by E. E. Knight
“Thank you, sir,” Valentine said, sitting in the club chair opposite Solon’s desk. The Consul had shortened the legs on it, giving Solon a height advantage he didn’t have when standing.
“I saw you admiring my bow.”
“It’s a handsome one, sir. Beautiful wood.”
“My quiet center. I go away with the bow when I need to think. Or rather, not think, at least consciously. I’ll take you out and show you, when we’re less pressed by duty. Did you get caught up at the presentation?”
“Yes, sir. It was thorough, I’ll give you that. There’s only a little mopping up to do south of the Arkansas. North of it, it looks like you’ve got what’s left of the opposition boxed in.”
“They’re more like a treed tiger. Properly prodded, they’ll jump down. Unpleasant for whoever happens to be under them, but it’ll be the end of the tiger.”
“Could be dangerous for whoever goes up the tree to do the prodding, too.”
“You understand your role, then. You wanted your shot at glory; I’ve granted your wish.”
“They must be pretty hungry by now. Why not wait?” Valentine said.
Consul Solon’s hangdog face tightened. “Evidently they’d prepared for years for this eventuality. Food and supplies deep in caves, mines ready in all the critical road junctures. And of course you’re aware that our borrowed forces have to return home more or less intact.”
“I caught that, sir.”
“So headlong assault wasn’t an option. It’s our own fault. We didn’t pursue promptly enough when they collapsed. It must have been some civil defense plan, to have so much put away for civilians, even. You know we’ve captured livestock up in the hills? I was tempted to take back some rings if my generals allowed them to get away with their chickens and sheep. Hopeless incompetence, but then what do you expect of forces that have been doing nothing but glorified police work and putting down uprisings for decades. They’re gun-shy.”
“Why not use Grogs?”
“The Grogs have their own concerns. The St. Louis ones only go to war for land; I’m not about to give up an inch of the Trans-Mississippi. Quite the contrary. Once we’ve got things under control here, we’ll expand north. The whole Missouri Valley is crawling with them from St. Louis to Omaha; that’ll change.”
“The Higher Ups gave them that land in return for—”
“Don’t be stupid, Colonel. That was a deal settled long ago. It wasn’t with the Trans-Mississippi Confederation, either. I’ve spoken to the Twenty-three, and they’re in agreement. You’re seeing only the planting of a seed that will one day flower in the headwaters of the Mississippi, the Tenesseee, the Missouri, the Arkansas, yes, even the Ohio. That’s why I came west, Le Sain. Elbow room. My days of sweating out strategies to control four more counties in Virginia or a town in Maryland are over.”
“You’re from the East, sir? I’ve always wanted to see it.”
“No you don’t. It’s chaos.”
“So you left? How did you manage that, if you don’t mind me asking, sir?”
“You’re a kindred spirit, Le Sain,” Solon said, a twinkle coming to his basset-hound eyes. “If you don’t like a place, your role in it, you get yourself out. I did the same, did you know that? My father was a senator in the old United States government. He didn’t survive ’22. I barely remember him. My mother struck up a relationship with a general who’d been useful to the Kurians. His lordship held a few towns around the Potomac in northern Virgina. I got my start as a courier; eventually I was running everything for miles around Harper’s Ferry. The Kurians are such children in a way; if you’re useful in getting them their candy, you can train them like Pavlov’s dogs. I learned the art of politics. There must be generational memory in the land, for the whole area around what used to be the District of Columbia is home to the most backbiting, infighting group of Kurians you can imagine, all holding court in their little monuments around the Mall. A woman named Rudland, I believe she was from New York, organized them into a ‘committee,’ to cut down on the blood feuds. I’d help plead my lordship’s cases before the committee, and if that didn’t work, bribe a powerful member. Then a deal went wrong, and I had to—let’s just say I left in a hurry.
“Not that it’s been any easier out here. The soldiers I was originally going to use to flush out these backwoods killers suffered a setback when their Grogs revolted. Grogs are more trouble than they’re worth; I’ve said it enough, you’d think someone would be listening by now. Those fools on the Missouri. It’ll be a generation before that particular plan can be brought again to fruition. I’m not the first person to learn that if you want something done right, do it yourself, so I made deals to get the forces I needed. Though I haven’t sought a reputation in the cannon’s mouth, far from it. I earned my ring with words and ideas, not with bullets. They’re more powerful in the long run.”
