Valentine's Resolve

by E. E. Knight

  "I should tear that up in front of you," the GAR man said.

  "Want your bulletproof vest back? You do and I'll have the GAO and the AG on you tonight. You'll be out riding a motorcycle in the boonies, collecting Patriotic War Duties."

  "Table it, Barry," the woman said, tearing off a preperforated card from the yellow sheet and handing it to Valentine. "Sag here is engaged to a guy on the AG's staff." She stamped it and handed it to Valentine.

  The last checkpoint was a velvet-rope serpentine. Sagamoto lifted a latch and they cut through the empty switchback alleys, and came to a pert, attractive woman in a thick blue blazer with a red, white, and blue scarf. Her smile was almost as bright as the sodium floodlights at the top of the tunnel. She checked Valentine's ID.

  "Welcome to Mount Omega," she said, handing him a small, dog-eared book held together with a rubber band. "If you have any questions, this guidebook may assist you. Issuing the guidebook is not an implied contract to provide services. Acceptance of the guidebook places you under all the provisions of the Visitor Security Act."

  "Take it. Don't worry," Sagamoto said.

  Valentine accepted it and the woman recorded his ID number on a clipboard. Her smile brightened by another couple of watts. "Thank you. There is a FAQ and a list of security restrictions in the guidebook. Failure to comply with speech codes on page three will result in loss of Inside privileges. Mount Omega is a discrimination-free zone. Mount Omega is smoke-free since 2024. Mount Omega is proud to be Working for Victory under VO-2011 protocols under the Just Human Rights and the Resistance Acts. For more information on any of these initiatives, consult your selected representative."

  Valentine felt air moving, like a fresh breeze outside. The strong air currents indoors weren't exactly disturbing, but they lent an unreality to the cavernous underground.

  "We call this level Grand Central," Sagamoto said, pulling Valentine out of the way of a platoon of soldiers with Marine Corps insignia walking toward the entrance, two navy officers in timber stripes trailing behind, one carrying a camera with a long telephoto lens. "Sometimes people come up here just for the chance of seeing a fresh face. Above this level is the atrium, and there are greenhouses that are the next best thing to going outside on your vacation. Getting to be Outside again is a big recruiting incentive for the military, but people generally find out it's not all it's cracked up to be."

  "That why you signed up?"

  "Wanted to go out and change the world. Felt like it for a while— I was helping refugees relocate."

  "Same here," Valentine said.

  Sagamoto pulled the string on his paperlike pants and he opened his waistband, as though they were two little boys comparing genitals. Valentine saw a wide plastic tube emerging from a fleshy hole just above his line of pubic hair. "My first battle didn't quite work out the way I thought. Have to stick close to medical care now."

  They stepped under a big electronic board, above a guarded alcove with four banks of elevators, where LED lights spelled out activity on different levels. Congress was in session, and various cases were being heard in courts, including the Supreme Court.

  "You heard of that butterfly's wings stuff?" Valentine said.

  "When there's no lower intestine left to stitch—"

  "No, it's this theory—a butterfly flaps its wings in China and you get snow in Virginia. Little, imperceptible events have big repercus­sions later. Maybe you caused two people to meet out there, and their kid grows up to be the next George Washington."

  "I heard that kind of thing from the rehab team. They don't have to wash out colostomy bags—look, Valentine, I'm not challenging. You were trying to be nice." He took a deep breath. "Sure. You never know. At least I tried. I'm still trying, just in a different way. Looks like you've had a near retirement or two yourself."

  Valentine opened the guidebook. The map of Mount Omega was a combination of a cross section of the decks of a ship and a subway chart. He tried to find their location on Grand Central.

  Sagamoto pulled it out of his hands, snapped the rubber band back on, and shoved it in Valentine's pocket. "That thing's useless. The map makes a lot of sense once you already pretty much know your way around. As for all the rules—just be polite and wait your turn in line, and if the police tell you to do something, do it. Just a second, I'm going to use one of the phones and get in touch with the senator's office.

