Valentine's Exile (Vampire Earth #5)

Valentine's Exile (Vampire Earth #5) Page 11

Xanadu, October: Summer lingered that year between the Great hakes and the Appalachians. In eastern Russia and Mongolia the bitter winter of '72 came hard and fast, leading to starvation in the Permafrost Freehold. In the Aztlan Southwest El Nino blew hot, making a certain group of aerial daredevils licking their wounds in the desert outside Phoenix ration water. Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas drowned under torrential tropical storms hurtling out of the mid-Atlantic one after another, ushering in what came to be known as the mud fall.

Ohio could not have been more idyllic, with cloudless days reaching into the midseventies and cool nights in the high fifties, perfect weather for sleeping under a light blanket. There was plenty of time for apple picking and blueberry gathering, and the turkeys had grown extra large in that year of plenty.

David Valentine always remembered that first fall of his exile as a grim, disturbing business under a kindly sky. Perhaps if he'd been lazier, or argumentative, or a thief, he and Ahn-Kha would have been thrown out of Xanadu with the Golden One's sutures still weeping. But after his first day in the fields he found the bio warfare scare story implausible, and became determined to find out what lay behind the neatly tuck-pointed facade of those reddish bricks.

The job offer didn't come as much of a surprise. It happened over dinner in the "field house"-a small apartment building that reminded Valentine of Price's motel, essentially a line of tiny rooms, two sharing one bath, that housed the lowest of the low of Xanadu's laborers: the "hands."

Up one step from the hands were the service workers, who mixed with the hands at their shared recreation center just behind the hospital. The fixtures made Valentine think it had originally been built to be a large-vehicle garage, but now it held Ping-Pong tables, a video screen and library (full of dull-as-distilled-water New Universal Church productions), and a jukebox ("Authentic Vintage MCDs").

The service workers performed cafeteria and janitorial duties inside the main buildings. Valentine learned his first night there that they expected the hands to do the same for them. He learned how to cook "factory food,"-washtub-sized trays of pastas, vegetables, and sweet puddings. Every other night there was meat from the Xanadu livestock. Beef predominated, which Valentine found remarkable. Even during his hitch as a Coastal Marine he'd only been fed chicken; beef was saved for feasts before and after a cruise.

A step above the service workers was the security. There weren't many of them, considering the evident importance of the facility. Enough to man the two gates (there was a smaller one to the east) and the towers, and to keep guard at all the main building doors. Valentine could have stormed the place with a single company of Wolves, had he been able to get the company that deep into the Kurian Zone.

And made it past the cordon of Reapers.

The security forces lived and worked from the long building almost connecting the hospital with the salmon-colored apartment blocks.

That was all Valentine could learn about the self-contained community in his off hours. During the day he worked on the plumbing for a fourth barn, stripped to the waist and digging the ditch for the piping. He recognized make-work when he saw it; a backhoe could have completed the digging in a day.

"You ever think of joining the Ordnance, Tar?" Michiver, the chief hand, asked him over his plate of stew at one of the long cafeteria tables in the rec center. Michiver had a nose that looked like an overgrown wart and ate slowly and stiffly and with a bit of a wince, like an old dog.

"I like the soap and the flush toilets," Valentine said, truthfully enough.

"When I saw you pull up with your big Grog in that leather outfit, I thought you were just another Kentucky quirt. But you put in a real day's work and stay sober at night."

"That's not hard when the nearest liquor store's ten miles away."

Michiver's eyes puckered as he leaned close. "Ordnance duty is nice, if you put in the hours. Three hot meals a day, good doctors and dentists, Lake Ontario cruises for your vacation."

"I'm not much on the Church, though."

Michiver rested his head on rough hands. "It's just one day a week. I've gotten good at sleeping with my eyes open. Heard one lecture about the importance of recycling, heard them all."

"So are you offering me a job, boss?"

"For you and your Grog, assuming he's willing to work. When that new barn goes in I'll need a supervisor, you could be it."

"I was thinking of joining up with the Kentucky Legion."

"And get your head blown off? Chasing guerillas up and down the hills is alright for some, but you've got character and intelligence. I see it plain. We could use you here."

"Doc Boothe warned me off about diseases."

"Hands work outdoors; you're not cleaning up after the patients inside. I've been here fourteen years and I've never seen anything but colds and flu and a bit of pneumonia in the winter. Don't concern yourself with what's going on up at the Grands."

"You sure seem eager to have me. That means there's a catch."

"I'm no spring chicken, Tar," Michiver said, rolling a lock of gray hair between thumb and forefinger. He had an I GAVE MY LITER button on his shirt. "If there's a catch, it hasn't caught me."

"Do I have to sign a contract or anything?"

"Ohio's booming. Hard to find reliable men these days; everyone wants city work under the lights. You Kentuck aren't so hot for jump joints and dazzle halls. Don't worry about contracts, you can quit whenever you like. Forget about your tribesmen. No one in Kentucky's in a position to say boo to the Ordnance. Stay the weekend at least. Saturday's a half day and we're having a dance in town at the NUC hall. The Church is bringing down some husband-hunters from Cleveland and the beer's all the way from Milwaukee, if you're partial to that poison." Michiver made his points poking the table, each poke nearer to Valentine as though trying to herd him into saying yes. "Great way to end your week here, either way-what you say?"

"I say fine."

Ahn-Kha watched him get dressed for the dance-leathers on the bottom, freshly washed blue chambray workshirt up top-and offered only one piece of advice: "Don't drink. Doctor Boothe says Michiver doesn't touch a drop of alcohol."

Valentine wished he had something other than work boots to put on his feet. "I'm more interested in getting friendly with the security staff. There's one odd thing about this place; except for the people in charge of the various departments, and that vet's nurse, seems like no one here's worked here longer than a year or two. Except friend Michiver."

Ahn-Kha gave that a moment's thought. "Perhaps you either get promoted or rotated out."

"I get the feeling Michiver's offer is a wiggling pink worm inside the mouth of a very big snapping turtle."

"It gives us time to look down the turtle's throat, my David."

Valentine waited in front of the staff apartments, a little apart from the crowd of off-duty hands and service workers waiting for the buses into town. A last bottle of sealed Bulletproof was tucked inside a plain paper bag he cradled. He watched those waiting to go to the dance. A few passed around a silver flask, more smoked. The women wore golden metallic eyeshadow and heavy black liner, apparently the current style in Ohio.

A dozen of the security staff all waited together in a line against the wall, like the schoolkids too cool to be out on the playground.

Doctor Boothe rode by in her little four-wheeler-an electric golf cart tricked out for backcountry. She used it to get from animal to animal on Xanadu's horizon-spanning acreage. She stared at Valentine for a moment, then picked up her bags of instruments and turned indoors.

Three buses took them into the riverside town. Valentine managed to take a seat next to one of the security men, but he either stared out the window or spoke to the two of his class in the seats just ahead during the half-hour trip. The church hall turned out to be a quasicathedral with attached school; the dance was set up beneath raised basketball backboards in what had been the gymnasium. A raised stage was built into one end of the gym.

Red and blue streamers formed a canopy overhead and decorated the refreshment tables-provided by the Ohio Young Vanguard, Actualization Team #415, according to a sign and a jar accepting donations. A teenage girl, eyes bright enough to be the result of Benzedrine, thanked him for his five-dollar donation and offered him a four-color pamphlet.

THE ORDNANCE AND NUC THANKS ITS HEALTH SECURITY WORKERS OF XANADU read the banner over the raised platform at one end of the gymnasium. Dusty red curtains half closed off a stage, hiding the lighting gear for the musicians. At the other end folding tables and chairs had a few balloons attached.

A nostalgic hip-hop dj-backed band ("lame" pronounced one of the security staff) laid down a techno beat as they entered, and the chief bandsman started exhorting the crowd to enjoy themselves as soon as the workers trickled in. The music echoed oddly in the high-ceilinged, quarter-lit gym, making Valentine feel as though he'd just stepped inside a huge kettledrum.

Valentine knew a handful of names and a few more faces, and once he'd nodded to those he knew he sat down on the basketball stands and read the tri-fold pamphlet the Young Vanguard girl had given him.

7 Civic Virtues we grow inside, as our bodies grow outside:

1. Humility-we understand that mankind has been pulled backfrom the brink of self-destruction by wisdom greater than ours, giving us hope.

