The Third Eagle

by R. A. MacAvoy

  But it wasn’t fair to claim that the Patish had lied to him. It probably had never occurred to it that Wanbli would object to the drugs. After all, wasn’t he supposed to be a killer? And what do people (of all species) think of killers?

  Killer. Warrior. What enormous, meaningless difference between the words.

  The revivalists had never actually lied to him, either. They had just underestimated his ignorance. No one had come up to him, looked him in the eye and said, “You know we really kill most of the sleepers we catch, don’t you?” That was not the sort of thing anyone would say.

  And the Wacaan had never come out and said he was not permitted to leave the planet and the clan. He had only been careful not to ask.

  What about the betrayals of which Wanbli was the recipient? He stared up at the underside of Guillermo’s web cot and considered. It was both a less and a more painful undertaking.

  Digger. He had thought the Dayflower’s death a betrayal: a negation of their friendship. Without asking, Digger had rejected the thought that Wanbli, the great manipulator, had any power to help him.

  Maybe he didn’t. The list of people Wanbli had not been able to manipulate or even help was growing steadily. Wanbli was willing to admit that if life without Wanbli was unbearable for Digger, life with him in it might also be unbearable.

  But then there was Audry. Sad to say, that was a definite betrayal. Wanbli could forgive her, especially with her so far away, but still…

  Still. She had decided to conceal the truth and force a man with a bad job in a place he didn’t like to leave job and place. If she had told the truth, she might have lost her own job, which she didn’t like either, but which allowed her to take care of her mother and little sister, and would possibly have made her leave the place of her birth.

  So Audry hadn’t acted heroically, but then she did not live with a heroic ideal. Watching the shimmers produced a lot of heroic ideals in a person, but working the shimmers took a lot out of them. No betrayal, really, except to the stored passion Wanbli had dedicated to her. Of which she may have been completely ignorant.

  He was able to wonder, halfway objectively, whether part of her duties had been to bed-partner her boss.

  Even the old toad of a Technical Authority probably believed by now that he had not asked Wanbli to hit him.

  No betrayal. No betrayal anywhere. People trying their best. Soon they would break in and try their best to kill him. Or maybe they’d flood Medical with an anesthetic and dust him neatly in the middle of the sleepers. Sleepers asleep again.

  It wouldn’t be that easy, thought Wanbli. He would not let it be easy, but whatever, it would be no betrayal.

  It came to him with great force that there was no such thing as betrayal. It was all misunderstanding. And there was no such thing as… Something else. Much more important. Something to do with all he’d been saying to Eddie, or to Garland.

  I only need one more piece, he said to himself, and then I’ll know something worth knowing.

  They came to him while he was talking to Victoria; one was black, one was ivory and one was Garland: of the color the sleepers called “red.” “You have met the Reverend Gods-love Thompson and Henry Larssen,” said Garland in Lakota. Or Wacaan. “Each of us represents one group of the Commitment colonists. We have discussed the matter thoroughly and we have no intention of letting them kill you.” The other two nodded.

  Wanbli tried to keep the proper straight face. “I also have no intention of letting them kill me,” he said. “Tell me, though, what is it you plan to do about it? We’ll be caught in the middle of the Big Ball, which is as close as these flyers come to having a home. By the way—are you aware that they are certainly monitoring our conversations from Central?”

  “We are aware of that,” answered the Reverend Thompson, in bad Ceremonial Wacaan. Wanbli did not laugh now, at the sounds coming out of the young man’s throat. Garland said self-consciously, “We of the Native American community voted on a language for our new settlement, and since the Sioux are great in number, it was decided that it be Lakota. Later, when we decided to take people of other origin with us…”

  “It was scarcely charity.” Larssen’s Wacaan was also faulty, but his expression made him eloquent. “You charged us four times what…”

  “I did not mean to imply it was charity. I am only explaining why we can all discuss our future without courting interference from our captors. It is a very good thing”—and Garland fixed a stony gaze on the dissident—“that we did insist on a second shared language.”

