Valentine's Exile (Vampire Earth #5)

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

The Nut, May: The Nut was an Arkansas State Medium Security Correctional Facility known as Pine Ridge before the Kurian Order, and would probably have remained another overgrown jumble of fence and concrete were it not for Mountain Home, the nearby town that fate selected to be the capital of the Ozark Free Territory (2028-2070).

There are any number of legends as to how Mountain Home ("Gateway to the Ozarks") became the seat of the Free Territory and the headquarters of Southern Command. The more colorful legends involve a poker game, a fistfight, a bad map, a general's mistress, or a souvenir shot glass, but the most likely story concerns Colonel "Highball" Holloway and her wayward signals column.

The colonel and her sixteen vehicles were one of hundreds of fragments fleeing the debacle south of Indianapolis that marked the end of the United States government as most Americans recognized it. While topping a hill northeast of Mountain Home two of her trucks collided, and Colonel Holloway established her signals company in the nearby town of Mountain Home. USAF General J. N. Probst, in charge of a substantial shipment of the first ravies vaccine, heard Holloway's test transmissions and rerouted his staff to make use of the army's facilities. Soon the fragments of everything from National Guard formations to a regiment of Green Berets were being inoculated and reorganized around Mountain Home. Civilians flocked to the protection of the military guns and vehicles, and a government had to be established to manage them. Some chafing in the first years as to whether Southern Command ran the Ozark Free Territory or the Ozark civilians ran Southern Command settled into the American tradition of military subordination to civilian authority-provided the civilians abided by the Constitution and held regular elections.

In those chaotic years the only law was martial-unless one counts the occasional lunchtime trial and afternoon hanging of looters and "profiteers" by horse and bike-mounted posses. Military justice required an incarceration facility, and as the only other prison nearby was being used to house ravies sufferers in the hope of finding a cure, Pine Ridge became Fort Allnutt, named for its first commander.

Sometime after his death it became "the Nut."

The Nut is an asterisk-shaped building that might pass as a college dormitory were it not for the bars on the windows. Double lines of fencing separate it from the fields-the prisoners grow their own crops and raise their own livestock and the better behaved they are the more time they get outside the wire-and subsidiary buildings have sprung up around it. Two technical workshops, a health clinic, the guard dorm, and the courthouse that doubles as an administrative center surround the six-story concrete asterisk. Finally there's "the Garage," an aluminum barn that houses a few wrecks used for spare parts. The Garage is where condemned men are hung, traditionally at midnight on their day of execution.

Valentine was proud of his memory, but in later years he never recalled his arrival at the Nut with any real clarity. Mostly he remembered a military lawyer reading the charges against him to a gray and grave presiding officer: torture and murder of prisoners under his supervision during the rising in Little Rock the wild night of what was occasionally being called Valentine's Rising.

Six men had died at the hands of the women he'd freed from the Kurian prison camp. They were guards who had used dozens of women under their supervision as sort of a personal harem. Valentine had never known their names and it was strange to hear them read out in court with all the formality that legal proceedings required-one wasn't known by any name other than "Claw."

Southern Command rarely tried its officers for the execution of armed Quislings-men caught fighting for the vampires were disposed of under a procedure informally called "bang-and-bury."

Two generations of bitter feelings between the sides, and the Kurian habit of sending their own armed prisoners straight to the Reapers, had hardened both sides.

"The court finds cause for a trial." Valentine remembered that phrase. The judge declared that Valentine should be kept within Fort Alnutt until the date of his trial, set for the end of the month: May twenty-third, to be precise.

This rapidity struck Valentine as strange; his knowledge of Southern Command jurisprudence was based on one bad hearing after the destruction of Foxtrot Company at Little Timber Hill and the occasional Southern Command Bulletin article, and it was rare to be tried within six months of one's arrest.

And with those words he went dumbly through the sanitary procedures at the jail entrance, climbed into shapeless baby-blue scrubs with large yellow Xs sewn onto the back, each leg, and the chest pocket, and went to his cell.

His cell he remembered. As a major he got his own room in what his guard escort told him was the nicer wing of the Nut. There was a door with a small glass window rather than bars, and windows that would open to admit a breeze, though the sturdy metal frame was designed so that he couldn't crawl out.

The room had five one-foot-square green linoleum floor tiles across, and nine deep. The bolted-down bed bore a single plastic-wrapped mattress and a depressed-looking pillow in a cotton case that smelled like bleach, as did his combination sink and toilet. His ceiling had a brown-painted light fixture but no bulb: "They don't waste fluorescent tubes on cons, so the sun decides 'lights out,' " the guard said. "Hot chow in the cafeteria twice a day, and we bring out a soup and bread cart to the exercise yard for lunch. Questions?"

"How do I get a shave?" Valentine asked, rubbing his three-day beard.

The guard, whose name tag read Young, but looked as though his first name should be "Gus" or "Mick" or something else hearty and friendly, stuck his thumb in a belt loop. "There's two razors in the showers. You have to use them under supervision. Be sure to put it back in the blue cleanser-"

"I'm not a suicide."

"Didn't say you were. We keep an eye on sharp edges here. Lots of the guys just grow beards until trial."

Valentine looked at what appeared to be a hundred keys at the guard's waist. "Is there a library?"

"Mostly paperbacks held together with rubber bands, and porn. There's a bookcase or two for the highbrows. We've got a store with the Provisional Journal and Serial Digest for sale; you can earn money in the fields or with janitorial work. Kitchen's full up now."

"Thank you." The formal politeness came out despite the circumstances.

"No problem, Major Valentine. Good luck with the trial. There's a packet of rules and instructions under your pillow. We do an hourly pass through if you need anything."

"A lawyer would be nice."

"You'll have a meeting tomorrow or the next day."

His uniform "scrubs" were poorly finished on the inside. Loose threads tickled whenever he walked. By the time he finished biting off the stray threads with his teeth it was time for dinner.

Officers awaiting trial had a small cafeteria to themselves. Valentine ended up being at the end of the blue-and-yellow file escorted by Young and another guard to the central cafeteria.

Dinner, plopped onto a tray and eaten with a bent-tined fork and a spoon that looked as though it dated from the War of 1812, consisted of an unappetizing vegetable goulash with ground meat.

