《The Amtrak Wars I : Cloud_Warrior》17

'What kind of damn fool question is that?"  Beaver looked up at
Yellow-Hat and chuckled.  'You think I've forgotten what they look
like?  Start moving that shit off her legs."

Yellow-Hat went to work.  Beaver pulled the stopper out of his skin
water-bottle, eased Jodi's head off the ground, and tipped a little
water onto her parched lips.  Jodi licked them dry and opened her mouth
for more.

'Thanks..."  she wheezed.

'She don't look so hot,' said Bone-Dome flatly.

'No.  She's broke up pretty bad,' admitted Beaver.  'But she'll mend.

Make no mistake, this is one tough lady."

'She'll need to be,' said Bone-Dome.  He seized hold of the dead coyote
and flung it aside.  'Okay, let's get her to Medicine Hat."

Jodi had been found by a scavenging party from a band of Tracker
renegades.  S he had known about them for years.  As a youngster, she
had seen several who had been captured and brought back to the
Federation for trial, confess the error of their ways before being shot
on tv.  Later, during her time as a wingman, she had also seen the
bodies of about a dozen renegades killed by patrols from The Lady.  Men
and women that she had helped hunt down.  Beaver and his two friends
were the first live ones she had ever met face to face.

She remained conscious until they lifted her onto a makeshift stretcher
then slipped into a coma.  For a time, Jodi knew nothing of the outside
world, but deep within her subconscious mind the ordeal continued.  Her
inner eye was continually assailed by jagged, abstract images of pain;
a limitless form of mental torture that drove her, screaming
soundlessly, to the edge of madness.  Eighteen hours later she emerged
from the fevered coma to find herself in the hands of Medicine Hat.

Someone holding a clean worn rag mopped her brow.  She looked up at the
sky and took a deep breath, savouring the sweetness of the air.  Oh,
Columbus!  It hurt.  Her whole body burned from head to toe.  It didn't
matter.  She was going to live/ For Steve, the next weeks seemed to
blur together, making it hard to place specific events.  He could only
remember being fed a thick soup twice a day from a wooden bowl held by
Cadillac, Mr Snow, and a number of female lumpheads who ranged from the
simply plain and unattractive to the hideously grotesque.  At first,
the thought of eating Mute food filled Steve with revulsion.  He
refused it for a couple of days then became so hungry that he ate what
he was offered - and was promptly sick.

After several more days of mental and intestinal discipline, he found
he was able to keep the food down without feeling nauseated and,
eventually, began to look forward with growing relish to the next
strongly flavoured dish.  He did not, however, ask what he was
eating.

His progress was rewarded by a meal he could recognise - a fish with
succulent pink, flaky flesh, roasted over a wood fire.

Exactly as in that flash of memory he had had at Roz's side in San
Jacinto Deep.  As he ate the fish, he wondered how he could have
acquired that knowledge.  Perhaps, he conjectured, it did not stem from
a memory of past events but was a glimpse of the future.  Perhaps he
had foreseen this moment - in the same inexplicable way that he had
often been able to predict the direction of the course marker lights
when flying in the Snake Pit.

Mr Snow visited him from time to time to inspect and dress his
wounds.

Sometimes Cadillac came with him; at other times, the straight-limbed
Mute would enter alone and squat silently by his side.  Occasionally,
Steve would engage them in desultory conversation; desultory because he
was given regular small doses of Dream Cap which kept him in a state of
drowsy euphoria.  Twice, or maybe three times, Steve was vaguely aware
of being lifted onto a stretcher of wood and skins which was then
carried through the darkness.  He half-remembered feeling the cool
night air on his face; seeing the wondrous twinkling brilliance of
countless points of light scattered across a black velvet sky.

From the overheard snatches of conversation that entered his fudged
brain, he understood that his Mute captors were moving camp under cover
of darkness and lying concealed by day to avoid discovery by the
arrowheads that now regularly crossed the sky.

Once, as he lay under a loose covering of branches, he saw, through a
ragged gap in the leaves, two of the graceful Skyhawks dip and wheel
across the sky; saw the white wingtip panels and recognised them as
coming from The Lady.  Steve realised that she must have returned
re-equipped with a new section of wingmen to continue her thrust into
Plainfolk territory.  He wondered if Gus White was one of the pair now
above him and whether they were looking for him, or whether they were
just hunting Mute.

