Winter Duty

by E. E. Knight

  There was still a pretense of an assembly going on in Elizabethtown, complete with press notices. A radio broadcaster calling himself Dr. Samuel Johnson—Valentine had no idea if that was his real name or not, but he felt as though he should know the name—continued to report jumbled details and play recorded interviews allegedly obtained in Elizabethtown over what was probably Free Kentucky’s only computer-telephone line hookup. Of course Kurian agents were hunting all around Elizabethtown for the site of the assembly, probably so it could be targeted for bombing again, but for now the decampment to Owensboro and the new swearing in of delegates at the high school basketball court had remained a secret.

  They kept an “underground special” radio in Valentine’s city headquarters for listening to Dr. Johnson’s daily report. Valentine, who was right in Owensboro with the Assembly meeting only around the corner from him, knew more about how the debate was progressing from a transmitter in Elizabethtown than he did from local reports.

  Odd world. But he’d noted that before.

  There didn’t seem to be much for his security team to do. In the end, his one great contribution was to take Pencil Boelnitz off the hands of the Assembly security team. He snuck into the Assembly once, was warned off, and was escorted out. When he got in again the very same day, the Assembly sergeant at arms demanded that he never see Boelnitz’s classic profile again.

  Valentine had the journalist put under guard and walked back to Fort Seng.

  Even Brother Mark wouldn’t update Valentine on the real progress of the debate. Valentine plied him with food and had Ediyak cut and style his hair—strange duty for someone with captain’s bars, but she was as curious as Valentine about the progress of the debate and was willing to play sort of a Mata Hari with comb and straight razor.

  “Sworn to secrecy, I’m afraid,” Brother Mark said, wincing at the amount of gray exposed at his temples. “Everyone’s afraid of an opinion getting back to the Kurians. There’s a rule, until the actual Assembly vote, that none of the voting on motions and so on is to be recorded or reported.”

  “But Dr. Johnson’s sources keep giving him a ‘sense of the Assembly, ’ ” Ediyak said, applying a little Macassar oil (Owensboro style—probably cooking oil with a little dye).

  “Dr. Johnson is not necessarily accurate in his reports,” Brother Mark said. “Remember, he’s also reporting that they’re meeting in an ‘undisclosed location outside Elizabethtown.’ ”

  “Well, that’s true after a fashion,” Valentine said. “About eighty miles outside Elizabethtown.”

  “Why didn’t they do this last summer?” Ediyak asked.

  “Karas was operating on his own hook with his own allied clans,” Brother Mark said. “But some of Kentucky supported him and started putting together a democratic assembly, on paper at least. The Assembly is almost feudal, going back to the traditions of the Magna Carta. This is a collection of powerful and influential men and women. Kentucky’s nobility, you might say.”

  “You wouldn’t know it by how they’re spending in town,” Ediyak said.

  “They’re afraid to show their faces. If you see a man hurrying down the street with his collar turned up and his hat pulled down, I guarantee that’s an Assembly member.”

  Brother Mark was willing to brief them on general parameters of the debate. There were three broad factions in the Assembly, the Old Deal Caucus, the Militant Independents, and the All-Ins. According to Brother Mark, the future of Kentucky would be determined by which way the Militant Independents voted.

  “Hard to say what’ll tip the balance,” Brother Mark said. “The Kurians seem to have finally figured out that threatening Kentucky is causing more problems than it’s solved.”

  The debate was raging among the people as well. Dr. Johnson, when he had no news to report, read letters and notes from a few phone calls and even news reports from overseas. Of course there was no knowing just how much the good doctor was editorializ ing, but the vast majority of the messages he read were in favor of Kentucky declaring itself against the Kurians, though there were mixed feelings about whether they should join the United Free Republics or no.

  The United Free Republics, as it turned out, suddenly developed a diplomatic interest in the situation in Kentucky.