2. Hope for the Future-we know we can build a better world if we just listen to the quiet voice in our hearts.

3. Hearts that know Compassion-to act for the better of all, we pledge our minds, and the mind's servant, the hand.

4. Hands Busy in Labor-we pledge to work and sacrifice so that the following generation may live happier lives.

5. Heroism-we stand for what we know to be right and pledge our lives to the future; our word is our bond.

6. Honesty-we must be honest with others, for only then can we be honest with ourselves.

7. Healthy Bodies and Minds-we pledge to refrain from partaking of any substance that might cloud mind or pollute body.

Pictures of particularly outstanding Vanguards and their Ordnance sponsors filled the back. Valentine more than half believed it all. The Churchmen knew how to keep their flocks all moving in the same direction-straight to the slaughterhouse.

The male-female ratio equalized a little when a pair of local Churchmen arrived with a contingent of single women. Their clothes and stockings marked them as city girls, looking like peacocks dumped in a headwater barnyard, and smelling of desperation. Or perhaps that was just the name of the perfume. The Churchmen divided the group in two parts and led their subflocks around, making introductions.

"Take a heck of a lot more than applejack to get me to take a run at one of those boxies," one of the security men said to his mate.

"Try a blindfold," another agreed from behind a thick mustache.

Valentine sidled up to the trio. "I've got an untapped bottle of Kentucky bourbon, if you like."

Thick Mustache sneered. "Take a hike, cowpuncher."

"My-" Valentine began.

"Get lost, quirt," the one eyeing up the women said. "You're not making yourself look good, you're making us look bad."

Valentine felt the room go twenty degrees warmer. "We could talk more outside, if you like."

"I'll share your liquor, new man," a female voice said in his ear.

Valentine startled. Six feet of creamy skin stood barefoot next to him, her heels dangling loose from one hand and a clutch purse in the other. She was at least a decade older, but high-cheeked and attractive in a shoulder-padded dress. Or simply more skilled with makeup and clothing than the rest of the women in the gym. Valentine wondered if she'd come in by a different route-she'd neither arrived on the buses nor been escorted in by the Churchmen.

"Looking hot, Doc P," the security man who'd called Valentine a "quirt" a moment ago said.

The woman cocked her head, an eyebrow up. Even Valentine, thirty degrees out of the line of fire of the stare, felt a chill.

"C'mon, you 'bot," Thick Mustache said, pulling his companion away.

"What's your name?"

"Tar. Tar Ayoob."

"Tar? Like in 'nicotine and

"Short for Tarquin," Valentine said.

She transferred her shoes to her purse-holding hand. "Fran Paoli. I work up at Xanadu too."

"I'm liking it better and better there," Valentine said, shaking her offered hand. She laughed, but lightly.

Valentine showed her the bottle.

"That's real Kentucky Bourbon, I believe," she said.

"Care for a snort?" Valentine asked.

"With water," she said. "About 5ccs."

"How much is that?"

"A shot glass."

When Valentine returned from the refreshment table with two ice-filled plastic cups of water, she stood next to a paper-covered table festooned with balloons reading "Happy Birthday."

Valentine set his glasses down and held out the chair for her. "Why did you take your heels off?" he asked.

"I can be sneaky that way. Besides, it makes me feel sexy."

It also makes you two inches shorter than I am, Valentine thought. "I didn't know we'd have any doctors in attendance."

"I'll be it. Oriana and I came down to the waterfront to do some shopping."

"And you just couldn't resist the music and the decor?" Valentine passed her drink to her. She sipped.

Fran rolled the liquor around in her mouth, and swallowed. "No. I wanted to meet you."

"You're very direct."

She looked up as the liquor hit. "Whoo, that takes me back. I did a term with a field hospital down your way."

"Wanted to meet me?" Valentine insisted.

"When you get a few more years' . . . oh . . . perspective on life, let's say, you run short on patience for gamesmanship."

Valentine watched more uniforms flow in. Couples began dancing, doing curious, quick back-and-forth movements, one part of the body always touching. Hand gave way to arm that gave way to shoulder that gave way to buttock that turned into hand again. He felt like a scruffy backwoodsman at a cotillion.

Good God. Ali's here.

She wore a plain woolen skirt and a yellow blouse that flirted with femininity, but went with her flame-colored hair. Lipstick and eye makeup were making one of their rare appearances on her face. A soldier who looked like a wrestler's torso on a jockey's legs was introducing her to one of the Churchmen. Valentine wondered if he was looking at an infatuated boy or a dead man.

"Do you want to dance?" Valentine asked.

"You don't look like the slinky-slide type."

"Is that what that dance is called?"

"It was when they were doing it in New York ten years ago. God knows what it's called out here." Her thin-lipped mouth took on a grimace that might be called cruel.

Valentine tried a tiny amount of bourbon, just enough to wet his lips and make it appear that he drank. "So how did you know you wanted to meet me?"

"Moonshots."

"Is that something else from New York?"

"No," she laughed, a little more heartily this time. "Have you been in the Grands yet?"

"The four big buildings? No."

"I have a corner in Grand East. Top floor." She said it as though she expected Valentine to be impressed. "Apartment and office. I've got a nice telescope. Myself and some of the nurses have been known to take a coffee break and check out the hands. We call a particularly attractive male a 'moonshot.' It's hard to get a unanimous vote from that crew, but you got five out of five. The hair did it for Oriana-she's the tough grader."

"There's not a bet having to do with me, is there?"

"Admit it. You're flattered."

"I am, a little." He picked up his drink. "Don't go anywhere." He took a big mouthful of his drink, headed for a corridor marked "bathrooms," and turned down a cinderblock corridor. He found the men's. An assortment of student-and adult-sized urinals stood ready. He went to the nearest one and spat out his bourbon, thinking of an old Wolf named Bill Maranda who would have cried out at the waste.

Alessa Duvalier tripped him as he exited. He stumbled.

"You're a rotten excuse for the caste," she said, keeping her voice low and watching the hallway. "Have you found her?"

"No. Just as tight on the inside."

"So how do you like pillow recon?" she asked. "Is she tight? Or is the bourbon loosening her up?"

"Haven't had a chance to find out, yet."

"According to my date she's big-time. You be careful. I've moved to the NUC women's hostel, by the way. My would-be boyfriend was horrified by my accommodations. Bed checks."

"I've got a chance at an upgrade too, methinks."

She pressed a piece of paper into his hand. "Phones work around here, but you get listened to," Duvalier said. "If you need to run, leave a message at the hostel that your migraines are back. I'll get to the motel as soon as I can and wait. Do they allow inbound calls up there?"

"I think there's a phone in our rec center. I'll call with the number."

"Good luck." She made a kissing motion in the air, not wanting to leave telltale lipstick. She dived into the women's washroom, and Valentine went to the bar for more ice.

He chatted with Fran Paoli for thirty minutes or so, learned that she'd been born in Pennsylvania and educated in New York. She found the Ordnance "dull enough to make me look forward to Noonside Passions" evidently a television show, and wouldn't discuss her work, except to say that it required specialized expertise but was as routine as the NUC social. But it promised her a brass ring and a Manhattan penthouse when she completed her sixteenth year at Xanadu.

She couldn't-or wouldn't-even say what her area of medical expertise was.

Paoli waved and another woman approached, with the purse-clutching, tight-elbowed attitude of a missionary in an opium den.

"Oriana Kreml, this is Tar, our moonshot babe. Tar-baby! I like that."

"The market was a joke. 'Fresh stock in from Manhattan' my eye. Are you done presenting in here?"

"Oriana's a great doctor but a greater prig," Fran Paoli laughed. "Would you like a ride back, Tar-baby?"

"Thank you," Valentine said.

"Then let's quit the Church. Crepe paper gives me a rash."

They took Valentine outside to the parking lot. A well-tended black SUV huffed and puffed as its motor turned over. It was a big Lincoln, powered by something called Geo-drive.

"Would you like to drive my beast, Tar?" Fran Paoli asked.

"Would you forgive me if I wrecked it?" Valentine said. "I'm not much with wheels." Valentine liked cars, the convenience and engineering appealed to him, but he didn't have a great deal of experience with them.

He climbed into the rear seat. The upholstery had either been replaced or lovingly refurbished. A deep well in the back held a few crates of groceries. Valentine smelled garlic and lemons in the bags. The women in front put on headsets.

