Choice of the Cat

Fort Smith on the Arkansas River, March: hell on the border reads the sign hung just beneath the foot-tall stencils of the post's official marker. The slogan goes back to Fort Smith's days as a station at the edge of the Indian Territory, when prisoners brought in from the Nations waited in a dank series of cells for their turn before the Honorable Judge Parker, U. S. Grant's "hanging judge."



Now the buildings around the Reynolds Bell Tower-the bell still serves as the post's alarm system; it last rang in the fall of '66 during an air raid by harpies-still see their share of prisoners. Runaways from the Gulag, deserters, captured Quislings, and troublemakers from the western half of the Free Territory are brought here to be interrogated, and either sent downriver into the Free Territory or brought up before a military court.



Fort Smith is the responsibility of the Guards, the uniformed defenders of the Free Territory. It marks the end of the commercial line on the Arkansas River and four eastern roads. There is a civilian presence supporting the soldiery and schools and a hospital to accommodate them. It is a hard-duty station. Only the posts south of St. Louis on the Free Territory's border see more alerts and action. Hardly a month goes by without the departure of a regiment or two of Guard infantry with their supports to cover some portion of the border against a real or threatened attack out of the Kurian Zone. Lesser patrols depart and return at reports of everything from Reapers to horse thieves, downed telephone wires and hayloft arsonists.



The graveyard south of Belle Point is filled with the Guards who came back in the morgue wagons.



Duty at Fort Smith is not without its diversions. Traveling performers entertain at the Best Center-singing groups and acting companies inevitably called the "Worst Enters" by the sarcastic soldiers. The women at Miss Laura's, the most opulent of Fort Smith's brothels, provide assorted horizontal refreshments, but unlike the free Best Center, it takes a week's pay to enjoy a few hours of diversion. The local beer, Smith-Knoble, is well thought of throughout the Territory, and entrepreneurs who don't mind the occasional sound of artillery fire operate restaurants and pubs.



Hunters in from the KZ stick to a few boarding houses and pubs that welcome their kind. Neither civilians nor Guards, they are nominally subordinated to the Officer Commanding Fort Smith while within the broad boundaries of the post. But something about the Hunters, even in civilian dress, makes the civilians wary and Guard hackles rise. Perhaps it is the intense stares or the too-quick-for-the-eye flinches at unexpected movement or the tribal clannishness that sets them apart. But when word comes that a Reaper is on the border, Hell on the Border is glad to have them there.



The orders in Valentine's dispatch pouch that read "Survivors leave ending 9MAY2067" amounted to an epitaph to Foxtrot Company.



It meant the Second Wolf Regiment considered the company destroyed as a fighting force; even those still un-wounded after Little Timber would be distributed to other units. If they decided to rebuild the company, he'd get a second set of orders soon enough. As the senior unwounded officer, he might even be selected for command. If so, he'd try to get a few of the veteran NCOs, perhaps arguing that "third time's the charm" for ill-fated Foxtrot, now decimated twice in three years.



After getting the flimsy, Valentine decided to spend his leave in Fort Smith. It would be easy for orders and mail to find him there; he could visit the library; perhaps he'd even be able to spend a few days fishing in the river or one of the lakes around the post if he could obtain a skiff, rod, and reel. He needed quiet and solitude to help the memories of Little Timber settle.



He'd thought about spending his leave in Weening. Molly had invited him to visit in her letter, but she was no doubt enmeshed in a celebration of her engagement or wedding plans-he'd seen in the spring issue of the Service Bulletin that her swain had been promoted. Molly didn't need Valentine hanging around like the proverbial skeleton at the feast. Her beau might even consider it an insult.



The part of him that wanted to get away was strong enough that he considered fleeing to Hal Steiner's enclave in the Arkansas bayou country. Frat had written that Steiner's unusual community of man and Grog had thrived since he'd first visited it years ago. But Steiner's independent land wasn't part of Southern Command's communication system. He'd have to journey to the nearest post to check for orders.



So he settled on Fort Smith. Besides, he had another report to make. This time he'd do it in person.



The afternoon he arrived he first went to the communications office on the old university grounds. There he reported his presence in person to the duty officer, and by phone to Second Wolf Regiment Headquarters. With that done, he drew a portion of his accumulated pay and was a free Wolf.



He asked about the town at the civilian liaison officer's station, but the sergeant behind the open, circular desk spoke with such enthusiasm about the food and beds at a particular boarding house that Valentine decided he was getting a kickback. He just picked up a mimeographed map and walked toward town.



