Winter Duty

Backwater Pete's on the Arkansas River, the third week of November: Pete's is the informal abode of the river rats-the brown-water transportation flotilla of Southern Command and the sailors of the quick-hitting, quick-running motorboats of the Skeeter Fleet.



Pete himself is long dead, killed during Solon's tenure for theft of Trans-Mississippi Combat Corps property and smuggling supplies to "guerrilla bands" during the Kurian occupation. His widow followed him to the Reaper-gibbet soon after (hardly a word had to be changed in the indictment or the sentence), but his brother survived Solon's occupation of Arkansas and rebuilt the old riverside bar.



Built of ancient gray cypress beams the color of a January cloud-bank, part dockyard, part trading post, part gin mill, and part museum, Backwater Pete's is an institution. A new brown-water sailor who first sees the fireflies of tracer being exchanged at high speed while bouncing down the Mississippi comes to Pete's for his first drink as a real river-man. Newly appointed boat commanders and barge captains fete their crews there, and retiring master mechanics say their farewells beneath the pink and lavender paper lanterns and sensually shaped neon.



The bar is decorated with grainy pictures of boat crews as well as old Sports Illustrated swimsuit models and Playboy centerfolds, immortal icons of wet-haired desire. Wooden models of famous Southern Command river craft-mostly pleasure or sport or fishing boats and tugs converted to carry machine guns and old rapid-fire twenty-and thirty-millimeter "bush guns"-rest on a little brass-railed shelf above the bar. The traditional mirror behind the bar is more a mosaic of shards now, having been broken in so many brawls and patched together with colored glass it now resembles a peacock splattered against a wide chrome bumper.



Most newcomers say it smells like tobacco, recycled beer, sun-baked sweat, and mud fresh from a swamp where eggs go to die. The regulars wouldn't have it any other way.



On that warm night of a quick-fading autumn the bar saw a stranger. His clothing set him apart immediately: thick blue-black leathers that looked too oddly pebbled for cowhide but not stiff as snake-skin. He wore a small machine-gun pistol in a big soft holster across his midriff and a straight-bladed, sharkskin-handled sword across his back. Vambraces like a motorcycle rider might wear guard his arms, but odd bulges running up from the wrist suggest they might be offensive as well as defensive.



For all the weaponry, the high military boots with their lace guards snapped over, the scar descending from his right eye and fresh bruising to the left, and the long black hair tied back so it's out of his eyes, he doesn't look like he's after a fight. For a start, he looks tired: the haggard, leeched-out look of a man who has undergone prolonged stress. Then there's the odd hang of his jawline. A humorous tip to his jaw gives him a slight, good-humored smile.



"Cat. Or maybe a Bear," one of the grizzled river rats says to his companions dressed in more typical attire of soft white trousers and light canvas jackets, sockless in their rubber-soled boat shoes. They don't make room for the newcomer at the bar, river rats being as fiercely territorial as any Dumpster-diving rodents.



"What'll ye think a Hunter wants here?" a man with a patchy youth's beard asks.



"Someone to push up into a length of trouble," the oldster says, unaware of just how right he would turn out to be.



According to Southern Command tradition, Backwater Pete's served the best tequila on chipped ice in the Trans-Mississippi Free Republics. Not being an expert on tequila, Valentine opted for rum and tea, a concoction he'd grown used to during his sojourn in a Kurian uniform with the Coastal Marines.



The rum was of good quality, all the way from Jamaica. Valentine reread his accumulated mail over it while his mind subconsciously absorbed the rhythms of Backwater Pete's. A man in a bar had a choice to be alone, even if he could smell the sweat and engine oil on the man next to him, and he'd dumped his six new companions at a Southern Command billet-flop.



They were all the reinforcements he was getting, and he didn't like the look of them. Hatchet men sent to decide what was worth saving and what was worth discarding, plus one young doctor and an ancient nurse.



He savored his mail like a gourmet meal. The aches and pains from last week's wounds were forgotten in the excitement of mail.



He opened the one all the way from Jamaica first, wondering what tortured route it had taken to get to the UFR. Probably landed by some friendly smugglers on the shore of Texas, probably on the same boat that brought in rum, coffee, and fabric dyes. The Dutchmen from the Southern Caribbean were good about that sort of thing.



There was a picture of Amalee, dated six months ago and stamped by Southern Command's mails in mid-October, probably on the same boat that made the rum runs. She had deep copper skin and her mother's wide, bright eyes. She would be seven now.



Seven.



Nice of Malita to write. The letter was mostly of Amalee's do ings and development and included a clipping from the Kings-ton Current, describing the exploits of Jamaica's "Corsairs" off the coast of Cuba.



Nothing from Hank in school-Valentine had made a call to make sure he still was in school. He was just getting to be that age where a boy notices all the interesting ways nature arranges for girls to be put together.



Molly wrote him as well. He had three letters from her, increasingly worried as the months of last summer went by.



He found a dry piece of bar and penned her a reassuring reply.



