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William Post, the former Quisling Coastal Marine who'd helped
Valentine while crossing the Caribbean in the old Thunderbolt, had been given a sinecure with Southern Command. With some reading between the lines Valentine determined that Post had made himself indispensable with his usual efficient intelligence. He'd been given a minor position cataloging captured documentation from the Gulf Coast area and the Mississippi River valley, and had started making educated guesses based on everything from shipping manifests to maintenance logs.
His evaluations, thanks to his years of experience in the area, won him a position in the staffs Threat Assessment Bureau. TAB was charged with ensuring that Southern Command wouldn't get surprised again by the kind of coordinated attack that had allowed Consul Solon to roll up Missouri and Arkansas.
The news contained in the letter was good. Post knew that someone working the Kurian Zone would just as soon hear nothing but cheer. He and Gail were settled in Fort Scott, a trolley ride from his air-conditioned office. Hank Smalls was getting good marks in school and had a place as top starting pitcher on the academy's baseball team. His fastball was already attracting local fans.
Valentine could almost recite it word for word, especially one tantalizing paragraph:
I'm breaking security with this, Dave, but it's nothing the KZ isn't aware of anyway. Thought you'd like to know there's been a spike of action up and down the Appalachians, mostly in the Virginias and Kentucky. Only info on it is from secondary sources, but it's all the same story: guerrillas on legworms, popping in and out of valleys, and the Karen't having much luck with their whackja-mole mallets. The coal mines are caught up in it, too. Here's the interesting bit: Supposedly some huge Grog's leading the revolt, bat ears and fur described as being either straw-colored or white. If we weren't SO short, we'd send a mission to help and I'd know for sure. It's been ugly.
Valentine had been tempted to tell Styachowski to let Mr. Adler remain mysterious and take the first slow barge up the Ohio.
Post's mention that Southern Command was short on "Special Operations" - Wolves or Cats and Bears in the latest military parlance - put him back on the leash.
Of course, it wouldn't be above Moira Styachowski to ask Post to slip in a mention from someone Valentine trusted as a clincher. Styachowski and Post were both veterans of Big Rock Hill. She might ask a favor.
And so what if she had? They're your friends, man. Been in the Zone too much. They've given you a taxing but not particularly dangerous job to bring you back into the fold. Be grateful. And stop tallying to yourself.
Narcisse waited until Blake was lost in the spinning, clattering, multicolored wheel from the old Life game to speak again.
"If Ali found you, that means they needed you to be found. Are you going off again?"
"Afraid so, Sissy", Valentine said. The wheel spun again and Blake pointed to the new number. Wobble chased his tail, imitating the whirling toy.
"You have so little time. He misses you, you know. He's human enough to pine. Too young to understand".
Valentine wondered how Narcisse had tipped to that. Of course he'd been interested in the challenge of the journey. But what was his absence doing to Blake? Was he cocking this up, along with everything else in his life? Wait, Val, you made a bargain with the past four years ago. Let it be. "Ten days. I'll stay here ten days. I need to fatten up on your cooking".
The wheel came off its mount. Blake picked up the wheel and offered it to Valentine, "papa help bwaykhl"
"You can do it yourself. See? Circle in the circle?"
Blake's bony features screwed up in thought. He put the spinner back in the little green dish of plastic. But he didn't align it and settle it on the pin. Valentine reached, but Blake gave it an experimental spin and sent it skittering across the floor.
"bwokel" Blake said, smashing his fist onto the green cradle. The green plastic shattered and Wobble froze. Blake made a gurgling sound.
"Now it is", Valentine said. Narcisse stroked the back of Blake's neck with her intact hand.
"sowwy", Blake said in his faint, breathy voice, "vewy sowwy, papa".
Valentine picked him up again. "We'll make a new one". A piece of planking and a small, dulled nail would do. "Together".
Blake liked the sound of that. He showed all his fangs.
* * *
The days passed like the cars of a speed freight. Valentine contrived to take Blake on a fishing trip. Sufficient dirt, an oversized droopy boat hat, and some baggy clothes made him into a lean boy whose arms and legs were finishing up a growth spurt. The fish were biting, but any sort of motion, from a frog's leap to a rabbit's careful hop, made him drop his rod and investigate.
On his own, Valentine visited a little shrine near the old arch that he'd found on his first trip to the city. Years ago his father had eliminated the Kurians from St. Louis - he learned this not from his father but from some men who had served with him - and the Grogs set up their form of memorial in the lobby of what had been an elevator to the top of the monument. Some bits and pieces laid out in an arch of parachute "silk" that imitated the one above - bullet casings, a canteen, a K-bar-style knife, a climbing glove, and some nylon rope he understood, but there was also a fox tail, a bunch of oddly shaped dice in a clear plastic tube, and a stoppered bottle of what looked like salad oil.
The mementos were meticulously dusted. Maybe at festivals a storyteller hopped up on the display (did the Grogs believe that putting the items behind glass detracted from their power?) and used the props. Or perhaps there were bodies buried behind the access door the heavy case blocked; the Grogs often put mementos outside grave sites. It wasn't even taboo for a Grog to take them up for a moment's examination or obeisance, provided they were returned when the task was done.
He was tempted to take the glove. Though it was larger than his own hand it still seemed small when compared with his memories of his father's huge, capable ones, but the aging Grogs clustered at the doorstep were already snorting and huffing when he bent too close to the display.
Cutcher took him up to the riverbank bluffs and showed him a house with a rambling basement cut into the limestone, lately occupied by a river trader who owned a wharf-side sawmill and a bone-wracking tubercular cough. In a fit of anxiety about his approaching death, he'd donated the property entire and its furnishings to the church.
"One last trade, this time with God", Cutcher chuckled. "May his bargain pay off".
