Valentine's Exile

by E. E. Knight

  "First I've heard of it. Were the charges dropped?" Farland asked.

  Valentine shook his head.

  "You made a powerful enemy, Major," Thrush said. "Martinez had a lot of friends in Mountain Home. He had the sort of command you'd send your son or daughter off to if you wanted to keep 'em out of the fight."

  "Technically I was under him during Archangel. His charges are why I'm here, or that's what my counsel says."

  "Bastard. Heard he didn't do much," Farland said.

  "I wouldn't know. I was over in Little Rock."

  Roderick grew animated. "Heard that was a hot one. You really threw some sand in their gears. What was her name, Colonel . . ."

  "Kessey," Valentine put in. "She was killed early on in the fighting. Bad luck."

  "What are you going to plead, Valentine?" Thrush said.

  "Five minutes, gentlemen," a guard yelled, standing up from his seat next to the door.

  Everyone was wet. Were they all bedraggled sacrificial sheep? "Haven't made up my mind yet."

  * * * *

  Valentine grew used to the tasteless food, and the boring days of routine bleeding into one another and overlapping like a long hospital stay. He took a job in the prison library, but there was so little work to do they only had him in two days a week. He could see why men sometimes marked the days on the wall in prison; at times he couldn't remember if a week or a month had passed.

  The weather warmed and grew hot. Even the guards grew listless in the heat. Young brought in two of the pamphlets produced about the fight in Little Rock and had Valentine sign them.

  "Turns out I had a cousin in that camp your Bears took. One's for him and one's for his folks."

  Part of his brain considered escape. He tried to memorize the schedule of the guard visits to his hallway, tried to make a guess at when the face would appear in the shatterproof window, but their visits were random.

  Also, there was the Escape Law. Any person who broke free while awaiting trial automatically had a guilty verdict rendered in absentia.

  He slept more than he was used to, and wrote a long letter to the Miskatonic about the mule list. He labored for hours on the report, knowing all the while that it would be glanced at, a note would be added to another file (maybe!) and then it would be filed away, never to see the light of day again until some archivist went through and decided which documents could be kept and which could be destroyed.

  He suggested that further investigation into the mule list was warranted. Anything important enough for the Kurians to put this kind of effort into—and apart from feeding and protecting themselves, the Kurians had few pursuits that Valentine was aware of— might prove vital.

  Valentine signed it. His last testament to the Cause?

  * * * *

  Letters arrived in a strung-together mass. Outrage and gratitude from Post, who was on the mend in a convalescent home and had installed Narcisse in the kitchen; wonder from Meadows; a few postcards from his former Razors who had heard about his imprisonment one way or another.

  One offered to ". . . come git you Sir. Just send word."

  Nothing from Ahn-Kha, which worried Valentine a little. The Golden One could read and write English as well as anyone in his former command, and better than many.

  Valentine heard footsteps in the hallway pause, and then a knock at the door.

  "Visitor, Major."

  This time Corporal Young took him down to a regular visiting room, carrels with glass between allowed for conversation through small holes in the glass—or plastic, Valentine thought when he saw all the scratches. There were fittings for phones but it looked as though the electronics had been taken out.

  He waited for a few minutes and then they brought in Moira Styachowski.

  She wore good-fitting cammies with her Hunter Staff crossbar on her captain's bars. The only female Bear he'd ever met looked about as healthy as she ever did—just a little pale and exhausted.

  "So they got you after all," Valentine said.

  "I might say the same about you," Styachowski said in return, then her eyes shifted down. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Dumb thing to joke—"

  "Forget about it, Wildcard."

  She smiled at the handle issued to her the night he'd been burned in the Kurian Tower of Little Rock. "You know who's behind this, right?"

  "Yes, that Sime . . ."

  "No, the charges. It's Martinez."

  "My counselor told me. Seems like a sharp woman."

  Styachowski looked down again.

  "What?" Valentine asked.

  "I was told, Val, in language that was . . . umm, remarkable for its vigor, to come here and tell you to work with Sime on this. The 'vigor' of the language employed made me ask a few questions of a friend at GHQ. So, for the record, take the deal."