  “No argument.”

  The Reverend Godslove Thompson sighed.

  “And as for being in their mother ship, I can only say that people have escaped from equally impossible places. Hostages give one great power.”

  “I am very grateful, certainly,” said Wanbli, leaning companionably against Victoria Whistocken. She was very warm. “But they will probably shoot the air with some sort of sleep drug and haul me off while everyone is sleeping. What then? What can you do about that?”

  Wanbli himself wondered what he was going to do about that, but it felt better to offer it as a challenge to someone else.

  “We also suspected that,” answered Garland, and Henry Larssen cleared his throat. “Mr. Larssen was the first to suggest that as a possibility. Therefore we are having the air system put on emergency: removed from the rest of the ship’s circulation.”

  “Who among you knows how to do that? Is your ship so similar to the Condor?”

  “Not at all. It is the medical attendant who knows, of course. He will tell us.”

  “Gilly? He’ll tell you? I hadn’t thought it of him. These revivalists stick together.”

  Garland smiled. Henry Larssen grinned. The Reverend Thompson did not. “Guillermo went back behind a sheet with Mary Standing-Shoes. This is what the visual monitor saw. He now wears a piece of tape across his mouth and he is communicating by means of paper and pencil. He knows that he must disconnect us, tell us how to disconnect, or die.”

  “I promised Eddie Pierce I wouldn’t hurt old Gilly,” said Wanbli thoughtfully. He put his arm over Victoria’s shoulder in absentminded fashion.

  “And so I hope that you do not,” answered Garland. “It is a terrible thing to break one’s word.”

  “We wouldn’t really kill him,” added Thompson. “I don’t even like this business of threats, but it is an extreme emergency.” He was a very young clergyman, with a heavy manner and a stiff, shy smile.

  “We, however, never promised zip-squat to the buggers.” It was Larssen speaking, and although Wanbli was not familiar with the words “zip-squat” and “buggers” and doubted they were even Wacaan, he understood Larssen perfectly.

  “Can we do this without alerting Central?” asked Wanbli. He was beginning to enjoy the conversation.

  “That’s more difficult.” Garland made a face.

  “Pray God they don’t notice,” said Thompson under his breath. He didn’t seem to mean it as advice.

  “Why don’t we put that responsibility on Guillermo?” asked Victoria. The three sleeper men glanced at her in faint surprise.

  “I mean, think what a great position it will leave us in if they dance in here and think we’re all unconscious! We just tell the little drunken rat that if there’s any sign that the crew knows we’re going off-line, we cut out his bowels and show them to him.”

  “That’s horrid,” said Thompson.

  “I like it,” said Larssen.

  Wanbli liked it too. He felt very comfortable around Victoria. She was not exotic, like Audry, but she had sound ideas.

  “Good so far, Vikki, but then what? You’ve got a dozen or two of revivalists with weapons in here. Surprise or no, what do you do?” Something occurred to him that made him giggle. “Hey! You know, I’ve been training these flyers in self-defense!”

  Victoria’s dark eyes widened. Garland gave a grunt. “And are they any good?”

  “Wretched. Absolutel
y wretched.”

  “Then don’t worry. I have been training my people for over a year—I mean a year three hundred years ago, but yesterday to us. They are not wretched.”

  “Ah.” Now Wanbli understood Medicine-Bear’s emphasis on warriors. “You have your own fighting arts, then?”

  “I teach Hapkido.”

  “In my home, we have a large spiny animal called the stunk, which preys on ratchetts, which are no bigger than the hollow of your hand. The stunk is faster and much stronger, but nine out of ten times, when it chases a ratchett it loses, gets tired and gives up. This is because the stunk has many opportunities for supper and the ratchett only this one for life. In fact, sometimes the ratchett turns and tears the stunk’s feelers off, which is an act of great madness and bravery. I myself would not try to tear off the feelers of a living stunk.

