Artillery

"Do you hear them?"

"Hear what, sir?"

"The guns."

The Prime Minister slouched against the bar and accepted a drink from me. I could never admit to being surprised that he won the election, it had been such a simple thing in the end. But I was always surprised at how... normal he was.

At a self-described as towering 179cm, he would never be described as tall, unless you happened to be sitting next to him. Or, as I was, taller but less confident.

Something about him just drew you in. Not in an 'everyone begins to orbit them' way, more a just you way. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the bar, and asked, "who're we shooting at?"

I'm not some kind of hero. I was just working a government event, one of those guys who gets used as a human shield in spy movies, so I wasn't being glib. The music was loud but not loud enough to cover gunshots, and the way he said it made me think he was speaking in metaphor.

"Oh them," he waved the drink towards the dance floor. "And them," this time at a cluster of tables. "And of course, there's those pusillanimous blatherskites over there -- shit-they've-seen-us, smile."

Unfamiliar words rattling around in my head, I smiled, chatted, entertained, gossiped, complimented, laughed, joked, and finally poured drinks. By the time the party left, and I was able to turn my customer service brain off for a few minutes again, I was focused on two main thoughts.

Firstly, I decided that both words were something I had heard before. Loosely attributed them to Billy Shakes in high school English and logged it as an insult to look up later. So that when I used it, I could defend its being real with confidence.

And secondly, I realized that the Prime Minister had pulled a vanishing act on me. I had the impression that I'd seen him leaving with the guests I'd just served. But for some reason, I doubted that. And glancing after them, I saw that not only was I right, but they themselves were looking around in some confusion.

Not the only one to have my conversation partner disappear on me, then. Well, these things are how they are. And it's not as though I could expect someone with his kind of job to spend all day shooting the breeze with me. He had diplomacy to do, or something.

Meaning that it took me completely by surprise when I turned back to the bar, cloth in hand to clean up after one of the Right Honourable guests and saw the Right Honourable Prime Minister facing me again. In fact, he was slouching against it as though he had never left. I strongly suspected he was even in the same spot.

"As I was saying, did you catch that little skirmish we just had?"

"I don't understand?"

"Of course, you do! Your whole job is just the airsoft equivalent of what I do. Professional, mind, more like those people who get paid to play tag than weekend-warrior types. I think the best analogy for what you are compared to me through them would be that they have their buddies over for cocktail experimentation nights, while you work here."

"That makes sense," I was starting to get lost.

"Right, sorry, you haven't been drinking. Can you? I'll buy."

Glancing at my watch I did some quick mental arithmetic, arrived at an answer I liked, and smiled, "one won't hurt."

He ordered another of his previous drink for himself and waved vaguely at me with one hand, patting his pockets with the other. Taking the hint, I mixed myself a Klondike Mule.

"Bless the tariffs for reopening us to making up our own stupid names for things," he said, and I raised my copper mug to him. "What was it we decided on for this this soiree?"

"Nothing imported, everything domestic. Even the limes, if you can believe it. Cost was something so I hear."

"Yes, yes. Cost always is something, nothing's free in this life. But sometimes that something is justifiable and so we spend it." He emphasized his words by dropping a bill in the tip jar. "Tell me what you learned from that little clash."

"Well, it didn't seem like a clash at all to me. They were perfectly pleasant, and you seemed to come to some kind of arrangement. I wasn't quite sure what about, but one of the reasons I have this job is that I strategically don't listen."

"Clever solution to a difficult problem. But be honest with me, what arrangement do you think we came to?"

"Based on what I heard, it had to do with trade. Risks of lowering something or other and raising something else. That's the best I've got for you."

"Well, that's close enough. And just about what you're cleared to know, so why don't we circle back," he mimed comic gagging motion at the corporate speak, "to my first question, can you hear the guns?"

"The base is pretty strong right now, thankful for my earplugs."

"Funny guy. I mean the steady, distant crump. crump. crump," every onomatopoeia marked by drumming his fingers on the bar top. "Of enemy artillery hammering away at us and our own responding?"