  Valentine lowered his voice. "Off the record?"

  She leaned forward. "It's a setup for the benefit of some Oklahoma Quislings. According to my source at GHQ, Sime said, 'They need to see a few hangings to convince them.' Don't look like that. You've got your deal from Sime."

  "Sime says. He's powerful enough to make it happen? Even with a Jagger judge?"

  "The representatives"—she said the word with the inflection a bluenose might use to describe workers in a bordello as 'hostesses'— "are here and your trials are due to start. Luckily you were the last one arrested. The others will go first. They'll get their hangings."

  "Is there anything you can do?" Valentine asked. So goddamn helpless in here. He felt an urge to lash out, punch the Plexiglas between himself and Styachowski. Perhaps even hit Styachowski, for nothing more than being the bearer of bad news. But the mad flash faded as quickly as it rose.

  "I don't have much experience in this. A couple of classes on military law and that farce we had near Magazine Mountain sums up my experience."

  "What about the newspapers? Your average townie thinks every Quisling should wind up in a ditch."

  "Military trials aren't public. I'll see if I can talk to your counsel. If it makes you feel any better, Ahn-Kha is here. I set him up quietly in the woods nearby. I sent word to that Cat you're partial to but I haven't heard back."

  "Who's your source at GHQ?"

  Styachowski hesitated. "The lieutenant general's chief of staff, a major named Lambert. Says she remembers you from the war college, by the way."

  Dots. Valentine had a feeling back then that she was destined to rise. She practically ran the war college as a cadet.

  "Thank her," Valentine said.

  "Val, if there's anything else I can do . . ."

  "You've already exceeded expectations," Valentine said. "Again. Good-bye."

  She visibly gulped. "You did right by those women." Styachowski got up and left, a little unsteadily.

  Young escorted him back to his room/cell. "We turned away a visitor for you yesterday, Major. Guards say she was a bit of a meal. Red hair."

  So Smoke had drifted into the vicinity after all.

  "Turned away?"

  "You're to get no visitors except by judge's order. Sorry."

  "Is that usual?"

  "Not for anyone in Southern Command. Sometimes we try Quislings, redhands, men caught as spies. They're kept I-C if it's thought they know something damaging if it gets out, but you guys are the first of ours."

  "Should the lack of precedent worry me?"

  "I only work here, Major. But, to tell the truth, it worries me."

  * * * *

  Thrush got his trial the next day. He ate his dinner alone and the "shooters" didn't see him until breakfast (reconstituted eggs that tasted like bottom sand). He wasn't inclined to talk about the proceedings.

  "My counsel keeps objecting and getting overruled," Thrush said. "Six witnesses for the prosecution. My defense starts today. There was wrangling over the witnesses, my counsel only got two in."

  "Do you have any family or friends in the audience?" Valentine asked.

  Thrush scowled, pushing his uten
sils around on his tray. "There's an audience alright. You never saw such a bunch of hatchet faces. Tight-ass Kansas types. I wouldn't be surprised if they are Quislings."

  "I'm going to ask for noseplugs if they're there at my trial," Roderick said.

  * * * *

  Valentine never saw Thrush again after that meal. Young, wary and somber, told him the verdict and sentence. Valentine wasn't surprised by the verdict but he was shocked at his reaction upon hearing the punishment. The Garage. Death by hanging. Thrush's sentence rang in his ears, rattled around in his head like a house-trapped bird frantic but unable to escape: Death by hanging.

  Death by hanging. The Garage. Death by hanging.

  Farland went next. The morning of his trial he was almost cheerful. "Hey, I've admitted it. I did wrong and I'll take what's coming, serve time and address cadet classes about humane treat­ment of prisoners if they want. The court's gotta see this as a case for mercy, right?"

  His guilty plea just meant he had to spend less time in the court­room before hearing his sentence. The trial was over and done with in thirty minutes.

  This time, when Valentine asked, Young just shook his head. The guard had a hard time meeting Valentine's eyes.

