"South of Kansas City, Kansas".
"Top, he's traveling with a stoop - that puts him under suspicion", the twitchy kid said. "Stop and question".
"Question away, I'd like an excuse to get off this damn worm", Valentine said. "It's Tic-tac here who is on tribal-conference business. I just own the worm".
Tic-tac rocked nervously in his saddle, his anxiety evident, but kept his hands away from his long, single-shot varmint gun. Valentine doubted he even had any bullets for it. Instead he had a grip on his sharp-hooked worm goad. Valentine hoped Tic-tac wasn't getting any ideas about the worth of the kid's rifles and hair at the next tribal bragging session. If the kids knew just how quickly a Grog could throw a balanced utility ax like the one dangling from its leather thong on the saddle hook, they'd be back another ten yards or so.
Valentine tried to will the kid into slinging the gun and losing interest in the encounter, but the boy had either imagination or a grudge against men out of the Groglands.
"That's maybe a Kurian agent", the kid insisted. "He should be put under arrest".
"Not another word, Cadet", the NCO said. "If that Grog is a messenger, he'll die before he'll come out of that saddle. Then we'll have a feud with Rabbit's Foot and their allies".
Valentine's stomach sank. The kid was an officer candidate, looking to establish his record for initiative.
"Bury and buckle up, Top. C'mon", one of the kids quietly urged from the brush.
"And if he were a Kurian agent, we'd all be running to check out the sound of seventy legworms passing north of here, or shooting at each other", the NCO added.
Valentine felt a gurgle in his stomach, and took the opportunity to lean to his right and bounce a loud fart off his chair.
"Never could handle those Grog mushrooms", he said.
The NCO chuckled and the quieter of his two charges laughed.
"Pass wind, friend", the NCO said, stepping aside and gesturing with his hand to the west. The cadet glared at him.
"Don't worry, we'll be out of UFR lands by nightfall", Valentine said as they goaded the legworm into its rippling motion again.
The NCO pulled the boys out of the way of the legworm's antennae and nodded to Valentine as they passed. Valentine considered that the peacefully concluded meeting was an example of the differences between the Free Territory and the Kurian Zone. In the Free Territory an NCO could use his judgment. In the KZ they'd be kept waiting while the NCO called his officer, who called a higher officer, who would order them searched and then, when they found nothing of interest, would call a higher officer still, who would ask "Why are you bothering me with this?" and order them released anyway, provided there wasn't a Reaper breathing down his neck with an appetite that made starting a feud with a Grog tribe over a single wanderer's aura worth it.
The kids who were covering from ambush stood up as they passed, and gaped.
There was a time when the whole check in the Nomansland between would have been done by Wolves, who would probably have just observed them from cover and tracked them to see what they were up to, unseen and unheard unless the patrol leader decided they constituted a threat. Then Tic-tac would have been dead and Valentine
roped and cuffed in about the stopwatch time it takes a rodeo champ to bring down a calf.
It was a good thing for the UFR that Missouri was so quiet these days.
* * *
On the third day it took both of them together to keep their mount going - legworms had astonishing reserves, but eventually even the digging goads would have no effect.
Valentine let the Grog have his legworm and rig with many thanks and a swapping of Tic-tac's delicately carved ear-grooming stick for a half-empty tin of Valentine's foot powder. He felt no particular sympathy with Tic-tac, but if this wasn't the longest trip the Grog had ever been on, it was close, and he'd want something to point to when telling the story.
Valentine walked into Nancy's oddly peaked roofs - they always reminded him of old Pizza Huts - under his own steam, taking the first of many steps westward.
Nancy's, March: David Valentine first learned of Nancy's from his old tent mate Lieutenant Caltagirone of Foxtrot Company.
Nancy's had been a retirement home for Tulsa's well-to-do who were unwilling to quit the rolling hill-country of eastern Oklahoma. Its single-story, vaguely Prairie-school architecture was spread out over several acres, with a central hub and an outbuilding or two. In the Kurian Zone people were "retired" in much the same manner as an old, worn-out tire, with the Reapers serving as mechanics, but its layout made it a convenient rehabilitation center for Quisling veterans. Nancy herself was something of a legend in the Nebraska Guard for her devotion to the maimed and shattered.
She kept her charges busy with arts and crafts, which she sold in Tulsa at Kurian patriotic festivals to buy a few luxuries. The "Nancy's" sticker became so famous that an art colony of sorts had sprung up in the area, with workers of metal, leather, wood, ceramics, and paint adding to the trade.
Nancy's also had the best food in three states. Kurian Order and New Universal Church dignitaries often spent long weekends visiting the "home" and enjoying the cuisine as they got their picture taken shaking hands with the more photogenic of the wounded.
It seemed the last place one would expect to be a warehouse for the resistance. When the Kurians heard the occasional whisper or screamed confession that Nancy's had been the place guerrillas got their explosives, they assumed that their prisoners had been coached into fingering the establishment in the hope that the whole staff would be swept up in a purge. The routine searches revealed nothing.
Of course, they didn't remove the wounded from their thick, comfortable, bleach-scented bedding, pillowcases lined with gleaming rows of decorations. Only the laundry staff, under careful supervision of senior nurses, ever changed the bedding.