A state of disobedience

Houston, Texas

There had been a day when Charlesworth might well have been able to speak to the crowd even without a PA set. Those days were fallen far behind him. Now, aged beyond anything he had ever expected to see outside of a biblical film role, his voice was weaker even though his heart—in the twin senses of both that which pumped blood and that which defined his spirit—was as strong as ever.

The crowd, about twenty thousand of Houston's more than four million, filled an area of not more than a couple of acres in the city's Galleria area. For this, the PA set was more than adequate.

Though weaker, Charlesworth's speaking voice had lost none of its inner power. Electric amplifiers added whatever time had stolen.

"Almost two centuries ago, and just about two hundred and fifty miles from here, a group of Texans stood up for what was right at a little Spanish mission called the Alamo. Just as far away in space, but so recently that it still makes the headlines—makes them, that is, anywhere that headlines are permitted to speak the truth—another group of Texans stood up for the right at another mission, the Dei Gloria in Waco.

"In both cases, the defenders of the truth and the right paid with their lives. They fought a hopeless fight for principle. In the first case, whatever the short-term end, we know today that the defenders won after all. In the second case, the Dei Gloria Mission, boys and girls and an old Catholic priest lost their own fight . . . but they may just have arranged for us to win ours.

"There were several survivors of Santa Ana's tyrannical attack. There was but one from the Dei Gloria. Her name is Elpi—she is a very nice young lady—and she'd like to say a few words to you. . . ."

* * *

They'd had words before, the Commander of 18^th Airborne Corps and the suited chief of the EPA's Environmental Protection Police—his personal "Zampolit." Much of this had been trivial. More had been hostile. The EPP simply abhorred roughing it and the Army and their attached Marines took a perverse glee in seeing that they had to do so. This was not the only point of disagreement, be it noted.

One of the more notable aspects of the many new police which the Rottemeyer Administration had put on America's "streets" was the extremely "issue oriented" nature of those police. A precise breakdown would, of course, be impossible as some of these "police" fell into the secret variety.

But of those which were not secret? Their organizations, parent organizations and missions read as a litany of left leaning and outright leftist causes. Besides the Surgeon General's Riot Control Police—the mission of which was to make profits safe for abortionists—there were the Animal Rights Police, existing to make the world unsafe for purveyors of female cosmetics, the Internal Revenue Service's "Enforcement Arm"—for when the courts took a dim view of legalized extortion, and—notably—the "Raid Command" of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—whose mission needed no restatement. Then there were the Environmental Protection Police which, within a couple of years of Rottemeyer's election, made it clear to would-be polluters that one could either follow the government's stringent environmental policies . . . or contribute heavily to the Democratic National Committee.

It went almost without saying that the PGSS, whose mission was the protection of Rottemeyer and the enforcement of her precise will, had a leftist cause all their own.

The one thing each of these agencies shared was that none of them were composed, strictly speaking, of police officers, of the simple constables of the peace that made civilized life possible. Snipers there were aplenty. Riot control trained thugs were in no shortage. But of men and women who could make a bad situation better, deal with people—sometimes angry ones—temper justice with a trace of mercy? These were vanishingly rare.

The people with whom they dealt generally despised them as police as much as the armed forces tended to despise them in their manifestation as soldiers.

"You people aren't soldiers and you aren't much as far as being cops goes. So stay the hell out of our people's way while we move into the city." Those were the last words the Commander of the 18^th Airborne had given to the Chief of the EPP before his soldiers began to fan out into Houston.

* * *

Perhaps it was because a hooker had no time to be shy. Perhaps it was that her loss was too profound even for a shy girl to keep hidden. Whatever it was, the girl soon had the crowd eating out of her hand. She wept? Then they wept too. She showed her pain and her anger? The crowd growled with their own. She was such a success that Charlesworth was moved to whisper, "When this is over, Elpi, remind me to link you up with my agency."

Elpi had just finished speaking—Charlesworth had coached the untrained girl very thoroughly—when the first of the 3^rd Infantry Divisions armored vehicles were spotted turning a corner into the Galleria. A thrill of anxious worry ran through the crowd.

As Charlesworth pulled Elpi to one side, the side where Minh stood by to help her escape when the time came, he said, "Be calm, my friends, be calm. These are just our soldiers. At heart, most of them are on our side. They feel about Washington as most of us do." A soldier—a sergeant with a nametag that read "Soult"—standing upright in a passing armored vehicle looked at Charlesworth and gave a soft thumbs up. He was not alone.

"Elpidia here has told you of what it was like from her point of view at the Dei Gloria. Now I want to remind you that there is yet another group, a third Alamo, if you will, making their stand up in Fort Worth. . . ."

* * *