Brass rings.
"Yes. Word of advice, Valentine. Don't believe your own propaganda posters about freedom and all that. There's always been the rulers and the ruled". He tapped the glass in the direction of the city. "The Kurians aren't that different from other rulers throughout history, save for one twist. They want productive births and productive lives, just like all the others. The only thing all this slanging is about is their desire for, when the time comes, productive deaths. Reuse and recycling of strange and mysterious energies otherwise lost to the cosmos".
"If that's what you believe, then I hope I'm around when you go drowsy and forgetful. You going to strip off those rings and volunteer for recycling?"
"I've earned a ripe old age, and I intend for it to be a productive
one. Sadly, I've not had time for children yet. Our aphrodisiacs have been certified for ninety-year-olds. But really, I didn't come here to talk about myself or the honorable family name. I wanted to get an idea about you, before plunging into all the hows and whens. I'm a little curious about what you want out of all this".
"Put in your words, I want to stop the unproductive deaths. Adler is slaughtering whole families".
"Both sides are exhausted from all the fighting. The Kurians never thought it would take so long to reorganize us. Every new eruption kills more in a few weeks than the Kurians do in a year. Waste, sheer waste".
An elegant woman in business dress, lovely eyes behind thick glasses, cleared her throat from the hallway.
"Mr. Silas, they're reassembled and await you".
Silvers took a long snootful of the air around the assistant and popped his lips together: dop dop dop.
"I look forward to hearing your plans, Valentine. Just don't think you can organize another mutiny here. We're not stupid".
"Never said you were, Silas. Rotten, maybe, but not stupid".
"You're not my idea of an ally either".
"We don't need to respect each other, as long as we cooperate. I'd make a deal with the devil himself to stop Adler's slaughter".
* * *
Two and a half hours later Valentine finally got a chance to talk, in the meeting room at the top level of the Space Needle. It rotated with the speed of a minute hand, slowly shifting from city skyline to mountains to the bay.
He stood at one end of a long, slightly curved wooden table, richly lacquered and the color of blood. Papers placed on it seemed to hover above their own shadows. The table could hold twenty-two at a pinch, Valentine guessed, but at the moment only four figures sat at it, Silas at the other end. Lesser operatives sat discreetly at the edges of the room, near phones and computer terminals, but Silas dismissed them for the day, keeping only those seated at the table and his secretary.
And of course Silvers, filling a battered sofa just behind Silas' chair.
"What the hell is a deep amphibious operation?" a general with heavy, burnished steel shoulder boards said. He had the fleshy look of a man who liked to do his generaling after a late breakfast and before cocktail hour.
"Hear him out", a uniformed woman with a raccoon mask of camouflage airbrushed across her eyes said. Her bristle-short haircut made one of Alessa Duvalier's self-administered razor jobs look vulpine. "About time someone talked about going on the offensive. We need more men willing to put their balls on the table, pardon the expression".
"Keep yours behind your zipper, Park", the fleshy general said.
"Let the man answer the question", Silas put in, and the table went silent again. Behind him, the city's skyline glowed in splashes of color, searchlights illuminating the old, empty office buildings as though they were national monuments. Lights dusted the edges of the city, washed down the road.
"I just made up the term", Valentine said. "But it describes what I think your 'Big Mouths' can accomplish, if the field training I received about their habits was correct. I read some news bulletins about their use in Florida deep into the Everglades".
"How many will you need?" a man in thick black wool asked. He had the fishy odor of a man off a long day at a gutting wharf. Valentine couldn't tell if he was in casual military clothes or civilian wear so rugged and severe it could pass for a uniform. His name tag was similar to the general's and that of the woman called Park, a black rectangle with white lettering; his read troyd.
"I have to see them training to decide that. Do you train them?"
"We do", Troyd said. He kept his hands out of sight under the table, unlike the others, who were making notes or drinking coffee or tea.
"How are you going to get past the river barriers?"
"I know a little about the watch system", Valentine said. "Before my
comrades delivered me into your little garden of horrors, I was an officer in the troops that supplied the river sentries. Dangerous work".
"That's why they had PeaBees doing it, no?" Park asked.