Fran Paoli turned on the lights and the parking lot sprang into black-shadowed relief. Music started up, enveloping Valentine in soft jazz. She turned the car around and drove down a side street until she reached the river highway. Two police pickup-wagons motored west. Valentine wondered how many unfortunates they carried to the Reapers. Two each? Three? Nine? Valentine stared out the window as the red taillights receded into demon eyes staring at him from the darkened road. They blinked away.

"You and your hobbies," Oriana said quietly.

Fran Paoli turned up the music, but Valentine could still hear if he concentrated. "So I like to go to bed with more than a good book."

"Someday it's going to bite you."

"Mmmmm, kinky. But don't fret. I can handle this hillwilly."

"He's after status and that's it. Don't fool yourself."

Valentine looked for Reapers in the woods as the truck approached Xanadu, but couldn't see or sense them. The security guard hardly used his flashlight when the SUV reached the gate. Fran Paoli waggled her fingers at him and he waved twice at the gate, and the fencing parted in opposite directions.

She drove up a concrete, shrub-lined roadway and pulled into a gap under the south tower. "Two-one-six, entering," she said into her mouthpiece, working a button on the dashboard, and a door on tracks rolled up into the ceiling. The SUV made it inside the garage-just-and parked in the almost-empty lot. A few motorbikes, a pickup, some golf carts, and a low, sleek sports car were scattered haphazardly among the concrete supporting pillars like cows sleeping in a wood. A trailer with an electric gasoline pump attached was set up on blocks near the door.

"You'll like the Grand Towers. You mind helping with the groceries?"

Valentine took two crates, Oriana one.

They walked past a colorful mural, silhouettes of children throwing a ball to each other while a dog jumped, and Fran Paoli passed her security ID card over a dark glass panel. An elevator opened. It smelled like pine-scented cleanser inside. Soft music played from hidden speakers.

"Home," Fran Paoli said, and the elevator doors closed.

"You don't have to hit a button?" Valentine asked.

"I could. It's voiceprint technology. A couple of the techs on the security staff like to tinker with old gizmos."

"I wish they could get an MRI working," Oriana said.

Valentine looked in his boxes on the ride up. Foil-wrapped crackers, a tin of something called "pate," a bottle of olive oil with a label in writing Valentine thought looked like Cyrillic, artichokes, fragrant peaches, sardines, a great brick of chocolate with foil lettering . . .

The elevator let them out on a parquet-floored hallway. If there was a floor higher than twelve the elevator buttons didn't indicate it. Lighting sconces added soft smears of light to the maroon walls.

Fran Paoli held Oriana's groceries while she let herself in. "Good night. Call if you want your rounds covered."

"Thanks, O."

Oriana thanked Valentine as she took her box of foodstuffs- slightly more mundane instant mixes and frozen packages with frost-covered labels. Her door had a laminated plate in a slide next to it: ORIANA KREML, MD.

"I'm at the end of the hall, Tar-baby," Fran Paoli said.

She led him down, putting an extra swivel in her walk. Valentine clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in time to her stride. She twirled her keys on their wrist loop.

The door at the end read EXECUTIVE MEDICAL DIRECTOR. She opened it and Valentine passed through a small reception office-a computer screen cast a soft glow against a leather office chair-and a larger meeting room with an elegantly shaped glass conference table. Floor-to-ceiling windows reflected only the darkness outside and their faces. Lights came on as she moved through the space to a frosted-glass partition. Valentine marked a telescope at the glass corner she passed.

A casual living space and then a kitchen. Valentine set the boxes down on a small round table, and extracted the fresh fruits and vegetables.

"Stay for a drink?" Fran Paoli asked.

Fran Paoli snored softly beside him in postcoital slumber.

Her makeup was on the sheet, him, and the oh-so-soft pillowcases, and she gave off a faint scent of sweet feminine perspiration and rose-scented baby powder. She made love like some women prepared themselves for bed, following a long-practiced countdown that evidently gave her a good deal of pleasure.

Valentine thought of "Arsie," the professional he'd met at that Quisling party in Little Rock. Was this how it was for her? Did she feel like her body was an apparatus as her customers took what they wanted ?

Valentine engaged in the lovemaking with-perhaps clinical detachment was the right word. It had been fun; Fran Paoli's hunger for him, the way she discovered his scars and touched them, licked them, gently as though drawing some mixture of the pain they represented and taking pleasure from them, both motherly and sexual, healing and arousing; while he'd become instantly erect at the first touch of her full, falling breasts and flesh-padded hips. She touched his erection, squeezed it as though testing its tensile strength, clawed and gasped and bucked out her satisfaction with its quality, and then brought him back again after he spent himself into the black-market condom-a thin-walled novelty that made Southern Command's prophylactics feel like rain ponchos.

"You can get a shortwave radio easier than these," she said, and she passed him the second plastic oval.

But he'd learned little, other than Fran Paoli's expertise with a bathtub razor, from the "pillow recon." She still wouldn't talk about what she did.

She woke him briefly when she got up, though she tried not to. Valentine dozed, feeling the sun change the quality of the light in the apartment, heard a vague whirring sound, remembered that he'd seen some kind of pulley-topped treadmill. Then she woke him for sex; sweaty, clean-faced, with her hair tied in a ponytail and her muscles hot from exercise. In the morning light the dark circles under her eyes showed, along with the sags at the backs of her arms, and the topography of the deposits on her thighs, but he came erect and she rode him like a final exercise machine.

"Tar, you are a treat for sore thighs," she said, and collapsed backward, still straddling him. He felt her hair on his ankle. He couldn't see her face, and had the strange feeling he was speaking to her vulva.

She pulled herself up. "I need a shower. There's another bathroom right next to the outer office if you need to use it. You can help yourself to anything you like in the kitchen. No homesies for your Aunt Betty, though. Poppy-seed crackers and Danish Havarti are too hard to come by."

"I should check in at the barn," Valentine said. "The livestock don't take days off."

"If I'm still in the shower when you're dressed, feel free to just leave. When I got up I phoned down to the security desk and let them know you were my guest last night. Just take the yellow card on the counter for the elevator."

He investigated the kitchen, and found bananas and orange juice. The "orange" juices Southern Command issued had a grainy taste, but this had real pulp in it. Valentine ate two bananas and explored the apartment. There was an office off the conference room, but it was locked. He could jimmy or pick it easily enough with something from the kitchen, but after she walked naked from the bathroom to go to her bedroom dresser for clean underwear he decided against it.

Fran Paoli didn't keep much that revealed anything about herself as a person in her apartment. He saw a photo in the bedroom of her as a teenager, atop a horse, in a khaki uniform with a peaked cap tipped saucily on her head. A gray-haired man in a tweed sport coat, with a forced smile, hung in a frame on the wall. A sad-eyed china spaniel sat on top of what might be a candy dish on the kitchen counter. It was chipped and scratched, but the dish contained nothing but a couple of bands for her hair.

He looked out the windows. The conference center looked out on the grounds, barns, and wire in the distance. The living room was set so you could look at the other three "Grand" buildings. All had the tall windows at the top, and he saw a few desks and living room furniture in the others. The rows of windows below were darkened and many were shaded. They told him nothing except that if there were one room per window, that made a lot of rooms, over three hundred per building. Twelve hundred rooms.

Between the four "Grand" buildings was some kind of common space, nicely laid out with lots of bistro tables around the edges near trees and planters, and a long pool at the center under greenhouselike glass. People were swimming what looked like laps, but in a leisurely fashion. He couldn't tell much about them thanks to condensation. Others were sitting at the bistro tables, enjoying what remained of the soft fall air, but from so high up he could tell little by the tops of their heads. All were wearing either blue or pink scrubs.

Pink and blue. Pink and blue.

He set his glass of orange juice down on an end table. Valentine strode into the conference center and looked at the telescope. He tried lifting it. He could stagger, just, with it. He looked at the smaller "finder" scope-it could be detached from the larger. He twisted a screw, freed it, and went back to the living room. He looked from pink to pink down in the plaza.

The patients were all women. He'd expected that. They were thin, some sickly looking, most with tired, limp hair. He'd expected that too, as he'd seen it often enough in the Kurian Zone.

Almost all were pregnant. Some bulging, some with just a swelling.

He hadn't expected that.

The shower turned off. Valentine picked up his orange juice and drained it as he returned the spotting scope to its rest, lined up with the telescope. He hoped he hadn't screwed up the alignment too badly. He pointed the large scope at the barn, adjusted the counterweight, and made it clear that he'd been screwing with the optics.