Blue-steel storm clouds rolled in the distance, so he decided to look around town while the weather held. There were Guards in their charcoal-gray uniforms everywhere. Those on duty moved about under camouflage ponchos, rifles slung and helmets bumping from their hooks on their belts. As he got farther away from the fort, he met more off-duty soldiers, undershirts white in the spring overcast, thumbs hooked in their suspenders, hats pushed back to reveal close-cropped hair. The men and women of the Guards clustered about the pubs and markets in groups, laughing and talking with animated energy. Valentine with his dirty buckskins, mud-crusted ponytail, and meager possessions rolled in his hammock felt like a country hare wandering amongst hyperactive city squirrels.



Constant war had not been kind to Fort Smith. Every other lot was a reclaimed "rubble garden" with neat shelves of ruined masonry supporting wildflowers and surrounded by bushes. A few old homes were still standing in a section of town the map called the Grove. One of them, Donna's Den, was listed on the map as a boarding house. He'd heard the name from one of the Foxtrot Wolves. After getting his bearings off the Immaculate Conception Church, he found it.



Donna's Den was a white two-story house with an antique iron railing running around the roof. There was a chicken run and a garden in back. The front had a flower garden, with a pair of wooden sofas and a lounge chair sitting among the blossoms. The outdoor furniture supported domestic animals. Cats snoozed, and a dog twitched an ear as he passed. He smelled pies baking.



His knock on the screen door summoned a shirtless boy who thundered down the stairs. The boy had modified a laden tool belt with shoulder straps so it would go around his tiny waist. "Lieutenant Valentine, Second Regiment, Foxtrot Company," the boy said, looking at Valentine's collar tabs and sewn-in nameplate. "But the tunic is cut Zulu Company style, Lieutenant, sir. What's the story?" The boy sounded bored.



"David is fine, to a veteran like you." That got a brief smile out of him. "Do I speak to you about a room?"



"Mom!" the boy bellowed over his shoulder before vanishing back upstairs. "One of Dad's kind."



Donna Walbrook had flour in her hair and on her overalls. Valentine's nose picked up the scent of strawberries. She wiped her hands on a towel as she came to the door, showing more enthusiasm for Valentine's presence than the boy had.



"Brian has no manners," she apologized. She had a nice, though practiced, smile and a good deal of ragged beauty. "He's got his teeth into building armoires. Can I offer you a room?"



"Until the second week of May, if it's not inconvenient."



"No such thing for a boy in buckskin. Come into the parlor-just leave your bundle at the foot of the stairs."



It turned out the parlor had a small shrine to Hank Walbrook under a framed commendation letter. Valentine looked over a photograph; it showed a Wolf with an old United States Army beret set at a jaunty angle on his head. Walbrook's belt and parang lay in a case, a few rifles- Valentine noted that they smelled of gun oil and appeared well cared for-hung over the fireplace. She poured Valentine water out of a pitcher and presented him wim a glass.



"Your husband?" he asked, feeling he already knew all the answers.



"Yes. A sergeant, First Regiment. Captain Hollis was his commanding officer, but I understand he's retired."



Valentine had never heard of him.



"My husband was killed in February of '55."



"I'm sorry."



She saw him glance upstairs as he did the math. "Brian isn't from Hank, but he thinks he is. I'll explain it to him when he's old enough to work it out. We have two other Wolves staying at the moment, convalescent leave," she added, putting the smile back on. "I'm sure you'll be eager to meet them."



"I would, Mrs. Walbrook."



"First rule of this house is to call me Donna."



She went through the other rules. They were brief and clear, militarily precise, and covered visitors, mealtimes, the gun locker, and the necessity for stoking the boiler if there was to be enough hot water. After negotiation involving Valentine reducing some of her cordwood to kindling, they settled on twelve dollars Southern Command script a day for his room and two meals. If he did his own bedding and laundry. Lunch he could scrounge, buy, or have for free if he cared to walk all the way to the Guard canteen.



"Any questions? I've been here fifteen years. There's nothing about the town I don't know."



Valentine wondered how to phrase his request. She wasn't officially part of Southern Command, but-



"Out with it, young man. I've heard it all." She covered her ample deralletage with a hand. "You got a case of something you don't want down in your Q file? I won't scream and faint." Her eyes sparkled with interest.



