Free Black Sun Reich by Trey Garrison Page A

discrimination was less overt though no less embraced, and bigotry was more directed at Jews, Eastern Europeans, and Orientals than at those of African or Caribbean origin.
    But here in Texas, Rucker had explained on the flight, the Freeholders were more guided by the experience and example of the first Texas ranches, where the ongoing need for reliable, skilled ranch hands and later oil field roughnecks trumped traditional racial barriers. The subsequent close partnership with Brazil and France—the first true melting pots of the West—further shaped the Freehold’s character. A voraciously trade driven people, Freeholders cared more about the color of money and gold than any other hue.
    Of course, Deitel thought, by every axiom of conventional European wisdom and every tenet of the New Order, this freewheeling, decentralized, mongrelized society shouldn’t have worked. It should be balkanized and chaotic. Ungovernable.
    But Deitel wasn’t sticking much with conventional wisdom anymore. After all he’d seen so far, and after his exhaustive time with Lysander Benjamin, he was having doubts about nearly everything he thought he knew.
    He went over the extensive debriefing again. Benjamin had immediately taken the microfilm he’d brought and sent it off by way of a pneumatic tube. The man then listened to his report without comment. Then Benjamin asked him to repeat the story, and asked questions—sometimes pertinent, sometimes wholly irrelevant—after almost every statement he made. Then the man had chatted about his bursitis, about his days as an altar boy, wheat beers, and other irrelevancies. Benjamin never once spoke of his authority within the Texas government, nor of how this would be handled by the Freehold’s intelligence services.
    What was happening now? Deitel wondered.
    He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice Rucker slide onto the stool beside him.
    â€œSo, how you doing?” Rucker asked, as he signaled the bartender. “How’d that whole ‘end of the world’ thing go?” He sounded amused and flippant
    â€œYour Mr. Benjamin was . . . what is the English? Surprisingly nonchalant. Much like your tone,” Deitel said.
    Rucker grinned. “I conjured as much. Don’t take it all personal like. It’s his job to vet you,” he said, handing the bartender a silver coin. “Finish that candy water. I’m taking you to a real bar. Saddle up and twenty-three skidoo.”
    Some of that had to be English, Deitel thought.
    Minutes later they were on Sixth Street. The pace Rucker set—Deitel idly wondered, was this a “mosey”?—carried them casually down the walkway. The cobblestone avenue was crowded still. Did these people go out carousing every night of the week?
    He marveled at the seemingly endless variety of fashions and livery among the people. The women with their modern flapper bobs and some with softer long hairstyles. Some wore cloche hats. There seemed to be no single fashion that dominated. Women wore dresses and outfits that would have scandalized even the most urbane metropolitans in Germany for their daring and sex appeal.
    Meanwhile, men wore everything from short jackets and lightweight sport coats to dungarees with shirtsleeves or light jumpers. He even saw some in gauchos with silk shirts—the influence of the Freehold’s sister nation to the south, the Propriedad de Brazil. Fedoras and cowboy hats were the primary men’s headgear, and he saw no formal suits—which would have been inappropriate to this climate anyway. Then there were the colors of the men’s and women’s clothing—not just blues and grays and brown and blacks so uniformly, and somberly, common in European fashion, but every color in the palette.
    He also noticed at least two saloons with signs that were surprising and gauche. One said, NO IRISH OR DOGS ALLOWED. The other had the same