose, leaning back in his chair and groping on the floor for a bottle of the Monte Alban mescal. He took a long swig and offered it to Monks. Monks shook his head.

“The next question is: How do you bring off something like that?” Freeboot said. “You’d need an army, right?”

Monks was still not clear on what “spanking America ” entailed. He shrugged noncommittally.

“It’s already out there.” Freeboot waved one arm in a wide, circling gesture. “All those working people who got thrown out on the bricks, because somebody sent their jobs to slave-labor factories in China. All those kids coming up poor, the best thing they can ever expect is to put on a Burger King cap. There’s three and a half million homeless people in this country right now, man, and thousands more every month. Another big factory closed down every time you pick up a newspaper. That’s the real, hard-ass result of the big rip-off that’s going on.”

He watched Monks, his gaze challenging.

“I agree that spreading money around differently would help,” Monks said.

“It’s not just about money. Those people have lost their dignity. You give that back to them, they’ll give you dedication.”

“Dignity’s a huge thing to offer.”

“Meaning what? My mouth’s writing a check my ass can’t cash? Let me tell you something else. The necks think the people on the streets are just going to disappear somehow. They’re fucking wrong. Those people are tough, and they’re not stupid.”

“Necks?”

“That’s right. ’Cause when shit starts to happen, somebody’s foot’s going to be on them.” Freeboot crossed his ankles up on the table, displaying his bare soles, dark with dirt and horny with callus. “They think they can hide in their gated communities and nobody can touch them. They’re gonna get spanked hard.” He drank again from the mescal bottle. It seemed that he was prepared to hold forth for quite some time.

“I’d better check on Mandrake,” Monks said, turning toward the bedroom.

“Hey, I took your chains off.” Freeboot said, annoyed. “You’re not going to talk to me?”

Workers of the world, unite, Monks thought. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

He turned back. “I understand what you’re telling me,” he said. “But not why. What do you care what I think?”

Freeboot’s face took on its heavy-lidded, hypnotic gaze.

“I got to have something to call you,” Freeboot said. “Coil says ‘Rasp.’ Okay?”

Monks shrugged. He was particular about who used his nickname, but he was damned if he’d let Freeboot know that he was pushing a button.

“He says they called you that in Vietnam,” Freeboot said. “You got a good look at guerrilla war, huh?”

“I was never in combat. Mostly I dealt with the results.”

“Must have been ugly.”

Monks felt a tremor of razor-keen memory: jerking awake on the hospital ship USS Respite in the South China Sea, sodden with sweat from the wet heat, the sour bile taste of fear already in his mouth and adrenaline starting to course through his bloodstream, at the far-off thunder of medevac helicopters ferrying their bloody burdens from Quang Tri.

“Very,” he said.

“Well, there you go. All because those Vietnamese got fucked over too much for too long and they started fighting back.”

Another simplistic judgment, about a war whose roots were a Gordian knot.

But the words that Glenn had been chanting came into Monks’s mind: number nine, number nine, number nine-

Revolution Number 9.

Finally, the hints that Freeboot had been dropping clicked into focus.

“Are you talking about an uprising?” Monks said incredulously.

“I’m talking about Free Companies, like I told you. That’s going to be the real new world order. Think Road Warrior, man. Roving armies doing whatever they want, armed to the teeth. They’re already on the ground in Africa and South America, and all it’s going to take here is somebody to light the fuse. They’re everywhere, right there in your town.”

“This isn’t Africa or South America,” Monks said. “We have systems of civil protection.”

Freeboot snorted in derision. “There aren’t enough cops to stop them or prisons to hold them. The necks can call out the miltary, but they got a problem there, too. What about all the ghetto kids coming back from places like Iraq? They spend a year in hell, then get home and find out they still get treated like dogshit. Whose side you think they’re going to come down on?”

“There was a lot of talk like this in the sixties,” Monks said. “Not much came of it.”

“People had things too good in the sixties,” said Freeboot, who could not have been born by then. “The people I’m talking about are hungry.”

He stood up suddenly, with the quickness and balance that Monks had come to expect.

“You think I’m just bullshitting,” Freeboot said. “I got something to show you later.” He padded to the door and vanished into the dusk.

Monks stood where he was, trying to weigh what he had just heard. Clearly Freeboot thought of himself as a leader out to liberate an underdog element of the population-the foot on the “necks” would be his.

On the face of it, his ideas were a mishmash of superficial political theory, megalomania, and chest-thumping fantasy, all wrapped up in a bubble of schoolboy logic-the kind of self-contained shell that couldn’t be penetrated without going more deeply into the issues, which, obviously, he had no patience for. Like a lot of self-proclaimed prophets, he had gleaned a few high-sounding bits of philosophy and twisted them to suit his own purposes. And like a lot of revolutionaries, he seemed to idealize violence.

To imagine that this little clutch of misfits could cause widespread unrest was absurd. But it was still disturbing. Freeboot possessed undeniable charisma-and there was enough truth in what he said to make it persuasive, especially to listeners who wouldn’t examine it closely.

Monks even admitted to a prickle of sympathy. Without doubt, there was a lot of gross injustice out there, and maybe in some ways it was getting worse. He’d had his own run-ins with the way of thinking that saw human beings as numbers on paper, livestock, pawns to be used by an elite who considered themselves godlike, and who kept themselves carefully shielded. And yet, society’s rules were the only thing that kept most people safe from the chaos and bloodshed that had been common through so much of history.

When did it become acceptable-even necessary-to cross that fragile line?

He had to agree that in some circumstances, violence was the only way for the oppressed to recover both their rights and their self-respect. There could certainly be heroism in fighting for ideals, and glory in battle itself.

But he had seen so much horrifying pain, and dignity didn’t usually go along with it.

Mandrake seemed to be asleep or sunk in lethargy. Monks decided to leave him alone until it was time for the next blood-sugar check, then to wake him and try to engage him in talk or play.