Gil, as easily as you'd pick up a rabbit knocked out with your slingshot."
"Hood? That's another word for a Reaper, right? We were supposed to call them Visors."
"Do you know how it all works, Hank?"
"I know the Vis-the Reapers drink blood."
"A Reaper's like a puppet. There's another person pulling the strings. We call them Kurians because they're from another world, a planet called Kur. They use the Reapers to feed because it's less dangerous for them when they get the energy. The donor puts up a fight."
"That energy they get, it's something in us, right? Like our souls?" Hank said.
Valentine felt as if the boy had kicked him in the stomach. He thought back to the graves of his parents, brother and sister who fell in Minnesota when he was eleven. He had asked Father Max if their souls had been eaten. "Nobody knows. Yes, it's something humans have more of than other creatures. The man who raised me called it an 'aura." There's more aura in an intelligent being than there is in a dog or something. That's why they feed on us."
"We walked past a Reaper once on an Honor Guard march. They had us out burning down houses. It didn't move. Just looked at us dead cold. Reminded me of a snake sitting on a rock."
"Dead cold, all right," Valentine agreed.
"So that's why everyone's scared all the time now. They're afraid the Reapers will get them."
"That's why people cooperate with them. The people who serve them get badges, or cards, or pieces of jewelry that mean the Reapers can't touch them."
Hank nodded. "Yeah, we heard some of that in Honor Guard. Our Top Guardian had some sorta certificate that signified his family was too important to reassign. I hated him, Dallas trash if ever there was."
"You grew up here in the Ozarks, right?"
"Yes, in the borders. My pa would go out into Texas and steal, or trade for horses. He sorta worked for Southern
Command; at least they gave him stuff when he brought horses in."
"You remember what the Free Territory used to be like, right?"
"Yes, it all happened last spring, or last summer, really. I heard a lot of fighting. Then there were new people in charge. My pa was in Texas at the time; when he got back he said we had to do what they say for a while."
"You liked it better before they came, right?"
"Yes. Momma was happier. She hated it when Pa was in Texas though."
"I was gone for a couple of years myself. Now that I'm back I'm trying to find if there's any Free Territory left."
"Are we going to live there? Is there anywhere safe now?"
"I hope so, Hank. If there is, we'll find it."
* * * *
They were refilling their water skins at a trickle when Ahn-Kha came back from his scout of the old camp.
"Everything's burnt out, my David. Picked clean. Lots of holes in the ground. If there were buried weapons, I'd say they've been dug up."
"No one there?"
"Tracks. I smelled urine."
"You speak really well, for a big stoop," Hank said.
Ahn-Kha stood straight, towering over the boy. "We call ourselves the Golden Ones. I grew up trading with men in Omaha. I translated for my people when I was David's age."
"What's old for a stoop?"