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"Young for a colonel", Valentine said.
"It looks better on the letterhead", Lambert said. "I had a staff position, really unimportant a few years back, 'cooperative commands operations director.' If something was happening in New England or Europe or South America that the staff needed to know about, I summarized and passed it on. Once in a great while we'd get a liaison visit from Denver or Quebec City and I'd arrange briefings.
"Then Archangel hit and suddenly we were plunged into joint operations with the Texans. I had all the old responsibilities, but suddenly ten times the information was coming in, and we had to coordinate our movements with theirs, work out shared-supply issues, ad hoc attachments of Southern Command and Texas forces. Am I boring you, Valentine?"
Valentine looked up from his hands. "Not at all. I owe you a thank-you. You helped save the Razors".
"Texan enthusiasm saved the Razors. Once they started rolling I got out of their way. I just found them a few tugs".
The emotions of seeing the fleet of little boats come down the Arkansas River came back. Even the pain from the burns on his back and legs throbbed anew with the memory.
"What is my old friend General Martinez up to these days?"
Styachowski glanced at Lambert and shook her head, but Lambert spoke anyway: "Inspector general. It suits him. He keeps to the rear areas, getting expensive dinners and cigars as he makes his rounds. I can't deny he's popular. He sees to it that the food and comforts improve whenever he visits a post".
"Which reminds me", Duvalier said. "I've got a letter for you from Will and Gail. Over a year old now, but you haven't been leaving forwarding addresses". She dug in her duster and produced a wrinkled, grease-stained envelope. The letter smelled like turned bacon, but Valentine accepted it gratefully.
"So much for the past,'* Valentine said. "What do you have in mind for my future?"
"What I'm about to tell you is about as secret as anything can get, Valentine. Does your disenchantment with the Cause extend to materially hurting its efforts?"
"If anyone asks about this meeting, I'll assure them it was purely sexual".
Duvalier rolled her eyes. "Dream on, Valentine".
"C'mon, Major", Styachowski said.
"I don't have anyone to talk to, unless you count my legworm. If Kur does get its hands on me, there's no keeping secrets from them". Valentine had been questioned under drugs before.
"This is more of a morale matter for our side. Our Lifeweavers have disappeared".
"Still?" Valentine remembered that after Solon's brief occupation of the Ozarks the Lifeweavers had fled, but he'd assumed they would return. Assuming makes an ass out of...
"Almost", Styachowski said. "Your Old Father Wolf has been located in the Sierras in Mexico. We're working on getting him back up here. Ryu and the Bearclaw are thought to be dead. There were a couple others in Southern Command, staff-level advisers, also gone. With no Lifeweavers..".
"No more Hunters", Valentine supplied, so lost in his thoughts that he brought up what was obvious to all of them.
"Our regulars are a match for theirs any day", Lambert said. "Unless they get the bulge on us with artillery. We can even handle the Grogs, most of the time. But when the Reapers show up..."
Valentine knew all this. "I'm supposed to locate some, right?"
"No, the locating's been done. We want you to get a message through to them. Maybe even try to bring a few back".
"They're not just across the Missouri somewhere, I take it".
"Seattle".
Valentine managed to blink.
"You got one out of the Zoo in Chicago", Styachowski said.
"His body, you mean. I came upon Rho by accident, and he died during the escape".
Lambert had clean nails. Valentine got a chance to examine them when she placed her hand, palm down, near his. "This isn't a case of going into a Kurian Zone and breaking one out. You'll simply travel to the resistance in the Cascades, meet one, and let it know our need".
"Simply? It must be fifteen hundred miles. One way".
"You've been traveling the Kurian Zone for years".
