Mouthpieces: Every Kurian organization depends on layers of intermediaries between the Kurian Lords and their human herds. Seattle is no different.

All the layers of police, troops, secret police, church investigators, even diplomats to other Kurian Zones, report to one man's office in Seattle, and that man is Maxamom Silas. Impressive looking, with a good eye for clothes, and an even more impressive speaker and judge of character, he's something of a born second-in-command. Some in the know of the ins and outs of Seattle's realm believe him to be more important than the lesser Kurian Lords in the feudal conglomeration, especially with recent desertions of the Kurians supposedly guarding the borders of Seattle's empire.

He has his faults, of course. If an original thought ever entered his head, it got lonely and left. He's also a man who lives very much in the present day. "The past can't be changed and the future has too many variables", he's been known to say.

Maxamom Silas watches over his city from the old Space Needle, overshadowed by the greater Kurian Spire doubling the highest heights of the Seattle skyline, as if contesting Mount Rainier itself. Why he chooses the Space Needle as a location for the meetings of his highest military, industrial, and church leaders might be answered better by psychology than logistics or practicality or even sybaritic comfort - after all, he often weekends at the much more congenial Gates estate. He's earned the view. As a Seattle-born NUC altar boy, he impressed the church hierarchy enough for them to send him East for an education. He returned a bright young

graduate of Harvard's Population Management School, not inspired with any particular vision, but crammed with the latest skills and theories.

Silas receives credit for his division of the city into neighborhood-sized "quads" - each ruled by a Kurian. School and work and sports teams encourage quad loyalty. These in turn are gathered into "conferences" where a presiding Kurian clan works out squabbles. In theory, a human need never leave his conference; the whole of his existence is encompassed in the square miles that make up a conference, though he will sometimes travel to another conference to root for a home team in a championship, or listen to a political speech.

Seattle himself oversees the conferences as sort of a supreme judge. His conferences reside in his own massive tower, where they may be more easily watched and controlled. Treachery has been unknown since the great purge of Year Forty, when three leading conference clans were killed in a single deadly night.

It is this simple system that allowed Seattle to expand his realm in the 2050s, owning all the land between the Grogs in Oregon and the thinly inhabited coastline north of Vancouver. From the Kurian point of view, the apparently powerless "quad" role was attractive, for the number of human auras he had to pass up the food chain was strictly limited, and in return he received the military protection of Quisling formations organized at the conference level. While there is some dispute on the matter, Seattle can at least be credited with being the only Kurian overlord who regularly saw his fellow Kurians petition him to be included in his empire.

Until, of course, the advent of Adler and his brutal strategy. Adler would strike in secret, hard and fast, at the quad level of the Kurian Order, harassing and chipping at the vulnerable fringe of Seattle's realm. He avoided every trap laid for him, seeming to know which quads were strongly garrisoned and which were weak-Even Maxamom Silas had few ideas of how to cope with the crisis. His expertise in security was limited to quelling dissent from within and breaking up organizations like the Resistance Network-After three conferences contributed to a "Guardian Army" that plunged into the mountains, only to dissolve thanks to desertion and harassing attacks from

mountain-wise guerrilla bands, no further attempts were made to take the offensive.

But Seattle himself is not without the canniness of a hunted fox. He sent to his subrealm of Vancouver for the "Big Mouth" amphibian Grogs, and used the numerous waterways around Seattle to gird his realm, though a good deal of his productive capacity is now spent feeding Grogs rather than trading with other Kurian Zones for the goods that once made Seattle such a pleasant place to live and breed.

* * *

Valentine watched Seattle through the outward-slanting windows of the Space Needle. He tried to imagine what the roads looked like long ago, filled with cars and trucks - the crushed remains of which now formed barriers between Seattle's zones. Now there were just bicyclists and a few motor scooters, making way for smoke-belching army trucks, biofuel buses, and the occasional gleaming SUV.

He'd first relayed the bare bones of a plan to a pair of skeptical military adjutants, but as he spoke they grew more and more interested. Then he spent a day in an apartment on what he guessed was a military base; bellevue conference is the first with the most read a banner hanging over an exercise field that he could just see through his grimy window. Later they told him that he'd need to speak to Chief Executive Silas' Regional Security Work Group. So they gave him soap and a razor, sent a girl in to trim his hair and nails, and gave him an afternoon to present his plan.

They shuttled him to the Space Needle in a motorcycle with a little encapsulated sidecar that reeked of sweat and tobacco. A cold front had parked itself over Seattle, and the normal drizzle had turned to sleet the previous evening and promised to do so even earlier tonight. From the road Valentine got a closer look at the Lord's Tower, as it was called, and didn't care for what he saw.

Five great shafts, laid out like the dots on the "five" on an ordinary craps die, rose straight up in shafts of blue green like a fountain frozen in time. Above the tallest of the city's buildings, the Kurian compartments, as Valentine thought of them, began. They looked like mollusks or barnacles clinging to a pier, rather than the spider-egg-sac orbs he'd seen in the middle of the country. Atop all, like a great mushroom cap, was the dome of Seattle himself. Valentine thought he saw trees up there but could not be sure if the green caps were vegetation or just some odd element of Kurian architecture.

"That must have taken some time to build", Valentine said as they parked beneath the Space Needle and the driver opened his canopy.

