by E. E. Knight
Valentine walked up and shook her hand. "You make me sound like a statue."
"Umm . .. sorry? Gide's not on duty until seven."
"Can you get her, please? It's really important."
"Ah, love," she said. "Where are you storing your white horse?"
"It's desert tan, and that's what I needed to see her about."
"Burb," she said, employing the local slang for "be right back," and went off toward a long building that looked like two separate pre-'22 houses that had been enlarged toward each other until they joined.
She returned alone, as though from a trip to the bathroom. "Meet her in the tomato stands. Far end of the garden."
Valentine found her crouched in the tomato patch under an oversized umbrella. She'd brought a blanket and smelled like freshly applied scent.
"Lousy night for this, you know, it's damp. You could have given—," she said.
"Sorry, it's not that," Valentine said, squatting down beside her, hedged by ripening tomatoes. "I do mean sorry. Gide, I'm getting out of here."
"Huh?" She sat up.
"This place is poison."
"What, sodomy and the lash back in the Holes too? And you an officer and all."
"No. They're fighting... they're squeezing the Kurians in Seattle by getting rid of the population. And I mean getting rid of, not relocating."
"Cheezus. Poor bastards."
"I've done what I needed to do here, sorta, and I'm getting away."
"David, you're creeping me out here. Those sheeple are going to get it one way or another. Might as well make sure the towers don't have 'em."
"Don't tell me you knew too?"
"No, you just told me now. But—fuck!—it makes sense. We're what they need, right? Why let the bloodsuckers have what they need ?"
Valentine felt his cheeks go hot. "You used to live under them. Your whole life, pretty much."
"Yeah, and I'd rather've been shot or hung or whatever they do than let some fuckin' Hisser get his hook into me."
If she could just see it, see it as it too't place ...
"I'm getting out. I'm going to report to my contact. Maybe ... maybe change something, I dunno."
"Good luck with that. Me, I'm bucking for the regulars. There's a shooting tournament soon—you can win a month long trip up to the wilds for some hunting and training. It's a great way to get noticed." There was an edge to her voice, but she blinked hard, several times.
"Then this is good-bye," Valentine said. He gave her his Steyr. "Maybe this'll help you win the competition."
She cradled the gun, on her knees, the oversized uniform shirt making her look like a beautiful but well-armed garden gnome. "Can't you ... can't we sleep on it? Maybe it'll look different in the morning. We can talk. You're smart enough to see reason—"
The last thing Valentine wanted to do was kiss her, but he found it happening all on its own. "They'll come looking for me, and yours is the first bed they'll check. If they ask about the gyro, play dumb. I need to steal some high-octane gas off you."
"Let me put my boots back on," she said. A lace broke as she tied it. "Fuck! I'm supposed to be tough. I've been through... but you drop your guard just a little bit and it's like you never learned in the first place." She wiped her eyes, buckled her belt. "I'll help you get the cans over the fence."
Chapter Ten
Mount Omega: So many legends have grown up around Mount Omega that even its mention lays a shadow of doubt over any narrative featuring it.
Certain facts are not in dispute. Mount Omega had its genesis in "Fitzhugh's Folly," when the asteroid ZL-624 had its near-Earth encounter. Poor Dr. Donald Fitzhugh—while two other astronomers actually presented the case at the secret government briefing with him, their names weren't quite as euphonious with "folly," so they dropped out of history and the high-level panic surrounding ZL-624's approach. It was predicted to stride early in the second decade of the twenty-first century somewhere between the Mississippi River and the Azores, and Mount Omega was hastily constructed with equipment from the nuclear-waste storage facility in Nevada.
Even after fresh tracking data predicted a near miss, Mount Omega construction continued. It was a massive, well-funded project already under way, employing thousands and thousands of highly paid, security-clearance construction workers and technicians across rural Washington and northern Oregon. An eleven-month, money-is-no-object crash project stretched out into its second decade. Mount Omega eventually worked its way into the defense budget as a secure location for government officials in case of a catastrophic terrorist strike on Washington DC. Work on it never ceased.
