Valentine's Exile

The Ohio River Valley, September: North of the bluegrass in the upper reaches of the Ohio River lies a stream-crossed country of woods and limestone hills. Rust-belt ruins, dotted with an occasional manufacturing plant, line the river. North of the river is the Great Lakes Ordnance, a network of Kurian principalities in a federation of unequal mini-states huddled around the middle Great Lakes. South of the Ohio are coal mines and mill towns, under wary Kurians who have staked out claims bordering on the lands of the legworm ranchers.



No one much likes, or trusts, anyone else. But this is the industrial heartland of the eastern half of North America, such as it is, producing engines, garments, footwear, tires, even a bush-hopping aircraft or two, along with the more mundane implements of a nineteenth-century technology. Their deals are made in New York their "deposits" are exchanged in Memphis, and their human workers are secured by mercenary bands of Grogs hired from and directed by the great generals of Washington, DC. As long as they produce, even slowly and inefficiently, the material the rest of the Kurian Order needs, and keep the Baltimore and Ohio lifelines open, their position is secure.



It was here that David Valentine lost his forlorn hope of a trail.



* * * *



Valentine, Price, Bee, Ahn-Kha, and Duvalier stood at the Laurelton Station a week later in a blustery rain.



Zak and the other Bulletproofs departed after depositing them in the care of a man named McNulty, a River Rat trader and "labor agent" friendly to the tribe on the south bank of the Ohio.



They'd ridden into a shantytown right in the shadow of a grain-silo Kurian Tower-only the most desperate would resort to such real estate in broad daylight-with Price's mule happily munching hay in a flatbed cart being towed by the powerful legworm. After introductions at the River Rat's anchored barge-house and one last round of Bulletproof bourbon in farewell, Zak turned over six full legworm egg hides, cured and bound in twine. Valentine only parted with them after McNulty gave them Ohio ID cards, ration books, and an up-to-date map of the area. The map was annotated with riverbank areas that were hiring and cheap lodgings-all with the password "BMN."



McNulty probably took a cut of any business he referred.



With a week's familiarity, Valentine could see why the legworm-egg leather was so valuable. It breathed well, and though it became heavy in the rain the wet didn't permeate to the inside.



They followed the riverside train tracks to the turn-in for Laurelton. Price told them what he could about the north side of the river. He had returned fugitives to the Ohio authorities once or twice, but had never been much beyond the river. Bee stuck close to him here under the somber sky-autumn had arrived.



The residents kept to their towns. Patrolmen on bicycles, most armed with nothing more than a sap, rode the towns and highways. The officers looked at Price's Kalashnikov as they passed-the rest of their longarms were wrapped in blankets on the mule-but made no move to question them. Valentine saw only one vehicle, a garbage truck full of coal.



The ground reminded Valentine of some of the hills near the Iron Range in Minnesota, low and jumbled and full of timber. But where the forests in the Northwoods had stood since before the Sioux hunted, the forests in Ohio had sprung up since 2022, breaking up and overrunning the little plots carved out by man.



So when they cautiously turned the bends nearing Laurelton, only to find more windowless houses and piles of weed-bearing brick, he couldn't help feeling deflated.



There was a station, if a single siding counted as a station. The track continued north, but the height of the weeds, trees, and bracken suggested that a train hadn't passed that way in years. Valentine even checked the rust on the rails to be sure. In his days as a Wolf he'd seen supply caves hidden by saplings and bushes specifically pulled up and replanted to discourage investigation.



Deep oxidation. He could scrape it off with a thumbnail.



"Fool's hope," Valentine said. "Rooster either lied or didn't have correct information from the Kurians. Maybe they divert the trains to keep the final destination secret."



Price unloaded his mule to give the animal a breather. "The debt is settled. I feel for you, David. Long way to come to find nothing. It's happened to me."



Post would know he'd tried his best. How many vanished a year in the Kurian Zone? A hundred thousand? A half million? But how do you laugh in a legless man's face and tell him the last rope he's clinging to isn't tied to anything but a wish?



The narrow road bordering the track was in pretty poor condition. It certainly wasn't frequently traveled.



Why here?



Price filled the mule's nosebag and Bee rooted inside one of the abandoned houses for firewood. Duvalier stretched herself out next to a ditch and took off her boots.



The hills around Laurelton were close. A hundred men, properly posted, could make sure that whatever transpired here couldn't be seen by anything but aircraft or satellites.



Ahn-Kha poked around the road, examining potholes. "Strange sort of road, my David," Ahn-Kha said.



Valentine joined him. Like the tracks, it ended in weeds to the north. The south part-



-had been patched.



Valentine trotted a few hundred yards south.



