The Lifeweavers: Discussions of the Lifeweavers easily grow heated, especially since they rarely present themselves to conduct their defense.
The schools of thought - or bull-session opinion - on the Lifeweavers fall into four groups, often blended and shaded into one another at the edges like paints on an artist's palette.
The mystics see the Lifeweavers as divine intervention on humanity's side, or evidence that whenever evil arises, karma will marshal good to the side of the righteous so that the universe might be kept in balance. Thus the Lifeweavers should be considered reverently, and their actions as a form of religious truth. When skeptics point out that raining holy destruction down on the Kurian Towers Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style would save a good deal of effort all around, the conversation usually shifts over to pure religion.
The utilitarians aren't interested in the motivations of the Lifeweavers, only their efficacy in aid of the struggle against Kur. Their opinion of the extraterrestrials rises and falls along with humanity's fortunes in war. They'd prefer a little less anxiety over how the Lifeweavers are using the naked ape, and a little more thought put into how mankind can make better use of the Lifeweavers. Another set of utilitarians calls for some kind of planetwide exodus (along the lines of the improbable story Valentine heard while passing over Utah) where the Lifeweavers guide mankind to another world that might be made impregnable against the Kurians.
The diplomatists wish to see the Lifeweavers exert themselves less in resisting the Kurians and more in arriving at a solution that would end the fratricide among both species. Visions of some sort of worldwide strike, where mankind nonviolently refuses to aid either side until they solve their
differences or take their war elsewhere, make for an attractive flight of Pegasus-winged pigs. But even among the diplomatists, arguments break out when specifics for a peaceful solution are brought up.
The conspiracists come in almost as many flavors as the mystics. Many maintain that the Kurians and Lifeweavers, being of the same species, are simply playing an elaborate game of good cop/bad cop with humanity, to better control them for their own nefarious ends. Others see the Lifeweavers as basically good, but using humans as cannon fodder to fight an ancient war that spilled over onto Earth, to mankind's misfortune.
In Valentine's opinion, the Lifeweaver lurking in the depths of the rabbit warren offered strong evidence that excluded two of the above schools of thought.
* * *
Valentine hadn't slept since he set off on his courier flight. Thirty-six, no, forty hours now, he corrected himself.
Someone knocked on his door. "Yeah?"
Thunderbird's voice through the steel: "You wanted your interview, you got it".
Valentine wondered if he should shave. No, the sooner the better. Shaving wouldn't make a difference one way or the other. He opened the door.
Thunderbird stood there with two of his bigger Bears.
The enmity that had sprung up between himself and Thunderbird had turned into a wary truce back in the warren. As there was nothing Valentine could do on a battlefield - or a multiblock killing floor, in his mind - without getting arrested at the very least, he'd followed orders and flown back to Grizzly Ridge. He took the precaution of landing at the fuel depot to refuel, found Gide, and had her guide him up into the hills above the motor pool to a vacant house with an even more vacant garage. She sensed that there was something wrong and asked him about it, but Valentine didn't want to explain, couldn't without following the cowardly urge to flee the Cascades entirely.
But flight wouldn't save any lives but their own.
He trotted back to Grizzly Ridge, explained that his engine was misfiring and being maintained back at the motor service yard. He had written up both a request to see the Lifeweaver and a letter of resignation from Delta Group by the time the column returned. He waited outside Thunderbird's office and told him that unless the request was immediately granted, the resignation would follow.
In all probability he'd resign anyway, but Valentine didn't add that. He needed the interview.
That rated six clucks of Thunderbird's tongue, then an order to return to his quarters and get cleaned up.
Thunderbird walked him to one of the big, gurney-sized two-door elevators that served the medical center. Shielding the control panel with his body, the colonel pressed buttons using both hands.
"I think we got off on the wrong foot", Thunderbird said as the elevator dropped. "I figured you knew about your old man's solution".
Valentine didn't want to ask the question on his mind, and luckily the elevator stopped, and he had a brief reprieve as they met two more Bears at a duty desk in a rough-hewn, unpainted tunnel. Under bare bulbs projecting from boxes linked by a conduit, Thunderbird handed over an order sheet and he and Valentine turned in their IDs. Thunderbird checked his sidearm and they submitted to a pat down and being wanded by a metal detector as one of the Bears spoke into a phone.
A woman in a medical uniform appeared. "He'll see them", she told the Bear at the duty desk.
"Pass nine-nine", the Bear shouted down the hallway.
"Pass nine-nine", a voice shouted back.