  A civilian of Valentine’s acquaintance named Sime arrived with more than a dozen security men and aides dressed in the ordinary buttoned, collarless shirts and denims, corduroys, and mole-skins of the Kentuckians.

  Valentine could only gape at the motorcade. He hadn’t seen vehicles like this since driving Fran Paoli’s big Lincoln out of the Ordnance on Halloween night. The one at the front was marred by a big brush cutter. The passenger van at the rear bore a medical red cross. All were excessively dirty, however.

  Sime checked in at Valentine’s security office on a blustery afternoon. At the moment, Valentine didn’t have anything but oatmeal and hot apple cider to serve his elegant visitor.

  Valentine wasn’t sure how he felt about Sime. In some ways they were similar: in age, melting-pot heritage—Sime a dark chocolate and Valentine a native bronze—and general height and build. There were contrasts: Sime was smooth-skinned, Valentine scarred; Sime bald, Valentine long-haired. Valentine found Sime’s usual scent of sandalwood and gentleman’s talc appealing.

  More important, every time Valentine became involved with Sime, Valentine seemed to end up in deeper difficulty. Now Sime was giving him the additional headache of keeping tabs on one of Southern Command’s bigger political bugs.

  Sime idled in the lobby, after requesting the Kentuckians for an opportunity to speak on behalf of Southern Command. Perhaps for power-play reasons of their own, the Assembly put him off for a day.

  “You wouldn’t have a shower in here somewhere?” Sime asked Valentine. He had an entourage of sixteen, personal security types and drivers and communication staff.

  “There’s hot water in the washroom. Best I can do. You’re going to have difficulty finding accommodations in town, unless you want to squat in a rat run or take charity. You’re welcome to stay on base, but it’s a two-hour drive to Fort Seng.”

  “We can sleep in the vehicles. They’re rigged for it.”

  “I don’t suppose they’re rigged to carry medical goods and antibiotics. We could really use some.”

  “Yes, we’ll spare what we can. I’ve brought you the latest ravies vaccine too.”

  “New strain loose?”

  “You’ll have to ask the doctor. I believe it’s just this year’s booster,” Sime said.

  “We could really use a doctor at the post.”

  Sime pursed his lips, and Valentine knew the man well enough to know when his patience was wearing thin. “I thought you had support from Evansville.”

  “It’s a small manufacturing city, and even that’s not much good without raw materials. I don’t want to strip the town of what little they have for their own people. And it helps to have a doctor who has to obey orders.”

  “Personnel isn’t my specialty. Remember, I’m not here to support your guerrillas or légion étrangère or whatever you’re running here.”

  “What are you going to tell the Assembly?” Valentine asked.

  “What do you think I’ll tell them?” Sime asked.

  “A rousing speech promising the friendship of the Free Republics, as long as that friendship doesn’t get measured in bootheels over the river,” Valentine said.

  Sime had a good poker face. No tells gave away whether he was angered or amused. “I may just surprise you. I hope you come and hear it.”

  “I’m afraid they won’t let me in.”

  The lips tightened again. “The man handling security for the town? I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Seems to me everything you’ve been involved in has been a disaster for Southern Command,” Valentine said. Sime’s smooth exterior made Valentine want to stick a pin in him just to see if he would pop. “Kansas, Javelin . . . what about the offensive in the Rio Grande Va
lley? Your handiwork too?”

  “You earned your dislike, Valentine. Maybe one of these days you’ll grow up and realize I’m in the same fight as you. I can’t swing a blade and I shoot like a cross-eyed man and I’d be dead in a week if I had to eat preserved ration concentrate and WHAM! But I know people and I can read my audience.”

  “Bet that comes in handy when a Reaper tears the roof off your house.”

  “Maybe I’m better equipped for fighting the kind of battles the Kurians wage. They don’t put—what’s that phrase?—shit on target. They’d rather make their target give up and go home, or do a deal that swaps a few lives, a few towns, for a generation’s security.”

