"Yes. Long, long ago, I was given a gift, a revelation of biblical proportions, you might say. For my service, the scientists taught me how to achieve immortality."
"An immortality others pay the price for," Valentine said tightly.
"Don't cows, hogs, chickens pay the price for your life?"
"Not the same thing."
"That's where you and so many others are wrong. Cows and so on are eaten because they are tasty, certainly, but more important, because they aren't developed enough to keep themselves from being eaten. Mankind took a great leap forward when it learned to keep livestock, putting it ahead of all other creatures on the earth with a few bizarre exceptions like those honeypot ants that keep aphids. We were once no better than the cows, but we developed and the cows didn't. The cows pay the price, and we are better for it."
"Why are we talking about this?" Valentine asked.
"When you get to be my age, when you've seen people come and go over not just generations or centuries, but millennia, you become a good judge of men. In my days as a monk, before my awakening, I didn't think much of the human herd. No spark, no imagination, and misunderstanding even the simple concepts we tried to teach.
"As I've aged, I've found it harder and harder to suffer fools. Most people aren't much better than cattle. They've just inherited more complex stimulus-response routines. When you see men making the same mistakes, over and over and over again, you lose empathy and acknowledge only utility. That's what I tried to tell Kant when I lived in Prussia."
Valentine could hear someone outside the door asking for a message to be delivered to the General, and his aide accepting it.
"I think," the General said, "you are above the herd, a valuable piece of human capital. You, too, have been given gifts by the Lifeweavers. You have a talent I need badly. I'd like to have you on my side, rather than dead and in some Grog's stomach. If you found a tarnished bar of gold in the road, would you shine it up, or would you grind it up and toss it to the winds? I'm in a position to offer you what amounts to eternal life. A chance to grow your talent instead of wasting it."
"How can you have an opinion of me if you don't know me?" Valentine asked.
"When someone gets the better of me, I'd want to learn how they did it. I've done a little research, asked a few questions. A skilled man asked you some questions while you recovered. You were at the Eagle's Wings Brand out on those forsaken grassy dunes. Before that you were a promising officer, until you were sacrificed by an ambitious superior trying to keep his record clean. Yes, I have sources right in Southern Command. There are people you work for who want to live forever."
"You know me, then. Who are you?"
"Someone like you. A reader. A leader. More of a realist, but you are young, and idealism is the asylum of the young."
"I'm sorry you escaped the asylum."
The General ignored him. "I was, before my personal Enlightenment, a monk of the Dark Ages, one of those depressing, chanting celibates who claimed to be keeping culture alive after the fall of Western Rome, but were in fact dreaming up new ways to take advantage of the gullible. I was something of a historian, and I found hovering on the edges of certain ancient tracts pieces of a larger story. I convinced my superiors to let me go on a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land and beyond. I ended up going far beyond anything my order expected of me. I found the ruins of the Kurian City of Brass in Central Asia and met a smooth-skinned Chinaman who claimed to be two thousand years old. Thus began my education into the Arts of Kur. Later they sought us out. But the Chinaman-old Zhao-he was my savior, in a way.
"When I got my first infusion of vital aura, I was old and sick. It-you have to experience it, I can't put it in words. Where there had been weakness there was new strength. I'd forgotten what the flush of youth was; it's the finest feeling in the world. The opportunities it opened ... I could live my life all over again. I lived dozens of lives all over again. The Golden Horde knew me. I saw the Turks come and fade, I rode with Cossacks as the Grand Armee retreated from Moscow. I invested and let time work for me over generations.
"My wealth bought power and influence, which I put to the bidding of Kur. I owned prime ministers and generals, diplomats and writers. Have you ever heard of major league baseball? Owners of teams used to buy, sell, and trade their players in an effort to get a team that would win the pennant. I was doing the same on a global scale, slowly and patiently. That is the great advantage of the Kurian scientists' immortality, Valentine. It gives you the luxury of patience."
Valentine looked at the dried-up old General. If anyone ever looked old and sick, except for his lush band of hair, it was the former monk.
"Where did you get the Twisted Cross?"
The General touched the reversed swastika on his collar tab. "This is an old symbol, a token of special status of those who are counted as a friend of Kur. You can find it on artifacts from prehistory almost the whole world over. I chose it to symbolize a reawakening of the old open alliance between Earth and Kur, men and their old gods. Men with the vision not just to accommodate the New Order, but to shape it for their own purposes, as well."
"So you're on a longer leash than most. It's still a leash." His croaking voice took some of the spite out of the words.
"Kur needs me, desperately, to do their fighting for them. They are too busy running their dominions, feuding and scheming amongst themselves. Now that they have won so much, they no longer want to risk their precious Reapers fighting with the pockets that are left. You've been troublesome in your obstinacy, unwilling to admit the war is over-like starving Japanese soldiers in an island bunker."
Valentine felt very tired, and began to wonder if he would remain conscious for the rest of the interview, or interrogation, or inquisition.
"General, I'm the one in handcuffs here. What's next for me?"
"You have a choice, a choice that you deserve, given your abilities and manifest intelligence, albeit talents wasted in the unrewarding service of the ungrateful. I am not just speaking of the pathetic Lifeweavers, either, I am referring to your so-called brethren who stay at home while you risk your life to protect their chicken-hearted existence.
"I will not insult you by asking you to join me. You need not say yes. All you have to do is ask for another week's life. And then another. And then another. I will show you visions, introduce you to possibilities that will fire your imagination, your belly, your loins. Someday you may be given touchstones and have knowledge at your disposal that Aristotle couldn't have dreamed of. The rewards are literally endless. What shall it be, son? The pistol-or another week's life?"
What'll it be, Cat? Die defending "the herd"? Or feed off it?
Valentine, hurt and tired, found an answer in his pain. Faces flashed through his memory. He saw Molly, the Carlsons, Sutton the generous pig farmer. Linda, who'd been Mrs. Poulos for a few hours, and the squalling baby from the Rigyard. Donna and her armoire-building son. The young Grogs gamboling with human children around the well of Steiner's little enclave. Ahn-Kha and the Golden Ones. Jocelyn Hendricks. Who would be sacrificed for whom?