The big Bears sat down opposite the duty desk to wait. Thunderbird and Valentine walked down the darkening corridor, following the woman in white, the bulbs becoming less frequent and finally giving out. Valentine spotted an old hunk of armored vehicle crammed into a turn in the tunnel, a turreted gun that looked like a 30mm cannon covering the tunnel back toward the duty desk. Two layers of thick metal cage kept the Bears inside - Valentine guessed there were two,
but it was hard to tell... at their station. Valentine saw a portable toilet between the layers of cage.
They turned the corner past the dug-in vehicle and came upon a set of bars worthy of a rhino cage, a small door in a heavy frame offering access to the other side. Valentine heard dripping. The medical officer fought down a yawn, took a key looped around her neck, and put it in a lock at the half door.
They crouched to pass through.
There was another turn ahead, and Valentine felt the space and light around the corner through the transmitted drippings.
"I want to see him alone", Valentine said.
"Don't try anything funny. If the medical staff calls, I'll come in and put an end to you".
"Maybe", Valentine said.
The medical officer looked to Thunderbird, who nodded. "Take him in", he said.
She looked Valentine up and down. "You look tired. Are you okay ?"
"Fine".
"Don't be nervous - he's just a bit eccentric. Remember, he's not a human".
"I've met them before", Valentine said.
She took Valentine into a... grotto was the only word Valentine could use for it. It was warm and humid. Banks of what he guessed were grow lights fed thick ferns, palmettos, rhododendrons, and other plants Valentine hadn't seen since he'd been in the tropics. Off to one side a pool, fed by a sheet of water coming down the wall that most people would call a leak rather than a falls, moved quietly, stirred by some unknown current. The banks of plant boxes and platforms made something of a maze, but the medical officer guided him past the pool and into the center of the plant life.
"What's his name?" Valentine asked.
She led him past a bank of purple flowers. Valentine heard a bee buzz. Something was wrong with that, but he couldn't remember
what. "He said we couldn't pronounce it. We just call him 'Sir.' It's quick and easy.
"Don't let his appearance throw you off. Remember, it's just a show", she said, coming to a gauzy tent. She lifted a flap.
"David Valentine to see you, Sir", she said.
Valentine saw a hairy mass and several sheet-covered floor mats within.
"Enter, sojourner", a slightly lisping voice said.
Valentine went into the tent. Enough light from the intense bulbs penetrated the thick white gauze to make him feel as though he were inside some kind of cottony womb.
The creature within made a startling contrast to the whites and pale greens of the sheets covering the mats on the floor. The Lifeweaver looked like a half daemon, half satyr, right down to thick hairy legs hinged like a goat's. Overlong fingers and toes with nails that weren't quite claws displayed delicately painted, mysterious glyphs. Pointed of ear, flat-nosed and slant-eyed, it was barrel-chested but thin-hipped, covered with limp, stringy, dirty hair and the odd bubo about the neck and groin. Valentine couldn't say whether he was faced with a combination of legends or nightmares.
"Sit", it said, with an artful wave of the wrist and overlong fingers. Valentine was reminded of an exhibition he'd once seen after his return from Nebraska where a martial artist showed how to use a war fan. "Cross-legged is best, for your kind". Valentine sat.
It reclined on one of the mats, lounging. "Speak your mind, sojourner".
"Why do you look like that, Sir?"
The medical officer brought in a wide, water-filled bowl. A candle and some flower petals floated within. She set a small stainless steel cup in front of Valentine.
"Suits the profession. Suits of the profession. War, famine, disease, and death. All I've known, watching these thousands of years. It's all that's left of me. I stayed on, you see, though others left after the old
battles of your ancestors' time. I stayed and watched, for I loved and admired you. But I'm afraid it's driven me a bit mad".
He smiled, showing brown and green teeth. "Valhalla awaits, if you have the courage and survive your ordeal", Sir said, reaching out with arms that thinned as they extended. Valentine felt the greasy touch of its hands, the prick of its claws, as it cradled his head.
"You will be death, destroyer of worlds", Sir whispered in his ear, despite the fact that his head remained on the other side of the tent.
Valentine broke away from Sir's grasp. "Wait. I think there's a mistake. I'm not here to become a Bear".
The arms pulled back. "Not a Bear?"
"No, I need your help. I'm from Southern Command", Valentine said hurriedly, wondering just how much of this the nurse was hearing.
"A Wolf once, now a Cat, and more in your blood besides", Sir said.
Valentine didn't bother to ask for hows and whys. "They need the help of the Dau'weem".
"I never accepted that title. We were right, not backward", Sir said. The shape blurred and returned. "Southern Command, where is that again? Argentina?"