  He stared at Valentine. Valentine recognized the challenge and tried to meet his eyes, held them for a long moment, and then found an old lighting fixture over Sime’s shoulder suddenly of great interest.

  Perhaps he had been unfair to Sime.

  “Like you, I’m ready to make sacrifices for victory,” Sime continued. “I was ready to give you up to get Kansas. And if I could trade your life for a different outcome in Kansas, I would, like a shot.”

  “The feeling’s mutual.”

  “Would you, now, if it came to it?” Sime said. “If you could get the high country of Kansas back for us by just putting that pistol to my head and squeezing the trigger, would you?”

  Valentine took his hand away from his belt and crossed his arms.

  “It’s never that easy,” Valentine said.

  “Your father would have.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Not firsthand. But I know the history. He was what we called a plantation burner. Left a lot of scorched earth—and scorched bodies—behind. But it made the Kurians pull out of most of Missouri. I won’t argue the results. I’m sorry if he told you different, but that’s the truth of the matter.”

  “He never told me anything at all.”

  “You a fan of football, Valentine?”

  “I know the basics, but I never had much time to follow it.”

  “I’m a big fan. We have some fair mud leagues running the spine from Little Rock to Texarkana. I’m a Buzzsaw man, myself.”

  Valentine had overheard enough sports talk to be conversant. “I’ve heard of them. I think they won the championship a few years back.”

  “Two seasons ago. Every good team needs what I like to call a hatchet. With the Buzzsaws, it’s a linebacker. It’s the crazy mean player, the guy who puts people down for a game or two. So instead of covering assignments, the opposing team’s eyeing the hatchet, wondering who’s going to be broken next. Bad sportsmanship? Maybe. But I’ve learned something before I started shaving my gray hairs. Most good organizations have a hatchet or two to do the dirty work.”

  “I see.”

  “You’d make a pretty good hatchet. You have the right name, anyway, thanks to your father’s, well, fierce reputation.”

  Valentine shrugged. The gesture made him feel like a hypocrite—a shrug from a subordinate always annoyed him—but he was only too happy to use it himself with the slippery Sime. “I always thought of myself as more of a screwdriver. Always being used for jobs other than the one I’m designed to do.”

  Sime was good to his word. An Assembly ID showed up for Valentine the next day. Though he had to report to the Assembly’s own sergeant at arms to get his picture taken with a Polaroid and have a card made.

  The Assembly itself was run by the Agenda. That office was held by a woman, thin and wan and brittle-haired; she looked like a cancer victim. Brother Mark introduced Valentine to her. She greeted him gravely, made a polite mention of the power plant and said she hoped Kentucky would support his command in the manner of allies who’d bled together, and then she moved on to other business.

  Her handshake was a frail one.

  “You are no doubt wondering,” Brother Mark said. “Some kind of cancer, but it’s not public knowledge. She’s doing her best to get through the Assembly before it claims her.”

  “Brave woman.”

  “From a great old family in Lexington,” Brother Mark said. “Our good Agenda believes that however this goes, the Kurian Order is going to extract their revenge on whoever leads the Assembly. She intends to die quietly this winter and deny them the satisfaction.”

  Once the formalities were taken care of, Brother Mark showed him around the pre-22, poorly lit convention hall, which smelled like musty carpet and popcorn to Valentine’s sensitive nose. A lectern platform stood at one end, with most of the folding chairs around more-or-less arranged to face it. On the platform was a lectern with its own podium and a small desk just above a discreetly placed recorder’s station.

  The Kentuckians, a smattering of representatives from the Evansville area, and even a delegation from the rebels in West Virginia—he’d hoped Ahn-Kha would be among them but the golden Grog would have stood out among the men like an elk in a goat herd—had gathered into three distinct groups.

