“If the Old Man or whoever was properly plugged in. These mountains mess with them.
“I’m ready to help. Which way?”
“Downhill, toward civilization. You carry the torso.”
“Shit, why do you want to bring that?”
I grunted in answer. It took an effort on my part to turn my back on the opportunistic little toad and throw the larger corpse over my shoulders.
We reached water and sheltered downwind from a highway bridge. The bridge was unguarded; a good sign. If the Order had information that we’d escaped the explosion, it would be reasonable to assume that a trooper car at least would be keeping an eye on the crossing.
A riverbank at night is a raucous place. With the water falling to summer levels, the flow had been reduced to a good-sized creek and there were endless rocks for the water to splash against. Frogs were in good voice and the bats were out, with their barely perceptible yeeks.
“Maynes Point is just across the river,” Longliner said.
“Glad you know where it is. Go and get us some food. Something fresh for now, and dried or preserved for later.”
“I’m not leaving you until we have some kind of understanding,” Longliner said.
“I’ll make you this deal. Do what I say for the next three days and I’ll give you the general outline of my mission. If you help me with it, I will get you out of the Old Man’s reach. You may go to the Ordnance, if you like. As for your employment there, I can promise you nothing, though there are many who will be grateful if you help this mission to succeed.”
“Deal. Back with the groceries in an hour. You want me to steal them?”
“I want you to get them without attracting attention. If they could not be missed for a few days, that would be ideal.”
It occurred to me, watching Longliner pick his way across the river rocks and slapping mosquitoes (they bothered me, too, at the ears and around the eyes) that it would be easy for him to betray me to the authorities. I don’t pretend to have any great perspicuity in reading humans, but it seemed most of the younger Quislings in this principality were looking for a way up and out. Maybe the shabbiness of this baling twine and the whitewashed towns and coal-dusted rail stations beneath the silent, uncaring mountains drove the ambitious toward cleaner fields. Or it could be that if your name—or your spouse’s—wasn’t Maynes, it was a foregone conclusion that you weren’t going that high.
LONGLINER ON A SHORT LEASH
He returned with a cook’s apron knotted into a bundle around some pieces of fried chicken, some still-warm biscuits, an entire platter of Jell-O molded into an elegantly scalloped shape, and “coffee” in a plastic Thermos.
“I raided a church basement kitchen. It’s pregnant-teen support night.”
“What is your story?” I asked. “Why this, why now?”
“I’ve heard stories about the agents. We have an ex-agent churchman here, Apolio. Colonel Apolio. He lives at the White Palace. Political executive counselor for the Militia Officer Union and honorary fire marshall. He’s a bit goofy; every now and then he gets a brain-backfire and comes out with a real landslide of cussing. They don’t let him go to the Maynes family services. There the priest is, talking on about hopes for mankind and the new world of designed thought, and someone starts yapping shitfeast cocksnake and all that. That’s the story the district fire captain told, anyway.”
I toasted the flesh on a long flat-head screwdriver from my tool belt, wishing I had some chunks of sweet heartroot to add to the kebab.
“He talked about being an agent?”
“Not directly, just said that the Kurians can take a good man and make him a ‘veritable demigod.’ At first I thought he’d started into cussing, but then he told me what demigod meant. This was right after I got a commendation for turning in Robert Kenzie for selling a television. He gave the award and took me to lunch after.
“Anyway, I asked him about the Powers and he said he couldn’t talk about that. He wouldn’t do anything—boy did I beg him, I’m telling you straight. Finally he said that you had to live it to understand. I asked him to train me or whatever, and he said if they thought I’d be a good one, they’d get in touch with me.
“They never did. I did become a Youth Vanguard leader and they gave me some counterintelligence training, me and a few others for a summer at a place near Baltimore. Really great, but there were these coastal types with their New York and Boston accents and three-turn ties. Still, they didn’t ruin it for me, and the Church gave me an assignment at Number Four, just reporting o
n the usual conversations and whatnot. I had to do evaluations on everyone every year, even the director, which I liked, knowing something the director didn’t.”
“I’m surprised you’re telling me all this. What if I were part of the Resistance?”
“A Grog in the Resistance. Yeah! As if those backwoods swampies would breathe the same air as a stoop, beg pardon.”
We ate for a while. He hardly touched the chicken, leaving it for me.
“What’s your opinion of your fellow men?” I asked.
“Most of ’em aren’t fit for chicken feed. Church has it about right. The cream rises to the top; then you use that to make sweeter cream. Repeat, generation after generation.”