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"Physical contact isn't necessary, you know."
Valentine straightened. "But you said-"
"An aura projects up to, oh, nine feet from the body. You didn't know that?"
"No."
"I saw it on a scanner once, during my education. An aura shows up on certain kinds of electrical detection equipment. It looked a little like the northern lights-ever seen them?"
"Yes, as a boy."
"It's an odd thing. A man missing his arm will still have the aura of his arm. It just looks more like a flipper. He can even move it around, to an extent, by working the muscles that used to work his arm. They could turn up the sensitivity of the equipment and show just how far an aura extends. Fascinating stuff. It's one of the reasons I don't eat cooked food. There's more aura residue clinging to uncooked vegetables."
"You don't say," Valentine said, wondering how to get the Brother back to the subject at hand. "Thank you for continuing my education."
"You weren't wrong-of course the connection is a good deal clearer when there's physical contact."
"How often would the Kurian have to make contact?"
"All I can do is guess. Different Kurians have developed different skills."
"Guesswork, then."
"Every few days. It's like a- Do you know what hypnosis is?"
"I saw a hypnotist once in Wisconsin. He was doing it for entertainment."
"It's like a hypnotic suggestion. Much of it depends on the will of the subject. With a strong-willed individual, I expect there'd have to be contact every day or two."
"Can you detect the connection?"
"Possibly. But I don't think our good commander would appreci-ate me hovering around her at headquarters, feeling the staff up until the hooded hours. I'd rather not have another noose put around my neck." He tugged at his collar, as if he could still feel the rope's abrasive coil.
"No sense wasting time," Valentine said. "Come to the headquarters tent tor that glop that's passing for coffee. I need to talk to you about visiting the legworm clans anyway.
Perhaps you can help with snack table."
Luckily Valentine could lose himself in the detail of his position and his appetite's arousal as the food trays came in. As the nighttime activity commenced, his collection of officers gave Moondagger position reports from the Wolves and a Cat who'd single-handedly dispatched a three-man patrol, keeping one alive for interrogation. Clean bit of work, that. Valentine would talk that up with the companies as he passed through them on the march. Nervous pickets liked to hear that the other side suffered its own devils in the dark.
Bloom listened rather absently. She only spoke once.
"Send that prisoner back to the Moondaggers. Tell them if they'll leave us alone, we'll leave them alone."
A less Bloom-like order Valentine could hardly imagine. She earned her rank during Archangel by taking her company forward, hammering in the morning, hammering in the evening, hammering at suppertime (as the old song went) against Solon's forces at Arkansas Post to cut off the river.
Then there were more mundane announcements such as the discovery of leaking propane tanks in the mobile generator reserve-he'd put his old company on finding more-and the field kitchen was running short of cooking oil and barbecue sauce.
Legworm meat needed lots of barbecue sauce to make it palatable.
Valentine wondered if his opposite number in the Moondaggers was listening to his own briefing, worried over just what had happened to that three-man patrol and dealing with a shortage of hydrogen fuel cells for the command cars.
Brother Mark made himself useful. After giving his briefing regarding their allies'
dwindling enthusiasm, he went about the room with a coffee pot, touching distracted officers and staff and asking for refills. Now and then he shrugged at Valentine or shook his head.
Valentine passed close and noticed that Brother Mark was sweat-ing from the effort.
Tiddle took some catching, but Brother Mark finally managed to corner him and point out that his cuff and elbow were both frayed-Tiddle had spilled his bike with his trick riding.