Two clusters of officers ate together at opposite sides of the cafeteria. A narrow man with long, thinning, butterscotch hair in the smaller of the two cliques looked up at Valentine and made a motion to the seat next to him, but Valentine just dropped into the seat nearest the end of the food service line-and immediately regretted it. He felt alone and friendless, as though already dead, forgotten and entombed in this prison. After dinner some of the men smoked, and Valentine went to the slitlike barred windows and enjoyed the breeze created by the kitchen extractor fans. The Ozarks were black in the distance, the sun masked by haze.

"Shooter or looter?" a reedy voice said.

Didn't even hear him come. Valentine felt thick and tired, brain too apathetic to even function-if he didn't know better he'd suspect one of the mild Kurian sedatives had been put in the food.

He looked at the man, short and close to bald, with an ivory mustache and growing beard, smoking a cigarette from a whittled holder. The eyes were crinkled and friendly.

"Pardon?"

"Shooter or looter, boy? You're the new squirrel in the nut. What they got you in for?"

Valentine tried to make sense of the metaphor and gave up. "Murder. Quislings."

"Then you're a shooter. That's those three over there." He turned his chin in the direction of the group with the long-haired man. "I'm Berlinelli. Malfeasance in the performance of my duties."

"Meaning?"

"Looter. I was doing what a lot of other guys were doing, on a larger scale. Siphoning gasoline and diesel out of captured trucks and selling it."

"I thought everyone in prison was innocent," Valentine said, a bit startled at the man's frankness.

"If you're a snitch it's no hair lifted. I'm pleading out."

"I haven't even talked to my lawyer yet. I need to write some letters. You wouldn't know where I could get paper, would you?"

"Who's running your floor?"

"The guard? Young, I think."

"He's a decent guy. Just ask him." He tapped his wooden cigarette holder on the windowsill and winked. "Got to get back to my tribe. It's Grogs and Harpies in here; we don't mix much."

"Thanks for crossing no-man's-land."

"Just a little recon. Mission accomplished."

Valentine asked Young about paper and a pen as they locked him back in his cell. The long-haired man was two doors down.

"Ummm," Valentine said. "Corporal Young?"

"Yes, Major?"

"Could I get some paper and a pencil? I need to write a few people and let them know where I am." And he should write Post and give him the findings of the aborted investigation, which amounted to a few more facts but zero in the way of answers.

"Sure. It's a standard SC envelope; just don't seal it. Censors. I'll slip them under the door gap tonight on my rounds."

"Right. Thank you."

Young unlocked Valentine's door. Valentine couldn't help but glance at the fixture of a secondary bar, a bolt that could be slid home and twisted, fixed to the metal door and the concrete with bolts that looked like they could hold in Ahn-Kha.

"Major Valentine," Young said. "I heard about you on my break today. The fight on that hill by the river in Little Rock. It's . . . ummm ... a privilege."

Valentine felt his eyes go a little wet. "Thank you, Corporal. Thanks for that."

A sticklike insect with waving antennae was exploring his sink. Valentine relocated it to the great outdoors by cupping it between his palms.

He gave the insect its freedom. He used to be responsible for the lives of better than a thousand men. Now he commanded an arthropod. As for the general staff training . . .

"What the hell?" he said to himself. "What the hell?"

He met with his military counsel the next day right after breakfast-some sort of patty that seemed to be made of old toast and gristle, and a sweet corn mush. The officer, a taciturn captain from the JAG office named Luecke who looked as though she existed on cigarettes and coffee, laid out the charges and the evidence against him. Valentine wondered at the same military institution both prosecuting and defending him, and, incidentally, acting as judge. Most of the evidence was from two witnesses, a captured Quisling who'd been in the prison camp and a Southern Command nurse lieutenant named Koblenz who'd been horrified at the bloody vengeance wreaked by the outraged women.

Valentine remembered the latter, working tirelessly in the overwhelmed basement hospital atop Big Rock Mountain during the siege following the rising in Little Rock. He'd countersigned the surgeon's report recommending a promotion for her.

He'd sign it again, given the opportunity.

"They've got a good case. Good. Not insurmountable," Luecke said.

"And my options are?" Valentine asked.

"Plead guilty and-see what we can get. Plead 'no contest'-get a little less. Plead innocent and fight it out in front of a tribunal." She turned the cap on her pen with her fingers but kept her eyes locked on his as though trying to get a read.

"When you say 'not insurmountable' you mean?"

"Good. I like a fighter. For a start you're a Cat. We're hip-deep in precedent on Cats not getting prosecuted for collateral casualties. We can blame the women for getting out of hand-"

"I'm not hiding behind the women. Try again."

The pen cap stopped twirling for a moment. "If it were just the Quisling we could toss a lot of dust around. Lieutenant Koblenz will be tough; her statement is pretty damning." The cap resumed its Copernican course.

"She must have presented some case of charges for them to hunt me down so fast."

"She didn't file them. They talked to every woman who survived that camp and the battle. All the others couldn't remember a thing."

"Then who's behind this?" Valentine asked.

"Your former commander, General Martinez. I should say General Commanding, Interior, I suppose. He got promoted."

Valentine's head swam for a moment. When he could see the tired brown eyes of his counsel again he spoke. "He's got a grudge against me. I gave evidence at a trial-not sure if it can even be called that."

"Interesting. Tell me more."

Valentine tried to sum the story up as concisely as he could. He had come out of Texas with his vital column of Quickwood and was ambushed by "redhands"-Quisling soldiers who wore captured uniforms from Southern Command stockpiles. He had a pair of Grog scouts-they were smarter than dogs, horses, or dolphins and were far more capable fighters. The Grogs survived with a handful of others, and with a single wagonload of Quickwood made it to General Martinez, more by accident than design, at his refuge in the Ouachitas. Martinez had two of his Grogs shot at once, and it was only by putting a pistol to the general's head and arresting him for murder that Ahn-Kha survived.

The trial ended in a debacle and Martinez's camp was divided; many of the best soldiers decided to quit the place with Valentine. Ultimately they made it to Little Rock where the rising took place.

Captain Luecke remained poker-faced throughout the story, and only moved to set her pen down. "I don't know much about General Martinez, or what happened during the Kurian occupation," she said. "I spent it aspirating mosquitoes in a bayou. I'm going to ask for a delay in your trial date so I can prepare a defense, if you agree. Fair warning: It'll mean a lot more time for you in here."

She was a cold fish, but she was a very smart cold fish. As she packed up Valentine was already missing the smell of tobacco and coffee.

"Captain?" Valentine said.

