by E. E. Knight
"You're one of the herd yourself, aren't you?"
"One body can always be swapped with another. But talent—that's not so easily discarded. Do you know what these are?" He held out his manicured hands, an NUC-crested brass ring on the left, a plainer one on his right.
“Brass rings.”
"Yes. Word of advice, Valentine. Don't believe your own propaganda posters about freedom and all that. There's always been the rulers and the ruled." He tapped the glass in the direction of the city. "The Kurians aren't that different from other rulers throughout history, save for one twist. They want productive births and productive lives, just like all the others. The only thing all this slanging is about is their desire for, when the time comes, productive deaths. Reuse and recycling of strange and mysterious energies otherwise lost to the cosmos."
"If that's what you believe, then I hope I'm around when you go drowsy and forgetful. You going to strip off those rings and volunteer for recycling?"
"I've earned a ripe old age, and I intend for it to be a productive one. Sadly, I've not had time for children yet. Our aphrodisiacs have been certified for ninety-year-olds. But really, I didn't come here to talk about myself or the honorable family name. I wanted to get an idea about you, before plunging into all the hows and whens. I'm a little curious about what you want out of all this."
"Put in your words, I want to stop the unproductive deaths. Adler is slaughtering whole families."
"Both sides are exhausted from all the fighting. The Kurians never thought it would take so long to reorganize us. Every new eruption kills more in a few weeks than the Kurians do in a year. Waste, sheer waste."
An elegant woman in business dress, lovely eyes behind thick glasses, cleared her throat from the hallway.
"Mr. Silas, they're reassembled and await you."
Silvers took a long snootful of the air around the assistant and popped his lips together: dop dop dop.
"I look forward to hearing your plans, Valentine. Just don't think you can organize another mutiny here. We're not stupid."
"Never said you were, Silas. Rotten, maybe, but not stupid."
"You're not my idea of an ally either."
"We don't need to respect each other, as long as we cooperate. I'd make a deal with the devil himself to stop Adler's slaughter."
* * * *
Two and a half hours later Valentine finally got a chance to talk, in the meeting room at the top level of the Space Needle. It rotated with the speed of a minute hand, slowly shifting from city skyline to mountains to the bay.
He stood at one end of a long, slightly curved wooden table, richly lacquered and the color of blood. Papers placed on it seemed to hover above their own shadows. The table could hold twenty-two at a pinch, Valentine guessed, but at the moment only four figures sat at it, Silas at the other end. Lesser operatives sat discreetly at the edges of the room, near phones and computer terminals, but Silas dismissed them for the day, keeping only those seated at the table and his secretary.
And of course Silvers, filling a battered sofa just behind Silas' chair.
"What the hell is a deep amphibious operation?" a general with heavy, burnished steel shoulder boards said. He had the fleshy look of a man who liked to do his generaling after a late breakfast and before cocktail hour.
"Hear him out," a uniformed woman with a raccoon mask of camouflage airbrushed across her eyes said. Her bristle-short haircut made one of Alessa Duvalier's self-administered razor jobs look vulpine. "About time someone talked about going on the offensive. We need more men willing to put their balls on the table, pardon the expression."
"Keep yours behind your zipper, Park," the fleshy general said.
"Let the man answer the question," Silas put in, and the table went silent again. Behind him, the city's skyline glowed in splashes of color, searchlights illuminating the old, empty office buildings as though they were national monuments. Lights dusted the edges of the city, washed down the road.
"I just made up the term," Valentine said. "But it describes what I think your 'Big Mouths' can accomplish, if the field training I received about their habits was correct. I read some news bulletins about their use in Florida deep into the Everglades."
"How many will you need?" a man in thick black wool asked. He had the fishy odor of a man off a long day at a gutting wharf. Valentine couldn't tell if he was in casual military clothes or civilian wear so rugged and severe it could pass for a uniform. His name tag was similar to the general's and that of the woman called Park, a black rectangle with white lettering; his read TROYD.
