Gus gave him a stunned look. ‘But – I mean – why would –?’
‘Good question,’ replied Baxter. ‘All I can tell you is that little item won’t be reported to Grand Central. It’ll just be a straight PD/ET entry like Brickman’s.’
‘Wow…’ breathed Gus. ‘Nine Skyhawks down in one day. If the Federation’s going to lick these Plainfolk Mutes into shape we’re going to have to do better than this.’
‘Damn right we are.’ Baxter stood up from the table. Gus leapt to his feet. The F.O.O. eyed him. ‘I should warn you that if that jam in your rifle turns out to have been caused by faulty rounds you could draw a spell in the tank. “Negligence while on active duty”.’
Gus stiffened to attention. ‘Yes, sir, I’m aware of that, sir. It would mean that you’d be the only one aboard capable of flying forward air patrols.’
Baxter’s expression did not change. ‘I’ll bear that in mind when I receive the armourer’s report. Dismiss.’
Gus saluted smartly, turned on his heel and left.
In the forest, Clearwater watched with bated breath as a group of She-Wolves clambered up through the branches to the wrecked arrowheads. The bodies of the cloud warriors were cut free from their retaining straps and dropped unceremoniously to the ground. An attempt was made to dismantle bits of the aircraft. Various wires and control leads were ripped out but the larger items proved difficult to dislodge. Most of the scavenging Mutes contented themselves with pieces of the metallic blue solar cell fabric.
Returning to earth with their trophies they gathered round the two dead cloud warriors and watched as their visored helmets and clothes were removed. The pale, olive-pink bodies were almost hairless. A jostling crowd of spectators gathered to view the bodies then the heads of the sand-burrowers were hacked off and mounted on stakes outside the hut which Clearwater shared with three of her clan-sisters.
Ultra-Vox, the leader of the tree-climbing expedition, gravely presented one of the cloud warrior’s helmets to Clearwater. It was a tribute, in recognition of the powers she had summoned forth to bring them tumbling from the sky.
Clearwater squatted outside her hut between the heads of the cloud warriors with the prized helmet cradled in her lap. She felt drained by the power that had passed through her but, this time, she had not been weakened to the point of collapse. Even though Mr Snow had said that the Sky Voices had chosen her to receive this priceless gift she was still afraid of the mysterious strength that now lurked within her. She was also troubled by the striking resemblance between her own body, and Cadillac’s, and those of the sand-burrowers. Their young faces which now stared sightlessly from the stakes on either side of the doorway had the same even teeth; the same slim jaw. It was as if they had been cast from the same mould. She knew she should have felt elated by this victory but she did not. She felt saddened and confused. It was as if, with their deaths, part of herself had died. And the fact that she had fallen prey to such thoughts disturbed her even more.
Buck McDonnell, the Trail Boss, led the cheers as the front wagons of The Lady rolled up the now-dry mud slope onto the bank of the Now and Then River. Fifteen minutes later, the two sections were hitched together and she was ready to roll. With only one wingman to provide cover, over sixty wounded linemen and another thirty-seven lying under the floor in body-bags, Hartmann decided to head back to one of the main way-stations to seek assistance and await reinforcements. He ordered Captain Ryder, the Navigation Exec to set course for Kansas.
When Roz Brickman recovered consciousness some ten minutes after hitting the floor she found herself undergoing a detailed examination by the Assistant Chief Pathologist at Inner State U. Both wounds had ceased to bleed and the agonising pain had been reduced to a dull ache. The A.C.P. observed that the upper right cranium had been scored by a ribbed metal object and, by means of a probe, was able to establish that her right biceps brachii and the surrounding epidermis had been pierced laterally. Close inspection of the entry and exit points revealed that the wound had probably been caused by the passage of a pointed metal rod approximately one centimetre in diameter with four small vanes at the tip. A similar object could have caused the scalp wound.
Despite a thorough search of Unit 18 and a body check of the students and staff present when the accident occurred, no such object was found, nor was anything else that might have caused a similar injury. The right sleeve of Brickman’s lab coat was also found to be intact. Neither the Assistant Chief Pathologist, nor anyone else associated with the preliminary investigation was able to explain how any object could have passed through Roz Brickman’s arm without first passing through the woven fabric of the surrounding sleeve.
