Styachowski nodded. "You'll have to tell the story someday."
"When you're better."
"That'll be the day. I'm always down with something. If it's not a cold I've got a fever.
There was a long pause in the conversation while they ate. Valentine had never shared a meal in silence with a woman before. She probably needed to sleep again. "Can I get you anything before I go, Wagner?"
She shook her head, and Valentine relaxed a little, seeing her respond to her assumed name even under the influence of the painkiller. "No, thank you, sir. There is one thing though."
"What's that."
Styachowski glanced around the infirmary. "What's the policy here? Do they shoot the crippled horses, or send them ... somewhere else?"
"Don't be silly. You're not getting out of my outfit that easy. I'm not going to let anything happen to anyone in my command. Especially to someone hurt doing her duty. The battalion's not going anywhere without you."
She sank back into her pillow. "Thanks, Colonel."
"I'll see if I can get you put back in your tent. You'd be more comfortable there, I think."
"Thank you, sir. But not just for that."
Valentine arched an eyebrow; she blushed and buried her face in her mush bowl.
* * * *
"You wanted to see me, General?" Valentine asked
Xray-Tango thrust a curious, umbrellalike apparatus into the ground. It was a five-foot pole with four arms projecting from the top. At the end of each arm hung a string with a washer tied to the end. The spear end, currently buried in the dirt of what had been an underpass, was tipped with metal.
Styachowski was back in the tent she shared with a female sergeant. The ground had dried up, and the river was down feet, not just inches. Mrs. Smalls was expected to deliver within hours. Men still worked the levee, but life was returning to what passed for normal in Consul Solon's Trans-Mississippi KZ.
Xray-Tango smiled. "I hope this isn't a bad time. I'll try not to keep you too long. Technically, I'm off duty. I keep what used to be called 'business hours.""
"Curtiz said that, but he told me that I could find you here right now. I'm used to coming immediately when sent for. I'll be in first thing tomorrow, if you'd rather, General."
"No need. Unless you had plans for the evening."
"Maybe a trip to the screen center."
The south side of the river had two common rooms with projector screens, one for officers and me other for enlisted ranks. The soldiers lounged on everything from club chairs to old sofas watching the impossibly vivid colors on the pulldown screen. Valentine had put in an appearance at the officers' screen center and learned about the designer of a new riot bus, a biography of a woman who had produced an astonishing sixteen children, then an inspirational speech by a colonel who had won a brass ring in the rugged mountains in what had been West Virginia. He left to walk past Xray-Tango's headquarters and poked his head in the enlisted room, where a video of dancing showgirls on a Memphis stage had the packed soldiers drooling. An advertisement for a reenlistment bonus all-expense-paid trip to Memphis played immediately following. He hadn't gone back since and didn't intend to.
"Give the popcorn a miss. I think the butter is reclaimed machine oil."
"If you don't mind me asking," Valentine said, "what are you doing?"
"I started out as a section chief on the railroad. I still like to survey. You do anything to clear your head, Le Sain?"
"I swing an ax. To cut wood. I like turning big ones into little ones."
"I would have guessed music. Something artistic. There's a look in your eyes that makes me think you're the creative type. For Christ's sake, at ease, Le Sain. This is a chat, not an ass-chewing."
"Music's a good guess, sir. My mother used to sing. I had a little ... recorder, that's what it was called. A recorder I'd play. Since you said this is just a chat, can I ask what that thing is, sir?"
"It's called a groma. It's an old Roman surveying tool. They used it to make straight lines. Works good for corners, too, but it's best for staking out roads." He leaned over, hands on thighs, to eyeball the lines strung with washers at the end, comparing them with the shaft. When he was satisfied that it was level, he sighted down the groma and waved a private holding a flag over a step to the right.
"No fancy optics," Xray-Tango went on. "The Romans built their roads straight, using that doohickey."
"They were great road builders, weren't they?"