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"Bad, this. How old is it?"
Valentine dropped his mouth open wide and acted as though he'd been asked to construe Wittgenstein. "Errrrrrrup-not baby to manhood. Baby to hunting age."
"In years, please. Four seasons equals a year."
"Four. No, ten. Tenteen?"
The doctor sighed. "Never mind. It still gives you trouble?"
"No run long," Valentine said, which was close to the truth.
"Could have been worse, Scrubman. It might have hit your femoral artery. You would have been dead in seconds. Next time you have the opportunity you might want to sacrifice a chicken or whatever you do to appease fortune."
Valentine didn't mind being talked down to. It meant the disguise was working, at least so far.
The doctor took out a white instrument like a thick pen. He folded it open to reveal a little screen on a swing arm.
"Orderly, starting SSI scan."
The orderly picked up Valentine's clipboard and a pencil.
The instrument passed from temple to temple. Valentine felt a crackling presence across his skin, like a piece of wool that's built up a strong static charge.
"Subject fifty-one-eleven, Mentation weak A. That's interesting. Too bad he didn't get some education. Emotional weak C, no, I'll call that a strong D-he's seen a lot of stress, by the look of it, and he's got it buried deep. I've gotten strong Ds out of semi-sentient Grogs. He either tortures critters or he cries at the sight of a dead baby bird, I'll bet. Delta signal-whoa there, strong B." Valentine felt the instrument touch him midforehead. "No, weak A-no, strong A ... dropped back to B again. The hell? This SSI needs a factory recalibration, that can't be right with a Scrubman. And we're back at A, steady. I think this SSI's crapped out."
He tested it briefly on the orderly. Valentine watched its screen travel from green to pink, with little arrows and letters appearing as he moved it across the man's forehead. "Hmmm," he said.
The doctor turned and stared hard into Valentine's eyes. "You're not a Kurian agent, I'm guessing, unless our dear Baron's made some powerful enemies. An agent wouldn't dink around in the labor pens. He'd walk right into headquarters."
Valentine tried to look blank and uncomprehending, and offered a nervous smile. "Haircut now?" he asked.
"Wonder who whelped this pup and who his father was," the doc mused, folding up his instrument again.
The stingray-whip corporal took a firm grip on his upper arm and led him past a small motor pool filled with rebuilt trucks-the sleek twenty-first-century panels had been replaced with brutally ugly corrugated steel painted in that same vertical camo scheme-to a pole barn filled with shipping containers and tables.
They issued Valentine a set of plain white canvas pants and a shirt, along with some mass-produced sandals that he'd last seen in Xanadu. The shirt, probably once stiff and uncomfortable, had been washed down to an almost flannel smoothness. Valentine noticed there was a patch sewn on the right breast, shaped to look like a shovel-head with a number 3 on it.
"Don't worry, in the winter you'll get boots," his corporal said.
"No kill? No eat?"
The corporal cracked a smile for the first time. "Believe me, this isn't the end of the line for you. Getting roped by that Grog's the best thing that ever happened to you. Getting any of this?"
"Yes-yes," Valentine said. "Littles."
"Do as you're told and you're entitled to three hots and a cot. If you're doing heavy labor, you get snacks, even. I grew up in Illinois, farm labor, and we didn't get that unless our families snuck it out to us, so appreciate it. We only send screwups back north. We've had some guys come out of the pens and make sergeant. I don't suppose you can read and write-"
"Read, yes, read good."
The corporal chuckled. "Well, they'll test you, so let's wait-Hey, look alive, if you know what's good for you, here's the man himself. That there's the Baron, Scrubman, he owns your ass now. You do what he say, you can rise right up to a piece of Iowa heaven. Cross him and you'll be turned into pig feed."
Two four wheelers and a pickup truck rolled through camp at a gentle pace. Valentine assumed that the Baron was in the first car, the passenger seat of a polished, high-clearance jeep-style vehicle. He wore a long legworm-leather duster of a reddish-brown hue with its brass-tipped collar turned up and the brim of his old military-style scrambled eggs cap down low. He wore big reflective sunglasses, in fact, put a corncob pipe in his mouth, and in that cap and glasses and Valentine thought he might pass for General MacArthur.
The corporal saluted as the cars passed and Valentine aped him, poorly. The Baron gave no sign he'd seen them.
The rear truck had a camper on the back with old bulletproof vests fixed over the windows. Valentine supposed some Grog body-guards were within, looking out at the world through concealed firing slits.
The corporal looked pleased with the salute.