"War's still pretty far away, eh boss?"

"The shooting kind. All the world's a stage, and the part I'm playing right now is a different kind of soldier on a different battlefield. No risk of death or mutilation for me, unless I royally fumble the ball, but still... it's a war in its own right."

"Wouldn't this be a play then? One of the tragedies or comedies?"

"Dealer's choice."

"Least collateral damage in Othello I think, but pretty sure Twelfth Night would be more fun."

"Good choices but think more if the Scottish Play was simultaneously the Comedy of Errors and ol' Willie is doing coke with Orwell, Verne, and Alan Moore."

"Something on your mind then, boss?"

"Napoleon said that God fights on the side with the best artillery. So, we have to debase ourselves and become philosophers by first asking 'what is artillery.'"

My blank expression, the one that all bartenders use when their customers have started drunkenly rambling, but bills still need paying, must have shown what I thought of that.

"Not real artillery, of course! That's all much too messy, no, no, I mean what do we use to strike our targets that's mostly accurate, long range, and highly devastating? What do we use in our duels of words and nations that, like artillery, requires complex processes and logistics to keep the guns firing?"

"Trade."

"And?"

"I would think trade is the most important. I mean, think about it, sir, if the world stopped trading, everything would fall apart."

"Yes it would. But the world will never stop trading. Even if the entire global merchant navy was so many new reefs in the morning, trade would continue, only a different kind. So, yes, trade is among the batteries at our disposal."

"Media, then? There's always talk about who owns what."

"Ownership of those guns is a powerful thing. Especially if you have enough to make people think the attacks are coming from all sides. Not quite false flags, but near enough and indiscriminate enough to cause all sorts of lovely causalities."

"Would this party qualify?"

"Pieces of it. But mostly this party is more akin to court-politics. The kind of thing Herbert was so good at, lots of scheming and plans within plans within plans. No, I don't think this could be much more than a collection of spotters all trying to hunt out targets."

Using my drink to cover the lack of anything else to say, I watched the crowd, letting my eyes wander lazily over the people there. I didn't so much see them as acknowledge an awareness of them, less people and more mannequins running on invisible strings.

Those strings were hard to see, and I got the impression that one of the things which separated me from my new confidant was that he could see them. Despite being an unknown, despite forming and capturing the country with a new party through sheer influence of personal wealth, he could see what guided people.

But saying that would not be a useful expenditure. No, the Prime Minister was testing me for something. Maybe it was just boredom, or a desire to be seen filling time with 'better company' as a snub. With all this talk of artillery, I got the impression that everything he did was mentally targeted at some distant and explorable target.

"Good will," I said at last.

"What was that," he had been looking intently at the monarch's daughter. Earlier in the evening he had caused something of a scandal by dancing with her suggestively. Then again, he had also pulled three others into skillful and suggestive dances, two of them men. I wondered what he had said to her, and why she was staring daggers at him.

He gave her a little finger wave and a smile so condescending that I was surprised she didn't storm across the room and smack it off his face. Colour rushed into her cheeks, and she turned on her heel, pulling her husband after her.

"Well, none from her at least. But I said, 'good will,' because I think that's one of the batteries you're trying to hint at."

Smiling, the Prime Minister turned back to me and raised his glass to his lips. I immediately started preparing another and he didn't stop me but also did not invite me to join him. I'd said one, and that was what he expected.

It had been nice to offer to pay me, but the bar was open, and the only money involved went in my jar. So that was nice too, and I could tell by the colours, not just one then, that generous seemed an apt description. If I hadn't already wanted to talk to the man, I would have felt obligated to just for the tip alone.

"Tell me more."

"Well," I tried to formulate my thoughts. "It's not something you can use to actually attack someone, can't throw good will at drones. But it allows you to work without really being bothered about anything else."

"Not bad, keep going."

