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"I'm not going to hurt you," Valentine said. "All I want is a news report."
"News report?" the Moondagger said.
"Yes. You know, like on the television. You've watched television."
"Allchannel," the Moondagger said.
Valentine smiled, remembering the logo from Xanadu. "Yes, allchannel. It's the Curfew News. Give me the highlights from Kentucky."
Realization of what Valentine wanted broke over his face like a dawn. He raised his chin.
"The worm herders. They fight with us. Our Supreme, he says to give a lesson, but from that lesson we must give five more lessons, and then fifty. So now we must call in many more re-erforcings. Much fighting everywhere-here one day, there another. I am diligent, I am peaceable, I follow orders only."
Valentine tried to get more out of him: places, clans, the nature of these "re-erforcings,"
but he was just an youth taught little more than to follow orders, line up to eat, obey his faith, and of course shoot.
"Let's get him back to headquarters. Give him a little food and water. He looks like he could use it."
"I pass my test," the prisoner said.
"Come again?" Valentine asked.
"The Gods, always they test us. Both with blessings and misfortunes. Either can lead you from the righteous path."
"On that, we're agreed," Valentine said.
"I was afraid that you would kill me and I would not be taken to higher glory by the angels of mercy. I still have a chance to make something of my death."
Valentine felt like slapping some sense into the hopeful, young brown eyes. A little understanding, please, David, he heard Father Max's voice say, sounding just as he had when Valentine complained as a sixteen-year-old about his first and second year students' haphazard efforts with their literacy homework. What would he have become, had he been raised on Church propaganda as though it were mother's milk?
He left the prisoner and his disquieting thoughts, and plunged into planning a route back to the brigade.
* * * *
With the column under way again, Valentine sought out Brother Mark.
"Is confession a specialty of yours?" he asked.
Brother Mark took a deep breath. "It's not a part of my official dogma, no. But I believe in unburdening oneself."
Valentine sat. "There's a demon in me. It keeps looking for chances to get out. This damn war keeps arranging itself so I don't have much choice but to free it. I just came back from a little ambush in Green River clan territory. I did . . . appalling things."
"You want to talk sins, my son? You will have to live lifetimes to catch up to my tally."
"Killing wounded?"
"Oh, much worse. I believe I told you some of my early schooling and work at the hospital? Of course. After my advanced schooling they posted me to Boston. I did well there.
Married, had three kids. All were brought up by their nannies with expectations of entering the Church in my footsteps. Poor little dears. There was a fourth, but my Archon suggested I offer her up. Parenting effectiveness coefficients for age distribution and all that. Middle children sometimes grow up wild in large families."
"I'm sorry. So you left after that?" Valentine asked.
"Oh, no. No, I gave her up gladly and took Caring out to dinner on the wharf to celebrate afterward. My bishop sent us a bottle of French champagne. Delicious stuff. I became a senior regional guide for the Northeast. The Church keeps us very busy there. There are a lot of qualified people employed in New York or Philadelphia, Montreal and Boston, and down to Washington. High tech, communications, research, education, public affairs-the cradle of the best and the brightest. They require a lot of coddling and emotional and intellectual substantiation. You can't just say 'that's the way it must be; Kur has decided' to those people.
You have to argue the facts. Or get some new facts.
"So I became an elector. Myself and the council of bishops helped set regional, and sometimes interregional, Church policy. How old could an infant be before it could no longer be offered up for recycling? What was the youngest a girl could be and have a reasonable expectation of surviving childbirth? We listened to scientists and doctors, debated whether a practicing homosexual was a threat to the community even if he or she produced offspring.
