holdouts, it was safe to assume, would be
under surveillance on Potlatch Day. Cold-eyed sergeants and lieutenants
would make note of the material each of them consigned to the flames,
and would cross-check their notes with Nearest-and-Dearest lists to make
sure that all post-dated Mom's Day and Dad's Day gratuities, all of last
Xmas's gifts, had been destroyed as required by BSG ordinance.

Meanwhile letters piled into Captain Winfree's office, thousands of them
each time the Post Office truck stopped outside Headquarters. Several of
these were penned in a brownish stuff purported to be their authors'
lifeblood; and all voiced indignation against Schedule 121B, Table 12,
which set minimum levels of cost for the birthday gratuities they'd have
to give each of the fifteen persons on their Nearest-and-Dearest lists.
Hundreds of protests were printed in the vox populi columns of District
newspapers, recommending every printable form of violence against agents
of the Bureau. BSG practice was to regard with benign eye public outcry
of this sort. No consumer in Winfree's District, immersed as he was in
the debate over Birthday Gratuity Minima, could possibly plead ignorance
should he be apprehended in violation of these new regulations.

* * * * *

Finally, it was two days before Xmas, Potlatch Day Minus One.
Phone-calls had rippled out from District Headquarters, calling all BSG
Reservists to the colors, assigning them to Potlatch Duty in the
townships or patrol in the city; telling each officer and non-com where
and when to submit his requisition for pyrotechnical devices, gasoline,
thermite bombs, and pads of BSG Form No. 217-C, "Incident of Consumer
Non-Compliance." And the day was even more than this. It was the day
Captain Wesley Winfree was to wed Corporal Margaret MacHenery in the
sight of God, man, and the glitteringest crowd of BSG brass ever
assembled outside Washington.

By noon the typewriters in Headquarters were covered and shoved with
their desks behind folding screens hung with pine-boughs. Every wheel in
the District motor pool was on the highway from the airport, shuttling
in the wedding-party. The bride, closeted in an anteroom with a gaggle
of envious bachelor-girls, was dressing herself in winter greens, her
chevrons brilliant against her sleeves. Peggy had pinned a tiny
poinsettia to her lapel; strictly against Regulations; but who'd have
the heart to reprimand so lovely