Valentine's Rising

by E. E. Knight

  “Go check on her, if you like. Ahn-Kha and I’ll hold the dike.”

  Styachowski was asleep, her leg already in a cast, and after speaking to a nurse about her Valentine made himself comfortable. She was the only one occupying a bed in the infirmary; the real field hospital was on the other side of the river, in the old library. The nurses were keeping busy bandaging bashed fingers and wrapping sprains. A ruptured man groaned as the doctor probed his crotch.

  Valentine made the mistake of putting his feet on her bed. The next thing he knew he was being kicked in the leg.

  “Colonel,” Styachowski said. “You’re snoring.”

  He massaged the bridge of his nose until his eyes felt like focusing again. “Is it light out? How’s the pain?”

  “Better. They gave me a shot and I went out like a light. Codeine or morphine, I think. It’s morning now. We’re still in the dispensary, so I guess the levee held.”

  “The water was receding last night.”

  “New Columbia lives.”

  His stomach growled. “Aren’t they going to feed you something? Wait, I’ll go myself.”

  After retrieving bread, honey, and some kind of cooked cereal from the headquarters kitchen, he returned to Styachowski.

  “You broke a leg once, sir?”

  “No. It wasn’t for lack of trying.”

  “You limp. I thought maybe—”

  “An old wound. Line of duty.”

  Styachowski nodded. “You’ll have to tell the story someday.”

  “When you’re better.”

  “That’ll be the day. I’m always down with something. If it’s not a cold I’ve got a fever.

  There was a long pause in the conversation while they ate. Valentine had never shared a meal in silence with a woman before. She probably needed to sleep again. “Can I get you anything before I go, Wagner?”

  She shook her head, and Valentine relaxed a little, seeing her respond to her assumed name even under the influence of the painkiller. “No, thank you, sir. There is one thing though.”

  “What’s that.”

  Styachowski glanced around the infirmary. “What’s the policy here? Do they shoot the crippled horses, or send them . . . somewhere else?”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re not getting out of my outfit that easy. I’m not going to let anything happen to anyone in my command. Especially to someone hurt doing her duty. The battalion’s not going anywhere without you.”

  She sank back into her pillow. “Thanks, Colonel.”

  “I’ll see if I can get you put back in your tent. You’d be more comfortable there, I think.”

  “Thank you, sir. But not just for that.”

  Valentine arched an eyebrow; she blushed and buried her face in her mush bowl.

  “You wanted to see me, General?” Valentine asked

  Xray-Tango thrust a curious, umbrellalike apparatus into the ground. It was a five-foot pole with four arms projecting from the top. At the end of each arm hung a string with a washer tied to the end. The spear end, currently buried in the dirt of what had been an underpass, was tipped with metal.

  Styachowski was back in the tent she shared with a female sergeant. The ground had dried up, and the river was down feet, not just inches. Mrs. Smalls was expected to deliver within hours. Men still worked the levee, but life was returning to what passed for normal in Consul Solon’s Trans-Mississippi KZ.

  Xray-Tango smiled. “I hope this isn’t a bad time. I’ll try not to keep you too long. Technically, I’m off duty. I keep what used to be called ‘business hours.’ ”

  “Curtiz said that, but he told me that I could find you here right now. I’m used to coming immediately when sent for. I’ll be in first thing tomorrow, if you’d rather, General.”

  “No need. Unless you had plans for the evening.”

  “Maybe a trip to the screen center.”

  The south side of the river had two common rooms with projector screens, one for officers and the other for enlisted ranks. The soldiers lounged on everything from club chairs to old sofas watching the impossibly vivid colors on the pull-down screen. Valentine had put in an appearance at the officers’ screen center and learned about the designer of a new riot bus, a biography of a woman who had produced an astonishing sixteen children, then an inspirational speech by a colonel who had won a brass ring in the rugged mountains in what had been West Virginia. He left to walk past Xray-Tango’s headquarters and poked his head in the enlisted room, where a video of dancing showgirls on a Memphis stage had the packed soldiers drooling. An advertisement for a reenlistment bonus all-expense-paid trip to Memphis played immediately following. He hadn’t gone back since and didn’t intend to.

