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"Quick but dusty, Major."
"You are going to come to the point of this?"
"Tobacco? Maybe a little bourbon?" Sime made no move to produce either, and Valentine wondered if some assistant would emerge from the shadows of the big, dark room.
"No, thanks."
"Trying to make things more pleasant for you."
"You could get me a bar of that soap you used before meeting me."
"How-oh, of course. Ex-Wolf. I'm very sorry about all this, you know."
Valentine said nothing.
Sime leaned forward, placing his forearms on the table with interlaced, quick-bitten fingers forming a wedge pointed at Valentine. "Are you a patriot, Major?"
"A patriot?"
"Do you believe in the Cause?"
Had the man never read his service file? "Of course."
"Body and soul?"
This catechism was becoming ridiculous. "Get to the point."
Sime's eyes shone in the window light. "How would you like to do more to advance the Cause than you've ever done before? Do something that would make the rest of your service-impressive though it is-look like nothing in comparison?"
"Let me guess. It involves the charges against me disappearing. All I have to do is go back into the Kurian Zone and-"
"Quite the contrary, Major. It involves you pleading guilty."
A moment of stunned silence passed. Valentine heard Young shift his feet.
Valentine almost felt the edge of the sword of Damocles hanging above. "That helps the Cause how?"
"Major Valentine. I'm personally involved in-in charge of, in a way, some very delicate negotiations. A consortium of high-level officials in the Kurian Zone-"
"Quislings?"
Sime wrinkled his nose and opened and shut his mouth, like a cat disgusted by a serving of cooked carrots.
"Quislings, if you will," Sime continued. "Quislings who run a substantial part of the gulag in Oklahoma and Kansas. They're offering to throw in with us."
"I see why you use good soap."
"Stop it, Major."
Valentine turned toward Young.
"Listen!" Sime said, lowering his voice but somehow putting more energy into his words. "We're talking about the freedom of a hundred thousand people. Maybe more. An almost unbroken corridor to the Denver Protective Zone. Wheat, corn, oil, livestock-"
"I see the strategic benefits."
Sime relaxed a little. Valentine felt nervous, his dinner of doubtful meatloaf revisiting the back of his throat. "Still don't see how my pleading guilty helps."
"These Quislings are afraid of reprisals. Maybe not to them, but to some of the forces they command. The Provisional Government organizing the new Free Republic wants to show them that we're not going to permit atrocities."
