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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."