"The Ozarks, Texas, parts of Oklahoma now..."
"Mississippi River, oh yes, of course. Louisiana Purchase and all that. One of your better specimens, Jefferson, though I've only known him secondhand. I met Washington once. A good man and true. You're not fighting with the Britons again, are you? You've got to settle these squabbles yourselves or you'll never get anywhere as a people. All Rome's fault, of course - if they'd only stayed the course and not become addicted to slavery. It's like an opiate".
Valentine wondered how to drag Sir's mind back out of lost millennia.
"We need your help. I have to get in touch with the other Lifeweavers".
"That can be dangerous", Sir said. "Very dangerous indeed. I can't take that step without revealing myself in the process. Never mind the danger to you".
"I know it's a lot to ask", Valentine said.
"Do you ask?"
"Yes".
"No matter the consequences, the possible harm?"
"I would think that would be your decision. But it's important".
"Not my forte. Not my forte at all. But I'll try".
"Thank you".
Sir slipped out one side of the tent.
Valentine wondered if an all-out assault on Grizzly Ridge would be entirely a bad thing. The medical officer poked her head in. "You got him all stirred up".
"I hope that's all right", Valentine said, wondering if Thunderbird would bust in and start beating him to death with a shovel.
"He needs the activity. He lies around too much, not that we really know what's healthy for his kind. How do you feel? Hot yet? You should have another..."
"I'm fine", Valentine said. "Wait, I think there's been a mistake. I didn't come here for an Invocation".
She blinked. "No?" She knelt and looked in each of his ears, folding his lobes back to peer behind. "That's a relief. But that's all he really does for us. Just a moment". She disappeared.
"Success", Sir said, returning to the tent. He held a small, slightly curled rubber-tree leaf in his hand. Valentine saw a small green stone on the strange presentation leaf. "Took some time to find the right one. Ready?"
"For what?" Valentine said, warily.
"To speak to our kind. You needed to communicate with us, yes?"
"Yes", Valentine said.
"This will do the trick". He passed the leaf to Valentine, waddled around behind, and put his hands on Valentine's shoulders. The hands
turned into tentacles, soft grasping veined leaves at the ends. "Just touch it with your fingertips".
Valentine looked at the shard of jade. Some kind of hieroglyph of a bird was carved on the side. "I'm ready, if your ka is", Sir said. "It's quite painless".
Valentine reached down and touched it.
It felt like ordinary jade, cool and smooth.
A roar, hundreds of voices in his head, the static noise of an excited crowd. It overwhelmed him, incendiary butterflies opened their full-spectrum wings in his mind, and he spun around, looking for a way out, but the voices...
He opened his eyes, found he was lying on one of the mats. The medical officer hovered anxiously, Thunderbird behind.
Sir looked at him, eyes narrow and calculating.
"Are you still with us, David Valentine?"
Valentine felt as though he were in another time and space. "I think so. What does that thing do again?"
"It's a touchstone. It opened up your mind".
"Nothing made sense", Valentine said.
"It takes a great mind to comprehend a touchstone on contact. But everything you need to know is..."
The medical officer put a hand to his cheek. "He's hot. Sir, is he entering up as a Bear?"
"No, I simply opened the channels. He shouldn't have the biological resour... wait... Design help us! I forgot. Oh me! Oh me! Your father was a Bear, I believe".
"I think so".
Sir licked his lips with a pustule-coated tongue. "You may have had the talent passed down to you".
The medical officer looked at Thunderbird. "We'd better isolate".
Thunderbird nodded, hurried off out of the grotto. Valentine heard a plant crash to the floor.
"Oh, and he needs calm now more than anything. Oh me, oh me,
I've been a fool. Careless! I expect he'll go mad. They said I was useless and they've been proven right again".
"Tell Thunderbird", Valentine said, feeling like he was floating away on a river. "Danger. Sir, you revealed yourself. Don't forget".
"We'll take care of it", the medical officer said. "What's that about?"
"He's confused", Sir said. "He must have thought... I had to take my true shape to guide him to the right part of the touchstone, make sure it didn't rush in all at once. I meant the danger was to him, not to me. Oh, this has been bunkum and confusion from the first".
"I'm going to sedate him", the medical officer said. She yanked a big white case from within a stand of ferns and opened it. The needle squirted something on Valentine as she positioned it above his arm. "I doubt it'll last...", Sir said.
"Long enough for him to get on the gurney".
Valentine, disoriented, half-awake, and anxious, didn't even feel the needle going in...
"Don't let him get up. Don't let him up", someone was shouting. A weight pressed on his chest. Valentine saw lightbulbs passing above, one after the other, each leaving a snail trail glowing on his retinas. His heart began to hammer.
