by E. E. Knight
Their faces stood out against the dark uniforms and the shadows beyond the table. Odd that all three were approximately the same height when seated. Three witches, telling him his future over a dirty table with finish bubbled and cracked.
"And if I make contact with a Lifeweaver?"
"Simple message. Southern Command needs their help. Badly. Or we're finished."
"That dicey, is it?"
"We're running out of Hunters," Lambert said. "The lieutenant I used to admire would have known what that meant, and been the first to volunteer. We've sent calls for help north, east, and south. We want you to be west."
The lieutenant Dots used to admire would have been so startled at the news of her admiration that he would have been able to think about little else. Valentine just noted it as an interesting detail.
Duvalier, eyes raised to heaven, and mouth like she'd just swallowed a spoonful of castor oil, muttered something about "Ghost" being the wrong clan nickname.
"Have you told me everything?"
"Everything," Styachowski said. "Trust me, Val. You did at one time."
"There is one more thing," Lambert said. "It's not an important detail. But it might mean something to you. The third mission, the one that disappeared, was led by your old CO from Zulu Company. LeHavre."
Lots of things could happen on the trail. Even to a man as experienced as LeHavre.
"I don't suppose Ahn-Kha has wandered in from across the Mississippi? He'd be invaluable."
"Sorry, Val," Duvalier said, her voice soft for the first time that evening. "He'd be sitting here if he had."
Styachowski smiled, but Lambert leaned forward. "Does that mean you're going?"
"I haven't spoken to a Lifeweaver in years," Valentine said. "I've gathered quite a list of questions."
"Great. We can get you as far as Denver," Styachowski said. "They can—"
"No. Sounds like your pipeline's got leaks, if LeHavre couldn't get through. I'm going as David Valentine, ex-Southern Command. He'd have to figure out his own way there. I'll have to write up a list of gear I need, though. Gold will be on it."
"Give it to Moira," Lambert said, suddenly informal. "Where do you want it delivered?"
"Do you know Nancy's?"
"I know Nancy's," Duvalier said. "Used to be the best safe house between Kansas City and the Rockies. Practically in Free Territory these days."
"I'll meet you there in three weeks."
"Thanks for rejoining the team, Valentine," Lambert said.
Valentine felt a little warmth in the look they exchanged. A bad use of a football-coach metaphor made her fallible—and therefore human.
"Will I have a contact I can trust out there?" Valentine asked. "I might need backup. Supplies or gear."
"I'll catch up to you at Nancy's," Styachowski said.
"Good to see you again, Valentine," Lambert said. "From this day on, your little charge is history. On paper, anyway."
Duvalier was the last to leave and ran her tongue obscenely against her lips as they said good-bye. "Even Queen Balance Sheet folds at last," she said quietly. “I’ll buy you a drink at Hob's to make up. I'm guessing that ego of yours needs some soothing after getting shaded by a woman half your size."
"I'll have to chit that. If I'm going to be back at Nancy's in twenty days, I have to get that list to Styachowski and get my worm rigged."
The corner of Duvalier's mouth went up, but she ignored the opportunity for another raunchy joke. "Be careful, sweet David. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."
First Macbeth, now Hamlet. He wondered where Duvalier had even picked up the line. He kissed her on the cheek. "I will."
Chapter Three
St. Louis, Missouri: The mighty river-flanked city has again grown to be one of the most crowded civic centers in the Midwest, second only to Kurian-held Chicago, almost bursting at the bluffs when set against the mile-high vistas of the thinly populated Denver Freehold.
Except that the population is mostly nonhuman.
The Missouri River valley from St. Louis to Omaha belongs to the sentient bipeds—"Grogs" in the highly unspecific vernacular. In some of the Zones, they still serve their original purpose, acting as a military caste between the Kurian overlords and the human populace. Other Grog clans and tribes took land grants after their twelve-years service (Grog tradition holds that there are five twelve-year periods to a full life, and the Grog who makes it past his fifth age is revered indeed). The Kurians settled them as bulwarks against the few areas not under their control.
The reason the Kurians left such back-waters held by enemies or unreliable transplants is still a subject of no little debate.
