Valentine's Rising by E.E. Knight

Author:E.E. Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

“The Kur are rich in will. I’ve never seen vision to go with it, so I’m supplying my own. As to will—well, you’ve seen what’s being built in New Columbia. It’ll be good. I’d like to think you’d stay out of desire to help me build here. But stay you will. Do you understand?” Solon curved his finger downward and tapped his desk to accentuate his words. “Stay. You. Will.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve got an ambitious look about you, Colonel. I saw you at the meeting, looking around, wondering which of your fellow officers you could rise above. You’re still a young man, and I’ll indulge young men in that. At this rate you’ll be one of my leading generals in a few years. Then you’ll have it all: an estate, women, wealth. You’re present at the founding of a country. Someday we’ll mint coins. Maybe your face will be on one, if you distinguish yourself.”

“I hope so. Did you have all this in mind when you came west?”

“New Columbia will be another Washington, another London, another Rome. Only better than Rome. Our temples will have real deities who give real rewards for an appropriate sacrifice. They will be Temples of Meaning instead of houses of superstition.”

Valentine sickened at the thought of more white towers rising in the green Ozarks like that abomination across the hill, each one asking for its share of Carolines. His mother had been raped and killed again, and once again he trotted home just in time to see the horror. He couldn’t keep the words in: “As long as we follow orders.”

Solon looked at him with sad understanding—but then, with those basset-hound eyes, he had a face custom-built for the expression.

“Le Sain, if you’ve studied the history of China, you know it’s been conquered many times. From the Mongols to the British. But in a generation or two, somehow it was China again. This land is the same way. We’ll absorb the Kurians; when this fighting gets done with, we’ll rebuild. They’ll be powerful figures, certainly, like heads of corporations or governors. The real power was always in a set of oligarchs. They just happen to be Kurian now. But the rewards will go to the integrators, the ones who make it all work. Another constitutional government will rise, we’ll have legislatures and courts, taxes and tollways.”

“They’d let us have all that?”

“Why not?”

“Due process and all that might cut down on the flow of aura.”

Solon leaned forward, steepled his fingers under his chin, and lowered his voice. “What makes you think I’d want that?”

“I’m not sure I follow you, sir.”

“Every society has is share of drones: the uneducable, the lazy, the unproductive, the crippled, the sick. Then there are the criminals. Civilization has always paid some kind of price for their upkeep. With the Kurians in charge, they’ll be fed into that furnace in the place of the talented. Only instead of the haphazard and arbitrary methods of today, it will be smoother, determined by courts and elected officials instead of this random slaughter.

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