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The driver bounced us all the way to one of the Maynes family holdings, a monumental white edifice that I learned was a pre-Kurian hotel outside White Sulphur Springs. Stackworth reknotted his tie and checked his zipper after stepping out of the transport.
It was a rambling, multistory structure in a clean Federal style, white as a solitary cumulous cloud on a fair summer day. Gardens, a golf course, and bridle trails surrounded it, with encompassing picturesque, thickly forested blue hills. In layout, it was staggered with several similarly styled buildings linked together over the vast grounds, not very different from the buzzing human hives in the bigger cities.
“Welcome to the White Palace,” the shuttle driver said as we pulled up.
Stackworth spent a few moments talking to a man in a granite uniform with large, shining black buttons and a captain’s bars. “This is the Grog I called about. For Maynes.”
“You should be more specific. We have about sixty of the Maynes name here, not counting wives and first cousins.”
“You know I mean Joshua Maynes the Third,” Stackworth said. “Bone.”
And that is how I learned the name of the most troubling, and troubled, man I ever served.
• • •
We dropped the soldier with the cough at a door with a medical cross on it, then shuttle parked around a lesser projection jutting out of the back of the white wall of the palace. They brought me in what I presume had been the staff entrance. I was met by an attendant with the inevitable clipboard.
“No luggage?” he asked the driver.
“Fresh out of the woods, I’m told,” Stackworth said.
I waited, idle—there is a great deal of idle waiting in any Kurian Zone—while the attendant phoned the security administrative office and they sent someone up to get me. Once again, this woman was incredulous that I had no luggage. I decided to acquire a toothbrush at my first opportunity, just so whatever they needed checked off about my luggage could be checked off.
The security office, or at least the part that handled new employees, was located in the basement. They took me down three flights of stairs, the first having a polished wood balustrade, the second having no-slip utility strips, and the third being just three broken steps down under a sign that read WATCH YOUR HEAD. The hallway my escort took me down was narrow, and I wondered what would happen if we met someone coming the other way. I heard the muted roar of a boiler coming from nowhere in particular. As the sound faded, I was brought into a sort of office with a big whiteboard with a permanent black grid with names and shift information. “Maynes” showed up repeatedly on the grid along with names of those detailed to each.
Two men in granite-colored canvas uniform pants and creased light woolen shirts with silver snaps sat in chairs sorting documents into bins labeled “file” and “shred.” A third, wearing a jacket and tie over a denim shirt, sat at a desk, sipping water out of one of those oversized tumblers you sometimes see bedside in hospitals.
“This is the Wonder Grog,” my escort said, shutting the door behind her. “No sign language or icon books; he talks.”
“Uh-huh,” the man in the suit jacket grunted.
Rather relieved to finally meet someone who wasn’t worried about my luggage, I stared at his water and smacked my lips. I was thirsty after the ride.
“You drive?” he asked. I liked that he didn’t call me a stoop.
“Yes! Drive!” I said, mimicking the operation of a steering wheel and floor shift.
He imitated my syntax. “You fight? Know subdue. Subdue?”
I rubbed my forehead and looked at the floor. “What—who—not—me teach? You me teach? You teach me subdue?”
He nodded. “Mean not kill. Hold.”
“Hold! Wrasslin’!” I said. I hoped they wouldn’t put me on collection runs, or whatever they called them here, gathering victims for the Reapers.
“Yes, wrestling, exactly,” shirt-and-tie said, throwing a look at the men sorting. I noticed he had an orange earplug in his ear. It wasn’t attached to a wire, so communication or a personal sound system was out.
“Wrasslin’, know. Wrasslin’ do,” I said, on my guard now.
“Do now,” he said, nodding at the escort at the door.
The lights went out and the two men who were sorting papers flew at me like aimed arrows. I heard handcuffs open and felt the hard bar of a baton lever against my elbow.
They fought dirty. One stomped my instep, hard, with his bootheel as he worked the baton and the other fired a deafening air horn. I felt the force of it on my fur, but my ears had already closed and twisted back as soon as the lights turned off. Do not be impressed; this was more reflex than intention. Golden One ears go flat during a tooth-and-claw whether we want them to or not.
Wrasslin’ he wanted and wrasslin’ he got. My two attackers, so lively and aggressive in their opening moves, like inexperienced chess players, relaxed considerably once I had the blades of my forearms up against their windpipes. I hugged them tight until they went limp.
The lights went on about the same time that I smelled urine.
