by E. E. Knight
"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 über-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 B
ears 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 in
to 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.
