“Drop ’em!” the man in the suit and tie shouted, white faced. He reached for a phone on his desk, but he looked a little better as soon as my wrestling partners took deep wheezing breaths.
My escort had backed into a corner and held a canister of pepper spray in a shaking hand, pointed at me. I turned my head away, just in case. “Last time they kicked the shit out of that poor ape, Marko.”
“I figured it was just Stackworth trying to snoot another security-hire bonus for himself,” this Marko said.
“What the hell happened?” one of my attackers said, working his jaw experimentally. It was already swelling up a little; he’d have a decentish bruise by dinner.
“Good wrasslin’?” I asked, cringing a little before Marko.
“Have the vet give him the once-over; then send him to the kennels for an evaluation,” Marko said to the woman who’d finally lowered her canister. “If he checks out, we’ll start him off with Maynes Version Three. He’s always complaining that Gus and Lightning look too old to intimidate anyone.”
“Home has peed himself. Still sleeping like a baby.” The guard rubbing his jaw stood up. “You know, we could all save ourselves by just using the big boy here to intimidate Version Three. Maybe if that little cocksucker would tone it down, we wouldn’t be so busy bagging his dumps when he goes out for walkies.”
He toed his partner and the man groaned. To be honest, I was a little relieved, though under most circumstances I don’t pity the regime’s armed lackeys.
“If I want you to have an opinion, I’ll issue you one,” Marko said. “Better get Home to the infirmary. And you, ape, are going to go get your kidneys prodded by the vet.”
“He’s hard as a piece of hickory, that one,” MacTierney said.
• • •
My new master, Joshua Maynes the Third, didn’t greet me on my first day. Or my second. Or even in the course of my first week.
I fell under the supervision of the barn staff, who also oversaw a few Gray Ones who did manual labor with the livestock and helped out whenever the groundskeepers or maintenance people needed strong backs.
I never learned what happened to “the Second,” but Joshua “Version Three” Maynes was an important part of the Maynes family. The Conglomerate still exists in the Coal Country; indeed, I believe it thrives, and I would like to know if the same withered, grasping hand still remains at the nexus of the puppet strings. Few others share my curiosity about just who controls Maynes Consolidated these days; that scarred section of West Virginia is still something of a mountainous backwater.
The Maynes family, unquestionably the most powerful in West Virginia though there were others of import, maintained the White Palace as a combination residence, government center, and citadel near the road and rail line co
ming out of Virginia (and the main highway coming down from Maryland and Pennsylvania).
Though I hid it, I was thrilled with the appointment to the security detail of Joshua Maynes the Third. The assignment entailed everything I desired at that moment: access to weapons, a daily job that involved use of a vehicle, and presumably some sort of uniform or insignia indicating my proximity to those in power.
Those who have never lived within a Kurian Zone rarely appreciate just how far the trappings of power may carry you. The epaulettes and stick of the local patrolman, the overcoat and briefcase of the investigator, the simple black twill and orders of precious-metal clerical collar tabs of the New Universal Church—these and scores of others like them give the power of life and death. And I don’t mean an easy movie death, either, where the villain takes out a small pistol and shoots his powerless victim in the head, clearing an obstacle the way one might brush off a fly.
Officialdom has the weight of documentation. The Kurian Zones were great keepers of records. Like a chicken within a coop, each egg produced is documented. Similarly, a careless phrase or a burst of temper could mark one as a troublemaker, and troublemakers tended to disappear in the night. The ability to place a note in a file, or worse, “card it” so it moved to a different, security-related department (at least in the Atlanta Kurian Zone and those affiliated with its internal policing arrangements, as we had in the Virginias) could change, and perhaps shorten, the course of your life. The ordinary people knew that what went in their file was more important than what went in their bodies; you were your file, to put it to a philosophical point, much more than you were a collection of cells processing proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.
If Joshua Maynes Version Three had been a modern product such as a pocket concierge, customers would have wondered why the Version Three did so much less than the first generation. It was his grandfather who put the Coal Country back together after 2022 and got a proud people back into something that resembled a civilization, despite being more than seventy when worldwide disaster struck. But I find that is often the case with the Children of Titans. In the shadow of such monoliths, who can find the sun to grow?
Having expressed sympathy for the man, I’m now free to describe him as I knew him for that tiresome seven months. Of all the humans I’ve known well, he was remarkable in that he exhibited fewer virtues than any other individual I’ve met.
We have a saying among our people, which I’ll translate, taking some liberty with the phraseology:
When missing one, may just mean fun;
Take two away, adds spice they say;
When lacking three, thy purse keep to thee;
Four or more, show him the door.
In other words, those missing one virtue will probably be more companionable, for who can spend much time in the companionship of a saint without growing bored? Those without two will be fascinating to know, but I’d recommend not becoming too close to them. Those who show no signs of three virtues, never trust with money, and you’re better off entirely avoiding those missing four or more.
The Golden One virtues share some similarities with human ones. For those interested, I will list them; the rest should skip ahead a page or two. In short, these virtues are empathy, truth, justness, reason, courage, fortitude, industry, salubrity, and generosity.
Empathy—This virtue is usually called the first, because it is what separates the Golden One from the salbal.* Being able to put oneself upon the path of another, understand pain and desire to mitigate it, even knowing nothing of what challenges came behind and what obstacles stand before, is the bright shining line between sentience and bestiality. Unlike all the other virtues, its place is specifically listed in the Rhapsodies as the one that makes civilization possible. Empathy is a good place to start on one’s ascent, for it takes no money or skill—we each have all the tools in our minds and hearts already to practice this virtue.
Truth—This virtue is at the heart of all others. While young, we’re often taught that one must always tell the truth. But that comes at the end of the path of this virtue, not the beginning. One must be able to look at oneself, others, and the world with clear eyes. Once one has trained himself to see the truth, then he can begin to attempt to speak it. The final step on the Ascent to Truth is teaching others how to see and speak it.