When Fran Paoli came out of the bathroom, her hair in a towel, he was washing his glass in the sink.

"Just leaving," he said.

She gave him a kiss on the neck.

"I don't suppose you'd like to come to my place, next time," he said.

"You're cocky." She unwrapped the towel and began to work her scalp with the dry side.

"No next time?" he asked.

"Of course there will be, Tar-baby. You're so tight. I don't feel like I've begun to unwrap you yet."

"I'm in room-"

"While there's a certain thrill in those old, stained mattresses down there, I'm a bit worried about fleas. How about we meet halfway? I might work in a picnic tomorrow-I've got a spare afternoon. You can tell me where you got those hot-assed pants. I would love to have a skirt of that leather. Is it kid?"

"More like bug."

"Is Michiver still running things out in the fields?"

Valentine tried to read her brown eyes, but failed. "Yes."

"I'll get you the afternoon off tomorrow, if I can make it."

"Great."

"And tell that old knob we need a golf course, not more cows. I'm really sick of the one-hole wonder on the north forty."

"I'm the bottom man in the totem pole in the barns, Fran-tick."

She laughed. "Frantic. Tar-baby, I love it. You'd better go, or you'll really see frantic. I'm due on my rounds."

Valentine slapped her thin-robed bottom as he headed for the door. She stopped him with a whistle and passed him a yellow piece of plastic. "Here. Elevator won't work without this. Just slide it into the slot above the buttons. There's a diagram."

"Thanks."

He winked as he closed the door behind him and walked down the hallway. The lighting had been altered; it was brighter and cheerier this morning. He went to the elevator, feeling like a male black widow spider who's crossed the female's web and inexplicably lived.

He swiped the card in the reader according to directions. As an experiment, he hit the button for the sixth floor, but the elevator took him to the ground floor.

Valentine exited at a high-ceilinged lobby. Cheerful, primary-colored murals of square-jawed agricultural workers, steel-rimmed medical men, and aquiline mothers told him that those who passed through this lobby were

CREATING A BETTER TOMORROW

and that

PROGRESS COMES WITH EACH GENERATION

A rounded, raised platform held a few of the security staff. Two women in blue scrubs, one holding a plastic water bottle, the other a Styrofoam coffee cup, chatted near a bank of wide-doored elevators that evidently didn't go all the way to the top floor. Valentine walked toward the doors leading to the patio and pool area.

"Hey, hand!" one of the security men called.

He couldn't pretend not to have heard. He turned. "I'm sorry?"

"Your yellow building card. Turn it in."

Valentine fished it out of his pocket, reached up to place it on the desk. "Here you go."

He went back toward the doors, pretending not to see the other exits.

"Am I getting smarter or are they getting dumber?" the security desk said to his friend. "Hand!"

But Valentine was already passing out the doors.

He headed across the slate bricks. The intertower area smelled like flowers and cedar chips, which were spread liberally around the landscaping. Two women in pink, both copiously pregnant, nibbled at ceramic bowls, eating some kind of breakfast mix with beat-up spoons. Valentine's nose detected yogurt. Both were rather pallid and looked as though they needed the morning sun.

Another group of four, no visible swelling inside the loose pink outfits, kept company by one in blue, worked on each other's hair and a pitcher of tomato juice. Valentine passed through the greenhouse doors and down a short ramp to the swimming pool deck. Chlorine burned his nostrils. Two dozen heads bobbed in the wide lap lanes. Others were lined up at one end of the pool, talking, waiting their turn.

No two swimming suits were alike; there were hot pink bikinis and big black one-pieces. Maybe the pool was the one place the women got to express themselves with clothing.

"Come on, ladies," a man in shorts with a coach's whistle exhorted from a short diving board. "Keep swimming. Gets the blood flowing. Gets the bowels moving. I want to see healthy pink cheeks-yo, can I help you?"

The last came when he spied Valentine.

But the words barely registered.

Gail Foster, formerly Gail Post, waited at one side of the pool with the next group.

Her hair and cheeks were thinner, but the big green eyes and delicate, upturned nose were unmistakable. With her hair wet and flat, idly kicking the water as she talked to the woman next to her, she appeared childlike, so unlike the ID photo from Post's flyer where she stared into the camera as though challenging the lens to capture her. She didn't even look up as the man with the whistle hopped off the board to approach Valentine.

"Just taking a shortcut," Valentine said, tearing himself away from Gail's face.

"Don't disturb the expectants. Turn right around and-"

"Right. I'm going." Valentine retreated back up the ramp.

He walked around the greenhouse to the east side of the patio, looking for a hose, a rake, anything. But there were no groundskeepers or tools in sight. He removed his work boot and went to work on the leather tongue with his pocketknife, tearing it. If questioned, he could say that he was trying to get rid of an irritating flange.

He managed to idle away a half hour. A new group of women marched out of the south tower in single file, white robes held tight even in the warm morning air. Valentine looked at the knobby knees and thin legs, and wondered what kind of diet the women were on. They looked like gulag chars who hadn't been on full rations of beans for weeks. Once they passed in another group walked two-by-two back into the tower, led by one of the medical staff in blue scrubs.

Valentine went to work relacing his boots so the laces presented fresh material to the eyelets.

Like clockwork, another group came out, this time from the west tower, and Gail Foster's exited. It was hard to tell under the robes, but all seemed to have about the same level of swelling in the midsection. Same routine, led like chicks behind a blue mother hen.

Damn. West tower.

Valentine put his boots back on and hurried back to the road leading to the pastures.

A faint beep sounded from behind. The vet, Dr. Boothe, sped up on her little four-wheeler cart. "Want a lift?"

My weekend to be offered rides by women.

Valentine hopped into the seat next to her. The trail tires kicked up gravel as she set the electric motor in motion again. "What did I tell you about falling for the bullshit here?"

"I like being indoors every night. I've seen too many bodies in the woods."

She looked at him and away again, quickly. "Impolite to bring up such matters."

"It's all the same bullshit, Doc. Depends on how much you want to shovel off."

"Give me a break. You're part of it now. You were, even in Kentucky."

"There's being a part and taking part. Your assistant, for example. How'd she get past the genetics defect laws?"

"Pepsa? She wasn't born that way. She's from a tough neighborhood in Pittsburgh. She complained once too often, and that's what happens to complainers there. They ripped out her tongue. She still complains-just does it on that little pad of hers."

"So what's with all the pregnant women?"

She took a breath. "They're highly susceptible. You know how the Ordnance is about birthrate."

"I don't, actually."

"They're here so the babies can be saved."

"Don't want anyone going before it's decided. Nice and orderly." Price had that right, anyway.

"Don't talk to Michiver that way, Ayoob. I wish you weren't talking to me."

She pulled up to the veterinary station. The guard dogs in their kennels barked a welcome.

"I imagine you're supposed to turn me in," Valentine said.

"If it comes to protecting my position, don't think I won't. You and the Grog are nothing to me. Nothing."

"Except someone you can be honest around."

"You want honest? I don't like people. That's why I'm a vet. Now get out, I've got some cows to inseminate."

Valentine got out and went over to greet the dogs. He nodded to Pepsa, busy cleaning out the kennels. Dr. Boothe stared at him for a moment, then drove away.

Michiver seemed to know more than he was willing to say as he greeted Valentine at the farm office. "Heard you had a good time after-err, at, the dance, buck." Out back a feed truck clattered as the winter's stores were transferred to the silo. A group of hands ate sack lunches on the porch.

"A lively night," Valentine agreed. "Where do you want me today ?"

"You can have the afternoon off. Be back for evening milking. Let the machines do the titty-pulling for a change."

"I give him a month," one of the other hands said to his lunch mates.

"He's colored," a big piledriver of a man named Ski said as Valentine left. He didn't bother to lower his voice; Valentine hardly had to harden his ears at all to pick up the commentary. "And a Grogfucker to boot. She'll keep him around to show off to the other doctors at the holiday parties. He'll get his dismissal papers right before New Year's."

Valentine seethed. He took a walk to let the anger bleed off. Watching cows had a magical soothing quality to it, something about the tail swishing and contemplative chewing always put him in a better mood.

The cows of Xanadu were rather scrawny specimens. Compared to the fat milkers in Wisconsin or the small mountains of beef he'd seen in Nebraska they looked fleshless and apathetic-despite the good grass and plentiful water.