Eight hours after collapsing, no trace of either injury could be discerned. Roz was hospitalised and kept under observation for twenty-four hours and a confidential report on the incident was transmitted to the White House. The Amtrak Executive responded immediately by despatching two special investigators, one male, one female. Despite skilful and outwardly sympathetic interrogation Roz did not reveal the terrifying visions that had assailed her, especially the last one in which she felt herself falling out of the sky. After a final examination of her now-healed arm and head, the two investigators returned to the White House.
On the following day, Roz learned that the incident file had been closed. She was formally discharged from the intensive care unit and told to resume her course studies. When she rejoined her class, she found that – apart from asking how she felt – her fellow students were unwilling to discuss the incident. Roz didn’t mind. She didn’t want to talk about it either. It was too dangerous. Who would believe that she knew, with utter certainty, that her kin-brother had been hit by a crossbow bolt? Had crashed. Been injured, and was now in the hands of the Plainfolk…
THIRTEEN
When Steve recovered consciousness, he found himself lying in semi-darkness, wearing only his underpants, on a layer of furry animal skins. His air-conditioned sense of smell was immediately overwhelmed by the strange odours. He tried to close his nostrils to filter out the foulness that hung on the air but could not prevent it entering his lungs. He gagged silently; felt nauseated.
A small, lean-bodied Mute with long, braided white hair knelt over him, tending the wound in his scalp. Still woozy, Steve raised his head far enough to glance down at his body. His chest, both shoulders and his upper arms were bandaged; his left leg was held, from thigh to heel, in a rudimentary splint. Beyond it, sitting crosslegged on a buffalo skin, was the straight-limbed Mute who had pulled the bolt out through his arm. He met Steve’s eyes with the same impassive expression he had worn when rescuing him from the burning cropfield.
Steve laid his head back on the furs. He let out a long sigh and coughed, trying to clear the rising bile from his throat. The environmental stink hung so thick on the air it seemed to have coated his tongue; filled every pore.
‘Welcome back,’ said the old Mute.
The shock of hearing the Mute speak the same language in a clear, comprehensible voice brought Steve’s senses back in a rush. Stung by the sudden realisation of what was happening to him, he jerked his head away from the old Mute’s ministering hands. It was an automatic reflex. All Trackers knew that Mutes had diseased skin which, if touched even briefly, caused your own body to rot.
The old Mute sat back on his heels with a patient sigh. ‘Don’t you want me to fix your head?’
‘There’s no point,’ muttered Steve. ‘If you touch me, I’ll die anyway.’
The old Mute’s weathered face creased into a smile. He chuckled into his beard then jerked his head at the straight-limbed Mute. ‘Hold this nit-wit down, will you?’
Cadillac uncrossed his legs and knelt on the opposite side of Mr Snow’s patient. He placed one hand firmly on the cloud warrior’s chin, and the other on the crown of his head. The warrior’s lack of self-control had been a great surprise. He seemed terrified, his eyes rolled wildly, but he was unable to put up much of a struggle because
of his injuries. Were all sand-burrowers like this? Maybe, thought Cadillac, their courage has been swallowed up by their powerful sharp iron. If so, the Plainfolk had nothing to fear.
‘I’ll give him five threads of Dream Cap,’ muttered Mr Snow. ‘That should quieten him down a bit.’ He addressed the cloud warrior. ‘You’re a very mixed-up young man.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw the white-haired Mute rummage amongst various bags and baskets, finally producing a small skin pouch from which he extracted a few short strands of a greyish-brown substance between thumb and forefinger. He held them out to Steve. ‘Chew this.’
Cadillac forced the cloud warrior’s mouth wide open. Mr Snow inserted the shredded dose of Dream Cap, then Cadillac clamped the warrior’s jaw shut.
‘Okay, don’t chew it,’ grumped Mr Snow. ‘It makes no difference. You’ll have to swallow it eventually.’