Something was in his mouth, he bit down, it snapped, a tooth gave way.
And then a convulsion. Even though he felt that he was lying on his back, someone still managed to clobber him across the small of his back with what felt like a baseball bat. His arms and legs forgot how they worked. He smelled eucalyptus.
"Zap him again!" a voice shouted.
The gurney's wheels chattered as they passed over the uneven surface below. Valentine felt calm and collected, even as his body jumped under another jolt. The world faded away, but whispered to him that it would be back, new and improved.
* * *
Madness, fighting in vain against tentacles, bludgeons, ropes, the world had turned crimson and black, shadows surrounded him, baying like a wolf pack. But above and behind it was singing, the most perfect singing he'd ever heard, an angelic choir majestic. He sang along as he fought until he sagged in exhaustion.
* * *
He awoke to find himself in a dark room, his arms bound around his own waist as though he were mummified. No, straitjacket, it was a straitjacket, made out of thick leather. His legs were swathed in some kind of padding and buckled down flat. He sensed he was lying faceup, somewhere underground, but beyond that, he could tell nothing, except that he felt dirty all over, particularly itching and filthy between his legs.
"Hello?" he croaked.
Thirsty. So thirsty.
A presence at his side. He felt a plastic nozzle enter his mouth.
"Get ready to swallow, okay?" a voice said. Gide's, it was Gide.
He nodded, vaguely aware of tubes and wires connected to him. He suspected one of the wires could give him a jolt.
Water, just a tablespoon or two, went in his mouth, and he swallowed. So salty it tasted sweet. They repeated it. Twice.
"Good", the voice said. It wasn't Gide.
Valentine felt a gap in his teeth on the upper left side. He probed with his tongue, felt a missing tooth, or rather the stump of one. The other felt good and cracked.
* * *
The next day - at least they told him it was the next day - he could sit. The tubes were gone, but he still had wires running the length of his body, individual ends attached to forehead, Adam's apple, chest, stomach - a couple more on his back. They hung off the bed and met at a black box.
He had the run of a two-person berth on the hospital floor. It
was in the "security" wing - the doors were solid steel, hinged on the outside and closed with what sounded like a heavy bar reinforced by bolts dug into stone beneath the linoleum. The man in civilian clothes sitting opposite, under two painted panels masquerading as windows, didn't have many answers.
His name was Wholmes, and thanks to burned and reconstructed skin, he looked like he'd been freeze-dried and rehydrated. He spelled it as he said it, though Valentine could read it on his ID card.
"How do you feel?" Wholmes asked.
"Better", Valentine said. "I had eggs and oatmeal for breakfast".
"You're on soft foods until those teeth get taken care of. Tomorrow or the next day".
"Has anyone figured out what went wrong?"
"Nicely put?"
"Clearly put".
"You were a pig who wandered into a bacon factory in hopes of speaking with the management. But when a pig visits a bacon plant, there are obvious hazards. Sir doesn't direct or guide or advise this freehold. He's used strictly for creating Bears".
"Who are you, Mr. Wholmes?"
"I help new Bears with their adjustments to transhumanism. You're an interesting case, though, Valentine".
"Why's that?"
"Sir didn't do anything to you. Well, anything much. To the Lifeweavers, the human body is like a big, locked-up factory with all the switches turned off. How we got that way - well, I'm not going into the various theories. I'll leave that to the philosophers".
Valentine felt a little jolt of recognition; Wholmes talked a little like the general who'd offered him a choice of death or the possibility of eternal life in service of the Kurians.
"Are you feeling all right?" Wholmes asked.
"Yes. Closed factory and all that".
"Now, throughout history a few individuals have managed to turn on bits of their factory on their own, transcending normal human
limits, like some of the great athletes or, with mental discipline, astrophysicists and yogis and the odd musician and so on. Some combine the two; I'm told there were martial artists who could do the same sort of tricks you Cats can.
"Now, of course when the Lifeweavers go into the factory and turn on a couple of machines, sometimes it takes the mind a little while to catch up and learn to channel the new outputs. That's where I come in, and were you aware your crystal-spark-snorting mother sucked off drovers in station bars to get her fix?"
"When your old man wasn't beating her to it", Valentine said. "What's the deal?"
"That's the fascinating thing". Wholmes reached under Valentine's bed by the black box and tore off a piece of paper covered with squiggles. "A little stress peak when I questioned humanity's origins. A bigger one, a good deal bigger, when I insulted your mother. Another Bear, fresh from his Invocation, would have jumped out of the bed and started pounding me".