Had it ever been finished, it would have been a wonder of the world. Nuclear power, state-of-the-art hydroponics, air- and water-filtration systems supporting office space and housing larger than the Vatican, the Kremlin, and the Forbidden Palace combined (with the Mall of America thrown in as a cherry on top), from the golf course on the surface to the deepest geothermal heat pump, it would have had space to rival a small city.
But the project was never really completed.
The Kurian onslaught of 2022, with the civilization-shattering mix of seismic activity and the ravies virus, led a skeleton crew of key elected officials, staff, and support personnel to receive their orders to relocate to Mount Omega. As the disaster grew, a stampede to the lifeboat Mount Omega represented began, and only after the shootdown of flight 5X03 did planes cease landing at its little emergency strip of blockaded, reinforced -concrete highway.
And there, guarded by the best the army, navy, air force, and marines had to give under General Roma, they buttoned up.
This narrative will not attempt to answer the question of why the Kurians never attempted to take over Mount Omega. Of course it would have required launching an operation of the scope of the Grog-versus-human battle that took place in Indianapolis now recorded as Congress' Last Stand. There were certainly enough organized Grogs on Oregon's Pacific coast in the years following 2022, after they swept up through Mexico and into California. Perhaps Fort Roma's inarguably passive role in resisting the Kurians led to it being spared. Cynical humor holds that there weren't enough uncompromised human souls buttoned up in the underground refuge to make the game worth the candle, but the fact remains that a number of senators and congressmen indisputably left Mount Omega to make it back t0 their constituents and share their fate. Only a handful ultimately lent their names and voices to the Kurian Order, and those black names are recorded elsewhere.
Mount Omega was neither a sybaritic paradise where champagne was lapped from silicone-enhanced cleavage between banquets with Kurian diplomats nor a monastery to Truth, Justice, and the American Way where senators and cabinet officials wore sackcloth and ashes and debated the finer points of federalism by the light of candles, all the while making hand copies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
A social scientist or a psychiatrist might make sense of some of the oddities David Valentine saw on his brief visit to Mount Omega, but if any did, their observations aren't easily found. Self enclosed populations, as Darwin noted on his trip to the Galapagos, lead to a strange selection of attributes. Valentine himself, when asked his opinion of Mount Omega, always shrugged and said, "Three generations of cabin fever."
* * * *
"That is one darling little helicopter," the corporal said.
Valentine didn't bother with the lecture on the difference between an autogyro and a helicopter.
He'd made Fort Omega in one long, exhausting flight with only a brief stop for refueling and sanitary purposes. The autogyro's stomach-tossing, bobbing motion left him feeling the same way he'd felt when climbing off the old Thunderbolt onto dry land—the odd sensation that the ground was swaying.
Mount Omega wasn't on any map; indeed, its "undisclosed location" wasn't even a mountain, more of a sheep-littered ridge on the grounds of an old army training base, a little west of an old, spent nuclear-fuel repository. Valentine simply skimmed the surface until
he saw the skeletons of some stripped commercial jets beside a wide patch of concrete highway with a big Day-Glo X painted on either end, and then landed and waited for someone to come point a gun at him.
Several someones did, displaying admirable handling of their old, but immaculately maintained, weapons. Of course "old" was a bit of a misnomer, as they looked lighter and of better quality than even the products of the Atlanta Gunworks, with combat zoom sights, lasers, and 20mm integral support cannon. Leather and plastic knee and elbow pads were fixed over outer shells made from old ponchos. Wash-worn uniforms beneath showed signs of heavy patching and repair, but they were still men Valentine would have been proud to line up in front of one of Southern Command's staff inspectors.
They ordered Valentine to lie down on his face, and he complied.
He tried to speak, but they told him to "shut up" until they fixed his hands in what felt like plastic wire, perhaps ripped from one of the airliner carcasses lying by the side of the road.
"Let's have it," a lieutenant said. "Why did you not acknowledge radio signal and land without permission?"
