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 a bride? The minister who was to perform the wedding, a young captain-chaplain of BSG, paced amongst the hidden desks, memorizing the greetings he'd composed to precede the formal words of wedding. The guests came laughing through a corridor of potted pines into the District Headquarters, where they were greeted by the BSG Band-and-Glee-Club's rendition of the Bureau's official anthem, "I'm Dreaming of a White Potlatch." As though it had been arranged by Washington, snow had indeed begun to fall; and the tiers of overcoats racked in the outer hall were beaded with melted flakes.

The groom, wearing his dress greens—the winter uniform worn with white shirt and a scarlet bow-tie—was still trapped behind his desk, hardly conscious of the joyful noises from beyond the door. "They haven't shown?" he bellowed into the telephone. "Don't fret your head about it, Sergeant. Those Reservists will damned well be on duty tomorrow morning or we'll have their cans in a courtroom before dark." Slam! An anxious girl Pfc tiptoed in. "Sir, a consumer's delegation wishes to speak with you about the new Birthday Quotas."

"Tell them they're stuck with it," Winfree snapped. "Hand these around that delegation, Soldier," he said, shoving a stack of Schedules 1219B across his desk toward the girl. "Tell that bunch of complainers I'll keep this District's economy healthy if I have to jail every consumer in it."

The phone rang again. "It's me, Wes, Peggy."

"Darling, I'm busy," Winfree said.

"Didn't you write our wedding-date on your appointment list?" she asked. "It'll only take a quarter-hour."

"Don't marry anyone else," Winfree said. "I'll be right out." He hung up the phone and stood at the mirror in his closet to check his uniform. Then he picked up his silver-trimmed dress swagger-stick and marched out into the main office to meet the chaplain, and his wife.

Major Stanley Dampfer, glorious in his dress greens, a Sam Bowie belt equating his belly and supporting the side-arm holstered by one big hip, slapped Winfree on the back as he entered the hall. "At ease!" the Major shouted, then glanced contritely toward the two BSG colonels who'd been talking the loudest. "Gentlemen, ladies: I want to present the founder of this feast, the brightest star in the Bureau's firmament, the young genius of Birthday Gratuity Quotas. I refer, of course, to Captain Wesley Winfree!"

[Applause, shouts, a few ribald remarks from the officers nearest the bar]

"I just want to tell you all," the Major went on, his arm heavy across Winfree's unwilling shoulders, "before I relinquish this fine young officer to his new commander, a corporal ..."

[Laughter]

"... that here's a man who's going places. Look well at Captain Winfree's face, friends. You will see it yet on the cover of Time, above a pair of stars."

[Applause]

The Major freed Captain Winfree, the guests settled down into their folding-chairs, and the chaplain opened his BSG Book of Authorized Ceremonies. He and the affianced couple stood alone together in a moment of silence. He opened the service. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here ...

"... Margaret, wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded husband ... so long as ye both shall live? ... by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Corps of Chaplains, Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities, I pronounce that you are Man and Wife. Amen, and Congratulations!"

The first wedded kiss, and the stag-line demanding its similar perquisite. Kevin MacHenery seized his son-in-law's right hand. "I wish you both fifty happy years, Wes," he said. "I hope you'll see the light soon, and spend most of those years in decent mufti." Major Dampfer shouldered Mr. MacHenery aside to tug Winfree and his new wife toward the mountain of gifts, covered like a giant's corpse with a sheet, standing by the base of the Xmas tree. The Major triumphantly pulled a ripcord, and the sheet dropped away. Beneath it were dozens of boxes and bundles and bottles, wrapped in scarlet and green and silver and gold. "Open them!" some guest prompted from the end of the hall.

"Why open them?" Corporal Mrs. Peggy Winfree asked. "Anyone got a match? We'll have our Potlatch Pyre right here and now, burn them right off instead of waiting a year."

"The lady jests," Major Dampfer assumed. "Wedding-gifts, Corporal, aren't subject to Potlatching."

"Goody," Peggy said.

"I'll have some of the enlisted guests carry these gratuities out to your car," the Major said. "You can unwrap them during your honeymoon." He chuckled.

Towing his bride with his left hand, accepting handshakes with his right, Captain Winfree shouldered his way through the mob of brass and chevrons to the door. His car, adorned with a Just Married sign that completely obscured the rear window, trailing strings of shoes and empty milk-tins, stood at the end of a corridor formed by two face-to-face ranks of BSG Officer-Candidates. The OCS-men wore dress greens and Academy helmets, and about the waist of each hung a saber. Consumers stood gray and inconspicuous behind the two rows of uniformed men, silent, unsmiling, like onlookers at an accident. Captain Winfree looked over this civilian crowd. Each person wore, pinned to a lapel, perched in a hatbrim, or worn like a corsage, a small white feather. "We'd best hurry, Peggy," he said, urging her toward the gantlet.

The Officer-Candidates, on a signal from Major Dampfer, snicked their ceremonial sabers from their scabbards and presented them, blade-tip to blade-tip, as an archway. The BSG Band-and-Glee-Club, playing and singing, "Potlatch Is Comin' to Town," stood in the doorway. Captain Winfree, clasping Peggy's gloved hand tightly, led her through the saber-roofed aisleway as rapidly as he could. "What's the rush, Wes?" she asked. "We'll get married only once, and I'd like to see the ceremony well enough to be able to describe it to our eventual children, when they ask me what it was