Of course, with characters like Ski taking care of them, anything was possible. He probably left nails or bits of wire lying around. Cows aren't overly bright in their grazing, and they're never right again once a wire is lodged in one of their stomachs.

Valentine found Ahn-Kha scooping grain. The Golden One was alone, and the cascade of grain going onto the conveyor as it went up to the silo gave a lot of covering noise. He hopped up onto the side of the truck.

"I met a doctor last night and got inside the towers. I saw Gail."

To his credit, Ahn-Kha didn't miss a stroke with the shovel. "I knew this would be the end of the trail. I am surprised she is still alive."

"Give me that. You shouldn't be pushing."

Ahn-Kha passed him the shovel. It felt good to move the mix of corn and feed grain. "This is some kind of baby factory. I've heard stories of women otherwise unemployable just being warehoused while they gestate. Once they recover they go through it all over again."

"Then why all the security?"

"Remember the Ranch? The Kurians might be tinkering with the fetuses. I've wondered why they don't make their own versions of Bears."

"Too hard to control, perhaps. My David, where were you born?"

"The lakes in the North woods. You know that."

"But do you? You've told me before it was a strange childhood. Never seriously ill. Never a broken bone. Healing from cuts overnight."

Valentine shoveled harder. "Bear blood, passed down. Like Styachowski. If someone was breeding a more pliable human, it didn't take."

Fran Paoli continued to see him on her strange schedule as the weather turned sharply colder.

Valentine loved autumn up north, the bannerlike colors of the trees, the wet, earthy smell of leaves falling and rotting. He found excuses to work near the wire where he could see the trees, smell the woods.

They saw each other strictly on her terms. Her duties sometimes left her with as much as a whole day free, and she would tear up the roads in her big Lincoln to get them to a show in Cleveland and then back down again. Once she brought him to the south Grand and they made love in an empty conference room on the top floor where a few spare mattresses were stored, for medical staff working long shifts to take breaks.

Valentine never asked her about putting him to work in the towers. He never asked her for so much as a ham sandwich. She bought him two sets of clothes, a fine-material suit with a double-breasted jacket-he feigned ignorance with the necktie knot, since the only one he really knew how to make was the tight Southern Command military style-and some casual, slate-colored pants with a taupe turtleneck made of an incredibly soft and lightweight material she called cashmere.

"You need more than cash to get that these days," she said, observing the results when he put it on and stood in front of the framed floor-length mirror in the corner of her bedroom. "You need connections."

"My whole life I've never had a connection."

"Which is why you're milking cows. I'm not even that great of a doctor, but I'm running a whole department here thanks to connections I've made. Why haven't you asked me for a better job? Every guy I've dated wants me to set him up in an office."

Preguilt flooded Valentine before he even said the words. "You're not like any woman I've ever known, Fran. I didn't want you to think I was... what did Oriana call it... 'after your status.' "

"You're so young."

Valentine let that rest.

"A brass ring won't just fall into your lap, you know. You're smart. Haven't you figured out that you need to be angling for job security?"

"If I don't like it in the Ordnance I'll just go back into Kentucky, or sign on as an officer in a Grog unit."

"That's a waste. Any stump-tooth can fill out requisition forms for Grog infantry. You need to get yourself into a field Kur needs here. Something not just anyone can do. That's why I chose obstetrics. Kur looks ten thousand years into the future, and about the only certainty is that you need babies to get there."

"The kind of education I have doesn't lend itself to medical school," Valentine said. The bitterness came of its own accord, surprising him.

"There's nursing. You could put in a year here, then go off to Cleveland or Pittsburg for classroom work."

"You could arrange that?" Valentine said.

"I'll speak to the director. Be right back." She turned her back to him, then turned around again and sat on the bed.

"She said you might fit an opening," Fran Paoli said, patting the spot next to her. "Let's do a follow-up interview to be sure."

Valentine managed to wheedle a job for Ahn-Kha out of it as well. Ahn-Kha went to work in the laundry of the main hospital building- the amount of clothing and linen generated by the hospital and the four Grands was formidable. Ahn-Kha discovered two other well-trained Grogs, the simpler Grey Ones, working in the bowels of the hospital, also filling and emptying the washers.

They left the grotty little hand housing and moved into the cleaner, but smaller, apartments for the service workers.

"Less than two weeks in Xanadu and already you're improved," the housing warden said. He carried an assortment of tools at his belt and a long-hosed can of bug spray in a hip holster. "I want your Grog to shower outside, though, or you're outta here. He can use the hose. First sign of fleas and you're outta here."

The room had a phone, and even more amazingly, it functioned. Valentine couldn't remember the last time he'd stayed in a room with a working phone.

They put Valentine to work in the South Grand to begin. His "nursing" duties involved bringing food and emptying the occasional urine bottle, and endless tubes of breast milk.

He learned a little more of the "baby factory" routine. The women had their children at an appointed date and time, always by caesarian. Up until that time they were two to a room, with high cubicle walls in between giving the illusion of individual apartments.

After giving birth, they were "rotated" to a new building and given a new room. If they hadn't had a window before, they got one the next time.

Each room had a single television.

A modicum of dealmaking took place having to do with television choice and the window side of the room The television had four channels; channel three exhibited a parade of tawdry dramas including the staple Noonside Passions. Would Ted turn Holly in to gain the brass ring he'd so long wanted, though he did not yet know she was carrying his child, and would her sister Nichelle ever get out of the handsome-yet-despicable black marketeer Brick's webs? Channel six showed a mixture of quiz shows, courtroom contests where curt, black-robed Reapers impassively heard evidence and assigned monetary damages, divorces, or inheritances, then self-help or skill-improvement sessions in the evening; channel nine broadcast children's programming in the day and then music, either with the musicians or with relaxing imagery at night; channel eleven was the only station that broadcast twenty-four hours a day, providing nothing but propagandistic Ordnance newscasts and bombastic documentaries about mankind's past follies.

Valentine worked four floors in his new blue scrubs, madly during mealtimes, slowly at other hours. Two days of twelve-hour shifts, then a day off, then two more days of twelve-hour shifts, then a day off and a half day-though the half day usually consisted of either training or NUC lectures or some kind of team-building make-work project. His charges were all in their second trimester. Though the women looked wan and drawn thanks to their pregnancies, they were cheerful and talkative, or spent long hours on sewing projects for Ordance soldiers (rumor had it the semen that fertilized them came from decorated combat veterans). He wondered if Malita Carrasca had been this upbeat during her pregnancy. He wondered at the weight loss; the mothers to be he'd met over the years had mostly put on weight.

"It's the quick succession of pregnancies," another nurse, an older woman with years of experience, told him as she lit up in the emergency exit stairway, the unofficial smoking lounge. Valentine had taken to carrying cigarettes, and even smoking one now and again-it was the easiest excuse to get away from his duties for a few minutes. "They have six and then they retire to the Ontario lakeshore and run a sewing circle or a craft workshop. Nice little payoff. But hell on the body while you're cranking them out."

"Diet, Tar," the hefty nurse who counted off meals as they went on Valentine's cart said. She was his immediate supervisor for mealtime duties. "These doctors are all protein-happy. Throwing pregnant women into ketosis. Protein, fats, fiber, and more protein is all they get. And enough iron for a suit of armor. Liver, onions, supplements."

"It gets results," Valentine said. "They're happy enough."

"That's the medication talking. Every woman here's buzzier than a beehive."

Valentine got a chance to test his supervisor's opinion the next day. Every time Valentine got a chance, he looked out one of the windows facing the patio area and the greenhouse below, trying to get a feel for the rhythm of Gail Foster's schedule. Other than a trip to the pool every other day, she never seemed to join the other groups of pink mothers to be.

He wondered if there was a reason for that.

Then one day, as he served lunch, he saw her again, sitting at a table with a book open before her. She had one of the thick, white robes around her body and a towel around her neck.

Valentine finished passing out his meals to the women who ordered food delivered to their rooms-most ate on the second floor, in the cafeteria-and then hurried to the elevator and went outside, ostensibly for a smoke.

Gail Foster sat wrapped up in her book and white terrycloth. He tried to read the title, but it was in a cursive script hard to see at a distance. He walked up at an angle, getting out of the mild fall breeze so he could strike a match.

