Silas' limo pulled up to the scaffolding and he and Troyd got out. Silas, wearing an elegant camel-hair coat that stood out against the dull aluminum of the metal, led Troyd up the stairs, where after a brief introduction as "the skilled xenologist who is doing so much to reverse our recent misfortunes" Troyd walked up a set of railless stairs that seemed impossibly narrow to Valentine. It was tipped with a sort of pulpit, and from there, by leaning on the rail and reaching his hand up, he could just reach a sort of blister on the side of the tower.
Silas spoke, talking about battles recently won that Valentine had never heard of, except for a small skirmish that resulted in a raiding PeaBee company retreating from an old state trooper station. To hear Silas describe it, another Stalingrad had been won.
Troyd passed his hand through a shimmering wall of light and pulled it out, still dripping with what looked like liquid fire. He shook it off and held up his undamaged hand, and the new brass ring on his finger glimmered like Venus on a dark night.
Valentine half listened to the speeches, marking the placement of Reapers. Two stood at the bottom of each stairway.
Troyd descended the stairs more surely, and stepped to the microphones. With the TV camera on him, he gave a brief, halting speech, thanking Seattle for his generosity and leadership, as a banner unfurled from the bottom of the scaffold.
29 RINGS AWARDED IN OUR SIXTH DECADE
WHAT'S STOPPING YOU FROM GETTING YOURS?
With Troyd's speech concluded, the Archon stepped to the microphones again. He clutched the railing and sagged for a moment, but Silas helped support him. With that, he raised his head, and with his eyes rolling and cheeks twitching he spoke.
"My children", he said, giving Valentine an odd tingle over the difference in his voice. The Archon sounded a little like a stroke victim who hadn't quite regained the full use of his tongue. "Your Kurian friends and allies have this day placed one of your number among the eagles that soar over this lovely land of ours. He is an example to be followed, for he teaches us the virtue of cooperation and utility. The beings he directs to guard your homes may look fearsome to you, but consider how fearsome they must look to those who threaten our peace. Perhaps then you shall look on their strange faces and beauty. We, your Kurian friends and allies, know you have sacrificed to feed these beings, but who regrets a toe when a leg is saved?
"There are dark forces at the gates of our city, so long a symbol of the heights mankind can reach, with just the tiniest touch of a friendly hand. With these fresh allies beside us, we can look to better days ahead. Belief in victory will lead to work for victory. Work for victory will lead to an affirmation of that belief.
"Too many homes have been darkened by death in the last year. New medicines are even now on their way to church dispensaries to help you dispel whatever fears and doubts you may have. But these have not come cheaply. We must bring the new B-6 into production to meet orders already placed, and certain luxuries will, for a time, become unavailable. Your conferences will provide you with details of our plans to increase output. If we all push together, a very short period of sacrifice will put us back on the road to prosperity and peace. Meet these hardships, not as a burden among burdens, but as a challenge above self! Will you, my family, accept this challenge?"
"Yes", Silas shouted into the microphone. "Yes, yes, yes", he chanted, and the crowd took it up, perhaps eager for exercise to keep warm in the chill November air. The Youth Vanguard jumped up and down with each "yes".
After a few close-ups of people cheering, and a rowdy student or two lifting her sweater and T-shirt, the TV cameraman left.
Silas came down the stairs, chatting with Troyd.
"Wait for Valentine a moment, won't you, Troyd?" Silas asked. "I believe he's going to accompany you back to your wet little camp. Unless you want to come up and pay your respects in person".
Troyd looked at the ring on his hand, rubbed the skin. "No. I was touched once. That's enough for me".
"Then it's you and me, Valentine", Silas said.
"What, up there?"
"Of course".
"I thought I could just speak to one of the, the ..".
"We call them avatars".
"One of the avatars", Valentine finished.
"He wants to look at you with his own eyes. All eight of them. Are you coming?"
Valentine nodded, and stepped up onto the scaffold stairs.
The four Reapers came up the stairs with them, boots loud on the metal steps. Valentine saw the TV man blanch as he placed his camera in a padded bag and frantically wound cables as the Reapers passed.
Silas hit a button by the microphones - another worker with a little silver television pin on her collar dismantled the microphones - and the stairs Troyd had used to climb up to the blister lowered and flattened into a narrow walkway, bridging a gap between the tower and the scaffold bridge. Valentine saw a slit open up in the tower wall, saw lips peel back as it widened.
He looked up at the blister in the tower. Some trick of light put six Reaper faces in various oddly shaped shards and panels of glass.
Two Reapers led them inside, ducking to go through the slit. Silas followed, hands held out a little for balance. Valentine walked the beam uneasily, more thanks to the Reaper following behind than from fear of a misstep.
They lost two of the Reapers at the portal. Valentine couldn't resist turning around and looking. Sure enough, there were lines of triangles like shark teeth, yet off bias like the blades of a ripsaw, deadly yet decorative bumps on the inner side of those lips.
Valentine was relieved to see the inside conforming to human ideas of architecture and design.