The Ark, Pine Bluff, Arkansas: Southern Command collapsed when Solon arrived, not in panic, but in a controlled implosion more reminiscent of a carefully demolished high-rise than a chaotic rout.

Stockpiles of foods, medicines, and especially weapons disappeared into predug and camouflaged caverns. Where caverns weren't available, basements sufficed. One of the most important of the Eastern Arkansas caches resided at SEARK-the Southeastern Arkansas College. Southern Command had several important facilities around Pine Bluff, including the main docks on the lower Arkansas, the old arsenal that produced munitions for the Freehold, the war college at the old University of Arkansas (an agricultural and technical university taught civilians on the same campus) and, in a nondescript building at the edge of campus, a group of scientists devoted to researching the Kurians, known by a few as "the Miskatonic." From machine tools to research archives, key resources were concealed on the overgrown campus of SEARK, or "the Ark." A whole greenhouse on the campus existed just to shelter plant growth that would be used to cover entrances to underground warehouses, and the more burned-out and disused a classroom building looked, the more likely it was that explosives could be found stored in the rusty darkness of the basement.

The Ark deception worked in Pine Bluff. Southern Command, in abandoning the arsenal, blew up piles of junk to make it look as though machinery was destroyed rather than hidden. The Miskatonic turned piles of old phone books into fine white ash in a bonfire outside the institute.

Pine Bluff, in the year after Solon's rule, is only a shadow of the lively riverfront town, with its markets and stores, blacksmiths and seamstresses. Some of the population still wears the dull yellows and oranges of Solon s Trans-Mississippi Confederation, others go about like hungry beggars as they lookfor lost friends and loved ones, searching for familiar faces from the shops and docks.

The Ark has a new lease on life thanks to its period as an archive. The Miskatonic has relocated from the burned U of A campus to McGeorge hall, three stories of red brick with freshly painted white pillars around the entrance and new-planted trees relocated from roof and doorstep. If the building's architecture reflected the facts and secrets locked within, it would be a dozen stories tall and carved out of black granite, with horns projecting from the roof and gimlet eyes peering from the gaps in the still-boarded windows. . . .

* * * *

David Valentine stepped off the train even before it came to a full stop and landed neatly on his good leg. He checked in at the Guard Station and reacquainted himself with the modest sights of the hill-circled town, enjoying the sensation of being off the rickety train.

It had been a long trip up from Texarkana, thanks to the stop-and-start nature of nonmilitary travel. He spent a night in Hope, and learned that the famous unification of Texas and Arkansas forces had actually taken place in the nearby crossroads of Fouke. Southern Command, perhaps with an eye toward history, or realism about the soldier's eagerness to say they were present at the famous Texas-Arkansas-Fouke, had broadcast the news to the world from a minor general's temporary headquarters in Hope. Valentine spent ten dollars on an afternoon outing from Hope to the spot of the linkup (sandwich lunch included!) and saw the two state flags waving on a small hill next to a creek where beer and whiskey bottles from the celebration were still in evidence.

He wandered up and down Pine Bluffs main streets. Occupation seemed to have leeched all the cheery color from the town he remembered from his early days as a Wolf, studying at the academy. Vanished flower boxes, missing chalkwork advertisements on the brickwork, empty display windows where once mannequins had stood displaying everything from rugged smocks to ruffled wedding gowns, even the tired-looking berry bushes and picked-clean fruit trees filling every vacant lot related the occupation's story.

The lots made him think of Razors for some reason. Missing faces, dead or gone. He missed Hank most of all, even more than Narcisse or Ahn-Kha. Both could take care of themselves. But Hank had gone off to school with little enthusiasm. Valentine had tried to ease the parting by giving him his snakeskin bandolier, the same one he'd worn the night of the Rising in Little Rock.

"You deserve a medal, Hank, but this is the best I can do."

Hank ran his good hand across the oversized scales. "For real? For keeps?"

"For exceptional valor," Valentine said.

Hank hooked a finger in one of the loops. "Take a while to grow more Quickwood," Hank said.

"Fill it with diplomas."

At that Hank frowned-the boy saw himself as tried and tested as any of the Razors. In the end Valentine tasked Ahn-Kha with seeing the boy safely seated-and if necessary, handcuffed-at school.

He brought himself back to the present.

