Death-Bringer

by Patrick Tilley

  Recruiting the D’Troit to do the spade work was part of that plan. The present fragmented nature of the Plainfolk which led to clans of the same blood-line fighting each other was pointless and unproductive. And the trading arrangements under which each clan annually supplied varying-sized groups of ‘volunteer’ slave-workers was an inefficient way of meeting the constant demand for labour.

  They killed each other in the same haphazard way. There was no master plan. Warriors who triumphed in a clash of arms did not go on to plunder the settlement of the losers. The victorious clan did not occupy its rival’s land or slaughter the survivors. It did not even attempt to enslave them. The winners simply went home and composed fire-songs which extolled their prowess!

  Part of the problem was the vastness of the territory at their disposal. There was too much land and too few people. And because the inhabitants were savages with a simple life-style, they did not need to exploit the land’s resources. There was enough room for everyone, an abdundance of game and more raw material than anyone could possibly need. There was no need to conquer each other. Mutes fought each other because they were wedded to the warrior ethic. It was a test of courage, part of the process of natural selection. Very laudable. But all that ferocious energy should not be allowed to go to waste. It should be directed towards a loftier goal, not frittered away on inconsequential skirmishes.

  The Yama-Shita planned to provide that sense of direction by unifying the disparate clans of the D’Troit and C’Natti bloodlines and creating two vassal states. Armed and advised by the Yama-Shita, they would then subjugate their hated rivals, the She-Kargo, and the other lesser bloodlines. When this had been done, they would levy annual tributes in the form of raw materials and able-bodied males and females. Punitive tributes which would force this race of savages to toil from dawn till dusk instead of idling their days away with smoke-filled dreams. Work would be their saviour, not some invisible being called Talisman.

  As patrons and protectors of the D’Troit and C’Natti, the Yama-Shita family would be the sole conduit for this new flow of materials and labour. It would generate unimaginable wealth – but only if each move was carefully planned. The treasonous acts of Lord Hirohito had robbed the family of its exclusive right to trade with the grass-monkeys. Licences had been awarded to its southern neighbours, the Ko-Nikka and Se-Iko but it was Yama-Shita who controlled the entrances to the Great Lakes and it was their navigators who knew what course to steer through the deeps and shallows. They had the know-how and the contacts, and their fleet of giant wheel-boats dwarfed the vessels owned by the Ko-Nikka. The Se-Iko, whose domain was land-locked, only possessed river craft. For this first trip they had been obliged to lease two boats and their crews from the Yama-Shita at exorbitant rates. Both families had placed orders for larger vessels but the Ko-Nikka’s shipwrights – who lacked the expertise needed to construct such large vessels–were still wrestling with the problem of how to lay out the bilges.

  Sakimoto was content to let them stew in their own juice. The family’s former allies had broken ranks in return for a share of the Great Lakes trade and now they were learning that there was more to it than a pretty piece of paper with the Shogun’s seal on it. The Yama-Shita still had the edge on its new partners and they both knew that without its assistance their own crews might return empty-handed.

  From the signals coming into Sara-kusa, it appeared that some of the wiser heads in both domains were already regretting the hasty leap onto the Shogun’s coattails. If these veiled contacts were inspired by feelings of guilt then he, Aishi Sakimoto, intended to exploit such sentiments to gain whatever advantage he could. Given their recent turn-about, he could not take them into his confidence and it was not necessary. They would serve his purpose better by remaining independent witnesses. They would be able to testify that the fighting at the trading post broke out between the rival Mute bloodlines and it was only when the conflict appeared to be getting out of hand that the Yama-Shita family felt obliged to intervene in order to separate the warring factions and protect the Iron Masters trapped on shore. And if, in the course of establishing a cease-fire, one faction suffered heavier casualties than the other then that would be regrettable but unavoidable.

  This had been Lord Hirohito’s plan, and it was a good one. In making it, he had not been inspired by any particular animosity towards the She-Kargo. On the contrary. Their pre-eminence was something to be admired. He had simply decided to back the D’Troit and the C’Natti because their burning desire to become the paramount bloodlines of the Plainfolk would tempt them into an alliance with the Yama-Shita.

  But with his death at the hands of the white witch, the subjugation of the She-Kargo was no longer just the initial phase in the economic development of the Western Plains. It had become an act of vengeance.

  And the first tribute to be exacted by the new vassal states on behalf of their master would be the heads of the Clan M’Call.

  The M’Calls were also at the top of the hit-list drawn up by the leaders of the Amtrak Federation. The narrow escape of the wagon-train known as The Lady from Louisiana in the Battle of the Now and Then River in June 2989, and the subsequent disastrous attack which destroyed a third of its wagons and crew in the November snows of 2990 had badly dented the Federation’s image of invincibility.

  It was a challenge that could not be ignored. Such spirited resistance by sub-human savages could not go unpunished. The Clan M’Call, the group responsible for this outrage, had to be crushed. Ground into dust as an example of what happened to those who resisted the might of the Federation.

  The decision to annihilate the clan had been the easy part. The difficulties lay in its implementation. The M’Calls were led by an individual called Mr Snow – said to be one of the most powerful summoners ever born into the Plainfolk.