There was a filled gap in the road at a washout, recent enough for the asphalt to still be black-blueish, rather than gray-green. The Kurians weren't much on infrastructure maintenance even in their best-run principalities; they didn't like anything that traveled faster than a Reaper could run. . . .



Valentine examined the weeds and bracken bordering the station. Sure enough, there were three gaps, definite paths leading from the tracks to the road. Quick-growing grasses had sprung up, but no brambles or saplings, though they were thick on the west side of the tracks.



"A farewell feast," Price said, revealing a sausage wrapped in wax paper and a loaf of bread. "Unless you want to come back with us."



Valentine handed him Everready's Reaper teeth. "More than earned. If I had another set I'd give them to you, with my initials written on them."



"If you see the old squatter again, let him know I appreciate being able to repay the debt. What are you going to do next?"



Valentine rubbed his chin. He needed a shave. "You said you'd brought in men to the Ordnance?"



Price consulted a scuffed leather notebook and extracted a card from a pocket. "Yup. I'm 31458 here in Ohio." He passed it to Valentine.



The card had the number, and some kind of seal featuring a man in a toga holding one hand over his heart and the other outstretched, over a pyramid with an eye at the top. "Meaning what?"



Price shrugged. "Dunno. They always recorded my number when I brought a man in, though."



"How hard is it to get one of those?"



"I didn't even know I had to have one. They gave it to me when I brought my first man in. I was going to stop at one of the cop stations and look at what kind of warrants are out. Long as I'm up this way, maybe someone's hiding out in Kentucky I can bring in. Make the trip profitable in more than a spiritual sense."



"Mind if I tag along?"



"Not at all."



"Let's walk along the road on the way back to the river."



After lunch they walked single file down the side of the road. Valentine stayed in the center of the road, crisscrossing it, checking blown debris, the patchwork repairs, anything for some kind of sign. He found a few old ruts that he suspected were made by heavy trucks, but they were so weathered that he could only guess at the type of vehicle.



"So we did all this for nothing?" Duvalier asked when they took a rest halt. "We're just going back?"



There was a welcome tenderness to her voice; she'd been cold since Valentine had turned the mutual slaughter she'd tried to start into a victory for the Bulletproof.



"Wherever they take the women, it has to be pretty close. I want to start searching. Seems to me it's got to be within a few miles. Otherwise they'd bring the train somewhere else, or right to where they want them. We'll just start searching, using a grid with the station as a base point."



"Why are we still with Stinky, then?"



"To set us up as bounty hunters. It's not far from what we're really doing, and it would explain us poking around in the woods."



"I don't like it here. These hills and trees, all wet and black. It's like they're closing off the sky. I haven't liked this job; just one misery after another."



Valentine looked up from yet another worthless mark that wasn't a track. "I'm glad you're here. I'd have been hung months ago if it wasn't for you and Ahn-Kha, most likely."



"The Lifeweavers were watching over us all back there. But they don't know about us being here. How can they know we need their help?"



Duvalier's worshipful naivete when it came to humanity's allies took strange forms sometimes. "Not sure how they could help us now," Valentine said.



"Something would turn up. A piece of luck. Like the general's train showing up in Nebraska."



"After we crisscrossed three states looking for him. Would have been better if the Lifeweavers had arranged our luck to hit when we passed a dozen miles from his headquarters without knowing it."



She planted her walking stick. "You think everything's chance."



"No. If it were, I wouldn't still be alive."



* * * *



After Price flagged down a patrolman on the riverside highway, they stopped in the little Ohio-side town of Caspian. An Ordnance Station, part police house, part customs post, and part post office had the latest warrant flyers posted in a three-ring binder.



Valentine and Price went inside while the rest visited a market to buy food.



"Look what the river washed up," an Ohioan with a package said to his friend as they passed in on their way to the postal clerk.



Price helped Valentine select a handbill. Valentine wanted a female, thirtyish. "Not much to choose from. Guess Ohio women are law-abiding. Except for Gina Stottard, here."



"Stealing power and unauthorized wiring," Valentine read. "A desperado electrician."



"She's all there is."



"What do I do next?"



"Follow me."



Price took three handbills of his own-the top man had killed a woman while trying to perform an illegal abortion-and went over to a blue-uniformed officer behind a thick window. She blinked at them from behind thick corrective glasses.



"Copies of these, please," Price said, sliding the handbills under the glass along with his warrant card. "And-"



"Gimme a moment," she said, and went to a cabinet. She got a key and disappeared into another room. Ten minutes later-perhaps she'd worked in a coffee break-she returned with the copies. They were poor-quality photocopies, but still readable. "Six dollars," she said.



"My associate needs a bounty card."



"That makes it sixteen dollars. You could have said so. Have to make another trip to get one."



"I tr-I'm sorry."