"First, the radio's a piece of crap that's preset to only receive three Quisling frequencies. Second, I'm on Southern Command orders, Hunter comma Cat, precleared to contact civilian authority. I have a verification code that I will supply to anyone with the prefix."
"Shit. Let me get someone from liaison, sir. I'm afraid you have to stay under restraints and guard for now." He gave orders to a messenger, who double-timed off toward one of the grounded planes and disappeared up a nose ladder.
"If it's going to be much of a wait, I need a trip to the John. And I could really use a hot meal." Valentine couldn't remember when he'd last been so hungry, and wondered if Sir had permanently accelerated his metabolism or if he'd adjust in time.
"Understood, sir. We'll have to watch you, though. As to a meal, if you get taken Inside, the food's better than what we can give you out here."
After seeing to his comfort, they started making small talk about the gyro. A five-stripe came out to observe.
Valentine heard bicycle tires and a driving chain. A tall pipe cleaner of a man in civilian clothes, brown wool trousers topped by a khaki shirt, pulled up and removed his helmet and hung it on a hook on his belt. He took a courier bag off the bike's handlebars and trotted up to the soldiers, a holster bobbing at his hip.
"My name's Patterson," the man said, kneeling so his eyes were level with Valentine's.
"Valentine," Valentine replied.
Patterson took out a neatly printed card. "I'm your Professional Military Surrender Resource. I'm completely outside their chain of command, and my only concern is for your behalf. I'm here to see that you get food, medical care, legal representation, and religious or social comfort between now and your release or execution. Do you understand?"
Valentine wondered how the title looked on the paperwork and smiled. "I just need to speak to the liaison officer."
"You should see him do this with Grogs," one of the older waiting soldiers told another, sotto voce. "Oooks and bobs his head and rattles beads until they head-butt him."
Patterson ran through a flow chart of questions regarding his treatment. Valentine denied being harmed or humiliated after his surrender.
"Captain Sagamoto is on his way," the lieutenant reported. "He'll verify your credentials and then we'll be done with you. Hope you're telling the truth, because otherwise—"
"Lieutenant, don't terrify the prisoner," Patterson cut in. "I'll have to log that."
"Beg your pardon," the lieutenant said, whether to him or Patterson Valentine couldn't tell. He backed off, and a five-striper nudged him.
"Don't let it bother you, sir. Just a bunch of papers."
Patterson had the lieutenant sign a piece of paper, and while they were so occupied the sergeant knelt down behind Valentine and checked his bonds.
"Inside, ifs they asks you where you comes from, say Canada. Make up some small place nobody's ever heards of like Moose Dick or Fragileoshus," the sergeant whispered.
The sergeant stood up as soon as the officers turned. "Just making sure I could wiggle a finger through," he said to them.
Valentine's ears picked up a faint whine and wheels turning on the landing strip. A golf-cart-like vehicle emerged from between two fuselages and joined the party, parking next to the autogyro. Like Patterson, the driver was on the lean side. His margarine clothes were thin and seemed hardly enough to keep out the dry wind. They reminded Valentine of the hospital gowns he'd seen at Xanadu.
He had faintly Eurasian features and a growth of beard that made him look like a model from one of the old magazines trying to look rugged and fresh off a mountain.
"I'm Captain Sagamoto," he said. He nodded to the lieutenant. "Patterson, I don't think this'll concern you. Can the newcomer and I have a moment?" He squatted down opposite Valentine as the others moved away. Valentine ran through the signs and countersigns he'd memorized back at Nancy's in his head.
"Red to blue?" Sagamoto finally asked, extending his left fist.
"Negative negative negative," Valentine said. "Sorry I can't lock knuckles."
Sagamoto smiled. "I can see that. Prefix two oh nine."
"Suffix V April twenty-seven. I'm here to see Senator Bey from the illustrious state of Oklahoma."
Sagamoto stood. "Lieutenant, he's cleared. I'm going to ask you to use your comset. I'm taking him to the Inside. Patterson, aren't you needed in the marshes? I heard a team of Grogs got captured after the fighting. You pedal hard, you'll be there to make sure they're tucked in tonight and get properly exchanged. Might win you that promotion back to the Inside."
