up with another invasion of their pocketbooks,let alone their private sentiments?"
"Peggy, if you're going to gripe every time the Bureau raises the quotasa notch," Winfree said, "you don't belong in that uniform you'rewearing."
"Want me to take it off?" Peggy challenged, reaching for the top buttonof her blouse.
"No, dammit!" Winfree said. "But if you're going to discuss thepropriety of every decision I make, please have the grace to wait tillwe're outside District Headquarters to do it."
"Yes, sir; thank you, sir," Peggy said. She saluted. "Is there anythingmore you want to chew me out about, sir?"
Winfree saluted back, then growled at himself for the reflex. "Woman,"he said, "once we're married I want to see your request for dischargelying here on my desk. How the devil can an officer run an organizationwhen 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 payoff our BSG quotas. What with buying Xmas presents, gifts for Mom's Dayand Pop's Day, and sending Birthday Gratuities to every name on ourcombined Nearest-and-Dearest lists, we'll be living on rice and soybeanstill you make Light Colonel. Quit? Wes, if you expect to eat regularafter we're married, you'd best put me in for sergeant's stripes."
"Please, Peggy," Winfree asked. "We'll discuss this all tonight, offduty, if I survive your father's swordplay. For now, please let lettersout to all District wholesalers, telling them of the Birthday Quotas andthe new dating procedures. Have one of the lieutenants open the _secret_files for you--it's all under 'Operation Nativity.' You can get at itright away."
"Very well, Captain, sir," Peggy said. "Happy Potlatch, sir." Sheabout-faced and marched out, banging the office door behind her.
"Happy Potlatch be damned!" Captain Winfree said, flinging hisswagger-stick toward the calendar.
* * * * *
The MacHenery home was all gables and pinnacles and spooledporch-pillars, very like an enormous wedding-cake, every horizontalsurface now frosted with a thin layer of snow. Captain Winfree tuggedoff his gauntlets, rang the bell, and stood straighter than usual towithstand the hostile inspection of Kevin MacHenery, Peggy's father.
Mr. MacHenery opened the door. Captain Winfree, although retaining hissmile of greeting, groaned inwardly. MacHenery was wearing his canvasfencing outfit, flat-soled shoes, and carried a foil in one hand. "Myyou are a gorgeous sight, all Kelly-green and scarlet piping, like atropical bird that's somehow strayed into the snowfields," MacHenerysaid. "Do come in, Captain, and warm your feathers."
"Thank you, sir," Winfree said, brushing the snow from his cap. Hepeeled off his overcoat and hung it on the hall tree, sticking hisswagger-stick in one of its pockets. "Peggy busy?" he asked, hoping thather appearance would preclude his being given another unsolicitedfencing-lesson.
"After having spent two hours in the bathroom with a curry-comb and abottle of wave-set," MacHenery said, "my daughter has finally got downto work in the kitchen. We have time for an engagement at steel in theparlor, if you'd care to refine your style, Captain."
"Just as you say, sir," Winfree said.
"Your politeness offends me, Wes," Kevin MacHenery complained, handinghim a foil and a wire-mesh mask. "Slip off your shoes. It's a terribleburden you are laying on the shoulders of an aging man, being sowell-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. "I'llnot have you two sitting down to eat all sweaty and out of breath, likelast time Wes was over here."
"She treats me like a backward child," MacHenery said. He took a bottlefrom a shelf and poured generous dollops of Scotch into two glasses, oneof which he handed to Winfree. "Inasmuch as I disapprove of the comingseason," he said, "I'll offer you no toast, Captain."
"You don't care even for Xmas?" Winfree asked in a tone of mildreproach.
"Ex-mas?" MacHenery demanded. "What the devil is this nor-fish-nor-fowlthing you call Ex-mas? Some new festival, perhaps, celebrated bycarillons of cash-register chimes?"
"_Christmas_, if you prefer, sir," Winfree said. "We in the Bureau ofSeasonal Gratuities get used to using the other name. We use the word somuch in writing that cutting it from nine letters to four saves somethirty thousand dollars annually, in this District alone."
"That's grand," MacHenery said. He sat down with his whiskey. "Simplygrand."
"We could drink to a Happy Potlatch," Captain Winfree suggested.
"I'd sooner toast my imminent death by tetanus," MacHenery said.
"I'd like to taste this stuff," Winfree said. "Let's compromise. Can wedrink to Peggy?"
"Accepted," MacHenery said, raising his glass. "To my Peggy--our Peggy."He gave the whiskey the concentration it deserved. Then, "You know,Wesley," he said, "if you weren't in the BSG I could like you real well.I'd rejoice at your becoming my son-in-law. Too bad that you wear theenemy uniform."
* * * * *
"The BSG is hardly an enemy," Winfree said. "It's been an Americaninstitution for a long time. This is excellent whiskey."
"We'll test a second sample, to see whether its quality stands upthrough the bottle," MacHenery suggested. "For all we know, they may beputting the best on top." He poured them each another. "Yes, Wesley, theBureau of Seasonal Gratuities has been with the American consumer quitea while. Twenty years it'll be, come next Potlatch Day. You were broughtup in the foul tradition, Wes. You don't know what our country was likein the good old days, when Christmas was spelled with a _C_ instead ofan _X_."
"I know that a paltry twenty billion dollars a year were spent onXmas--sorry, sir--on Christmas Gratuities, back before my Bureau came onthe scene to triple that figure, to bring us all greater prosperity."
"Your Bureau brought us the stink of burning," MacHenery said. "Itbrought us the Potlatch Pyres."
"Yes, Potlatch!" Captain Winfree said. "Potlatch Pyres and PotlatchDay--childhood's brightest memory. Ah, those smells from the fire! Theincense of seared varnish; the piny smoke from building-blocks tossedinto the flames; the thick wool stinks of dated shirts and cowboy-suits,gasoline-soaked and tossed into the Potlatch Pyre. My little brother,padded fat in his snowsuit, toddling up to the fire to toss in his datedsled, then scampering back from the sparks while Mom and Dad smiled athim from the porch, cuddling hot cups of holiday ponchero in theirhands."
"Seduction of the innocents," MacHenery said. "Training the babes to bewastrels."
"We loved it," Winfree insisted. "True, the little girls might cry asthey handed a dated doll to the BSG-man; while he prepared it for sutteewith a wash of gasoline and set it into the fire; but little girls, as Isuppose you know, relish occasions for weeping. They cheered up mightyquick, believe me, when the thermite grenades were set off, filling thenight air with the electric smell of molten metal, burning dated clocksand desk-lamps, radios and humidors, shoes and ships and carving-sets;burning them down to smoke and golden-glowing puddles under the ashes ofthe Potlatch Pyre. Then the fireworks, Mr. MacHenery. The fireworks! TheBSG-man touching a flaming torch to the fuses of the mortars; a sizzleand a burst; the Japanese star-shells splitting the sky, splashingacross the night's ceiling, scattering from their pods, blossoming intoQueen Anne's Lace in a dozen colors of fire."
"Fire and destruction," MacHenery said. "There's your holiday forchildren--fire and destruction!"
"You missed it, sir," Winfree said. "You don't understand. Potlatch isa wonderful day for children, a glorious introduction to the science ofeconomics. The boys light Roman candles, shooting crimson and orchidand brass-flamed astonishers into the clouds. A soft fog of snow makesfuz
zy smears of the pinwheels, of the children racing, sparklers inboth hands, across the frozen lawn. Dad lights the strings ofcannon-crackers--at our house they used to dangle from a wire strungacross the porch, like clusters of giant phlox--and they convulse intolife, jumping and banging and scattering their red skins onto the snow,filling the