"I have to see them training to decide that. Do you train them?"
"We do," Troyd said. He kept his hands out of sight under the table, unlike the others, who were making notes or drinking coffee or tea.
"How are you going to get past the river barriers?"
"I know a little about the watch system," Valentine said. "Before my comrades delivered me into your little garden of horrors, I was an officer in the troops that supplied the river sentries. Dangerous work."
"That's why they had PeaBees doing it, no?" Park asked.
"Yes," Valentine said. "I even lost a few men to them in the fall. We never found the bodies."
"They've adjusted their fertility cycle to the salmon runs. Whoever eats the most gets to be female and host the fry. Sometimes they even eat the males, if the males don't swim away quick enough after the mate."
"That's a fucked-up way to do it," the fleshy general said.
Troyd shrugged.
Park snorted. "Make for a quieter world."
Silas cleared his throat. "Let's set comparative biology aside for now. We've learned what you'll need for the job. What do you want in return?"
"Some peace and quiet. A nice little house, maybe on one of those islands outside the bay there. A nice boat, not quite a yacht, but something I can use for travel or fishing. A few servants and a couple women to keep me warm on these clammy nights. But most important, one of those brass rings like you all wear so I get left alone."
"You? Settle with us?" the general asked.
"Not with you. Among you. I'm not going to be welcome back with Pacific Command. I'm under a hanging judgment with Southern Command."
"Brass rings aren't mine to give out. Speaking of which, there's going to be one awarded to our friend Troyd here at the next audience, for his work with the Big Mouths."
"And well deserved," Park said, rapping the table.
"Damn, is that this week?" the general asked, looking at his organizer book. "I may have to beg off—I've got inspections in Tacoma."
Silas kept his gaze on Valentine. "It's a boring ceremony. Speeches mostly, gives the TV station something to broadcast for a few weeks. I might arrange for a short interview. Seattle is most interested in the proposition, and he would be the one to promise a ring."
"I'm not doing it on faith," Valentine said.
"We're not so sure you can do it," the general said.
Valentine shrugged. "I wouldn't expect a ring to be handed out unless I accomplish the mission."
"I'm expected at a wedding banquet for one of my colonels. Can we wrap this up?"
"Hungry for your cake, or your droits?" Park asked.
"Not what you're thinking, Valentine," Silas said. "The maid of honor gets a more active role in military weddings around here, is all."
"Who gives a damn what he thinks?" the general asked. "Are we reporting up here or no?"
Silas nodded to his breathtaking secretary. "I'll call for a vote on the Valentine Proposition, and we'll adjourn." He touched a button on the arm of his chair. "Captain Chu, take Valentine back to the lounge."
"Suppose you vote the proposal down?" Valentine asked.
"You might end up in Seattle's tower anyway, but in considerably less distinction. But don't worry, a part of you will live on as a conversation piece."
Valentine went back to the lounge, smelled the nervousness on Captain Chu. Valentine wondered if the m
an expected to be stabbed with a stir stick. He felt too tired, too disgusted with himself, to put up much of a fight, even if the vote went against him.
Ten minutes later the door opened and he saw the French cuffs of Silas, a broad smile on his face. But he had Silvers with him rather than the statuesque secretary.
Valentine struggled to look nonchalant.
"The vote ended up unanimous in your favor."
"All four? I figured that general was hedging."
"Three. Friend Troyd sat at the table as a courtesy, but he doesn't have his ring just yet. I decided to seat the minimum for an official meeting of the Security Staff. I imagine the less who know about your project, the better."
"Wise of you," Valentine said.
"I want you to have dinner with me tonight. We'll get you cleaned up and into some decent clothes. When you're out mixing with the other ranks, your cover story is that you're an emissary from Catalina, learning how to handle Big Mouths. You know anything about Catalina?"
"Not really. Island off the California coast is about all."
"Don't worry, no one here's ever been there. Our only contact with them is for oil transactions, and the Energy Staff isn't scheduled to renegotiate for eighteen more months. Just pretend you're wealthy. Oh, and say 'awhoha' now and again."