"Yes, Major?"

"I'm not sure I want to fight this. I let prisoners get tortured and murdered right under my nose."

She sat back down. "I see. Guilty, then?"

"I . . ." The words wouldn't come. Coward. You're quick to condemn others.

"You don't have to decide this second. Can you do something for my satisfaction?" Yes.

"Give me the names of some of those women. And no, we're not going to point fingers and say 'they did it.' I just want to hear from all sides about what happened that night."

Valentine thought back to the too-familiar faces of the siege, especially those stilled in death. And not always faces: Petra Yao was only identified by the jewelry on the arm they found; Yolanda, who had to wear diapers thanks to the mutilation; Gwenn Cobb who walked around with her collar turned up and her shirt tightly buttoned afterward-rumor had it they'd written something on her chest with a knifepoint; the Weir sisters, who never talked about it except for their resulting pregnancies; Marta Ruiz, who hung her head and grew her hair out so it covered her eyes. . . .

Christ, those cocksuckers should have gotten worse.

Valentine felt the old, awful hurts and the heat of that night come back. The thing, the shadow, the demon that sometimes wore the body of "the Ghost" flooded into his bloodstream like vodka until his face went red and his knuckles white.

There were things a decent man did, whatever the regulations said, and let any man who hadn't been there be damned.

"Still want to plead guilty?" she asked.

Valentine tried lowering his lifesign. That mental ritual always helped, even when there weren't Reapers prowling. "Prepare your case."

The men in the exercise yard kicked up little rooster tails of fine Arkansas dust-Valentine hadn't seen its like even in Texas; soft as baby powder and able to work its way through the most tightly laced boot-as they walked or threw a pie-tin Frisbee back and forth.

He got to know his three fellow "shooters" there. They took their sourdough bread and soup out as far from the prison as possible and sat next to the six-inch-high warning wire that kept them ten feet from the double roll of fence.

Colonel Alan Thrush was the highest-ranking, not distinguished-looking or brimming with the dash one expects from a cavalry leader. He had short legs and the deft, gentle hands of a fruit seller. "Caught a company of Quislings doing scorched earth-with the families inside-on a little village called McMichael." McMichael had risen against the Kurians in response to the governor's famous "smash them" broadcast shortly after Valentine's move on Little Rock. "Left them for the crows in a ditch."

Unfortunately, his men left the customary set of spurs on the forehead of the Quisling officer in charge, and the commander of a column of infantry following made the mistake of pointing out his handiwork to a pink-cheeked reporter who neglected to mention the charred corpses in McMichael.

Colonel Thrush intended to fight out his court-martial. He said so, slurping a little beet soup from his pannikin.

Valentine was the only major.

Captain Eoin Farland was a clean-faced, attractive man whose wire-rimmed glasses somehow made him even better-looking. A reserve officer who'd been put in charge of a fast-moving infantry company in Archangel, he'd been far out on the right flank on the drive to Hot Springs. His men recaptured a town, stayed just long enough to arm the locals, and when he asked the local mayor what to do with six captured Quislings who had gunned down a farmer hiding his meager supply of chickens and rice, the mayor said, "Shoot them."

"So I did. I'd seen it done before in the drive, especially to Quisling officers."

"But he put it in his day report. Can you believe that?" Thrush laughed. "Shoot, bury, and shut up."

"Says the man who left bodies in a ditch," Farland said.

"Not better, that's for sure," the thin man with the long, honey-colored locks said. Valentine had learned that his last name was Roderick, that he held the rank of lieutenant though he looked on the weary side of forty, and nothing about the charges against him. Every time anyone asked, he shrugged and smiled.

"Are you asking for court-martial?" Valentine asked Farland.

"No. I'm pleading guilty. They've got my paper trail. Something's holding up the show, though, and my trial date keeps getting postponed."

"As does mine," Thrush said.

"What's gonna happen is gonna happen," Roderick said. "I'm asking for lobster and real clarified butter for my last meal. How about that? Better get it."

"Shut up," Thrush said.

"You start planning yours too, Colonel."

Valentine only got one piece of mail his first week in the Nut. It came in an unaddressed envelope, posted from Little Rock, and bore a single line of typescript:

HOW DO YOU LIKE IT?

"You've got a visitor, Major," Young said after the sun called lights out the next day. Valentine wondered if the guard ever got a day off. He'd seen him every day for a week.

Something felt wrong about moving across the prison floor in the dim light. Sounds traveled from far away in the prison: water running, a door slamming, Young's massive ring of keys sounding like sleigh bells in the empty hallway.

Valentine expected to be taken to some kind of booth with a glass panel and tiny mesh holes to speak through, but instead they brought him to a big, gloomy cafeteria on the second floor of the asterisk. Light splashed in from the security floods outside.

Young made a move to handcuff him to a table leg across from a brown-faced man in a civilian suit. Valentine was jealous of the man's clean smell, faintly evocative of sandalwood-in the Nut one got a new smock once a week and clean underwear twice.

Valentine wondered at the smooth sheen of his visitor's jacket. The civilian's gray suit probably cost more than everything Valentine owned-wherever they were storing it now.

"Don't bother, please," the man said, and Young put the handcuffs away. "It's an unofficial meeting. Won't you-"

Valentine sat down. He noticed his visitor nibbled his fingernails; their edges were irregular. Somehow it made him like the man a little better.

"Major Valentine, my name's Sime."

He said the name as though it should provoke instant recognition. Valentine couldn't remember ever having heard it.

Neither man made an offer to shake.

Sime tipped his head back and spoke, eventually. "I'm a special executive of our struggling new republic. Missouri by birth. Kansas City."

"How did you get out?" Valentine asked. Jesus, that used to be the first question he'd ask those fleeing the Kurian Zone in his days as a Wolf. Old habits died hard.

"My mom ran. I was fourteen."

"What's a 'special executive'?" Valentine asked.

"I'm attached to the cabinet."

"That superglue is tricky stuff."

"Quick but dusty, Major."

"You are going to come to the point of this?"

"Tobacco? Maybe a little bourbon?" Sime made no move to produce either, and Valentine wondered if some assistant would emerge from the shadows of the big, dark room.

"No, thanks."

"Trying to make things more pleasant for you."

"You could get me a bar of that soap you used before meeting me."

"How-oh, of course. Ex-Wolf. I'm very sorry about all this, you know."

Valentine said nothing.

