by E. E. Knight
They traveled back up in another elevator with a yawning attendant and she took him to the end of the Mall. After another ID check and search they went up another escalator to a sports and meeting arena, a vast open area under reinforcing girders.
The Senate held court from a ring of upholstered club chairs circling a wooden floor with old basketball markings. Little groups of three and four people down on the first level sat together, talking or listening to the senator addressing chambers from a round platform in the center with a podium that slowly rotated. The nonsenatorial watched from the old plastic chairs; every now and then one was missing in the rows, giving the audience area a gap-toothed look compared with the last arena Valentine had been in, the horror show under the Pyramid in Memphis.
The senators had real clothing, it looked like, complete with ties and shined leather shoes.
"One faction in the House wants to set up basketball league play again," Ducks said quietly. "The Senate keeps killing it, says having the Senate break for a game would destroy the dignity of the chamber."
"They're just scared because basketball would draw a bigger crowd," a man a couple of rows behind said.
"Mount Omega can't raise chickens for anything, but we can sure breed cynics," she muttered.
Valentine tried to catch the thread of the speech. The young man kept pausing and saying "hummmm," from beneath a generous overbite.
"McCaffee isn't much of a speaker," Ducks said. "But he is a third-generation senator, and half the Majoritarians owe his family favors."
"So those are senators in the big chairs?" Valentine asked. "They're not thin."
"Privileges of constitutional office."
"I see," Valentine said. "Sounds like he's done."
"New Hampshire is next. Now she can talk."
"Has she ever been to New Hampshire?" Valentine asked.
"Of course not. Senators argue their elections in front of the Supreme Court, so you can be sure she represents their values. She's flinty, tough, practical."
"And married to the head of the Unified Journalism Network," the man from behind said.
"That's Senator Bey there, in the leather chair with the bull horns at the top."
Whatever remained of the miner in the graying body was in the set of the shoulders and head. Senator Bey leaned forward in his chair, chin up and out and fist set on his knee, as if ready to rush the podium and tackle the speaker.
Valentine tried to follow the debate. The "distinguished senator from New Hampshire" was defending the credentials of a new director for the Law College.
"There's a college here?"
"Of a sort. They feed the specialty schools: Military, Law, and Social Support or Revealed Religion, plus a special technical school for the people who keep the juice and water running. Most of the learning is computerized up until tenth grade. Then you get teachers, most of whom are studying at the college at the same time—it's how they pay their tuition. College is tough. I only barely made it. Try going four years on nothing but study naps."
Valentine waited through a vote—the new director was confirmed, and then the Senate ended session for the day with one of the most vaguely worded prayers Valentine had ever heard.
"Sorry it wasn't more interesting," Ducks whispered during the prayer. "Last week we had an impeachment trial. Those are always fun."
"Amen," the man behind said, though whether this was to cap the prayer or not Valentine never learned, for he left a moment later.
* * * *
Ducks led Valentine through yet another Capitol Police checkpoint, this one with a bank of security camera monitors, but she seemed on friendly terms with all the men there and they made only a cursory check of his ID, and logged him in via computer.
These tunnels were wood paneled, with real door handles separating the garage-sized offices from the carpeted corridor. Soft music played through speakers hidden within the electrical and water conduits. She stopped at a door with a laminated plate that read senator john bey, senior senator from Oklahoma, and knocked.
The door opened a crack, and Valentine saw a ferretlike man with a widow's peak. "Ducks."
"Visitor for the senator, Larry."
"Okay, but it has to be fast. He's got a party dinner to attend."
Valentine entered the office, lit by soft bulbs in tasteful lamps. The senator sat in a little chair by a porcelain sink, being shaved by an attendant while another staffer changed his shoes and socks. Valentine thought his face looked careworn.
A bodyguard with a holster bulging under his paper jacket stood in a corner with a good view of the whole room.
Ducks led him to the end of the room and Valentine checked himself in the mirror. "Senator, this is Major David Valentine, Pacific Command by way of Southern Command. Major, this of course is Senator Bey." She turned to the man with the widow's peak. "And this is Larry Decasse, the senator's chief of staff."