  As Brother Mark explained it, the biggest faction in the room was the Militant Independents. A mixture of legworm clans and burghers, these Kentuckians believed that Kentucky now stood in a position of strength to negotiate with the Northwest Ordnance north of the Ohio and the Tennessee Kurians and the Georgia Control to the south. They had a provisional charter drawn up that declared Kentucky a self-governing territory with a promise not to engage in operations outside its old United States borders, nor to shelter fugitives or guerrillas.

  “The fugitive law is the real sticking point,” Brother Mark said. “Almost everyone in the legworm clan has a relative or an in-law who fled the Kurian Zone. They’d be grandfathered in, of course, but there’s sympathy for escapees.”

  “How do they know the Kurians will go along with it?”

  “I suspect there’s already been some back-and-forth. Rumor has it a top-brass ring fixer has been negotiating in Louisville.”

  Valentine had heard of “fixers” before: trusted human interme diaries who handled difficulties between the various Kurian Zones. Without their intervention, the Kurians would eliminate each other in the snake-pit world of high-level Kurian politicking.

  Was there a conference going on in, say, Chicago or Cleveland or Atlanta, with Kurian representatives meeting to determine what to do about the chaos in Kentucky? He hoped some stealthy Cat had managed to worm her way in to listen. Or better yet, plant a thermobaric bomb.

  Next in size among the groups at the Assembly was the All-Ins. These delegates represented the legworm clans gathered under “King” Karas last summer for Javelin and their supporting towns, the thinned-down remainders of the Kentucky Alliance who’d done much of the fighting in the destruction of the Moondaggers. They’d already beaten the Moondaggers and were expecting the other delegates to join them in a rebellion well-started, to their minds.

  The Old Deal Caucus was the smallest contingent but, not surprisingly, the most polished and best turned out. They represented Kentucky’s Kurian-occupied cities and those with financial interests in the Kurian system. They had their chairs in a circle in the far east corner, mostly talking among themselves.

  Of all the delegates, these men and women from the Old Deal Caucus may have been the most courageous, to Valentine’s mind. Their lives, and probably those of their families, would be forfeit if the Kurians learned of their presence here. The more hard-line rebels considered them only a baby step away from being open collaborators, and Valentine’s sharp ears picked up one of the All-Ins saying that they should hang the lot of them.

  Whichever way the Assembly ultimately voted, Valentine suspected that these delegates would suffer the most.

  Maybe it was just ego, the desire to show Valentine that there were victories to be won in the political arena as well as on the battlefield, but Sime had facilitated Valentine’s credentialing on the day he was scheduled to address the Assembly on behalf of Southern Command.

  Sime, looking like a walking advertising poster for skin toner, stepped to the podium as th
e Agenda introduced him from her little desk. Sime’s aides had cleared away the Styrofoam cups and the scribble-covered scraps of provisional resolutions and vote-counts littering the podium and the stagelike platform. Much of the audience quieted—not just hushed voices and close-together heads, but true attention. Evidently all were interested in what he had to say.

  “Thank you, Madam Agenda,” Sime said.

  “I come before you as a friend of liberty and an open enemy of the Kurian Order.

  “This Assembly is now addressing the most vital question in human history. What is the future of our species?

  “There are those who counsel for surrender. Certainly, deals may be struck with relative ease. Either the Northwest Ordnance or the Georgia Control would be happy to hand out a few brass rings, sign elaborate guarantees, and offer the usual Kurian promises of better food, housing, and medical care in exchange for the Kurian Order policing of criminals and troublemakers. Are there any voices who consider this their preferred option?”

  The Assembly didn’t produce so much as a cough. Had it been night, Valentine suspected he could have heard crickets outside.

  “The next option is an understanding with the Kurians such as you lived under these past decades: the emasculated autonomy trading produce for peace before your martyred hero, Mr. King Karas, declared himself against our oppressors.”

  Several members stood up and began to applaud. Valentine recognized them as members of Sime’s entourage, sprinkled about the assembly. The others who joined in on the recognition of the dead hero’s name looked enthusiastic enough, but Valentine felt a little sickened by the planted enthusiasm.