There was one more letter to write. It had to be carefully phrased. Narcisse up in St. Louis would have to tell Blake that there wouldn't be a visit this year. He'd have to see about sending a Christmas present.



It was hard to read Blake. Valentine still didn't know if Blake had strong feelings about him one way or another. Blake was always interested in new stuff. Was a visit from "Papa" a break from his usual routine and therefore a source of happiness, or was it more?



Valentine shouldn't have been this tired. Maybe he was slowing down with age. He hadn't bounced back from the beating he took outside Ladyfair's little cooperative. Served him right for continuing to wander from office to office and warehouse to warehouse, hunting up help for Kentucky and his old stored gear and their resident ghosts and memories.



David Valentine even had the dubious honor of a trip back to Southern Command's new GHQ at Consul Solon's old executive mansion atop Big Rock Hill to plead Kentucky's case with the outgoing commander in chief. One way or another, much of Solon's late-model communications gear survived or could be easily repaired, and old "Post One" didn't lack for office space and conference rooms.



The southern half of the hilltop, the old final trenches and dugouts, had filled in and greened over since being churned to mud by big-caliber rounds. The consular golf course was back in operation, and the red brick of the former college a beehive of clerks and radio techs. New, giant radio masts had sprouted both on Big Rock Hill.



They had stared at his cuts and bruises and listened politely but briefly. A few made noises about thanking him for his efforts in Kentucky. He endured another quick debriefing where he told the same story he told in Jonesboro with the same outcome.



It was time to take them back to Kentucky.



His efforts in Jonesboro and Little Rock hadn't been completely in vain. They'd given him the hatchet man team of "replacement" NCOs and a shipping manifest of materiel being loaded on a barge, though how Southern Command thought he'd get a barge all the way up the Ohio to Evansville was the sort of detail they had been vague on. When he asked, they said someone was "working the problem" and he could meet the barge at Backwater Pete's.



The manifest looked promising. Uniforms, or at least fabric to make uniforms. Cases of weapons. Explosives. Even recreational and educational materials for the new recruits.



Even more reassuring was the vessel and captain listed on the manifest. Whichever logistics officer they'd put in charge of "working the problem" knew his or her business.



Valentine had last seen the barge tied up on the Arkansas when Consul Solon was still running the Trans-Mississippi from his network of numbered posts. Valentine led his six new charges to the foot of the gangway and called up to the anchor watch.



"Permission to book a travel warrant?" Valentine asked the rumpled deckhand on watch, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The deckhand sauntered off to get the captain.



Captain Mantilla may have changed since Valentine last met him during Solon's brief hold on the Ozarks and Ouachitas. Valentine's memory of the man had diffused like a rewetted watercolor. But as the captain approached, Valentine noted the mat of hair and the quick, flashing glances that weren't suspicious, just indicative of a busy man with a lot on his mind-yes, it was him.



He stood there in gray overalls bearing a camouflage moire of grease stains and a formerly white but now weather-beaten ivory skipper hat riding the back of his head as though bored with the job. Thick bodied with a bit of a pot, he still looked like a fireplug with a seven-day beard and a couple arms hanging off it.



"Have to ask my passenger," Mantilla said. "I expect she won't mind."



"Passenger? Since when do passengers give orders to captains?"



"Her charter." Mantilla jerked his thumb over his shoulder.



Valentine was shocked to see Dots-Colonel Lambert, officially-looking lost in a big patrol coat and a hat with the earflaps turned down, and fiddling with her dunnage as if deciding what to have handy and what to store below.



Valentine wondered if she was traveling not so much incognito as low-key, a simple officer looking for transport. Probably on her way to meet a Cat and a Bear team looking to raise hell in Mississippi.



"Sir," Valentine said, saluting. "I'm told this boat's headed for the Mississippi."



"Valentine!" Lambert said, brightening. "Not going back already?"



"Afraid so. Javelin needs these replacements. You'll take priority, of course. I'll go on once he's dropped you downriver."



Lambert cocked her head. Her usual brisk manner was gone; she looked like a traveler who'd missed a bus. Little fissures explored her formerly vital, cheerleader-smooth skin from the corners of her eyes and mouth.



"I think we're at cross purposes, Major. I'm joining your command. I'm headed to Evansville as well."



"Is there a new . . . operation?" Stupid words-she no doubt had to keep quiet.



"No, I'm joining up with what's left of Javelin. I suppose you haven't heard. My whole command was moved under one of Martinez's staffers. They were going to stick me in an office routing communications where the only decision I'd ever make is what to have for lunch. So . . . I volunteered to go to Kentucky."



"As what? If you don't mind my asking."



"I don't mind at all. They need a new full colonel out there to act as CO. No bright young officer wanted the job-Javelin's a dead end as far as Southern Command is concerned. I'm not so sure. Thought I'd be the one to be out there for a change."



Lambert had run a sort of special forces unit dedicated to helping allies in the Cause. Kentucky was the second trip she'd sent him on, and whatever had gone wrong in the wooded passes of the Appalachians wasn't her fault. "You've nothing to prove to any of us."



