Consumption (Economics) -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
Those firemen not immediately concerned with spraying the warehouse
wall mounted the racks of their truck to watch the duel. BSG-men and
-women, huddled close to the warmth of the burning building, watched
unhappily as their champion was forced to retreat before MacHenery's
technique. "He'll kill him!" Peggy shouted. She was restrained from
trying to break up the fight by two burly consumers.
* * * * *
Winfree, trying a gambit he'd seen in one of MacHenery's books but had
never before attempted, extended his saber and flew forward toward
MacHenery in a flèche. MacHenery caught Winfree's blade on his own and
tossed it aside. He brought back his own weapon to sketch a line down
the Captain's right cheek. The scratch was pink for a moment, then it
started to bleed heavily. The crowd shouted encouragement, the
BSG-troops groaned. "Keep cool, Wes," MacHenery whispered to his
opponent as they dos-à-doed back into position. "I have to make this
look fierce or they'll insist on lynching you."
"Don't make it look too good," Winfree panted. "Cover yourself--I might
hurt you out of sheer clumsiness." His chin and throat were covered with
blood, now; blood enough to satisfy the most indignant consumer. The
moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his
blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met the
flash of the other man's forte, and his blade bounced aside like a
sprung bow.
MacHenery slammed his saber into Winfree's, spinning the weapon out of
his hand into the crowd. He lunged then, delivering his point against
Winfree's chest. Peggy, released from her captors, burst from the crowd
to throw herself against her father. "Stop it, Daddy!" she pleaded,
"please stop!"
MacHenery raised his saber in salute. "All right, Pocahontas," he said.
"Take your John Smith home and patch up that cut. It's no worse than
what he gets shaving." He turned to the crowd, his saber still raised in
salute. "Potlatch is over forever!" he shouted.
Urged by a delegation of music-loving consumers, the tubist raised his
ravaged horn. The other members of the BSG Band-and-Glee-Club gathered
round him, all ragged, some with one eye closed by a purple fist-mark;
and they began, on the tubist's signal, "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen."
The District Headquarters building, gutted, was glowing like an
abandoned fireplace. The firemen joined the singing as they coiled their
hoses. The Potlatch Riot was over.
Winfree led his wife to their car. The _Just Married_ sign was still in
place, but the car's train of shoes and milk-cans had been ripped off to
furnish ammunition in the fight. "Let's go home, Peggy," Winfree said.
"I yearn for a fireside and some privacy."
Kevin MacHenery spoke from the back seat. "You deserve them, Wes," he
said.
"What are you doing here?" Peggy demanded, twisting to face her father.
"After you cut up my Wes you should be ashamed to show us your face."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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