  The ability to summon invisible forces present in the earth and sky – dynamic energy which flowed through their bodies and was shaped and directed by their minds – was one of three attributes possessed by certain ‘gifted Mutes’. Their rarity was something to be thankful for; the ability to summon hurricane-force winds, ‘sky-fire’ and ‘earth-thunder’, and to levitate rocks weighing up to half-a-ton was the most spectacular and dangerous form of what had come to be known as ‘Mute magic’.

  Summoners, seers – those gifted with the power to read the past and foretell the future with the aid of seeing-stones – and wordsmiths – those born with prodigious memories – displayed mental abilities that belied their primitive appearance and life-style. They were highly intelligent, and the powers they possessed – or could call upon – defied all rational explanation.

  In due course an answer would be found through the rigorous application of the recognized laws of physics, but in the meantime, faced with something they could not master or understand, the First Family had officially decreed that there was no such thing as Mute magic. Any public utterance to the contrary was a Code One offence – punishable by death, and any overground unit that found itself on the receiving end of Mute magic could not use it as an excuse for failing to achieve its operational objectives.

  Draconian measures which had been ruthlessly enforced. And with good reason. Maintaining a high degree of motivation among units exposed to a hostile environment for months at a time in distant work-camps and way-stations was no easy task. And that included the elite troops known as Trail-Blazers who crewed the wagon-trains. Totally dedicated and highly disciplined, the Trail-Blazer Division was a cross between the battle-hardened WW2 generation of US Marines and the Waffen-SS of the same period. But even they had been known to lose their grip when confronted by the awesome powers unleashed by a summoner able to call upon the Seven Rings of Power.

  Mr Snow, known as The Storm-Bringer, was one such individual – perhaps the only one of his kind among the Plainfolk. Thanks to the efforts of Steve and Roz Brickman, Mr Snow’s protégée, Clearwater, was now in the hands of the Federation. Well, almost. To be more precise, she was in
the intensive care ward of the mobile field hospital hitched to the Red River wagon-train now heading south out of Nebraska.

  Clearwater, on past form, was rated as potentially even more dangerous than Mr Snow, but after suffering massive wounding followed by major surgery she was now under continuous sedation and, in the short term, was not judged to be a threat while in transit aboard Red River or to the Federation where the research staff of the Life Institute were eagerly awaiting her arrival.

  That left Mr Snow, summoner and wordsmith of the Clan M’Call, and his other young pupil, Cadillac Deville, apprentice wordsmith and seer. Their capture (at planning level it was called ‘their removal from the equation’) was to be the final phase in OPERATION SQUARE-DANCE, masterminded by Commander-General Ben Karlstrom.

  Karlstrom, a close relative of the President-General, was the Operational Director of AMEXICO, the covert operations unit formed to carry out assignments initiated directly from the Oval Office – currently occupied by George Washington Jefferson the 31st.

  In late 19th century terms, AMEXICO combined the functions of the American CIA, the Gestapo of Germany’s Third Reich and the British SAS. Intelligence-gathering, state security, commando-style forays and ‘judicial terminations’ in parallel to, but without the knowledge of, the recognized military police and army intelligence units. Its agents – known as mexicans – operated within the subterranean nation-state ruled by the First Family and the blue-sky world above, and its existence was the best-kept secret in the Federation.

  The nine members of the Supreme Council were officially aware of the general nature of the organization but they did not know the manpower it employed, the resources it could call upon or the scope of its activities. Only Jefferson the 31st and Karlstrom knew the full score. Others could only speculate. AMEXICO was the President-General’s private army and the impenetrable cloak of secrecy was essential because it was sometimes called upon to eliminate potentially troublesome members of the First Family.

  To some readers, it may seem strange that disaffection of any sort could exist in an enclosed totalitarian state in which every aspect of the environment and its soldier-citizen’s lives was controlled with military precision and computerized efficiency from Day One. But such was the case. Any reader with direct experience of the armed forces or the electronics industry will know that ‘military precision’ and ‘computerized efficiency’ are mythical states which bear little relation to what either system is able to deliver.

  All monolithic power structures staffed by human beings are bound to be less than perfect – especially one reliant on advanced technology – and the Federation was no exception. Nine hundred years of relentless regimentation had failed to produce a First Family version of ‘Soviet Man’. People at every level of the command structure still screwed up and systems crashed with unfailing regularity. Depending on your attitude towards what the First Family was trying to achieve this was either a matter of grave concern or grounds for celebration. Proof of the indestructibility of the human spirit; a ray of hope for the future of mankind.

  The founding Father, George Washington Jefferson the 1st, had known this basic truth when he laid the foundations on which his vision of the future was to be built. ‘Only people fail, not the system’, was one of his two Delphic utterances emblazoned on every available wallspace throughout the Federation and echoed daily on the nine public video channels. A phrase of cunning simplicity which had helped to preserve the status quo by deflecting the blame for any shortcomings in the system back onto the individual who raised his voice in protest against the measures taken in its name.