Steve held out for about a minute then relented. He chewed the strands briefly then steeled himself to swallow them. The taste was strange, but not unpleasant. Ahhgh, what does it matter? he thought bitterly. He was going to die anyway. The idea that he might somehow escape death, his confused appeal for help in the cornfield, had been part of a pain-filled fantasy. Someone, probably the old Mute, had tended his injuries with unsuspected medical skills but it didn’t make sense… unless they were saving him for the big event. The Annual Torture Stakes – which he was no doubt destined to win by a head. Terrific…
In spite of such dire prospects Steve began to find that his anxiety was fading. The pain from the broken parts of his body was also gradually easing. He felt agreeably lightheaded; weightless; could no longer feel the ground beneath him. He didn’t feel like struggling any more. He just lay back and let himself float.
Cadillac let go of the cloud-warrior’s head. He sat back on his heels and watched Mr Snow carefully unwrap the bandage on his patient’s right arm. He peeled off a mash of red leaves and examined the raw, gaping wound. ‘Hmmphh… he’s lucky it was one of your bolts. If it hadn’t been clean…’
‘Is it bad?’ asked Steve, in a faraway voice.
‘It’ll take a while to heal, but it’s clean. Whether or not you’ll recover the full use of your arm is up to you but at least you’ll have something to hang your right hand on. Okay… hold still.’ Mr Snow used a sliver of wood to poke a fresh mash made from pulped herbs into both ends of the hole and bound up the wound.
Steve eyed the straight-limbed Mute. His attention was fixed on what the old guy was doing. Steve looked back over his head and saw, to his right, a yellow flame flickering in a small hollowed-out stone. He took closer stock of his surroundings. The three of them were in a low eight-sided hut made out of wood and what he presumed were animal skins. The light poles that edged each panel curved over some five feet off the ground and sloped inwards to meet its neighbours in the centre of the shallow pitched roof. The poles fitted into a wooden ring which was open in the centre and was evidently some type of flue; no doubt to provide badly-needed ventilation. There were a number of untidy bundles and baskets piled round the inside edge but nothing that Steve could recognise as furniture. Compared with the ordered, antiseptic layout of his shack on the quarterdeck of the Academy the hut was, frankly, a mess.
Steve could hear voices and sounds of activity coming from outside the hut. And music of a kind he had never heard before but which recalled the wind whips used in the attack on The Lady. It had a strange, haunting quality that reached deep into his psyche, evoking a troubling response. He turned his attention back onto the young Mute kneeling by his left side and noticed that he only had four fingers and one thumb on each hand. Steve’s mood was too detached to ponder deeply on the significance of this discovery but it occurred to him that, apart from his long hair, the only physical feature that distinguished the Mute from himself-or any other Tracker – was the random pattern of black, brown, dark-cream and olive-pink that covered his skin.
The old, white-haired, bearded Mute was a true six-fingered lumphead with an uneven row of tumour-like bone growths across his forehead. His vari-coloured skin was further disfigured by strange knotted patches on his arms and cheekbones but, contrary to what Steve had been led to expect, the old Mute’s eyes sparkled with intelligence – as did those of his young companion.
‘What’s wrong with the rest of me?’ asked Steve, as the old Mute completed his skilled inspection of Steve’s injuries.
‘You’ve got a simple fracture of the left shin-bone, a badly sprained ankle, at least three cracked ribs, severe bruising of the left shoulder and a slight dent in your skull. You may have what used to be called a hairline fracture. In the Old Time, there were things for looking through bones but they don’t exist anymore.’
‘X-ray machines,’ said Steve.
The old Mute nodded. ‘Is that what they were called?’
‘They still are,’ replied Steve. ‘All the medical centres of the Federation have them. We’ve got all kinds of electronic scanning equipment.’
‘I see, well, you’re going to have to get by without all that,’ said Mr Snow. ‘Not to worry. Your brain’s still in one piece.’
Steve lay on the furs, his body limp, unresisting. ‘Feels like it’s leaking out of my ears.’
‘That’s the Dream Cap,’ said Mr Snow. ‘It’s good stuff. Helps you to loosen up.’
Steve nodded. ‘We have pain killers too. Small pills called Cloud Nines.’
Cadillac looked surprised. ‘You have clouds in your burrows?’
