Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War

by Thomas Hobbes

  “They’re right about that,” I injected.

  “Indeed,” Bill said. “What do the men say about the war?”

  “It is very difficult. We can only do small things.”

  “If you have plenty of weapons and tens of thousands of fighters, why can you only do small things?”

  “Señor, it is Mexico. It is possible to make great plans, but nothing happens. You go to meet someone and they do not come. The man who was to bring the bullets got drunk last night and is still in bed. Nobody told another man to put gas in the truck so he did not do so. In your country, when things go wrong, people make them right. In my country, they find a place in the shade and wait for someone else to do it. Many people have tried to change Mexico and make it like other places: Maximilian, Dias, Cardenas, Salinas. But in the end, they go away or die, and everything is the same.”

  “And you think a new leader would change this and win the war for you?”

  “Perhaps. I do not know. But I can see no other hope.”

  “Who leads you now?”

  “A junta. But it does very little.”

  “Why?”

  “There are always plots, señor. You can trust no one. When you Yankees have a problem, you put a group of men together and they solve it. In Latin countries, if you do that, the people do not think of the problem. They think of how they can please other men who might be useful to them. They look for patrons or clients. They support one against another. The problem is not important and is soon forgotten. That is our culture, señor.”

  “Yet, as you know well, Miss de Alva, Spain became the first true world power. At the time of your famous ancestor, the Duke of Alva, the Spanish army had not lost a single battle for more than a century.”

  “That is true, señor. But we were a different people then. In the time of the Emperor Charles V, a Spanish nobleman was honest, blunt, forthright, even to the king. But then the court grew in power, and favor at court became more important than courage or honesty or the ability to so something. So new men rose, smooth, polished, full of flattery and lies, men who cared only for themselves. And Spain fell.”

  “We know something of that story here, señorita, in the old United States. But we have taken much of your time, and I’m sure you are tired. What you have told us is most helpful.”

  Bill stood up, and the interview was over. Rick escorted Maria from the room, closing the door behind him.

  “John, I could tell you what to do, but I’m not going to,” Bill said to me. “Instead, I’m going to ask you to think carefully about what you’ve heard here, and answer one question, not as Maria’s friend, but as Chief of the General Staff of the Northern Confederation. Is it probable that your presence with the Cristeros would make a decisive difference in their war, or not? If your answer is yes, you may go. Think on it tonight, and give me your decision tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “And thank you.”

  I thought on it most of that night. No matter how I looked at it, the answer was always the same. Bill’s questions had gotten straight to the heart of the matter: culture. Culture was the basis of everything else, and if the culture didn’t work, nothing else would either. Mexican culture—more broadly, Latin culture—didn’t work. Oh, it worked better than some others. I’d rather live in Mexico than Africa. But I remembered a joke a Spanish Marine Corps officer told me at Quantico. “People talk about the German economic miracle or the Japanese economic miracle, but those aren’t miracles at all,” he said. “Germans and Japs work like crazy. Spain is the real economic miracle. The place is booming and nobody works at all.”

  If I went to Mexico to be the Cristeros' caudillo, nothing would change, because it couldn’t. Oh, I might kick and drive and even inspire their troops to do better than they were doing. But the more I succeeded, the faster plots would grow against me. And I couldn’t be every place at once.

  I still wanted to go. But Bill hadn’t asked me that. He’d asked for my professional judgment. The same self-discipline we demanded from every private required that I set my own feelings and desires aside. As Chief of the General Staff, there was only one answer I could give: no. The overwhelming probability was that if I went, the Cristeros would continue to lose, for the same reasons they were losing now.

  But that answer left me facing another question: what about Maria? What did I owe her? What did she want from me? Anything, now that I had to refuse her request to help her people? Was I really thinking about marriage?