"I take it your job has a comprehensive benefits package".
Wholmes chuckled. "Like you, I'm a fast healer. Plus they learn an important lesson when they calm down, and it sticks, and they become more receptive to my training". He lifted an object that looked like a flashlight held backward, with two small silver prongs. "Besides, a quick jolt calms you down.
"But you, you've been controlling yourself and your reactions since childhood, I'm guessing. You've got straight pipes, so to speak, in the brain-body connection, but you've managed to install a muffler yourself. I wish we knew more of your early childhood".
"I remember fighting a lot with my sister".
"Did you ever hurt her?"
"I... I can't remember exactly. Just kid stuff. She'd start swinging... but since she was littler I had to take it. Mom was always separating us. She'd sing to calm us down". Memories returned vague yet powerful blasts, Mother's leonine bronze face as she held him down, blood on her upper arm... "She'd sing to calm me down".
"Whoa there, Valentine, you're spiking again. And... it's gone. Remarkable. A ramp like that should lead to a redline, and you pull yourself back each time. Your father was... and there's another spike. Perhaps I should leave off your family for a bit".
"What about the... the touchstone?"
Wholmes tapped his thigh with a scar-covered hand. "We don't know".
"Does Sir?"
"Depends on the state of his mind when you speak to him. I understand at one time he was one of the Lifeweavers' leading lights on the study of humanity, followed our civilizations very closely. But he's old now, very old, and he's slipping".
"How did he end up here?"
"In the mess of 2022 he and a few other Lifeweavers revealed themselves to the government. They went to a 'secure area' at Mount Omega, but weren't of much practical help - meaning they couldn't deliver on the magic bullet everyone keeps thinking will get rid of the Kurians".
"There's stuff that helps. Like Quickwood".
"Somebody showed up with a couple seeds of that stuff. I've no idea where it's growing, big secret".
"So did the other Lifeweavers leave?"
"Seems like. I'm told they kept trying to pick up stakes and go elsewhere. They ended up breaking out somehow, oh, about the time I was born. All but Sir, and no one really knows what happened next. The other Lifeweavers had vanished. But I wonder. About the time they disappeared was when we first started hearing about this uber-Kurian in Seattle. Some people say they defected".
"Defected?"
"I think it's bunk myself. Adler says he thinks they were captured, and the old King of the Tower used them to increase his power".
Valentine felt exhausted, but he forced a few more words out. "How does he do that?"
"We're still working on figuring out how Bears can grow a new lung back, but not a hand.
Ever seen a grown-back Bear limb? Looks kinda like a flipper. Some of the guys have doctors tie the nub off so nothing weird grows back".
Valentine sagged back into his pillow.
"You need some food. I can tell. I'll get someone to bring you a tray".
* * *
He saw the dentist, a chattering type who covered all the discomfort with a steady stream of talk. He offered to cap his teeth with ground-down Reaper fangs, a popular option for Delta Group's Bears. One soldier, who had lost his upper lip and a good chunk of gum line, replaced all his uppers with Reaper fangs. Valentine declined.
Nights passed in weirdly vivid dreams, swirling mists that formed into wells and towers only to dissolve a moment later like a sand castle falling to a tide.
"Think I might get a little fresh air today?" he asked Wholmes, who was now dividing his time between Valentine and two fresh Bears in a cell next door. Valentine heard a good deal of screamed profanity, not quite as eloquent as that of the engineering crew on the old Thunderbolt, who had practically cursed in iambic pentameter as they overhauled an engine, but a good deal louder.
"It would do you good. Colonel Thunderbird will probably send a couple of men to keep an eye on you".
Valentine was interested to hear a rank used. In Delta Group ranks were for outsiders, rear-zone lurkers, or Pacific Command apparatchiks. Perhaps Wholmes didn't like Thunderbird.
When he went next door Valentine hopped out of bed, tried a few stretches and push-ups. His old leg wound gave him hardly a twinge, though usually a long spell in bed left it more sore than ever when he used it again.
But even that small amount of exercise left him ravenously hungry. He called for food and a nurse gave him a heaping plate of brown rice and dark beer, pushing it through a notch under the door.
He scraped his plate down to the last rice husk, listening to Wholmes encouraging the Bears to calm themselves by mantra. In this case, the old "Itsy-bitsy Spider" song every child picks up somehow or other. Hearing snarly voices talking about spiders traveling up and down waterspouts got him thinking...
* * *
Wholmes must have given him an enthusiastic recommendation, because they released him the next day into the charge of a stiff-legged old Bear named Yarborough.