"The coffee on this tub's surprisingly good," she said. "I think the good captain has connections in every trading port on the river. Let's hit the galley and get some. Tell me more about these Quisling volunteers you recruited."



"I have some support staff looking for passage too. And mail, of course," he said, patting his oversized shoulder bag.



"That bag's a heavy responsibility," she said. "If the captain doesn't mind cramming a few more in, I won't object."



They asked Mantilla, who shrugged. "Fuck it. Cook will be busier, is all. I'm fine with it, ma'am," Mantilla said. "Your people do their own laundry and use their own bedding. I'm not running a cruise ship."



Valentine joined the chorus of "thank you, Captain's" from his charges.



"All you headed up to Evansville?" the sleepy mate asked.



"Looks that way," Valentine said.



"Tough run. Not many friends on the Ohio."



"Maybe I'll make some new ones," Mantilla said.



Last-minute stores of fresh vegetables came on board, and with no more ceremony than it took to undo mooring lines, the tug pushed the barge downriver into the narrow, dredged channel.



Valentine now knew why Mantilla's crew were somnambulists when they tied up. They worked like furies when the boat was in motion: throwing sacks of mail and unloading crates to shore boats along the run practically without stopping, nursing the engines, hosing windblown fall leaves off the decks, cooking and snatching food, and, most important, checking depth with a pole on the doubtful river. Mantilla's barge and tug was big for the Arkansas. Most of the river traffic was in long, narrow flatboats with farting little motors that sounded like fishing trollers compared to the tug's hearty diesels.



Valentine, feeling guilty for just watching everyone work, eating of their galley but toiling not for his bread, checked the materiel Southern Command had scraped up for his operation in Kentucky.



As usual, the promises on paper didn't live up to what waited in the barge.



There was plenty of material for uniforms: soft gray felt in massive, industrial rolls.



"I know what this is," Lambert said. "We took a big textiles plant outside of Houston."



"We'll have to sew it ourselves."



"It's light, and it keeps you warm even when you're wet. They use it for blankets and liners."



"What's it made out of?"



"Polyester or something like it. Everyone's talking about the winter blankets that Martinez is passing out made out of this material. But they're not talking about how he acquired them."



"What's the story?"



"Stuff comes from a fairly high-tech operation-a factory with up-to-date equipment and facilities. We captured it intact outside Houston. The ownership and workers were only too happy to start cranking out material for Southern Command as their new client. General Martinez wouldn't have any of it, though. He had them work triple-shifts cranking out fabric, and then when they'd burned through their raw materials, he stamped the whole product 'Property of Southern Command' and shipped it north. Factory never got paid and owner had no money to buy more raw materials, so it's sitting empty now instead of making clothes for Texans and selling uniform liners to Southern Command. But Martinez got close to a million square yards of fabric for nothing."



The weapons were painfully familiar to him: the old single-shot lever action rifles he'd trained on long ago in the Labor Regiment. They were heavy, clunky, and didn't stand up to repeated firing well. The action tended to heat up and melt the brass casings, jamming the breech. But it was better than nothing, and it threw a big .45 rifle bullet a long way. They'd be handy for deer hunting, if nothing else.



The guns kept turning up like bad pennies in his life.



"Don't look so downcast, Valentine. Check the ammunition."



Valentine opened a padlocked crate.



"Voodoo Works?" Valentine asked, seeing the manufacturer.



"Pick one up."



Valentine knew something was different as soon as he lifted up a box of bullets. He raised an eyebrow at Lambert.



"Yes, it's Quickwood. Testing found that the .45 shell was less likely to tumble and fragment. Only a couple of thousand rounds, but if you distribute the Reaper rifles to your good shots . . ."



She didn't have anything to say about the explosives Valentine uncovered next. They'd loaded him up with what was colloquially known as Angel Food, a vanilla-colored utility explosive that was notoriously tricky to use. The combat engineers used to say working with it kept the angels busy, thus the name. You could handle or burn it without danger, but it was quick to blow when exposed to spark. Even static electricity was dangerous.



For preserved food there was a lot of WHAM. Probably captured supplies taken off of Quisling military formations and now being repatriated to its native land. The WHAM had probably logged more time in service than many of his soldiers.



As to the training materials, they were mostly workbooks on reading, writing, and arithmetic: useful to many of the lower-level workers who escaped the Kurian Order functionally illiterate but not particularly useful to his troops.



For entertainment they had cases and cases of playing cards with the classic depiction of a bicyclist.



Valentine lifted one of the boxes and opened it. Inside, the cards were wrapped up like a pack of cigarettes.



"Strip poker?" he asked Lambert.



"Stakes aren't worth it, not with your face looking like that."



They laughed.



Valentine would have found it hard to put into words to say how relieved he was Lambert was joining them in Kentucky. She was the sort of person who did a good deal without drawing attention to herself. He'd come across an old quote from one of the Prussians, von Moltke something or other, that perfectly described her: accomplish much, remain in the background, be more than you appear.



