by E. E. Knight
“Trans-human?”
“It’s just an official designation for people enhanced by the Lifeweavers. You never ran into it?”
“I’ve been out of the communication loop for a while now.”
“Of course.”
“Well, it’s better than subhuman,” Valentine said. “I’ve met a few civilians who’d use that word.”
He decided to change the subject.
“When did Styachowski and Post get so close? During the fight at Big Rock Hill?”
“You mean Valentine’s Stand?”
“The history books don’t call it that.”
“She knew him from that, obviously. She met him again when he was assigned to the assessment staff. He gave a very thorough report, and . . . Moira said she had a thing for the older, fatherly-looking guys. I was a little surprised: She never said anything about an interest—Well, that’s neither here nor there. But I understand the appeal. He is good-looking. I got to know Post better through her. He told me some interesting details about life in camp with General Martinez, by the way. He knew Moira and I had been close and he said he wanted me to have her gun the last time we—I mean, the last time we met.”
Valentine didn’t know the extent of Post’s injuries that confined him to his chair, didn’t know how his marriage had been put back together or under what terms. None of his business.
Lambert was blushing. Valentine couldn’t ever remember seeing her blush before.
“Does Gail know . . . about Will’s connection with Jenny’s real mother?”
“No. Moira said they ended it after you brought Gail back. It took them a while to figure out who each of them was and who the other was in the marriage. Will told me Gail had changed a lot out there, through her experiences. But he was determined to take care of her.”
Valentine decided to pry. “Who’s Jenny’s father?”
“I—I . . . Moira said it was a man she met after the Razors broke up.”
“None of my business. I wonder if Jenny’s got a little Bear in her—or a lot. Some of the Bears get very randy after a fight.”
“I’ve heard that,” Lambert said.
“Whatever Moira had in her blood might have been passed to her daughter.”
Lambert opened a little gear bag and began to clean the submachine gun. Valentine did the same with his rifle.
“But Bear parents don’t always pass on their tendencies, I’m told,” Lambert said. “Sometimes the kid’s just a little feistier than most or heals bumps and bruises faster. Also, she’s a girl. Don’t female Bear fetuses miscarry?”
“I was told that it’s adult women who tend to have heart attacks or strokes when the Lifeweavers try to turn them Bear,” Valentine said. “I don’t know about the children.”
“Southern Command is still doing that breeding program. Because there are so few Lifeweavers.”
Valentine nodded. He’d been part of that breeding program. Strange stuff. “I haven’t spoken to one in ages.”
“Knowingly, anyway. They’re operating in secret these days, with so many Kurian agents around.”
Boat trips leave you a lot of time to think. As Valentine played with his new rifle’s butt and balance, trying to decide if he should add another inch to the butt, he thought about his friend.
Old Will. Well, not that old; he had a decade on Valentine at most, whatever his personnel file said. In the Kurian Zone you always falsified your birth date whenever you had the chance. Valentine pictured Styachowski running her quick fingers through Post’s salt-and-pepper hair. So there was some hot blood beneath that cool countenance.
“Patrol boat signaling to board,” the ship’s speaker announced, breaking in on his thoughts.
Mantilla had warned all of them to expect this. The Southern Command soldiers were to go down and wait in the engine room.
Valentine filed down behind the rest of the hatchet men, new rifle and an ammunition vest ready—just in case.
Lambert hurried to catch up to him. “Mantilla wants us ready to go up top. He says he doesn’t know this patrol boat. There may be a problem.”
Valentine wished there was time to go forward into the cargo barge and get some of the explosives. No time.
He warned the young doctor and the old nurse to be ready, just in case, and had the hatchet men arm themselves and wait in the engine room. Orders given, he went up to the cabin deck just under the bridge. The portholes were a good size for shooting.