  To prevent these isolated cranks spreading their disaffection like a virus through the body politic over which they presided, the First Family had installed a number of fail-safe systems. By the spring of 2991, these included an acoustic surveillance system code-named HYDRA under which their entire underground empire had been wired for sound.

  Any location, at any level, could be monitored by keying its coordinates into a command console. It was possible for human operators to listen in to conversations but the sheer logistics made that impractical. Most of the eavesdropping was controlled by COLUMBUS using a given hit-list of suspects and hourly random samplings known as ‘sound sweeps’. Ordinary conversations were monitored but not recorded: it was only when a speaker used a word or phrase listed in a ‘subversive vocabulary’ that the reels started turning. The taped conversations were then subjected to computer analysis, classified into various categories according to the nature of the conversation and graded in terms of ‘arrestability’. It was only when this sifting process had been completed, that the daily residue of hard cases – known as the action list – was displayed on the screens of the operatives at HYDRA Central.

  But the system, and its handlers, missed the big one.

  Despite HYDRA and the nation-wide network of undercover agents the Family were caught totally off-guard by the protest strike mounted by the crews of the Federation’s wagon-trains. Organized and led by their executive officers it had none of the characteristics of a popular uprising led by dissidents, but it was, nevertheless, a rebellion; the first serious challenge to the authority and wisdom of the First Family for over six hundred years.

  The protest, which was confined to Trail-Blazers on active duty aboard the trains, was disciplined and unpublicised and the divisions’s so-called grievances were conveyed to CINC-TRAIN in a coded message signed by twenty wagon-masters and their executive officers out of the Federation’s fleet of twenty-one. Only the name of Red River – Amtrak’s flagship – was missing from the roll.

  The protesters had two demands. First, official recognition of the existence of Mute magic. If, for reasons of state, this could not be made public then it was to be admitted in secret session to the wagon-train fraternity by representatives of the First Family. Second, the disciplinary charges brought against Commander Bill Hartmann and the executive officers of The Lady – which had arisen from their inability to combat the power of a Plainfolk summoner – were to be dropped. All crew members were to be fully exonerated and returned to active duty in their previous posts without loss of seniority to privileges.

  There was no ‘or else’ but with 95% of its wagon-train force ranged solidly behind the protest, the White House decided to roll with the punch. In a hurriedly-prepared videocast beamed exclusively to the wagon-trains, Jefferson the 31st agreed to the rebel’s requests within forty-eight hours of their receipt.

  It was an unprecedented concession; the first time an organized protest had not been brutally crushed, but it was also a victory for both sides. The First Family had been wrestling with the problem of Mute magic for the last two hundred and fifty years.

  The decision to deny its existence had been taken by a long-dead and buried Supreme Council. At the time, it had not been a problem. It was the Southern Mutes who had then been the enemy. The rumoured existence of summoners had been reported by FINTEL, but on the few occasions where their presence had been suspected, their intercession had failed to halt the advance of the Federation.

  The Family had therefore concluded that the alleged power of these individuals did not pose a serious threat to future operations. The danger came from uncontrolled rumours and wild speculation about Mute magic within their own ranks. But instead of ending all ill-informed discussion of the subject, the imposition of sanctions had merely driven it underground.

  With the move north into Plainfolk territory the nature of the conflict had changed. The days of easy victories were over and the earlier blanket denial of Mute magic had left the present leaders of the First Family on the hook. This was a chance to slide off it and score a few Brownie points in the process.

  Given the latest situation reports from Wyoming and Nebraska, the call for the reinstatement of Commander Hartmann and his crew could not have come at a more opportune moment. Conceding to the rebel’s demands provided the First Family with an opportunity to bring its secret OPERATION SQUAR
E-DANCE to successful conclusion.

  That fact would only become apparent with hindsight, but it did not mean that all would be forgiven and forgotten. Hartmann and his executives had been the catalyst which caused a simmering discontent to crystallize into open rebellion. The protest might have been restrained, short-lived and totally justified, but it was a direct challenge to the First Family’s inalienable right to rule from the top down.

  What made it worse was the fact that the rebellion had been well-organized and had not been foreseen. Such appalling laxity on the part of security services could not go unpunished. Sooner or later everyone concerned would be dealt with. No one got the better of the First Family and lived to tell the tale. And among the first to learn that harsh lesson would be the crew of The Lady from Louisiana.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Commander James Fargo, the wagon-master of Red River, had seen plenty of Mutes at close-quarters during his time on the overground but they had all been dead, dying, or framed in his gun sights. Killing Mutes was what he had been trained to do. He had never once imagined that a day would come when he was required to play host to two live lump-heads. But they were here. Cosseted aboard Red River.

  It was a strange feeling. As far as he knew, this was the first time Mutes had ever sullied the interior of a wagon-train with their poisonous presence, and it was a dubious honour he would have preferred to do without. But orders were orders. Even so, he felt he should have been taken into the confidence of his other guests, a seven-man task-force from the White House complete with their own secure lines of communications. From the moment the two Mutes had come aboard, it was clear they were not true lumpheads and – to judge from the flurry of coded signals flowing between the task force and Grand Central – might be something else entirely.