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In between haunting the communications center and helping Patel and Ediyak evaluate the new NCOs, he was asked to visit Doc. Doc had stayed behind to research the new strain of ravies the Kurian Order had deployed that winter. Despite the gray hair and the bent frame, he'd been putting in long hours seven days a week. He'd spent an inordinate amount of time on the radio, mostly advising communities how to prevent cholera and deal with an isolated ravie found here and there, half-starved and confused. The challenge had reawakened the committed researcher who'd lost himself on the Hooked O-C ranch.
Valentine walked over to the hospital-formerly the servants' quarters for the estate. The patients had small, comfortable, climate-controlled rooms. They'd turned a former garage into an operating room, and the old office into an examining room and dispensary. Doc had taken one of the little patient rooms for his research. What little equipment he had, he'd brought with him to begin with.
"Major Valentine, a moment of your attention, please," Doc said. He stood in his office, rocking from the waist. Doc kept eyeing Valentine's sidearm.
Valentine was expecting another request for nonexistent microscopes or a culture incubator. "Sure, Doc. My time is yours."
"May we speak privately? I have some analysis to show you. I would not want my . . . theory-theory, mind you-to become a subject of common discussion."
"I'd like nothing better," Valentine said, and shut the office door.
Doc went to his closet and opened the door. On the inside he'd pinned up a map of Kentucky. He flipped on a bright track light that placed a spot of light on the map when the door was all the way open. The glare made Valentine's head hurt and he felt a little nauseous as Doc invited him over to look at Kentucky, covered in incredibly tiny notations.
"Doc, I've been meaning to ask: Wherever did you learn to write that small?"
"My father was a hog man, Major. He didn't like to waste good feed money on paper. So I learned to take notes in the margins of my classmates' discards. By the time I was studying biology at Jasper Poly-"
"Never mind. I didn't know you'd been tracking our trip to get the O'Coombe boy so closely," Valentine said, looking at the map.
"But I haven't," Doc said, shoving his hands in his pockets, where they went to work like two furiously digging rodents as he rocked. "This is an epidemiological study. With ravies, geography is a strong predictor. Ravies sufferers naturally seek water, whether for sustenance or its cooling effect. Given no higher attraction, such as noise or a food source, they will find water and then follow small tributary to larger river, rather in the manner one is taught to find civilization if lost in the outdoors.
"Of course, my information is sketchy and mostly based on radio reports. But the dates and places of outbreaks show a curious track, don't you think?"
Valentine did think. It followed the arc of their path through north-central Kentucky.
"Always forty-eight to seventy-two hours behind us. Grand Junction. Elizabethtown. Danville. It always started in places we'd visited. We've been a four-wheel Typhoid Mary through Kentucky, Major Valentine."
"Someone's infected but not showing symptoms? They shook hands with a Kentuckian and spread the virus without knowing what they were doing? I thought ravies didn't pass through casual contact; you had to break the skin or eat contaminated food or some such."
Doc shook his head. "Even if it had been via casual contact, it spread too fast. No, the contact network for any one of us is not wide enough, not for this kind of effect in only forty-eight hours. There were multiple infections. It had to be placed in a food source or water supply."
Valentine startled at the implication. "You're saying someone in our column spread it intentionally."
"I'm saying that is what my analysis indicates. My sourcing may be faulty. There might be a statistical anomaly, as our communications with Fort Seng relied on relays with stops behind us, so the data points are naturally skewed to cover our trail. But there were no alarms from outside, say, Bowling Green or Frankfort, as you would expect from a population center that wide."
"Why would the Kurians use us? You'd think trained harpies or-"
"I'm no strategist, Major."
The Kurians would want to use the forces of Southern Command to make sure Kentucky would know who to blame for losses. Give every family a grievance.
Suddenly Valentine knew who'd spread the virus, and where he'd got it from. The sudden realization made him so sick he staggered to Doc's sink and vomited.
Valentine wiped his mouth. Double cross, triple cross, cross back . . . Kurian treachery was like a hall of mirrors. Somewhere a vulnerable back was showing to plunge the knife in. No doubt there were Kurian agents dropping a few broad hints, revealing a few interesting details, in minds willing to believe the worst about outsiders. Bears weren't well understood even in the UFR. Many a regular citizen heard only of howling teams of battle-maddened men killing anything that moved. He could see an average Kentuckian believing Southern Command had brought a contagion into their land, probably by accident. But the dead were still the dead.
The winter wind blew dead leaves and freezing rain in confused swirls. Valentine didn't like freezing rain. It magically found crevices-the collar, the small of the back, the tops of your shoes-hitting and melting and leaving you wet and cold.
He'd summoned Lambert, Duvalier, Ediyak, Gamecock, and Nilay Patel to the old basement of the estate house. They'd cleaned it out and were in the process of turning it into a sort of theater that could show either movies or live plays.
It could also serve as a courtroom, if need be.
Frat stood before him, his bright new bars shining.
"Why'd you do it, Captain?" Valentine asked.
"Do what, sir?"
"Betray us," Valentine said.