  In the yard that day Roderick didn't eat, he just rocked back and forth on his heels, whistling. Valentine felt he should know the tune but couldn't identify it.

  "'There's No Business Like Show Business,' Val," Roderick supplied.

  "Roderick, what did you do that got you in here?"

  Roderick shrugged. "Guess it doesn't matter now, since none of us will be telling tales. Rape and murder of a Quisling prisoner. She was sweet and creamy, and I figured they do it plenty to our people. She had the softest-looking brown hair, partly tied up in this red bandanna. Funny. If her hair didn't catch my eye, she would have just been another prisoner walking by. But I had the boys pull her out of line."

  "They reported you?"

  "No. I felt guilty about it afterwards. Talked it over with a chaplain. He turned me in. Guess I don't blame him. There's got to be a difference between us and them, or what's the point? I'm al­most so I want their brand of hemp medicine." He made a hanging motion at his neck with his finger, both gruesome and funny at the same time.

  Roderick's words stayed with him for hours. Roderick de­served his fate—if the men saw their officers behaving that way, they'd degenerate into a sexually charged mob the next time . . . but wait. How different were their crimes, really—save that Valentine amassed a higher body count? Eight men had died in horrible pain.

  In the afternoon he met with Captain Luecke in a little, white-painted room with a big table. She looked a little haggard.

  "I was handling Farland's case as well. I thought it was just going to be plea negotiations. I heard something about Sime mak­ing you an offer."

  "What happened to Thrush?"

  "He moved onto death row. They hung him at midnight last night. In front of the witnesses." She took a long drag at her ciga­rette, and the shaking in her fingers stilled for a moment as the nicotine hit her bloodstream. "Farland will go tomorrow night. Our guests can't afford to stay long. Do Sime's deal."

  "Or end up like Thrush and Farland?"

  "Maybe they're having you go last for a reason. After a few hangings, the bastards might be willing to see a little mercy."

  "'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,'" Valentine quoted.

  "This last week has been strictly Old Testament, Valentine. Like Leviticus."

  "How did your checking on Martinez go?"

  "It was quite revealing. I'm glad I wasn't at that trial. Were there really bullets flying in through the windows?"

  "The prosecuting officer almost got raped."

  Luecke sent a funnel of smoke at the ceiling lights. "There were times I thought a lynch mob coming for some overeager scalp-taker wouldn't be altogether a bad thing. But to see it in real life—"

  "It worked out in the end. My defense?"

  "You don't have one. Every witness I wanted to call met with the same response from the judge: Major Valentine is on trial, not General Martinez. Denied. Valentine, honestly, take Sime's deal. If anyone has the pull to get you off the hook, it's him."

  "Pull? What kind of justice system is this?" Valentine asked.

  Luecke lit another cigarette from the butt of her first as she took a last drag. "A kind I've never seen before. Take Sime's deal."

  "If I don't?"

  "I'll do my best. I have a feeling it won't be good enough."

  "Can you get me a visitor? There's—"

  "Sorry, no. Maybe after sentencing."

  "That'll do me so much good," Valentine said.

  "You're frustrated. I understand. Go back to your room and think it over. Sime's offer is our only hope."

  "Our? You're not going to be standing in the Garage with a rope around your neck by the end of the week."

  She crushed her cigarette. "You think I don't feel for the people I defend? It's a rotten world. A lot of the men who wind up here just got an extra spoonful of rottenness. Maybe they were born with it, or maybe it got fed to them in little mouthfuls over their lives. In either case, I do what I can for them."

  Valentine put his head in his hands. Keep it together, Ghost. "I'm sorry. You've done more for me than I should expect, considering."

  "If it makes you feel any better, Val, I did turn up one thing. I couldn't see much of it, but Southern Command did investigate Martinez. There's some kind of intelligence file that I saw cross-referenced in the docs. Whatever they were looking into came up negative, so the file got sealed. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

  "All I know is he shot two of my complement. And that he kept a few thousand men drunk and hiding in the hills when Southern Command needed them."

  "We'll talk tomorrow morning. It looks like your trial is going to be on Thursday."

