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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.
"Seeing as it's your first day, we'll let you get settled in quarters."
The corporal took him to an old basement that had been timbered over with sod. Two ventilation pipes stuck up, without any sort of cover to keep out the rain. The corporal pulled back a tarp and brought him downstairs.
It smelled like body odor, wet wool, and possibly ferrets within, but to the eye it was clear enough. There were window wells, partially blocked up to prevent someone from sneaking out, that admitted some light. Most of the furniture was bunks, but there was also a big five-gallon plastic water barrel with a permanently stopped spigot hole. Instead of that there was a siphon hose and a cup.
"This is Hole Three. Can you say that?"
"Hole threes," Valentine repeated.
"Remember that. Any bunk without a blanket you can take."
Valentine decided he had to choose between light and fresh air and warmth. He chose light and fresh air, and took an unoccupied bottom-bunk near the door.
"Here, you won't eat until breakfast," the corporal said, rummaging in one of his big cargo pockets and pulling out something wrapped in foil. "Unless you're in the hospital, you only eat on the job site. Don't know if you're too smart or too dumb for all this, but I appreciate you not fussing and spitting, Scrubman."
The outer wrapper had a label with a picture of snowcapped mountains. It tasted of real cocoa and sugar and had plenty of peanuts in it. If a corporal in the Gray Baron's command could afford to give away chocolate like this to a prisoner as a kindly afterthought, they must be doing very well indeed in the Kurian Order. Valentine had sipped ersatz cocoa with many a New Universal churchman, even in Louisiana with its access to ocean trade.
Valentine ate half and saved the rest.
Everyone called him Scar.
Hole Three was run by a fleshy man known as Fat Daddy. Valentine wasn't sure of the source of his authority, as he went directly to his bunk and didn't move, even to urinate. His urine was collected and dumped into the basement urine bucket-he later found out every drop was saved, it went to a fertilizer manufacturer-by an injury-hobbled old man called Pappy.
They were all wary of him at first, in his clean new clothes. Fat Daddy distributed the soap ration, and there was none left once his own ample body and that of his rather gorgeous, bewigged golden boy were taken care of. A mix of servant, jester, and lover, the effeminate youth slept like a dog on his plastic-covered mattress at the foot of Fat Daddy's pushed-together bunks. Everyone called him Beach Boy and he was the one who gave Valentine the "Scar" moniker.
"Just do like Fat Daddy says and everything'll work out swell," Pappy advised him.