Grog custom makes warfare a way of life and a path to status; theft entrepreneurship and slave-taking are the twenty-first-century version of human resource management. While the "Gray One" clans and tribes that inhabit the valley consider herding a noble and respectable duty, the dirt digging of agricultural work is left to their slaves of the human caste, not quite despised, but only rarely admitted into Grog homes on an equal basis.
Free humans live among the Grogs, wearing hatbands or wrist tokens that serve as proof that "foot pass" (as the term is translated) has been paid to the admitting tribe. "Looie" is a refuge from both the terror of the Reapers and the justice of the embattled United Free Republic to the south, and humanity there has carved out niches that many would consider enviable. They perform for Grog audiences under the Oriental decor of the Fox Theatre, sweep the streets of the Hill, operate specialized workshops, breweries, and distilleries in Carondelet, or keep trading posts stocked with goods imported from both Kurian Zone and Freehold. A small cadre of experienced arms men even teaches at the old City Museum. The best of the Grog child warriors are sent there by their tribes to improve their warcraftiness and learn from others.
Churches educate, heal, and minister to both human and the rare Grog desperate enough to seek succor outside his clan, under generous land grants from tribal leaders who otherwise would have fewer men to serve them. An entire human ghetto has grown up around the Basilica of St. Louis, catering to human needs, including that of a surprisingly well-equipped hospital and small school. The orderlies drink and the students study nearby at that eternal mark of urban culture: a cafe looking out on the sugar-beet gardens of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
But everyone is careful to always have a foot-pass token on display: a red wooden bracelet with copper pennies inlaid for the Headstriker Tribe, a decoupage of old postage stamps set on a wooden tongue depressor for the Sharpeyes, a battered bit of embossed black leather with white stitching for the Startold....
* * * *
David Valentine stepped out of the confessional, still able to sense the anxious sweat on the priest who remained in his stuffy little booth. The cathedral, lit by candles, arched overhead like a vast cave and echoed the noises of the few who remained after evening services. Janitors were putting out the oil lamps.
"Father Dahl might need a moment," he told the three people waiting. It had been a long and busy year since he'd last knelt next to a priest. The ritual always made him feel better, thanks to its tiny, tenuous connection to his upbringing in the schoolhouse of Father Max.
The priests and nuns also liked you to set an example. He'd happily swallow his doubts and buy some new rosary beads and show up for a few masses for Blake's sake.
He checked his tribal city pass as he left the church by the public side door. He wore it around his neck on a shoelace tether: a cardboard emblem the size of a bar coaster emblazoned with a two-color circle of blue and white copied from the BMW logo. The Grogs of the Waterway Guides had a knack for picking up on designs of deep spiritual significance. He shared a hobbyist's enthusiasm for fishing with a clan chief and they gave him his Looie foot pass at a steep discount.
The well-maintained shotgun formerly of F. A. James greased the transaction, of course. Offering up the weapons of a killed enemy transferred spiritual pow
er to the Waterway. Valentine had been glad to be rid of its weight and associate memories.
Just across the corner from the cathedral was the dormitory and school. Even his limp became a little less pronounced as he bounced up the steps and signed in with the desk warden. She wore her foot pass in the form of an oversized earring, which swung as she pulled on a bell cord.
"He's still downstairs?" Valentine asked when Monsignor Cutcher welcomed him back.
"And thriving like a mushroom," the bristle-haired Jesuit said. He spoke with a faint accent, indefinite but distinctly European when compared with the usual Midwestern drawl of the Looies, and sometimes chose odd similes. Cutcher was the most well-traveled man Valentine had ever met, and had come all the way from Malta to assist with Blake, though he spoke of Cape Town and Kyushu with equal ease.
Cutcher took him to an alcove with a discreetly placed, heavy wooden door. "He gets the playground all to himself every night," Cutcher said. "We had a dark episode with a squirrel he'd been offering tidy-bits. He gained its trust and then attacked the poor rodent. Just like with the pigeons. He always obeys a warning for a few minutes but forgets unless frequently reminded. Tiresome."