‘No, of course not. Clouds are part of the blue-sky world. And let’s get one thing straight. We don’t live in burrows. Those are for animals. We live on bases – like big cities. In clean quarters with plenty of room, light, fresh air.’ Steve waved his left hand limply. ‘A heck of a lot better than this lousy dump.’
Mr Snow had never heard the words ‘lousy dump’ before but he guessed their meaning from the tone of the cloud warrior’s voice. ‘Tell me,’ he said affably. ‘Do you have a name?’
‘I’ve got a name and a number,’ answered Steve. ‘29028902 Brickman, S.R. or, if you prefer to be less formal, Steven Roosevelt Brickman.’
Cadillac repeated the number with awe. ‘29028902… Talisman! That is a powerful number! More than all the raindrops in the sky. More than all the stars in Mo-Town’s cloak.’ He looked at Mr Snow. ‘Did you know there were so many people under the earth?’
Mr Snow did not answer. He turned to Steve. ‘This number, and the names you bear. What do they mean?’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at,’ said Steve. ‘They’re just names.’
‘No name is just a name,’ replied Mr Snow quietly. ‘Every word has meaning. There must be a reason why you were given this number and these names.’
‘Ahh, I get it,’ said Steve. He continued to gaze up at the flickering light on the roof of the hut. ‘29028902 is my personal identification number. The number on my ID Card–’ His hand went automatically to the appropriate chest pocket then he remembered that he’d been stripped of everything except his underpants.
‘ID Card?’ queried Cadillac.
‘My identity card,’ explained Steve. ‘It’s to let people know who I am.’
‘Do you not know who you are?’
‘Yes, of course I do. The card is to prove I am who I say I am.’
Cadillac’s puzzlement increased. ‘But – why would you say you were someone else? Are you not known to your clan-brothers and sisters?’
I’m talking to an idiot, thought Steve. ‘Look–’ he began, then gave up. ‘Forget that. The real reason we have a card is so that we can access the services controlled by Columbus. It’s a big computer–’
‘Computer?’
‘A word from the Old Time,’ observed Mr Snow.
‘A machine that runs things/ explained Steve. ‘With thousands of access points all over the Federation. That’s why you need a number. You feed your card into a slot and the number and other magnetic data
on it is passed to Columbus. That’s how it knows who you are. With the help of the computer you can – depending on your credit rating – access all kinds of services: food, databanks, transit systems, video-communications. Your number allows you to establish an interface. You can’t exist without it.’
Cadillac nodded thoughtfully. ‘So many strange words, strange ideas. I cannot get my mind round them.’
‘His world is not ours,’ said Mr Snow. ‘It will take time to understand these things.’ He turned to Steve. ‘Tell us about your names.’
‘Steve – Steven is my Family name, given to me when I was born by the President-General; Roosevelt is the name of the base where I live – “Roosevelt Field”. Brickman is my kin-folk name. The name of my guardians.’
‘Guardians?’ Mr Snow raised his eyebrows. ‘Were you kept as a prisoner on this – base?’
Steve replied with a wry laugh. ‘No. My guardians were the two people assigned to look after me when I was born.’
‘Do you not have an earth-mother and father?’ asked Cadillac.
Steve did not fully understand the question. ‘My guard-mother carried me for the first nine months of my life. My father was the President-General. Head of the First Family. The father of all life within the Federation.’
‘President-General – is this the name you give to your chief elder?’ asked Cadillac.
‘No, that’s his title. His name is George Washington Jefferson the 31st.’
‘If he is more powerful, why does he have less numbers than you?’
Steve smiled. ‘It’s a different kind of number. He doesn’t need an ID Card. He is the thirty-first Jefferson to head the Amtrak Federation. The Jeffersons have run things from the very beginning. They were the beginning. That’s why they’re called the First Family.’ The words tripped off Steve’s tongue. ‘They gave us the light, and the air we breathe, they invent things, they design our cities, they can do anything. They taught Columbus everything it knows. They are our leaders, our teachers, our counsellors, our guides on the path to the Blue-Sky World.’ End of lesson. ‘The President-General is their chief elder. The top man.’
Cloud Warrior Page 19