The driver shrugged. "My dad knew a guy from the conference who worked on it. Once the foundation went in, they grew the columns. Only steel in there as far as I know is remnants from the scaffolding".

The driver passed Valentine on to one of the military attaches he'd first talked to. They took an elevator up the Space Needle. Some minor earthquake damage had been patched over and painted, but otherwise it still looked fresh from the World's Fair.

Valentine idled in a waiting room, downing a mug of the best coffee he'd had since his last trip to Jamaica. Photographs of post-'22 reconstruction projects and the Victory-5, a super-fuel-efficient observation plane and light bomber produced at the Boeing works, filled the waiting area. A card listed an impressive set of specifications. The plane's lines reminded him a little of the gliders he'd trained on in Yuma, wide flat wings with little stabilizers at the tip, though with a heavier body and push-pull propellers.

He listened to a pair of engineers breaking for coffee, grousing about the state of the sewers. Seattle was only a third as populous as it had been pre-2022, and as the remaining humans no longer produced enough waste to keep the sanitary system working, they were closing off vast sections so as to divert into the still-working parts and narrowing pipes.

"You'd think PVC was gold, they way they stint", one said, sipping his coffee.

"The shit's gold, that's for sure. Energy wants it for the biofuel stills. Fisheries want it for the hatchery. Agriculture needs fertilizer.

If they only would let us get a per-gallon rate, we could buy all the tubing we needed from the Oakland Bay Company. But no, 'waste' it remains".

Next trays of food - Valentine smelled fish and roast beef, along with onion and potato - came up the elevator and disappeared into the meeting room.

Valentine wandered to the observation rail while the Quisling leadership ate. A sharp lemony smell filled his nostrils, and Valentine heard a heavy, shuffling step.

He turned. A squared-off man, all right angles and pinstripes, stood on the observation platform, looking at him. He had golden rings on each hand.

Behind him was a big gray Grog, who evidently was the source of the lemony smell. Valentine couldn't remember ever seeing one of the long-armed grays so neatly trimmed and coiffed. It wore a kilt with sewn-in scabbards for weapons, and the butts of two rifles projected from its shoulders. Silver-capped teeth shone against lips greasy with roast beef juice, its tongue discreetly probing for trapped morsels.

"I take it you're Valentine", the man said, stepping up with hand out. He was about Valentine's height, but built a little heavier. "I'm Silas, chief executive around here. Kur commend you". He had what sounded to Valentine like an odd manner of speech, as though all the words were formed in the top of his throat and passed up through his nose as well as his mouth.

"David Valentine. You could get a fair price out of the Louisiana Kurians for me, by the way". The Grog hovered as Valentine shook hands.

"You're not frightened of Grogs, are you? Silvers is well trained", Silas said.

"U-koos", Valentine said to the Grog, lowering his left hand toward the floor and bringing the right to the center of his chest. The greeting was a fairly universal one in St. Louis, but he didn't know if it applied out here.

The Grog slapped his own centerline a few times and hooted. Valentine saw an old white scar on his right breast, sloping down toward the Grog's navel.

"Introductions being over, we've got another hour or so of work after lunch. Sorry to keep you waiting, but we're running late. Then it's going to be all military, and you're first on the agenda. Seattle himself is curious as to what you're going to propose, you know. It would be in your own interest not to disappoint him. If I understand, you're some kind of assassin? You took the measure of two Reapers, unless I'm being misinformed".

"It was me or them. I'm glad Seattle is the forgiving type". Valentine felt shaggy and uneducated in the light of Silas' controlled diction.

"Nobody much likes the Bellevue clan. They trade with the insurgents and word gets around about that little exercise field. Unsettles the herd".

"You're one of the herd yourself, aren't you?"

"One body can always be swapped with another. But talent - that's not so easily discarded. Do you know what these are?" He held out his manicured hands, an NUC-crested brass ring on the left, a plainer one on his right.

Brass rings.

"Yes. Word of advice, Valentine. Don't believe your own propaganda posters about freedom and all that. There's always been the rulers and the ruled". He tapped the glass in the direction of the city. "The Kurians aren't that different from other rulers throughout history, save for one twist. They want productive births and productive lives, just like all the others. The only thing all this slanging is about is their desire for, when the time comes, productive deaths. Reuse and recycling of strange and mysterious energies otherwise lost to the cosmos".

"If that's what you believe, then I hope I'm around when you go drowsy and forgetful. You going to strip off those rings and volunteer for recycling?"

"I've earned a ripe old age, and I intend for it to be a productive

one. Sadly, I've not had time for children yet. Our aphrodisiacs have been certified for ninety-year-olds. But really, I didn't come here to talk about myself or the honorable family name. I wanted to get an idea about you, before plunging into all the hows and whens. I'm a little curious about what you want out of all this".

"Put in your words, I want to stop the unproductive deaths. Adler is slaughtering whole families".

"Both sides are exhausted from all the fighting. The Kurians never thought it would take so long to reorganize us. Every new eruption kills more in a few weeks than the Kurians do in a year. Waste, sheer waste".

An elegant woman in business dress, lovely eyes behind thick glasses, cleared her throat from the hallway.

"Mr. Silas, they're reassembled and await you".