Valentine read the lettering next to a white cross painted on a walkway above the street, connecting two buildings at the heart of downtown:

here they hung james ellington

for spitting under the boots of

the occupiers as they marched

they said he was to be an example

they were right

One of Valentine's happier memories was of his time spent in Pine Bluff as a student at the war college. Essays on the qualities of Integrity, Professional Competence, The Courage to Act, and Looking Forward; regulations on the care of dependants and children of his soldiers; sound management principles-Southern Command was nothing if not parsimonious-the multitude of identification badges. . .

Or the cheery efficiency of Cadet "Dots" Lambert, juggling student and instructor schedules with teenage energy. Valentine laid down circuitous paths so he could pass her desk and say hi between his early duties with Zulu Company, class, and meals. He'd never worked up the courage to so much as ask her to a barbecue-he'd been a scruffy young Wolf, a breed apart from the well-tailored guards and cadets who undoubtedly dazzled as they whirled the girl around the floor at military mixers that Valentine, with patched trousers, collarless shirts, and field boots always managed to miss.

He hoped Lambert hadn't been hung from the clock tower at the university. Or shipped off in a cattle car.

Which brought him back to his reason for the trip to Pine Bluff. The Miskatonic.

Valentine refreshed himself with a hotdog in heartroot at the diner, then wandered southward along the tracks to the old SEARK campus, now listed on the town map as the "HPL Agricultural and Technical Resource Center." The entire SEARK campus was now surrounded by two rows of fencing topped with razor wire on either side of the streets surrounding the campus, enclosing as it did the war college, cadet school, and military courthouse.

Valentine showed his ID at the gate, surrendered his weapons, and signed in as a visitor.

"Have a fine one," the gun-check said, handing him a locker key on a pocket lanyard.

He heard distant gunfire from the other side of the railroad tracks as he entered, the spaced-out popping of a practice range. The cadets probably had a range day-it was a Friday and it would be just as well to stink them up on a day when they'd be a smelly nuisance to friends and family rather than their instructors-as most of the students looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. They looked so young. Elaborate razor-cut sideburns reminiscent of a bull's horns looked to be the new standard with the boys, and the girls were showing tight ringlet curls dangling from their little envelopelike caps.

Valentine, now closer to thirty than twenty, with three long trips into the Kurian Zone behind him that aged a man more than years or mileage, could shrug and disparage them as children. Except that the children had each been more or less handpicked and was studying morning, noon, and night in an effort to win their first brass tracks. Children didn't make PT at four A.M. and fall asleep on a pile of books at midnight.

There wouldn't be any old instructors to visit-frontline officers took a year or two off to teach, sometimes, but only the cadet school had permanent faculty and Valentine had ventured onto that campus only to take qualification tests. He took the sidewalk bordering the inner fence straight to the Miskatonic.

Their new building looked a good three times the size of the old one. Perhaps Southern Command had finally decided to take the scholars seriously. The Miskatonic researched how the Kurians and other dangerous fauna they'd "brought over" interacted and thought, instead of simply cataloging and quantifying threats.

Valentine had visited the "oddballs" inside now and then as a student at the war college, and had constant contact since in the form of debriefings every time he came back from the Kurian Zone. The debriefings were always by a variegated trio; a young student who served as stenographer, an intellectual-looking questioner, and then an older man or woman who silently listened, almost never asking a question him or herself, but sometimes calling the other two off into another room before the trio returned with a new line of questioning. He'd gotten to know a couple of the "oldsters"-by their faces, anyway-enough so that he hoped he could run down Post's mystery letter.

A pair of workmen bent over an addition to the entryway, adding a small brick blister next to the doorway. Valentine passed through a layer of glass doors. A second layer was in place, but the glass was missing.

The whole institution had a fresh-scrubbed smell to it. Valentine caught a whiff of wet paint from one of the halls.

Six feet of neatly uniformed muscle stood up from his desk. "Can I help you?"

Valentine wondered if the hand casually dangling at the edge of the desk had a sidearm in reach, or was hovering over the alarm button. Two more guards watched from a balcony on the second floor.

Procedures had changed since he was a student. The last time he'd just walked into the building and wandered around until he heard sounds of activity.

Valentine reached for his ID again, feeling a bit like he was still in the KZ. "David Valentine, for a follow-up to my 18 August debriefing."