Fifteen minutes later she returned with the form. It had a numbered card on it similar to Price's. Valentine filled it out using his Ohio ration-card name-Tarquin Ayoob, not a name Valentine would have chosen on his own; it came off his tongue like a horse getting wire-tripped-and passed it back under the partition. She counted the money, stamped both the document and the bounty card, then took out a scissors and cut the card free.



"What's the number for?" Valentine asked.



"If you got a prisoner in tow you can get free food and lodging at any NUC door, they just need the number. Counts as good works for the Ordnance Lottery. Bring in a man or even a useful report and your number goes in that week. You can buy tickets, too. This week's pot is half a million. Care to enter?"



"Doubt we'll be in the Ordnance long enough to collect," Price said. "I thank you, officer."



They left the station and reunited with Duvalier and the Grogs at the riverbank, sharing a final meal. Apples were growing plentiful, making Valentine think of Everready. Price pulled up the mule's feet and inspected them one by one as Bee held the animal.



"This is really good-bye," Valentine said.



"Watch your curfew around here, son," Price said. "Folks button up really tight. If you're solid-silver lucky, the police pick you up and throw you in the clink for breaking.



"I'm going to be poking around in Lexington for a bit. Ohio fugitives head there, more often than not. There's jobs at the processing plants, and the West Kentucky Legion isn't too choosy about who it takes on. I'll check in at the depots."



"Can I come back with you that far?" Duvalier asked.



Valentine almost dropped his apple. "You want to give up?"



"This led nowhere, David. I don't want to stumble around ground I don't know. I feel like we stick out here. Everyone talks different, wears different clothes."



"Give me three more days," Valentine said.



"How far away will you be in three days?" Duvalier asked Price.



"I could dawdle along the river here for a bit. I never got my vacation in at the Shack. I owe myself some fishing."



"Three days' worth?" Valentine asked.



"Three days."



"Lots of people here on bicycles," Valentine said. "Price, where do you suppose we can rent some?"



* * * *



Price treated himself to a motel room. He found one with a distinctly nondiscriminating owner when it came to personal hygiene, Grogs, mules littering the weed-covered parking lot, and where the occupants poured their night soil.



It turned out you couldn't rent bicycles, and no money would buy a bike capable of supporting Ahn-Kha. By parting with yet another gold coin to a bike and moped dealer under a canopy of festive plastic bunting, he and Duvalier each got bicycles with tires, functioning brakes, storage baskets, even clip-on flashlight headlamps that charged by pedaling.



After some exploring with Ahn-Kha they found a house deep in the woods, not quite a cabin and not quite a shack. While it rested at a tilt thanks to the absence of a foundation, there was a functioning well and Ahn-Kha got water flowing into the house again with a little tinkering and a lot of root cutting.



The weather turned fair again and Valentine and Duvalier bicycled together, almost unarmed-he brought the .22 pistol, she her sword-carrying stick-starting at the nearest crossroads to the end-of-the-line station and working their way outward, following roads heavy enough to support trucks.



Valentine kept turning them to the north and east, into hillier and more isolated country. He couldn't say what drove him into this particular notch of Ohio. Perhaps it was a line of three legworms patrolling a ridge, glimpsed as they crept through the trees at a distance. Or it was the one true military convoy that passed them coming out of it; three tractor trailers, with Grog troops in supporting vehicles and venerable five-ton cargo trucks.



They were only questioned once, by a pair of policemen also on bicycles. Valentine showed his card and the warrant for the renegade electrician, explaining that he'd learned she had a cousin who lived out in these woods.



"Don't think so, Ayoob," one of the patrol said. "Even during deer season most around here know to avoid the point country. You're better off searching the other side of the river."



So on their third day they risked a predawn ride along the river road to get into the hills early. Other than the good condition of the roads in the region, he couldn't point to anything but a feeling.



"Another feeling. Is it because you can't go back?" Duvalier asked. "Is that why you won't let this go? You need something to do, even a ghost chase?"



Valentine chewed a wild bergamot leaf and tossed its purple-pink flower to Duvalier. "You've been good company. After today you can go find the Lifeweavers. But be sure to tell them about this."



She nuzzled his cheek. The half quarrel had faded.



"Wish we could find out where that's going," Valentine said as they breakfasted on bread and cheese. A green-painted military truck turned off from the river road and approached their position. Black smoke belched from its stack as the truck shifted up.



"Can do," she said, putting the flower between her teeth and picking up her bicycle. "Watch my coat."



"Ali-"



She pedaled madly in the same direction as the truck, and brought her bike alongside. She reached out and grabbed a tie for the cargo bed's canvas cover.



Valentine watched her disappear.



He had little to do over the next three hours but refill their water bottles and worry. When she came coasting down the hill again she had a huge smile.