Valentine took a look at the patrol boat. Valentine didn’t see the usual blue-white streamer of the Mississippi’s river patrol, so he suspected it was from one of the Kurian towns. Maybe they were in search of bribes. But the craft had official-looking lights. It was a low, boxy craft and looked like it had a crew of three—sort of a brown-water tow truck.
He had a height advantage from the cabin deck.
The patrol craft suddenly sprouted a machine gun from its roof. The barrel turned to cover the bridge.
Valentine tipped a bunk and shoved it against the porthole wall. He didn’t do anything as stupid as shoving the barrel out the window; he just kept watch.
The boat pulled up and lines were passed.
Valentine, flattening himself against the wall beside the porthole, watched two men and a dog come on board. The senior officer, judging from the stars on his shoulders, kept his hand on his pistol as he came aboard. He had a squinty, suspicious look about him, like an old storekeeper watching kids pick over candy tubs.
Captain Mantilla came down to greet them. The older of the two men looked shocked, perhaps at the captain’s slovenly appearance. Suddenly, the officer threw out his arms and embraced Mantilla like a long-lost brother.
Valentine couldn’t understand it, but it seemed like the crisis had passed. He watched the search team go forward.
He wrapped the gun in a blanket and stowed it and the ammunition vest in a locker. He didn’t need to change clothes; like the rest of the passengers, he’d been wearing crew overalls so he could move around on deck freely without drawing attention from the riverbank.
Curious, he went out to the rail on the port side and watched Mantilla with the search team. They were doing a good deal of animated talking and very little searching. Even the dog looked bored and relaxed, sitting and gazing up at the humans, panting.
The patrolmen debarked. Valentine waited for the inevitable bribe to pass down to the senior officer, but a square bottle full of amber-colored liquor passed up to Mantilla instead.
The patrol craft untied and proceeded downriver. Mantilla’s tug gunned into life.
As it turned out, they were boarded from the other side of the river an hour’s slow progress from where they had met the patrol boat.
Valentine saw some soldiers, probably out of Rally Base, signal with a portable electric lantern and wave them in. By the time anchors had fixed their drift, a little red-and-white rowboat set out from a backwash, fighting its way through some riverside growth.
Two men were in it, a big muscular fellow at the oars who had the look of a river drifter who made a little spare money watching for enemy activity, and a magazine cover of a man with slicked-back hair.
“Permission to come aboard, Captain?” slicked-back hair called.
“Granted.”
The baggage came first. A big military-issue duffel hit the deck with a whump, tossed up by the muscular man in the rowboat. It was followed by the would-be passenger. On closer inspection Valentine saw that he had a pencil-thin mustache, precisely trimmed to the edges of his mouth.
Which was smiling, at the moment.
“Good God, I was afraid I’d missed you. My river rat swore to me that your tug had passed yesterday. I thought a very bumpy ride had been in vain. Broke records getting to Rally Base.
“Let’s see. Transport warrant. Letter of introduction, and permission to be on Southern Command military property. That’s the lot. I was hoping to hitch a ride.”
“This trip is chartered by Colonel Lambert,” Mantilla s
aid. “You’ll have to ask her.”
“Who are you?” Lambert asked from her spot at the rail.
“Rollo A. Boelnitz, but my friends call me Pencil. I’m a free-lancer with The Bulletin. My specialty is actually Missouri but I’m eager to learn about Kentucky.”
The Bulletin was a minor paper published near the skeleton of the old Wal-Mart complex in Arkansas. It was new—post Archangel and the UFR anyway. Valentine had never read it.
“Why Pencil, Mr. Boelnitz? Because of the mustache?” Lambert asked.
“No, at school. I always lost my pencil and had to borrow. It just stuck.”
Lambert glanced at Valentine. “You wanted reinforcements. One pen a mighty army makes.”
Valentine disliked him, maybe simply because of the way Lambert had perked up and thrown her chest out since this young icon came aboard.
“General Lehman suggested I join you,” Boelnitz offered. “I was talking to him to get a retrospective on his tenure. He said a bit of publicity might help your cause in Kentucky, and the Cause on top of it.”