He felt a sudden pang of regret at being grounded then consoled himself
with the thought that, against all odds, he was still alive and in one
piece, being fed and cared for.  If he could manage to stay alive, if
his body mended, he could begin to plan his escape - always provided
his captors didn't find themselves on the receiving end of another
napalm strike.  Despite the fudging effects of the Dream Cap, this
thought was a salutary reminder that he, Brickman, S.R.

was now one of the hunted.  His fate was bound up with that of his
captors.

After about a month, Mr Snow stopped feeding Steve threads of Dream
Cap. Steve found he was able to sit up without too much discomfort
from his mending ribs.  His left shoulder was still painfully stiffbut
he was able to make limited use of his left arm.  His right arm was
still in a sling but the livid, gaping wound had closed.

Mr Snow pronounced himself satisfied with Steve's general progress.

'You should soon be ready to start moving around on that leg.  I'll see
if we can knock you up something to walk with."

'You mean a pair of crutches?"

'Yes, crutches,' said Mr Snow.  'We must talk some more.

You must know a whole lot of forgotten words."

'You must know a lot I've never heard of,' replied Steve.

'If you've got time, uhh - maybe we can learn each other's language."

'Maybe,' said Mr Snow, noncommittally.  'A lot of the words I use won't
mean anything to you.  You live in a different world; see things in a
different way."

Steve shrugged.  'You could teach me to see things your way."

Mr Snow smiled.  'I doubt it.  What, for instance, do you mean by the
word "understanding"?"

'"Understanding"?"  Steve reflected for a moment.  'llhh, knowing what
someone means when they give you an order.

Knowing how something works, or what to do if anything goes wrong."

Mr Snow nodded.  'How about "Love"?"

Steve hesitated.  'Is that a Mute word?"

'No, it's from the Old Time.  It was a word that was constantly on
people's lips.  Not that it changed anything."

Steve shook his head.  'Couldn't have been very important.  If it was,
we'd use it in the Federation.  What is it - some kind of swearword?"

Mr Snow let out a throaty chuckle.  'I can see you've got a lot to
learn."

Steve grinned.  'Listen - Cadillac hadn't heard of "television sets",
you hadn't come across "crutches", and I didn't know about "love".

Maybe we can make a trade.

Think about it."

Mr Snow's eyes twinkled.  'I will."  He patted Steve on the shoulder
and ducked out of the hut.

Now that he was no longer being fed Dream Cap, Steve began to think
more clearly and was quick to realise that his conversations with Mr
Snow and Cadillac could be his lifeline.  He had been told about
wordsmiths in the Field Intelligence briefing the crew had attended
before their departure from Nixon-Fort Worth.  In a race of idiots, the
wordsmiths were the bright guys.  Rare, gifted individuals who acted as
the communal brains for the Mute clans which harboured them.  It was
known that Mutes could not read or write and since most were dum-dums
who didn't know what day it was they were totally reliant on the
memories of their wordsmiths.  According to the three-man FINTEL team
who gave the briefing, the cleverest of these guys carried up to nine
hundred years of history around in their heads.  They also possessed
the ability to put chunks of it to music - what were known as 'fire
songs' - plus a mental compendium of general knowledge that enabled
Mutes to survive!

In the decimation of the Southern Mutes in the centuries after the
Break-Out many wordsmiths were believed to have perished.  Those who
escaped death during pacification and resettlement of the New
Territories had either moved north or were keeping an extremely low
profile.  Figures were not available but it was believed that
wordsmiths were more numerous among the Plainfolk but not every clan
had one and those that did guarded them well.  Apart from the obvious
advantages of owning a walking encylopaedia, it had become apparent
that possession of a wordsmith gave a clan a vital edge over their
rivals in other ways; ways which were still not fully understood.  One
thing, however, was clear: a definite correlation had been established:
the more gifted the wordsmith, the more powerful the clan.

Having been told repeatedly from the age of three that Mutes did not
take prisoners, Steve could not understand why his life had been
spared.  He longed to know the answer but it was theone question he
studiously avoided asking his captors.  At the back of his mind was a
lurking fear he might learn that their calendar might include some
bizarre festival at which the entire M'Call clan solemnly dined off
roast cloud warrior.  If that was what was waiting at the end of the
road he preferred not to know about it.  Steve contented himself with
expressing his appreciation to all the Mutes who helped nurse him back
to health and congratulated himself on his luck at being shot down by
Cadillac.  Apart from being intelligent and good-humoured, he and Mr
Snow were insatiably curious.  Great.  Couldn't be better.