Silvers took a long snootful of the air around the assistant and popped his lips together: dop dop dop.

"I look forward to hearing your plans, Valentine. Just don't think you can organize another mutiny here. We're not stupid".

"Never said you were, Silas. Rotten, maybe, but not stupid".

"You're not my idea of an ally either".

"We don't need to respect each other, as long as we cooperate. I'd make a deal with the devil himself to stop Adler's slaughter".

* * *

Two and a half hours later Valentine finally got a chance to talk, in the meeting room at the top level of the Space Needle. It rotated with the speed of a minute hand, slowly shifting from city skyline to mountains to the bay.

He stood at one end of a long, slightly curved wooden table, richly lacquered and the color of blood. Papers placed on it seemed to hover above their own shadows. The table could hold twenty-two at a pinch, Valentine guessed, but at the moment only four figures sat at it, Silas at the other end. Lesser operatives sat discreetly at the edges of the room, near phones and computer terminals, but Silas dismissed them for the day, keeping only those seated at the table and his secretary.

And of course Silvers, filling a battered sofa just behind Silas' chair.

"What the hell is a deep amphibious operation?" a general with heavy, burnished steel shoulder boards said. He had the fleshy look of a man who liked to do his generaling after a late breakfast and before cocktail hour.

"Hear him out", a uniformed woman with a raccoon mask of camouflage airbrushed across her eyes said. Her bristle-short haircut made one of Alessa Duvalier's self-administered razor jobs look vulpine. "About time someone talked about going on the offensive. We need more men willing to put their balls on the table, pardon the expression".

"Keep yours behind your zipper, Park", the fleshy general said.

"Let the man answer the question", Silas put in, and the table went silent again. Behind him, the city's skyline glowed in splashes of color, searchlights illuminating the old, empty office buildings as though they were national monuments. Lights dusted the edges of the city, washed down the road.

"I just made up the term", Valentine said. "But it describes what I think your 'Big Mouths' can accomplish, if the field training I received about their habits was correct. I read some news bulletins about their use in Florida deep into the Everglades".

"How many will you need?" a man in thick black wool asked. He had the fishy odor of a man off a long day at a gutting wharf. Valentine couldn't tell if he was in casual military clothes or civilian wear so rugged and severe it could pass for a uniform. His name tag was similar to the general's and that of the woman called Park, a black rectangle with white lettering; his read troyd.

"I have to see them training to decide that. Do you train them?"

"We do", Troyd said. He kept his hands out of sight under the table, unlike the others, who were making notes or drinking coffee or tea.

"How are you going to get past the river barriers?"

"I know a little about the watch system", Valentine said. "Before my

comrades delivered me into your little garden of horrors, I was an officer in the troops that supplied the river sentries. Dangerous work".

"That's why they had PeaBees doing it, no?" Park asked.

"Yes", Valentine said. "I even lost a few men to them in the fall. We never found the bodies".

"They've adjusted their fertility cycle to the salmon runs. Whoever eats the most gets to be female and host the fry. Sometimes they even eat the males, if the males don't swim away quick enough after the mate".

"That's a fucked-up way to do it", the fleshy general said.

Troyd shrugged.

Park snorted. "Make for a quieter world".

Silas cleared his throat. "Let's set comparative biology aside for now. We've learned what you'll need for the job. What do you want in return?"

"Some peace and quiet. A nice little house, maybe on one of those islands outside the bay there. A nice boat, not quite a yacht, but something I can use for travel or fishing. A few servants and a couple women to keep me warm on these clammy nights. But most important, one of those brass rings like you all wear so I get left alone".

"You? Settle with us?" the general asked.

"Not with you. Among you. I'm not going to be welcome back with Pacific Command. I'm under a hanging judgment with Southern Command".

"Brass rings aren't mine to give out. Speaking of which, there's going to be one awarded to our friend Troyd here at the next audience, for his work with the Big Mouths".

"And well deserved", Park said, rapping the table.

"Damn, is that this week?" the general asked, looking at his organizer book. "I may have to beg off - I've got inspections in Tacoma".

Silas kept his gaze on Valentine. "It's a boring ceremony. Speeches mostly, gives the TV station something to broadcast for a few weeks. I might arrange for a short interview. Seattle is most interested in the proposition, and he would be the one to promise a ring".

"I'm not doing it on faith", Valentine said.

"We're not so sure you can do it", the general said.

Valentine shrugged. "I wouldn't expect a ring to be handed out unless I accomplish the mission".

"I'm expected at a wedding banquet for one of my colonels. Can we wrap this up?"

"Hungry for your cake, or your droits?" Park asked.

"Not what you're thinking, Valentine", Silas said. "The maid of honor gets a more active role in military weddings around here, is all".

"Who gives a damn what he thinks?" the general asked. "Are we reporting up here or no?"

Silas nodded to his breathtaking secretary. "I'll call for a vote on the Valentine Proposition, and we'll adjourn". He touched a button on the arm of his chair. "Captain Chu, take Valentine back to the lounge".

"Suppose you vote the proposal down?" Valentine asked.

"You might end up in Seattle's tower anyway, but in considerably less distinction. But don't worry, a part of you will live on as a conversation piece".