"We may have to move him," Valentine said.
Cutcher paused at the bottom of the stairs. "Oh?"
"I've been informed that they are hunting him. The Freehold is going to fake his death in the documents. I'd like to make sure the trail dead-ends here at the same time."
"There is a small mission in La Crosse. But it may perhaps be easier to hide him somewhere else in this city. Strangers are noticed here—-someone snooping around is sure to draw attention of the tribes."
They descended to what had probably once been preparation and scullery rooms for kitchens, judging from the number of sinks. Wooden partitions filled one whole wall, storage space and dormitories for the worst of the summer heat. Valentine's odds and ends filled one; the more permanent trunks of the Bloch brothers rested open in another. Behavioral biologists from the Miskatonic in Pine Bluff, they studied Blake's every intake and excrete, and gave him an occasional medical examination—and then only under supervision Valentine trusted. Getting Narcisse out of Southern Command had been easier than he'd thought: They'd put her to make-work in a convalescent home and treated her more like a patient than a skilled nurse or cook. Will Post had presented her with his offer and arranged to relocate her to a border town where they could be reunited.
Valentine looked forward to giving the Miskatonic fellows their walking papers. Their faces would drop lower than the muddy bottom of the nearby Mississippi.
Valentine smelled food cooking. The Blochs were probably at breakfast. Blake was mostly nocturnal, and they'd adapted their schedules to his.
A squeak of rubber turning on linoleum sounded from the darkness of a corridor ahead.
"I heard your step on the stairs, Daveed," Narcisse said, coming into the dim light reflected from the dirty tile.
Valentine's old guide from Haiti smiled up at him from beneath one of her colorful bandannas. Her face had a few more lines, a few more liver-colored blotches.
"Hello, Sissy."
"You look tired. Rest and eat. Let me pour a bowl of soup for you. There is bread. Olive oil too, from some raid or other. It gives the gray folk the runs something terrible, so they give it to us."
"I'd like to see Blake first."
"Of course."
"I'll say good-bye to you two," Cutcher said. "Feel free to hop up and talk, David, if you have any concerns regarding Blake."
"Will do, Monsignor."
She led him down the hall. They'd mounted a first-aid kit the size of a briefcase on the wall since he'd last been there; Valentine wondered if there'd been worse trouble than with squirrels and pigeons. They entered the incinerator room that now served as the young Reaper's bedroom.
An aged nun with a face like a raisin watched him as he slept, a crack in the basement window admitting a shaft of sleep light.
"David Valentine, we see you again at last," she whispered as she hugged him. "Such a blessing."
Blake had grown like Iowa corn in a hot, thundery summer. Valentine felt the old pain, looked at his wrists, both of which still bore a faint track or two, like needle marks on the addicts he'd seen in Chicago's Zoo. He remembered the exhausting first months with Blake, shuffling him from Nomansland hole to Nomansland hole under cover of darkness, feeding him when there wasn't livestock to be had. He'd looked in a mirror once and thought he was staring at his own ghost.
"Blake," Valentine said from across the room. He could sometimes lash out like a wild animal if he was touched in sleep.
Yellow, slit-pupil eyes opened. The small figure sat up, wearing an old pajama top with characters that Valentine recognized as Ernie and Bert.
"Papa," Blake said in his tiny, breathy voice. He sprang out of bed, crossing a meter or more in a clumsy jump.
"Jumping," Narcisse warned, and the obsidian-toothed mouth formed a regretful "o."
Valentine took Blake up, turned the child's head up and away from his breast—no sense taking chances, and besides, he wanted a good look at the growing face. He was shocked at the weight gain. At two years and three months, Blake was a good deal heavier than a human child his size, perhaps the weight of a five- or six-year-old. "Papa bek. papa bek see bwaykh!"
"Yes, I'm back." Valentine's wary ears picked up a faint thump from beneath the cot and a little terrier mix appeared, wiggling as it scooted out.
"That's Wobble," Narcisse said. "Blake got heem as a puppy."
"Wobbow not for eat," Blake informed Valentine, his blue-veined face going serious.