  The problem was that I was already married. I was married to Bellona, goddess of war. Bigamy would quickly become a burden. Back in my Marine Corps days, most of my fellow officers had been married. They still did their jobs, but the Corps and war wasn’t their life the way it was mine. If they took an evening or a weekend or a month to hear Bruce Gudmundsson lecture on stormtroop tactics or walk the Valley with Jackson or follow Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division through northern France, they left at home a wife in tears or in a snit. And their sweet little wifey knew just how to make their life a perfect hell unless they kept her happy. Though it was usually only the aviators who came home from a six-month deployment to find the toilet seat up.

  Maybe Maria, as a de Alva, would be different. But every man since Adam who got married did so thinking his girl would be different.

  The next morning I went to the governor’s office right after breakfast and gave him my answer to his question: no. Then I walked over to his house and asked to see Maria. It was a fine Indian summer day, and she met me in the garden.

  “Maria, I have to tell you something I would rather not. I will not be going to Mexico. I do not think my presence would make a decisive difference, even if the Cristeros were to accept me as a leader, which they might or might not. I cannot justify leaving my duties here in the face of that fact.”

  Maria smiled, reached out and took both my hands in hers. “Señor John, please believe that I understand. It is what I expected. If my ancestor the Duke of Alva were here, I think he would decide the same way. A soldier must know when to fight and when not to fight. If he does not know that, he will lose many battles.”

  “Maria, there is another question, and it is one I cannot decide. I have enjoyed our time together, more than I have enjoyed a woman’s company in a long time. If my life belonged to me alone…well, it does not. I cannot grant the one thing you have asked of me, but perhaps there is something else. What do you want to do now, and how can I help you?”

  “My duty is to return to Mexico and my family.”

  “Do other Mexican fishing boats come up this far?”

  “Yes, a few, but…the Guadeloupe was my brother’s boat, so my honor was safe. On another Mexican boat, it would not be safe. I am sorry, Señor John, but that is Mexico.”

  “I understand.” I took a minute or two to think. “Do the Cristeros have any contact with the Confederacy?”

  “Yes. My father goes to Houston sometimes, and there he meets with a Confederate officer. They have supplied us with some arms.”

  Though neither side recognized it officially, the new border between Texas and Mexico left Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio in Confederate hands, while the Cristeros held west Texas. The Confederates were smart enough to realize that Aztecs would be difficult neighbors.

  “I have some friends down south who I’m sure will help you get to Houston. Your father could pick you up there?”

  “Yes.”

  If I’d been talking to a man, I would probably have left it there. Problem stated, solution identified. But I was talking to a woman, a woman I cared about. “Maria, you said your duty was to return to your family. I know women have their duties also. But I asked you a different question. What do you want to do?”

  Maria looked down at the ground, then at me. Softly and hesitantly, she said, “I would like to stay here, with you.”

  “I would like that too, Maria.” I knew now how much I wanted that. But all my desire and hers did nothing to change reality.r />
  “Maria, I’m a soldier in a world in which there is no peace. I hardly have a home. At least I’m seldom there. I could not do my duty to my country and a wife, and I’m already sworn to my country.”

  “You do have a home, Señor John?”

  “Yes. We call it The Old Place. It’s been in my family since we Rumfords came to Maine, and that was a long time ago. It’s near a little town called Hartland.”

  “Who keeps your house for you?”

  “No one, I guess. It’s just there, empty most of the time.”

  “I will keep your house for you, John, if you will let me. I do not mind being alone most of the time. I will keep your house well. I can clean as well as cook. My family also lives on the land. I will keep your house for you, and someday, if there is peace…”

  Lead us not into temptation, I thought. What about when I was home? Maria and I alone under the same roof, liking each other, perhaps in time loving each other, unmarried. Could I maintain her honor and God’s law?

  Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re praying, but God hears anyway. His answer was clear and strong: yes! Maria was Christian also, and the three of us, her, me and God, could do it.

  “Very well, Maria. The Old Place has always been a refuge for those in need of one. It was for me, and now it can be for you. Yes.”