  “When a weaker group takes on a stronger group,” said Wanbli to the assembled sleepers, “it must be like the ratch-ett, or”—and he dragged the word out for suspense—“it must be able to convince the stunk that it is.

  “They must think we are fearsome. They must be convinced we are mad: that life and death mean nothing to us. That we are complete savages.”

  The roar of laughter that greeted Wanbli’s last statement was a complete surprise to him. He looked inquiringly at Victoria, who was as convulsed as the rest.

  “No problem in that, brother,” she called over twenty heads.

  Wanbli didn’t want Victoria to think of him as a brother. It made him feel inhibited.

  “Don’t you mean we really have to be those things?” a man sitting on one of the empty coffins shouted over the noise. “Fearsome, mad, savage?”

  Wanbli considered, shifting from foot to foot. “If you cannot act them well enough, then perhaps you must. I myself would rather keep my madness as a bluff. Intimidation.”

  The questioner—he was one of the horse-symbol people, as was Victoria—made an uncertain sound. “But your own people, Wanbli. Aren’t they taught to be ruthless and fearsome? To kill on command?”

  For a moment Wanbli felt insulted. “We are taught to fight on command, Lucian. It’s a matter of poverty.”

  Now Lucian stood up. “But you have a lot of land. You said so.”

  The discussion seemed to be going far afield, and any minute now the revivalists would move against them. “A small continent, yes, but…”

  “And aren’t there animals on this continent? Isn’t there soil? I don’t think you people are so poor. Not poor at all, in fact.”

  One last time Wanbli tried to explain. “It isn’t so simple. Few of the animals of Neunacht are much good to human stomachs. The deserts of Southbay need a lot of watering before they produce crops. And then they salt up. We used to subsist, in the old days, but a few changes in weather patterns nearly wiped out the settlements. And when we were self-sufficient, it was a poor and strengthless life compared to our neighbor countries. Who themselves are fairly bad off.

  “We have no metals. Poverty isn’t so simple, Luce. In fact…”

  “Poverty is having no land,” shouted Lucian.

  “Poverty is having no string station,” replied Wanbli, slightly heated, and then he stood still, one hand raised in a frozen gesture.

  The irritation smoothed out his face. All expression went. Sixty-eight people sat, slouched or leaned against equipment and watched Wanbli respectfully, for no man wears such a look of blank thoughtlessness unless he is thinking very hard.

  “I have it. I have the other thing.” He whispered these words but then he took one step closer to his audience. “I know the way out of our problems,” he announced, and then he sat down on the lid of a coffin, staring at his own hands and grinning.

  There was rustle and restlessness as the sleepers stared at Wanbli. Garland Medicine-Bear stood up. “As I see it, we have two choices.”

  Wanbli’s head jerked up. “No! Never say that, flyer! That’s half the trouble in life: people believing that there are only a few possibilities. Possibilities are infinite.” Now Wanbli hopped over to the shorter, broader man and spoke to him, not to the audience.

  “Most Wacaan are so willing to believe that: that paths only fork into two. They think there ought to be a right way and a wrong way to go, and when both ways look punishing, they feel cheated, but they choose one of the two.

  “The training of the Third Eagle is to look for forks three, four and five off the path. Or blaze a new path.” He gave Garland a rough little shake.

  “Flyer, I can give you what you want,” he said. He glanced at the puzzled audience: at Lucian. “I can give you what you want. I can give you all what you want, because there is no poverty. No shortage. No poverty at all.”

  “Hallelujah!” shouted Godslove Thompson and all the sleepers echoed. “Hallelujah!” Wanbli did not know the word. He doubted it was Wacaan.

  TEN

  EDWARD PIERCE was always glad to be back on the Ball; he could usually convince himself that the docking was equivalent to planetfall, at least for the first few days. He was glad to be back this time too, because now it was less likely that the red man was going to do the one more stupid thing—who knew what—that might blow them all up. Edward had been worried about that.

