David Valentine had forgotten how much the smell and sound of Ahn-Kha comforted him. The Golden One's vast presence was like having your old family dog sleeping nearby. Only better. The old family dog can't knock a Reaper off its feet with one swing of its fist.
As Ahn-Kha slept, bleeding heat like a cooling potbellied stove, Valentine read by a tiny shake-and-glow clip light. The light began to dim, and Valentine picked up the light, shook it vigorously until it visibly brightened, and then returned it to its magnetic cradle.
Every time he did this routine, he marveled at the wonders the world used to produce. To only know the pre-22 world from New Universal Church propaganda, you'd think the old United States produced nothing but pollution, illness, and hunger. But still they made lights like this, still going strong almost a lifetime later.
Not quite as good as those Lifeweaver crystals, of course, which would shine brightly all night if left in the sun for an hour or so. He'd once had one, lost it in Nebraska when he was captured by the Twisted Cross.
With difficulty and care, he turned a page of the spineless mass of print he was reading.
Valentine had never seen a document composed entirely of wastepaper repurposed as manuscript pages. Two great wads of it, rolled up and filling a plastic-lined leather map tube that Ahn-Kha had evidently stitched together and sealed against the elements. Ahn-Kha had written mostly in English but here and there in his own language-the printing looked like a cross between Viking runes and mathematical formulas. Every now and then there were little pyramids of writing with horizontal lines between.
"What are those?" he'd asked the Grog while he was still awake.
"Names. In my language. In case it fell into the wrong hands."
"Didn't they ever find it?"
Ahn-Kha had been around humans enough to imitate a shrug. "It was my pillow. It looked like a big roll of wastepaper wrapped up in a towel. Remember, my David, they didn't know I could write."
"I had no idea you were such a diarist."
Valentine fell asleep reading about a mine revolt in Kentucky, marveling at his friend's eye for detail.
He brought it up over breakfast, where Ahn-Kha was taking up two seats and three-quarters of the table. At the rate his friend was eating well-salted hard-boiled eggs, they'd have to add a few more chicken coops.
"If I didn't know better, old horse, I'd think you were thinking about publishing your memoir. Some of your descriptions get a little rich for a military report."
Ahn-Kha bit his hard-boiled egg, shell and all, and salted the remaining half before popping it like a pill.
"My David, like many of my kind, I have a poor memory for that which I don't see, smell, do, and touch every day, or has been taught to me in song or rhyme. Set the letter 'V' of your dictionary to music, and I should improve my skills in your language for the rest of my days-but to look something up once and then remember it, that is very hard for me. I remember the manner in which we were-what was your word-de-"
"Debriefed."
"Debriefed, yes. I remember the manner in which we were debriefed. The volume of information and detail we were expected to provide on that which we'd seen once, and briefly-I started taking notes early on."
"I remember you writing on some old kid's tablets during the drive on Dallas. But to keep a diary when the Kurian Order's sending you underground in chains-that takes dedication."
"The practice kept despair at bay at first. Later, once the practice had worn down and rutted deep into habit, it became a way of clearing my head for sleep at night. Whatever my problem, if it had been put down on paper, it could be reread and rethought with the dawn. Never underestimate the power of a good night's sleep."
"Depends on what you're dreaming about," Valentine said. Valentine rarely slept really well, being troubled by dreams. Alcohol drove away the dreams, but he didn't care for the other side effects. Sex brought an emotional purge and exhausted oblivion, but it seemed doubtful that he'd see Caral again anytime soon. Or Tikka, who was leading the Army of Kentucky. With the Ordnance still looking for a way to reclaim Kentucky from the north and Atlanta probing at their southern flanks and the AOK healing the wounds inflicted by the ravies outbreak, she had better things to do than recreational lovemaking.
Valentine cleared his desk and spent the day touring Fort Seng with Ahn-Kha, introducing him to the NCOs and as many of the troops as possible. Golden Ones were gifted engineers, and Ahn-Kha quietly offered suggestions for a second river landing and a new road linking the artillery positions with the motor pool.
The motor pool had grown since Valentine last inspected all the vehicles. They'd captured some light armor from the Northwest Ordnance when they moved in on the winter offensive in the wake of the ravies outbreak and were working on refits using bits and bobs scavenged from Evansville.
A messenger found them atop one of the scout cars, testing the rotating ring for a machine gun. Both had oil on skin and fur.
"Colonel Lambert requests the Major's company at a working dinner, sir," the recruit relayed.
Valentine didn't recognize the boy. New recruits, most from the Kentucky backwoods desperate for new clothes, a bed, and chances of pay started out as messengers so they could learn the location of the companies and the officers and NCOs of the base. The best Lambert kept, the others went across the river to join Evansville's home guard regiment now training under Fort Seng's supervision.
Valentine acknowledged the request and fought off a groan. Lambert and her working dinners.
The outer office was empty by the time he'd showered and changed his shirt. Valentine heard voices from the base com center across the hall.
He knocked and was invited in. The air was so thick with smoke it formed its own weather system. He saluted and sat at the usual polite invitation, slouching a little to get his head below the worst of the fog bank.
Valentine admired Lambert, for all her taste for cold sandwiches and milk surrounded by baskets of flimsies.