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"So what's in Memphis that's worth all that security?" Duvalier asked. Valentine thought she looked like a silent-film starlet, with face glowing in the firelight behind the layer of netting.
"The banks," Everready said.
Her voice rose a notch. "Banks? There aren't banks any more."
"Yes, there are," Everready said. "Only kind of banks that matter to the Kurians. Big marshaling yards for the transhipment of humans."
"Tell her why," Valentine said.
"Logistics," Everready said. "Memphis is only a day's rail from every big city on the eastern seaboard, plus parts of the Midwest and Texas-the parts your boys haven't took yet, that is. It's why oP FedEx was headquartered there, too. Some Kurian in Kansas buys tractors from Michigan; he sends authorization to the bank in Memphis to ship up three hundred folk or whatever the price was. They're on the next train to Detroit. Those yards are a sight to see. Let me ask you the same question. What's so important in Memphis that you're willing to risk going in?"
"We're looking for someone," Valentine said.
"Unless he got a job in one of the camps-"
"She," Duvalier corrected.
Everready shrugged. "Unless she got a job in one of the camps-wait, is she a looker?"
"She's attractive enough, but there's more to it," Valentine said.
"What do you mean, more?"
Valentine tried to explain the mule list to Everready as concisely as possible. The old Cat thought it worth another apple; he carved off slices for the other three and then gnawed at the remaining wedge himself.
The fruit tasted like candy to Valentine.
"There's this big ol' boy named Moyo who runs all the girls inside the wall. Always has his men checking inbound shipments for beauty. He's got a regular harem; half the large-scale pimps south of the Ohio buy from him. He employs bounty hunters to comb the hills east of here to bring in folks to swap out when one of his men spots a pretty girl. Kurians don't really care-what's the difference between one dollar coin and another? Moyo does a lot of high-priority transshipping. He'd be the first place I'd look for more on this mule list of yours, if it really is all women."
After that he and Valentine spent a few minutes looking at maps-Everready chuckled that he hardly used the maps anymore, he knew the ground between Memphis and Vicksburg so well-and planning the hike north.
"We should jog east a bit at the Coldwater. I got a store of captured gear you three can draw from." Everready flicked his fingers at Valentine's disintegrating guard shoes, and Valentine wondered if he was going to get the old lecture about how there's no reissue on feet.
"How's Trudy?" Valentine asked, jerking a netting-shrouded chin at Everready's ancient carbine. The well-oiled stock glowed in the firelight.
"Still saving my life."
"And the Reaper-teeth collection?"
"Seventy-one and counting."
"All from fair fights, right?"
Everready made a move to box his ears. "Valentine, how you think I got this old? Only time I even get into a scrap with a Reaper is when they's so disadvantaged it's hardly a fight a'tall."
* * * *
Valentine woke to the smell of chickory coffee.
Everready and Duvalier were the only ones up. Ahn-Kha lay in a snoring heap, wrapped around his gun like a snake that had swallowed a bullock before retiring to a too-small tree.
He listened to the conversation as he shifted around, feeling for creepy-crawlies. He missed his old hammock.
"I didn't know Cats got as old as you. I thought we were all done by thirty."
"For a start, I stay in territory I know better than they do. I don't make a lot of trouble, I'd rather let my eyes and ears do the work."
"Don't the Lifeweavers ever have you-"