"Machine-gun bullets, both legs", Yarborough said, easing his way down the corridor with a cane carved from Reaper femur.
Yarborough took him up to the Bear cafeteria and watched Valentine consume a vast meal of potato-heavy stew. "Tired. Very tired", Valentine said, wiping up the plate with a heel of warm bread. He was only half paying attention to Yarborough; his mind was on the layout of the elevator, in particular the bumper at gurney level.
"You'll get used to it". Yarborough winced as he rose. "A little exercise helps. Want to throw some pins around?"
"Maybe a walk outside".
Yarborough looked doubtful. "I was nervous as a colt my first time out of doors. You might panic and try to take down a truck".
"I've got it under..."
"Boo!" Yarborough ejaculated, lunging with both hands across the trays.
Valentine found himself six inches backward, heart thudding away, and nonplussed.
"Um ... grrrrr?" Valentine said back.
They both laughed. "I think Sir's slipping", Yarborough said. "Even a week after my Invocation, I would have been trying to open my head like an M-22 if I were you".
"Can I ask a question, Yarborough?"
"Fire away".
"What happens to the little kids?"
Yarborough's brow came down like a guillotine. "What do you mean?"
"I saw a truck full of little kids, too young for school, babies, pulling out after the last clearing operation. What happens to them?"
"They go to orphanages, poor souls. Some up to Canada, some out East or the other side of Rainier. You know Eagle, right? He came out of one of the orphanages, went in older than most even, ten, I think he said".
Valentine didn't know Eagle, but relaxed. He'd been worried they were used as Reaper bait. Or worse.
"How about that walk?" Sure.
The cafeteria was starting to fill up with the lunch crowd. Bears hurried to pile their trays with rice-flour bread and mulligan stew. Thunderbird and an adjutant came walking in as they approached the door.
"Valentine, a new man, I see", Thunderbird said.
"Tired as an old one", Valentine said. "But I'm going to try a walk aboveground, if that's okay".
Thunderbird clucked his tongue. "Sure. Be good for you. Stop by my office when you feel yourself again".
"How about tomorrow instead?" Valentine couldn't say whether he'd ever be himself again, after witnessing Pacific Command's Bears in action.
"Anytime. Door's always open, you'll remember".
Valentine took his walk on the flattened valley floor at the foot of the ridge. He tried balancing on one of the train rails that led to the big unloading station in the tunnellike terminal, though he'd never seen or heard a train come in. The breeze felt good on his face, but clouds screened the sun.
Yarborough watched him from the bench at the headquarters shuttle pickup.
Valentine took a short run about a third of the way up the hill, and
Yarborough opened a box marked with the network-phone squiggle. Puffing a little, Valentine reached the halfway mark on the ridge and hurried back down.
His bad leg twinged, but stayed steady on even the steep slope of the warren. He ran to the train-cave mouth, saw a big wire gate inside, and ran back again.
"Good to get some air". Yarborough nodded in agreement.
An engine started up, and Valentine saw a flag-draped coffin inside a black horse-drawn station wagon pull out of one of the tunnels. A big plastic wreath was propped up in the empty, hoodless engine compartment, and the driver steered the horses through a missing windshield, but otherwise the wagon was black and polished right down to the tires, which gleamed and smelled like gun oil. The engine noise came from an honor guard riding behind, rows facing each other on benches in the back of an open pickup.
"One of the new Bears. Poor kid burst his heart", Yarborough said, standing up. "Doctors don't catch everything".
Valentine lined himself up next to Yarborough and followed form as he saluted as the station-wagon hearse passed. It was just about the first salute he'd seen since coming to the warren.
"They dye the horses black", Yarborough said after the escort passed, grinding along in bottom gear. "Don't see what difference the color of the horses makes, when you're standing before that Golden Throne getting judged".
"I'm worn through", Valentine said, sitting down.
"Keep drinking water. Lots of water helps", Yarborough advised. "Let's head down".
Yarborough dropped Valentine in his original room, told him that he looked healthy as a horse, then went doubtful as he remembered that the last horses they'd seen had been drawing a hearse.
"I'm going to sleep. If you're supposed to escort me to dinner, give me a break and knock softly", Valentine said.
Valentine hadn't been back since his appointment with Sir. He checked his weapons, which were all still there, along with his ammunition. Someone had picked up his rifle, and accidentally snapped shut both buckles on his pack rather than the one.
He took out his razor-edged boot knife and opened the seam on his mattress, tilted it up, and shook it. He felt around through the hole, came up with his coin belt. More to give himself something to do than out of guilt at the vandalism, he closed up the seam for the second time with needle and thread from his sewing kit. Then he turned out his lights and rested.