"There's supposed to be a Command Intelligence Division office about somewhere. I've seen bulletins issued from them, and the Western Border ones are marked 'Fort Smith.' But I didn't see it on the guide at the Fort, or the town map." He held out his map. "You wouldn't know where it is?"



She looked disappointed. "It's hardly a secret. They just don't have enough people to staff an information desk for every Tom, Dick, and Jane off the riverboat who saw a strange footprint."



"I need to file a report, in person." He'd tried through channels once, and nothing came of it. "It's more than a footprint."



"They're in the old museum building. Three stories, red brick, curved windows at the top. There's still a nice little one-man museum on the first floor. Schoolkids and recruits spend some time there for lectures. CID has the rest. You go in through the museum."



"Thank you."



"And there's a wonderful laundry just catty-corner. Tucks, it's called, and they will make those buckskins look like they've just been sewn. They can get the bloodstains out. Along with the ... ahem ... natural masculine odors."



The museum filled out about one quarter of the first floor of the building Donna had described. Valentine had bummed a pair of jeans and a clean shirt off one of the convalescing Wolves-Gupti had a head wound and Salvador a knee brace; Salvador's advice was to borrow from Gupti because there was every chance of him not remembering he'd ever lent out his clothes. Valentine borrowed clothes from Salvador and reported to the fort to let them know where he was staying; then went into town.



The museum was on his map.



He spent a few minutes chatting with the curator, a one-legged veteran with a solid build and a pistol in a quick-release holster-a former Bear. A single key dangled from a breakaway chain around his neck; Valentine suspected it was for a case of captured assault rifles.



He took a polite look at the exhibits, tracing everything from the last newsmagazines, stained and dog-eared, covering the earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanoes of 2022 before Big R hit. The next cabinet covered the Ravies plague-photographs of wild mobs caught in action, cities aflame, stacked corpses riddled with bite marks and bullet holes. Then the hopeful headlines from the few remaining newspapers about the Kurians, visitors from another world who had come to restore order to a shattered civilization. Alongside these were pamphlets, amateurish and smeared and filled with horrific sketches about how the Kurians were the cause of it all. There were drawings of the robed Crisis Governors with captions asserting that the "Reapers" were nothing but death-collectors, vampirelike creatures who fed on humans for their masters.



Then came a few fuzzy shots on bad stock of the Lost War. Drawings of the Grogs, a polyglot of beings brought by the Kurians from other worlds. Blasted tanks. Crashed planes. Mushroom clouds. Ruins. Flags being hauled down as bases went up in smoke to save them from capture.



A room, shielded from the rest of the museum by a black curtain, was devoted to the Kurian Order as practiced across the planet save for a few remote Freeholds. Valentine decided not to look in mere. He'd seen enough of the KZ wim his own eyes.



Valentine stated his business. The custodian picked up a phone and dialed, and he told Valentine one of the "upstairs men" would be with him in a minute.



* * *



Bone Lombard was about Valentine's age and had thick glasses. He introduced himself as a CID "filter."



"What's that?" Valentine asked.



"I'll show you."



He took Valentine back to the loading dock. Like a big garage, the dock had a series of metal doors on rails, a wide-open interior devoid of anything but structural supports. Painted lines crisscrossed the floor. The lines organized a sea of wire crates and metal trays filled with documents, binders, folders, and books.



"We get a lot of captured paperwork," Lombard said. "We meaning a big we-Southern Command. Anything that isn't obviously useful, like the details of a column, where and when it'll be, ends up being carted here. We get everything from Quisling cookbooks to personal letters, complete with perfume and snips of hair. I don't want to bore you with all the procedures, but the filters read through it." He waved at another young man and a woman. The other filters sat on wheeled chairs with a built-in desk, pencils handy under a droplight hanging from a hook attached to the back of the chair, going through loose paper. "It can sometimes give us a picture of what's really going on outside our borders. Where there are shortages, weak spots."



"You divine trends from paperwork?"



"Once, based on requisitions that the logistics commandos found in a hospital, we saw that huge amounts of bandages and surgical supplies were going to Shawnee Oklahoma. Turned out that the Fassler Revolt was in full swing."



Valentine remembered hearing something about it while he was studying for his lieutenant's bars at Pine Bluff. "It ended badly."



"Fassler and all his men got hanged, yes."



"I heard crucified," Valentine said.



"Maybe. Couldn't get them enough guns in time. The Oklahomans really locked down the counties in revolt. But again, if it weren't for some paperwork, we might not even know the name Fassler."



