is nearly up. I should have liked to bring you to another new-moon party at the Outlook. I believe you attended one before".
"I kept to my room".
"I'm sorry we didn't meet there. Better circumstances might have made our association a happier one.
"Farewell, David Valentine. Your theory about the inviolability of one's soul is about to be tested".
Collection vans: Valentine had seen all varieties of them over the months and years of his trips through the Kurian Zones. He'd seen buses with shuttered windows in Chicago and long yokes for captives to be linked together in Hispaniola. He'd averted his eyes from vans in Wisconsin and armored cars in Louisiana. The principle was always the same, whether they rode on battered old suspensions across snow-dusted old interstates in the Dakotas or were pulled by a team of cart horses along an Alabama backwoods path: Separate those to be taken to the Reapers from the rest of society, hike so much of the Kurian Order, it was a simple mix of deception from the New Order and willful blindness in their subjects. Hide the contents of the stock trucks bound for the slaughterhouse and allow those who might be unlucky enough to see one in operation the comfort of telling themselves a lie.
Valentine had seen more of them than he cared to remember. But that chill November night was the first time he'd been put in the back of one.
* * *
They made the switch at midnight on a small, battered bridge over a river. Three Bears, in spiffy uniforms the color of a typical overcast, pulled Valentine out of a concrete bunker and chained him to two other unfortunates, a man in the lead and a woman just in front of him. The man wore thick flannel and was barefoot; the woman stood shivering in militia pants and a T-shirt. Valentine passed a note to the Bear in charge, a brief farewell to Gide he'd been allowed to pencil, thanking her for their weekend at the Outlook, and asking him to pass his regrets to Colonel LeHavre and Captain Mofrey.
Passing the note was made a little more difficult by the thick leather belt around his waist, and the attachment for the handcuffs around his wrist.
The Bears brought him to the east end of the bridge. Valentine's night-sharp eyes saw a similar party on the other side.
A flashlight waved up and down. One of the Bears waved his horizontally right and left.
"They're ready", an NCO said. "Let's go, dead men".
"And women", the one in front of Valentine added, tiredly.
The man in front sort of lurched forward. "Ahhh! Ahhha!" Valentine heard his handcuff chain rattling against the front fitting at his belt.
"Move it", the Bear at his side ordered.
"My legs!"
"Now they're stopping", a young militia with a volunteer armband said, his eyes pressed to some binoculars.
"You just gotta walk to the other side of the bridge. Nothing's going to happen to you there, not with our guys around", the lead Bear said.
The man wouldn't move. "I will, I will... I can't, I can't. Can't!" the man stammered.
"Oh, balls", the Bear said. He and another each took an arm and they lifted him.
As they carried him he sputtered something about being really, honestly sorry. Why wouldn't anyone believe him that he was sorry?
At the midpoint of the bridge two prisoners were waiting, one in a bloodstained militia uniform; the other looked like a truck driver thanks to his ball cap with rolling cooperative emblazoned on it.
Quislings and Bears, exchanged sets of keys. Valentine noticed that the harnesses were identical. While this was going on, a bottle moved west, a thick roll of newsprint east.
"You shouldn't be doing that, Bongo", a Bear chided his mate.
"I like to read their funnies", the one evidently called Bongo replied. "Don't read nuttin' else".
"Don't or can't?" the chained militia woman asked.
"Shut down, you", the leader of the column warned.
The exchange done, the Bears accepted the two and immediately unlocked them. One of the Bears threw the harnesses' across his shoulder, presumably for the next midnight exchange. Valentine listened to the two Bears who'd carried the lead man talk quietly as they walked away.
"The one in the back, ain't he a Bear?"
"Think so. Seen him in the uniform at Fort Drizzle, anyway".