The soft knock woke him, but he didn't answer. Yarborough was right, though - he was thirsty. He drank, and whiled away the hours dozing on and off. In the bustle of sentry shift change at eleven p.m. he slipped out the door, gear crammed into an enormous Pacific Command duffel with his bedding peeking out at the top. He went down to the laundry, checked in with the attendant and got tokens for the machine, and put his sheets in. He wandered, grabbed a couple of pieces of fruit from an elegant porcelain bowl resting in the small library on the same floor as the laundry, and returned to put his sheets in the dryer.
Someone else would have to take them out of the dryer.
The attendant didn't notice him extract his duffel from between a couple of machines and exit again. He ducked into the library again and took off his boots.
He went to the elevator bank and was momentarily frustrated when he found it occupied by a couple of bored technicians carrying toolboxes. If they noticed his socks, they didn't say anything. He got off at his own floor and then idled, waited for another. This one was empty.
He punched the button for the second-to-the-top floor, climbed up to the rail, and hung on in the corner using his toes. He opened the service access on the roof, picking the lock with his hairpinlike jimmies, praying that the elevator wouldn't stop on its upward trip.
He tossed the duffel up through the gap and made it to the elevator roof. The rolling gears and cables pulled steadily, their companions to the counterweight on the other side vibrating.
Valentine didn't want the elevator to stop at the top floor; a bell
sounded in the corridor whenever the elevator arrived to alert the sentries that someone was coming up.
He climbed to the next level easily enough; rungs were built into the shaft for workmen, firefighting, or a loss of power. Using his gun flashlight, he examined the top-level door, found the trip for the bell. He lifted the latch on the door at the top level, and just cracked the door so he could slip through.
Valentine tucked his stiletto into his sleeve and listened, checking down the corridor toward the machine-gun-post exit. A sentry sat at a junction of rough-hewn tunnels, reading a book.
Nothing to do but bluff. Valentine strode down the corridor. The sentry lowered his book.
"B aerial crapped out", Valentine said. "I'm checking the connection before making a big issue with service". Valentine didn't know if there was such a thing as a B aerial, but it was quite possible the sentry wouldn't either.
The sentry stood, didn't reach for his rifle, but put his hand on his pistol holster. "We need a..."
Valentine jumped, and drove the outer edge of his boot into the sentry's midsection. The breath left the sentry's lungs with a whoosh and Valentine put a foot on his wrist and a knee on his neck, bearing down hard. He dropped his knife out of his sleeve and poked the sentry hard under the chin.
"Last thing I want to do is hurt you, friend", Valentine said. "You make me open up your carotids, it's going to bother me for days".
"Mrfph", the sentry agreed.
Valentine relieved him of his pistol, was happy to see a pair of handcuffs on his belt and a Taser. "Stay flat on your face, spread-eagle. I just got invoked a couple days ago, and I'm twitchy as hell. What's your name?"
"Appleton".
Valentine gave Appleton careful instructions, and in three minutes he was handcuffed and stuck in the big duffel bag, with his bootlaces tied together and threaded through the grommets.
"I'm going to leave your rifle with the handcuff key near the exit. You can work your way out of this pretty easily, I should think".
The sentry was breathing a little steadier now, listening.
"I'm going to be looking around for a while from the exit. Any booby traps I need to know about?"
"No".
"While I'm looking around, if I hear you moving around, I'll come back and taze you.
"Way I see it, you've got two options, Appleton. You can be a good soldier and work your way out of the bag and ring every alarm in the warren. Someone might ask why you didn't hear the elevator bell, how I caught you unprepared and got the drop on you".
"There are patrols outside", Appleton said. "They shoot on sight, you try going down the west side of the ridge".
"Don't worry about that. Your other option is to ditch the bag and play dumb. I hear alarms going off and they catch me, well, I'm just going to have to tell them I caught you jerking off with your belt around your ankles".
"I wasn't..."
"I know you weren't. But I'm a good liar. Think they'd send you to the Punishment Brigade for that?"
"Don't forget the alarm on the hatch. It's just a switch on the side of the battery", Appleton suggested.
"If I were you, I'd get out of the bag, inch my way down the hall, uncuff myself, and go back to my book. But, then, I'm a deserter".
* * *
Valentine remembered the alarm, gave Appleton a little bit of a poser by sliding the handcuff key down the rifle barrel, and cracked the hatch to the air-defense post.
A drizzle that fell like it was too tired to work up into actual rain slicked on his face and hair as he negotiated the warren's slopes, making off down the eastern side.