“I’m still looking for mine.”
“I’ll tell you something an aging U.S. federal judge once told me. He had it on a plaque:Vision without will fades like a dream.
Will without vision grows into a nightmare.
“The Kur are rich in will. I’ve never seen vision to go with it, so I’m supplying my own. As to will—well, you’ve seen what’s being built in New Columbia. It’ll be good. I’d like to think you’d stay out of desire to help me build here. But stay you will. Do you understand?” Solon curved his finger downward and tapped his desk to accentuate his words. “Stay. You. Will.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve got an ambitious look about you, Colonel. I saw you at the meeting, looking around, wondering which of your fellow officers you could rise above. You’re still a young man, and I’ll indulge young men in that. At this rate you’ll be one of my leading generals in a few years. Then you’ll have it all: an estate, women, wealth. You’re present at the founding of a country. Someday we’ll mint coins. Maybe your face will be on one, if you distinguish yourself.”
“I hope so. Did you have all this in mind when you came west?”
“New Columbia will be another Washington, another London, another Rome. Only better than Rome. Our temples will have real deities who give real rewards for an appropriate sacrifice. They will be Temples of Meaning instead of houses of superstition.”
Valentine sickened at the thought of more white towers rising in the green Ozarks like that abomination across the hill, each one asking for its share of Carolines. His mother had been raped and killed again, and once again he trotted home just in time to see the horror. He couldn’t keep the words in: “As long as we follow orders.”
Solon looked at him with sad understanding—but then, with those basset-hound eyes, he had a face custom-built for the expression.
“Le Sain, if you’ve studied the history of China, you know it’s been conquered many times. From the Mongols to the British. But in a generation or two, somehow it was China again. This land is the same way. We’ll absorb the Kurians; when this fighting gets done with, we’ll rebuild. They’ll be powerful figures, certainly, like heads of corporations or governors. The real power was always in a set of oligarchs. They just happen to be Kurian now. But the rewards will go to the integrators, the ones who make it all work. Another constitutional government will rise, we’ll have legislatures and courts, taxes and tollways.”
“They’d let us have all that?”
“Why not?”
“Due process and all that might cut down on the flow of aura.”
Solon leaned forward, steepled his fingers under his chin, and lowered his voice. “What makes you think I’d want that?”
“I’m not sure I follow you, sir.”
“Every society has is share of drones: the uneducable, the lazy, the unproductive, the crippled, the sick. Then there are the criminals. Civilization has always paid some kind of price for their upkeep. With the Kurians in charge, they’ll be fed into that furnace in the place of the talented. Only instead of the haphazard and arbitrary methods of tod
ay, it will be smoother, determined by courts and elected officials instead of this random slaughter. The robber barons will still take their toll, but it won’t be at random anymore, they’ll simply be a surgical instrument keeping the body politic healthy. Evolution did that for millennia, weeded out the unfit, but with our civilization the weeds were allowed to grow as well as the flowers. It’s time to replant the garden of Eden. But first, we have to separate wheat from chaff. Every generation produces its share of each.”
“I see.”
“Do you? That unpleasantness with the baby the other night—yes, I heard about it. It upset you. If you want to be part of my bright future, you’ll have to become used to that. Wheat and chaff, Le Sain. Wheat and chaff.”
“You’re a man of vision, sir. But sometimes the ‘unfit’ have hidden talents. Wasn’t there a brilliant physicist named Hawking who only had use of his mouth? Van Gogh was crazy, Einstein’s teachers thought he was retarded.”
“You’re well read for a bayou woodsman.”
“I grew up in an old library, sir. Sort of a private collection. It started out with picture books and took off from there.”
“You haven’t been listening, Colonel. I’ve got the answers, so quit worrying about the questions. You see, we’ll have courts, appeals. We’ll control the flow. The Kurians won’t care how the plumbing works as long as the water keeps flowing. In the end, we’ll have the real power.”
