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"Whassat?" Snake Arms said.
"Baron wants to see ya, Champ."
This time it was four who escorted him, two from Snake Arms's trailer joining up with two more waiting outside. These men were neater and a good deal more alert than the Baron's usual human soldiers who supervised the labor gangs.
They let him dress completely and didn't put him in handcuffs, so perhaps the Baron was having some sort of private after-midnight celebration.
They brought him to a different part of the camp, in the wooded hills behind the church. They walked him on a pavement path big enough for a single truck up a hill and down into a hummock between two higher hills.
A glow of lights frosted the red oaks and maples. Valentine got the sense of some kind of compound. The planting of the trees did a good job of concealing it, but he suspected heavy fencing stretching off into the woods. It looked like someone had planted quick-growing, thorny trees of some sort along a double line of razor wire a few years back. The trees turned the wire into a messy tangle that was difficult to spot at night.
The ground flattened, and they came to a second line of fencing, nice-looking iron railing, gated at the trail. Valentine smelled dogs, but didn't see or hear them. His escort nodded to a sentry at a shelter and was waved in.
Valentine got his first look at the Baronial residence.
It looked like a hunting lodge or a small hotel set in the pretty wooded hills, with decorative rather than security lighting.
He passed under a threshold. The posts and lintels were covered with deep-burned Gray One markings, wedge-writing like cuneiform. Valentine recognized one for "victory" and one for "health."
The inside was just as rugged. Slabs of limestone and great, river-smoothed rocks in a sort of hunting-lodge meets prairie-style that the Gray Baron seemed to favor.
He was taken into an office-cum-game room. There was a pool table with a low electric light hanging just above it and a dartboard at one end, and a great semicircle of bookcases high enough that they needed a ladder with a desk in the middle at the other. A beautiful button-backed leather sofa sat near a massive stone fireplace, partly in the office, partly in the gaming area.
The books looked dusty and not in any sort of order. Valentine wondered if they were just for show.
"Welcome to my home, Scar, isn't it?" he said. Valentine nodded in reply. "Sorry to keep you up so late. I'm a night owl. Useless in the morning. Coffee?"
"Whiskey spirits?" Valentine asked.
"Not when I'm working," the Baron said. "Sit."
The woman he'd seen draped behind his chair shuffled papers.
"Chuckles here has three degrees," the Baron said. "You know what a degree is?"
"Hot," Valentine said, wondering if he looked wary enough.
"No, it's a piece of paper that says you know better than someone who's been in the field their whole life. But she makes everything I do look right on paper. Keeps the generals in Iowa happy. I don't imagine you know any Iowa generals, but they expect the paperwork correct. Murder all you like, just file it in triplicate."
The dark woman came out with a wooden tray. A little chrome-and-glass pot and some cups sat on it.
"Three degrees to serve coffee," the Baron said.
"And five technical certifications, plus security clearance," she said.
Valentine sipped the coffee. It was rich stuff, but he felt a slight lift that wouldn't be explained by caffeine as it warmed him. Probably a few drops of some KZ happy/alert mix favored by higher-level Quislings.
"Why did you speak up for Beach Boy?" the Baron asked.
"Knew him, room, gang same-same," Valentine said.
"That made you like him better? He's been a problem since he hit the recruitment office in Davenport. He's been here nine months. Never bothered to learn the first thing about military discipline. We tossed him into labor after his three months probation was up, figured he could serve out his term there, then let him muster out. But sleeping on the job-that's a death sentence, whether it's a sentry on duty, a rail switchman, or a guy with a shovel."
Valentine shrugged. The dark woman was staring at him. It made him uncomfortable.
"You're clearly tough, well-muscled, healthy. I'm impressed with your reflexes. I think you're a lot smarter than you're letting on. I'd like you in one of my service uniforms."
"Soldier-no good," Valentine said. "Fighting-dead quick."