"I've got a date for tonight," she said, pulling up her bike and accepting a water bottle. "Nice guy from New Philadelphia. Lance Corporal Scott Thatcher. He plays the guitar."



"Thought you were leaving tonight."



"Don't you want to know what I found?"



The jibe Valentine was working on died half-formed. "You found something?"



"It's big, it's well-guarded, and Thatcher didn't offer to take me to lunch inside, even with a lot of hints. You wanna see?"



Valentine picked up his bike as Duvalier shoved her coat into the basket on the back of her bike.



"What is it?" Valentine asked as they pushed up the hill.



"I'm not sure. It looks kind of like a hospital. There were ambulances out front, military and civilian. Big grounds, double-fenced."



They topped a hill; another loomed on the other side of a narrow gully. The road took a hairpin turn at a small stream. "I don't suppose your Corporal Thatcher illuminated you?"



"He said he was just a delivery boy."



A truck blatted through the trees. They pulled their bikes off the road and watched it negotiate the gulley. It was an open-backed truck, filled with an assortment of uniformed men, some in bandages, some just weary-looking.



"Okay, it is a hospital," Valentine said as they remounted their bikes. "Why all the security, then?"



They finally saw it from the top of the next hill.



"This is probably as far as we should go," Duvalier said. "There's a watch post at the end of the trees."



Valentine couldn't see much through the trees, just a few salmon-colored building tops, at least a dozen stories tall. The ground leveled out past the hill, flat ground and a straight road to a guarded gate beyond a half mile or so of open ground. Valentine looked through his minibinoculars. Yes, there was a little watch station, about the size of a lifeguard's house at a beach, near the break in the trees.



"Three layers of fencing, with a road between," Duvalier said. "Outer layer is electrified. Innermost layer is just a polite six feet of glorified chicken wire. He dropped me off at the gate. The gatehouse looks normal enough, but ten yards out to either side there's tenting over something. I'm guessing heavy weapons."



Valentine did some mental math. This place was perhaps twenty minutes from the train tracks, in trucks driving forty miles an hour.



"Oh, Thatcher gave it a name."



"He did?"



"He called it 'Zan-ado.' "



"Xanadu?" Valentine asked.



"Yeah. Mean anything to you?"



"I've heard the word. I don't know what it means. A fairyland or some such. You hanging around for your date?"



"I'm meeting him in Ironton."



"Ahn-Kha and I will check this out. Tonight."



* * * *



They said good-bye to Price while Duvalier biked off to keep her appointment. Valentine decided he could trust Price with a message to Southern Command. Someone needed to know about Xanadu.



If Price was willing to act as courier.



Valentine insisted on a farewell drink. Their supply of Bulletproof had been much reduced in trading, but they still had a few stoppered bottles.



They drank it inside the filthy motel room, windows and doors wide open to admit a little air.



"Price, you ever run into any guerillas?"



"I avoid them if I can. I've had my guns commandeered off me. They've threatened to shoot Bee, too."



"If you could get a message through to the Resistance, you'd really help the Cause."



"The Cause. Not that shit again."



"It's the only-"



"No! You don't tell me about the Cause, boy." Price took a drink. "I know your Cause. I know Everready's Cause."



"How did you come to know Everready? What happened with those teeth?"



Price took another long swallow. "Don't suppose you ever heard of a place called Coon County?"



"No."



"Won't find it on your old maps. Nice little spot, up in the mountains near Chattanooga, north of Mount Eagle. Called it Coon County because of Tom Coon, roughest son of a bitch you ever met. I bet he killed near as many Reapers as Everready. Ol' Everready was our liaison officer with Southern Command. Got radio gear and explosives through him."



"We had a bad scrape and lost twenty-six men, captive. Colonel Coon, he had some Quisling prisoners of his own. We kept them around pulling plows or cutting wood, that kind of stuff. He went in, alone, to negotiate. We figured they hung him, since he vanished for a month. But wouldn't you know, he came back with twenty-four. Said two had been killed before he could get there, and he exchanged the survivors for twenty-four of our prisoners.



"A few weeks later this big operation got under way, Rattlesnake I think it was called. Lots of guerillas involved. I missed it because I had Lyme disease. Tick bite. Put me on antibiotics and finally got a transfusion from old Everready.



"Then Colonel Coon came back. He looked tired, but he took the time."



He stared out the window, looking at his mule grazing in the field across the road. Valentine wondered what visions he really saw.



"Coon sat by each bed in the hospital, told a few jokes. He asked me how my wife was doing, if the baby had come. He had that kind of memory.



"Then the Reaper showed up.



"It wasn't any kind of a fight, any more than pigs in a slaughter pen put up a fight. Doc Swenson tried to get to a gun; he went down first. A nurse ran. I remember Coon wounded her in the leg. Kneecapped her.