"Fourteen and counting," Decasse said. "I could use three more if we could just get the funding."
Valentine remembered hearing that Southern Command's commander in chief, General Phillips, ran his office with the help of two staffers and a communications officer, and had refused the protection of a bodyguard.
"I think I know your name, son. How can I help the Cause and the people I represent?"
"Sir," Valentine said, suddenly unsure about how one addressed a senator, "I've got two reports. One needs to be transmitted to Southern Command." Valentine laid the first document, his one-page report on finding Sir and relaying the message that Southern Command desperately needed Lifeweaver help, down on the desk.
"The second is more for your eyes, though I ask it to go to Southern Command as well. It concerns what can only be called war crimes carried out by Pacific Command."
"War crimes?" the senator asked, and Decasse hurried to the senator's side. "Who? What? We just voted a commendation for Adler for opening a new line to British Columbia."
Mr. A. "It's in the report. They slaughter Kurian populations. That's why Adler is so successful. He murders whole towns."
"It's not slaughter," Decasse said. "They're relocating populations. He's the most effective commander in the Resistance. Very popular on the Hill."
Valentine ignored the chief of staff and stared at the senator. "Call it what you like, it's deliberate murder of civilians. Lot easier to win battles when the other side can't shoot back."
"I don't like this," the senator said. "Staff, give me and the major here a moment of privacy. Yes, you too, Ducks. You're not in trouble— you did your job."
Everyone passed out into the hall, save the senator and the bodyguard. He wiped the rest of the lather from his face and tossed the towel in the sink.
"Major, you think we're insulated here from the world, and about as useful as your grandfather's third nipple. We've got channels of communication all over the country, even a couple of fake ones we let the Kurians listen to going overseas. But for all the folderol, Mount Omega is still wired into the world better than most any other place I can think of. I probably know more about operations in the Cascades than you do."
Valentine felt gut-kicked. "So you approve?"
"If you're asking me if I like it, no, I don't. Do I condone it? Yes. It's a hard truth of this war. We just lost a Freehold in the Balkans and as far as we can tell, the Koreans no longer exist. If it weren't for the Australians, bits of Alaska, and the del Fuegans, the Pacific Rim would be a giant Kurian circle. Southern Command got lucky, but it's about exhausted, and Denver doesn't have electricity anymore. The only victories being won are up in Pacific Command, and he's taking on the toughest, best-organized Kurians west of the Mississippi. Now's not the time for some kind of purge. We do those kind of blood sports here, but nothing that gets said or done in Mount Omega makes a damn bit of difference. I'm under no illusions about matters here. But if we're ever going to win this thing, it'll take leadership from men like Adler. There's even talk of making him commander in chief, if his
plan to drive down into California succeeds. We haven't had a president since 'twenty-two."
The gut-kick turned his meal to bile. Bile that had to come up and out.
"Some leadership. Your speech code in the guidebook says that 'no person is to be addressed in a derogatory or demeaning fashion.' But murder is just fine for someone a couple hundred miles away."
Senator Bey's face reddened. "Sure, it's a silly bit of pantomime. But we can afford the niceties of civilization here. The trick is to get the rest of the country back to the point where we can sue each other over passing gas while someone else is speaking. I'm going to paraphrase Lincoln here. The objective is to win the war. If we can win it by killing every last person in a Kurian Zone, I want to win that way. If we can win it without killing anyone, even better. If we can win it by killing some and letting others alone, I'd be for that too."
A strong knock sounded at the door. "Senator!" Decasse's voice sounded. "The Capitol Police are here."
"Now what?"
Valentine suspected he knew what. The bodyguard went to the door.
"Yes?" the bodyguard asked as he opened it.
Valentine heard Decasse's voice: "Turns out Major—"
"We need to take the senator's visitor into custody. He's a deserter from Pacific Command," an authoritative voice said.
The bodyguard turned and looked at the senator. Valentine guessed that some protocol kept police out of the office.
