She descended from her aerie early, feeling achy and anxious from the dream. Her muscles had never relaxed properly last night.
They had an old tack room that had been converted to an extra walk-in cooler for the camp by the simple expedient of adding a heavy-duty window air conditioner and extra insulation. She went in and poured some of the camp goat’s milk, then shuffled off to the first-floor communal kitchen to find some baking soda to brush her teeth.
Narcisse had just drained a couple of chickens for Blake and was in the process of plucking them. The feathers lay all about her feet. “You had a bad night, girl.”
“Bad dreams,” she said. “You need help?”
“Oh, I think you have things to do. General Martinez arrives today.”
How did she know about that?
She wondered about Narcisse, the old woman Valentine had picked up in the Caribbean on his mission to find Quickwood—a rare hardwood that might have served as the basis for legends about vampires being killed by stakes—and brought north. Physically, the old woman seemed more dead than alive these days. She’d seen a few people in hospitals kept alive by machines, and Narcisse reminded her of them. The same dead-looking skin, withered hands, sunken cheeks. Yet for all the decrepitude of the body, she managed to keep going somehow, some inner animating spirit occasionally showed in her eyes, especially when she was interacting with Blake. And mentally, she was still more insightful about the people in camp than even Brother Mark was.
She washed up in a basin, ate some cold jerked chicken left over from last night, and attended to her very limited duties. Then she joined other idlers in waiting for General Martinez to arrive.
He put on a pretty good show, she had to admit. His red-white-and-blue-painted plane circled low over the camp and made a couple of passes over the highway to make sure it was clear of traffic.
He was a little fleshier in person than in his newspaper photos. She wondered if they were doctored. Still, he had a nice head of hair that was equally impressive whether real or fake—if real, because of its youthful thickness and luster; if fake because of the expensive craftsmanship that must have gone into it.
She noticed there was a woman in uniform taking pictures. She looked tired.
Sime, the United Free Republics politico who handled the Kentucky Alliance, trailed in his wake along with other staff. She’d seen Sime on one or two occasions. He’d been involved in Valentine’s troubles with Southern Command in some manner.
Martinez bounced out of the plane and exchanged salutes with Lambert and the other officers there to greet him and pumped the hands of the Evansville and Kentucky civilians with a good deal of enthusiasm. He apparently made a compliment to one of the women; she blushed and rocked on the balls of her feet as they had the photographer take a picture. He did everything but kiss a baby.
He got into a waiting, lightly armored four-by-four and turned up toward Fort Seng, with his official photographer riding precariously in a folding seat attached to the rear bumper. Duvalier was a little surprised at the security vehicle. She didn’t think it came from the motor pool. If not, some poor chump had had to drive it through Western Kentucky, wash off the inevitable chaff that accumulated, and have it ready in time for the general’s arrival.
She lost interest after he disappeared into the camp. She bought a couple of small soaps and shampoos from one of the traders across the road from Fort Seng. She visited a bakery—it had once been a doughnut cart, but now it actually had a counter, although the counter was festooned with pictures of cute kids at Youth Vanguard day care doing something with flour. There were copies of the New Universal Church’s Guidon near the cash box.
Martinez was supposed to have a quiet meeting with Lambert and her staff, then eat lunch with the soldiers, give a short speech, and depart.
General Martinez gave a good speech; she allowed him that. Too bad more weren’t there to hear it. Most of the Bears and Wolves had found other things to do. The ones who did show up concentrated on their food.
The slide show was nothing but self-aggrandizement. Photos of Martinez as a youth, doing hardscrabble farm labor, in a poorly-sized uniform for his frame as a new lieutenant, an entire biography. After Consul Solon’s occupation of the Ozark Free Territory and eventual defeat, the pictures suddenly became a great deal more professional than friends’ snapshots and service journalism. Martinez had evidently recruited a professional or found someone who could do a very professional job making him look good in still life.
The second-to-last slide was just the words PURPOSE TO EVERYTHING. Martinez made a few rah-rah statements, but the audience was just as cold to it as she was.
The final photo received some cheers and whistles. Martinez basked for a moment in the whooping and cheering; then it dawned on him that there was some laughter in the crowd, too. He turned around and there he was, in a rather grainy press photo of a banquet, asleep at the table with his head lolling back and collar unbuttoned, tie loosened and hanging like an overheated dog’s tongue. A pair of champagne ice buckets stood on the table with overturned bottles in them. In the background, the president of the UFR was speaking from a podium, though no one seemed to be paying him much attention. You could practically hear Martinez snoring in your imagination.
Martinez turned around. His jaw dropped when he saw the photo.
“A different slide is supposed to go there!” he thundered at the projectionist. “Go back.”
The picture returned to the PURPOSE TO EVERYTHING slide, but the projectionist must have been having technical difficulties, because it went forward again to the picture of Martinez snoring at the table. And back. And forward, while the technician frowned and furrowed his eyebrows and pulled at his chin, peering at the slide projector. It clicked from the title card to Martinez dead-drunk at a banquet table, and back again, over and over, to the laughter of the assembly.
The general’s face went even darker. Duvalier grew afraid that he’d stroke out or have a coronary right on Fort Seng’s main stage, so to speak.
“Just unplug it, Corporal!” Martinez bellowed across the laughing ranks.
One of his aides hurried to intervene. He ran up to the slide projector and pulled the plug. The screen went dark instantly. There was still a good deal of laughter in the audience.
As Martinez left, the aide made an explanation to the men that the slide was a private joke between Martinez and his staff and had accidentally been left in the presentation. “The general has quite a sense of humor about himself,” he insisted.
It didn’t look like it as Duvalier watched him on his way out of camp back to the red-white-and-blue plane.
General Martinez needed to lash out and Lambert was the nearest target. Duvalier watched him pace back and forth in front of her as he dressed her down.
“So, if I could summarize,” Lambert finally said, “somebody knew you were showing up with a slide show, had a slide manufactured, inserted it into the tray that was always in the control of your people, then manipulated the soldier working the slides—one of your staff, I might add—into making your slide projector malfunction in order to humiliate you in front of the troops?”