Lambert examined his paperwork. “That’s Lehman’s signature. The permission to be on Southern Command property might have been overkill. Kentucky’s neither fish nor fowl at the moment.”
“Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?” Valentine asked. “There’s no regular mails between Kentucky and the UFR. No banks to cash expense vouchers.”
“I was hoping for the traditional hospitality of Southern Command to members of the press. As to my stories, one of your men can transmit via radio. General Lehman said you are in radio contact twice daily.”
That settled any issue about this being a put-up job. Radio security was about as tight as Southern Command could make it, involving scramblers and rotating frequencies. Lehman must have passed that tidbit on. Standard Southern Command procedure for brigades in the field was three radio checks a day. As theirs had to be relayed through Rally Base, they found it easier to do just two.
Valentine shrugged and gave Lambert a hint of a nod.
“Welcome aboard, Pencil. I hope you find the situation in Kentucky interesting,” she said.
“But not too interesting,” Valentine said. “We all had enough interesting this summer to last us till pension draw.”
Boelnitz shook hands all around. It was hard to say which version of Pencil Boelnitz was more handsome: serious, expletive Boelnitz or grinning, eager-to-befriend Boelnitz. Valentine couldn’t tell whether Lambert had a preference, either.
The bottle their patrol boat had given them contained some seven-year-old bourbon. Mantilla shared a glass with Valentine that night.
They sat in the captain’s day cabin. Valentine supposed it was meant to be an office too, but the ship’s records seemed to take up one thick sheaf of paper in various sizes, stains, and colors attached to a rusty clipboard.
A single bulb cast yellow light on the cabin deal table. Mantilla and Valentine sat with their legs projecting out into the center of the cabin as the captain poured.
“This is even better for your cold than honey,” Mantilla said.
“It makes being sick a little more relaxing. The inspection today—what was that about?”
Mantilla leaned back and put his chin down so the shadow of the cabin light hid his eyes. “A formality, as it turned out.”
“Thought you said you didn’t know the boat.”
“I didn’t. But I turned out to be an old friend of the officer in command of the patrol boat.”
“Were you?”
Mantilla chuckled. “For a little while. Today anyway.”
“I thought you hadn’t met him before.”
“I never saw his face in the whole of my life. And you would remember a face like that. Like an asshole with pimples.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know how a shitty bunghole seems like it’s winking at you—”
“No, you never met him, but he knew you?”
“Major Valentine, let’s just say that I’m an expert in letting people see what they want to see.”
Valentine finished his glass of bourbon and tapped it. To be friendly, Mantilla tossed back his own, gave a little cough, and refilled them both.
“Let me tell you a secret about people, Valentine. They’re really good at fooling themselves. They go through life jerking themselves off, complimenting themselves that they’re seeing things as they are. Really it’s wishing, like a little boy on a skate-board pretending it’s a jet airplane. Some chocha says no, no, no but the prick she’s with hears yes, yes, yes.”
“Or she’s hearing wedding bells and he’s thinking bedsprings. But I don’t see how that gets a sealed bottle of bourbon out of a local river cop.”
“He didn’t want to come on board and find trouble. He was hoping for a friendly face. I gave him one.”
“Just how did you do that?”
“Allow me to keep a few secrets, Major. I will say this. All it takes is the tiniest bit of a nudge. A shape in the shadows turns into an old friend. A crumpled old diner check turns into a valuable bill.” He pointed to the sheaf of paper on the wall. “An old spreadsheet becomes a transport warrant.”
“Sounds like magic.”
“With magic, people are looking for the trick that is fooling them. What I do is give them a little help fooling themselves.”
“Go on,” Valentine said, interested.