  “Give the popcorn a miss. I think the butter is reclaimed machine oil.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” Valentine said, “what are you doing?”

  “I started out as a section chief on the railroad. I still like to survey. You do anything to clear your head, Le Sain?”

  “I swing an ax. To cut wood. I like turning big ones into little ones.”

  “I would have guessed music. Something artistic. There’s a look in your eyes that makes me think you’re the creative type. For Christ’s sake, at ease, Le Sain. This is a chat, not an ass-chewing.”

  “Music’s a good guess, sir. My mother used to sing. I had a little . . . recorder, that’s what it was called. A recorder I’d play. Since you said this is just a chat, can I ask what that thing is, sir?”

  “It’s called a groma. It’s an old Roman surveying tool. They used it to make straight lines. Works good for corners, too, but it’s best for staking out roads.” He leaned over, hands on thighs, to eyeball the lines strung with washers at the end, comparing them with the shaft. When he was satisfied that it was level, he sighted down the groma and waved a private holding a flag over a step to the right.

  “No fancy optics,” Xray-Tango went on. “The Romans built their roads straight, using that doohickey.”

  “They were great road builders, weren’t they?”

  “Yes. The old United States interstate system only built about half the miles that the old Roman network had. If you leave total lanes out of account, I imagine. They would have caught up, if they’d lasted as long as the Romans.”

  “Kur took care of that,” Valentine said, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

  Xray-Tango waited for another twitch to pass, then signaled to his private to place the little red-flagged stake. “You’ve had the usual indoctrination, I suppose.”

  “It varies from place to place.”

  “What’s your wrist-cuff crib on it?”

  Valentine had heard the Kurian catechism so often he was able to repeat it without thinking, half believing it. It had been drilled into him, twice weekly, at the community center meetings and Universal Church lectures in his time in the Zone. “Our planet was dying. War. Overpopulation. Pollution. Disease out of control. Mother Earth had a cancer called the human race. They came in and restored balance, brought order to the chaos. Kur did for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. Over half the population has proper food, shelter and health care now; everyone in care has access to the doctor. There are even dentists in a lot of places. New Orleans, for example. In Natchez we had to go to a plumber to get a tooth taken out.”

  “You know the words. You ever think about it?”

  Valentine looked around to see if they were being overheard. “I think history gets written by the winners. The Old Regime had its problems, but they made some beautiful stuff. How many engines they built fifty or sixty years ago still run? Lots. If Kur makes anything that wonderful, they’re keeping it to themselves. What’s made now is clumsy by comparison, even when it works.”

  “The terrorists? The renegades?”

  “They’re right about them. Most of them are just misled. They don’t know the Reapers are like white blood cells in an organism. If a piece of the body isn’t working right, if it doesn’t belong, if it’s dead
wood, it gets taken out to keep the rest of the system healthy.”

  “So you don’t have problems with the system.” He waved his assistant farther away to plant another stake.

  Valentine’s dancing heart missed a step. He’d found that among people who disliked the Kurians, they put a little extra stress on the phrase “the system” as a way of sounding out others who might share unorthodox opinions.

  I’ve been running my mouth again. Is this a trap? Does he want to see how far I’ll step into the noose? The problem was, he liked Xray-Tango for some reason, and when he liked someone, the dam on his garrulousness broke. This time, a breach could cost every man in his command his life. He needed to stuff a sandbag in his mouth, block it up like the river, before his tongue hung them all.

  “I’ve done well under it,” Valentine said, after a pause he hoped didn’t betray him as thinking about his answer too much.

  “Nothing’s perfect under the sun. Come to think of it, even the sun up there isn’t quite round. It’s a bubbling sphere. Sends out some long arms of superheated gas now and then, if you look at it close. But the governors and their Reapers are in the here and now, not millions of miles away. When you’re close to them, just like with the sun, sometimes you see the flaws. But we’re a stronger civilization, thanks to them. Even if the system’s ugly at times, doesn’t work as fairly as it should.”

