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I've been running my mouth again. Is this a trap? Does he want to see how far I'll step into the noose ? The problem was, he liked Xray-Tango for some reason, and when he liked someone, the dam on his garrulousness broke. This time, a breach could cost every man in his command his life. He needed to stuff a sandbag in his mouth, block it up like the river, before his tongue hung them all.
"I've done well under it," Valentine said, after a pause he hoped didn't betray him as thinking about his answer too much.
"Nothing's perfect under the sun. Come to think of it, even the sun up there isn't quite round. It's a bubbling sphere. Sends out some long arms of superheated gas now and then, if you look at it close. But the governors and their Reapers are in the here and now, not millions of miles away. When you're close to them, just like with the sun, sometimes you see the flaws. But we're a stronger civilization, thanks to them. Even if the system's ugly at times, doesn't work as fairly as it should."
"Are you saying something's wrong with the system, General?"
"I suppose I am, in a roundabout way. Thing is, if something doesn't work right, you either throw it away or you fix it. The poor bastards who used to live in this part of the country, they tried to get rid of it. It got rid of them, instead. I'm sure you've noticed as you get higher in the ranks it becomes more seductive. You know who Nietzsche was?"
"Ummm..." Valentine knew, but he wanted to let Xray-Tango talk.
"He talked about supermen, beyond old concepts of good or evil. You get to feel that way after a while. Beyond law, because there really isn't one, except don't cross the Kurians. Beyond morality, since there's no one to censure you-and as long as you do your job right the Higher Ups won't."
Valentine felt his admiration for Xray-Tango ebb. He'd heard too many upper ranks in New Orleans talk this way. The supermen rise, and decide who shall rise behind them. The others have to die. "Freedom," Valentine said.
"Yes, it's damn near perfect freedom. I've got a brass ring, so I know what I'm talking about. But you know what? While most use their freedom to put on airs, or lose themselves in drink, or vice-hell, I know a colonel who screws little boys and girls-some of us use it to improve things. You can improve the system. Not all at once, and maybe not outside where you hold whatever authority you've climbed to, but you can make a difference. Tell you the truth, Le Sain, it's pretty satisfying, helping those who don't have a choice about anything."
Valentine stood silently, until it became clear Xray-Tango expected him to say something. "I'm not going to argue with anything you've said, sir. But why are you telling me this, General?"
Xray-Tango turned. He accidentally bumped his groma and, before it fell, caught it up again in a blur of motion. Valentine hadn't seen anyone move like that, anyone who wasn't tuned up by the Lifeweavers, that is. Now he knew how Xray-Tango won all those trophies. He wondered if he was looking into the mismatched eyes of a Cat, deep undercover.
"I'm telling you this, Le Sain, because I've taken a shine to you. You're a good officer. I've decided I want you in my command. You'll have an enviable place in New Columbia- in the new Trans-Mississippi, one day. I want to put men in place who think like I do. Maybe together, we can build something worthwhile. Consul Solon's got me vision, he just needs men who can help him carry it out."
"Thank you, sir. But I've promised my command a chance to distinguish themselves, at least doing something other than hunting down the moonshiners."
"Are they that eager, or is their commander?"
"Action means promotion," Valentine said.
"You may get your chance soon. We're going to activate your brigade, refit them as light infantry. Once we've gotten through the final push up those mountains, we'll be in a position to promote you. Maybe even get you the ring you're sparking on."
"Thank you, sir."
"It's not quite as easy as that. You still need to speak to someone before you formally join AOT Combat Corps. Trust me, you'll come through with flying colors. You're intelligent, and you've already proven yourself where it counts. He might test you some more, but don't worry; I passed it and I'm sure you can, too."
Xray-Tango shouted to his assistant, "Sun's dying, son. Let's call it a day. We'll finish laying out the quad tomorrow." He picked up his Roman surveyor and shouldered it. "Hungry, Colonel?"
"I could eat."
"Good. Maybe our little meeting would go better over dinner."
Had Consul Solon slipped in early? The rumor, spread up and down the slop-pail lines, was that Solon was due in New Columbia, to check on plans for construction of his new capital city and especially his Consular Residence on the north bank of the Arkansas. He'd heard grumbling from the engineering officers, who were still clearing rubble with a single bulldozer while Solon's engineers had a crane, backhoe, cement mixer, and "the good dozers" up on his hilltop west of town. Supposedly, plans for the final push against the remnants of Southern Command were to be outlined, giving the generals in the field time to work out the details once the general strategy was handed down. Boats were already ferrying men from the hospital to clear bed space.
The worst cases went to the seashell-like tower still under construction. Some said that afterward their bones ended up in the cement mortar.
As they walked back to Xray-Tango's headquarters, Valentine marshaled his arguments to petition for a role in the offensive; he wanted all the operational knowledge he could get. The fact that Xray-Tango had offered to arm and activate his men could mean that the battalion was to take part.
The general led him past his sentries. His headquarters still buzzed with activity, though there were fewer present to be busy. Instead of taking Valentine to his corner office the general led him down a set of stairs, along a whitewashed warren of corridors, and around a corner to another sentry. This one had a different uniform than the other rough-and-ready soldiers in the general's command. He wore a dark, crisp uniform that was a cross between old Marine Corps dress blues and an SS ceremonial uniform. A bullpup assault rifle came to present as the general rapped on the door and opened it.
So Consul Solon's got his own version of the Praetorian Guard , Valentine thought as he passed in. He readied his mind for the interview with the new administrator of the Trans-Mississippi.
Then he stopped. This was an interrogation room. Complete with mirror at one end, a desk and a waiting chair.
Sitting behind the table in the bare little semicell was a Reaper.
New Columbia, March of the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order: The Reapers.
For the residents of any Kurian Zone, fear of the Reapers is as natural an instinct as hunger, thirst, need for sleep or sexual desire. The Reapers come and go as they please, the eyes, ears, mouth and appetite of their vampire masters from Kur. Pale-skinned, yellow-eyed and black-fanged, one might think they had been designed to inspire dread; death incarnate, as painted with the fearful symmetry of Bosch. And one would be right. The Reapers are designed and grown by Kur to be their avatars among the human race, for the process of extracting the vital auras the Kurians use to extend their lifespan into immortality. When animating one of their Reapers, the Reaper is the Kurian and the Kurian a Reaper, the ultimate version of a puppet. The symbiotes consume humans -the Reaper feeding off of blood, and the Kurians restoring themselves through the energy created by all sentient beings. Even a plant gives off vital aura, though in such minuscule quantities that only one Kurian Valentine had ever heard of managed to exist off of it, and even that was at the cost of lassitude and an addict's pangs. Like their brother Lifeweavers, divided millennia ago by the great schism over immortality gained through consuming sentients, a Kurian can appear to humans in many forms, but even this is not sufficient to protect their precious lives-all the more valuable thanks to their belief that they've cheated entropy. So for the dangerous work of mingling with, and feeding off, humans, they employ a team of Reapers, going from consciousness to consciousness and place to place the way a pre-2022 human might flip cable channels.