* * * *
Valentine rode back to the city in Silas' limousine with his secretary. The trunk of the vehicle had been heavily modified to accommodate Silvers in his own semicupola complete with the first Grog gun Valentine had seen since leaving St. Louis. This one was a piece of craftsmanship, twin barrels each with its own two-thick magazine sloping down at an angle, with a built-in firing shield. Silvers strapped himself into the gun and the seat like the deep-sea fishermen Valentine had seen in the Caribbean.
"That's quite a hogleg your bodyguard totes," Valentine said, looking through the tiny back window at Silver's hair whipping in the wind.
"That little apparatus came off an armored personnel carrier, initially. I think they're ... ummm."
"Twenty-five millimeter, Thunder City Rangeworks," the secretary supplied.
"Anyway, they cost a lot. Oh, I'm sorry, David Valentine, Luty Loosh. She usually goes by Miss L. Top-quality English import, and almost as hard to get as a Rolls."
"I'll save you some time: Lubey Bush, Lusty Tush, Loosey Flush, Thirsty Lush, and combinations thereof," she said. Valentine detected a little bit of an accent now, and she tended to hit the first syllable of her words hard and sharp, like a determined pianist. Valentine felt like a drawling backcountry scrub compared with these elegant-sounding creatures.
"She was ill-bred enough to make herself so useful I had to keep her around—even after we got tired of each other," Silas said.
They took an off-ramp into the city, passed through a gate in a concrete wall, and pulled up beneath a well-lit turnaround, sheltered by a gold-fringed awning protecting a carpeted path to shining brass-and-glass doors.
"This is my pied-a-terre in the city. Let's get you changed for the better and then talk more over dinner."
"Whatever Silas says," Valentine said.
"I've heard that one before too," Miss L. said.
They rode up in an elevator that made the one in Fran Paoli's building in Xanadu seem like a freight. A little screen in the elevator showed the time, date, and outside temperature as it ticked off names and what Valentine guessed were locations every few seconds:
vinson, b. coltrane mil
apporimatox, n. tacoma 18
rutig, a. (in transit 5)
Neither of the others paid any attention to the screen, so Valentine ignored it as well.
The elevator opened into what Valentine guessed to be Silas' apartment. It was airy and open, a Prairie-school foyer/living room combination filling two floors. Stairs passed up on either side to doors that Valentine guessed to be bedrooms, and glass filled the wall facing the bay. A patio filled with plants had a second floor to the left side.
"I like a drink after that many circuits in the Needle," Silas said. "You like Scotch, Valentine?"
"You're a brave man, Silas," Valentine said.
"Why's that?"
"You left your bodyguard downstairs. I'm a desperate insurgent. Suppose I went for your throat?"
Miss L. removed her jacket. Valentine saw a soft leather holster strapped under her arm, the shining butt of an automatic inside. "It's loaded with hollow-points," she said.
"Have to admire a woman who brings her own protection."
"I believe in redundancy," Silas said. "Speaking of which, Luty, see if you can find friend Valentine one of my suits from when I'm better about exercising and down ten pounds."
She led Valentine up the carpeted stairs and to a bedroom that had been converted into an oversized closet, complete with three-way mirror. Her heels clacked on the hardwood floors as she walked down the line of jackets.
"I'd like to see you in gray flannel," Miss L. said. "You're too serious for double-breasted. Hmmm, a vest will make you look like a pimp with that hair. We'll stick to a simple cotton shirt. Where are you from, again?"
"Minnesota."
"That's the one east of Wisconsin?"
"West of Wisconsin."
"Ah." She paused until he looked at her. "How old is your mother?"
“I’m sorry?”
"Just wondering if she was Old Regime or not."
"No, she died fairly young."
"I'm truly sorry to hear that. Here, try these. I'll give you some privacy. There's clean socks and underwear in the drawers. I'm sure Mr. Silas won't mind you taking a pair."