Valentine left the Consul’s office, hazy and flattened beneath a steamroller of a headache. He felt pressed flat by fatigue, as though the fading sun could pass through him as if he were a blood-smeared microscope slide. Consul Solon was persuasive. Valentine had to allow him that. He was also quite possibly a megalomaniac. It was a formidable psychological combination. No wonder Solon had come so far, so fast, in his quest for a federated empire of Kurian “states.”
But like many ambitious conquerors, Solon had a problem. Would-be empire builders historically had two moments when even the smallest successful show of resistance might bring collapse. One was at the empire’s birth, and the other was when it quit growing. Valentine doubted he’d live long enough to see the expansion stop.
That left turning Solon’s Trans-Mississippi into a stillbirth.
Chapter Eight
New Columbia, March of the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order: The Quislings and the Rats. Perhaps history has been overly unkind to Major Vidkun A. L. Quisling. He certainly loved his native Norway, but not so much that he let it get in the way of his ambition for political power through selling his good name and country to the Nazis. In that, at least, he is as dishonorable as his conscienceless name-sakes. In the vocabulary of opprobrium against the Kurians, “Quisling” is considered perhaps the most obscene, for they thrive in the service of humanity’s conquerers.
For those who spend time in the Kurian Zone, it is hard to be as bitter about the lower ranks. Armed service under the Kurians ensures life for the Quisling soldier and his family. It is hard to begrudge parents decent food to feed their children, a warm house and a few diversions. But some acquire a taste for the luxuries power brings and seek higher rank. They amass property, or gather art, or indulge their physical desires. Some become killers or sadists, exploring the freedom to taste that which is forbidden to others.
To the aid of the great ones with the power and money, there are always those willing to acquire their desires, legally or no. In New Columbia, those fulfilling, and profiting in, that service are the Rats. Not quite Quislings, but somewhere above the unfortunates living under the shadow of Kur, they live on the fringes of the law, their river boats giving them a freedom of movement and privacy that allows them to engage in lucrative smuggling. They have a strip on the north side of the Arkansas avoided by all save the river thugs, or those with the money to pay for a night in the dubious haunts of the riverfront. Most of them are clapped-together wooden establishments, already redolent of the unsavory activities taking place within. But there are a few substantial, finished buildings, complete with a touch of landscaping or a colorful coat of paint and expensive ironwork. Of all these, the most notorious—and expensive—is the Blue Dome.
As daylight faded Valentine hitched a ride into town with a pickup full of workmen, ignoring a pair of lieutenants who were waiting for more suitable transport. As the truck shuddered into second gear, one pulled a leather flask from within his shirt, passed it to a buddy, and with a practiced squirt shot a stream of the concoction within into his mouth before handing it back to the owner. He held it out to Valentine.
The Cat was tempted. After several sleepless nights, he’d spent the day keying himself up to kill a hatful of high-ranking Quislings, and then perhaps himself, only to find the moment, or his nerve, failing to live up to his destructive plan.
“What is it?”
“Joy-juice,” the bearded laborer who’d produced the sack said. “Little wine, little homemade brandy, some fruit squeezings. Go on, Colonel, it’s good stuff. Ain’t blinded us yet.”
Valentine shot some of the mixture into his throat, but didn’t have the knack for stopping the stream yet. It splashed across his dress uniform shirt. He gulped it down. He’d had worse.
By the time the truck passed the markers at the bottom of the estate hill, they’d all had a round.
“How do you like working on the Residence?” Valentine asked.
“Good work,” the man said, a few stray gray hairs on his head standing out against the black of his face and beard. “Ration book, and cash besides. No way I’m going back across the Missisisippi. There’ll be good work for years. I can do electricity, plumbing, carpentry . . .”
Valentine felt for Xray-Tango across the river, trying to build New Columbia using captured Free Territory men, while the skilled workers, imported at God-knows-what expense, went to Solon’s Residence.
“You don’t live on the site?”
“Naw. Town’s more fun. We all got a real house, even a couple of Tex-Mex women in residence for the chores and such. It’s a sweet setup, Colonel. There’s a diner in town, bars. They’re talking about getting a movie-house going.”