The smell of the match lighting reminded him of that long-ago escape from Chicago's Zoo.

It looked like the elaborate cursive script of her book read A Dinner of Onions, but Valentine couldn't be sure. Gail studied the pages before turning, as though she had to learn the first chapter for a test.

"Good book?" he asked.

She didn't respond. Valentine watched her eyes. When she got to the bottom of the right-facing page, instead of turning it she went back up to the top of the left-side page again. Was she memorizing the novel?

"Not many patients here like to read," Valentine tried again. He took another step forward, blocking her light. "What's it about?"

She turned, looked up at him. "I'm sorry?"

"Your book. What's it about?"

"Some people. I don't know."

"You feeling alright?" Valentine asked. She seemed distant.

"Very well. Doctor says I'm doing very well. But I need some sun, you see?"

Valentine took that to mean he should get out of her light. "Your accent, where are you from?"

"Down south."

Nothing to be gained by waiting, though he felt as though he were having a conversation with a child. "Do you ever want to go back ?"

The words slid off her like the water in the pool. "Back where?"

"Down south?"

"No. I have to stay here so the baby can come. It's part of being a healthy mom. There are four parts to being a healthy mom, did you know? Diet, Exercise, Care, and Attitude. I had to work on my attitude most of all, but it's much better now."

"Obviously," Valentine said, giving up. "Do you ever wish you could be with your child after it's born?"

Her eyes grew even larger. "Oh, no. Our children go to special schools. They learn, from their very first weeks, how to lead mankind out of darkness. The Long March to the Future. It would be selfish of me to want to keep my baby from that. That would be a very bad attitude to have."

"Absolutely," Valentine said, finishing his cigarette. Post had once told him that he and Gail had their falling out over an abortion. She did not want to bring a child into the world just to be disposed of at some future date by the Kurian Order. Was there anything left of that woman?

On off days Valentine and Ahn-Kha went out to "the grotto"-a low pond ringed by trees on the southwestern perimeter of Xanadu-and plotted out how an escape might be engineered. They would eat and talk, then throw a fooball back and forth when they needed to think. At the next break they would talk again. The escape had to buy them enough time to get across the river before an alert was sent out and a pursuit organized.

They developed a plan, but it was like a string of Morse code, a group of dots and dashes with gaps in between. The biggest problem was the security system. Thanks to some postcoital perusals of Fran Paoli's file cabinets-he turned the television on after shutting her door to allow her to sleep in peace-he had learned that Gail was in room 4115 of Grand West, and that she was scheduled for her caesarian in early December. Valentine's ID would get him into his building and onto his assigned floors, plus the common areas for staff, but he couldn't even get access to a floor above or a floor below his levels, let alone a different building. Ahn-Kha could bring laundry into the basements of any of the four Grands, but couldn't access the elevators.

His conversations with Alessa Duvalier grew increasingly anxious. She wanted to know how his head felt.

"Go back home if you like," Valentine said. "Or are things getting heavy with Lance Corporal Scott Thatcher?"

"Soon to be Sergeant Thatcher. He's talking about getting married, said it makes a big difference in how the officers look at you when promotion time rolls around."

"That's wonderful," Valentine said.

"I'm counting the days until he pops the question. I hope your schedule lets you come to an engagement party."

Cooperation from Gail would make all the difference in the world. During daylight hours the women were free to visit their outdoor patio, or even a strip of park bordering the north tower.

But how to get cooperation from a woman who had to think long and hard over whether she'd finished a page in her novel or not, and what action to take about it once she did?

"We need someone who can drive. Drive really well," Ahn-Kha said as the days began to run out in October. There was frost on the ground most mornings now.

"That might be doable," Valentine said. "You think we could trust the doc?"

"Your lover? No-"

"I meant Doctor Boothe. I've seen her with pickups and that little ATV She says she hates people. Maybe she means she hates the system."

"She is risk-averse," Ahn-Kha said. "She does her job, wraps herself in it like a cloak, my David."

"There's one bit of skin showing. That assistant of hers, Pepsa, she's protecting her, hiding her. I wonder if she'd get her out with us."

"And why are we leaving?" Ahn-Kha said.

"I'll come up with a reason."

Evenings at the rec center were typically a bore, and that night was no different. The cavernlike garage had a few games of cards going, an almost-unwatched video, a pickup basketball game, and a "reading circle" where a group of nurses took turns reading a novel-a tattered old gothic about some siblings locked in an attic by a cruel grandmother-and performing the different voices. The only things new were several taped-up orange flyers for the Halloween Dance at the NUC hall, and a table where some of the workers were sewing together odds and ends and adding colored feathers or glitter to masks and hairpieces. The result was more Mardi Gras than Halloween. Valentine wasn't planning on attending. Since he had been to the previous dance, and his lover didn't feel the need to go trolling again, he offered to work that evening.

He opened a "coke" and took a swig of the syrupy concoction with its saliva-like texture. Xanadu cokes had never seen a cola nut but they did give one a brief rush of caffeine-charged glycemic energy.

The pickup basketball game had a lot of noisy energy. Valentine watched Ski, the hand who liked to call him "Grogfucker," sink a three-point shot over the heads of the other hands. An easy man to dislike. Valentine counted heads, nerved himself.

"You've only got five players. Need a sixth?" he asked.

They ignored him.

Valentine set down his bottle and moved around under the basket.

"Clear out, Nursey," Ski said. "Boys only." The jumble of arms and legs shifted back to the basket to the beat of the bouncing ball. Ski tipped it in and Valentine reached out and snatched the ball. He gave it an experimental bounce.

"How about a little one-on-one?" Valentine asked, looking at Ski. The others lined up next to Ski.

"How about you fuck off," Ski said. "Before I bruise up those pretty little eyes."

Let's get it over with, big boy.

Valentine bounced the basketball off Ski's forehead, feeling oddly like he was facing Vista again. He caught the ball on the rebound.

"Naaaah"-Ski let loose with a scream, charging at Valentine with fists flailing. He was big, but a sloppy fighter. It would have been so easy for Valentine to slip under his guard, take his elbow, and use the big hand's momentum to tip him over the point of Valentine's hip. Instead Valentine put up a guard as Ski rained blows on him. He put his head down and rammed it into Ski's stomach. Ski gripped him by the waist and they locked.

A couple of the others saw Ski winning and joined in. Valentine felt himself pulled upright, took the better part of a punch on the temple, a grazing blow to his chin, then another in the gut. Air- and a little coke-wheezed out as his diaphragm contracted. He tasted blood from a cut lip-

Then they were pulled apart, Ski by two of his fellow hands, Valentine by a burly blue arm. Valentine realized it was one of the security staff, talking into his radio even as he put him on the ground with a knee across his back.

Xanadu's security arrived faster than he would have given them credit for-perhaps they were better than they appeared-and didn't let the fight go with a simple "shake hands." Valentine, Ski, and a third hand all made a trip to the long security complex between the hospital and the Grands, where they were put into whitewashed cells to cool down. Valentine gathered from the exchanges at the admissions desk that Ski had caused trouble before, and Valentine had been scooped up in the administrative overkill. Almost as an afterthought they fingerprinted him.

Valentine sat in his cell with a rough brown paper towel, wiping the ink off his hands, wondering-

He'd been printed before in the Kurian Zone. A set of fingerprints existed in the Great Lakes Shipping Security Service, inserted there as part of the long-ago operation that brought him to the Gulf Coast with a good work record that could survive a detailed background check. He imagined the Ordnance had some kind of connection with the GLSSS, and he just might be able to explain away a connection if the old "David Rowan" identity pinged.

But if the connection was made to the renegade officer of the late Thunderbolt . . .

Valentine felt a Reaper's presence in the building. Somewhere above.

A warty, one-eyed officer had the three brawlers brought up a level so they stood before his desk. The Reaper lurked somewhere nearby, not in the room. Valentine felt cold sweat on his belly and back, and his eyes searched the desk and file cabinets for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon.

"Brawling, eh?" the officer said from his paper-littered desk. His desk plate read LIEUTENANT STRAND.

"Hot blood, Strand," Ski said. "Nobody was aiming at murder."

"Little too much hot blood. You didn't join in the blood drive this fall."

"I get woozy when they-" Ski said as his companion winced.

"Corporal!" Strand said. "Take them over to the hospital. Liter each, all at once. They won't feel like fighting for a while."