  “Are you saying something’s wrong with the system, General?”

  “I suppose I am, in a roundabout way. Thing is, if something doesn’t work right, you either throw it away or you fix it. The poor bastards who used to live in this part of the country, they tried to get rid of it. It got rid of them, instead. I’m sure you’ve noticed as you get higher in the ranks it becomes more seductive. You know who Nietzsche was?”

  “Ummm . . .” Valentine knew, but he wanted to let Xray-Tango talk.

  “He talked about supermen, beyond old concepts of good or evil. You get to feel that way after a while. Beyond law, because there really isn’t one, except don’t cross the Kurians. Beyond morality, since there’s no one to censure you—and as long as you do your job right the Higher Ups won’t.”

  Valentine felt his admiration for Xray-Tango ebb. He’d heard too many upper ranks in New Orleans talk this way. The supermen rise, and decide who shall rise behind them. The others have to die. “Freedom,” Valentine said.

  “Yes, it’s damn near perfect freedom. I’ve got a brass ring, so I know what I’m talking about. But you know what? While most use their freedom to put on airs, or lose themselves in drink, or vice—hell, I know a colonel who screws little boys and girls—some of us use it to improve things. You can improve the system. Not all at once, and maybe not outside where you hold whatever authority you’ve climbed to, but you can make a difference. Tell you the truth, Le Sain, it’s pretty satisfying, helping those who don’t have a choice about anything.”

  Valentine stood silently, until it became clear Xray-Tango expected him to say something. “I’m not going to argue with anything you’ve said, sir. But why are you telling me this, General?”

  Xray-Tango turned. He accidentally bumped his groma and, before it fell, caught it up again in a blur of motion. Valentine hadn’t seen anyone move like that, anyone who wasn’t tuned up by the Lifeweavers, that is. Now he knew how Xray-Tango won all those trophies. He wondered if he was looking into the mismatched eyes of a Cat, deep undercover.

  “I’m telling you this, Le Sain, because I’ve taken a shine to you. You’re a good officer. I’ve decided I want you in my command. You’ll have an enviable place in New Columbia—in the new Trans-Mississippi, one day. I want to put men in place who think like I do. Maybe together, we can build something worthwhile. Consul Solon’s got the vision, he just needs men who can help him carry it out.”

  “Thank you, sir. But I’ve promised my command a chance to distinguish themselves, at least doing something other than hunting down the moonshiners.”

  “Are they that eager, or is their commander?”

  “Action means promotion,” Valentine said.

  “You may get your chance soon. We’re going to activate your brigade, refit them as light infantry. Once we’ve gotten through the final push up those mountains, we’ll be in a position to promote you. Maybe even get you the ring you’re sparking on.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “It’s not quite as easy as that. You still need to speak to someone before you formally join AOT Combat Corps. Trust me, you’ll come through with flying colors. You’re intelligent, and you’ve already proven yourself where it counts. He might test you some more, but don’t worry; I passed it and I’m sure you can, too.”

  Xray-Tango shouted to his assistant, “Sun’s dying, son. Let’s call it a day. We’ll finish laying out the quad tomorrow.” He picked up his Roman surveyor and shouldered it. “Hungry, Colonel?”

  “I could eat.”

  “Good. Maybe our little meeting would go better over dinner.”

  Had Consul Solon slipped in early? The rumor, spread up and down the slop-pail lines, was that Solon was due in New Columbia, to check on plans for construction of his new capital city and especially his Consular Residence on the north bank of the Arkansas. He’d heard grumbling from the engineering officers, who were still clearing rubble with a single bulldozer while Solon’s engineers had a crane, backhoe, cement mixer, and “the good dozers” up on his hilltop west of town. Supposedly, plans for the final push against the remnants of Southern Command were to be outlined, giving the generals in the field time to work out the details once the general strategy was handed down. Boats were already ferrying men from the hospital to clear bed space.

