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"They always start you off easy. After I took my first vows, they put me in a little schoolhouse, helping the Youth Vanguard with their reading, writing, and 'rithmatic. Cozy.
And they had a full priest there for all the tough questions. If someone asked where their grandfather went, all I'd have to say is 'Let's go talk to our guide.' Then sit quietly while the full priest talked about sacrifice for the greater good.
"Then they moved me to the hospital. I'd just taken my second set of vows. Passed all my examinations with flying colors, by the way. Dead-even emotional resonance when presented with disturbing imagery."
Valentine didn't know what that was but didn't want to change the old churchman's loquacious mood. He'd only seen the church from the outside.
"Did hospital service change your opinions?"
"No, it took me a long time to wake up. Nightmares shouldn't be allowed to pose as dreams."
"I ran into one of those about a year ago," Valentine said. He still felt conflicted about the course he'd chosen in the Cascades. Valentine was not a believer in the revolutionary's morality, where the result justified the means. Could he have come up with a better way to get rid of Adler's bloody direction of Pacific Command?
Brother Mark broke in on his thoughts. "Again, they made it so easy. At the hospital I had a nice little office, and each patient went through a rubric while their medical needs were being evaluated. Took into account age, physical condition, skill set, community activism, and responsibility ... and of course how involved the treatment might be and prognosis for recovery to full useful life. Above a certain score and they were treated. Below a certain score and they found themselves on the drop list.
He whispered the last two words, as though they were something shameful.
"Drop list," he continued. "Sounds innocuous, right? It meant they crossed over into the hands of the Reapers, of course. In a lot of cases the really sick people stayed at home or had quacks treat them, so we always talked to the school-agers about reporting any adults they knew who were sick. Spread of contagion and so on.
"There were scores in between the drop list and treatment. In those cases I consulted higher authority. I'd call the local senior guide and we'd talk it over. Sometimes I'd visit them.
Later I found out my guide would phone the family and ask them to come into his office for a consultation. He'd tell their families that serious decisions had to be made about a loved one, and by the way, the residential hall is practically falling apart on the east side and everyone knows clergy aren't paid salaries . . .
"After a year there my senior guide started having me make decisions myself and then explaining them to him. I must have been good at it. He only overruled me once, in the case of a nephew of a brass ring who had cerebral palsy. They'd found some sinecure for him, and I suspect old Rusty had a big bag of money drop between his ankles under the table. With practice it got easier. I was able to tell myself it was for the good of the species, all the usual Guidon false analogies and circular arguments when it's not engaging in outright devil's advocacy. You wouldn't believe-or maybe you would. But I was destined for greater things."
"So when did you start to question your Guidon?"
It might have been the time I went to the basement. There was an incinerator down there for medical waste and so on, and I was responsible for destroying certain records. Lost records are the bureaucrat's best friend when trouble pays a call, Valentine, and don't you forget it if you ever rise to a desk.
"Now usually I just dumped the files down the chute, but it was after normal office hours and for some reason I thought the incinerator might not be burning since we were on a winter fuel savings drive. I went down to check. The basement had its own cargo lift, otherwise you had to take the stairs, and there were two doors out of the lift. The first set, by the buttons, went to the incinerator. I'd always heard that only people who were dropped went out the back doors.
"I took the lift down to the basement because they were painting in the stairs and the fumes bothered me-we'd hit the natal goal for the year, and the doctors and nurses from the delivery ward were having all their faces painted on the landings-and I heard a sound from the other side of the back door as my exit opened. It was like . . . like a sander, a belt sander or one of those ones with the little round pads. I heard screaming."
"We'd always been told, you see, that everything was done to make death painless and worry-free, right down to the use of drugs to relax the person designated for recycling. I still hear that whirring noise and the screams, right to this clay, like someone made a tape of it.
"I went to the incinerator and burned the old records and took the stairs back up. Though it almost choked me."
Valentine asked Ediyak to see if she could scare up some food, worried what the ten fingers of bourbon consumption would do to Brother Mark's nerve-worn system.
"You're a good boy, Valentine."
"Where did they send you after the hospital?"
"Education in Washington, DC, seat of the New Universal Church. The Vatican, Medina, Jerusalem, and the River Ganges all wrapped up around one green mall. Ever seen it? No, I suppose you haven't."
"No."
"Well, all the Church upper education schools and monuments are there. Tor the service of mankind,' they all say. Yes, each and every one of them. Sometimes in letters six feet high in marble.
"My six years there reaffirmed my faith in mankind's future. I took lots of classes on old wars, intolerance, racism, studied how mankind had been in a downward spiral and that the so-called Age of Reason led to anything but. I could recite the four controls Homo sapiens needed and wrote long essays on the correctly actualized person.
"Oh, and I had my great moment of fame, when I acted in an atrocity film. I got to play both a local priest bemoaning the slaughter of an entire town and a colonel who admitted giving orders to your terror operatives to poison water supplies feeding hospitals and schools.
Different films, of course."
"Of course."
"I wondered if anyone would recognize me. Of course I had a full beard and an eyepatch when I was playing the captured colonel.
