Over the centuries since the Holocaust, Mutes had shown themselves to be totally immune to the radiation that blanketed the overground; in fact, they seemed to thrive on it despite the mounting yearly body-counts filed by Trail-Blazer expeditions. Mutes lived, on average, twice as long as Trackers and were said to outnumber them by over fifty to one. At the last census, in 2985, the Tracker population was just under 450,000 – which meant that, if FINTEL had gotten its facts right for once, there were over twenty-two million Mutes spread over the landscape!
Privately, Anderssen found it hard to believe. She was not insensible to certain attractive aspects of the overground but, in general, it was a vast, forbidding place. She had been out there, many times over a period of years, and had never seen more than five or six hundred Mutes at one time. Someone on her staff had found a good name for it. The Big Open. The place was empty! That had been, and still was, her overriding impression. A silent land, where danger lurked, ready to trap the unwary; a sleeping land, waiting patiently over the centuries for the return of its rightful owners. If there were twenty-two million Mutes out there you wouldn’t be able to walk ten yards without tripping over one of them.
Anderssen’s doubt were not shared by Grand Central. Faced with such alarming estimates of the size of the opposition, it was not surprising that the top priority task of the Federation’s overground forces was to bring the total Mute population under control by continuing the programme of pacification that had been launched soon after the Break-Out in 2465. Pioneers from way-stations like Pueblo and Trail-Blazers from the roving wagon-trains – like the one Brickman had served on – played their part by conducting what, in Grand-Centralese, were called ‘fire-sweeps’; scorched-earth operations in which every possible resource that might provide Mutes with food and shelter was methodically destroyed and every animal within range of the patrol’s guns was killed. Mutes, themselves, were at the top of the target list. Whenever the tactical conditions permitted, the young males and females were rounded up to replenish the labour force in the overground work camps; the rest, the old and the very young, were liquidated.
It was a grisly, messy business in which Anderssen herself had participated while working her way up through the ranks. But it had to be done. Everyone knew that. That was what they had been raised to do. In the Federation you obeyed orders. You didn’t ask why. Anderssen was a typical product of the Federation. She was a good soldier; a tough commander. But sometimes she asked herself questions for which there were no easy answers. Questions she had tried repeatedly to dismiss but which kept returning to niggle away at her iron resolution.
Occasionally, the pressures would pile up and become too hard to handle. For those particularly difficult moments when even the honeyed voice of the P-G intoning the Fourth Inspirational was not enough to take the heat off, Anderssen had her own private escape hatch. Taped to the back of the big portrait of George Washington Jefferson the 31st was a precious cache of rainbow grass taken from a cee-bee who had gone to the wall for being dumb enough to be caught trying to smuggle it into the way-station from a wagon-train making its usual quarterly supply run. Officially, the evidence was supposed to have been burned after the summary trial but way-station commanders, if they are sharp, can sometimes fix these things. Anderssen came into this category. Despite her outward, solidly conformist, slightly plodding demeanour, she didn’t miss a trick. In the underground bases within the Federation, even line-colonels had to keep looking over their shoulder. Everyone had to. But in the front line – despite what she had said for Brickman’s benefit – you could bend the rules a little. Well – some of the rules. As Anderssen would occasionally remark in private – why the heck else would a guy break her ass to make colonel?
Only Major Jerri Hiller, Anderssen’s closest companion and the only other woman at Pueblo above the rank of lieutenant was in on the secret. Anderssen had shared the illicit grass with Hiller for close on a year now. It was a Code One offence but she had enough on the blue-eyed Major to know she would not turn rat-fink and call in the Provost-Marshals.
Mutes smoked rainbow grass in pipes. Anderssen didn’t have one. Most Trackers who smoked grass rolled it up in a certain kind of dried leaf. Anderssen also had a supply of those. The inch or so of dead space created by the frame backing made an ideal hiding place. The President-General’s holographic portrait was a permanent fixture in every living- and work-space throughout the Federation. And while similar pictures were addressed thrice-daily by Tracker pioneers intoning the Prayer to the First Family, no one actually looked at it. And it was extremely unlikely that anybody would think of moving the one in Anderssen’s office.
Unless you were the colonel and needed to get to something behind it.
