Allen Kim Lang

“ His car, adorned with a Just Married sign that completely obscured the rear window, trailing strings of shoes and empty milk-tins, stood at the end of a corridor formed by two face-to-face ranks of BSG Officer-Candidates. The OCS-men wore dress greens and Academy helmets, and about the waist of each hung a saber. Consumers stood gray and inconspicuous behind the two rows of uniformed men, silent, unsmiling, like onlookers at an accident. Captain Winfree looked over this civilian crowd. ”

“ Are you really proposing that each consumer be required to give birthday presents to the same people, and on the same scale, as he now gives Xmas Gratuities?"
"Precisely, sir," Captain Winfree said. "My staff has in the files the birthdate of every consumer in the District. Enforcement of the new quotas I propose will be no more difficult than the old: the same scale of fines for non-compliance, the same terms of imprisonment for repeated offenses will be imposed. The dates-of-destruction to be marked on Birthday Gratuities will be set as the next Potlatch Day, plus one year. ”

“ He turned to the consumer ringleader. "OK with you if we throw a little water on the fireworks warehouse?" he asked.
"Sure," the man said. "We don't want to blow up the old home-town; we only want to put the BSG out of business." His band of consumers stepped back from the yellow fireplug to let the firemen hook up their hoses, toggle on the pressure, and begin playing water over the blank face of the fireworks warehouse.
Captain Winfree was buried in hard-fisted civilians, all seemingly intent on erasing him as the most familiar symbol of the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities. ”

“ Peggy scooted into the car just as the District Headquarters building burped out a giant bubble of smoke. An arm reached out to Winfree's lapel and tugged him back from the car. "You're going nowhere, buddy," a civilian growled at him. The man, Winfree saw, was wearing the ubiquitous white feather in his lapel. As Winfree shook himself free from the civilian, the arch of sabers above them collapsed. The BSG-OCS-men were tossed about in a mob of suddenly screaming consumers, waving their weapons as ineffectively as brooms. ”

“ We must press on toward Total Prosperity."
"How, Winfree?" Major Dampfer asked.
"By adding three hundred and sixty-two days a year to our laurels, sir," Winfree said, sweeping his swagger-stick across the face of the calendar. "My plan is to make every consumer's birthday a Gratuity Day for each of his Nearest-and-Dearest."
Major Dampfer sat up straight. "Captain," he said softly, "this is Thinking Big. This could lend billions a year to the Gross National Product. It could mean a major break-through on the Prosperity front. ”

“ Winfree explained. "Used-car lots used to border all the downtown streets, anchors on progress. Now those dated cars are smashed, and used for scrap. The high-school drivers work off their aggressions ramming them together. And there's no mayhem, Mr. MacHenery; the BSG-man assigned to Potlatch Parties strap the kids in safe and make sure their crash-helmets fit tight. It's all clean fun."
"Morally," MacHenery said, "Potlatch Parties are still chicken-runs."
Peggy came back, as sleek and crisp as though cooking were an expensive sort of beauty treatment. ”

“ Winfree said. "Peggy and I have set the wedding for twenty-three December, the day before Potlatch. We'd be delighted should your duties allow you to attend, Major."
"I'll be there," Major Dampfer promised. "And as a little gift from the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities, Winfree, I order you to move out on your new campaign that same day: twenty-three December." He raised a gauntleted hand. "No, Captain! Don't protest that you'll be needed here. Your work is strategy, not tactics. Your plans can be implemented by your staff while you're off on your honeymoon." ”

“ We never get to see a building burn all the way. Think of all the papers in there, file-cabinets full of government regulations, lists of all our birthdays, quota-forms; all curling up and turning brown and reaching the kindling point. ”

“ Winfree saluted back, then growled at himself for the reflex. "Woman," he said, "once we're married I want to see your request for discharge lying here on my desk. How the devil can an officer run an organization when one of the enlisted personnel, the corporal he's in love with, persists in subordination?"
"I can't quit," Peggy said. "We'll need my salary, Wes, if only to pay off our BSG quotas. ”

“ Captain Winfree said, quoting an early slogan of the BSG.
"Your artificial prosperity requires us, the moment we're sated with chrome chariots and miracle-fiber dressing-gowns and electronic magics, the minute our children have toys enough to last them through the age of franchise, to take in hand the feather forced upon us by regulation of the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities and visit the parish Potlatch Pyre, our modern vomitorium, to spew up last year's dainties to make belly-room for a new lot," MacHenery said.
"Daddy!" Peggy MacHenery protested from the living-room doorway. ”

“ Winfree said. "I'm placing my career in the balance. If I attempt this, and goof, ship me to the sticks, Major. I'd rather spend the rest of my BSG years as a corporal, a simple Potlatch Observer in a downstate village, than never to have embarked on this campaign."
"Young Napoleon must have been very like you, Winfree," Major Dampfer mused. "Very well, lad. Brief me."
"Yes, sir!" Captain Winfree marched over to the giant calendar that covered one wall of his office and tapped his stick against the three dates circled in red. "We've established this triangle of strong-points," he said. ”

“ My little brother, padded fat in his snowsuit, toddling up to the fire to toss in his dated sled, then scampering back from the sparks while Mom and Dad smiled at him from the porch, cuddling hot cups of holiday ponchero in their hands. ”

“ It's a terrible burden you are laying on the shoulders of an aging man, being so well-spoken when he likes nothing more than an argument. Now assume the on guard position, Wesley."
Winfree obediently placed his feet at right angles, raised his foil, and "sat down," assuming the bent-leg position and feeling his leg-muscles, still sore from his last session with MacHenery, begin to complain. "You're holding your foil like a flyswatter," MacHenery said. "Here, like this!"
"None of that, Daddy," Peggy said, appearing from the kitchen. ”

“ No Smoking sign blossomed a hundred yards on every side. The blacklists, naming consumers who'd withheld dated gifts from the Potlatch Pyres of earlier years, were brought up to date and distributed to the Reserve BSG Officers in each township of Winfree's District. These holdouts, it was safe to assume, would be under surveillance on Potlatch Day. ”

“ Winfree snapped. "Hand these around that delegation, Soldier," he said, shoving a stack of Schedules 1219B across his desk toward the girl. "Tell that bunch of complainers I'll keep this District's economy healthy if I have to jail every consumer in it."
The phone rang again. "It's me, Wes, Peggy."
"Darling, I'm busy," Winfree said.
"Didn't you write our wedding-date on your appointment list?" she asked. "It'll only take a quarter-hour."
"Don't marry anyone else," Winfree said. "I'll be right out." He hung up the phone and stood at the mirror in his closet to check his uniform. ”