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If he'd lived a hundred years ago, and been reasonably lucky, he might have had this every day. Coffee with someone in the morning, making sure he used the right color toothbrush, a little pink-and-white razor by the tub. A messy head of hair on the pillow next to him and a clean, warm presence flowing across the sheets.
Of course, if he'd been born a hundred fifty years before that, he might have died as a child on the Trail of Tears. Life was a crap-shoot, but only in his bleaker moments did he think he'd rolled snake eyes. More like an eight the hard way, he supposed. Good or bad depending on the line and side bets.
Lovemaking was also more intense, when neither of you knew if it would be the last time. She'd sweated over him, working him with mouth, hands, breasts, and of course her voracious and triumphant sex. The male might enjoy the role of penetrator, but the female always overpowered and reduced it in the end, the way the soft and lapping surf eventually wears down the rock. Mark Twain had written something about the candleholder outlasting many candles, hadn't he?
He looked over at the cupcake wrapper. They'd shared it to the last crumb, only the candle was left.
After the lovemaking, they'd cooled together on the back porch, naked in the spring breeze, his head pillowed between those sunflower aureolas. They'd talked about household items that might be obtained in Evansville's workshops and markets. Evansville had a thriving brewery and a distillery or two now, and running alcohol into the Kurian Zone was making a few rich and a lot more able to afford to look for little luxuries.
"Nobody wants the Kurians back."
"No," Caral said. "A few want you soldiers out, though. There's some talk about Evansville being a 'Free City.' Or maybe an 'Open City'-depends who you're talking to."
Valentine turned toward her. He'd heard talk like that now and again in the Transmississippi-turning the Free Republics into neutral states that wouldn't accept the Kurian Order or oppose it. "That again. I wonder if there are some agents in town spreading that stuff."
Actually, he didn't wonder, he was close to certain. The organs of the Kurian Order, from the New Universal Church on down, regularly sent people in to the free territories to plant rumors and sow discord. They hadn't been very successful in the Free Republics because the region created enough argument, feud, rumor and discord much in the manner that a sheepdog grew hair, and the body politic had developed immunities. But Evansville was new to freedom.
"I would have saved you one of their flyers if I'd known you were interested. The Southern Command guys aren't going to bust up their meetings, I hope."
How quickly they forget. Just this last winter the troops in Fort Seng had saved them from being touched by the ravies outbreak. Perhaps they'd been a little too effective, and the Evansville citizenry assumed that because they hadn't suffered from the outbreak, they wouldn't have.
But politics soon bored Caral. She started talking about how Evansville rivermen were passing Kurian cargoes up and down the Ohio, using their boats and tugs as a sort of portage across the Southern Command-controlled stretch of the Ohio. Often the barges didn't even uncouple their own tugs, the Evansville boat would simply nudge the rest of the mass up- or downriver.
"No human cargo, of course," she said. She was very sensitive to Valentine's feelings on the matter of Kurian aural fodder, and it had been a long time since she'd said of some female rival: bitch isn't fit for a Reaper. "Not that some of those suckling pigs wouldn't, between your boys with the inspection boats and our police, they can't get captives through. Still, they're making good money doing it, probably skimming a little off the manifests besides. Those rivermen are good customers."
He'd luxuriated in the domestic conversations and Caral showed every sign of enjoying them, but he didn't want to hear about her customers. "How's your tinker doing with the hot water heater for this place?"
"It's coming along," she said, and they launched into forty minutes' worth of plans for improvements to her house. Valentine gave advice only when asked, and soon they drifted off . . .
It was nice to get a little taste, play around in another generation's world, another man's life. Did those men, ordering their gourmet coffee on the way to work from an electrically operated car window, appreciate what they'd lucked into?
The man who'd raised him, Father Max, encouraged his interest in the Old World but had been determined to keep him from being lost in it. Rome fell, but then a future Caesar couldn't imagine came to surpass it. One day, we'll know how to reach for the stars again, David.
He sat up, suddenly a little guilty. Father Max would have a few choice words to say about his relationship with Caral. They'd met innocently enough on the ferry across the river. She'd been leafing through an old fashion magazine, he a dog-eared, glued-together copy of National Geographic, and they'd struck up a conversation about old magazines.
Valentine rose, located his things, and left her softly snoring. As he put on his shoes, he decided the cupcake deserved something extra. He added another fifty dollars of Southern Command scrip to the usual hundred in the envelope, and placed it carefully by the big vintage mirror. He noticed the mirror had an extra latch, so it could be extended to an angle where those who'd paid to be in her bed could look at themselves.
Valentine grabbed his first mosquito of the year. He knew better than to slap the little bloodsuckers, lest the sound carry.
They were outside the rising Kurian tower, near enough to see, through their binoculars, the power lines stringing from work light to work light.
Gamecock's Bears had departed for a crossroads blockhouse and communication center Valentine had marked on his exploration of the Kentucky/Tennessee border. It looked like exactly the sort of place, squat and thick and slit-windowed, for a secret cellar where a Reaper or two could wait out the sun. The Bears would take it on, and hopefully draw a large company of soldiers out of the camp.
The plan was that Gamecock's Bears would attack it, in a half effort, Kentucky guerilla fashion, and then retreat as soon as they started shooting back. That would hopefully draw out some of the troops from the construction camp, and maybe even a couple of Reapers. The Bears were the one military organization in all of Southern Command that relished a fight with the Reapers. When Gamecock found some advantageous ground, he'd turn on his pursuers, and the hunters would become the hunted.
He left Frat and crawled back into the thicker trees where Vendetta's operational headquarters had been set up. A limber Wolf had posted their antenna in a tree and the radio was manned.
It was a cold camp with colder food and no coffee. It would have to wait. They could celebrate success with a good fry-up and coffee boil.
Valentine would man operational HQ with the Wolves, in charge of the overall execution of Vendetta. So far, the most onerous part of being in command was the need to chat with Major Grace, who was making copious notes in a small pocket folder stuffed with papers and maps.
A third force had moved south with Vendetta. Six worms of the Gunslinger Clan rigged for cargo would be available to haul away wounded or valuables, depending on the outcome.
He looked up at the crest of the hill, where Frat sat against a tree stump, looking down at the rising Kurian tower through field glasses.
Frat Carlson still had the robust good looks that made Valentine think of Old World advertisements for colognes and watches. Except men in those ads never wore rather shaggy, shapeless deer-skins over a pilled cotton shirt.
He'd changed since being revealed as a Kurian agent. The whole camp more-or-less knew he'd been connected with the Kurians somehow and exposed, the details were still a matter of conjecture. Since many of the men at Fort Seng had their own Kurian Order skeletons, buried and unburied, Valentine had expected them to be more charitable toward the man they called "Tails."