Valentine went back to the lounge, smelled the nervousness on Captain Chu. Valentine wondered if the man expected to be stabbed with a stir stick. He felt too tired, too disgusted with himself, to put up much of a fight, even if the vote went against him.

Ten minutes later the door opened and he saw the French cuffs of Silas, a broad smile on his face. But he had Silvers with him rather than the statuesque secretary.

Valentine struggled to look nonchalant.

"The vote ended up unanimous in your favor".

"All four? I figured that general was hedging".

"Three. Friend Troyd sat at the table as a courtesy, but he doesn't have his ring just yet. I decided to seat the minimum for an official meeting of the Security Staff. I imagine the less who know about your project, the better".

"Wise of you", Valentine said.

"I want you to have dinner with me tonight. We'll get you cleaned up and into some decent clothes. When you're out mixing with the other ranks, your cover story is that you're an emissary from Catalina, learning how to handle Big Mouths. You know anything about Catalina?"

"Not really. Island off the California coast is about all".

"Don't worry, no one here's ever been there. Our only contact with them is for oil transactions, and the Energy Staff isn't scheduled to renegotiate for eighteen more months. Just pretend you're wealthy. Oh, and say 'awhoha' now and again".

* * *

Valentine rode back to the city in Silas' limousine with his secretary. The trunk of the vehicle had been heavily modified to accommodate Silvers in his own semicupola complete with the first Grog gun Valentine had seen since leaving St. Louis. This one was a piece of craftsmanship, twin barrels each with its own two-thick magazine sloping down at an angle, with a built-in firing shield. Silvers strapped himself into the gun and the seat like the deep-sea fishermen Valentine had seen in the Caribbean.

"That's quite a hogleg your bodyguard totes", Valentine said, looking through the tiny back window at Silver's hair whipping in the wind.

"That little apparatus came off an armored personnel carrier, initially. I think they're ... ummm".

"Twenty-five millimeter, Thunder City Rangeworks", the secretary supplied.

"Anyway, they cost a lot. Oh, I'm sorry, David Valentine, Luty Loosh. She usually goes by Miss L. Top-quality English import, and almost as hard to get as a Rolls".

"I'll save you some time: Lubey Bush, Lusty Tush, Loosey Flush, Thirsty Lush, and combinations thereof", she said. Valentine detected a little bit of an accent now, and she tended to hit the first syllable of her words hard and sharp, like a determined pianist. Valentine felt like

a drawling backcountry scrub compared with these elegant-sounding creatures.

"She was ill-bred enough to make herself so useful I had to keep her around - even after we got tired of each other", Silas said.

They took an off-ramp into the city, passed through a gate in a concrete wall, and pulled up beneath a well-lit turnaround, sheltered by a gold-fringed awning protecting a carpeted path to shining brass-and-glass doors.

"This is my pied-a-terre in the city. Let's get you changed for the better and then talk more over dinner".

"Whatever Silas says", Valentine said.

"I've heard that one before too", Miss L. said.

They rode up in an elevator that made the one in Fran Paoli's building in Xanadu seem like a freight. A little screen in the elevator showed the time, date, and outside temperature as it ticked off names and what Valentine guessed were locations every few seconds:

Vinson, B. COLTRANE MIL

Apporimatox, N. TACOMA 18

Rutig, A. (in transit 5)

Neither of the others paid any attention to the screen, so Valentine ignored it as well.

The elevator opened into what Valentine guessed to be Silas' apartment. It was airy and open, a Prairie-school foyer/living room combination filling two floors. Stairs passed up on either side to doors that Valentine guessed to be bedrooms, and glass filled the wall facing the bay. A patio filled with plants had a second floor to the left side.

"I like a drink after that many circuits in the Needle", Silas said. "You like Scotch, Valentine?"

"You're a brave man, Silas", Valentine said. ' "Why's that?"

"You left your bodyguard downstairs. I'm a desperate insurgent. Suppose I went for your throat?"

Miss L. removed her jacket. Valentine saw a soft leather holster strapped under her arm, the shining butt of an automatic inside. "It's loaded with hollow-points", she said.

"Have to admire a woman who brings her own protection".

"I believe in redundancy", Silas said. "Speaking of which, Luty, see if you can find friend Valentine one of my suits from when I'm better about exercising and down ten pounds".

She led Valentine up the carpeted stairs and to a bedroom that had been converted into an oversized closet, complete with three-way mirror. Her heels clacked on the hardwood floors as she walked down the line of jackets.

"I'd like to see you in gray flannel", Miss L. said. "You're too serious for double-breasted. Hmmm, a vest will make you look like a pimp with that hair. We'll stick to a simple cotton shirt. Where are you from, again?"

"Minnesota".

"That's the one east of Wisconsin?"

"West of Wisconsin".

"Ah". She paused until he looked at her. "How old is your mother?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Just wondering if she was Old Regime or not".

"No, she died fairly young".

"I'm truly sorry to hear that. Here, try these. I'll give you some privacy. There's clean socks and underwear in the drawers. I'm sure Mr. Silas won't mind you taking a pair".

* * *

They ate off china in a restaurant with a French name filled with blue velvet and gold trim. Miss L. went home for the evening and Silvers took his spot at his master's shoulder. The Grog got his own bench behind a thin curtain and sucked down an entire tureen of soup, softly hooting to himself as the men ate. Valentine had salmon with dill and assorted greens, Silas king crab legs. Silas probed him, not about opinions of the Kurians and those who worked for them, but about music and art and books he'd read.