Steve was prepared to assuage their thirst for learning.  He would feed
them the entire Tracker vocabulary one word at a time, plus everything
they wanted to know about the Federation in the minutest detail.  And
what he didn't know, he would make up.  He would spin out the material
by getting them to tell him everything they knew.  As long as they felt
they were onto a good deal they would keep him alive.  After all - who
else did they have to talk to?

In the long periods when he was left alone, Steve dwelt on the
possibility of escape.  He wondered if the wreckage of his Skyhawk had
been abandoned or whether any bits of the airframe or equipment had
been kept as trophies.  It had not escaped his notice that one of the
female lumpheads assigned to bring him food had blue and red electric
cable threaded through her plaited hair.  Maybe someone had ripped out
the radio.  Although normally powered by the motor, it carried its own
battery pack for use in an emergency.  There was also the survival
equipment he had been carrying: air pistol, combat knife, map, food
concentrates, flares, and a portable pocket-sized emergency radio
beacon that enabled the wagon train to home in on a downed wingman.

Steve had been stripped of everything except his underpants but he had
seen Cadillac wearing the top half of his flight fatigues.  The pockets
had been empty.

That meant the goodies they held were probably stashed away
somewhere.

If so ...

Steve spent many happy hours devising elaborately detailed escape
scenarios - all of which ended in triumph with a suitably thunderous
welcome at Grand Central.  It was an agreeable fantasy.  No Tracker
who had fallen into the hands of the Mutes had ever lived to tell the
tale.  As the days passed and the strength gradually returned to his
body, Steve became convinced that he wis going to make it.  He would be
the first.  His skill and daring would more than make up for his
failure to gain top marks and the coveted Minuteman Trophy.  His master
plan would be back on course.

Set down outside Cadillac's hut for the first time in daylight, Steve
discovered the source of one of the smells that had plagued him.  The
decaying heads of two Mute warriors were stuck on six-foot stakes set
in the ground on either side of the doorway.  Steve studied them with
morbid fascination noting the wide, powerful necks and lower jaws, the
primitive helmets with their pattern of pierced stones, and the way the
point of each stake, roasted iron-hard over a fire, had been hammered
through the top of the skulls.  Steve looked towards the other huts
scattered under the nearby trees and saw that several of them had
stakes outside the doors loaded with similar grisly trophies.

Around noon, Cadillac appeared carrying two freshly-caught salmon
trout.  He used his flame-pot to kindle a fire, gutted the fish,
threaded them on his knifestick and proceeded to roast them over the
flames.

Steve's sense of smell had, by this time, adjusted itself to
accommodate the appetising aroma.  His saliva glands began to work
overtime.  He noticed that Cadillac was wearing his digital watch.  A
calendar alarm model - strapped upside down on his left wrist.  Steve
twisted his head round in an effort to read the date, failed, thought
about asking for the watch back and decided to wait for a more
appropriate moment.  He drew Cadillac's attention to the head impaled
on the stake to his right.  Shakatak.  'A friend of yours?"

Cadillac dropped his eyes onto the roasting fish, turning the
knife-stick so that they cooked evenly.  'He tried to invade our
turf."

'So you killed him?"

'Both of them,' said Cadillac.  It wasn't strictly true but to tell the
whole story would mean explaining Clearwater's contribution.  Mr Snow
had told him that the cloud warrior must not learn of her powers or her
presence in the settlement.

'And if you kill somebody else, will his head end up on a pole too?"

'It will join these,' answered Cadillac.  He broke up some more
branches and fed them into the fire.  'Each pole holds ten heads.  A
full head-pole is the sign of a mighty warrior."

'I see..."  Steve glanced at Shakatak's sightless head.  'I guess that
means you've got some way to go."

Cadillac responded with a quiet smile.  'I am forbidden to run with the
Bears.  But in their eyes I have standing.  I have chewed bone."

'Chewed bone?"

'Killed in single combat.  Taken the head and eaten of the knife
arm."

Steve felt queasy.  'Jeer - you mean you ate the arm of this poor
sonofabitch?"