Sime leaned forward, placing his forearms on the table with interlaced, quick-bitten fingers forming a wedge pointed at Valentine. "Are you a patriot, Major?"

"A patriot?"

"Do you believe in the Cause?"

Had the man never read his service file? "Of course."

"Body and soul?"

This catechism was becoming ridiculous. "Get to the point."

Sime's eyes shone in the window light. "How would you like to do more to advance the Cause than you've ever done before? Do something that would make the rest of your service-impressive though it is-look like nothing in comparison?"

"Let me guess. It involves the charges against me disappearing. All I have to do is go back into the Kurian Zone and-"

"Quite the contrary, Major. It involves you pleading guilty."

A moment of stunned silence passed. Valentine heard Young shift his feet.

Valentine almost felt the edge of the sword of Damocles hanging above. "That helps the Cause how?"

"Major Valentine. I'm personally involved in-in charge of, in a way, some very delicate negotiations. A consortium of high-level officials in the Kurian Zone-"

"Quislings?"

Sime wrinkled his nose and opened and shut his mouth, like a cat disgusted by a serving of cooked carrots.

"Quislings, if you will," Sime continued. "Quislings who run a substantial part of the gulag in Oklahoma and Kansas. They're offering to throw in with us."

"I see why you use good soap."

"Stop it, Major."

Valentine turned toward Young.

"Listen!" Sime said, lowering his voice but somehow putting more energy into his words. "We're talking about the freedom of a hundred thousand people. Maybe more. An almost unbroken corridor to the Denver Protective Zone. Wheat, corn, oil, livestock-"

"I see the strategic benefits."

Sime relaxed a little. Valentine felt nervous, his dinner of doubtful meatloaf revisiting the back of his throat. "Still don't see how my pleading guilty helps."

"These Quislings are afraid of reprisals. Maybe not to them, but to some of the forces they command. The Provisional Government organizing the new Free Republic wants to show them that we're not going to permit atrocities."

"Show? As in show trial?"

Sime turned his head a little, as though the words were a slap. He looked at Valentine out of one baleful eye.

"You have me. You also have this: plead guilty, and it comes with an offer. You'll get a harsh sentence, most likely life, but the government will reduce it and you'll serve somewhere pleasant, doing useful work. Five years from now, after we've won a significant victory somewhere, your sentence will quietly be commuted to celebrate. You could return to service or we could arrange a quiet little sinecure at a generous salary. When was your last breakfast in bed? I recommend it."

"I have the word of a 'special executive' on that? I've never heard that title before:"

"Consider it as coming from your old governor's lips. He knows what you did in Little Rock. I'm speaking for him and for the other members of the Provisional Government."

Valentine took a deep breath.

"Do this, Major, and it'll be the best kind of victory. No bloodshed."

"That's the carrot; where's the stick?"

"You haven't given me an answer yet."

"Let's say I fight it out."

"Don't."

"Let's say I do anyway," Valentine said.

Sime looked doubtful for the first time. "The Garage." The air got ten degrees warmer in the dark of the cafeteria.

"Will you accept a counteroffer?"

"I'm a negotiator. Of course."

"Do you know Captain Moira Styachowski?"

"I know the name from your reports. She served with you on Big Rock."

"Get her in here. I hear that same offer from her, and I'll take it."

"Ah, it has to come from someone you trust. I feel a little hurt, Major. Usually my title-"

"I've had a gutful of titles in the Kurian Zone. You can keep them."

"I'll see what I can do. If she's on active service I might not be able to get her."

"She's the only-no. If you can't get her, get Colonel Chalmers. I've dealt with her before."

Sime extracted a leather-bound notepad and wrote the name down. "She's with?"

"A judge with the JAG."

"Very well. Thank you for your time, Major."

"I have nothing but time."

"Don't be so sure. Take my deal." Sime looked up and waved to Young.

The next day rain tamped down the dust on the exercise yard. The shooters and the looters stayed on opposite sides of the pie slice between the frowning brown wings D and E, trying to keep their pannikins full of lukewarm lentils out of the rain as they sat on long, baseball-dugout-style benches.

"Anyone got an offer from a civilian named Sime?" Valentine asked.

Farland and Thrush exchanged looks and shrugged. Roderick sucked soup out of his tin.

"We're getting pushed back again," Farland said. "God, it's like getting a shot when the doctor keeps picking up and putting down the big-bore needle."

Roderick stopped eating and stared. "I had rabies shots. Harpy bite."

"He said all this is more or less of a show. To convince some gulag Quislings that Southern Command won't just shoot them dead if they join us."

"News to me," Thrush said. He returned his pannikin to the slop bin and returned, twitching up his trousers with his deft little hands before he sat. It took Valentine a moment to remember when he'd last seen that gesture-Malia Carrasca's grandfather in Jamaica would go through that same motion when he sat. "You know, they might be firing smoke to get you to plead out."

"They've tried murderers before," Farland said. "My uncle served with Keek's raiders before they hung Dave Keck. But he killed women and children."

"And Lieutenant Luella Parsons," Roderick said. "When was that, fifty-nine?"

"She shot the mayor of Russelville," Farland put in. He wiped raindrops from his glasses and resettled them.

"Yeah, but she claimed he was working for them. Said she saw him talking to a Reaper."

"I heard they tried General Martinez himself for shooting a couple of Grogs," Roderick said.

"That makes sense," Thrush said. "If you ask me, it's a crime not to shoot 'em."

"Actually it was," Valentine said. "I was there. The two Grogs he shot were on our side."

"First I've heard of it. Were the charges dropped?" Farland asked.

Valentine shook his head.

"You made a powerful enemy, Major," Thrush said. "Martinez had a lot of friends in Mountain Home. He had the sort of command you'd send your son or daughter off to if you wanted to keep 'em out of the fight."

"Technically I was under him during Archangel. His charges are why I'm here, or that's what my counsel says."

"Bastard. Heard he didn't do much," Farland said.

"I wouldn't know. I was over in Little Rock."

Roderick grew animated. "Heard that was a hot one. You really threw some sand in their gears. What was her name, Colonel . . ."

"Kessey," Valentine put in. "She was killed early on in the fighting. Bad luck."

"What are you going to plead, Valentine?" Thrush said.

"Five minutes, gentlemen," a guard yelled, standing up from his seat next to the door.

Everyone was wet. Were they all bedraggled sacrificial sheep? "Haven't made up my mind yet."

