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They beckon for a brother’s weight.”
I recognized the music, but not the words. Like many of the more popular Youth Vanguard songs, the sprightly jingle had been reworded in the Free Territory into a tune about eating corn biscuits and peanut butter (“jammers”) on the march:
Corp, pass them jammers down this way
It’s all we’re gonna get today.
“How fit are you, friends?” the female leader asked those relaxing with their meals and beer.
A few of the drinkers and diners gave nervous gulps. Maynes snorted.
The male gave a single, resounding clap. “Give them an example. Remember, we’ve been doing hiking and field craft exercises all morning. And just think of what the soldiers in Mississippi have to overcome!”
It is easy to forget the terror the Youth Vanguard wielded. When relating such scenes, I, Ahn-Kha, witnessed, I am called an exaggerator, a fabulist, even a straight-out liar. There is more evidence than my testimony, my reader, if you can stomach the experience of viewing the photographs and remaining video footage. But that is outside this account. Suffice to say, that at a denouncement from a member of the Youth Vanguard, you could easily have your career wrecked. I have even heard, from those who have seen it, that the Vanguard carried out summary executions—a rarity in the Kurian Zones, where blood and vital aura are conserved for the Reapers and their animating Kurians. But each of the Youth Vanguard leaders carried a black nylon holster along with the rest of his gear, a symbol of trust and authority.
They put their charges through a series of exercises. Maynes ignored it, cracking peanuts and either tossing them into his mouth, or down toward the riverbank, where some local squirrels would race for them.
“You Coal Country people have a reputation of being tough as nails. Let’s see you try,” the woman suggested, smiling broadly.
MacTierney rose to his feet with the others, but Maynes threw a peanut at his ear. As it bounced off, drawing a glance from the target, Maynes shook his head.
The diners formed themselves into a line opposite the youth troop and performed, slowly and cumbersomely, the exercises. One of the drovers broke wind as he bent, drawing some giggles from the children.
“That’s not funny,” a male leader said. “A demerit each.”
The simple calisthenics grew more laborsome. The exercisers panted and sagged.
“What’s the over/under on heart attacks?” Home asked.
The elderly couple stopped. Smiling, they held up their hands as though in surrender. The Youth Vanguard leaders turned solicitous, also smiling, and offered to help them back to their seats.
“You show a remarkable tolerance for idleness,” the male said to our table. “Also, smell. When did that Grog last bathe?”
“That’s just my aftershave, kid,” Maynes said. “From my grandfather’s estate. Eau de Senate Cloakroom. Don’t you like it?”
“Strange that such a healthy and important young man is idling in a beer garden,” the Virginian said.
The wife of the middle-aged man suddenly fell to her knees and vomited up her lunch.
As though given permission by the others stopping, the rest of the exercisers broke off.
“No one told you to stop,” the female Vanguard leader shouted, slapping a hand on her pistol holster. She stepped over to the woman who’d vomited.
“Your system’s better off without all that beer in it. Clean up that disgusting mess. Now!”
She looked around helplessly, and her husband knelt and helped her scoop up the vomitus with their bare hands.
MacTierney, looking a little pale, excused himself from the table. Odd how the bodily functions of another species do not provoke the same visceral reactions. My head spun and I fainted at the birth of my own children, but I once carefully helped replace a pair of popped-out eyeballs that had resulted from the concussion of the bombardment of Big Rock Hill on a man.
“I think you gentlemen should take their places,” the Youth Vanguard leader said.
“Who’s going to—,” Home started to say.
Maynes tossed another peanut into his mouth. “Hey, King, you weigh as much as all of us put together. Go join in. Hippity-hop, now. Let’s see if our Youth Vanguard leaders can do as many push-ups as you.”
“By my authority to protect . . . ,” the male leader began, drawing his pistol from the holster at his waist. It was a mass-produced revolver, probably a .38, hardly a military-grade threat or the sort of weapon a professional assassin sent to kill Maynes might employ, but it was clean and oiled and deadly nonetheless.
I dislike displays of authority above the barrel of a gun. I have never seen anything good come of them. In fact, useless bloodshed is often the result of such exhibitions. I reached out, engulfed the vanguard leader’s hand, and rendered the revolver less dangerous, at least to anyone but its user, by bending the barrel into a pinch-point. The bones in the Vanguard leader’s hands broke rather more easily.