  Two days.

  "Thank you, Captain. You should eat—you don't look so good."

  She pulled out a cigarette. "I'm paving my own trip to the Garage with these. See you in sixteen hours."

  * * * *

  Valentine spent the next day in a kind of weary anxiety. They would try Roderick in the morning—he was not going to contest the proceedings, so it would go quickly—and then Valentine's trial would begin in the afternoon. He tried to write letters and found himself unable to find words, went through the motions of his job rebinding books at the prison library in a funk, unable to finish any­thing. He and Luecke met again, but found they had little to say to each other. She simply asked if he'd take Sime's deal. He shrugged and said that he hadn't made up his mind yet, and she said she had the statement for the tribunal ready if he did decide to plead guilty.

  Valentine believed any speech she might make would be scrimshaw on a casket. What would happen to him would happen regardless. The only words that would count would be those that would place him in prison, or send him to the Garage.

  The hours slipped away until sundown, and the prison slowly bled off the heat it had soaked in during the day. Valentine lay in his cot, arms and legs thrown wide to allow the perspiration to disperse.

  There was a knock at the door and Valentine heard keys rattle.

  "Room search," Young said.

  Valentine knew the routine. They took him to a holding cell— this one had real bars—while two guards searched his room. The process usually took a half hour or so.

  This time it took an hour. Were they worried he'd constructed some kind of weapon to use in court?

  When they returned him to his cell Valentine noticed the usual cart outside, piled with his linens. Young looked at the other guard. "I'll take it from here, Steve-o."

  "You sure?" the guard asked.

  "I'm sure. Enjoy your dinner."

  Steve-o, the other guard, extended his hand. "Good luck, Major Valentine."

  "You mean good luck tomorrow, don't you?" Young said.

  "Yeah. That's what I meant.
"

  Valentine shook the hand.

  "Just wanted to say I done it," Steve-o said. He wandered down the hall, whistling "There's No Business Like Show Business." Maybe he'd picked the tune up from Roderick.

  "You've got a letter," Young said. He looked again at the envelope. "It says that it's not to be delivered to you until after your trial. But we had to check it anyway. No reason we couldn't check it be­fore."

  "Of course," Valentine said, wondering.

  "Here you go. I get the feeling it's not from a friend."

  Valentine saw the same plain envelope and paper. He opened the tri-folded message.

  ENJOY THE HANGING. WISH I COULD BE THERE.

  Young cleared his throat. "Kind of funny, this person being so sure of your verdict."

  "Funny is right," Valentine agreed.

  Young extracted a multitool pocketknife, unfolded a screwdriver, and cleaned a black mark from beneath his thumb. A red-painted key jangled from the ring on the knife; Valentine saw it glitter in the dim light coming in from his window. "I've never had a problem with my job before, Major. Most people wind up here, well, they deserve it. The ones that don't get spat back out, usually along with some who do. Better that way than the other. But in sixteen years I've never seen anything like this."

  Young pointed to a laundry bag on his bed. "Fresh linens for your bed and a new smock," he said. "Girl in the laundry is new. I think she doesn't read so good. If they screwed up, I'll be back in an hour and fifteen minutes and I'll get you a new set of clothes." He placed the knife in his pocket. "Well, I got to get down to the yard. We got sick dogs tonight and until the vet is done looking at them, it's the two-legged animals that got to walk between the wire. I know the night before a trial is always slow. Hope you get some sleep, eventually."

  As he turned, Valentine heard the pocketknife bounce off his boot and hit the floor. It slid under his cot.

  "Damn cheap service trousers! Cotton my ass. More like knit­ted lint," Young said, and slammed the door behind himself— slammed it so hard it didn't close properly. Valentine didn't hear the dead bolt shoot home.

  Valentine waited one amazed second, then put his slip-on shoe in between the door and the jamb so it wouldn't close accidentally. He checked his laundry bag. A complete guard uniform, right down to polished shoes and belt, hat, and hankerchief was inside. Valentine read the stitched-on name tag: YOUNG.