"The Reaper took a friend of mine, Grouse, we called him. The woman next to me blew air into her IV and died rather than have the Reaper take her. I just froze up. I couldn't move a muscle. Not even my eyes, hardly. It killed the nurse right at the bottom of my bed.



"It fed and Coon started staggering around. He was speaking so fast-you ever hear someone speaking in tongues, David? Like that, words coming out as fast as voltage. The Reaper started dancing, doing this sorta waltz with the nurse's body as it jumped from bed to bed. Some of her blood and piss got on me as it swung her around, hit me right in the eye.



"That's when Everready came in. He gave it a face full of buckshot and stuck a surgical knife in its ear. Then he drowned Coon in the slop bucket where they emptied the bedpans. He picked me up like I was a six-year-old girl and ran.



"Well, there were Reapers everywhere. Coon had led them right in. They got everyone in Coon County, even-even my wife."



Price passed the bottle back to Valentine.



"Everready told me about how he'd heard from the Lifeweaver what a seductive thing it was, to feed on another man's spirit like that. He said humans could do it same as the others with the right training-kind of like what the Lifeweavers do to men like Everready. I thought they got to Colonel Coon when he went to bargain about those twenty-six men, but Everready said it was probably even before that. I felt dirty, living when Na-everyone else died."



"What's Coon County like now?" Valentine asked.



"Just another Kurian Zone, David. I gave up the war then. How are we supposed to win when they can grant a man immortality for joining in? The Kurian Zone ain't so bad. The Reapers feed behind closed doors, it's like it's not even happening. A person gone now and then, like they walked off into the country and never came back."



Price looked at him sidelong.



"Even the end's not so bad, they tell me. The Reapers, they look into your eyes and you see pretty meadows full of flowers and sunlight, or everyone you know who's dead welcoming you, urgin' you on, like. You don't even feel the tongue going in. That doesn't sound so bad. A good Christian doesn't fear death."



"He doesn't hasten it, either," Valentine said.



"Young and idealistic. You want to talk 'hastening' death- you've been in battles. Who's got the better deal, the man in the Kurian Zone has plenty of food on the table, leisure time to spend, a family if he wants-children, even grandchildren if he keeps his nose clean-compare that to you boys in the Ozarks. Get drafted, what, sixteen is it now? Break your back in labor units until a rifle becomes available, and then you're dead by twenty. How many virgins you buried, David? What kind of life did they have?



"Only people I'm setting myself against are those that want to make other people's tiny slice of life a misery. Murderers, rapists, child touchers, swindlers. That's my cause."



"You're forgetting the biggest murderers of all."



"You say. I say all they're doing is making it sensible and orderly. You get an orderly birth, an orderly life, an orderly death. I've come across dozens of folks running from the Kurians. Or at least they started out that way. Two, three days later they're hungry and cold and they ask me to lead them to food and shelter, thank me for putting them back in the Order, even if it's an NUC waystation with a Reaper in the belfry. They want the Order."



"Keep telling yourself that, Price, if it makes you feel better. Wish I'd known the man Everready saved."



"You missed him," Price said. "I don't. Let's talk again in ten years and see if you're still so sure of your Cause."



* * * *



Valentine rode his bicycle and Ahn-Kha loped along, his gear tied to Valentine's handlebar and on the back of his bike. A distant whistle sounded curfew as the sun disappeared, and Valentine walked the bike off the road.



They slept for three hours, long enough to give their bodies a break, then moved through the hills more cautiously. Valentine kept his lifesign down, and hoped that his old ability to feel the cold presence of a prowling Reaper hadn't been dulled by disuse. Sure enough, there was one in the gully with the hairpin turn on the road, keeping watch.



They put earth and trees between themselves and the Reaper, threw a wide loop around-



And Valentine sensed another one, a dark star on his mental horizon.



It reminded him of the installation he'd come across with Gonzo in Wisconsin, before their disastrous encounter with a sniper.



He and Ahn-Kha backed off, put another half mile of woods and wildlife between themselves and the sentry Reaper.



"I might be able to get through them alone, old horse," Valentine said. "You don't make human lifesign, but you make enough for them to get curious."



"I could go first. When it comes to investigate, you-"



Ahn-Kha was no fool. The Golden One knew exactly what he was saying, that he was willing to draw a prowling Reaper and trust Valentine to dispose of it before it killed him.



"No. A Reaper goes missing and they'll know someone's poking around. Go back to the house, keep to thick cover, and wait for me. Or Duvalier."



"What will you do?"



"I'm going to get past the Reaper sentries. Then keep down until the day watch comes, if any. If I'm lucky, I'll be inside the sentry line and outside the wire, and I can get a real look at the place by daylight. At dusk I'll creep out again."