Over dessert they talked about what kind of sports Valentine enjoyed. Silas apologized for the size of the desserts, enormous slabs of cheesecake slathered in syrupy strawberries. "If I have a weakness, it's for sweets".

"Mind answering a question?" Valentine asked.

"That's foolish to answer before hearing the question".

"Why the VIP treatment?"

"You're not getting the VIP treatment. I am. You're just in the overkill".

"And the questions about jazz versus jug band?"

"Just trying to take the measure of you".

"I appreciate the clothes, but this isn't the life I want. I could never live in the shadow of one of those towers".

Silas laid down his delicate dessert fork. "Do you speak from experience?"

"I've spent years at a stretch in the Kurian Zone".

"Just because you make it sound temporary doesn't change facts on the ground".

"There's no such thing as never. I'm pretty sure some mathematician or other proved that".

* * *

Silas put Valentine up in an almost empty apartment in his building, with some apologies that it would be temporary. But it did have a bed and hot water, and it was warm and dry. Valentine looked out at the city through two layers of glass door, both locked and welded shut.

The next day, after a quick rundown on the public transit system from Miss L., they fitted him with a plastic-sheathed metal loop around his ankle. A twitchy technician issued him with an ID card and swiped it through a slot in a black plastic circle the size of a wristwatch face embedded in the loop.

"Okay, Valentine comma D. of the Catalina Island and Baja Principalities.

Your TRFID transmitter verifies who you are every time you use the card. Just in case you lose it, it's useless to anyone else". He consulted a screen. "You'll be okay for travel downtown for a couple days. Wow, nice expense account".

"It's not going to electrocute me in the shower, or blow my foot off if I leave Seattle, will it?"

The technician raised his eyes. "Catalina must really suck, if they run it like a work camp".

"No comment", Valentine said.

"Naw, it won't do any of that. Go swimming with it".

He didn't swim, but he spent two days exploring Seattle, staying as far away from the Kurian Tower as he could. It seemed a technology-driven city, and Valentine couldn't understand half of the conversations going on in the cafes. Every other block had a technical college or a medical school, mostly filled with foreign students from Asia. Everyone had an ankle tag, except for a few arty types who wore theirs around their necks, and it was from one of these that Valentine learned the coding system. Black indicated foreign dignitaries.

"Of course upper management has theirs implanted", a youngish longhair cradling a leather-topped wooden drum in a relaxed lounge with the intriguing name "Earworm Cafe" explained. "Everyone's got to bear the mark of almighty Babylon". He worked on an old computerized music player with a portable light and a set of precision tools.

"Sez the dude who spends every other morning getting CI certification", a girl chided as she cleaned a table and collected discarded mugs. "Double Deck, you'll be wiring IDs to your own family before you know it".

"Go pop out another kid for the churchies, your royal no compromises", the drummer said.

She bared sharpened teeth and Valentine decided to pay his bill. And the boy's.

Back at his apartment he found a note.

"Don't forget audience tomorrow. I had the suit pressed and the shirt cleaned... Luty".

* * *

The next day Valentine stood in borrowed clothes under a cheap plastic poncho. Seattle's mighty tower soared above him, making him feel like an ant in the shadow of a redwood.

A vast plaza surrounded the tower, rimmed with decorative columns topped with pensive statues of Reapers that served a more discreet purpose as vehicle barriers. Inside the circle it was paved with red and gray bricks that probably formed some kind of design when seen from on high, perhaps a spiral of some kind. Valentine guessed that at least four square blocks of downtown Seattle had been knocked down to make the expanse.

A strange sort of scaffolding had been set up in front of the tower. Perhaps three stories high on its own, it consisted of two staircases leading up to a long, bridgelike platform, an isosceles triangle aimed at the center column. A television camera was perched halfway up the stairs.

The spectators gathered for the audience consisted of well-dressed functionaries in the front, and a mass of shaggy student types farther back, each of whom received a little paper ticket like a theater admittance. The Seattle Police, in waxy black leather jackets, herded the entire crowd into one narrow mass in front of the scaffolding. Silas went up to the television platform and spoke to the cameraman, who turned his camera out on the crowd. Silas looked through it as well, and the police had the crowd spread out a little at the back, and passed out banners that could be unfurled to hide the lack of numbers.

SEATTLE CITY OF DREAMS AND PROGRESS, read one.

PACIFIC COAST BEST AND BRIGHTEST HONORS KUR.

Then there was the eternal our future is bright again in phony childish lettering, held up by uniformed Youth Vanguard troops, which Valentine had seen in every political rally he'd attended in the Kurian Zone. Duvalier always said that Youth Vanguard troop rallies were so filled with high-ranking Quisling pederasts and pedophiles that the banners should read Our cherry is plucked again.

"Why not just round up more people for the audience?" Valentine asked one of the cops. "That's what we do back home".

"That's what I tell 'em", the cop said. "Just give folks a day off so they can come into the plaza. Give 'em luxury coupons like they give those sweatin' kids. They wanna have their cake and eat it too is all. Can't lose ten lousy hours of work. What they do is give everyone a half day on Fridays so they can go home and watch the speeches rebroadcast".