But had she ever stood under shellfire before? History was full of leaders who were fine organizers but couldn't face what Abra ham Lincoln called the "terrible arithmetic" of sacrificing some men now to save many in the future.



To be honest with himself, Valentine had a little trouble with his sums as well.



Later that night, as he fell asleep, he felt a slight, ominous tickle in his throat.



Valentine, thick-headed and sneezing on the flatboat trip downriver with his new charges, observed that you could mark the deterioration of civilized standards the closer you drew to the Mississippi by the signs along the Arkansas' riverbank.



He liked leaning on the rail, watching the riverbank go by. Mantilla had put them all in oil-stained overalls even dirtier than his crew's and beat-up old canvas slippers with strips of rubber sewn in for traction.



"Only because it's not barefoot weather, unless it's a sunny day," one of Mantilla's crew explained.



Back in the better-served counties with functioning law enforcement, there were polite notices not to tie up or trespass, bought at some hardware store.



Farther down the river, you had hand-painted boards up.



KEEP OUT! THIS MEANS YOU!



or



I'M TOO CHEAP FOR WARNING SHOTS



Then closer still to the Mississippi, the ownership left off with writing entirely and sometimes just nailed up a skull and a pair of crossed femurs at their jetty.



They left the last of the gun position and observation posts guarding the mouth of the Arkansas River at night and turned up the wide Mississippi with all hands alert and on watch.



Mantilla's men were experts with paint and brush and stencil and flag, and within a few minutes they had transformed the old barge with Kurian running colors.



Valentine stood on the bridge, drinking the captain's excellent coffee with Mantilla. They had a shallow draft, so the captain kept close to the Kurian east side as part of his masquerade. There were monsters on the river six times as long as Mantilla's little craft.



"You should have a little honey for that cold. Honey's the best thing. Colds are a real suka."



Valentine accepted some tea and honey. As usual, he was in for another surprise. The tea was rich and flavorful; it made much of the produce in Southern Command taste like herb-and-spice dust.



"That's Assam, all the way from Sri Lanka," Mantilla said.



Valentine wasn't even sure where Sri Lanka was. To change the subject, he inquired about the dangers they might face on the river, motoring right up through the border of two warring states.



"It's a sort of truce at midchannel," Mantilla said, pacing from one side of the bridge to the other on the little tug. "Nobody likes to make a fuss, sinking each other's river traffic. The sons-of-whores military vessels will chase and shoot right and left, but the coal and grain barges pass without too much trouble. Of course, the Kurian captains are smart enough to do a little trade with our little luggers; a few tons of coal or steel given up here and there for a quiet run between the Kurian Zone and the UFR is a small price to pay. The bastards would rather pay up than fall in the schiesse with our side."



"Chummy."



"We stay on our side; they stay on theirs. Most of the time. Your little venture into Kentucky broke the rules. Our Kurian friends can't allow that to stand, you know. They'll strike back."



"It had better be with something better than what they've used so far," Valentine said as the Mississippi unrolled like a blue-green carpet in front of the little barge. "The Moondaggers were vicious, but they weren't much in a stand-up fight against people who could shoot back."



"They were supposed to take you quietly into custody. After a few culls, the rest would be exchanged back to the UFR in return for some captured Texas Quislings or some other property the Kurians wished not to lose. Your little rebellion in the Ozarks is getting too big for its britches."



"Our little rebellion. You're on our side."



"Very much so. If I speak strangely, it's only because I know of other rebels in other places and times."



The "and times" comment put Valentine on his guard. How much did he really know about Mantilla? What did the captain's name mean in Spanish again? Was it a cloak or covering of some kind?



Valentine wondered how Mantilla, a river captain, knew so much about the fighting. You'd think he'd spend his time studying depth charts and dealing with customs clerks and patrol boat captains.



With the usual methodical lucidity he had during illness, he thought the matter over in the glorified closet that served as his cabin. He didn't like being played, but unless Mantilla was an unusually cruel gamester, he didn't think he was being toyed with. Instead, the barge captain seemed to be trying to let him in on a secret without saying so directly.



He went to bed wondering just who, or what, their captain was. If he was, say, a Lifeweaver, why would he be doing something as exposed and dangerous as traveling up and down the rivers of the former United States-and perhaps into the Caribbean and beyond as well?



The other possibility was that he was a Kurian who had gone over to the side of his estranged relatives, the Lifeweavers, to help the humans, but that made even less sense.



There was a third option. Valentine had heard rumors, long ago in his days as a Wolf, from his old tent mate that there was supposed to be another kind of Hunter, another caste beyond the Wolves, Cats, and Bears. Of course, it hadn't been much more than rumor. His old tent mate had claimed that it was something the Lifeweavers tried to effect in humans but that didn't work out; they all went mad and were locked up in secrecy.



Then again, Valentine had met an old resistance leader in Jamaica who'd been modified in some way by the Lifeweavers. She'd seemed sane enough, even if most of the rumors about her were insane. She'd offered some insight into his future.



She'd turned out to be at least partially right.



