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"No you don't. It's chaos."
"So you left? How did you manage that, if you don't mind me asking, sir?"
"You're a kindred spirit, Le Sain," Solon said, a twinkle coming to his basset-hound eyes. "If you don't like a place, your role in it, you get yourself out. I did the same, did you know that? My father was a senator in the old United States government. He didn't survive '22. I barely remember him. My mother struck up a relationship with a general who'd been useful to the Kurians. His lordship held a few towns around the Potomac in northern Virgina. I got my start as a courier; eventually I was running everything for miles around Harper's Ferry. The Kurians are such children in a way; if you're useful in getting them their candy, you can train them like Pavlov's dogs. I learned the art of politics. There must be generational memory in the land, for the whole area around what used to be the District of Columbia is home to the most backbiting, infighting group of Kurians you can imagine, all holding court in their little monuments around the Mall. A woman named Rudland, I believe she was from New York, organized them into a 'committee," to cut down on the blood feuds. I'd help plead my lordship's cases before the committee, and if that didn't work, bribe a powerful member. Then a deal went wrong, and I had to-let's just say I left in a hurry.
"Not that it's been any easier out here. The soldiers I was originally going to use to flush out these backwoods killers suffered a setback when their Grogs revolted. Grogs are more trouble than they're worth; I've said it enough, you'd think someone would be listening by now. Those fools on the Missouri. It'll be a generation before that particular plan can be brought again to fruition. I'm not the first person to learn that if you want something done right, do it yourself, so I made deals to get the forces I needed. Though I haven't sought a reputation in the cannon's mouth, far from it. I earned my ring with words and ideas, not with bullets. They're more powerful in the long run."
"I'm still looking for mine."
"I'll tell you something an aging U.S. federal judge once told me. He had it on a plaque:
Vision without will
Fades like a dream.
Will without vision
Grows into a nightmare.
"The Kur are rich in will. I've never seen vision to go with it, so I'm supplying my own. As to will-well, you've seen what's being built in New Columbia. It'll be good. I'd like to think you'd stay out of desire to help me build here. But stay you will. Do you understand?" Solon curved his finger downward and tapped his desk to accentuate his words. "Stay. You. Will."
"Yes, sir."
"You've got an ambitious look about you, Colonel. I saw you at the meeting, looking around, wondering which of your fellow officers you could rise above. You're still a young man, and I'll indulge young men in that. At this rate you'll be one of my leading generals in a few years. Then you'll have it all: an estate, women, wealth. You're present at the founding of a country. Someday we'll mint coins. Maybe your face will be on one, if you distinguish yourself."
"I hope so. Did you have all this in mind when you came west?"
"New Columbia will be another Washington, another London, another Rome. Only better than Rome. Our temples will have real deities who give real rewards for an appropriate sacrifice. They will be Temples of Meaning instead of houses of superstition."
Valentine sickened at the thought of more white towers rising in the green Ozarks like that abomination across the hill, each one asking for its share of Carolines. His mother had been raped and killed again, and once again he trotted home just in time to see the horror. He couldn't keep the words in: "As long as we follow orders."
Solon looked at him with sad understanding-but then, with those basset-hound eyes, he had a face custom-built for the expression.
"Le Sain, if you've studied the history of China, you know it's been conquered many times. From the Mongols to the British. But in a generation or two, somehow it was China again. This land is the same way. We'll absorb the Kurians; when this fighting gets done with, we'll rebuild. They'll be powerful figures, certainly, like heads of corporations or governors. The real power was always in a set of oligarchs. They just happen to be Kurian now. But the rewards will go to the integrators, the ones who make it all work. Another constitutional government will rise, we'll have legislatures and courts, taxes and tollways."
"They'd let us have all that?"
"Why not?"
"Due process and all that might cut down on the flow of aura."
Solon leaned forward, steepled his fingers under his chin, and lowered his voice. "What makes you think I'd want that?"
"I'm not sure I follow you, sir."
"Every society has is share of drones: the uneducable, the lazy, the unproductive, the crippled, the sick. Then there are the criminals. Civilization has always paid some kind of price for their upkeep. With the Kurians in charge, they'll be fed into that furnace in the place of the talented. Only instead of the haphazard and arbitrary methods of today, it will be smoother, determined by courts and elected officials instead of this random slaughter. The robber barons will still take their toll, but it won't be at random anymore, they'll simply be a surgical instrument keeping the body politic healthy. Evolution did that for millennia, weeded out the unfit, but with our civilization the weeds were allowed to grow as well as the flowers. It's time to replant the Garden of Eden. But first, we have to separate wheat from chaff. Every generation produces its share of each."
"I see."
"Do you? That unpleasantness with the baby the other night-yes, I heard about it. It upset you. If you want to be part of my bright future, you'll have to become used to that. Wheat and chaff, Le Sain. Wheat and chaff."
"You're a man of vision, sir. But sometimes the 'unfit' have hidden talents. Wasn't there a brilliant physicist named Hawking who only had use of his mouth? Van Gogh was crazy, Einstein's teachers thought he was retarded."
"You're well read for a bayou woodsman."
"I grew up in an old library, sir. Sort of a private collection. It started out with picture books and took off from there."
"You haven't been listening, Colonel. I've got the answers, so quit worrying about the questions. You see, we'll have courts, appeals. We'll control the flow. The Kurians won't care how the plumbing works as long as the water keeps flowing. In the end, we'll have the real power."