Anderssen lifted the picture frame out of its four wall clips, pulled off the pouch taped to the back then repositioned it. Under the benign gaze of the white-haired President-General, she carefully rolled a leaf around a portion of grass to make what Trail-Blazers called a ‘reaf’, took a hot wire coil from the same pouch, plugged it into a power socket till it glowed red then lit up. She took a deep, calming draw, raised the reaf to Jefferson the 31st in an ironic salute then sauntered through to her sleeping quarters. Dropping the light level down as far as it would go, Anderssen stretched out on her bunk in the semi-darkness and burned off some more grass. She felt a lot happier. The frustrations that had built up inside her after getting the ‘hands-off’ order on Brickman began to fade. What the heck! Let those gold-braided sacks of lumpshit at Grand Central find out the bad news. Maybe it might take the crease out of their pants.
The wall of her bed-space began to change colour and curve outwards. A pleasant numbness spread through her body. The unending pressure of her tightly regimented, claustrophobic existence eased; the problems of maintaining the high level of motivation and discipline required by Grand Central ceased to exist; the bloodstained images of dead lumpheads and mutilated Trackers that littered her own private landscape of death no longer pressed on her inner eye. The octagonal light panels in the low ceiling glowed and sparkled of their own accord; moved upwards away from her – as if she was inside an expanding balloon – then exploded silently into a thousand pieces. The fragments receded; became a carpet of stars.
It was the moment known to Trail-Blazers as ‘tunnelling out’; the Happy Time…
Two days later, following another videogram from Grand Central, three silver-blue Skyhawks with red-tipped wings and a similar craft camouflaged in red, black and brown like the wagon-trains approached Pueblo from the north east and asked for permission to land. Seated in his allotted place at the main console, Deke Haywood tracked them with a wide-angle tv camera; saw them circle above the watch-tower in tight diamond formation then drop down, one by one, to land into the wind on the south side of the bunker.
Deke’s interest was aroused by their appearance. Pueblo had received an equipment update depicting the new Mark Two Skyhawk that was being tested operationally, but this was the first time Deke had seen one for real. Instead of the sweptback inflated wing, these new aircraft had rigid constant chord wings with a straight leading edge, a cruciform tail mounted on a boom above the pusher engine, and a streamlined transparent cover over the previously open cockpit. The whole appearance was sleeker, more powerful, more deadly. The camouflaged aircraft – the last to land – was different again. It had a tubby fuselage pod and as it came into close-up on screen, Deke saw it was a side-by-side two-seater.
The aircraft had been flown off the illustrious Red River wagon-train. Better known by its semi-official nickname of Big Red One, its combat record over the last eighty years was unequalled. It was the Federation’s number one killing machine and every Trail-Blazer with an ounce of ambition aspired to serve aboard her at some time during their overground career.
Wyman, the fair-haired, crew-cut wingman leading the airborne guard detail saluted Anderssen with impeccable precision and handed over the small, floppy-disc file containing a co
py of the orders concerning Brickman’s transfer. Anderssen passed the disc to Jerri Hiller who loaded it into the drive slot of the electronics module that sat under the VDU, ran a validity test, then screened its contents.
Anderssen quickly scanned the one page movement order. The four wing-men from Big Red One were to be Brickman’s escort as far as Roosevelt/Santa Fe. Buried deep under the desert of New Mexico, it was the nearest base linked by shuttle to Grand Central. Brickman was to ride, hooded and chained, in the two-seater. At Santa Fe, Brickman was to be handed over to the Provost-Marshal’s office from where he would proceed to Houston/GC. The skyship he had constructed in captivity was to be sent back aboard the next wagon-train calling at Pueblo.
Steve Brickman leapt to his feet and stood to attention as the door to his cell opened. Three Deputy Provost-Marshals entered; a fourth held himself at the ready in the corridor outside. Two of the Provos carried out the routine check to see that the manacles on Steve’s wrists and legs were still securely fastened; the third, toting the standard lead-weighted rubber truncheon, stayed two paces back ready to deal with any trouble.