  "As a visitor, you really just need to know about the Mall, the Hill, the Point, and the George. The Mall's just below Grand Central— there are a couple of escalators just ahead there. The Hill's at the end of the Mall—it's an old indoor arena the reps and senators use for Con­gress. Point is above us—it's pure military. The George is where guests stay—it's also off Grand Central here. Of course there are archives and sewage treatments and waste and workshops and everything we need to keep going, plus the housing levels. The vice president and Speaker and chief justice all get windows and patios. The rest of us make do with twenty minutes in the UV rooms every day." An elevator opened and a small throng emerged. "And I think this is your aide."

  A woman with wide eyes and tired hair, but almost glamorous thanks to her choice of scarf and gloves and satchel, broke away from the group leaving the elevator. She had an ID printed on a half-Capitol-dome, half-eagle-wing design, her picture and a thumbprint superimposed.

  "Hello, Captain," the aide said. "Good to see you again. Is this our contact?"

  Valentine extended a hand: "David Valentine. Southern Command, and lately Pacific Command."

  She shook it: "Daphne Trott-Diefenbach, Senator Bey's chief military aide. I bet you're hungry."

  More than half the people walking the wide corridor of Grand Central looked hungry to Valentine. "I'm all right."

  "Well, I could use a bite. Captain, join us?"

  Sagamoto took a step back. "No. I've got to log paperwork on the fresh face here."

  "Thank you, Captain," Valentine said.

  "Just doing my bit. Ma'am," Sagamoto said, turning.

  "Then it's us. I'll take you down to the Mall—it's worth seeing," she said. "Can I call you David, or do you do Dave?"

  "Most people just use Val," Valentine said.

  "I'm Ducks, then."

  "Ducks?"

  She jerked her head down the tunnel, and they headed farther in, Valentine unconsciously falling into step. "They used to call me Daffy in school. Daffy Duck sometimes. I liked the Duck bit."

  She took him down a worn old escalator. The new tunnel was even higher and wider than Grand Central. It was arched at the top, like a cathedral, and twin banks of lights shone down on small trees and grass running the length of the Mall. Valentine heard a fountain roaring somewhere. Bars, eateries, shops, movie booths, even a massive gallery piled with used books, lined the Mall. Valentine heard a pounding and hard breathing, looked up, and saw a walkway running above at treetop level, its railing thick with plant boxes. Joggers were running up there.

  "I use the pool, myself. Warm as a summer lake, not that I've had a chance to swim in one. Let's break in John Bull's."

  Valentine guessed it was an English-style pub, as there was a picture of Winston Churchill he recognized on the wall, and some black-and-whites of Congress being addressed. Behind the bar in a place of honor was a high blue helmet that reminded Valentine of an oversized egg.

  "Two fry-ups and two shakes, Walther," she told the barkeep. She led Valentine to a back booth. His strange clothing was drawing stares from the Omegans in their scrublike paper clothing.

  "Beer, Ducks?"

  "No."

  A server wiped their already-clean table and they sat.

  "I'm just so eager for news of Outside. Tell me anything and everything," Ducks said.

  "Ummm—where should I start?"

  "How about Operation Archangel?" she asked.

  Valentine took strange comfort in the fact that she'd heard of it. "I didn't see much of it."

  "We had—I can't remember exactly how many, bu
t several all-night sessions. Had this whole place buzzing like a beehive. Not that I've seen one."

  "Really? Go up to the old airfield. I heard a bunch in the engine housing of one of those big jets."

  "I guess they keep bees in some of the agro areas Outside, but on my vacations I usually just go to the river."

  "Why were there all-night sessions? Trying to get other areas to join in?"

  "State handles that. No, we were upholding the legality of the operation pending."

  "Pending what?"

  "Restoration of constitutional civilian authority."

  The meal arrived, a couple of fried, sliced tomatoes, a few French fries, and a breaded something about the size of a small sausage. Two big pint glasses came with it, thick with something that looked like a strawberry milk shake.

  "Here's to it," Valentine said, lifting a glass. He tried a sip. It tasted like someone had tossed ice and old newspapers into a blender, then added a little syrup.