“I’m due at a party tonight. What’s good to eat at the Blue Dome?”
The laborer smiled at Valentine with tobacco-stained teeth. “Shiiit, Colonel, what do you take me for? Only time I seen the inside of that place was getting the toilets running. Most of us do odd jobs at night, and old Dom, he pays well. But if I tried to walk in as a customer . . .”
“Exclusive?”
“Strictly for you officer-types and the rat-boat captains. What passes for society in these parts. But don’t you worry; they’ll treat you right, and the food’ll stay down.”
Valentine thought regretfully of the cigar box full of “Solon Scrip” back at his tent. He hadn’t expected the day to end with dinner and drinks, so he’d left that morning with only a dollar or two tip money in his identification pouch.
The truck dropped him off next to a pyramid of rubble with a watch post atop it.
“Follow this street down to the river, Colonel,” the workman said. “You’ll see the Ragbag, a clothing-swap warehouse that’ll still be open. Just to the right is the Blue Dome. No windows and only one entrance. It’s got a neon sign with an arrow; you can’t miss it.”
“Thanks for the drink,” Valentine said, after a second squirt from the leather flask. He offered two dollars in scrip. The laborer refused.
“It comes with the ride. Watch your money at the card table, and when you draw a flush, think of me.”
The pickup bucked into gear and Valentine waved good-bye. He walked to the new riverfront of the north side of the Arkansas, at the edge of a little slope above the river proper, and thus safe from flooding. There were tent bars playing music, street vendors with food in carts, and everywhere men in deck shoes and woolen coats and sweaters, wearing knit caps or baseball-style ones with ship names sewn into the crown. A trio of muscular rivermen drinking behind a bar glanced at him, b
ut shifted their eyes apologetically when they took in the uniform.
Valentine peered into the Ragbag’s single window. The rest were still boarded up. Long tables and racks of recovered clothing were piled everywhere, and there was a cobbler in the corner tearing apart old shoes to recover the soles. He looked up the lively street and saw that a neon sign advertising the Blue Dome hummed from its position hanging out over the sidewalk. The joy-juice had assuaged his headache and left him sleepy.
The Blue Dome was a squatty block of masonry, better fitted together than most of the antheaps on the south side of the shallow Arkansas bisecting New Columbia, and painted to boot. There were no windows on the first story, and only shuttered, tiny slit ones on the second. Atop the building he could see the awning of something he guessed to be a penthouse; someone had gone to the trouble to hang basketed plants. From the alley between the Ragbag and the Blue Dome he heard the hum of ventilation fans and picked up the charred smell of meat on the grill. Valentine realized he was hungry.
Oddly enough, the Blue Dome’s entrance was in the alley rather than on the main street. The aged stairs were pre-2022; he descended them to a new wooden door, which opened even before he knocked.
“Pri—oh, excuse me, sir, come right in,” the burly doorman said, moving aside. Valentine stepped inside and halted, awestruck.
He felt as though he’d opened a worm-eaten wooden box only to find a Fabergé egg enclosed. Stuccoed walls opened up on an elegant room. Ensconced lighting behind delicate glass seashells drew his eyes upward to the glow of the Dome.
It stretched above a parquet wooden dance floor and stage to the right of the entrance. The concave surface was painted with some kind of luminescent blue material, which glowed in the reflected light of what Valentine guessed to be hundreds of small, low-wattage bulbs, giving the effect of a cloudless sky at twilight. Opposite him stood a massive wooden bar with polished silver fittings, a solid wall of liquor bottles behind it, and a bartender in a crisp white shirt and black tie standing ready. Between the bar and the stage, an elevated corner platform held a seated knot of musicians playing a quiet variety of jazz. The undomed part of the room stretched off to Valentine’s left. Uniformed members of the TMCC sat around linen-topped tables. They stood on staggered burgundy-carpeted levels under the subdued blue light from what looked to be fifty miles of fiber-optic cable artfully wound into the ceiling and structural pillars. Around the edges of the room velvet-curtained alcoves were more brightly lit; Valentine could just make out green-topped gaming tables behind heavy burgundy curtains.