  The worst cases went to the seashell-like tower still under construction. Some said that afterward their bones ended up in the cement mortar.

  As they walked back to Xray-Tango’s headquarters, Valentine marshaled his arguments to petition for a role in the offensive; he wanted all the operational knowledge he could get. The fact that Xray-Tango had offered to arm and activate his men could mean that the battalion was to take part.

  The general led him past his sentries. His headquarters still buzzed with activity, though there were fewer present to be busy. Instead of taking Valentine to his corner office the general led him down a set of stairs, along a whitewashed warren of corridors, and around a corner to another sentry. This one had a different uniform than the other rough-and-ready soldiers in the general’s command. He wore a dark, crisp uniform that was a cross between old Marine Corps dress blues and an SS ceremonial uniform. A bullpup assault rifle came to present as the general rapped on the door and opened it.

  So Consul Solon’s got his own version of the Praetorian Guard, Valentine thought as he passed in. He readied his mind for the interview with the new administrator of the Trans-Mississippi.

  Then he stopped. This was an interrogation room. Complete with mirror at one end, a desk and a waiting chair.

  Sitting behind the table in the bare little semicell was a Reaper.

  Chapter Seven

  New Columbia, March of the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order: The Reapers.

  For the residents of any Kurian Zone, fear of the Reapers is as natural an instinct as hunger, thirst, need for sleep or sexual desire. The Reapers come and go as they please, the eyes, ears, mouth and appetite of their vampire masters from Kur. Pale-skinned, yellow-eyed and black-fanged, one might think they had been designed to inspire dread; death incarnate, as painted with the fearful symmetry of Bosch. And one would be right. The Reapers are designed and grown by Kur to be their avatars among the human race, for the process of extracting the vital auras the Kurians use to extend their lifespan into immortality. When animating one of their Reapers, the Reaper is the Kurian and the Kurian a Reaper, the ultimate version of a puppet. The symbiotes consume humans—the Reaper feeding off of blood, and the Kurians restoring themselves through the energy created by all sentient beings. Even a plant gives off vital aura, though
in such minuscule quantities that only one Kurian Valentine had ever heard of managed to exist off of it, and even that was at the cost of lassitude and an addict’s pangs. Like their brother Lifeweavers, divided millennia ago by the great schism over immortality gained through consuming sentients, a Kurian can appear to humans in many forms, but even this is not sufficient to protect their precious live—all the more valuable thanks to their belief that they’ve cheated entropy. So for the dangerous work of mingling with, and feeding off, humans, they employ a team of Reapers, going from consciousness to consciousness and place to place the way a pre-2022 human might flip cable channels.

  The Reapers are instruments built to last. Cablelike muscles are fixed to a skeleton as light as ceramic and strong as high-tensile steel. They’re strong enough to take apart a car without tools, and can run faster than a horse from the time the sun goes down to dawn. They wear heavy robes and cowls of bullet-absorbing material. Daylight is not deadly to either them or the Kurians, though it interferes with the link between puppet and master, and obscures lifesign, the ethereal emanations created by vital aura that the avatars use to home in on prey. So the Reapers restrict their dark purposes to the sunless hours.

  Like the night David Valentine came in for his interview with a vampire.

  “have a seat, mr. knox le sain,” the Reaper hissed. It had a dry, menacing voice, like old bones grinding against each other. Its skin had all the life and animation of a rubber mask; its heavy robes had a faint mustiness, but a sharper smell—like hospital disinfectant—came from the sleeve holes and cowl. Piss-colored eyes, as cold and unblinking as a lizard’s, fixed on him. The Reaper’s gaze escorted him into the room.

  “Colonel Knox Le Sain, my lord,” Valentine corrected, sitting in the armless chair across from evil. The presence of a Reaper made the everyday motion into a fall. It was poised, still, and every instinct in Valentine’s gut told him that it would spring into action, a praying mantis going after an unwary fly. He wondered how many fearful tells could be read on his face, and tried to assume the complacency of one who is used to conversation with a Reaper.