  "Takes some getting used to. I'm told the flavoring is strawberry."

  Valentine waited for the "Not that I ever had one," but it never came.

  The server was already long gone, arguing at another table that Representative Mowbrarun's credit wouldn't buy a shot of pickling juice.

  "What's really in it?"

  "Mostly fiber-powdered vitamin supplement. It leaves you feeling full, anyway."

  Valentine tried the fried whatever, mostly ground-up bean paste and gristle, he guessed. Ducks went on: "I never get invited to the good parties anymore because I still support the military, as does the senator."

  "Who else is going to get rid of the Kurians?"

  "Oh, I don't mean the Resistance. Everyone supports that, especially Senator Bey. Well, almost. Our military. They're supposed to be out there getting food for us, but a lot of people think they're keeping it for themselves."

  "Speaking of the senator—"

  "Oh, just a second. We can't talk about him or your operations just yet. I was hoping you might have a valuable or two up in your locker you could donate to the Winter Harvest fund. Also, Senator Bey has a reelection court date coming up, and lawyers are expensive. Even a small donation will help him win his case and keep supporting the people of Oklahoma in their struggle."

  Valentine knew a demand for a bribe when he heard one. At least the fries were tasty, thanks to the salt.

  "What's the senator like?"

  "He's wonderful. A real American success story out of the good old days, you know? Bunting and John Philip Sousa and all that. A son of one of the tunneling engineers. But he broke out of the father's-footsteps stuff and started standing for selections young. He represented himself at his first selection and the judge was so impressed by his rhetoric, he became a representative from Third District. He caught the eye of the SecDef, and got a position on the Resistance Approbation staff. His press conferences were really something, I think I was nine when—"

  "There's a press here?"

  "Of course. All the big newspapers still exist—of course they only come out on Tuesdays, which is good news, Fridays, which is bad, and Sundays, which is all analysis. I've got a copy of the Times here... ."

  She extracted a single sheet of folded newsprint. Four "pages" of close-set type under a banner, front-page headline:

  palmetto-bergstrom

  investigation widens

  Possible Cabinet Involvement

  Vice President Declines Comment

  "Will Blades Cut HUD Staffer's Throat?"

  Valentine scanned a couple of paragraphs. Evidently a judge's clerk named Palmetto was caught sharing a portable walkie-talkie phone with a congressional aide named Bergstrom, violating Separation of Powers practice. The "new evidence" was from the Housing and Urban Development chief of staff, who admitted to Justice Department investigators that he tried to call Bergstrom, got Palmetto, and mentioned that a fresh supply of razor blades had come in.

  "What an unwise," Ducks said. "All I can think is she didn't know who Palmetto was. They're just making a meal out of it because right now the VP and Donovan Baltrout are both in Majoritarian. So what about that contribution?"

  "This shake is going right through me. I'll be right back," Valen­tine said. He went to the washroom, festooned with no smoking and water nondrinkable signs, took out two of his gold coins—the belt was now well over half-empty—and returned to their booth.

  "Okay, I've got—"

  "Oh good God, don't give it to me," Ducks said, sliding so far away from him she almost fell out of the booth. "Are you out of your mind? We'll swing by the Fair Politics booth and you'll fill out an envelope, one for Winter Harvest and a separate one for the senator's campaign. You'll have to do a lot of paperwork for the latter. Then they'll give me the envelopes."

  "Uh-huh."

  "The senator is on the anticorruption committee, you know. We're not going to be caught out."

  She put the meal on the senator's account and they went through the paperwork at the busy booths off the Mall, which had an entire section of tunnel devoted to them.

  Clusters of people with placards, pamphlets, cups, jugs, and purses filled the hall, swirling around those traveling to and from the booths. "Support Booth-Ramierez!"

  "Bring America Back needs you!"

  "Volunteer labor needed for Food for Thought, one free meal per day!"

  "Stop the Midwestern Senatorial Junta before they stop you!"

  Ducks used her satchel like the prow of an icebreaker, holding it in front of her and forcing her way through the throng.

  "Unpleasant."