What could he do, unarmed? Take the bodyguard's gun and shoot his way back up through Grand Central?
"I don't suppose Mount Omega has a sanctuary policy somewhere in this?" Valentine asked, lifting the guidebook.
"Too many people here already. There are families of representatives that go hungry at night."
"I'll go quietly," he told the senator.
The senator stood up and patted him on the shoulder. "Sorry, son. I'll make sure the report about your mission gets through. We want Southern Command to know you went out a hero."
Chapter Eleven
PB Camp "Sally," July: Valentine had seen dozens of compounds like these in his travels in the Kurian Zone; only the little buildings on the inside varied. Outside it was always the same: two rows of fencing topped with outward-pointing razor wire and a high observation point for the guards. Sometimes the houses were nice little prefabricated mobile homes, in other places drafty shacks where the women and children ran around on bare earth.
This one, oddly enough, was in an old church-school combination, made of stones as gray as a typical Cascade sky. The watchtower sat in the church steeple, and the fence ran in a great rhombus from the bricked-up side of the school to the old church parking lot, encompassing both the school athletic field and a small park opposite the church doors.
He came to the Sally as a Punishment Brigade convict, having worked his way through the abbreviated Pacific Command military justice system like a grain of sand passing through a worm's tract. Like the metaphoric worm, Pacific Command didn't have much in the way of brains or heart, just nerve ganglia that received Valentine as a deserter (he rode back from Mount Omega in an empty supply truck—heavily caged for transporting valuables east and malefactors west—chained hand and foot and under the watchful eye of a sentry in the cab cage) and processed him by a hearing where he admitted leaving his post without orders with the intent never to return. He gave a fine speech damning Pacific Command from the Bears following orders all the way up to Adler's Resource Denial methodology, but none in the hearing seemed particularly impressed. They convicted him and sentenced him to ten years in the Punishment Brigade. When he asked his lawyer how many men survived that long a term, he got a quiet shake of the head.
They put him to work with some other convicts in a chain gang black-topping roads and felling trees. When they had 120 convicts together—the additions took roughly six weeks—they gave everyone a hose bath and piled them into a pair of seatless school buses for the trip to Pacific Command Military-Criminal Salvage Training—Sally.
* * * *
"Okay, you cocksuckers, listen and listen hard!" the top sergeant yelled, standing at the head of the stairs with his back to the church doors. Like Valentine, he had a generous helping of Native blood and wore a mattress-ticking shirt and green camping shorts. Only the jaunty police hat had a military crest, the eagle head of Pacific Command.
Valentine and the others waited in groups of twenty, each under a police corporal. Ever since being handcuffed at Mount Omega, he'd given up on hope. He felt like a wrung-out rag, but still had enough intellectual curiosity to wonder what kind of bin he'd be tossed into.
"I'm Sergeant Kugel. You're going to hate me, this place, and every waking minute you spend here. The only way to shorten your stay is to follow orders. You stay here until I decide you're fit to leave, on the bus to the front or in a body bag. Your choice.
"We've got no officers, no la-di-da judge advocates. Just you cocksuckers and your PB training staff and some sentries with scoped thirty-aughts, who'll shoot you down from the wire just for the challenge of a tight grouping."
He took off his pistol belt and hung it on the church door behind him. "I'm going to save everyone a lot of time and mental stress. Any of you cocksuckers feel like taking a shot at me, I'll give you the chance right now. No hard feelings. Anyone swings at me after this big fat kiss of a welcome, I shoot the cocksucker dead and feed his balls to my Doberman. So now's your chance."
He stepped down to the bottom of the church steps and disappeared from Valentine's view, thanks to the rank in front of him. Valentine could see a bit of hat and that was all.
"Well? Well? I haven't had PT today—I could use a good sweat. All right."
Sergeant Kugel trotted back up the stairs and put his gun belt back on.
"You're all standing here because you're useless. You were useless the day the bitch that whelped you squeezed you out, and you're useless now, according to God and Court, which decided you're not even worth the brass a firing squad would expend. We'd float you downriver like shit, except we don't want to give the Reapers the satisfaction. So I'm going to make sure that though you may have been born useless and lived useless, you'll be able to die in a useful manner and following orders for once.