"That many televisions around? We sure don't have that at home".

"Shit yeah. Back in the good times, before all the fighting with the insurgents, this was a sweet spot".

"Sorry to hear that".

He lowered his voice. "Getting so even a police badge ain't proof against a cull. Like I was..."

A blast of music from the speakers mounted on the scaffolding interrupted him. Valentine wondered if Silas had selected Aaron Copland.

Then a New Universal Church Archon began to speak. He led the audience in a hymn, "Onward Human Progress", and Valentine managed to drone through it; he'd heard it many times before in the Gulf.

Silas' limo pulled up to the scaffolding and he and Troyd got out. Silas, wearing an elegant camel-hair coat that stood out against the dull aluminum of the metal, led Troyd up the stairs, where after a brief introduction as "the skilled xenologist who is doing so much to reverse our recent misfortunes" Troyd walked up a set of railless stairs that seemed impossibly narrow to Valentine. It was tipped with a sort of pulpit, and from there, by leaning on the rail and reaching his hand up, he could just reach a sort of blister on the side of the tower.

Silas spoke, talking about battles recently won that Valentine had never heard of, except for a small skirmish that resulted in a raiding PeaBee company retreating from an old state trooper station. To hear Silas describe it, another Stalingrad had been won.

Troyd passed his hand through a shimmering wall of light and pulled it out, still dripping with what looked like liquid fire. He shook it off and held up his undamaged hand, and the new brass ring on his finger glimmered like Venus on a dark night.

Valentine half listened to the speeches, marking the placement of Reapers. Two stood at the bottom of each stairway.

Troyd descended the stairs more surely, and stepped to the microphones. With the TV camera on him, he gave a brief, halting speech, thanking Seattle for his generosity and leadership, as a banner unfurled from the bottom of the scaffold.

29 RINGS AWARDED IN OUR SIXTH DECADE

WHAT'S STOPPING YOU FROM GETTING YOURS?

With Troyd's speech concluded, the Archon stepped to the microphones again. He clutched the railing and sagged for a moment, but Silas helped support him. With that, he raised his head, and with his eyes rolling and cheeks twitching he spoke.

"My children", he said, giving Valentine an odd tingle over the difference in his voice. The Archon sounded a little like a stroke victim who hadn't quite regained the full use of his tongue. "Your Kurian friends and allies have this day placed one of your number among the eagles that soar over this lovely land of ours. He is an example to be followed, for he teaches us the virtue of cooperation and utility. The beings he directs to guard your homes may look fearsome to you, but consider how fearsome they must look to those who threaten our peace. Perhaps then you shall look on their strange faces and beauty. We, your Kurian friends and allies, know you have sacrificed to feed these beings, but who regrets a toe when a leg is saved?

"There are dark forces at the gates of our city, so long a symbol of the heights mankind can reach, with just the tiniest touch of a friendly hand. With these fresh allies beside us, we can look to better days ahead. Belief in victory will lead to work for victory. Work for victory will lead to an affirmation of that belief.

"Too many homes have been darkened by death in the last year. New medicines are even now on their way to church dispensaries to help you dispel whatever fears and doubts you may have. But these have not come cheaply. We must bring the new B-6 into production to meet orders already placed, and certain luxuries will, for a time, become unavailable. Your conferences will provide you with details of our plans to increase output. If we all push together, a very short period of sacrifice will put us back on the road to prosperity and peace. Meet these hardships, not as a burden among burdens, but as a challenge above self! Will you, my family, accept this challenge?"

"Yes", Silas shouted into the microphone. "Yes, yes, yes", he chanted, and the crowd took it up, perhaps eager for exercise to keep warm in the chill November air. The Youth Vanguard jumped up and down with each "yes".

After a few close-ups of people cheering, and a rowdy student or two lifting her sweater and T-shirt, the TV cameraman left.

Silas came down the stairs, chatting with Troyd.

"Wait for Valentine a moment, won't you, Troyd?" Silas asked. "I believe he's going to accompany you back to your wet little camp. Unless you want to come up and pay your respects in person".

Troyd looked at the ring on his hand, rubbed the skin. "No. I was touched once. That's enough for me".

"Then it's you and me, Valentine", Silas said.

"What, up there?"

"Of course".

"I thought I could just speak to one of the, the ..".

"We call them avatars".

"One of the avatars", Valentine finished.

"He wants to look at you with his own eyes. All eight of them. Are you coming?"

Valentine nodded, and stepped up onto the scaffold stairs.

The four Reapers came up the stairs with them, boots loud on the metal steps. Valentine saw the TV man blanch as he placed his camera in a padded bag and frantically wound cables as the Reapers passed.

Silas hit a button by the microphones - another worker with a little silver television pin on her collar dismantled the microphones - and the stairs Troyd had used to climb up to the blister lowered and flattened into a narrow walkway, bridging a gap between the tower and the scaffold bridge. Valentine saw a slit open up in the tower wall, saw lips peel back as it widened.

He looked up at the blister in the tower. Some trick of light put six Reaper faces in various oddly shaped shards and panels of glass.

Two Reapers led them inside, ducking to go through the slit. Silas followed, hands held out a little for balance. Valentine walked the beam uneasily, more thanks to the Reaper following behind than from fear of a misstep.