Valentine grew used to the tasteless food, and the boring days of routine bleeding into one another and overlapping like a long hospital stay. He took a job in the prison library, but there was so little work to do they only had him in two days a week. He could see why men sometimes marked the days on the wall in prison; at times he couldn't remember if a week or a month had passed.

The weather warmed and grew hot. Even the guards grew listless in the heat. Young brought in two of the pamphlets produced about the fight in Little Rock and had Valentine sign them.

"Turns out I had a cousin in that camp your Bears took. One's for him and one's for his folks."

Part of his brain considered escape. He tried to memorize the schedule of the guard visits to his hallway, tried to make a guess at when the face would appear in the shatterproof window, but their visits were random.

Also, there was the Escape Law. Any person who broke free while awaiting trial automatically had a guilty verdict rendered in absentia.

He slept more than he was used to, and wrote a long letter to the Miskatonic about the mule list. He labored for hours on the report, knowing all the while that it would be glanced at, a note would be added to another file (maybe!) and then it would be filed away, never to see the light of day again until some archivist went through and decided which documents could be kept and which could be destroyed.

He suggested that further investigation into the mule list was warranted. Anything important enough for the Kurians to put this kind of effort into-and apart from feeding and protecting themselves, the Kurians had few pursuits that Valentine was aware of- might prove vital.

Valentine signed it. His last testament to the Cause?

Letters arrived in a strung-together mass. Outrage and gratitude from Post, who was on the mend in a convalescent home and had installed Narcisse in the kitchen; wonder from Meadows; a few postcards from his former Razors who had heard about his imprisonment one way or another.

One offered to ". . . come git you Sir. Just send word."

Nothing from Ahn-Kha, which worried Valentine a little. The Golden One could read and write English as well as anyone in his former command, and better than many.

Valentine heard footsteps in the hallway pause, and then a knock at the door.

"Visitor, Major."

This time Corporal Young took him down to a regular visiting room, carrels with glass between allowed for conversation through small holes in the glass-or plastic, Valentine thought when he saw all the scratches. There were fittings for phones but it looked as though the electronics had been taken out.

He waited for a few minutes and then they brought in Moira Styachowski.

She wore good-fitting cammies with her Hunter Staff crossbar on her captain's bars. The only female Bear he'd ever met looked about as healthy as she ever did-just a little pale and exhausted.

"So they got you after all," Valentine said.

"I might say the same about you," Styachowski said in return, then her eyes shifted down. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Dumb thing to joke-"

"Forget about it, Wildcard."

She smiled at the handle issued to her the night he'd been burned in the Kurian Tower of Little Rock. "You know who's behind this, right?"

"Yes, that Sime . . ."

"No, the charges. It's Martinez."

"My counselor told me. Seems like a sharp woman."

Styachowski looked down again.

"What?" Valentine asked.

"I was told, Val, in language that was . . . umm, remarkable for its vigor, to come here and tell you to work with Sime on this. The 'vigor' of the language employed made me ask a few questions of a friend at GHQ. So, for the record, take the deal."

Valentine lowered his voice. "Off the record?"

She leaned forward. "It's a setup for the benefit of some Oklahoma Quislings. According to my source at GHQ, Sime said, 'They need to see a few hangings to convince them.' Don't look like that. You've got your deal from Sime."

"Sime says. He's powerful enough to make it happen? Even with a Jagger judge?"

"The representatives"-she said the word with the inflection a bluenose might use to describe workers in a bordello as 'hostesses'- "are here and your trials are due to start. Luckily you were the last one arrested. The others will go first. They'll get their hangings."

"Is there anything you can do?" Valentine asked. So goddamn helpless in here. He felt an urge to lash out, punch the Plexiglas between himself and Styachowski. Perhaps even hit Styachowski, for nothing more than being the bearer of bad news. But the mad flash faded as quickly as it rose.

"I don't have much experience in this. A couple of classes on military law and that farce we had near Magazine Mountain sums up my experience."

"What about the newspapers? Your average townie thinks every Quisling should wind up in a ditch."

"Military trials aren't public. I'll see if I can talk to your counsel. If it makes you feel any better, Ahn-Kha is here. I set him up quietly in the woods nearby. I sent word to that Cat you're partial to but I haven't heard back."

"Who's your source at GHQ?"

Styachowski hesitated. "The lieutenant general's chief of staff, a major named Lambert. Says she remembers you from the war college, by the way."

Dots. Valentine had a feeling back then that she was destined to rise. She practically ran the war college as a cadet.

"Thank her," Valentine said.

"Val, if there's anything else I can do . . ."

"You've already exceeded expectations," Valentine said. "Again. Good-bye."

She visibly gulped. "You did right by those women." Styachowski got up and left, a little unsteadily.

Young escorted him back to his room/cell. "We turned away a visitor for you yesterday, Major. Guards say she was a bit of a meal. Red hair."

So Smoke had drifted into the vicinity after all.

"Turned away?"

"You're to get no visitors except by judge's order. Sorry."

"Is that usual?"

"Not for anyone in Southern Command. Sometimes we try Quislings, redhands, men caught as spies. They're kept I-C if it's thought they know something damaging if it gets out, but you guys are the first of ours."

"Should the lack of precedent worry me?"

"I only work here, Major. But, to tell the truth, it worries me."

Thrush got his trial the next day. He ate his dinner alone and the "shooters" didn't see him until breakfast (reconstituted eggs that tasted like bottom sand). He wasn't inclined to talk about the proceedings.

"My counsel keeps objecting and getting overruled," Thrush said. "Six witnesses for the prosecution. My defense starts today. There was wrangling over the witnesses, my counsel only got two in."

"Do you have any family or friends in the audience?" Valentine asked.

Thrush scowled, pushing his utensils around on his tray. "There's an audience alright. You never saw such a bunch of hatchet faces. Tight-ass Kansas types. I wouldn't be surprised if they are Quislings."

"I'm going to ask for noseplugs if they're there at my trial," Roderick said.

Valentine never saw Thrush again after that meal. Young, wary and somber, told him the verdict and sentence. Valentine wasn't surprised by the verdict but he was shocked at his reaction upon hearing the punishment. The Garage. Death by hanging. Thrush's sentence rang in his ears, rattled around in his head like a house-trapped bird frantic but unable to escape: Death by hanging.

Death by hanging. The Garage. Death by hanging.

