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"Let me see your face".
Valentine sensed a mass shift behind him, heard curtains being drawn. The mask came off, and there was the real heart and soul and mind behind Pacific Command.
Adler wore the patient face of a teacher, calm as a death mask, just old enough to be fatherly, just young enough for a spark. He had sad mortician's eyes, but there was a power behind them. Valentine felt the loom of the Bears behind, though what he could accomplish shackled hand and foot...
Maybe worst of all, Valentine liked him on sight.
"What did Seattle do to you? You're laying waste to everything he owns".
"I served him. On a whim ... on a moment of appetite he destroyed my children".
"So now you're killing other people's children?"
"It's better than the alternative. A bullet ends the matter. Having your soul pulled apart, shred by shred,
memory by memory, every awful act laughed at, every joy mocked... no one deserves that".
"I've always thought one's soul belonged to God".
"Maybe. Nevertheless, they partake of the distilled experiences of a life. Sip by sip. Stand with me. Or I fear you'll find out".
"How do you know so much about it?"
"He made me watch. He relished every detail. All because of a careless thought against him".
"I am sorry", Valentine said.
"Then you'll rejoin our war?"
"Your war".
For the first time he looked exasperated. "Word games. Fine. My war".
"I pound on the door while your murderers slip through the window".
"Not how I would put it. May I promise you one more thing? When Seattle is destroyed, my war ends. I will retire, disappear, live quietly somewhere. Pacific Command may fight on or hang itself".
Valentine bowed his head. "You've been polite with me, so I won't tell you where you can stick your offer".
"Now it is my turn to feel sorry for you. As to my 'offer,' I doubt it would fit. My staff calls me all sorts of colorful names having to do with anal retentiveness".
They stared at each other.
Valentine broke first: "So we're both too phlegmatic to get angry. Just out of curiosity, what's with the heroism stuff? I missed the chance at a lecture".
"The Action Groups can't get everywhere. We regularly send propaganda deep into Seattle, along with certain painless, lethal pills, encouraging the populace to do the right thing. I understand you even flew some to a very difficult-to-reach area. With luck, many of them will be used. Their names will be added to the hero lists and read out in our broadcasts. I still have a friend or two west of here. But my time
is nearly up. I should have liked to bring you to another new-moon party at the Outlook. I believe you attended one before".
"I kept to my room".
"I'm sorry we didn't meet there. Better circumstances might have made our association a happier one.
"Farewell, David Valentine. Your theory about the inviolability of one's soul is about to be tested".
mp "Sally", July: Valentine had seen dozens of compounds like these in his travels in the Kurian Zone; only the little buildings on the inside varied. Outside it was always the same: two rows of fencing topped with outward-pointing razor wire and a high observation point for the guards. Sometimes the houses were nice little prefabricated mobile homes, in other places drafty shacks where the women and children ran around on bare earth.
This one, oddly enough, was in an old church-school combination, made of stones as gray as a typical Cascade sky. The watchtower sat in the church steeple, and the fence ran in a great rhombus from the bricked-up side of the school to the old church parking lot, encompassing both the school athletic field and a small park opposite the church doors.