  Maria smiled, with the soft, sad smile of those who have seen too much of life. “Thank you, Señor John.”

  I walked her back through the garden to the kitchen door. Mrs. Kraft opened it, smiling. Perhaps she had known something of Maria’s hopes, and mine.

  For once, I thought, I’ve done something right, and it wasn’t just fighting a battle.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I took Maria up to Hartland for Thanksgiving that year. I wanted to settle her in at the Old Place before winter, and I also thought I should be there when she met the rest of my family.

  I couldn’t say they were pleased with what I’d let follow me home, but they had good manners and minded them. The name Alva helped; we Rumfords knew the best families of Europe had not come over on the Mayflower.

  After thanking God for another year of life, good health and victory and feasting in His honor, I left Maria and went back to work. My family would keep an eye on her and help her adjust. We all knew a señorita’s first Maine winter would be a pretty intense learning experience. I left the larder well-stocked, and at Maria’s request I brought my livestock back up from Cousin Sam’s place: two Percherons for the wagon and the plow, a Jersey cow for rich milk and half-a-dozen Rhode Island Reds for fresh eggs. Maria said the animals would give her all the company she desired. For a Yankee farmer-soldier and a Spanish doña, we were surprisingly alike.

  Back in Augusta, I found plenty to keep me occupied. Good intelligence work was the first requirement for security in the New World Disorder, and while my staff was good, they tended to get lost in the weeds. Intel types always do. I needed to be involved personally to ask the man from Mars questions that sometimes draw meaning from mere information.

  I also expanded our contingency planning. We had concentrated our efforts on situations where the Northern Confederation might be attacked directly. But I also wanted plans for intervening, with advice, force, or both in situations beyond our own border where our assistance might be requested. I’d had to pull the Pacific campaign out of my butt, and while the Japs had taken care of most of it, I often wished I’d had a tad more to go on.

  The next couple years saw order re-established in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states, sometimes bloodily, more often not, as sources of disorder were given the option to repent or die. The biggest source of disorder had been the blacks, but inspired by what our blacks in the N.C. had done, the good ones took their communities back. Then, most of them followed our example and left the cities to become farmers. They knew there was no other way they could rear their children in a healthy environment, physically healthy and morally healthy.&

  Most Mexicans and Central Americans headed home. All the states passed laws forbidding the preaching, practice, or profession of the Mohammedan religion. Regular crime became rare as hanging became the usual penalty, at least where violence was involved. We remembered that if you hang a thief when he's young, he won't steal when he's old.

  All this made my life easier. By the end of 2037, a wild-eyed optimist might have allowed himself to think that the lone Teutonic knight, order, had a fighting chance against Old Night. In all of North America, there was only one place where things were still getting worse: California.

  When the American republic blew itself to pieces in 2027, the Hispanics promptly seized southern California, which they had long occupied. They drove the remaining Anglos out, then slaughtered the blacks, who had been slaughtering the Orientals until Korean marines landed at Long Beach to get their people out. A new border between Mexico and Anglo California eventually established itself just north of Bakersfield.

  Northern California had it all. It had resources, timber, and minerals it could sell in Asia. It had high-tech industry. Its farming country remained productive. But the first sign that it would turn itself into a colossal mess came early. In 2028, the government moved the capital from the pleasant and historic city of Sacramento to Berkeley. The stated reason was that Sacramento included the word sacrament, “an exclusive reference to the phallocentric Christian cult.” Berkeley, in contrast, was a shrine to the cultural revolution that broke out in the l960s and, in time, broke apart America.

  The new venue soon made its spirit felt. Because offices such as state governor were deemed “hierarchical,” northern California—officially now the Azanian Democratic Republic, a name soon unofficially abbreviated to Zany—adopted a popular assembly form of government. There were no officers or committees, all matters being debated and decided by the whole assembly. The assembly itself was vast, more than 1,000 members, the better to ensure democracy. Since, in the time of crisis, men had real work to do, the delegates were soon mostly women.