"I've got a name for you. What do you know about the Twisted Cross?"



Lombard shrugged. "I don't know. Let's index it."



One of Lombard's associates kicked out sideways and sent his chair-desk rolling down an alley between the boxes. A white cat jumped out of the way.



The "index" turned out to be an old library card catalog in a separate room, thickly insulated behind a safelike door. There were several of the huge wooden cabinets filled with index-card-size drawers. Valentine opened a drawer; under typed headings there were handwritten notations in a mix of letters and numbers.



Gannet, Pony A. (Capt. "Chanute Leadership Corps")



MIL-KAN ACT206928 11NOV61



Append CAP -6 INT -15( m, v) EX 61-415



"Don't even try," Lombard said. He took the card. "Seems this Pony-strange first name-Gannet was a captain from a Quisling body called the 'Chanute Leadership Corps.' Action Report 206-928 describes the fight. You see the date. Looks like he was taken, and there was something interesting about the capture-it appears as a separate appendix. His interrogation is also appended, and copies went to Division V, which deals with atrocities, and M, which deals with people missing in action. They must have caught him more-or-less red-handed at something. He was executed in '61 sometime between eleventh November and the end of the year. That's pretty fast nowadays. If you go to a card for the 'Chanute Leadership Corps,' you'll see-"



"I'm impressed. But the Twisted Cross?"



"Quisling unit, I bet," Lombard said.



"Yes."



Lombard went to a file drawer. "They have any other names?"



"I don't know. I wrote out my report. You want to read it?"



"Sure, in a sec. Okay ... Twisted Cross. They're designated a Quisling unit. Looks like they get around by train. That's odd. They're cross-referenced to Eastern Division."



"Why's it odd?"



"They provide railroad security, maybe?"



"Why is it odd?" Valentine asked again.



"Usually Quisling units stay in one area, under a lord or a group of lords. You wouldn't find the late Captain Gan-net's Chanute Leadership Corps operating in, say, Illinois. Unless that particular Kurian family was invading Illinois, I suppose."



Valentine gave him the copy of his supplemental report that he'd attached to his description of the battle at Little Timber. Lombard looked through the three pages at the rate of ten seconds a page.



"Aren't you going to read it?"



"I did. Shall I quote the key passage? Ha-hem ... 'The destruction of Lieutenant Caltagirone's platoon and Smoke's report of heavily armed Reapers employed in groups as a cohesive fighting force demand investigation. Any information on the General-'"



"Sorry. I wrote a report on these guys once before. I might as well have tossed it in a swamp."



"Fear not. I'm sure it lives forever in an index just like this one, so it can be located in a climate-controlled warehouse. Wish we filters got the same treatment-you should smell this place in August. Let's go talk to Doug; he's our Quisling expert for everything west of the Mississippi."



As he followed Lombard to the stairway, Valentine congratulated himself for passing through the filter.



Lombard took him to an office this time. Doug Metzel had a nameplate on his door, which opened only partway thanks to the volume of binders in his office. They lined shelves, filled corners, and cut off the light from the room's big, arch-topped window. A cat napped in the sun atop one labeled bridge security. But the man himself wasn't in.



"Two weeks' leave. His mother-cancer, I guess," his assistant reported. She was a slight woman, perhaps in her late thirties, and wore a Guards uniform. Her nameplate read sgt. lake.



"Shows you how often I make it to the third floor," Lombard said.



"What is it, Bone?"



"I've got a Wolf just in from ... ah ..."



"Lake of the Cherokees," Valentine supplied.



"Memory's great short-term." Lombard shrugged. "Five minutes later, it's mush. Comes from doing sort after sort after sort."



Lombard made further introductions. Metzel's Southern Command associate shook hands with Valentine. "I'm honored," she said gravely. Valentine hadn't heard that expression very often from either a civilian or a Southern Command Guard. He wasn't quite sure how to respond.



"It's a pleasure," he said.



"I'm Doug's liaison, and I'm filling in while he's gone. What do you have, Lieutenant? Sit down and give me the highlights."



Valentine sat across from her and began with his first encounter with the Twisted Cross swastika logo when he'd seen it on a canoe belonging to some Reapers hunting a Cat named Eveready in the Yazoo Delta. The Illinois Quislings who feared an organization with that insignia called the Twisted Cross. The Twisted Cross man he'd met in Chicago who spoke of a comrade who "fed" and suffered a bad leg wound. The man's own feeding, somehow inspired by the others. Then more recently, Smoke's description of Reapers with guns.