Farland went next. The morning of his trial he was almost cheerful. "Hey, I've admitted it. I did wrong and I'll take what's coming, serve time and address cadet classes about humane treatment of prisoners if they want. The court's gotta see this as a case for mercy, right?"

His guilty plea just meant he had to spend less time in the courtroom before hearing his sentence. The trial was over and done with in thirty minutes.

This time, when Valentine asked, Young just shook his head. The guard had a hard time meeting Valentine's eyes.

In the yard that day Roderick didn't eat, he just rocked back and forth on his heels, whistling. Valentine felt he should know the tune but couldn't identify it.

"'There's No Business Like Show Business,' Val," Roderick supplied.

"Roderick, what did you do that got you in here?"

Roderick shrugged. "Guess it doesn't matter now, since none of us will be telling tales. Rape and murder of a Quisling prisoner. She was sweet and creamy, and I figured they do it plenty to our people. She had the softest-looking brown hair, partly tied up in this red bandanna. Funny. If her hair didn't catch my eye, she would have just been another prisoner walking by. But I had the boys pull her out of line."

"They reported you?"

"No. I felt guilty about it afterwards. Talked it over with a chaplain. He turned me in. Guess I don't blame him. There's got to be a difference between us and them, or what's the point? I'm almost so I want their brand of hemp medicine." He made a hanging motion at his neck with his finger, both gruesome and funny at the same time.

Roderick's words stayed with him for hours. Roderick deserved his fate-if the men saw their officers behaving that way, they'd degenerate into a sexually charged mob the next time . . . but wait. How different were their crimes, really-save that Valentine amassed a higher body count? Eight men had died in horrible pain.

In the afternoon he met with Captain Luecke in a little, white-painted room with a big table. She looked a little haggard.

"I was handling Farland's case as well. I thought it was just going to be plea negotiations. I heard something about Sime making you an offer."

"What happened to Thrush?"

"He moved onto death row. They hung him at midnight last night. In front of the witnesses." She took a long drag at her cigarette, and the shaking in her fingers stilled for a moment as the nicotine hit her bloodstream. "Farland will go tomorrow night. Our guests can't afford to stay long. Do Sime's deal."

"Or end up like Thrush and Farland?"

"Maybe they're having you go last for a reason. After a few hangings, the bastards might be willing to see a little mercy."

"'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,'" Valentine quoted.

"This last week has been strictly Old Testament, Valentine. Like Leviticus."

"How did your checking on Martinez go?"

"It was quite revealing. I'm glad I wasn't at that trial. Were there really bullets flying in through the windows?"

"The prosecuting officer almost got raped."

Luecke sent a funnel of smoke at the ceiling lights. "There were times I thought a lynch mob coming for some overeager scalp-taker wouldn't be altogether a bad thing. But to see it in real life-"

"It worked out in the end. My defense?"

"You don't have one. Every witness I wanted to call met with the same response from the judge: Major Valentine is on trial, not General Martinez. Denied. Valentine, honestly, take Sime's deal. If anyone has the pull to get you off the hook, it's him."

"Pull? What kind of justice system is this?" Valentine asked.

Luecke lit another cigarette from the butt of her first as she took a last drag. "A kind I've never seen before. Take Sime's deal."

"If I don't?"

"I'll do my best. I have a feeling it won't be good enough."

"Can you get me a visitor? There's-"

"Sorry, no. Maybe after sentencing."

"That'll do me so much good," Valentine said.

"You're frustrated. I understand. Go back to your room and think it over. Sime's offer is our only hope."

"Our? You're not going to be standing in the Garage with a rope around your neck by the end of the week."

She crushed her cigarette. "You think I don't feel for the people I defend? It's a rotten world. A lot of the men who wind up here just got an extra spoonful of rottenness. Maybe they were born with it, or maybe it got fed to them in little mouthfuls over their lives. In either case, I do what I can for them."

Valentine put his head in his hands. Keep it together, Ghost. "I'm sorry. You've done more for me than I should expect, considering."

"If it makes you feel any better, Val, I did turn up one thing. I couldn't see much of it, but Southern Command did investigate Martinez. There's some kind of intelligence file that I saw cross-referenced in the docs. Whatever they were looking into came up negative, so the file got sealed. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"All I know is he shot two of my complement. And that he kept a few thousand men drunk and hiding in the hills when Southern Command needed them."

"We'll talk tomorrow morning. It looks like your trial is going to be on Thursday."

Two days.

"Thank you, Captain. You should eat-you don't look so good."

She pulled out a cigarette. "I'm paving my own trip to the Garage with these. See you in sixteen hours."

Valentine spent the next day in a kind of weary anxiety. They would try Roderick in the morning-he was not going to contest the proceedings, so it would go quickly-and then Valentine's trial would begin in the afternoon. He tried to write letters and found himself unable to find words, went through the motions of his job rebinding books at the prison library in a funk, unable to finish anything. He and Luecke met again, but found they had little to say to each other. She simply asked if he'd take Sime's deal. He shrugged and said that he hadn't made up his mind yet, and she said she had the statement for the tribunal ready if he did decide to plead guilty.

Valentine believed any speech she might make would be scrimshaw on a casket. What would happen to him would happen regardless. The only words that would count would be those that would place him in prison, or send him to the Garage.

The hours slipped away until sundown, and the prison slowly bled off the heat it had soaked in during the day. Valentine lay in his cot, arms and legs thrown wide to allow the perspiration to disperse.

There was a knock at the door and Valentine heard keys rattle.

"Room search," Young said.

Valentine knew the routine. They took him to a holding cell- this one had real bars-while two guards searched his room. The process usually took a half hour or so.

This time it took an hour. Were they worried he'd constructed some kind of weapon to use in court?

When they returned him to his cell Valentine noticed the usual cart outside, piled with his linens. Young looked at the other guard. "I'll take it from here, Steve-o."

"You sure?" the guard asked.

"I'm sure. Enjoy your dinner."

Steve-o, the other guard, extended his hand. "Good luck, Major Valentine."

"You mean good luck tomorrow, don't you?" Young said.

"Yeah. That's what I meant."

Valentine shook the hand.

"Just wanted to say I done it," Steve-o said. He wandered down the hall, whistling "There's No Business Like Show Business." Maybe he'd picked the tune up from Roderick.

"You've got a letter," Young said. He looked again at the envelope. "It says that it's not to be delivered to you until after your trial. But we had to check it anyway. No reason we couldn't check it before."