They lost two of the Reapers at the portal. Valentine couldn't resist turning around and looking. Sure enough, there were lines of triangles like shark teeth, yet off bias like the blades of a ripsaw, deadly yet decorative bumps on the inner side of those lips.

Valentine was relieved to see the inside conforming to human ideas of architecture and design.

"The center tower is separate from the others?"

"At the level humans go to, yeah. People work full-time in here, you know. They use our technology to light the place, keep the air moving. Seattle used to be a popular piece of real estate for them. I learned they evolved in tidal zones when I was out East in Cambridge".

They passed through an inner, curving shaft. Valentine looked up, saw small spiky projections on both sides of the wheel within wheels. There more threadlike projections connected the two layers of structure. It reminded him of a cross section of a bone with the marrow cleaned out. Climbing it would be possible, he imagined, but a long and demanding ascent.

All the corridors curved and wound, so it was difficult to see more than ten meters or so ahead. The Reapers led them to another elevator, in what Valentine guessed to be the center core of the pillar. Silas put his key into the slot and Valentine heard a beep.

"You have to do it too".

Valentine got the same beep and a green light came on over the elevator. The doors opened and they got in, accompanied by the Reapers.

"two for audience, Seattle level", a Reaper said to a speaker grid.

Valentine found it interesting that even Reapers had to report in to some central authority. Bureaucracy or security? Weren't these Reapers animated by Seattle himself?

The elevator rose fast enough for Valentine to feel the change in perceived gravity for a moment. Then he concentrated on swallowing to relieve the changes in air pressure.

The elevator opened out on a wide bay. A Reaper in a purple robe, his face hidden by hood and fabric mask, nodded, and Silas led Valentine out of the elevator into the plain, well-lit lobby. Valentine noted that the walls had a metallic sheen, and there were what he supposed were two-way mirrors on each wall.

"Silvers used to wait for me in this room. But he kept getting nervous around the avatars and soiling the corner".

"You feel like you need a bodyguard up here?" Valentine asked.

"You never know. A Grog's like a big, comforting dog sometimes. A dog that can shoot".

The Reaper pointed to a door on the right wall.

"Crap. I hate the tunnel. I was hoping he'd talk to us in the gardens. You're on your own, Valentine".

Silas hurried over to the door, waved at a camera lens - Valentine noted the door had no ID card slot - and it opened. Dim light, such as one might find under fifty or sixty feet of murky water, showed a room beyond.

"Go on. It's safe, until he decides it shouldn't be safe".

"See you", Valentine said.

Valentine passed in, ducking slightly to clear the door, wondering if another elaborate death awaited inside. Funny how even involuntarily one developed a fatalism about that sort of thing. Did they put some psychotropic in the food?

While touring a classroom once in Biloxi as a Coastal Marine, Valentine had to do "community service" in a classroom. The class had a small family of hamsters, and the hamsters had a little plastic warren of connecting tunnels and shafts and rooms. The room he stepped into reminded him of those shafts, save that it was in the shape of a slightly pregnant triangle and surrounded by some kind of liquid.

He thought he could see other shafts and rooms through the liquid, but they might have been decor, or models; the rather cloudy water - if it was indeed water - made it difficult to tell.

Valentine saw dozens of bodies floating in the liquid. Most were in the shape of the octopus-bat creature that Valentine knew to be a Kurian/Lifeweaver form. Wires or lines projected from their extremities and "necks" to a football-sized orb that glowed mysteriously now and then as the forms floated. Something about the slowness of the movements inside made Valentine decide the liquid wasn't, in fact, water.

Others shared the space with the aliens, gentle and predatory. Valentine saw a Grog or two, and humans. An encephalitic fetus, tethered both to mother by umbilical and to its own football, yawned and stretched.

"Do you admire my menagerie?" a voice in his head asked. It was slightly mechanical, and Valentine realized it was from an old battery-operated Ready Reader toy he'd heard Amalee playing with the last time he'd seen her. He'd given it to her when he arrived on Jamaica, and she proudly showed "Uncle David" how good she was with it already, dog and cat and hat and ball prancing, stalking, bouncing, or spinning across the faded screen.

Valentine decided to respond aloud. If he started having conversations with himself, or the Kurian, or maybe that floating fetus, he didn't like his chances of making it out of the tunnel a complete personality again. "Which one are you?"

"All of them. In a way. You have a well-rounded mind for your kind, Vaal-eyen-tine-Dee. Strong extremes of love and hate. I hope you know the narrowness of the balance point on which the scale rests. Oh, here she is. How are you, sweet boy ?"

The last was said with his mother's voice. Valentine felt a piece of him fall off. "Don't do that!"

"Do what, you little pail of piss water?" an old drill instructor from the Labor Regiment asked. "Oh, I like him".

What am I here to do again?

"Bargain, I think", LeHavre's voice said. Suddenly he was eleven again, standing in the kitchen above his pantsless mother, blood all over the floor, tomatoes stewing on the stove.

"Oh, that was delicious, thank you", Father Max's voice said. "But my time is limited".

Valentine found himself on his knees in the tunnel, gasping like a fish, his heart pounding. "Stop it! Please!"

"Very well. Why are you wondering if some of these are Dau'iveem?"