The soldier made a pretense of checking a list.

"I don't have-"

"Sorry, Corp," Valentine said smoothly. "A few months ago I got a request for another interview. I'm just back from Dallas, and the creeps told me that whenever duties allowed, I was to report. Duties allow, so here I am."

"Could I see the request, sir?"

"It was in the regimental file cabinet, which fell victim to a 122 during the Dallas siege, and was buried with honors by every soldier with a drunk-and-disorderly charge pending. You want to phone the old man and unclog the pipes at your end, or should I hit the Saenger for the afternoon matinee and work on my complaint letter? Maybe I can get reimbursed for my hotel and expenses from your paycheck."

"Sorry, sir," the corporal said. "It's these pointy heads. They'd run this place like a fruit stand. You'd think security was the enemy. Could you wait a moment?"

"Why the new security?"

"Kurian agent. Six men shot each other running him down."

Valentine looked around for a chair in the foyer, but the only two in evidence held up an improvised coffee station for the workmen set up on one of the missing glass door panes. He settled for sitting on a windowsill.

"I'll wait. I think it was signed O'Connor. David O'Connor," Valentine said, dredging the name from his memory.

"Doubt it," the corporal said, a rugged military phone to his ear. "He bought it when they dropped Reapers on the campus."

"My mistake," Valentine said.

"His. He tried to capture one." The corporal connected with someone and turned ninety degrees away from Valentine to speak.

Whatever he heard made the corporal look at Valentine again.

"Yes, Doc." He replaced the receiver. "You want some coffee or anything, Major Valentine?"

"I'm good."

"One of the senior fellows will be right down, Major."

"And he'll hear how polite you've been as you've done your duty," Valentine said.

"Thanks. I mean it."

The two guards looking down from the balcony on the second floor lost interest, and Valentine heard footsteps over more distant construction noises.

A limp-haired woman wearing shapeless scrubs that looked as though they belonged in a hospital emerged from a door behind the security station and came around the desk, giving a friendly nod to the corporal as she passed. She extended her hand and Valentine shook it. She had an easy, confident manner that made Valentine think of the midwife from his youth in the Boundary Waters.

"Gia Dozhinshka," she said. Valentine wondered if he'd been greeted in an Eastern European tongue. "Zhin's the shorthand around here," she continued.

"David Valentine, or just Val. I don't think we've met."

"No, but I summarized your debriefs. Nebraska and the Caribbean, and I read your Wisconsin and Great Lakes material. Call me a fan. Let's go to an interview room. We can sit."

"New digs," Valentine said as they passed through a different set of doors under the balcony at the back of the foyer.

"We hid our low-level archives here when we got the order to bug out. Seemed easier to move Mohammed to the mountain afterward. No one's complaining. Central air, if you can believe it."

"I thought that was a legend outside the hospitals and Mountain Home."

"We've been blessed. That's what it seemed like at first, anyway."

A young woman pushed a cart down the hall. "Interview A, Tess," Zhin called.

They turned a corner and she opened a door to a room that had been subdivided by half-glass walls. Valentine saw two people speaking to a hairy-faced man with the look of a frontiersman, though even with hard ears he couldn't make out any words through the glass. She led him to a warren of enclosed cubicles.

They circumvented most of them and went to a smaller office at the back, where she turned on a light.

"The chairs in this one are better. It's got its own sugar and such for coffee, too. Have to wait on Tess with your files. Anything to drink? Coffee? We have sage tea, courtesy of your Texas friends."

"Water would be good," Valentine said, spotting a cooler.

"Cups are up top. We don't have the kind that go in the little dispenser anymore."

Valentine got his drink and sat down at the bare table. Zhin settled herself opposite him.

"They decided you're worth guarding, it seems."

"We've come up in the world. Curse of being right."

"How's that?"

"A couple of our guys picked up on some strange dealmaking with the Texas-Kansas-Oklahoma Kurians. Solon hiring himself an army-but you know all about that. We figured we were going to get hit, and hard. Southern Command figured they were going to clean out the Grogs up and down the Missouri-Solon sent out a bunch of false intelligence indicating that. We ended up being right."

"But nobody listened," Valentine said.