"Of course," Valentine said, wondering.

"Here you go. I get the feeling it's not from a friend."

Valentine saw the same plain envelope and paper. He opened the tri-folded message.

ENJOY THE HANGING. WISH I COULD BE THERE.

Young cleared his throat. "Kind of funny, this person being so sure of your verdict."

"Funny is right," Valentine agreed.

Young extracted a multitool pocketknife, unfolded a screwdriver, and cleaned a black mark from beneath his thumb. A red-painted key jangled from the ring on the knife; Valentine saw it glitter in the dim light coming in from his window. "I've never had a problem with my job before, Major. Most people wind up here, well, they deserve it. The ones that don't get spat back out, usually along with some who do. Better that way than the other. But in sixteen years I've never seen anything like this."

Young pointed to a laundry bag on his bed. "Fresh linens for your bed and a new smock," he said. "Girl in the laundry is new. I think she doesn't read so good. If they screwed up, I'll be back in an hour and fifteen minutes and I'll get you a new set of clothes." He placed the knife in his pocket. "Well, I got to get down to the yard. We got sick dogs tonight and until the vet is done looking at them, it's the two-legged animals that got to walk between the wire. I know the night before a trial is always slow. Hope you get some sleep, eventually."

As he turned, Valentine heard the pocketknife bounce off his boot and hit the floor. It slid under his cot.

"Damn cheap service trousers! Cotton my ass. More like knitted lint," Young said, and slammed the door behind himself- slammed it so hard it didn't close properly. Valentine didn't hear the dead bolt shoot home.

Valentine waited one amazed second, then put his slip-on shoe in between the door and the jamb so it wouldn't close accidentally. He checked his laundry bag. A complete guard uniform, right down to polished shoes and belt, hat, and hankerchief was inside. Valentine read the stitched-on name tag: YOUNG.

"Thank you, Corporal Young."

He got into the uniform. It was a bit roomy, but he didn't look ridiculous once he punched a new hole in the belt with the knife's awl. It was a handy little tool: two kinds of screwdriver, two blades, a saw/fish scaler, a can opener, a file, an awl, and a clipper-though the last didn't look up to the job of cutting the wire in the yard.

He put wadded-up papers-one of them was the mystery note-around his feet so they fit better in the size-twelve shoes.

It occurred to him that if he were to pass as Young at a cursory glance he'd need to be heavier. He wound a sheet around his midsection and put the belt back on at its worn notch.

Feeling hot with excitement he stepped into the hall, trying to walk with his head turned down and handkerchief wiping his nose. He'd never seen cameras in the hall of this part of the prison but he wanted to be safe.

He left the room behind with no regret. When was the last time he slept in the same spot so many days in a row? His cabin in the Thunderbolt, most likely.

He walked down the hall in the direction of the edge of the asterisk. Then he stopped in front of a door two down from his. Roderick's.

The man was guilty of an atrocious crime. But if the system was gamed-

Valentine looked through the window. The cot was empty- had Young arranged for two escapes? Then his eyes picked up a figure in the gloom behind the sink/toilet.

Roderick had cheated the hangman.

What looked like a twisted-up sheet was knotted around the sink tap. Roderick was in a sitting position, butt off the floor and held up by his sheet, face purple and tongue sticking out as stiffly as his legs.

He turned away from the window, and looked at the dim hallway light to get the image out of his retinas.

Every other time they'd brought him through the center of the asterisk, but there was a fire exit sign above a heavy door. While he knew some of the routes through the center of the building, there was too much chance of meeting another guard. Valentine tried the red key on the heavy lock, Roderick's purple tongue filling his vision every time he didn't concentrate, and the fire escape door opened. For an aged guard Young thought things through well enough. He listened with hard ears, and heard footsteps somewhere on the floor below.

Valentine slipped off the guard shoes, wincing at the sound of paper crinkling-the tiniest sounds were magnified when one was trying to keep silent-and padded down the stairs to the bottom level.

He searched the door frame leading outside.

The door to the exterior had an alarm on it. Valentine flipped up a plastic access cover and saw a keypad with a green-faced digital readout. Someone had written 1144 on the interior. Valentine passed a wetted thumb over the ink and it smeared easily-it was still fresh. He punched the numbers into the keypad and then hit a key at the bottom marked ENTER.

Nothing changed color.

Every nerve on edge, Valentine pushed open the crash door.

"Thank God for minimum security," he whispered. A real prison would have had at least two more layers of doors.

He put the shined shoes back on. While rugged enough for street wear, he wondered how long they'd last if he had to hike out. His good boots were in storage somewhere in the bowels of the prison complex.

The night air felt cool and clean, but the best thing about it was the amount. Free sky stretched overhead as far as even Cat eyes could see. Valentine drank in the Arkansas night like a shot of whiskey, and even the memory of Roderick's tongue faded ... a little.

Keeping to the shadows, he walked around the edge of the building. Every now and then he stopped and pulled on a window as though checking to see if it was locked, all the while making for the pathway from the center of the asterisk to the gate in the double wire.

A few lights burned in the subsidiary buildings and the courthouse. Valentine stepped onto the path leading to the gate and strode toward the gate.

He heard high, feminine laughter from the gatehouse.

Valentine sneezed repeatedly into his handkerchief as he stepped into the flood of light around the twin vehicular gates. Valentine had seen the gatehouse in operation often enough; people were supposed to travel through the inside but guards desiring access to the area between the double row of fencing usually just had them open the gates.

Cap pulled low on his head, he looked into the window. Then stopped.

Alessa Duvalier sat on some kind of console, legs prettily crossed though she was in what Valentine thought of as her traveling clothes-a long jacket was folded carelessly next to her, her walking stick, which concealed a sword, next to it.

"... so the blonde gives birth and asks the doctor, 'How can I be sure it's mine?' " They laughed.

"Shit, how did someone as ugly as Young end up with you?"

"Kindness," Duvalier said. "He's a very kind man."

"If you ever want to trade him in on a newer model . . ." the young guard said. He sputtered with laughter as he waved casually at Valentine-not taking his eyes off Duvalier-and Duvalier said, "Oh, let me!" She thumped something without waiting for permission and the twin gates hummed as they slid sideways on greasy tracks. Valentine nipped out of sight of the gate and walked quickly down the road.

Valentine heard a thump from behind, a door open, and then quick footsteps as Duvalier caught up.