"If you're not lucky?"



"You and Ali get back to Southern Command. Hopefully they'll try again with a better-prepared team."



"I remember having this conversation before. We only just found you. Would it not be better to look around from inside the wire, my David?" '



"Of course. How do we do that?"



"It is a hospital. One of us just has to be sick enough."



Valentine nodded. "I know a couple of old tricks. One or two can even fool a doctor. Let's get back to Ali first. If this blows up in our faces, I have a feeling we'll never get outside that wire again."



* * * *



Valentine, Ahn-Kha, and Duvalier stood at the crossroads. The river road stretched off east and west, the road leading to the well-guarded hospital branching off.



She didn't discuss her "date" the previous night-save to deny that she got anything of use out of the soldier. "He's going on a long patrol. He offered to see me again in four days."



"Are you going to wait for him?" Valentine asked.



"Depends if you and the jolly gold giant here go through with this insanity."



"It will work," Valentine said.



"Price left us a bass boat," Duvalier said. "And I've still got our Spam. How much action do you want?"



"Just a little fire or two on the other side of the river. Tonight. Nothing too hard."



"And your illness?"



"A little ipecac and other herbs with unfortunate pharmacological side effects."



"Will that be convincing enough?" Ahn-Kha asked, scanning the road and woods. "I think I see your dinner, Alessa. My David, may I see your pistol?"



Valentine handed over the gun. Ahn-Kha checked it over, then pointed it at his neck.



"Ahn-"



The gun went off with a sharp crack. Valentine and Duvalier stood dumbfounded. Blood and flesh flew from the Golden One's neck. He lowered the gun to his elbow and shot himself through the arm. Then again, at the hip point.



Valentine tried to wrestle the gun from Ahn-Kha's grip, burning his hand on the barrel, but the Grog was too strong. It fired again.



"Urmpf," Ahn-Kha grunted, releasing the gun.



"What the hell, man?" Duvalier asked.



"No need for insults," Ahn-Kha said. "I just decided-"



"You wounded yourself to get into the hospital?" Duvalier asked.



"Why not just shoot yourself once?" Valentine asked, putting the gun back on safety and digging for his first-aid kit.



"One bullet wound with powder grains around it might be self-inflicted. How many desperate cowards avoid combat by shooting themselves four times? But I fear the last penetrated my intestines."



"I'm sorry," Valentine said. "I thought you'd gone mad."



"I knew what I was doing. Pass me that disinfectant."



"You should get going," Valentine told Duvalier. "If you pass some of our local constables, have them send an ambulance."



Duvalier gathered up her stick and pack, and wheeled her bicycle over to Ahn-Kha. She kissed him on the ear. "You taste like a muskrat. Don't let him leave you."



Valentine glared at her.



"I'll hang around at Price's motel," Duvalier said. "They made him pay for a month because of the Grog. If you make it back out you can find me there. Unless, of course, I get the feeling I'm being watched. Then I'm gone."



* * * *



Valentine applied dressings, then sat Ahn-Kha on the saddle of the bike. The tires immediately flattened, but it served as a convincing conveyance for a wounded Grog, with one long arm draped around Valentine's shoulder. Birds called to each other in the trees; they both could lie down and die and the birds would still sing on.



"How you doing, old horse?"



"The wounds burn."



"They'll get you patched up. Hope that supply truck passes soon."



"I can walk all the way there if I must."



No supply truck came, but a white ambulance snapped deadfall twigs as it roared through the riverside hills. It didn't employ a siren, but there was no traffic to hurry out of the way.



Valentine sat Ahn-Kha on the weed-grown shoulder and stood in the roadway, waving his arms. The ambulance, tilted due to a bad suspension, came on, unheeding, lights flashing-



Then swerved and braked, stalling the motor.



The driver spoke through the wire grid that served as his window. "You almost got yourself killed, quirt." His associate used the stop to light a cigarette.



"We're trying to get to the hospital. My friend's wounded."



The clean-shaven pair in blue hats exchanged a look. "A Grog? Try the-"



"I'm hurting too. Can we-"



"On a call, sir. We'll radio back and have you picked up." He nodded at his associate, who touched a box on the dashboard.



"Thank you. Thank you very much."



"Don't move. Another ambulance will be along." The driver got the engine going and moved off.



"Curbside service," Valentine said, taking out his pocketknife.



"My David, what are you going to do?"



"We're both going in wounded."



Valentine raked the knife twice across the outer side of his left hand. He'd been anticipating the pain, which made it all the worse.



"Defensive wounds," Valentine said.



"I hope we have no need for a real dressing. This is our last one," Ahn-Kha said.