Valentine didn't know how there could be such a thing as precognition. There were so many variables to life. He'd seen too many lives lost by someone being a step too late or a step too early.



He quit thinking about Mantilla. As long as he got them safely to Evansville. Or to the mouth of the Tennessee in Kentucky, even. Past Paducah.



He woke up to gunfire.



It alarmed him for an instant. The familiar crack put him atop Big Rock Hill and running through the kettles of south-central Wisconsin and in the dust of the dry Caribbean coast of Santo Do mingo and with the punishment brigade on the edge of the mine-fields around Seattle, not sure of which and remembering each all at once in dizzy, sick shock. Then he remembered Lambert had told him that Mantilla had said she could practice with her rifle up by Missouri bootheel territory.



He put on his boots, grabbed a piece of toast, and went up on deck to watch.



Lambert, dressed in some washed-out, sun-bleached fatigues, was firing her rifle from the seated position, looking down the scope through a scratched and hot-glued pair of safety goggles. Valentine had seen the rifle's cheap cloth case when he came aboard and wondered what she had in there. He recognized the weapon: It was one of the Atlanta Gunworks Type Threes he'd become familiar with when Consul Solon had issued them to his ad hoc group posing as Quislings on the banks of the Arkansas. They were sought-after guns in Southern Command, basically an updated version of the old United States M14.



Lambert looked like she had one rigged out for Special Operations. It had a slightly longer barrel with a flash suppressor and a fine-looking optical scope, as well as a bipod that could fold down into a front handgrip. The plastic stock had a nice little compartment for maintenance tools and a bayonet/wire cutter.



The bayonet was a handy device. It had a claw on the handle that was useful for extracting nails and the blade was useful for opening cans or creating an emergency tap in a keg.



But he knew the weight and length of the weapon all too well. Lambert, for all her determination, found it an awkwardly big weapon to handle.



She was using it to pepper pieces of driftwood, old channel markers, and washed-up debris lining the riverbank. She clanged a bullet off of what looked like an old water heater.



"You're a good shot," Valentine said.



"It's hard to be a bad one with this thing," she replied, putting her eye back to the sight and searching for a target. "I wish it wasn't so goddamn heavy, is all."



"Try mine," Valentine said, offering her his submachine gun. It was a lethal little buzz saw, with an interesting sloped design that fought barrel-rise on full-automatic fire. Perfect for someone Lambert's size. He'd carried it across Kentucky and back.



Valentine looked at the serial number on Lambert's gun. Something about the stock struck him as familiar. An extra layer of leather had been wrapped around the stock for a better fit on a big man. He'd last seen this gun outside Dallas-



"This belonged to Moira Styachowski," Valentine said.



"Yes," Lambert said flatly.



"She gave you her old Number Three?"



"No. Colonel Post gave it to me. I wanted his advice on a good field rifle. He said something about Kentuckians knowing a good long rifle for three hundred years and counting, and that if I got desperate I could probably trade it for a working truck, optics being precious in the borderlands. I am thinking about trading it, though. It's a great heavy thing."



Post knew his guns. Odd of him to give Lambert too much gun. He'd made a present to Valentine of his first .45 automatic. Valentine had lost it, of course, but had replaced it with a similar version at the first opportunity.



Lambert fired off a few bursts with the entry gun, ripping up a blackened old post for a dock missing its planking.



"That's more my size," she said.



Valentine considered a lewd comment about a small size having its advantages in ease of handling, but decided against it. Lambert wasn't a flirt and had been his superior too long for it to feel right, even as a joke.



They each fired off a pair of magazines. The Number Three wasn't quite as handy as the Steyr Scout Valentine had gone west with, but the optics were better and it had another hundred meters on the carbine. It was a weapon that could serve equally well as a sniper rifle and a battle rifle. Valentine wouldn't care to use it for house-to-house street fighting, but for the woods and hills of Kentucky it was ideal.



"Want to switch permanently?" Valentine asked. "I'd love to get my hands on an old Number Three."



"Will said to sleep with it, or you'd steal it," Lambert said.



"Unless it has sentimental-"



"I'm teasing, Valentine. Will said I should trade it if I found something better. I like your gun more. But are you willing to-"



"Only if I'm not breaking up a love triangle between you two and the rifle." Valentine instantly regretted the words. Stupid thing to say.



"I think he'd be pleased as anything if you carried it," Lambert said. "He thinks you hang the moon, you know."



"Only by standing on his shoulders. While he bled," Valentine said.



The cheery intimacy evaporated.



"Let's shoot," Lambert said.



"Ever fired a gun in battle?" Valentine asked.



"During Archangel," Lambert said. "But I don't know if it counts. Our column came under fire at night. I bailed out and started blasting away at the gun flashes with everyone else. Turned out we were shooting at our own men. No one was killed, but two of our men ended up in the hospital."



"It happens," Valentine said.



"Post said when you were young, you lost someone close by accident like that."



"True," Valentine said.



"I'm sorry; was he not supposed to talk about it? He only told me to make me feel better about that night."



