Winter Duty (26 page)

Sime, looking like a walking advertising poster for skin toner, stepped to the podium as the 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.

Sime nodded solemnly, looking toward the circled chairs of the Old Deal Caucus. “The rightness of his decision, I think, is not questioned by anyone in this Assembly, even if the outcome was not all that we in the Free Republics hoped would come of our alliance.

“Are there any who think that all the blood shed across Kentucky between the Alliance clans and Southern Command’s forces was wasted?”

“Madam Agenda,” a delegate said, upon being recognized and permitted to speak. “The representative from through the woods and over the river forgets that Kentucky is more than just legworm ranchers. There are farms, mines, towns, and cities. Not all of us suffered reprisals. Even with the troubles up north, the Nashville Kur left us in peace, and the Georgia Control even pulled back from the borderlands.”

A white-haired oldster cleared his throat. “Maybe the vamps don’t know which way we’re jumping, or even whether we’re gonna jump, and they don’t want to startle us. It’s the sitting frog that’s easiest to catch.”

The Agenda pounded her gavel at her own small desk at the edge of the stagelike platform. “The delegate from Bowling Green will keep order.”

Sime asked for permission to continue his address, and she nodded.

“There is a third alternative, one pursued by the Ozark Free Territory throughout its history, though we have recently been joined by Texas and much of Oklahoma and part of Kansas into the Free Republics. It is both the hardest and the easiest course: that of resistance.

“I say hardest because it means fighting, funerals, constant vigilance, loss of precious blood and matériel. Empty bellies in winter and blistered hands in summer. It has long been said that freedom is not free, but in the United Free Republics we’ve learned that those who desire freedom pay a bill more costly than the alternatives of supplication or cooperation. Freedom is a more exacting taskmaster than any Kurian Lord.”

Sime had worked up a good head of steam. Valentine realized why he survived as elected leaders came and went. “Yet it is also the easiest choice, for we can meet the terrible reckoning with a clear conscience that we remain human beings, dignity intact, our births and deaths ordered only by our Lord on his Eternal Throne.

“We will not be chickens in a coop or pigs in a pen. No, we’re the wolves in the forest, the bears in their caves, and those who would have pelts made from us must beware.

“While our cause is yours, I must tell you that for the moment, all that Southern Command can promise is that we will tie down as many of the enemy forces as we can on our borders. We’ve suffered grave losses recently. We need a few years’ respite to catch our breath before taking the offensive again. All I can offer the Assembly is moral support and what our forces near Evansville are able to recruit and train.”

The Assembly hid their feelings well, but Valentine could see consternation in the All-In faction.

They applauded, politely, and Valentine could only imagine the reception Sime would have received if he’d promised a whole division of Guards, complete with an artillery train and armored-car support.

“I’m glad you didn’t overpromise,” Valentine said later as he and Sime watched Brother Mark go from group to group to exchange a few words with the faction leadership.

“It’s the New Realism, Valentine.”

“Putting ‘new’ in front of anything as tenuous as a word like ‘realism’ sounds like an excuse rather than a strategy.”

“Nevertheless,” Sime said coolly, “I have to work within the parameters of the possible, just as you do.”

“And you agree with this New Realism?”

“Of course not. We can’t beat the Kurians playing defense.”

Either Sime was an unusually artful liar or he’d finally revealed something of himself beyond an official presence. “Something’s been bothering me for years,” Valentine said. “I hope you don’t mind if I ask.”

“Shoot,” Sime said.

“I’ve met a lot of men who shave their skulls, but your head looks . . . polished. What’s your secret?”

Sime’s face broke into a wide smile. He flicked his forefinger down his nose. “I’ll loan you my razor and we can go over to a washbasin—”

“On you it looks distinguished. I would look like a mental patient.”

“If I let my real hair grow, I’d look much older. Be proud of yours. Not enough gray yet to dismay the twenty-year-olds.”

“I never had luck with twenty-year-olds, even when I was twenty,” Valentine said. “Where will you go next?”

“You know that joke the Denver Freehold tells about the UFR, don’t you?” Sime asked.

“What’s that?”

“
Too near for a penal colony, too big for an insane asylum, and too fractious to be a nation
. I heard a similar joke in the Mexican desert, just not so family friendly in language. I’ll return to our insane penal colony nation.”

“Can’t say that I like you, sir. But I’m glad you’re with the team,” Valentine said.