"Just give me some surgical tape and a scissors. I'll close them with butterfly dressings. Those two in the ambulance might have noticed that I didn't have a big dressing on my hand."



"I will cut the tape. You're bleeding."



Valentine spattered a little of his own blood on his face to add to the effect.



Ahn-Kha deftly cut notches into each side of the surgical tape and handed the pieces to Valentine one at a time. A butterfly bandage used a minimal amount of tape directly over the wound, gripping the two sides of skin with its "wings." Valentine splashed on stinging disinfectant, then used three bandages on one cut, two on the other.



It took twenty minutes for the second ambulance to arrive-a gateless pickup truck painted white. The driver was a single, older man with a ring of flesh adding a paunch to his chin.



"You two're the walking wounded, I'll bet."



"That's us."



"Hop in the back. There's a water jug there, don't be afraid to use it. Bring your bike if you want."



A yellow plastic cooler with a cup tied to a string was stuck in one corner of the pickup with a bungee cord. Valentine put the bike in, then he and Ahn-Kha climbed into the bed. The truck sagged.



"Hoo-he's a big boy, your Grog. Now hold on, I'm going to drive gentle but I don't want to lose you when I turn."



The driver executed a neat three-point turn.



Valentine spoke to him through the open back window of the pickup. "I'm Tar Ayoob. What's your name, sir?"



"Beirlein, Grog-boy. I never seen his type before. He some special breed?"



"They got them up in Canada," Valentine said. "They're good in the snow. Big feet."



"Oh, Sasquatches is what he is, huh? What do you know."



"I'm told this is the best hospital south of Columbus," Valentine said. "Hope they're right. My friend's got a bullet in him."



"We'll patch him up. Don't worry."



The pickup negotiated the hairpin turn, climbed out of the gul-ley in second gear, then came out of the trees and Valentine finally saw Xanadu.



It filled all the flat ground in a punchbowl ring of wooded hills. Most of the structures were salmon-colored brick or concrete, save for some wooden outbuildings.



Duvalier was right; a triple line of fencing, one polite, two lethal, surrounded the campuslike huddle of structures. Guards at the gate made notations on a clipboard and handed Valentine and Ahn-Kha stickers with red crosses on them. In the farther corners of the expanse of grass between buildings and fence Valentine saw dairy cows. There looked to be a baseball diamond and a track closer to the gate.



The four biggest salmon-colored buildings looked like apartments Valentine had seen in Chicago, except those had been built with balconies, and large windows. Each one was as long as a city block, rectangular, and laid out so they formed a square. Valentine counted twelve stories.



A long, low, three-story building of darker brick extended from the four, and was joined to a concrete jumble, tiered like a wedding cake, that had ambulances and trucks parked in front of it.



The ambulance didn't stop in front of the hospital. It continued to drive around back, past what looked like three-story apartments.



"Hey, what about the emergency room?"



"Your Grog goes out to the stables. Don't worry, our vet's treated Grogs before."



The pickup drove to a pair of barns, giant old-fashioned wooden ones with an aluminum feed silo between. The truck pulled up to a ranch house with a satellite dish turned into a decorative planter. Valentine saw another, distant barn. Fields with a group of Holsteins and a group of Jerseys were spread out to the wire. A guard tower, hard to distinguish against the treetops, could just be seen.



Xanadu's footprint covered several square miles, perhaps the size of downtown Dallas. If it was a concentration camp of some kind, it was a pleasant-looking one.



A blond woman in a white medical coat, a stethoscope around her neck, came out on the porch of the ranch house and walked to the back of the truck. A man in overalls followed her out, holding what looked like a set of shackles. "This is Doc Boothe, Tar."



Doc Boothe had one of those faces that hung from a broad forehead, progressing down from wide eyes to a modest nose to a tiny, dimpled chin. "How cooperative is he?"



"Extremely," Ahn-Kha said. The vet let out a squeak of surprise. "Unless you try to put manacles on me."



"A patient who can talk. You're a DVMs dream. What's your name?"



"Ahn-Kha."



"I'm Tar," Valentine said. "We're out of Kentucky, Bulletproof tribe."



"And another Kentucky quirt shows up looking for Ordnance medical attention," the man with the shackles observed. "They need to patrol the river better."



The vet ignored both her helper and Valentine, except to say, "Leave your guns in the truck for now. We've got a safe inside. Ahnke, come into the operating room."



She led them in past kennels filled with barking German shepherds and pointers. She unlocked and opened a gray metal door. The tiles inside smelled of disinfectant. Dr. Boothe checked to see that they were following, then turned on a light in a big, white-tiled room. A heavy stainless-steel berth, like an autopsy table, dominated the center of the room.



"It's not right to treat him in a vet office," Valentine said.