She pulled him off the road and gave him a brief embrace, nuzzling him under the chin with her nose. "I can never leave you alone, can I?"

"My luck always turns whenever you're not around," Valentine admitted.

"If they arrested everyone who ever quietly shot a Quisling ..." she said.

"Let's not mention arrests or prisons for a while, alright? As of this moment I'm a fugitive from justice subject to the Escape Law."

"It's not so bad. My whole life, I've been a fugitive from just about everything," she said.

"What's the plan?" Valentine asked.

"That's your end. But I've got a start under way. Oh, that Corporal Young's a good man. We need to burn those clothes."

"You've got replacements?"

"They're with Ahn-Kha."

She turned him into the woods and an owl objected, somewhere. Valentine heard the soft flap of bats above, hunting insects in the airspace between branches and ground.

They stopped to listen twice, then found a burned-out house. A transport truck with a camouflaged canvas-covered back sat in front of it. Valentine marveled at it. The ruins of the garage held a small charcoal fire and a very large, faun-colored Grog.

"My David," Ahn-Kha said. "We have escaped again."

"If we're still at liberty in twenty-four hours I'll call it an escape. Where'd you get the truck?"

"Styachowski requisitioned us a transport," Duvalier said.

Valentine stripped out of his uniform, and Duvalier flitted about gathering up the guard's clothing.

Ahn-Kha handed him a too-familiar dun-colored overall.

"Labor Regiment?" Valentine said.

"It goes with the truck," Duvalier said. "The big boy looks like he could do a hard day's work with a shovel."

"And you?"

She covered her fiery red hair with a fatigue cap. "I'm management. You two look like the all-day lunch-break type. Besides Val, you're the suckiest kind of driver."

"Where do we go?" Ahn-Kha asked. "My people will gladly shelter us at Omaha."

"We'd have to cross half of Southern Command. No, let's go east."

Duvalier climbed into her own overall and zipped it up over freckled shoulders. "East? Nothing there but river and then the Kurians. Until the Piedmont."

"I have an old friend in the Yazoo Delta. And I've got a mind to visit Memphis."

"Memphis? The music's to die for, but the Kurians see to it that you do the dyin'." She sprinkled something that smelled like kerosene out of a bottle onto the clothes and tossed them on the charcoal. They began to burn with admirable vigor.

"Ali, I've got my claws into a job. I'm wondering more and more about Post's wife, Gail."

"She's gotta be dead if she was shipped."

"No, she was some kind of priority cargo. I'll explain later. We need to go to the area around Arkansas Post on the river. Can you manage that?"

"Says the guy who just broke out of a high-security lockup thanks to me!" Duvalier chided.

"Medium security," Valentine said.

She tossed her bundle of traveling clothes and sword stick into the back of the truck; "How do I look?"

"You're better suited singing in the Dome than for the Labor Regiment," Valentine said.

"Gratitude! The man's got a vocablarney like a dictionary and he doesn't know the meaning of the word!"

"Please," Ahn-Kha said. "We had best be going."

The truck bumped eastward along the torn-up roads. A substantial piece of Consul Solon's army had been borrowed from the area around Cairo, Illinois, and points east, and they had employed a spikelike mechanism called a paveplow to destroy the roadbeds as they went home.

Patching was still being done, so most vehicles found it easier to drive on the gravel shoulder.

Duvalier drove, Ahn-Kha rode shotgun-with his formidable gun pointing out through the liftable front windscreen to rest on the hood-and Valentine bounced along in the back, feeling every divot the worn-out shock absorbers struck and hanging onto the paint-and-rust frame for safety.

About noon he felt the truck lurch to a stop.

"Just a road check," Duvalier said through the flap separating the driver from the cargo bed. "Rounders."

Valentine's stomach went cold. There was an old riot gun in the back, but he couldn't shoot his fellow citizens, even if it meant being rearrested.

"Afternoon, digger," Valentine heard a voice say from up front. "Transport warrant and vehicle check. Jesus, that's some big Grog. He trained?"

"He's a citizen. Sick relief to Humbolt Crossing," Duvalier said, cool as ever. "There's the medical warrant. We've got an unidentified fever in the back, so you want to keep clear."

"Do we?" another voice said. "We'll have to risk it. Orders to check every vehicle. We had a breakout at the military prison in Mountain Home."

"Someone important, I take it," Duvalier said.

"David Valentine, part-Indian, black hair, scar on right side of face."

Duvalier again: "Never heard of him. He run over a general's dog?"

Valentine heard footsteps approaching the bed. There was nowhere for him to hide inside. He might be able to cut his way onto the roof. He reached for the knife, opened the saw blade . . .

"Killed some Quisling prisoners, they say."

"He use too many bullets?" Duvalier said.

"Whoa, Sarge, we got someone back here."

Light poured into the back of the truck, hurting Valentine's eyes and giving him an instant headache. The hole was only big enough to put his head through.

Valentine heard a harsh whisper from Duvalier.

"Well, well, well," one of the Rounders said.

"He doesn't look too sick," the one with sergeant's tabs agreed. "Wouldn't you say, slick."

That's it. Trapped. Back to trial.

"No."

"This look like our Quisling killer to you?"

The other squinted. "No, Sarge. Five-one and Chinese, three gold teeth; no way this is our man."

"I should get my eyes checked," the sergeant said, writing something down. "I need to erase, because I see a six-six black individual with a big tattoo of Jesus on his chest. Oh, crap, this stop form looks like shit now." He tore a piece of printed paper off his pad, wadded it in one massive hand, and tossed it over his shoulder.

"Anyway, it ain't our killer."

"No, that's not David Valentine," the sergeant said, winking.

"Too bad, in a way," the other said. "Old friend of mine, Ron Ayres, fought under him in Little Rock. I'd buy this Major Valentine a drink, if I could."

"So you've told me. About a hundred times," the sergeant said, closing the back flap.

Valentine listened to the boot steps return to the front of the vehicle.

"Okay, get your sick man outta here before we all catch it," the sergeant said. "I'd turn south for Clarendon about three miles along; there's an old, grounded bus shell with RURAL NETWORK PICKUP J painted on it alongside the road. No roadblocks that way to slow up your sick man, and I think this thing can make it through the wash at Yellow Creek."

"Thank you, Sergeant."

"Thank you for having such a pretty smile. Pleasant journey." And thank you, old friend of Ron Ayres, Valentine thought.