"I get spells-" Ski's accomplice said. Valentine felt only knee-buckling relief. Anything was better than the hovering Reaper.

They were marched over to the hospital under a single-security-officer escort. The security man had a limp worse than Valentine's. Perhaps a sinecure at Xanadu security was a form of payoff for commendable Ordnance service.

"A nice, big bore. Right in the leg," the security man told the nurse.

Noonside Passions was on in the blood center. Valentine concentrated on it as they jabbed the needle into his inner thigh. Ted's evidence against Holly had mysteriously disappeared, and the episode ended with Nichelle's revelation that she'd stolen it-not to protect her sister, but to force her to steal gasoline for Brick's smuggling ring . . . even as Brick started seducing a virginal New Universal Church acolyte named Ardenia behind Nichelle's back.

"That bastard," the rapt nurse said as she extracted the needle. Valentine didn't know if she was referring to Brick or the guard, who was holding a hand-mirror up to Ski to show him how pale he was getting. "One liter, Ayoob. You're done. You'd better lie for a while until I can get you a biscuit. Coffee?"

"Tea. Lots of sugar."

"All we have is substitute. How about a coke? That's real syrup."

"Great," Valentine said as he passed out.

Footsteps in the hall. A blue-uniformed, mustachioed security man turned a key in Valentine's cell. "Ayoob. You're being released to higher authority."

Valentine found he could stand up. Just. Walking seemed out of the question at the moment.

"C'mon, Ayoob, I don't have all night."

Had the fingerprints been processed?

The guard led Valentine out from the catacombs, up some stairs, each step taking him closer to the Reaper, past a ready room, a briefing area, and out to the entryway.

Away from the Reaper!

Valentine caught a whiff of familiar perfume.

"Tar-baby," Fran Paoli said, from across the vastness of the duty desk. "Your face! You need to see a doctor."

The damage wasn't as bad as it looked.

She took him back up to her apartment, dressed the small cut on his cheek, and gave him a pair of cream-colored pills that left him relaxed, a little numb, and with a much-improved opinion of Kurian Zone psychotropics.

"There's a little halloween party tomorrow night at the top floor of Grand North. You won't need a mask."

"I might be working."

"I'll get you off," she said, snapping the elastic waistband on her scrubs. He liked Fran Paoli better in her plain blue scrubs than in any of her more exotic outfits that were designed to impress.

"Undoubtedly. But I don't know that I should miss any shifts. I think I have to keep my nose clean here for a while. If they even let me keep my job. Otherwise it's back to Kentucky."

"Let me worry about your reputation. And your job. Besides, it's going to be a fun party. North has this beautiful function space, and even Oriana's going to get dressed up."

Valentine found it easier to talk with his eyes closed. He felt as though he were drifting down a river on a raft, and opening his eyes might mean he'd have to change course. "I don't have a costume."

"Yes, you do. That biker getup of yours. I've been working on something to match all those spikes."

"Easily done."

"You nap. I have to get back to the wards-I'm missing an operation." She left.

Valentine didn't nap. He wondered-agonized-about the efficiency of the fingerprinting procedures. Would it go in an envelope, off to some central catalog for a bored clerk to get around to? Or would it be scanned into a Xanadu computer, which would spit out a list of his crimes against the Kurian Order as fast as bits of data could be shuffled and displayed? How long before that long, low building, resting at the center of Xanadu, a crocodile keeping watch on his swamp, woke up and came for him? The Kurian Order, like a great slumbering dragon, could be tiptoed around, even over, by a clever thief. Make too much noise, though, rouse it through an attack, and it would swallow you whole without straining in the slightest. .

The sensible thing would be to blow this operation, tonight; take Ahn-Kha, find Ali, and be across the river in Price's bass boat before the next shift change.

Could he face Post, tell him his wife was a drugged-up uterus for the Kurian Order? Better to lie and tell him she was dead.

He wouldn't even be able to bring the news himself. He was an exile, condemned by the fugitive law. Ahn-Kha or Duvalier would have to find him in whatever rest camp was helping him adapt to an artificial leg and a shortened intestine.

Getting her out, hopefully in time to beat the fingerprint check, would mean he'd have to bring more people in on the effort. Could he trust the doctor?

Madness. He was right back where he started.

Would William Post do the same for you? How much can one friend expect of another?

No, that's a cheat. The question here is what is a promise, hastily issued from beside a hospital bed, a tiny promise from David Valentine, worth?

Doctor Boothe yawned as she came to her surgery door. "Ayoob. What happened?"

He tried to show the good half of his face through the strip of chained door. "A fistfight with Ski and a few hands. Can I come in?"

"It's eleven at night."

"It's important enough."

She shut the door and Valentine heard the chain slide. He looked around. The cool night air was empty.

She brought him into the tiled surgery and turned on a light. "What's so important, now?"

"I'm leaving the Ordnance. Going back to Kentucky."

"Good for you."

"I was wondering if your assistant might like to come. Anyone with veterinary training would be welcome there."

"Pepsa? A rabbit-run? Why should she do that?"

"She's mute. I'm surprised she hasn't been culled out of the herd before this."

"How dare-"

"Just cutting through the bullshit, Boothe. Or are you the type who only likes to see half the truth? I know people. We could get her somewhere safe from the Reapers, a lot safer than your dog kennels and dairy stalls."

"We?"

"Me. Ahn-Kha. You. Someone on the outside. I don't want to say more."

"You just offered your heart up, you know that. You'd be gone tonight if I told security. I'd get a seat at the head table at the next Ordnance Gratitude Banquet."

Valentine didn't want to kill this woman. But if she moved to the phone- "If you're such a friend of security, why haven't our guns ever left your office? Or have they?"

She couldn't help but look over her shoulder at the corridor to her storage room.

Boothe seemed to be fighting with something lodged in her throat.

"You could come along," Valentine continued. "Disappear into the tribelands, or relocate into Free Territory."

She frowned. "Free Territory's a myth. Some clearing full of guerillas does not a nation make."

"I've been there."

"As if it's that easy."

"I didn't say anything about it being easy."

She lifted her chin. "Let me talk to Pepsa."

Valentine followed her with his ears and listened from the surgery doorway as she went into a back room and spoke to Pepsa. The quiet conversation was one-sided; Valentine couldn't see what Pepsa communicated back on her kiddie magic tablet. This would be an all-or-nothing gamble. Every person added to a conspiracy doubled the risk.

Dr. Boothe, with Pepsa trailing behind in a robe, joined him in the surgery. Pepsa looked at him with new interest in her gentle eyes.

"You have people who can help us get all the way to Free Territory?"

Valentine thought it best to dodge the question. "There are plenty of animals to take care of there. Herds of horses."

Pepsa wrote something on her board.

"But you do have people outside Xanadu to help us get away?"

"Absolutely."

Boothe and Pepsa exchanged a look. Pepsa wrote again.

"What do you need us to do?" Boothe asked.

"We need some food that can be preserved. Pack some cold-weather clothing and camp-mats, and have it all ready by tomorrow afternoon. Make some excuse for not being available until November first or second. And one more thing. I need a quick look in your pharmacy."

Valentine walked all the way back to the rec center to use the phone there. He could have used the phone in Boothe's office, but just in case she or Pepsa turned on him, he could warn Duvalier.

The phone rang fourteen times before a gravelly voice at the hostel answered it. "Yeah?"

Valentine asked to speak to Duvalier's Ordnance ID pseudonym.

"No calls after nine."

"It's urgent. Could I leave a message?"

"She'll get it in the morning, Corporal."

The attendant must have thought Valentine was Duvalier's would-be boyfriend, Corporal Thatcher.

"Tell her my migraine is back. I'll come by tomorrow night, then we can get to the party."

"Migraine?"

Valentine spelled it.

"She'll get the message at a decent hour. Reread your phone protocols, Corporal-dating doesn't give you special privileges to disturb me."

"Tell her some new friends will be along. We'll have transport."

"I'm not a stenographer, son. Call her tomorrow."

Valentine thanked him and replaced the receiver. Next he'd have to wake Ahn-Kha. He looked at the craft table with the Halloween costumes.

Xanadu had its share of children, and while it was still light out they paraded around in their costumes from building to building, collecting treats from the security staff at the doors. The kids sang as they collected their candy.

A Reaper, a creeper

Goes looking for a sleeper

Waives him up, drinks him down

And packs him in the freez-zer.