He marked no activity on the road-rail terminus - the warren
might as well have been a graveyard - but that didn't mean eyes weren't watching from doors and sentry posts. Valentine made a long, elbow-and knee-battering crawl to the bottom of the slope. A garbage pit gaped fifty or sixty meters away; one of the more common punishments for minor infractions was a spell either digging new space for garbage or covering up whatever the scavengers - human, rodent, or insect - left.
A dog barked, freezing him, but it was a distant warning from the southwestern side of the ridge.
He rested and waited. Headlights glowed; then engine noise sounded from the road winding down from the western foothills. A motorbike leading a car approached the checkpoint, and Valentine took the opportunity to make a dash for the garbage pit. Half expecting a warning shot if not another bullet through the thigh, he was there by the time the vehicles reached the gate.
On the other side of the garbage pit the woods began. A fence ran through it, patrolled, but it was militia backed up by a few Bears. But the fence was little more than a polite warning, and the patrols were a training exercise, and Valentine had heard stories of paths to sneak out and go into town for a little fun. The tough part was getting out of the warren.
* * *
Valentine crept up on Gide's fueling station and motor pool, having gone over another fence. There were a couple of guards at the gate, but the rest of the buildings were locked up tight. Valentine rejoiced in his luck when he saw a woman Gide's size work a crank, pumping fuel from an underground reservoir into a fifty-gallon drum. Then she turned. The woman's profile was a straight horizontal line, flat as a building.
"Julia", he hissed from the shadows.
She stepped away from the pump and reached for her sidearm. "Who's there?"
"David. I'm a friend of Gide's".
"The David", she said, reaching for something at her throat. She pulled up a plastic nose and a surgical mask.
Valentine walked up and shook her hand. "You make me sound like a statue".
"Umm... sorry? Gide's not on duty until seven".
"Can you get her, please? It's really important".
"Ah, love", she said. "Where are you storing your white horse?"
"It's desert tan, and that's what I needed to see her about".
"Burb", she said, employing the local slang for "be right back", and went off toward a long building that looked like two separate pre-'22 houses that had been enlarged toward each other until they joined.
She returned alone, as though from a trip to the bathroom. "Meet her in the tomato stands. Far end of the garden".
Valentine found her crouched in the tomato patch under an oversized umbrella. She'd brought a blanket and smelled like freshly applied scent.
"Lousy night for this, you know, it's damp. You could have given...", she said.
"Sorry, it's not that", Valentine said, squatting down beside her, hedged by ripening tomatoes. "I do mean sorry. Gide, I'm getting out of here".
"Huh?" She sat up.
"This place is poison".
"What, sodomy and the lash back in the Holes too? And you an officer and all".
"No. They're fighting... they're squeezing the Kurians in Seattle by getting rid of the population. And I mean getting rid of, not relocating".
"Cheezus. Poor bastards".
"I've done what I needed to do here, sorta, and I'm getting away".
"David, you're creeping me out here. Those sheeple are going to get it one way or another. Might as well make sure the towers don't have 'em".
"Don't tell me you knew too?"
"No, you just told me now. But - fuck! - it makes sense. We're what they need, right? Why let the bloodsuckers have what they need ?"
Valentine felt his cheeks go hot. "You used to live under them. Your whole life, pretty much".
"Yeah, and I'd rather've been shot or hung or whatever they do than let some fuckin' Hisser get his hook into me".
If she could just see it, see it as it took place ...
"I'm getting out. I'm going to report to my contact. Maybe ... maybe change something, I dunno".
"Good luck with that. Me, I'm bucking for the regulars. There's a shooting tournament soon - you can win a monthlong trip up to the wilds for some hunting and training. It's a great way to get noticed". There was an edge to her voice, but she blinked hard, several times.
"Then this is good-bye", Valentine said. He gave her his Steyr. "Maybe this'll help you win the competition".
She cradled the gun, on her knees, the oversized uniform shirt making her look like a beautiful but well-armed garden gnome. "Can't you ... can't we sleep on it? Maybe it'll look different in the morning. We can talk. You're smart enough to see reason..."
The last thing Valentine wanted to do was kiss her, but he found it happening all on its own. "They'll come looking for me, and yours is the first bed they'll check. If they ask about the gyro, play dumb. I need to steal some high-octane gas off you".
"Let me put my boots back on", she said. A lace broke as she tied it. "Fuck! I'm supposed to be tough. I've been through... but you drop your guard just a little bit and it's like you never learned in the first place". She wiped her eyes, buckled her belt. "I'll help you get the cans over the fence".