n suck a cock with the best of them, I imagine, Duvalier thought.
“Helsinki is the biggest city in Finland, right?”
“Yes, it’s ten times the size of this, easy. Bigger than New Orleans, I think.”
“You think that’s wise?” Duvalier asked. “You’re supposed to be at this conference.”
“The conference is interesting in its way. I think if the Kurians were going to try something, they would have done so already. In any case, it’s a weekend. Half the delegates will be at the coast and the rest will be preparing for their next week’s presentations.”
“If the Kurians only found out the location after the conference started, they might still be staging a force strong enough to make it into the harbor,” Duvalier said.
“The Lifeweavers haven’t shown up yet. Unless they’re disguised. If I were the Kurians, I’d wait until I thought I could bag them. Sime told me they weren’t expected until the end of the month.”
“You’d think they’d have arrived while the location was still secret. Maybe the Kurians are out hunting for them.”
Valentine pulled at his chin. “If so, that’s something for the Finns to worry about. I don’t see how we can make a difference. If I could point to some tangible dangers, I’d just alert the Finns anyway and be ready to help. But you’re right—it is odd that they aren’t here from the start. Maybe the Baltic League doesn’t trust the Lifeweavers any more than the other delegates do. There’s always talk that the Lifeweavers are just Kurians pretending to aid us. Fighting both sides of the same war, as it were.”
Duvalier had heard that theory proposed from barstools by veteran soldiers and scraggly-bearded kids more than once over the years. It was the sort of idea you’d come up with after an evening’s drinking and bullshitting.
“The New Universal Church came up with that one,” she said with a laugh she hoped didn’t sound too forced.
Valentine let it drop. He knew she felt closer to the Lifeweavers than most.
“Could be,” Valentine said. “Still, there’s not much scheduled for the weekend. Some demonstrations in the field. Oh, Ahn-Kha will like the heartroot part. The Finns have a lot of mossy bogs around all these lakes. It’s doing very well there. It just freezes up in the winter—you can chip it out if you get real hungry and defrost it—then it goes right back to growing in the spring. I had a heartroot omelet for breakfast, as a matter of fact. It wasn’t bad, especially since they used a good cheese. It’s a little tasteless without support.”
“Heartroot? Great. Unless he gets it just like Mom used to cook, it gives him terrible cabbage farts,” Duvalier said.
Valentine smiled. “Still another reason to be in Helsinki this weekend.”
“Have you actually done anything at the conference?”
“Once we passed on the warning, I’ve just been doing what suits my fancy. There was a discussion about Xeno products. I was in the audience, but they had me talk a little about the legworm ranchers. They didn’t even know where to find the meat on a legworm or that the leather came from egg casings. I was able to straighten them out on a few things. Some delegates from Russia claimed there were a lot of legworms in the tagia up near the permafrost line. In the winter they go into the usual hibernation nest-pile, get snowed over, and sometimes people get curious about the heap, climb it, fall in, and are never heard from again. They’re terrified of the damn things, to tell the truth. They can believe the Kentuckians have built what amounts to a society handling them. What about you?”
She shrugged. To tell the truth, she was a little bored with it all. She never followed the grand strategy of the fronts beyond information about where the enemy was operating. Her vague feelings of unease probably came out of the boredom. She was so used to being ready to deal with death jumping out of the trees that she couldn’t relax—even with the aid of a sauna. “I sat in on a few talks. You have the headphones on and it’s like watching a foreign film, only there’s no film. As to finding a Kurian infiltrator, the security people are making sure there’s nobody wandering around recording stuff. The thing is, note taking isn’t against the rules; everyone’s jotting down notes all the time. If there is a spy—or spies—he’s got to be bored.”
“The voting delegates get special meetings. Ahn-Kha has said there might be something in the works for India. There’s been a lot of talk about it. To hear them talk, the Kurians there are worse than the ones back home; they fight with each other more than with the Resistance. They’re trying to get Australia and Russia to commit to getting enough arms to Mumbai for a rising. Those guys with the turbans, the Sikhs, that’s what they’re here for, to get more weapons out of the other freeholds.”
“If only Southern Command could have knocked over Georgia. We could arm the whole world.”
“The Atlanta Gunworks, you mean?” Valentine asked. “They make good stuff, better than we do. If we took it over—”
“Suddenly they’d be making crap guns like most of the stuff Southern Command stamps out.”
“I wasn’t going to put it quite like that, but yes. Funny how everyone hangs on to vintage firearms if they can get them.”
“Maybe she’s just after your bourbon.”
“It’s true. I have one bottle left. Thing is, she’s not really a drinker. Odd, because all of the other Poles here toss it down like iced tea. This is the hardest-drinking meeting I’ve ever been to.”
“You’re just used to Southern Command.” While Southern Command made her crazy at regular intervals, she did admire it. You’re not supposed to drink in uniform, and they didn’t think too much of you if you drank much out of uniform, either.
They split up and returned to the areas for their respective genders to dress. Her skin felt lovely thanks to all the steam, even without a thrashing by birch branches. She was in the mood for some really good food and maybe a little wine, and she didn’t have the money for a weekend at the expensive joints with the menus translated into French.
Ahn-Kha would be eating heartroot all weekend, which would give him gas, which would make the hotel untenable.
She decided to send a message to Von Krebs.
CHAPTER EIGHT