"I didn't know you two were that close."



"Oh, I might as well tell you. I facilitated his adoption of Moira's daughter after her plane went down. 'Facilitated' isn't quite the word. Stole, maybe. She was supposed to go to that special school where they're bringing up trans-human children."



"Trans-human?"



"It's just an official designation for people enhanced by the Lifeweavers. You never ran into it?"



"I've been out of the communication loop for a while now."



"Of course."



"Well, it's better than subhuman," Valentine said. "I've met a few civilians who'd use that word."



He decided to change the subject.



"When did Styachowski and Post get so close? During the fight at Big Rock Hill?"



"You mean Valentine's Stand?"



"The history books don't call it that."



"She knew him from that, obviously. She met him again when he was assigned to the assessment staff. He gave a very thorough report, and . . . Moira said she had a thing for the older, fatherly-looking guys. I was a little surprised: She never said anything about an interest-Well, that's neither here nor there. But I understand the appeal. He is good-looking. I got to know Post better through her. He told me some interesting details about life in camp with General Martinez, by the way. He knew Moira and I had been close and he said he wanted me to have her gun the last time we-I mean, the last time we met."



Valentine didn't know the extent of Post's injuries that confined him to his chair, didn't know how his marriage had been put back together or under what terms. None of his business.



Lambert was blushing. Valentine couldn't ever remember seeing her blush before.



"Does Gail know . . . about Will's connection with Jenny's real mother?"



"No. Moira said they ended it after you brought Gail back. It took them a while to figure out who each of them was and who the other was in the marriage. Will told me Gail had changed a lot out there, through her experiences. But he was determined to take care of her."



Valentine decided to pry. "Who's Jenny's father?"



"I-I . . . Moira said it was a man she met after the Razors broke up."



"None of my business. I wonder if Jenny's got a little Bear in her-or a lot. Some of the Bears get very randy after a fight."



"I've heard that," Lambert said.



"Whatever Moira had in her blood might have been passed to her daughter."



Lambert opened a little gear bag and began to clean the submachine gun. Valentine did the same with his rifle.



"But Bear parents don't always pass on their tendencies, I'm told," Lambert said. "Sometimes the kid's just a little feistier than most or heals bumps and bruises faster. Also, she's a girl. Don't female Bear fetuses miscarry?"



"I was told that it's adult women who tend to have heart attacks or strokes when the Lifeweavers try to turn them Bear," Valentine said. "I don't know about the children."



"Southern Command is still doing that breeding program. Because there are so few Lifeweavers."



Valentine nodded. He'd been part of that breeding program. Strange stuff. "I haven't spoken to one in ages."



"Knowingly, anyway. They're operating in secret these days, with so many Kurian agents around."



Boat trips leave you a lot of time to think. As Valentine played with his new rifle's butt and balance, trying to decide if he should add another inch to the butt, he thought about his friend.



Old Will. Well, not that old; he had a decade on Valentine at most, whatever his personnel file said. In the Kurian Zone you always falsified your birth date whenever you had the chance. Valentine pictured Styachowski running her quick fingers through Post's salt-and-pepper hair. So there was some hot blood beneath that cool countenance.



"Patrol boat signaling to board," the ship's speaker announced, breaking in on his thoughts.



Mantilla had warned all of them to expect this. The Southern Command soldiers were to go down and wait in the engine room.



Valentine filed down behind the rest of the hatchet men, new rifle and an ammunition vest ready-just in case.



Lambert hurried to catch up to him. "Mantilla wants us ready to go up top. He says he doesn't know this patrol boat. There may be a problem."



Valentine wished there was time to go forward into the cargo barge and get some of the explosives. No time.



He warned the young doctor and the old nurse to be ready, just in case, and had the hatchet men arm themselves and wait in the engine room. Orders given, he went up to the cabin deck just under the bridge. The portholes were a good size for shooting.



Valentine took a look at the patrol boat. Valentine didn't see the usual blue-white streamer of the Mississippi's river patrol, so he suspected it was from one of the Kurian towns. Maybe they were in search of bribes. But the craft had official-looking lights. It was a low, boxy craft and looked like it had a crew of three-sort of a brown-water tow truck.



He had a height advantage from the cabin deck.



The patrol craft suddenly sprouted a machine gun from its roof. The barrel turned to cover the bridge.



Valentine tipped a bunk and shoved it against the porthole wall. He didn't do anything as stupid as shoving the barrel out the window; he just kept watch.



The boat pulled up and lines were passed.



Valentine, flattening himself against the wall beside the porthole, watched two men and a dog come on board. The senior officer, judging from the stars on his shoulders, kept his hand on his pistol as he came aboard. He had a squinty, suspicious look about him, like an old storekeeper watching kids pick over candy tubs.



Captain Mantilla came down to greet them. The older of the two men looked shocked, perhaps at the captain's slovenly appearance. Suddenly, the officer threw out his arms and embraced Mantilla like a long-lost brother.