"Barbarians," Patterson said.
The sergeant cut Valentine's bonds and he and the corporal lifted him. Everyone watched Patterson bike away.
"I didn't knows about no fighting in the marshes," the sergeant said.
"I could have heard wrong," Sagamoto said, "You know how rumors fly in there."
* * * *
It was a fifteen-minute trip to the ridge that sheltered Mount Omega. They drove around a depressed-looking golf course that kept a single hole mowed, plus a putting green. "They cut back and start watering a new hole every couple of months just for variety. Of course even going out to golf is a privilege, Constitution-level officials only."
Sagamoto took his time driving, enjoying the clean, open air and the sunshine. Valentine found it was a relief from the gloom of the Seattle basin too, though hunger still gnawed at him.
The electric car zigzagged around a small, sloping mountain of brush-covered dirt and came to a wide steel door that looked like it was built to keep in King Kong. It was open wide enough to allow two of the little electric golf carts to pass. Part of it was filled with a trestle of closely packed rollers. Men were taking bins of potatoes and onions off of a beat-up farm truck and its companion trailer and sending them rolling down the track. The hundreds of little wheels spun on their bearings as load after load of produce disappeared Inside, sounding like a cave full of angry rattlesnakes.
Sagamoto beeped the friendly-sounding horn on the golf cart twice and passed through the formidable doors. He showed ID to a trio of bored, blue-uniformed police who intercepted them. There seemed to be two ways into the mountain, an express lane for those who lived and worked within, and a serpentine of desks and examining areas. The only other person being processed in the serpentine was a shaggy-looking man with a big netting bag filled with dead pheasant and chickens. They waved Valentine over to a brightly lit alcove. They let Valentine keep his pistol but put a trigger lock on it.
As they patted him down, Valentine looked down the vast tunnel, big enough for a freight train or a couple of tractor-trailers to pass into the mountain abreast. There were tracks built into the ground, as a matter of fact, and the vegetables were being loaded onto a flatcar.
"What about the damn sword?" the police officer searching Valentine asked as he stood with a thermometer i
n his mouth while a medical officer checked his blood pressure. "Bells, he's got a knife on him too. You from the bad side of the mountains or what?"
A gray-hair in a wheelchair supervising from a duty desk, an old leather jacket with a capitol police patch draped over his shoulders, glanced at Valentine. "Locker all his gear. Locker, dummies!"
The medical officer stamped his hand with blue dye. After that, they inked his thumb and pressed it on a set of cards. Sagamoto got something stamped at the desk and returned with a temporary ID bearing his name and thumbprint.
By the time the carload of vegetables was on its way into the mountain, Valentine had the slip for his gear in the locker. Two more officials, in black paper clothing that made their skin look even more pale, met him at the next desk.
"General Accounts and Revenue," Sagamoto whispered. Then to the woman: "Visitor, let's get him a card for two days of food."
"What'll that be, an ear tag?" Valentine asked.
The woman at the desk unlocked a big paybox, but the man glared at Valentine. "State of birth, United States designation?"
"I'm Canadian," Valentine said, wondering if he should try to imitate the accents he'd heard on the White Banner Fleet in the Great Lakes.
This made the official even madder. He pushed a yellow card at Valentine and passed over the stub of a dull pencil. "We'll be checking that."
Valentine filled out the yellow card, no easy task with a pencil under an inch long. He gave his correct date of birth and listed his birthplace as "Fat Log, Saskatchewan."
"Two days' visitor rations, six hundred seventy-one dollars," the woman said.
"You must run a hell of a cafeteria," Valentine said. The woman tapped a laminated statement on the desk that showed the daily prices along with various taxes, duties, fees, and environmental-impact charges. He reached for his coin belt.
"Keep it. Guest of Senator Bey," Sagamoto said.
"We'll have to clear it with his office," the GAR man said, reaching for a phone.
"An aide is on his way up," Sagamoto said. "I'll sign and put my sosh." Sagamoto didn't wait for approval; he scrawled a signature on Valentine's yellow card.