Valentine, dressed in his Bulletproof "leathers" and carrying a large brown market bag full of costuming, was a little shocked to hear the realities of life in the Kurian Zone expressed in nursery-rhyme fashion. He watched one young child, dressed in the red-and-white stripes of a frightening, bloody-handed Uncle Sam, pull his cowgirl sister along as they sang. He'd been at sea during his other Halloween in the Kurian Zone, so he couldn't say if it was a widespread practice. Or maybe on this one night mention of the real duties of the Reapers was allowed.

Valentine passed in to Grand East and nodded to the security staff. They were used to him by now.

"Nice costume, Tar. You really rode those things?"

"Sure did," Valentine said, trying to put a little Kentucky music into his voice.

Valentine went to the smaller of the elevators, the one that went to the top and garage floors, and rode up.

He couldn't help but pat the syringes stuck in the breast of his legworm-rider jacket. His .22 target pistol was tucked into the small of his back, held in place by three strips of surgical tape. Hopefully he wouldn't need it.

Fran Paoli just yelled "come in" at his knock. He hurried in, wondering just how-

And he had his answer when he saw her.

She stood in the doorway of her bedroom, a gothic queen spider in thigh-high boots thick with buckles. Black eyeliner, spider earrings, a temporary tattoo of a skull on one fleshy, corset-enclosed breast.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but leather and chains excite me," she quoted.

"What on earth do you use boots like that for?" Valentine asked.

"Turning men on. Is it working?"

"I'll say. Come here, you naughty girl."

She giggled, and came up and kissed him. She tested the hooks on his forearms, and looked down at the spurs.

"You're dangerous tonight," Fran Paoli observed.

"You've no idea."

He sat on the arm of her sofa and threw her across his knee, raising the torn, black-dyed taffeta miniskirt. A black thong divided her buttocks. He gave her backside an experimental slap.

"Ohhhh!" she cooed.

"I may just have to tie you up so other men don't get a chance to see this," he said, snapping the thong. He hit her again, harder.

"Nothing I could do about it," she said.

He hit her harder. She gave tiny giggle-gasps at each swat.

"My, what a strong arm you have," she said, lifting her now-splotched buttocks a little. Valentine extracted the syringe from his jacket, pulled the plastic cap off with his teeth, and held it in his mouth while he spanked her again, even harder. He felt both ridiculous and a little aroused.

"Uhhh-" she gasped. He transferred the syringe to his hand and injected her, threw it across the room behind her, and struck her again.

Six more swats and she was limp and moaning. The large-animal tranquilizers had their effect.

She slurred and tried to caress him as he transferred her to the bedroom. He kissed her several times, gagged her with her bathrobe belt, and tied her up in the closet using pairs of pantyhose and leather belts.

She offered no resistance save a dopey-eyed wink.

"Now you just wait there for a little while," he said, and kissed her on the forehead. He shut the closet door.

Valentine took her keys from the dresser, and her blue ID card. He pocketed them and rode the elevator to the basement.

He'd worked out every move in his mind, gone over it so many times a sense of unreality persisted. Was he still lying in bed, planning this? Was it his real hand reaching for the big Lincoln's door, his bag he placed on the passenger seat, his foot on the accelerator as he backed toward the fuel pump?

The pump clattered loudly enough that he wondered that the whole building didn't come to investigate. He topped off the tank, and filled the two spare twenty-liter plastic containers she kept in the back. He climbed into the driver's seat, and put on the seat belt and com headset. He started the SUV and turned it toward the garage door.

"Two-one-six, leaving," he said into her mouthpiece, pressing the com button on the dash.

"Dr. Paoli?"

"Tar Ayoob, running an errand," he said.

"Two-one-six, leaving," the voice acknowledged. "Enjoy the party." The garage door rose.

Valentine pulled the SUV around to the west tower, parked it in plain sight under a roadside light, and trotted over to the basement door with his bag. He knocked, and Ahn-Kha, in his laundry overcoat, answered.

"Here," Ahn-Kha said, and passed Valentine some blue scrubs.

The boots looked a little funny under them, but he'd pass. Once Ahn-Kha checked the basement hallway, thick with conduits and junction boxes, Valentine went to the larger, gurney-sized elevators and pressed the up button.

Ahn-Kha brought a wheelchair out from around a corner. They were easily found all over the building, but it never hurt to be prepared.

He pushed Fran's blue card in the slot and went up to the fourth floor.

Halloween decorations, traditional orange-and-black paper, festooned the hallway over the honor-in-childbearing propaganda.

Vague noises of something that sounded like a Chevy with a bad starter came from the central common room. Valentine walked behind the wheelchair to Room 4105.

The outer cubicle was empty. A woman lay in the next bed, sleeping-but it wasn't Gail.

He knew Gail Post's schedule by heart. She'd already been fed, and it was getting to the point where the women were usually expected to be in their beds, asleep.

He crossed the building to the common room. Twenty-odd women watched spacecraft blow up a model of long-ago Los Angeles. Vacant, tired eyes reflected the sparking special effects.

Gail Foster sat right in the center.

A nurse popped up at the door. "Can I help?"

"Gail Foster. Follow-up X-ray."

She glanced at Valentine's ID badge, but didn't examine it closely. "Follow-up to what?"

"Not sure. Dr. Kreml's orders. They should have called. She wants it taken tonight."

"That one," the nurse said, pointing.

Valentine tapped her on the shoulder. "Gail, I need you for a moment," he said.

"Sure," she said absently. Valentine helped her to the chair by the door. A few of the other patients exchanged looks, but most watched the movie.

The nurse who had questioned Valentine was at the center console, speaking into the phone.

No choice.

He wheeled Gail to the station. The nurse turned to watch him.

"Is there a problem?" Valentine asked.

"Just checking with central."

"Should I wait?"

"If you don't mind." She turned and checked a clipboard again.

Valentine hated to do it, but he took out the horse tranquilizer. With one quick step, he got behind her and jammed it into her neck. He pulled her down, one hand on her mouth, and waited until her legs quit kicking.

"You certainly got her cooperation," Gail said.

"Let's not have any attitude tonight, okay, Gail?" Valentine asked as he pulled the nurse into a file room. He found a length of surgical tubing and tied the door shut.

Gail offered a wheeeee as he raced her down the hall to the elevator. On the ride down he stripped off his scrubs.

"I've never been here before," Gail observed as they entered the basement corridor. Ahn-Kha helped her get dressed. "Oh, pretty," she remarked, as Valentine slipped a feathered mask on her.

They walked her out to the Lincoln, Ahn-Kha half carrying her across the road. The Golden One climbed in the back cargo area where his disassembled puddler waited, along with Valentine's weapons.

"Keep her quiet back there, and out of sight," Valentine said.

He drove the Lincoln around the building perimeter to the veterinary office. "Glad you remembered the heavy coat," Valentine said as Dr. Boothe slipped into the passenger seat.

"You give good instruction. Is this Paoli's rig?"

"I like to make an exit," Valentine said.

Pepsa's eyes widened as she saw Ahn-Kha in back.

Valentine passed out masks to Dr. Boothe and Pepsa. "Just on our way to a party, okay? Once we're past the gate, you'll be driving."

As they rolled around the hospital the headlights illuminated a figure at the roadside in harsh black and white, gleam and shadow. A pale face, exaggerated and immobile as a theatrical mask, held them like a spotlight.

A Reaper.

Boothe sucked breath in through her teeth. Valentine's heart gave a triple thump. The Reaper could upend the Lincoln as easily as it might lift a wheelbarrow. Then what chance would they have, still within Xanadu's walls. If it moved he'd have to-

But it didn't.

After they passed it crossed the road behind them. How could it not know they had an expectant mother inside the SUV? Of all forms of lifesign, a pregnant woman's was the strongest, and Valentine had one experience involving a Kurian and an infant's lifesign that he'd rather die than repeat. Perhaps the Kurian animating it was sick, or sated, or . . . someone was letting them go.

The gate warden hardly looked at them as they followed a bus full of Halloween partygoers out of Xanadu. Ahn-Kha lay flat in the back cargo space, holding down Gail Foster. "Have a good time, Dr. Paoli," the sergeant said. Valentine nodded and Boothe waved in return.

Pepsa tapped her hands against the leather seats as Valentine pulled away from the gate. "We've done it!" Boothe said.

"We've done it, alright," Valentine demurred. "Now what are they going to do about it?"