Valentine couldn't understand it, but it seemed like the crisis had passed. He watched the search team go forward.



He wrapped the gun in a blanket and stowed it and the ammunition vest in a locker. He didn't need to change clothes; like the rest of the passengers, he'd been wearing crew overalls so he could move around on deck freely without drawing attention from the riverbank.



Curious, he went out to the rail on the port side and watched Mantilla with the search team. They were doing a good deal of animated talking and very little searching. Even the dog looked bored and relaxed, sitting and gazing up at the humans, panting.



The patrolmen debarked. Valentine waited for the inevitable bribe to pass down to the senior officer, but a square bottle full of amber-colored liquor passed up to Mantilla instead.



The patrol craft untied and proceeded downriver. Mantilla's tug gunned into life.



As it turned out, they were boarded from the other side of the river an hour's slow progress from where they had met the patrol boat.



Valentine saw some soldiers, probably out of Rally Base, signal with a portable electric lantern and wave them in. By the time anchors had fixed their drift, a little red-and-white rowboat set out from a backwash, fighting its way through some riverside growth.



Two men were in it, a big muscular fellow at the oars who had the look of a river drifter who made a little spare money watching for enemy activity, and a magazine cover of a man with slicked-back hair.



"Permission to come aboard, Captain?" slicked-back hair called.



"Granted."



The baggage came first. A big military-issue duffel hit the deck with a whump, tossed up by the muscular man in the rowboat. It was followed by the would-be passenger. On closer inspection Valentine saw that he had a pencil-thin mustache, precisely trimmed to the edges of his mouth.



Which was smiling, at the moment.



"Good God, I was afraid I'd missed you. My river rat swore to me that your tug had passed yesterday. I thought a very bumpy ride had been in vain. Broke records getting to Rally Base.



"Let's see. Transport warrant. Letter of introduction, and permission to be on Southern Command military property. That's the lot. I was hoping to hitch a ride."



"This trip is chartered by Colonel Lambert," Mantilla said. "You'll have to ask her."



"Who are you?" Lambert asked from her spot at the rail.



"Rollo A. Boelnitz, but my friends call me Pencil. I'm a free-lancer with The Bulletin. My specialty is actually Missouri but I'm eager to learn about Kentucky."



The Bulletin was a minor paper published near the skeleton of the old Wal-Mart complex in Arkansas. It was new-post Archangel and the UFR anyway. Valentine had never read it.



"Why Pencil, Mr. Boelnitz? Because of the mustache?" Lambert asked.



"No, at school. I always lost my pencil and had to borrow. It just stuck."



Lambert glanced at Valentine. "You wanted reinforcements. One pen a mighty army makes."



Valentine disliked him, maybe simply because of the way Lambert had perked up and thrown her chest out since this young icon came aboard.



"General Lehman suggested I join you," Boelnitz offered. "I was talking to him to get a retrospective on his tenure. He said a bit of publicity might help your cause in Kentucky, and the Cause on top of it."



Lambert examined his paperwork. "That's Lehman's signature. The permission to be on Southern Command property might have been overkill. Kentucky's neither fish nor fowl at the moment."



"Do you know what you're getting yourself into?" Valentine asked. "There's no regular mails between Kentucky and the UFR. No banks to cash expense vouchers."



"I was hoping for the traditional hospitality of Southern Command to members of the press. As to my stories, one of your men can transmit via radio. General Lehman said you are in radio contact twice daily."



That settled any issue about this being a put-up job. Radio security was about as tight as Southern Command could make it, involving scramblers and rotating frequencies. Lehman must have passed that tidbit on. Standard Southern Command procedure for brigades in the field was three radio checks a day. As theirs had to be relayed through Rally Base, they found it easier to do just two.



Valentine shrugged and gave Lambert a hint of a nod.



"Welcome aboard, Pencil. I hope you find the situation in Kentucky interesting," she said.



"But not too interesting," Valentine said. "We all had enough interesting this summer to last us till pension draw."



Boelnitz shook hands all around. It was hard to say which version of Pencil Boelnitz was more handsome: serious, expletive Boelnitz or grinning, eager-to-befriend Boelnitz. Valentine couldn't tell whether Lambert had a preference, either.



The bottle their patrol boat had given them contained some seven-year-old bourbon. Mantilla shared a glass with Valentine that night.



They sat in the captain's day cabin. Valentine supposed it was meant to be an office too, but the ship's records seemed to take up one thick sheaf of paper in various sizes, stains, and colors attached to a rusty clipboard.



A single bulb cast yellow light on the cabin deal table. Mantilla and Valentine sat with their legs projecting out into the center of the cabin as the captain poured.



"This is even better for your cold than honey," Mantilla said.



"It makes being sick a little more relaxing. The inspection today-what was that about?"



Mantilla leaned back and put his chin down so the shadow of the cabin light hid his eyes. "A formality, as it turned out."



"Thought you said you didn't know the boat."



"I didn't. But I turned out to be an old friend of the officer in command of the patrol boat."



"Were you?"