  He was not in the good graces of Captain Brezhner. He had not had a good time in the string-com meeting that had decided what the revivalists’ responses would be to the catastrophe introduced by his barbaric protege. But Edward’s anxiety was not for his own sake as he paced the length of his own “home” quarters in the Ball. Edward was not an egoist.

  He was worried about the fate of the sixty-eight unplanned-for, unfeedable people a mile away, locked in one pod of the Condor. He had poked at the computers until his eyes swam in the last three days and now here in the greater facilities of the Ball, to see whether a system of one hundred and eighty people might stretch to care for two hundred and forty-eight. It could not: not for more than three Earth months. And even if it could, most of his own people wouldn’t agree to it. They lived with belts tight enough.

  They would have to be dropped on a planet somewhere. Illegally. Oh shit, illegally. They had all worked so hard to avoid breaking other people’s laws. Unpopular enough already.

  It would have to be some backward or isolationist world with no enforcement treaties, especially with Nashua. And what made it even worse was that you couldn’t expect awakened sleepers to conceal where they had come from and who had dumped them there. They were undoubtedly unhappy with the Condor crew and all the revivalists in general. Awakened sleepers needed to be reeducated. Edward himself had needed it more than most.

  Perhaps they would starve where they were put. Perhaps they would be murdered. About the sleepers, Edward worried.

  But it was for Red that he sweated. Red: boisterous, jolly, elegant in movement, good company and utterly (after all) untamable.

  Red was Edward’s campaign and his great folly. He reminded Edward of a story he had read as a child, about a boy who tried to tame a deer. At first it had seemed to work…

  Edward had volunteered to be the one to kill him. Of course. He had been voted down on that. Everyone knew that Edward, of all the revivalists, had the hardest time when it came to jettisoning a “spoiled” crew. Someone from the Big Ball would do it. Someone who had never taken one of Red’s classes.

  “Delia,” he whispered, not knowing that he had spoken at all.

  Soon now. Within the hour. Edward sat down in one of the wall chairs and stared at his hands in his lap. There was something unusual about what he saw and his blinking blue eyes narrowed. It was his belly. It was not hanging over his waistband, as it tended to do. He had lost weight. No—he had gained, according to the last weigh-in. It was muscle tone. He flexed his arms and felt muscle tighten beneath his shirtsleeves. For a moment he felt vaguely complacent, and then he remembered how he had gotten that flat belly, those (slightly) swelling shoulders.

  At least his distress—distress of mind, stomach,
bowel and even bladder, real distress—proved one thing. There was an immense difference between a living man and a sleeper.

  One only knew for sure once one had killed both.

  Edward checked the time and rose from the chair, which retreated back into the wall. He would have to be there.

  Twenty revivalists with breathers entered the medical pod the instant the jammed door was forced open. One, a doctor from the Ball itself, had the job of disposing of Wanbli, while the rest were to begin hauling the unconscious crew of the Commitment out to a more practical place of detention. Edward Pierce followed in the rear, wishing he could summon a trace of the anger that had supported him for three days.

  The door closed again behind them all, cleanly this time, and was sealed from the outside. It would be reopened for them only when they could announce that Red was dead. He was too tricky for them to take more chances.

  The limp forms, naked except for the improvised modesty wraps torn from lab smocks and hammock sheets, lay in a disarray that seemed in itself angry. He had watched over the monitor from Central as the occupiers had become aware of the anesthetic being leaked into the air. A few faces had reflected the shock and dismay natural at such a surprise attack, but most of them had erupted into blind fury, throwing bottles at the camera strip which ran along the top of the area wall, shaking fists, making really horrid faces at the monitor, which had begun to fail from this treatment. No one had even thought to try stuffing blankets into the air ducts. It wouldn’t have worked, but that would have been the sensible move.

  Perhaps there really was something to the idea that Indians were primitive.

  Among the various colors of body he could not find the distinctive shade of skin that belonged to Red. It would be easier if they hadn’t fallen in heaps as they had. Dr. Kassik was depending upon Edward to identify him. He had a hypopunch and it would be over very quickly.