"Nah," Gottberg said, but he looked cautiously over his shoulder when he did it. "You haven't heard me talk about how great things were in the old army, have you? You know, the real US Army, where they had real soldiers, with guns."
The young men all laughed, a bit uneasily. The food came out-starting with corn on the cob, a rare treat in the Clan's territories, where maize grew reluctantly. Spareribs in hot sauce followed it, and grilled pork chops with sage and onion stuffing, mounds of fried potatoes, steamed cabbage and carrots, brown bread and butter; plain food and plenty of it, and more beer along with it. Everyone said their varieties of grace-including one that simply went, "Good God, good meat: Good God, let's eat!"-and then all of them dug in with thoughtless voracity.
"Ah, that's better than I've had in a while," Edain said, pushing back his plate and wiping his mouth. "Saving your top man's own table, and that was seasoned with nervousness, for me."
Crackling and crunching and slobbering came from under the table, where Garbh enjoyed the bones; her jaws were more than strong enough to crunch them like stalks of celery, except that they had roast marrow in the center, which explained the ecstatic slurping sounds.
"Apple pie and ice cream all round," Gottberg went on to the plain middle aged waitress. "Hell, Judy, bring the bucket, and make it chocolate!"
Her brows went up. "You boys just win a lottery, or sack the Prophet's palace in Corwin, or what?"
"Nah, we get him in a month or two, and I'll buy a plow team with my share. We won a bet today. Found money and it's burning a hole in my pocket."
More serious work with fork and spoon followed. The talk turned to politics; Edain kept mostly quiet but kept his ears pricked.
"So we replace those useless old farts with another bunch of old farts just a bit younger," Kit said. "Hell with it. Why do we need 'em? And who's going to run against the boss for president? That would be like trying to take God Almighty's job."
That brought a laugh, but one soldier went on seriously: "Well, God bless him, but the boss isn't going to be around forever. I mean, you wouldn't know it the way he keeps up in the field, but he's an old man too-nearly sixty. I mean, sixty… how many people do you know last much past sixty?"
The hard young faces suddenly went a little uncertain. Edain recognized the feeling; people got the same way back home, thinking of what Clan Mackenzie would do without the Mackenzie. She was the Goddess on-Earth, the one who'd brought their parents or their grandpar ents alive through the Change and given their world its shape and meaning.
Still, they had Rudi ready to take over the job…
"We should elect him a new vice president, a younger guy. The boss can have the top job as long as he wants… understand, I've got nothing against Colonel Moore, but…"
"I figure he's OK, but he's as old as the boss. We should elect Captain Martin vice president," Gottberg said firmly, scooping more of the walnut-studded ice cream onto his plate.
It took Edain a moment to remember the ruler of Boise's eldest son; they must mean Martin Thurston. Who was about Rudi's age or a little more, come to think of it.
Gottberg went on: "That way if… well, you know… it'll be like the boss wasn't really gone."
"Yeah," Kit said. His eyes turned a little hooded. "I remember my dad telling me about how the boss found him and Mom and some others hiding out in an old warehouse near Nampa-this was just after the plague, you know, when it all went to hell?-and he said, 'Come with me if you want to live,' and they did. And they got a crop planted in time."
One of the rest of the squad nodded. "And if we pick Captain Martin, then when the boss is gone, we'll have someone closer to our age in charge. Christ, I get so fucking sick of those old geezers who never shut up about things before the Change. It doesn't mean any thing! I'm not talking about the boss, of course. Just the rest of them. Like my old man."
"Yeah," Gottberg said. "If I have to hear another story about how wonderful it was to sell, what did they call 'em, elstronics, for a living I'm gonna puke. Besides… when I get out of the army, I'm going home and then when my father's ready I'll take over the farm. I know that ground-know it through my hands and feet, know what every inch of it can do. I'm the oldest son, so I'll get it when Dad wants to sit by the stove and rest; that's fair, that's right. I figure it's the same with the country-why not?"
Edain ventured a comment: "This Captain Martin of yours, he's had his hands on the plow handles, then?"
Gottberg nodded. "I figure Captain Martin's got to know the Chief's job the same way I know our farm. It's not like he's some goof off; he's been doing jobs for his dad for years now, running a company in the sixth, helping start new villages-he talked the folks up north in Moscow into rejoining the country, too, the way I hear it, even if he was just in charge of the escort on paper."
"Yeah, that's true," Kit said. "And Martin Thur ston's… he understands, you know? Nothing against the boss, but sometimes he doesn't think like us. I've heard Captain Martin talk and I've talked to guys in the sixth regiment. They say you can always go to him with a problem and he'll see you right-he'll stand by a friend no matter what. And he's a young guy, like Joe says, he's got his pecker up, he's got big plans for the country.
Time to do something new, like his dad did when he was young."
"You'll hail him tanist, then?" Edain asked. "Vice president, I mean."
"Well, there's some bullshit rules about it," Kit said. "I don't see why we've always got to get our panties in a twist 'cause of something written way over on the other side of the world back when."
Gottberg put down his spoon, his blue eyes narrow ing. "Fuckin'-A. And those Cutter loonies from Corwin, they tried to kill him-snuck killers into the guard detail! Kill him and the boss and his brother too! I've got nothing against Colonel Moore, but he's even older than the boss, like you say. If those scumbags hadn't been shot in time, we wouldn't have anything of the boss left."
That brought a growl all along the table. Men sitting at others close enough to hear nodded; a couple of them gave Edain a thumbs-up gesture, probably having heard who it was who saved their ruler.
Rudi will be interested to hear this, Edain thought.
Politics lost its charm; someone began to sing. The Boise men didn't have as much training as so many clansfolk would, and it was odd to sing without women's voices, but they had some catchy tunes.
They liked "March of Cambreath," and he did it twice so they could get the words; the "How many of them can we make die?" chorus was really popular. Then they started in on their own war songs. Soon the whole room was hammering mugs and fists on the tables and bellowing:
Yanks to the charge! cried Thurston
The foe begins to yield!
Strike-for hearth and nation
Strike-for the Eagle shield!
Let no man stop to plunder
But slay, and slay, and slay;
The God who helped our fathers
Fights by our side today!
Edain turned down an invitation to follow them to a sporting house, whatever that was. He didn't know what the conversation had meant, not wholly, but it did give him a bit of a feeling for the place, and Rudi was better than he at putting the bits and pieces together.
"Yeah, that toadsticker you use is dangerous one-on-one," Martin Thurston said. "As long as you've got room to give ground."
Rudi nodded and settled back in the big chair; he felt loose and relaxed after the sparring and the shower. The officer's mess of Boise's citadel was a comfortable place, with leather furniture and good paneling, and a discreet bar. It also stood on the sixth floor of an old high rise, the Williams Office Building, built into the new citadel wall, which gave it a magnificent view of the state capitol-national capitol, according to the residents-when the heavy steel shutters with their arrow slits were drawn back.