"Naw, it won't do any of that. Go swimming with it".
He didn't swim, but he spent two days exploring Seattle, staying as far away from the Kurian Tower as he could. It seemed a technology-driven city, and Valentine couldn't understand half of the conversations going on in the cafes. Every other block had a technical college or a medical school, mostly filled with foreign students from Asia. Everyone had an ankle tag, except for a few arty types who wore theirs around their necks, and it was from one of these that Valentine learned the coding system. Black indicated foreign dignitaries.
"Of course upper management has theirs implanted", a youngish longhair cradling a leather-topped wooden drum in a relaxed lounge with the intriguing name "Earworm Cafe" explained. "Everyone's got to bear the mark of almighty Babylon". He worked on an old computerized music player with a portable light and a set of precision tools.
"Sez the dude who spends every other morning getting CI certification", a girl chided as she cleaned a table and collected discarded mugs. "Double Deck, you'll be wiring IDs to your own family before you know it".
"Go pop out another kid for the churchies, your royal no compromises", the drummer said.
She bared sharpened teeth and Valentine decided to pay his bill. And the boy's.
Back at his apartment he found a note.
"Don't forget audience tomorrow. I had the suit pressed and the shirt cleaned... Luty".
* * *
The next day Valentine stood in borrowed clothes under a cheap plastic poncho. Seattle's mighty tower soared above him, making him feel like an ant in the shadow of a redwood.
A vast plaza surrounded the tower, rimmed with decorative columns topped with pensive statues of Reapers that served a more discreet purpose as vehicle barriers. Inside the circle it was paved with red and gray bricks that probably formed some kind of design when seen from on high, perhaps a spiral of some kind. Valentine guessed that at least four square blocks of downtown Seattle had been knocked down to make the expanse.
A strange sort of scaffolding had been set up in front of the tower. Perhaps three stories high on its own, it consisted of two staircases leading up to a long, bridgelike platform, an isosceles triangle aimed at the center column. A television camera was perched halfway up the stairs.
The spectators gathered for the audience consisted of well-dressed functionaries in the front, and a mass of shaggy student types farther back, each of whom received a little paper ticket like a theater admittance. The Seattle Police, in waxy black leather jackets, herded the entire crowd into one narrow mass in front of the scaffolding. Silas went up to the television platform and spoke to the cameraman, who turned his camera out on the crowd. Silas looked through it as well, and the police had the crowd spread out a little at the back, and passed out banners that could be unfurled to hide the lack of numbers.
SEATTLE CITY OF DREAMS AND PROGRESS, read one.
PACIFIC COAST BEST AND BRIGHTEST HONORS KUR.
Then there was the eternal our future is bright again in phony childish lettering, held up by uniformed Youth Vanguard troops, which Valentine had seen in every political rally he'd attended in the Kurian Zone. Duvalier always said that Youth Vanguard troop rallies were so filled with high-ranking Quisling pederasts and pedophiles that the banners should read Our cherry is plucked again.
"Why not just round up more people for the audience?" Valentine asked one of the cops. "That's what we do back home".
"That's what I tell 'em", the cop said. "Just give folks a day off so they can come into the plaza. Give 'em luxury coupons like they give those sweatin' kids. They wanna have their cake and eat it too is all. Can't lose ten lousy hours of work. What they do is give everyone a half day on Fridays so they can go home and watch the speeches rebroadcast".
"That many televisions around? We sure don't have that at home".
"Shit yeah. Back in the good times, before all the fighting with the insurgents, this was a sweet spot".
"Sorry to hear that".
He lowered his voice. "Getting so even a police badge ain't proof against a cull. Like I was..."
A blast of music from the speakers mounted on the scaffolding interrupted him. Valentine wondered if Silas had selected Aaron Copland.
Then a New Universal Church Archon began to speak. He led the audience in a hymn, "Onward Human Progress", and Valentine managed to drone through it; he'd heard it many times before in the Gulf.
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