"We were always outside the whole command structure. We'd give an opinion on this or that. What might work to pierce Reaper cloaks. Is there a way to disrupt the signal between a Kurian and his Reapers. What kind of ailments kill 'em. But since Solon's bid we've got to issue regular reports, assessments, and they're even starting to filter who we talk to and where we go so we don't lose 'assets.'"

"I met one of the filters at the security desk. Seems a reasonable precaution."

The young woman with the cart knocked and entered, pushing a collapsed binder with Valentine's name and some sort of catalog number printed on the outside. Be interesting to take a look at the supplemental notes in that file, Valentine thought. Pens, notepaper, and storage bags and jars littered the cart.

"Tess Sooyan, David Valentine," Zhin said, by way of introduction.

The young woman hid behind her hair and glasses. She sat down in the corner with a pad, leaving the table to Valentine and her superior.

"Used to be if someone saw a weird track or bone they'd bring it to us, and we'd hand out little rewards and so on, even if it was just another Grog skull. But the, oh, what do you want to call them, shifty types-border trash-they avoid us now. All the barbed wire and uniforms scare them away."

"Speaking of shifty . . . I've got a confession. I'm here under false pretenses. I didn't need a follow-up to my last debrief."

Zhin leaned back in her chair. "Oh?"

Tacitly invited to explain, Valentine extracted Post's note. "A friend of mine got this . . . I'm guessing it's from one of your people. He's looking for his wife."

"Probably one of the kids," Zhin said, showing the note to her assistant. "Still in school or fresh out of it, they start here running down public queries. They shouldn't be sending out copies of documents, though. Or passing on opinions."

"That might be Peter Arnham's writing," Tess said at a level just loud enough for Valentine to hear it. "He's on the Missing/Displaced network."

"Can you look into it?" Valentine asked. "My friend's a good man. Badly wounded outside Dallas. He's going to have to put his life back together after all this. It would help if he knew one way or the other."

Zhin put the message in her leather folio. "I'll get a group going on it.

"I'll owe-"

"No, we don't work that way. No favors, no bargains, and you needn't come back with a crate of brandy. If you want, we can put you up for a night or two on campus."

"I know the town. I'd rather not be behind wire. I'll look up the Copley, if it's still around. Maybe try for a bass in the reservoir lake."

She and Tess both made notes. "You might at that. No one was doing much fishing while Solon was running things."

* * * *

Few pursuits can compare with fishing for a man looking for peace and quiet.

Two days later, enjoying his leave more than he'd enjoyed anything since parting with Malia, Valentine brought in a nice three-pound bass. As he tied up his aluminum shell he mentally inventoried the seasonings he'd picked up at the market after catching that catfish yesterday but had saved at the last minute in the hope of a better future catch: some green peppers, garlic, cloves, and a tiny bottle of what the spice merchant swore up and down was olive oil.

This particular lunker would be worth it.

He'd grill it over charcoal and hickory within the hour, and enjoy it with a syrupy local concoction everyone in town called a coke.

"Hey, Valentine," he heard a voice call. He looked up. "Reservoir Dan," the man who'd rented him the boat and tackle-and who accepted money only for bait " 'cause that's an actual expense" after seeing his Southern Command ID, stood at the pier, stubbing out one of the ration cigarettes Valentine had insisted that he accept. "Got a message for you-hey, you did good."

Valentine held the fish a little higher. "Got it near the stumps on the north side."

"You try that spinner?"

"That's what got him. What was the message?" Dan would go all afternoon about local fishing with the tiniest prompt.

"Some girl on a bike from the Ark. Said they ran your paper down and that you could come by anytime."

"I hope anytime includes after lunch," Valentine said. "Join me?"

"I'll bring the sweet potato pie," Dan said, smacking his lips.

Half a bass and a thick wedge of pie heavier, Valentine caught a lift on a military shuttle horse cart to the SEARK campus. Everything went faster this time, from surrendering his weapon at the gate to admittance to the Miskatonic.

This time Zhin brought him back to her office. The researcher had a deft hand at indoor gardening; assorted spider plants shot out tiny versions of themselves from the top of every file cabinet and bookcase, taking advantage of the window's southern exposure.

A young man she introduced as Peter Arnham, who seemed to prefer rumpled clothes two sizes too big for him, stood up nervously when Valentine entered.

"This isn't a trial, son," Valentine said. "I'm just doing legwork for a man who's missing his."