"I've got experience tranquilizing large animals. And I'm comfortable around them. I know you're worried, but he's in better hands here than in the main building. They slap bandages on and send everyone to the sanitarium in Columbus. Okay, Ahnke, on the table. Do you want to lie down? Make it easier for me to reach. You ever had a reaction to pain medication?"



"I've only had laudanum," Ahn-Kha said.



"This is better, it takes the edge off." She opened a cabinet and took out a box of pills, shook three out, and poured him a cup of water. "Pepsa!" she called. "Gunshot tray."



Ahn-Kha swallowed the pills.



A plump woman in blue cotton brought in a tray full of instruments. Valentine recognized a probe and some small forceps. The doctor removed Ahn-Kha's dressings.



"Pepsa, take a look at the legworm rider," Boothe said. "He's got some cuts on his hand. Unless you object to being treated by a vet assistant."



"I'd rather stay with my tribemate."



Pepsa gestured into a corner, and Valentine took a seat. She took up Valentine's hand and looked at the self-inflicted wounds, then got a bottle and some cotton balls.



"Does that hurt?" Boothe asked Ahn-Kha as she cleaned the wound on his neck.



"I'm not worried about that one."



"We'll get to your stomach in a moment. Neck wounds always worry me."



"He has a lot of neck," Valentine said.



"Must have been some brawl. You've got some graining."



"We walked into the wrong room," Valentine said.



"It happened in Kentucky?"



"Yes. A few hours ago."



"Uh-huh. I can still smell the gunpowder on you, Bulletproof. You two didn't get drunk and get into a fight or anything?"



Pepsa professionally dressed Valentine's wound without saying a word. By the time she was done the doctor had a light down close to Ahn-Kha's stomach, injecting him just above the wound.



"You've got a lot of muscle in the midsection, my friend," Dr. Boothe said. She probed a little farther and Ahn-Kha sucked wind. "Uh-huh. I think we can forget about peritonitis. I don't want to dig around without an X-ray."



Xanadu had no shortage of medical equipment.



"Is Pepsa a nickname?" Valentine asked as the nurse gave him his hand back. She nodded.



"Pepsa's mute, Tar. You done there, girl? Get him the forms. Put down whatever bullshit you want, Bulletproof, then we'll talk."



Valentine liked the doctor. Her careful handling of Ahn-Kha impressed him. That, and the fact that apparantly she gave a mute a valuable job in a land where disabilities usually meant a trip to the Reapers.



Pepsa led Valentine to a lunchroom. A quarter pot of coffee- real coffee according to Valentine's nose-steamed on a counter in a brewer. Above the poster a placard read "FALL BLOOD DRIVE! They bleed for you-now you can bleed for them! Liter donors are entered in a drawing for an all-expense-paid trip to Niagara Falls." Valentine filled out the forms, leaving most of the blocks empty-like the eleven-digit Ordnance Security ID, which occupied a bigger area on the form than name.



The vet dropped in and sat down, rubbing her eyes. "Calving last night, now your Grog. He'll be fine, but I will have to operate."



"Will it be a hard operation?"



"Toughest part will be opening up those layers of muscle. But no. Kentucky, since you're not Ordnance you'll have to pay for these services, cheap though they are. What do you have on you?"



"Not much."



She stared at him. "I know there are a lot of rumors about this place. That it's some kind of Babylon for high Ordnance officials. Or that strings of happy pills get passed out like Mardi Gras beads. I've heard the stories. I'm not saying you two jokers tried to get in here by doing something as stupid as putting some small-caliber bullets into each other. But Xanadu's no place you want to be.



"What it is, in fact, is a hospital for treating cases with dangerous infectious conditions. Anti-Kurian terrorists got it in their heads to try a few designer diseases lethal to the Guardians, and there's been some weird and very dangerous mutations as a result. That's why we've got all this ground and livestock, the less that passes in and out of those gates, the better. Just in case. Do you know how diseases work, microorganisms?"



"Yes, little creatures that can fit in a drop of water. They make you sick."



"Uh-huh. So every breath you take behind these walls is a risk, and the closer you get to the main buildings, the more danger. So you should thank your lucky stars you were treated out here."



Valentine nodded. Interesting. Is it all a cover? Or is there a project I don't know about?



"After I operate we're going to keep your friend here for three days of observation. Don't worry, you'll have a bed, but you'll work for it. Consider it paying off your debt for your partner's medical treatment. Once you're out of here, go back to Kentucky and tell your buddies. This isn't a drugstore, it's not a brothel, and it's not a place to come get cured of the clap with the Ordnance picking up the tab. It's a scary lab full of death you can't even see coming. You understand, or should we start writing it on the sides of the legworms you sell us?"



"I understand," Valentine said. "Thank you."