'No,' said Cadillac.  'Our forefathers did many long years ago.  The
arm and the leg.  Now, Plainfolk custom demands that, on the first
kill, a warrior bite the fore part of the arm that wields the sharp
iron through to the bone."

'Columbus ..."  Steve shuddered and lapsed into silence.

When the fish were cooked, Cadillac slid them off his knife-stick onto
a flat stone, cut off their heads, wrapped them in large red leaves and
handed one to Steve.

'Thanks..."  Steve took it in his left hand and edged his right hand up
to help hold it.  A sharp stab of pain pierced his torn biceps.  He
gasped, then inhaled the aroma of the roast trout and forgot about his
sore arm and the artless savagery of his companion and concentrated on
assuaging his hunger.

He brought his lips gingerly onto the fish.  It was still too hot to
eat.  'Smells good.  Did you catch these?"

'Yes."  Once again, it was not strictly true.  Cadillac had gone
fishing with Clearwater and it was she who had gently stroked them into
immobility and lifted them triumphantly by the gills from the rock
pool.

Steve gave a quiet laugh.  'It's crazy, you know.  I've seen fish like
this in the Federation.  Swimming around in pools.

But they're just decoration.  No one would think of eating one any
more than - ,' he hesitated, '- than they'd think of eating someone's
arm."

'A warrior who chews bone takes the strength of his enemy into his own
body."  Cadillac blew on the charred scales of his fish and bit into
the pale steaming flesh.

Steve replied with a hollow smile.  'You don't really believe that, do
you?"  He shook his head.  'I really can't work you guys out.  You go
to the trouble of pulling me out of the cornfield, and putting me back
in one piece and at the same time, you - ,' he gestured towards
Shakatak's impaled head, '- you do this kind of thing and -' Cadillac
cut in.  'The sand-burrowers have taken many heads from our Southern
brothers."  ?'Yeah, that's true,' admitted Steve.  'But it's not done
all the time.  It's a kind of initiation thing for wet-feet, linemen on
their first trip - warriors who have not chewed bone - and the only
reason it's done is because you started it."

Cadillac nibbled at his trout.  'Do you not kill?"

'Yeah, sure,' replied Steve.  'We have to.  We're trying to win back
what belongs to us.  The blue-sky world.  But you guys kill each
other."  He gestured at the heads of Shakatak and Torpedo.  'These
fellas are Mutes, like you!"  Cadillac considered Steve's words.  'In
our world, all those who are not blood-brothers and blood-sisters of
the clan M'Call are rivals.  We must defend our turf.  The M'Calls are
descended from the ninth daughter of Me-Sheegun and the ninth son of
She-Kargo.  Many of the Plainfolk clans accept our greatness for our
seed goes back to the Heroes of the Old Time.  But there are those who
envy our greatness and wish to take it from us.  If we are challenged
then we must fight to the death or lose our standing.  Without standing
we are less than dust."

'Why?  What's wrong in running away, then sneaking back later and
nailing the other guy while he's asleep?"

Cadillac did not understand the question.  He shrugged.

'This is not the way of a Warrior.  If he is of the She-Kargo, he must
follow the path laid down by Mo-Town, our great Mother."

That's your tough 'luck, thought Steve.  'And where do we, uhh
"sand-burrowers" - fit into all this?"

Cadillac eyed him solemnly.  'You are known by many names.  The Beasts
from the Bowels of the Earth, the Creatures of the Dark Cities, the
Smooth-Skulled Worms that ride in the belly of the Iron Snake, the
Death-Bringers, the Slave-Masters, the Evil Ones, the Servants of
PentAgon, Lord of Chaos and Scourge of the World."

Steve did his best to keep a serious face.  'Fascinating.

Back in the Federation we think we are the good guys.  You are the ones
who brought about the Holocaust that wrecked the blue-sky world."

'I know nothing about this Holocaust or the blue-sky world of which you
speak."

'Oh, come on,' insisted Steve.  He swept an arm across the landscape.

'This is the blue-sky world!  You burned the cities and laid waste the
land.  That's what we call the Holocaust.  It was you, the Mutes who
poisoned the air 'and drove us to take shelter within the
earth-shield!"  'No, you are wrong,' said Cadillac.  'It was PentAgon
who unleashed the War of a Thousand Suns through you, his servants.

That war destroyed the Earth and almost every living thing upon it.