"I mean, you mentioned something about supply lines, right? Artillery can't fire without shells, and my high school history teacher told us that after Armistice, the assembled allies fired a ton of their artillery into no-man's-land just because they'd already unpacked it. Well, without public support, they could never have made all those shells."

"You ever consider a career in Parliament?" The Prime Minister lifted the glass tip jar off the counter and lowered it onto my work top just behind the bar. He then delicately plucked the wad of bills from the top before laying it down on the metal surface. Then replacing the jar where it had been, he continued, "but yes, exactly. So, what am I trying to do here, with that ammunition?

"We're not exactly the most formidable country on the planet, so we can't flatten anyone with our artillery. What we have and how we use it must logically be highly specialized without losing large scale effectiveness. So, here, in my little dueling piste, what am I doing?"

What the tax man doesn't see he doesn't know. I slipped the cash into my pocket.

"I think you're trying to figure out how to use the good will you already have better. After coming to power the way you did, you bought a lot of loyalty from the people."

"Not loyalty, son. I bought that in spades from some people but not the Voters, what I purchased from them is rope. Now we'll have to wait and see if it's only enough to hang myself with, or if I can weave a bridge instead."

"Pretty distinct amounts of rope."

"Fickle public. And besides, I only 'win' if I manage to weave the bridge and it doesn't collapse. What am I doing with all this rope the public has given me? Because I'll just tell you that it's not just one chasm I have to cross, and the rope can be moved between projects only so far."

"Makes things harder. But I don't really know enough about what's going on here to tell you. The people love you for the jobs that came out of the Major Projects Office, and even conservative voters are coming around after the energy sector reforms. Internationally, though? I don't know how any of measures."

"Hardly more than you might think it should. Mostly it's money that we deal with, but if you can spin things right, then public favour is a valuable resource. For example, at present the votres trust this Government. We've followed through on most of our promises and are gearing up for the next phase of them. That trust is hard earned. And it can be spent abroad in interesting ways."

"Like what?"

"How much would a population be willing to spend on a Nation-building campaign abroad if their own house was not in order?" He noted my face, and continued, "mhmm. None. But since we're already providing marked benefits and have demonstrated trustworthiness thus far, the people are more likely to trust this as an investment."

"You're deploying the Peace Corps?"

"Please don't jump to conclusions, I meant what I said about looking at Parliament in your future. Leaps like that can take you straight off a ledge if you're not careful. No, I am not planning on that in the near future. The logistics alone, my God. No, but the Peace Corps is one of our batteries. And the public support for it is..."

"Unquestioned. Since they were created, they've basically gotten nothing but positive press. During their deployments, at least."

"Difficult for even the most determined cynic to lambast people actively helping in dangerous scenarios. Though they do insist on trying. We would have to be careful about how we deploy them, of course. Nothing too controversial if it can be avoided. But as soon as we declare readiness, we will have to act."

Finally, a question that I did not want to ask broke free. "Sir, why are you telling me this?" It was the exact question that ruined everything in movies, that reminded the powerful of your station and at least ended the conversation. If not worse.

But he only smiled at me. A smile that reminded me of my grandfather, even though the Prime Minister was nowhere near the same age.

"One of the first things you mentioned when I had you list artillery was media. Won't hurt to have a few rumours start to circulate. I think you can see to that, right?"

I nodded. What else could I do?

"And here," a white card flashed into his fingers, "give me a call some time next week. I think you've got potential."

And then, with a wink, he all but vanished into a rising tide of party attendees. Looking down at the card, I saw that it wasn't one of the sterile ones I'd seen functionaries giving to each other with a bland work email. Instead, it was decorated with the Heraldic Mark of the Prime Minister and a phone number.

Slipping the card into my pocket, I forced all thoughts of the conversation out of my end until end of shift. Then, after all the guests were gone and my endless list of closing tasks was done as well as the tip jar duly doled out, I sat at one of the guest tables and pulled the wad of cash out of my pocket.

Green and red bills smiled up at me.

What kind of idiot would I be if I didn't call him on Monday?