“You forget,” Vargas said, “he has everything anyway. He has personal command of five times as many men as I do. Besides, John Gatt is my friend. We went to school together in East Los Angeles.”
“Oh, I know all that,” Lupe said. “But sometimes friendship doesn’t last long when it’s a question of who’s going to have the supreme power.”
Vargas said, “I have no ambitions for any more power than I got.”
“But does Gatt know that?”
“He knows it,” Vargas said, and he sounded sure, but not absolutely sure.
“But maybe he doesn’t believe it,” Lupe said. “After all, power changes a man. You’ve seen how it’s changed some of the other generals.”
“Yes, I know. The Russian and Vietnamese independents. But they can’t hold out against Gatt. This time the world is going to be under a single command. John Gatt is going to be the first supreme ruler of Earth.”
“Is he worthy of that?” Lupe asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Vargas said, annoyed. “It’s an idea whose time has come. Life has been too crazy with everybody fighting everybody else. One supreme military commander for all Earth is going to work a lot better for everyone.”
“Well,” Lupe said, “I hope so. So are we going?”
Vargas thought about it. Despite the brave front he had shown to Lupe, he was not without his doubts. Who could tell what Gatt might do? It would not be the first time a victorious general made sure of his position by executing his field generals under pretext of throwing a party. Still, what was the alternative? The men of the Second Route Army were personally loyal to Vargas, but in a showdown battle, Gatt and his fivefold superiority in men and material would have to prevail.
And Vargas had no desire for the supreme command. He was a good field general. But he was not cut out for supreme command and had no desire to it. Gatt ought to know that about him. He had said it often enough.
“I will go see Gatt.”
“And me?” Lupe asked.
“You’ll be safe here with my troops.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lupe said. “Where you go, I go. That’s what a Camp Follower does.”
Vargas had been fighting in Italy before Gatt ordered him to airlift his army to California for the showdown with Wiedermayer, so he hadn’t much idea of the level of destruction in America. His flight by Air Force jet from San Francisco to Ground Zero, Texas, showed him plenty of burned-out cities and displaced populations.
But Ground Zero itself looked all right. It was a new city which Gatt had created. In the center of it was a big sports palace, larger than the Coliseum or the Astrodome or any of those old-world sports palaces. Here warrior-athletes and cheerleaders from all over the world could assemble for the sports rituals of the military, Vargas had never seen so many generals (and generals’ ladies) in his life. All of General Gatt’s field commanders were there, men who had been fighting the good fight for military privilege all over the world. Everybody was in a good mood, as may be imagined.
Vargas and Lupe checked into the big convention hotel which had been especially built for this occasion. They went immediately up to their hotel room.
“Eh,” Lupe said, looking around at the classy furnishings of their suite, “this is ver’ nice, ver’ nice.”
Actually she could speak perfectly good English, but in order to be accepted among the other Camp Followers who hadn’t been raised with her advantages, she had decided that she had to speak with a heavy accent of some sort.
Lupe and Vargas had had to carry up their own luggage to the room since the hotel was so new the bellboys didn’t have security clearances yet.
General Vargas was still dressed for combat. He wore the sweat-stained black khaki uniform of the 30th Chaco campaign, his most famous victory, and with it the lion insignia of a Perpetual Commander in the Eternal Corps.
He set down the suitcases and dropped into a chair with a moue of annoyance: he was a fighting general, not a luggage-carrying general. Lupe was standing nearby gaping at the furniture. She was dressed in her best pink satin whore’s gown. She had a naughty square crimson mouth, a sexy cat’s face, snaky black hair, and legs that never stop coming above a torso that would not let go. Yet despite her beauty she was a woman as tough in her own way as the general, albeit with skinnier legs.
Vargas was heavyset, unshaven, with a heavy slouchy face and a small scrubby beard that was coming in piebald. He had given up shaving because he didn’t think it looked sufficiently tough.
Lupe said to him, “Hey, Xaxi [her own pet name for him], what we do now?”
Vargas snarled at her, “Why you talk in Russian accent? Shut up, you don’t know nothing. Later we go to meeting room and vote.”
“Vote?” Lupe said. “Who’s going to vote?”
“All the generals, dummy.”
“I don’t get it,” Lupe said. “We’re fascists; we don’t need no stinkin’ votes.”
“It’s lucky for you that I love you,” Vargas says, “Because sometimes you’re so stupid I could kill you. Listen to me, my baby vulture, even fascists have to vote sometimes, in order to arrive fairly at the decision to keep the vote away from everyone else.”
“Ah,” Lupe said. “But I thought that part was understood.”
“Of course it’s understood,” Vargas said. “But we can only count on it for sure after there’s been a vote among ourselves agreeing that that’s how things are going to be. Otherwise we might lose everything we’ve worked for. The vote is necessary to secure our beloved revisionist counterrevolution.”
“I guess that’s true,” Lupe said, scratching her haunch, then, remembering her manners, quickly scratching Vargas’ haunch. She went to the refrigerator and got herself a drink of tequila, champagne, and beer, her favorite mixture.
“Is that all this vote’s about?” she asked Vargas.
Vargas was sitting in the living room with his spurred heels up on the coffee table. The coffee table scratched nicely. Vargas knew that they probably put in new coffee tables for each new group of generals who came through. But he enjoyed scratching it anyway. He was a simple man.
“We got also other things we got to vote about,” he told her.
“Do I have to vote too?” Lupe said.
“Naah,” Vargas said. “You’re a woman. Recently we voted to disenfranchise you.”
“Good,” Lupe said, “voting is a bore.”
Just then there was a knock at the door.
“Come in!” Vargas called out.
The door opened and a tall goofy-looking guy, with droopy lips and narrow little eyes, wearing a gray business suit, came in. “You Vargas?” he said.
“Yeah,” Vargas said. “And try knocking before you come in next time or I break your back.”
“This is business,” the guy said. “I’ve brought the bribe.”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Vargas asked. “Sit down, have a drink.”
The goofy-looking guy took a thick envelope out of an inside jacket pocket and handed it to Vargas. Vargas looked into the envelope. It was stuffed with thousand-eagle double simoleon bills.
“Hell,” Vargas said, “you can barge in any old time. What is this for, or shouldn’t I ask?”
“I told you; it’s a bribe,” the guy said.
“I know it’s a bribe,” Vargas said. “But you haven’t told me what, specifically, I’m being bribed for.”
“I thought you knew. Later, when the voting starts, we want you to vote yes on Proposition One.”
“You got it. But what is Proposition One?”
“That civilians should henceforth be barred from the vote until such time as the military high command decides they are reliable.”
“Sounds good to me,” Vargas said.