Following his initial interview, Steve had found himself in the way-station hospital where he was ordered to strip. After an initial, violent hose-down, he had been throughly scrubbed from head to foot by two masked, rubber-gloved para-medics. They had allowed him to undo his blue ribboned plaits and wash his own hair. He had then been examined in almost total silence by Pueblo’s surgeon-captain. Afterwards he had gotten the same blank wall treatment when he had been issued with clean cotton undergarments, a new pair of combat boots, and a set of black fatigues – the mark of a defaulter. They had a broad diagonal yellow cross on the front and back you could spot a mile off – and which also made a good aiming point. Once dressed, he had been immediately put back into chains and taken down to the cells.
Steve hadn’t given any trouble then and wasn’t planning on causing any now but he was fast becoming extremely pissed off. He had expected a cautious reception at Pueblo but once he had landed and made his identity known he had not expected to be treated like a renegade. Christopher Columbus – he’d come back of his own accord hadn’t he?!
One of the DPs produced the hood and slipped it over Steve’s head, plunging him into total darkness. He felt himself grasped by each arm. ‘Okay, move it.’
Steve was aware of retracing the same route he’d been marched along before. It led to Anderssen’s office. A right turn out of the cell, one hundred paces, a flight of twenty stairs, left turn, thirty paces, into an elevator and up. Could be three floors… hard to tell. Out of the lift, another thirty paces straight ahead, right turn, into some kind of outer office. Stop. Voices, murmuring muffled, tantalisingly indistinct. A second door opening. A faint fragrance permeated the air inside the hood. A sharp command from someone close by. ‘Okay, mister – straighten up!’
The same voice formally reported his presence to Anderssen and he was given the order to stand at ease. Steve did the best he could; the chain between his wrists was not long enough to allow him to put his hands in the regulation position behind his back. He heard his escort march out. As the door shut behind them, the hood was loosened and removed in one swift movement by Major Roscoe, leaving Steve blinking rapidly in the bright light.
Anderssen was seated behind her desk, flanked by the blonde, broad-hipped major she had previously addressed as ‘Jerri’. The last time around, Steve had noticed that the major was packing a size fourteen ass into size twelve trousers. The result was some badly overstressed seams and the kind of shape that could make your attention wander. Steve could not help thinking that, for a unit that was supposed to be run by The Book, it was a curious departure from the rules of dress which stipulated that the standard-issue unisex jump-suits and fatigues should be loose-fitting.
‘Good news, Brickman,’ said Anderssen, with a touch of disdain in her voice. ‘Grand Central has taken over your case. You ship out today for Roosevelt/Santa Fe. By air.’ She saw the change in his expression. ‘Don’t get excited. You’re travelling as a passenger.’
Passenger? Steve’s curiosity was aroused. Since when had there been two-seater Skyhawks?
Anderssen stood up. ‘Good luck, Brickman. I don’t know what it is you’re supposed to have done but I hope you get away with it.’
‘Thank you, sir-ma’am.’
Anderssen nodded at Major Roscoe. ‘Okay, black him out.’ Roscoe pulled the hood down over Steve’s head and tightened the draw-string. The door opened, boots thudded across the floor then Steve was seized by the arms and quick-marched out of the office.
Anderssen turned to her pet major. ‘Jerri, I know Brickman was decontaminated by the medics soon after he got here but I don’t want to take any chances. Christopher knows what kind of contagious filth he might have picked up from the Mutes. I want this office sterilised along with every other place he’s been. Especially his cell. Make sure the floor, walls and ceiling are steam-cleaned and swabbed with disinfectant. The mattress, the quilt, and anything else he’s been handling should be burned.’ She inspected the front and backs of her hands and wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘If I’d known beforehand where he’d been I would never have touched any of his things. Must have had at least six showers in the last two days. Almost scrubbed myself raw.’ She looked up at Hiller. ‘What did he use to eat with?’
‘Don’t worry. It was all disposable. And the air in that cell block is vented separately to the main supply.’
‘Okay. Get on it – including anything I’ve forgotten.’ Anderssen paused reflectively. ‘Actually, after he’d washed out those goddam plaits that long hair of his didn’t look so bad.’
‘No,’ said Hiller. ‘I quite liked it.’
Anderssen reached out and ran her fingertips through the hair over Hiller’s right ear. ‘Maybe you could try growing yours a little longer.’