"One last thing. I don't want to hear any talk about how anyone is innocent. That's between you and God above. I don't give a damn, and I hate you all, whether your souls are white as a virgin's sheets or black as the witch king's pits. I'm here to send you out ready to keep the Reapers busy until a Bear team can take them down. There's no sick call, no off duty, and a bullet's the only punishment. We start in five minutes. I'm not going to ask if you all understand. Like the man said, frankly, my dear cocksuckers, I don't give a damn."
* * * *
Valentine spent forty-nine endless days in the confines of the training school. After two weeks of almost solid physical activity—his only break was the two days he spent in the kitchens under the equally bloody-minded sergeant who ran the laundry and larder—the men began to break down and miss orders, stupefied with exhaustion.
He kept waiting for the pistols to come out, for an execution to set an example to the rest, but they lost only one man, a rapist whom the others called "Short Eyes." Valentine woke one morning and found his bunk empty. His name wasn't called in the morning roll, and nobody asked questions over breakfast. He'd slept at the opposite end of the bunk-littered school gymnasium, and Valentine fought hard to keep from being too much awakened by the inevitable noises of 120 men all sleeping in one room.
He made a few friends. Diaz, who had been caught raiding a Pacific Command depot—according to him, in order to feed his mother and sisters; according to Kugel, he'd been caught with copper wiring and electrical tools. Diaz never seemed to tire, and was always the first to offer a hand to help someone to his feet one more time. Then there was Smooth John Hollows, "Joho," who'd been caught peddling drugs but who had such an easygoing, friendly manner and a sharp sense of humor Valentine could
n't help but like him, or at least look forward to the next quiet quip out of his mouth, and then there was Tuber, a meaty, disproportionate Bear washout who'd lost his temper once too often and killed a man in a brawl.
After the eighteenth day, much of it spent on the broken-up old bleachers on the athletic field, which had been disassembled and turned into an obstacle course, the only way they could make it through their exercises was by teamwork. Pairs and trios of men helped one another up the shimmy poles and over the walls. Valentine divided the twenty-man team into groups of four and shoved them into places as they negotiated the course, then stayed with the slowest team. They'd get a rest break after ten circuits; the faster they got through the circuits, the longer the rest break. "His" platoon finished first.
When the mass could hardly walk without staggering, the sergeants made them crawl through everyone's least favorite stretch of the exercise yard: the mud pit and track circuit. The mud clung until it seemed that every man was carrying an extra thirty pounds for the trot around the edges of the wallow and back to the starting point for another crawl. After Valentine lost count of the circuits, he could rise only with the aid of Diaz and Joho.
"Wish they'd get some quimmies in this mud with us," Joho grunted. "I'd do some fast jackrabbit uh-uh-uh when lil' Keggo isn't looking."
Valentine remembered the shape and bob of Malia's mud-covered breasts, felt his heart break anew. That night drying mud flaked off his hair and into his dinner.
Then, remarkably, the tyrants gave them a day off. They distributed early apples and pamphlets with the history of the Punishment Brigade, its simplified rank structure, and the various sorts of specialty fields.
The Punishment Brigade mostly did high-risk duties: disarming unexploded ordnance, clearing minefields and booby traps, and doing forward signal duty or decoy work (the Kurians had some sort of special missile called a "screamer" they lobbed into the mountains now and then that homed in on radio transmissions), sapping missions, and "river watch."
The last was one of the most dangerous jobs in Pacific Command: guarding the rivers leading up into the mountains. The Kurians employed the fish-frog creatures Valentine had first encountered in Chicago, to guard water-girthed Seattle, and sometimes small teams of the creatures foraged inland. The river-watch teams inspected nets and kept an eye on white water, looking for a glimpse of the pale green bellies and shining goggle eyes of the Big Mouths. At night there was little you could do but keep away from the banks and listen for the slee-'tee, slee-'tee sound of their on-land breathing.