Mantilla chuckled. "For a little while. Today anyway."



"I thought you hadn't met him before."



"I never saw his face in the whole of my life. And you would remember a face like that. Like an asshole with pimples."



"What does that mean?"



"You know how a shitty bunghole seems like it's winking at you-"



"No, you never met him, but he knew you?"



"Major Valentine, let's just say that I'm an expert in letting people see what they want to see."



Valentine finished his glass of bourbon and tapped it. To be friendly, Mantilla tossed back his own, gave a little cough, and refilled them both.



"Let me tell you a secret about people, Valentine. They're really good at fooling themselves. They go through life jerking themselves off, complimenting themselves that they're seeing things as they are. Really it's wishing, like a little boy on a skate-board pretending it's a jet airplane. Some chocha says no, no, no but the prick she's with hears yes, yes, yes."



"Or she's hearing wedding bells and he's thinking bedsprings. But I don't see how that gets a sealed bottle of bourbon out of a local river cop."



"He didn't want to come on board and find trouble. He was hoping for a friendly face. I gave him one."



"Just how did you do that?"



"Allow me to keep a few secrets, Major. I will say this. All it takes is the tiniest bit of a nudge. A shape in the shadows turns into an old friend. A crumpled old diner check turns into a valuable bill." He pointed to the sheaf of paper on the wall. "An old spreadsheet becomes a transport warrant."



"Sounds like magic."



"With magic, people are looking for the trick that is fooling them. What I do is give them a little help fooling themselves."



"Go on," Valentine said, interested.



"You're walking down a dark street and you hear someone following. Merde! When you turn around, would you rather see a policeman or, better yet, your neighbor following behind? But of course. As you turn, you hope, you pray, it is not a thug or worse. These men on the river, even the patrols, they do not want trouble. They like to meet bargemen they know, friends who bring the good sweet liqueurs of Mexico and Curaçao, gold even, or silks from the Pacific Rim and Brazil that they have obtained in New Orleans."



Valentine took another mouthful of neat bourbon. Was the captain presenting him with what he wanted to see? Did he want to see an unkempt, out-of-shape boatman with a sweat-yellowed cap and grease stains on his knees and chest?



Valentine supposed he did. Older, weathered, an experienced man who'd lived long on the river and attended to his engines even at the cost of some mess, Mantilla had Valentine's respect. Even a little flab added to the secure image; Mantilla enjoyed his food. Then there was the keen, roving eye from the face Mantilla never quite turned directly toward you. Canny, with part of his mind on you, part of it on ship or river or weather. "Handy trick," Valentine said. "I don't suppose you could teach me the knack."



"When you work up the guts to look into your own mind and come to terms with what's living there, then you can come to me and speak of venturing into others' minds."



Valentine saw two more examples of Mantilla's trickery at a Kurian river station near Memphis when the captain stopped to pick up a few spare parts for his barge and some diesel for the motors, and then again outside Paducah, where their ship was inspected again. Two men went down into the barge hold ahead, and Valentine held his breath until they emerged, yawning.



Half a day later they approached Evansville and Henderson across the river. No bridge spanned the river anymore, but there were plenty of small craft on both sides. They scattered as the tug approached.



"Your boys close the river? Do I have to worry about artillery gunning for me?" Mantilla asked Valentine, who was standing with him on the bridge.



"No. Not a lot of traffic up and down the Ohio except food. We don't want to starve anyone. But I'd better go first in your launch and send some people down to the landing, just in case. We'll need all our motor resources to unload the cargo."



Valentine was met by a pair of Wolf scouts who took him up to an artillery spotter with a field phone. They'd made some progress with the communications grid in his absence. Perhaps his old "shit detail" had done the work. They didn't fight like Bears, but they had an interesting skill set. He called operations and reported the arrival of supplies from Southern Command. The hatchet men weren't worth calling reinforcements, so he called them specialists.



With that done, he returned to Mantilla's tug.



"We have some odds and ends needing transport back," Valentine said. "Sick and lamed men." Also a few who wanted out of it and were willing to take a dishonorable discharge to get away as soon as they could.



"Some might have to ride in the shell if there are too many. I'll need food for them, if there are many."



"That can be arranged."



"Then I'll be happy to offer transport back. In Paducah they will be surprised to see me again so soon."



"Captain Mantilla, once more I'm in your debt," Valentine said.



Mantilla pushed his hat back on his head. "It's my pleasure to aid a Saint-Valentine."



"It's just Valentine. As you can probably tell, I am about as Italian as I am Afghan."



Or does he know my mother was named Saint Croix? Valentine wondered.



"I've one more favor to ask. Do you know anyone on the river who can get a message up to St. Louis? There's a big church there that tends to the human population and the Grog captives. Slaves, I guess you'd call them. I have a friend near there that they help now and then."



"I'd be honored to bring a message to Sissy."



"Sissy?"



"Isn't that what you call Narcisse?"



"Do you know her?"



Mantilla dropped his chin so his eyes fell into shadow again. "Almost as well as you do, Major Valentine."