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"I claimed you fought me like an evil spirit and you'd no doubt won your scars in battle," he murmured, removing the lead. "They claim you're fit only for use as a draft block in a doorjamb, but I suspect they are pleased to have you."
Ahn-Kha insisted that their price for such a healthy specimen wasn't satisfactory, and the manager there finally accepted a deal where they would see how the captive worked, and if he lived up to Ahn-Kha's promises, they'd meet his price.
Ahn-Kha leaned on the counter so heavily Valentine could hear nails working free. "He's to be well treated, until my price is met."
They sprayed off the mud with a power hose they kept at the gate to the motor vehicle revetment. Valentine rather enjoyed all the mud being blasted off, though his skin felt like it had been sandpapered after. The towel they gave him to dry off was rough and stiff and had not met soap since the previous March, but it was as clean as well water could make it.
Sergeant Stock hung around, watching, which seemed a waste of time for a man due for liberty.
He threw the towel over his head and shoulders, assuming that his nakedness would draw attention rather than his face. If there were still wanted posters out for him, they were for a much more youthful face and long black hair.
A corporal with another odd variant of a short whip-it looked like a stingray tail Valentine had seen in the Gulf-led him to a white-painted prefab with a Quonset-hut-style roof. Valentine noticed a red cross painted on the roof-as if Southern Command or the Grogs had an air force that might bomb the Baron's headquarters-and took him inside. Valentine's nose smelled rubbing alcohol and Kurian Zone disinfectant of the sort that came in fifty-gallon drums sweetly reeking of artificial lemon.
He was glad the place sparkled and smelled. At least he wouldn't be probed with a blood-encrusted finger.
"Wait here," the corporal ordered, shoving him into a folding metal chair.
Stock, who was still watching, spoke up. "Easy there, Corp. This Scrubman's been a broke horse the whole march in." Turning to Valentine, he said, "Relax. Didn't you read the doormat? No fear. Goons over with here. No Reapers. Savvy?"
With that, he walked out of the building.
Was that a code, Valentine thought? Relax, I recognize you, your secret is safe? Or is he just kindly to human captives. The Molly Carlson he'd known wouldn't have married a brute, not after what she'd been through; if anything, she'd only be courted by the most gentle of men. Probably just his nature.
More waiting. Valentine grew ever hungrier, and his stomach growled. The corporal's knuckles whitened on the whip handle, but he otherwise didn't move.
At last, a cough preceded a medical man, with an orderly trailing behind carrying a tray full of instruments and some jars.
The doctor, a gray-hair who looked terribly frail for a forward military camp, examined Valentine. The medical man knew his business. He looked into his eyes, ears, and throat, listened to his heart and breathing through a stethoscope, tut-tutted over the old steam burns on his back, palpitated his scrotum and had Valentine cough, and ran some sort of irritatingly dry swab up his rectum.
He paused over the old gunshot wound in his leg. He cocked his head first to one angle, then another as he looked at it. He reminded Valentine of a pigeon he'd once watched in New Orleans, deciding if a dropped coin was edible.
"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.