‘Yes,’ said Hiller. She smoothed her hair back into place. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Steve lost his bearings after leaving Anderssen’s office but he knew he was outside the bunker when he felt the earth under his feet and the smell of the grass filtered through the light-proof vents in his hood.
‘Okay,’ said a voice. ‘Put your feet together and bend your knees forward. We’re gonna lift you into the aircraft.’ Three pairs of hands grabbed hold of him and hoisted him into the air. Another pair of hands guided his feet down under what he visualised was the instrument panel. He felt them touch the floor. ‘Okay, siddown.’
Steve sat. Hands pulled the straps of the safety harness over his shoulders and thighs, clipped them into the quick release buckle then adjusted the tension so that he was held down firmly.
‘Now put your wrists together,’ said the voice.
Steve offered up his manacled wrists. Another chain was passed around his wrists, drawing his hands tightly together and towards the right-hand side of the cockpit. He heard the snap of a padlock closing. ‘Okay. Don. he’s stowed away nice and tight.’
Don …?
Steve aimed his head up to the right. ‘What happens if we have to get out in a hurry?’
A hand patted him on the head and a new voice said, ‘I guess it means that you don’t, good buddie.’
Terrific…
‘Okay, let’s go,’ said the first voice. ‘We’ve done the map plot, so you know the course heading. We’ll fly a loose diamond at three thousand feet. 70 per cent power after climbout. You lead, Don. I’ll take the number two starboard station. Joe, number three to port, Tony, you sit on our tail.’
Steve heard the others murmur their assent. ‘What’s the Santa Fe channel?’ asked a third voice. Steve caught his breath as he recognised it. Come on – it couldn’t be…
‘Tower frequency is Channel Ten. I’ll give you the switch when we clear Pueblo.’
Steve felt someone settling into the left-hand seat. He spoke into the enveloping darkness. ‘Is that you, Don? Don Lundkwist?’
‘Yeah, that�
�s me,’ said the voice, with a hint of surprise. ‘Who’s under there?’
Steve laughed. ‘It’s me! Steve! Steve Brickman.’
‘Christopher Columbus,’ muttered Lundkwist. ‘I thought you were dead! Listen, hold it down – we’ll talk later.’ The electric motor burst into life with a loud vrooomm as she pressed the button on the dash. A few minutes later they were airborne.
How amazing, reflected Steve. Of all people. His escort on the first leg of his journey was to be Donna Monroe Lundkwist. The last time he’d seen her had been in his shack at the Flight Academy on Graduation Day. Lying naked alongside him on the bunk. With his guard-father asleep right beside them in his wheelchair.
A quarter of an hour into the flight, after they’d levelled off, Lundkwist removed Steve’s hood. As his eyes adjusted to the light he saw to his surprise that they were seated under a streamlined plexiglass canopy. All the Skyhawks Steve had ever seen were open cockpit models. He took in the view. The weather was good, the sky blue, with scattered alto cumulus and you could see for ever. In an ordinary Skyhawk, Steve might have been frozen stiff but with a closed canopy and the blower on, they were snugly insulated from the cold, mid-November air. ‘What do they call this thing?’
‘A Skyrider,’ said Lundkwist. She was wearing a white bone-dome with a bold red figure one on either side and she had the dark face-visor raised. Her shoulders were squarer, her face leaner and harder than when he had last seen it. She smiled. ‘You may find this hard to believe but even with the hood on I thought there was something familiar. I felt sure I recognised the hands…
‘You got a good memory.’
‘For some things, yeah…’ Lundkwist gave him a sidelong look then broke away to search the sky ahead.
Steve eyed the silver-threaded Minuteman badge sewn on her tunic, the top award given to the most outstanding senior cadet. It was a sharp reminder that he had been the victim of a shadowy conspiracy. Steve Brickman had set out to come first in his year at the Flight Academy and for three years he had totally dedicated himself to pursuing that goal with relentless determination. Brickman knew that he was the best cadet in his year but instead of being awarded the two highly prized graduation honours and top marks in the final examinations they had gone to Lundkwist. Never mind. He had mastered his disappointment but he had not forgotten or forgiven his humiliation. He now had a new goal that would be just as rewarding. He planned to destroy Lundkwist – and all the others who had conspired to give her the prize that had been rightfully his. Sooner or later, one by one, they would all get it.
First Family Page 4