  Valentine pressed tightly behind her. People were shoving flyers in his collar, his boot, his empty holster, anything they could reach. They made it to a police officer, who put them in line for the next available federal bursar.

  Valentine watched people step up to the glass booths. He'd seen rations doled out at old currency exchanges in the KZ and the setup reminded him of a clean, well-lit version of that. They only had a ten-minute wait, and Valentine's stomach gurgled as it tried to figure out what to do with the pub shake. Valentine extracted folded flyers from his clothing. Most featured drawings of ragged, starving children or trios of heroic-looking soldiers, two healthy supporting a wounded comrade.

  Ducks' eyes lit up when she saw the gold coins. She helped him with the paperwork under the bored eye of the woman behind the glass. The bursar gave her a receipt for the Winter Harvest contribu­tion, and the coin for the campaign went into a concealed neck pouch under Ducks' thin clothes.

  The rigmarole left Valentine nonplussed. But all the careful record keeping gave the people in here something to do.

  "You just made my day, Val," she said, pushing her way through the donation seekers again.

  They emerged from the crowd, where another policeman made sure the donation seekers didn't step out into the "sidewalks" and grass of the Mall.

  "When can I see the senator?" Valentine asked.

  She consulted a clock projecting from the wall ahead. "They're in session for another hour. Want to watch from the senatorial gallery?"

  Valentine shrugged. "I could use a shower."

  "You can use the one off my unit. Staffers have to share bath­rooms, though."

  They passed an overlarge team of gardeners taking care of a set of trees and she took him to another elevator bank. She showed her card to the operator inside, who punched a button for 26 and the elevator descended.

  The tunnel level 26 was a good deal rougher, about fourteen feet high and still circular, painted in a cheery soft yellow that had gone dingy, with exposed conduits and pipes running the ceiling. This part was not as well lit; only one light in three even had a bulb. It snaked along in a long bend of about three degrees, Valentine guessed. Seven-foot-high blue cubicle separators closed off by shower curtains divided the tunnel on either side. Some had "roofs"; others were open to the tunnel ceiling.

  The cubicle panels were decorated with family pictures, cartoons, even old pictur
es taken from what Valentine guessed to be calendars.

  "This is mine," she said, stopping at a roofless cubicle. Her "door" was a quilt of old materials, mostly faded logos from T-shirts. A Rodgers and Hammerstein Oklahoma! poster decorated the outside, a 2016 Broadway production with the cast either rootin' or tootin' energetically in splashy colors. She also had a semifamous black-and-white photo of a tired-looking guerrilla, his back to an old oak, keeping watch while an old man, a woman, and two kids slept in a huddle.

  "Hope you live here alone," Valentine said.

  "I do, unfortunately. Marrieds and cohabitants get more space— families even get their own toilet. But this is really pretty nice. Downstairs the service staff really just gets a barrack bed with some privacy curtains hanging down. Yeah, the cubicle paneling smells musty, but it absorbs noise like a sponge. I could never sleep in a barrack."

  "Consider the criticism withdrawn," Valentine said.

  "Let me just grab you a towel and some soap." She ducked into her cube.

  It was hard to say which was rougher, the towel or the grainy soap, but Valentine made use of them in the common shower room, a tiled-wall area in a dimple off the main passage. At least the water was deliciously hot. She gave him a tour of the rest of "her" level. They passed other dimples along the way—one had a television and four battered lounge chairs. Valentine was shocked to recognize Kurian Zone programming.

  "Actually, their stuffs popular, not that any of us have much to compare it to. We do our own news, of course. Majoritarian news at five and nine, Minoritarian at five thirty and nine thirty. Every now and then they show a movie or a TV series from the Old World, but I don't like to watch those. Shallow, stupid stuff. The real old movies are better. Have you ever seen Gone with the Wind?"

  "I like it. Don't knock shallow. Any culture that can put that much effort into entertainment about who is dating whom has all the big Maslow-sized problems pretty much solved."

  She pointed to an old magazine cover on a staffer's cubicle. "Everyone was so pretty back then. About the only way we look like them is thin. Thin we can do."