We, the She-Kargo and our soul-brothers and sisters now known as the
Plainfolk, were spared.  We were chosen by Mo-Town to grow strong in
body and great in number, to guard the Earth until the coming of
Talisman."

'Look,' reasoned Steve, 'we both can't be right.  I know what
happened.

It's all recorded in our archives.  What proof have you got that what
you say is the truth?"

'The proof is on the tongues of our wordsmiths.  The history of the
clan M'Call is sealed forever in the fire songs of our people."

Steve laughed.  'I don't believe it.  I don't care if Mr Snow is the
greatest wordsmith of all time.  Nobody can remember everything that's
happened in the last nine hundred years] It's impossible.  The Amtrak
Federation deals in facts billions of bits of verifiable data stored on
silicon chips not a collection of stories made up out of a mish-mash of
old folks memories."

'You use many strange words,' said Cadillac, 'but my mind begins to
grasp their meaning.  Because of the war, many of our people are born
without pockets in their heads.

Their minds cannot hold the past or the knowledge needed for the high
crafts but to some, whom we call wordsmiths, Mo-Town gave the power of
a hundred minds and a thousand tongues."  Cadillac squared his
shoulders and lifted his chin proudly.  'I too have been given this
power.  I know of the valiant deeds of the M'Calls, the history of the
Plainfolk from their beginnings, and the workings of the world.  I have
learned these things from Mr Snow who speaks with the Sky Voices.  You
say you have this Columbus - a thing made with the High Craft which
hold the past of your people ' 'Yes, computer archives,' interjected
Steve.

'The words have a dead sound,' said Cadillac.  'No matter.

If you remember nothing how can you be sure of what these - computer
archives - tell you?"

'That's easy,' replied Steve.  'Computers like Columbus don't forget,
and they don't make things up.  A computer is a machine -' Steve
paused.  'You know what a machine is?"

Cadillac shook his head.

Steve searched their surroundings for something which might explain the
concept.  He pointed at Cadillac's crossbow.  'You see that?  That's a
machine.  It throws bolts.

You could use your hand and arm to throw a bolt but the crossbow throws
it further and faster.  That's why we build machines.  To do things
better and faster than people can do them.  Computers are machines that
think.  Mechanical brains that store information.  "Mechanical" means
machine-like.  You feed in the facts and they remember them.  They also
do all kinds of other things which you wouldn't understand."

'Perhaps it is not necessary to understand these things,' said
Cadillac.

Steve smiled.  'Are you kidding?  When we started, the Amtrak
Federation was little more than a hole in the ground.  Now, thanks to
the First Family and Columbus, we have twelve bases with more building,
linked by linear-drive monorails.  We have two-way video, geo-thermal
power, hydroponic farms with automated weather systems, lasers, powered
flight, the technological know-how to do whatever we want and you
you're still in the stone age."

Cadillac smiled.  'And yet, in spite of these marvels, here you are."

It was the kind of observation Mr Snow would have made and it pleased
Cadillac immensely.

'A lucky shot,' said Steve.

'And the other cloud warriors that fell?"

'Freak weather plus a few bad breaks.  None of that makes any
difference.  It's time you faced up to the facts.  No one can resist
the power of the Federation.  You've seen what The Lady can do.  We
have twenty wagon trains like that and we're building more all the
time.  Ten years from now we'll have a hundred.  In twenty, we'll have
way-stations from coast to coast.  We'll be unstoppable.  We are the
future.  You are the past that's about to be swept away.  You're living
in a make-believe world - Sky Voices, Mo-Town, Names of Power ...

you've all been swallowing too much Dream Cap. I don'iknow where Mr
Snow got his version of history from but, believe me, it didn't happen
like that."

'Are you not sand-burrowers?"  countered Cadillac.  'Do you not live in
the Dark Cities beneath the Great Desert of the South?"

'They're not dark,' replied Steve.  'How many times do I have to tell
you?!  We have electricity.  Neon tubes.  Long sticks that give off
light like the sun."

'They cannot banish the darkness in the mind,' said Cadillac.  'This is
what we mean when we speak of the Dark Cities.  The truth stands in the
words of the Plainfolk.  After the War of a Thousand Suns, Pent-Agon
and his servants you, the sand-burrowers - were buried beneath the
earth as punishment for your crimes against the world."

'We must have been let off for good behaviour,' said Steve lightly.