"I didn't know Hunter Staff Cats--Cats with the rank of major, anyway-did their own legwork," Arnham said.

"I'm not staff yet," Valentine said.

The Miskatonic researchers looked at each other and shrugged. He knew as little about their world as they did his.

"Everyone just sit," Zhin suggested. "This isn't a formal briefing, nothing like it."

They did so.

"Val, you're free to ask Peter here whatever you like. We don't know much about this; we're holding nothing back."

Valentine sensed an edge to her voice that hadn't been there before.

"You think I'm on an assignment?" Valentine asked.

"We know you work with cover stories and so on."

Valentine leaned forward. "No. It's really what I told you. I'm inquiring for a friend, a fellow officer, William Post. This isn't prep for an operation, not by a long shot."

"It's just that the mule list is a bit of a mystery to us too," Zhin said. "We thought maybe someone was finally looking into it."

"Mule list?"

"Just a shorthand we use," Zhin said. "Solon's departure left behind a real treasure trove of documentation-we've never gotten this complete a picture of human resource processing in the Kurian Zone before. We've had to add and train dozens of people just to sift through it all."

Arnham added: " 'Mule list' is a term we use because all these women appear to carry something the Kurians are interested in. We know it's not blood type or anything obvious, like Down's. About all we know is that only women are tested, and that if they come up positive for it they're immediately packed up and shipped off."

"How do you know it's a positive? List I saw just had an X under 'Result.' "

"Intellectual shorthand," Zhin said. "We just call it a positive. That's the kind of optimists we got here." Zhin and Arnham both chuckled.

"Why the 'she's gone for good' note?"

"I thought he deserved to know." Arnham stared levelly at Zhin. "I don't think that sort of thing should be kept a secret. Like I said, all the security shit is hurting us more-"

"Let's keep this on point, Peter," Zhin said.

Zhin turned in her chair to Valentine. "This Gail, your officer's wife, is most likely dead. Everything we know about the mule list says that they're put on priority trains with extra security and shipped out. Handling is similar to what happens when your Wolves or Bears are captured. We know Hunters are interrogated and killed at a special medical facility; that's been established. Doctors working for the Kurians do a lot of pathology on the bodies."

Valentine had heard rumors along those lines before.

"Have you looked into the family background of your mule list? Do they come from Hunter parents?"

"A few," Arnham said. "Not enough for a real correlation."

"What is the test?"

"Don't know. They take a small amount of blood. Like an iron check when you donate."

Valentine had given enough blood in Southern Command's medical units to know what that meant. A drop or two squeezed from a finger cut. "And then?"

"They drop it in a test tube. We know the negatives stay clear."

"How many show up as positives?"

"Less than one percent," Arnham answered.

"About one out of a hundred and fifty or so, looks like," Zhin said, checking another paper.

Valentine wondered if any of his known unknowns were filled in, or if this just represented a new unknown popping up. "But these women present a danger to the Kurians?"

Arnham's lips tightened. "I didn't say that. I said they were treated that way. Look, we're in the dark about as much as you. We're laying it all out there."

He rooted around in his folios and passed a binder to Valentine. Inside were six tabs. Each had a list from a testing station similar to the one he sent Post.

"Your girl's in the yellow-tabbed one," Arnham said.

Valentine nodded and flipped to the list. The sheets were the same as the others, a bare list of negatives. Female names, no particular ethnic background to them

Valentine's heart thudded before his brain knew why.

Melissa Carlson.

The rest of the room faded away for a second as the name held his attention. Melissa . . . Molly . . . the woman whose family had helped him in his trip across Wisconsin, who he'd gone to the Zoo in Chicago to save when she caught the eye of a sexually avaricious Quisling nomenklatura and murdered him. . . .

"You okay there, Val?" Zhin asked.

No result next to Molly's name. She hadn't been put on a train. Molly's sister Mary was just below her on the list; she'd been tested too, also no X in the result column.

But she had been tested. She'd been tested at the same location as Gail Foster. Why was she listed as Molly Carson? She'd married her Guard lieutenant . . . What was his name . . . Stockton, no, Stockard. Graf Stockard.

"Fine. You keep the big directories here, right? The Southern Command Military Census?"

"Yes, of course."

"Can I have a browse?"

"Sure. A name ring a bell?" Zhin guessed.

Not just a bell. A gong and clattering cymbals.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***