  In happier times, tasking hundreds of women with thousands of decisions might have set the stage for a delicious comedy. One can imagine it in the hands of Moliere, or Gilbert and Sullivan. But ours were not happy times. Where nature intended comic chaos, ideology produced disciplined fanaticism. The ideology that grabbed hold was radical feminism.

  By 2030, the Feminists had a solid majority in the Human Gathering, as the assembly was named. Their early actions were a mixture of the predictable and self-satirizing. Women were given preference in all hiring, and the Azanian national flag became a pair of bloomers hoisted up the flagpole.

  Ideology, by its nature, demands purity. Any compromise is hypocrisy, weakness, and betrayal. The pursuit of purity can have no limits, least of all limits on the power of the state. Intentions, not results, are the measure of all actions. Where reality contradicts ideology, reality must be suppressed.

  The ideological imperative exposed itself quickly in Azania. In 2031, the assembly was renamed the Womyn’s Gathering and the male members were expelled. Later in the year, men were stripped of the right to vote. Only San Francisco’s homosexuals were exempt as the new law made them “honorary women”.

  2032 saw the beginning of what the feminists called Fair Discrimination. All pretense of equality between the sexes was thrown out. It had never been more than a cloak for power, anyway. Under Fair Discrimination, girls got higher grades in school than boys for the same work, plus a monopoly on the playground while boys spent recess inside where they were forced to play with dolls. All executive positions, including in private businesses, were legally reserved for women. Only women were allowed to be policemen, firemen, judges, attorneys, or clergymen. In all jobs, women received higher pay for comparable work, and where a job required physical labor, the woman was assigned a male secretary to do the heavy lifting while receiving half her pay.

  Men had to pay more to ride the bus or subway. When a male columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that
the government “couldn’t seem to tell the difference between Fair Discrimination and fare discrimination,” he was thrown in Alcatraz for the crime of public sexism and the paper was shut down.

  In 2033, a new law made all sexism, along with ageism and lookism, felonies punishable by imprisonment, “alteration,” or both. Alteration was a euphemism for castration. Conviction required no evidence beyond a woman stating that she had been offended. Only women were permitted to serve on juries.

  In order to break down stereotypes, sumptuary laws were enacted. Pants were reserved for women, and men had to wear skirts. In what was called the “stud muffin amendment,” muscular young men were exempted. Instead, they had to leave their chests bare and wear leather.

  But these measures proved insufficiently pure. Men were reduced to second-class citizens, but they were still there. Their very presence was soon deemed “offensive to women” by the more radical feminists. The only solution was their removal.

  Early in the year 2037, the radicals bullied the Gathering into mandating the abortion of all male babies. They argued this was a moderate measure, since it allowed men to die out gradually. Even so, it passed by only a narrow margin, and for the first time a feminist decree met widespread resistance from Azania’s people.

  The resistance was led by mothers. Many mothers and prospective mothers, it seemed, liked the idea of having sons as well as daughters. Mothers started marching and protesting. Ten thousand mothers gathered in Berkeley to make their views known. The Gathering turned dogs, fire hoses, and tear gas on them.

  But the radicals realized they had a problem. The solution, as always, was more ideology. First, the radicals slipped frying pans and rolling pins into the Gathering. Then, in the mother of all cat fights, they physically drove their opponents out. The Gathering duly cleansed, the radicals passed a series of new laws called the Gender Purity Acts.

  First, motherhood was outlawed. Any woman who got pregnant was required to get an abortion, regardless of the sex of the baby. Reproduction would henceforth be by cloning. Then, sex between men and women was also outlawed. Only lesbian sex was permitted, though male homosexuality was winked at. Finally, the vote was restricted to “women of full consciousness,” that condition to be determined by precinct committees made up entirely of lesbians.