* * * *
They ate off china in a restaurant with a French name filled with blue velvet and gold trim. Miss L. went home for the evening and Silvers took his spot at his master's shoulder. The Grog got his own bench behind a thin curtain and sucked down an entire tureen of soup, softly hooting to himself as the men ate. Valentine had salmon with dill and assorted greens, Silas king crab legs. Silas probed him, not about opinions of the Kurians and those who worked for them, but about music and art and books he'd read.
Over dessert they talked about what kind of sports Valentine enjoyed. Silas apologized for the size of the desserts, enormous slabs of cheesecake slathered in syrupy strawberries. "If I have a weakness, it's for sweets."
"Mind answering a question?" Valentine asked.
"That's foolish to answer before hearing the question."
"Why the VIP treatment?"
"You're not getting the VIP treatment. I am. You're just in the overkill."
"And the questions about jazz versus jug band?"
"Just trying to take the measure of you."
"I appreciate the clothes, but this isn't the life I want. I could never live in the shadow of one of those towers."
Silas laid down his delicate dessert fork. "Do you speak from experience?"
"I've spent years at a stretch in the Kurian Zone."
"Just because you make it sound temporary doesn't change facts on the ground."
"There's no such thing as never. I'm pretty sure some mathematician or other proved that."
* * * *
Silas put Valentine up in an almost empty apartment in his building, with some apologies that it would be temporary. But it did have a bed and hot water, and it was warm and dry. Valentine looked out at the city through two layers of glass door, both locked and welded shut.
The next day, after a quick rundown on the public transit system from Miss L., they fitted him with a plastic-sheathed metal loop around his ankle. A twitchy technician issued him with an ID card and swiped it through a slot in a black plastic circle the size of a wrist-watch face embedded in the loop.
"Okay, Valentine comma D. of the Catalina Island and Baja Principalities. Your TRFID transmitter verifies who you are every time you use the card. Just in case you lose it, it's useless to anyone else." He consulted a screen. "You'll be okay for travel downtown for a couple days. Wow, nice expense account."
"It's not going to electrocute me in the shower, or blow my foot off if I leave Seattle, will it?"
The technician raised his eyes. "Catalina must really suck, if they run it like a work camp."
"No comment," Valentine said.
"Naw, it won't do any of that. Go swimming with it."
He didn't swim, but he spent two days exploring Seattle, staying as far away from the Kurian Tower as he could. It seemed a technology-driven city, and Valentine couldn't understand half of the conversations going on in the cafes. Every other block had a technical college or a medical school, mostly filled with foreign students from Asia. Everyone had an ankle tag, except for a few arty types who wore theirs around their necks, and it was from one of these that Valentine learned the coding system. Black indicated foreign dignitaries.
"Of course upper management has theirs implanted," a youngish longhair cradling a leather-topped wooden drum in a relaxed lounge with the intriguing name "Earworm Cafe" explained. "Everyone's got to bear the mark of almighty Babylon." He worked on an old computerized music player with a portable light and a set of precision tools.
"Sez the dude who spends every other morning getting CI certification," a girl chided as she cleaned a table and collected discarded mugs. "Double Deck, you'll be wiring IDs to your own family before you know it."
"Go pop out another kid for the churchies, your royal no compromises," the drummer said.
She bared sharpened teeth and Valentine decided to pay his bill. And the boy's.
Back at his apartment he found a note.
"Don't forget audience tomorrow. I had the suit pressed and the shirt cleaned—Luty."
* * * *
The next day Valentine stood in borrowed clothes under a cheap plastic poncho. Seattle's mighty tower soared above him, making him feel like an ant in the shadow of a redwood.
A vast plaza surrounded the tower, rimmed with decorative columns topped with pensive statues of Reapers that served a more discreet purpose as vehicle barriers. Inside the circle it was paved with red and gray bricks that probably formed some kind of design when seen from on high, perhaps a spiral of some kind. Valentine guessed that at least four square blocks of downtown Seattle had been knocked down to make the expanse.