“You’re walking down a dark street and you hear someone following. Merde! When you turn around, would you rather see a policeman or, better yet, your neighbor following behind? But of course. As you turn, you hope, you pray, it is not a thug or worse. These men on the river, even the patrols, they do not want trouble. They like to meet bargemen they know, friends who bring the good sweet liqueurs of Mexico and Curaçao, gold even, or silks from the Pacific Rim and Brazil that they have obtained in New Orleans.”
Valentine took another mouthful of neat bourbon. Was the captain presenting him with what he wanted to see? Did he want to see an unkempt, out-of-shape boatman with a sweat-yellowed cap and grease stains on his knees and chest?
Valentine supposed he did. Older, weathered, an experienced man who’d lived long on the river and attended to his engines even at the cost of some mess, Mantilla had Valentine’s respect. Even a little flab added to the secure image; Mantilla enjoyed his food. Then there was the keen, roving eye from the face Mantilla never quite turned directly toward you. Canny, with part of his mind on you, part of it on ship or river or weather. “Handy trick,” Valentine said. “I don’t suppose you could teach me the knack.”
“When you work up the guts to look into your own mind and come to terms with what’s living there, then you can come to me and speak of venturing into others’ minds.”
Valentine saw two more examples of Mantilla’s trickery at a Kurian river station near Memphis when the captain stopped to pick up a few spare parts for his barge and some diesel for the motors, and then again outside Paducah, where their ship was inspected again. Two men went down into the barge hold ahead, and Valentine held his breath until they emerged, yawning.
Half a day later they approached Evansville and Henderson across the river. No bridge spanned the river anymore, but there were plenty of small craft on both sides. They scattered as the tug approached.
“Your boys close the river? Do I have to worry about artillery gunning for me?” Mantilla asked Valentine, who was standing with him on the bridge.
“No. Not a lot of traffic up and down the Ohio except food. We don’t want to starve anyone. But I’d better go first in your launch and send some people down to the landing, just in case. We’ll need all our motor resources to unload the cargo.”
Valentine was met by a pair of Wolf scouts who took him up to an artillery spotter with a field phone. They’d made some progress with the communications grid in his absence. Perhaps his old “shit detail” had done the work. They didn’t fight like Bears, but they had an interesting skill set. He ca
lled operations and reported the arrival of supplies from Southern Command. The hatchet men weren’t worth calling reinforcements, so he called them specialists.
With that done, he returned to Mantilla’s tug.
“We have some odds and ends needing transport back,” Valentine said. “Sick and lamed men.” Also a few who wanted out of it and were willing to take a dishonorable discharge to get away as soon as they could.
“Some might have to ride in the shell if there are too many. I’ll need food for them, if there are many.”
“That can be arranged.”
“Then I’ll be happy to offer transport back. In Paducah they will be surprised to see me again so soon.”
“Captain Mantilla, once more I’m in your debt,” Valentine said.
Mantilla pushed his hat back on his head. “It’s my pleasure to aid a Saint-Valentine.”
“It’s just Valentine. As you can probably tell, I am about as Italian as I am Afghan.”
Or does he know my mother was named Saint Croix? Valentine wondered.
“I’ve one more favor to ask. Do you know anyone on the river who can get a message up to St. Louis? There’s a big church there that tends to the human population and the Grog captives. Slaves, I guess you’d call them. I have a friend near there that they help now and then.”
“I’d be honored to bring a message to Sissy.”
“Sissy?”
“Isn’t that what you call Narcisse?”
“Do you know her?”
Mantilla dropped his chin so his eyes fell into shadow again. “Almost as well as you do, Major Valentine.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Fort Seng: Javelin landed and set up housekeeping within earshot of its victory against the Moondaggers on the banks of the Ohio.
In the hills just outside of Henderson, which is now mostly a ghost town, a thickly wooded old state park is now more state than park. Named after the naturalist, the Audubon State Park has changed hands several times in the past year.
Briefly used as a headquarters by the Moondaggers, the park was captured by Javelin almost intact, complete with supply depots and communications gear.