She listened attentively and brought down a binder. Inside it were pages of snipped insignia from uniforms. She consulted the legend in the front and then opened it before Valentine. "Like this?"



The card within had a black piece of fabric attached. On the fabric was a white piece of metalwork, a reversed swastika.



"That's their insignia. I saw one just like it in the Zoo in Wisconsin. The owner... he fed like a Reaper." Valentine's voice cracked, embarrassing him.



The liaison and Lombard grimaced. "Maybe just a sicko? Monkey see, monkey do?"



"I only saw him for a few minutes. He was definitely Twisted Cross."



She made a note on a pad of paper. "We don't know much about them. We think it's railroad security. They've been spotted in a couple different places." She looked in another folder. "Looks like the current theory is they run what we call 'Q-trains.' Trains filled up with soldiers that look just like normal cargo trains. You Wolves or whatever hit the train, thinking you're going to score some tires and penicillin, and out jumps a regiment of men. But there are no action reports having to do with the Twisted Cross attacking Southern Command, so we can only theorize about methods or numbers."



"It's got to be more than that," Valentine said. "There were border trash in Illinois that were scared-"



She turned the book around and looked at it again. "I don't doubt it. Lots of Quislings use Nazi insignia. Trying to be tough or scary." She waved at the binders. "I can name half a dozen groups that use that crap. There's a gigantic biker gang in California's Silicone Alley that has SS death's-heads and the twin lightning bolts plastered everywhere. Up in Idaho, there are brownshirts with those goofy cavalry pants and boots. The Quislings open a history book, find something that looks intimidating, and copy it. Hell, even our own guys-Colonel Sark's Flying Circus in the Cascades uses the Iron Cross as a decoration for valor. I'm sure there are others in the East; the West is my field."



"Will you read my report?" Valentine asked.



"It's informative," Lombard added.



"Of course."



Valentine passed it to her. "While I'm here."



She smiled at him. "You always been a Wolf, Valentine? Seems like you don't trust our department."



"Always been a Wolf, unless you count my year in the Labor."



"The millstones of Southern Command grind slow but exceedingly fine," she said. She rotated a pencil in her mouth as she read, looked up, and extracted it. "Sorry. Old habit."



Lake finished it, put a star in the upper righthand corner. "That means 'interesting,'" she explained. "I'm kicking it higher in the food chain."



"What would two stars mean?"



"Immediate threat," Lombard said.



"I don't see anything like that here. Southern Command has other fires nearer its foot to piss on. But thank you for bringing it to our attention. I'll see if I can find that Cat's report; I'll send them on together. Thanks for bringing him up, Bone."



Valentine had done all he could. Perhaps he'd given his story enough inertia to keep the Twisted Cross moving through Lake's millstones. He thanked her for her time, and Lombard escorted him to the door. A calico cat rubbed itself against his boot as Lombard fumbled with his key.



"What's with the cats, Bone?"



"Mice. They love to eat paper. We've got a lot of it here."



"Do you think what I came in with is important?"



Lombard took off his glasses and cleaned them with his shirttail. He didn't bother tucking it back in. "Yeah. Anything that can surround and kill a platoon of Wolves is dangerous. But your Cat's story-it's hearsay, kinda. Operating out in the KZ for months on your own, it's enough to queer anyone's judgment. I've read a few Cat reports.... Some sound like the products of a disordered mind."



"Will you make sure the paper trail stays in view?"



"I'm just a filter, like I said. I'll do what I can."



They shook on it at the museum door.



The weather turned sunny, almost hot. Valentine sweated on his walk back to the boarding house.



"You missed a courier, Valentine," Donna Walbrook said when he returned to the Den.



She handed him a sealed envelope. "Bad news when it comes special delivery." .



He read the sender's imprint. It was from the colonel's office, Second Wolf Regiment. Maybe they'd cut his survivor's leave short so he could take command of a reborn Foxtrot Company. Foxtrot deserved to live after the fight they'd put up at Little Timber. He broke the seal.



Mrs. Walbrook watched him, saw his face, patted him as he read. "Sorry, son. Someone you know die?"



"I've got orders to report to Montgomery next week." The rest of the words were hard to say; he had to force them out of a thick throat. "Under escort. There's a court of inquiry being formed to investigate my actions. I'm subject to court-martial."