“The feeling is mutual,” Sime said. “By the way, did you enjoy that soap?” The first time they’d met, when Valentine was sitting in prison awaiting trial for the murder of some Quisling prisoners, he’d complimented Sime on the unique smell of his sandalwood soap. Sime had presented him with a supply before the launch of Javelin. Valentine found it’s aroma relaxing, especially when worked into a fragrant lather in a steaming field-tub of water, and had used it frequently during the retreat whenever they paused long enough for a hot bath.

“Sadly, yes. Used it up last summer.”

“I’ve a spare bar. I’ll drop it by your fort on the way out. Oh, I’m taking Moytana back with me. The new broom wants a large reserve of Wolves ready to be shifted at need, and Moytana’s due for an important promotion. Besides, his replacement has arrived.”

Rumor had it the Assembly would vote before the first day of winter. Valentine found a reason to hang about the convention hall, hoping to run into Brother Mark in one of his circuits.

Valentine enjoyed the late fall air, chill but sunny. It reminded him of the Octobers of his youth in Minnesota. He wondered if the chill was characteristic of Kentucky this time of year.

A rather decrepit legworm stood facing the river. It was bare of all baggage, of course. Even the heavy saddle chair had been stripped off, and sheets of plastic tarp protected the legworm from the wind. Battle pads were on the side facing the street, with VOTE FOR FREEDOM = VENGEANCE painted on the mattresslike panels in Day-Glo colors.

Valentine felt for the legworm. In cold weather, their instinct was to gather in big heaps, forming domes that warmed and protected their eggs as living nests.

This dilapidated old creature had hide hanging off every which way and looked clearly uncomfortable on asphalt, glistening probes out to smell the air.

Valentine marked an ancient plastic refuse container holding a mix of leaves and refuse, probably from the quick cleanup of the convention center. Valentine picked it up and dumped it under the legworm’s front end.

Where was the legworm’s pilot? He could at least feed his beast.

“Wonder which end is worse, sometimes,” a delegate said as he puffed politely nearby on a cigarette.

The legworm happily sucked up the refuse. Paper would be digested as regularly as the crackling leaves.

Valentine looked down its torn, perforated side. Skin was falling away in patches from—

Nature abhors regularity, and something about the pattern on the legworm’s side facing the building disturbed Valentine.

Valentine quit breathing, froze. Sixteen holes in the legworm’s side. He lifted a piece of loose skin, saw stitching in the legworm’s hide.

He looked around, kicked some more refuse under the legworm’s nose. He marked rings around the light sensors that passed for eyes. The creature wasn’t old; it was ill cared for and badly fed. It had clearly been ridden on very little feed recently.

The legworm’s anchor detached with a casual press to the carabiner attaching the drag chains to the fire hydrant serving as a hitching post.

“You!” he called to the smoker on the corner of the main drag. “Get everyone back from this side of the building. This worm’s a bomb!”

Valentine unsheathed his knife and prodded the creature in its sensitive underside.

Valentine crept along, keeping low in the gutter, moving the legworm along with shallow stabs. Clear fluid ran down the knife blade, making his hand sticky.

The legworm angled left, drawing away from the building as it slowly turned from the conference center, tracing a path as gradual a curve as an old highway on-ramp.

Duckwalking made his bad leg scream with pain. Valentine waited for the cataclysm that would snuff his life out like a candle in a blast of air.

The hungry legworm hit some of the overgrowth at the end of street. What had once been a pleasant river walk had largely collapsed into brush and small trees. The starving legworm settled into a hurried munch.

Valentine, launching off his good leg, used a saddle chain to swing up and over the beast and dashed for the convention center.

Whoever had spread the alarm didn’t do a very good job. Several delegates, their ID cards whipped by the wind, ran out the doors on the worm’s side.

“Not that way,” Valentine yelled, waving them toward the main street.

Valentine had his face in the pavement. Later, he was told by witnesses that some kind of charges had fired out of one side of the beast like cannons firing in an old pirate movie. Most of the charges fell in the Ohio, detonating in white fountains like a long series of dynamite fishing charges. Valentine, deafened, felt the patter of worm guts all around.

When the thunder stopped, he stood up. The worm had been opened messily, mostly in the direction of the river. Part of the northwest corner of the conference center looked like it had been struck by artillery fire.

Troops, police, and citizenry were running in from all directions. Valentine went to work getting help to the figures knocked off their feet or staggering around in a daze, turning chaos into order.

Valentine felt something squish and slip underfoot as he directed the confusion. He glanced down, expecting a brown smear of dog feces, and realized he was standing on a length of human intestine.