Wobble had a bare patch on his back and a tiny ridge of scar tissue, and a bit of a limp. Valentine wondered how many close calls Wobble had survived before Blake had finally learned.
"Of course he's not for eating," Valentine said, going down cross-legged—with a twinge from his bad left leg—so he could set Blake's formidable weight down and pet the squirmy dog. Of course when he'd run with Southern Command's Wolves he'd learned to dine on dog and had eaten them innumerable times since, but what was civilization but a lengthy set of agreed-upon tribal taboos?
Despite his change in size, Blake's grip on his arm and shoulder was a good deal more gentle than he remembered. What accidental pains Narcisse had suffered to her shattered body as Blake's nursemaid Valentine couldn't imagine.
Blake began to produce his favorite toys.
Which reminded Valentine. "I had a letter from Will and Gail. Ali tracked me down."
"A letter!" Narcisse said. The St. Louis Grogs weren't on any postal network. "What it said?"
Valentine handed her the grease-stained envelope, spiderwebbed with creases. "You can read it." Valentine went back to helping Blake work a spinning top made out of an old office-chair caster.
William Post, the former Quisling Coastal Marine who'd helped Valentine while crossing the Caribbean in the old Thunderbolt, had been given a sinecure with Southern Command. With some reading between the lines Valentine determined that Post had made himself indispensable with his usual efficient intelligence. He'd been given a minor position cataloging captured documentation from the Gulf Coast area and the Mississippi River valley, and had started making educated guesses based on everything from shipping manifests to maintenance logs.
His evaluations, thanks to his years of experience in the area, won him a position in the staffs Threat Assessment Bureau. TAB was charged with ensuring that Southern Command wouldn't get surprised again by the kind of coordinated attack that had allowed Consul Solon to roll up Missouri and Arkansas.
The news contained in the letter was good. Post knew that someone working the Kurian Zone would just as soon hear nothing but cheer. He and Gail were settled in Fort Scott, a trolley ride from his air-conditioned office. Hank Smalls was getting good marks in school and had a place as top starting pitcher on the academy's baseball team. His fastball was already attracting local fans.
<
br /> Valentine could almost recite it word for word, especially one tantalizing paragraph:
I'm breaking security with this, Dave, but it's nothing the KZ isn't aware of anyway. Thought you'd like to know there's been a spike of action up and down the Appalachians, mostly in the Virginias and Kentucky. Only info on it is from secondary sources, but it's all the same story: guerrillas on legworms, popping in and out of valleys, and the K aren’t having much luck with their whack-a-mole mallets. The coal mines are caught up in it, too. Here's the interesting bit: Supposedly some huge Grog's leading the revolt, bat ears and fur described as being either straw-colored or white. If we weren't SO short, we'd send a mission to help and I'd know for sure. It's been ugly.
Valentine had been tempted to tell Styachowski to let Mr. Adler remain mysterious and take the first slow barge up the Ohio.
Post's mention that Southern Command was short on "Special Operations"—Wolves or Cats and Bears in the latest military parlance—put him back on the leash.
Of course, it wouldn't be above Moira Styachowski to ask Post to slip in a mention from someone Valentine trusted as a clincher. Styachowski and Post were both veterans of Big Rock Hill. She might ask a favor.
And so what if she had? They're your friends, man. Been in the Zone too much. They've given you a taxing but not particularly dangerous job to bring you back into the fold. Be grateful. And stop tallying to yourself.
Narcisse waited until Blake was lost in the spinning, clattering, multicolored wheel from the old Life game to speak again.
"If Ali found you, that means they needed you to be found. Are you going off again?"
"Afraid so, Sissy," Valentine said. The wheel spun again and Blake pointed to the new number. Wobble chased his tail, imitating the whirling toy.
"You have so little time. He misses you, you know. He's human enough to pine. Too young to understand."
Valentine wondered how Narcisse had tipped to that. Of course he'd been interested in the challenge of the journey. But what was his absence doing to Blake? Was he cocking this up, along with everything else in his life? Wait, Val, you made a bargain with the past four years ago. Let it be. "Ten days. I'll stay here ten days. I need to fatten up on your cooking."