"I have old friends in Southern Command who have vanished".

"I assure you, they are not here", Ready Reader said.

"What is this thing?"

"Are you familiar with your concept of a phased array?"

"No".

"A team of horses, perhaps?"

"Yes, of course".

"It's the same principle. Joined minds able to do what one cannot. It helps me keep tabs on my enemies... and my allies. Which reminds me, which are you?"

"An enemy".

"I admire your candor. Are you here to kill me, Vaal-eyen-tine-Dee?"

"No. I can't imagine how I'd do that".

"You've proven yourself inventive in the past. But you must know your limitations. Watch out for Blake. He'll forget himself someday and kill you, I expect. These constructs have very poor impulse control. Speaking of impulses, you've got strong ones toward my old friend Adler. What kind of a man do you think he is?"

"A madman", Valentine said.

"You're wrong. In any case, he's set me back years. Not that years mean much to me, of course. I shall rebuild, better and more carefully, once he's gone. Sooner or later".

"I want to make it sooner".

"You do, of that I'm certain. Your wobbly little scale is quite tipped where he's concerned. I'd like to do it in Silas-Em's life span; he is a talented sort and I shall hate to lose him to age. This new generation thinks the most piddling acts of conformity merit a brass ring. Where is the desire for greatness?"

"Maybe you're breeding it out of them. Herd talk and all that. We've still got it in the Free Territories".

"Dream on, Vaal-eyen-tine-Dee", Duvalier's voice said. "Are you sure you're not mistaking free range for free land ?" The voice shifted back to Ready Reader's. "Oh, and now we're tipping back for love again. You're more fun than a good treetop swoop on a breezy day, Vaal-eyen-tine-Dee".

"And my ring?"

"You do want it, after all. And food and a warm wet mouth and poke after poke into delicious juicy pussy and then a steaming hot bath. Are you toying with me, man, channeling the baser urges?"

Valentine kept fantasizing.

"Maybe you're not as interesting as I thought. In any case, I've no doubt you intend to go through with your plan. Your wish is granted. Adler's destruction would be worth eight-count of rings to me. Cross me and you will end up in the tank until your body rots. You can barely comprehend how long that will take".

"Don't forget my island".

"You'll find them cold and rocky after your Caribbean, but something can be arranged". Light poured into the tunnel. "You may leave now. Good-bye".

One of the human forms jerked as its tether balloon changed color. His eyes opened behind his mass of drifting hair and he waved. Valentine saw the eyes widen, and he tore his gaze away and fled back into the receiving room. The man floating in there was the Bear Rafferty.

* * *

"You don't look so good, Valentine", Silas said. "Did you see that little girl? Some comedian stuck a..."

"No", Valentine said. "I saw someone I knew, briefly".

"You need some air". He turned to the Reaper. "Can we go into the greenhouse?"

For a moment it seemed as useless as talking to a statue; then their escort Reapers moved to flank the other door. Silas waved Valentine over and it opened.

Valentine smelled fresh, humid air and open space. Above, a crystalline dome diffused and admitted light, whitening the sun a little. A red path covered with a no-slide coating led them up to a little prominence, with a couple of comfortable human lounge chairs before a pool, which flowed over into a waterfall somewhere below.

Staggered was the only word for what Valentine felt. The space was bigger than any stadium he'd ever seen, and filled with a winding archipelago that was half-bayou and half-beachfront.

Red and purple trees topped with bristles of tresslike leaves dropped green vines into the water. Spongy-looking yellow growths clung to the bare trunks of the trees, sending out vast, delicate webs to catch deadfalls from above. Wind swirled around the interior of the dome.

"This is a piece of Ehro, home planet of the Dau'ar".

Valentine felt invigorated. "I thought they came from Kur. Someone told me it was a dry, almost lifeless place".

"A castle under siege runs out of even rats eventually. But Ehro is where they evolved, I'm told. That oxygen's nice, isn't it?"

"I wish they'd go back to it".

"They can't, but then you know that, I expect. We're just a part of a bigger, older war. I worry sometimes that the Dau'weem will apply the same strategy to our planet that Adler does to the suburbs".

Something translucent buzzed by on pink wings. "They'd never do that".

"Remember what I told you the other night about nevers? I never wanted the role of interlocutor. I decided to take what they'd hand me

and go out East, build an academic ivory town and seal myself into it. But you'd be surprised, once you learn the true history of the world, just what parasites those things that laughably call themselves 'Lifeweavers' are. I've got a book or two I could loan you".

"I've seen the propaganda. Your master's the real parasite. Black bloody leeches. Worse than leeches, leeches at least leave the host alive. The Lifeweavers are interested in conserving life, not devouring it".

"Tell that to Silvers. He says a disease killed most of his people back home. They didn't want the Grogs used to conquer any more worlds".

"Not every plague has a purpose", Valentine said. "Seems just as likely your own masters would use a tactic to get them to quit their lands, force them to hitch up with Kur to find healthy land on another planet".

"Kur hates purposeless death".

"I can agree with you on that".

Silas sighed. "They've accumulated wisdom we can't even guess at in their long years. They're going to guide us up to heights we'd never reach on our own".

"I've had enough of this view. And the heights. I want to go to work".

Silas looked at his heavy gold watch. "Good. You'll start tomorrow".