The horses he both loved and feared knew his game.
Eagle — Paleface in the Superlative — was a Red Indian.
The ponies shared his secret. Eagle had evolved, from the diet of Westerns screened so often aboard Kasiga, a dialect all his own. It had a therapeutic effect both on himself and the horses alike. Zebralegs liked to hear it because it was gentle. Zebralegs respected it because he sensed that Eagle really was a Brave to conceal so much from so many.
So, all along, he had shared the secret.
And now, as Eagle nerved himself for pursuit on horseback, the game must be played. A quick swallow, a palpitating heart, and Eagle was prepared.
Eagle said to Zebralegs, ‘Me Big Eagle, horse play no nonsense on account of I’m terrified, now stand still and don’t fall into the mud, if I had my magnificent string of feathers on my head you’d behave properly, so you and me, we’re gonna imagine I’m all dressed up in war paint, and any rough stuff from you and I’ll prod you with one of my arrows.’
Zebralegs had nothing in particular to say, just squished toward him in the wet clay.
‘That’s my boy, you know a Chief when you see one, and don’t say who’s kidding who? ’cause I’ve got to ride you on the halter — there’s no time to get the tack. Say after me three times; “I’m not a zebra, I’m a horse”, and don’t mumble.’
In reply, Zebralegs blew quietly through his nose, as if to say, Don’t you be too sure, mister, I’ll be what I like, you’re in no position to argue.
Eagle mounted, then swung Zebralegs around by tugging on the starboard loop of the halter. ‘See those guys, Zebralegs? — You and me, let’s work up a real mutual interest in just what the hell they think they’re doing, only for Pete’s sake keep quiet, they seem like they could be real nasty people. Get the idea?’
Zebralegs jacked his ears right forward, as if somehow this might throw more light on the situation. Then he walked quietly out of the paddock.
The tractor moved off.
Eagle said, ‘Zebralegs, wherever they’re heading, we gotta get there first, but none of your crazy shortcuts on the cliff, I’m a coward and what’s more I’m in my pyjamas, I’d feel kinda stupid if we became conspicuous, which we would if I fell off into the creek, get the hang of it? Make this a smooth one and remember you’re a horse, I wish I’d never called you Zebralegs, it’s been giving you ideas …’ And all the time he was patting Zebralegs’ neck affectionately, and saying his lines with a gentle lilt, hell, it didn’t matter what you said to Zebralegs, but it was awful important how you said it.
The cloud-roof blazed momentarily from a paroxysm of sheet lightning, revealing nothing on the slimy clay beneath except rivulets of instant streams transforming the bridle paths into churning waterways.
‘My God, Zebralegs, we lost ’em, now I never saw no hovering UFO, where the hell are they, now control yourself! Zebralegs. Knock it off! I said no short cuts, Me No Want No Mudbath, so where the hell we going? Now look, I’ve always been good to you, right? Never hit you — well I did once but you have to admit you provoked me — but this is crazy, I mean, insane, we’ll never make it down that gully, and how the heck did you know they were making for Upper Creek, I didn’t know, how come you know? and what do they want with an engine in the creek, new don’t you say anything back, you make one false move and we both wind up on those rocks, see them?, right down there, Zebralegs, that’s pretty painful, rocks are hard, get that part right, for Pete’s sake!’
Zebralegs did get that part right. He was sure-footed, and honestly preferred picking his way down that knife-edge of a trek-path. As a matter of fact, Zebralegs had helped make it himself, and his father before him, and that’s why he was alive now, because during the drought there had been fresh water trickling into that creek, and although the water in the creek itself contained a lot of salt, because the new seas had brought it in, Zebralegs’ family had found it possible to hold their heads just below the outlet of the spring, where it made a tiny waterfall, and that way they had managed to drink fresh water, and stay alive.
‘Christ! Zebralegs, we stop right here. And you just tell me what those guys are doing, down in that creek? What are they building? — The Mayflower? — Think we ought to go down there and take a looksee? Now, don’t take any chances, mind. We have to have room to make a turn and get the hell out of there, in such a way that the mud don’t suck us down, get the idea?, and since I don’t see no Canadian Mounted chasing us down here, Zebralegs, you can slow down to about Mach-One and lay off them purple hearts.’
The rain stopped abruptly, as if a burst cloud had collapsed into itself and wrung itself out bone dry. The end of the storm left an ugly, unrequited silence, and Eagle thought, you know what?, that there rain has stopped because something else is scheduled to happen. To Zebralegs he whispered, ‘How’s your nerve?’
*
Big Chief Eagle reverted to being Eagle-100 the moment he saw what he saw.
For he saw Evil.
*
All was now clear. Eagle knew why Sladey had snatched the only spare engine and towed it to Upper Creek.
Abruptly Eagle forgot his fear of riding. Discarding his Apache-on-horseback game forever, he leapt from boyhood to maturity in one move.
‘Down there,’ he said to Zebralegs — and gave a firm tug on the halter. Zebralegs necked-around to the right and obeyed.
*
Upper Creek comprised a sharply concave crater tooled out of the landscape by a subterranean shift. Cone-shaped, it was drilled all the way down to the ravine. From there a natural canal passed out to the seas beyond Kasiga.
Because of its bizarre shape, the private enclave of Upper Creek was cut off sharply from the plains above it. So unless you squinted up from one of the jagged granite ledges you could see little above and beyond the cone.
This was what was making it so difficult for Sladey’s team to lower the engine from the power-takeoff of the mini-tractor: unless you got the angle exactly right there was no clear drop for the pulley. In consequence the nylon hauser was in danger of rasping itself against the serrated granite of the basin.
Sladey’s pip-squeak voice yelled petulantly down into the cone, which skewed his falsetto into coilspring shockwaves, like a castrated chorister screaming in a sewer. ‘Call yourself an engineer, Scorda? That’s a block-and-tackle, the way you have it the thing will unwind like a fishing rod and if it does I hope it wraps itself around your neck.’
‘There isn’t enough light. Get some fucking power on.’
‘Kendip, step up the damn power on that damn light, we want the engine lowered onto the pier. This way it gets a full burial at sea.’ But Kendip couldn’t decide between Flip and Flop.
Scorda yapped, ‘Cut that out and lend a hand yourself. Lower the other light, the cable is all fouled up.’
‘I can see that, you blue baboon, you have enough lights for a Hollywood Premier, so use them right, or I’ll be the one to blow a fuse … Handem, Gendabrig: you take over the lights, Scorda’s brain must have been omitted in the Ice-cube Department. Kendip, you there?’
‘I’m still stuck on the escarpment.’
‘Then get unstuck. Bring one of the lights.’
‘I can’t, I’m trying to grip the hauser so it don’t unwind itself, why can’t you grab that lever, Chrissakes?
‘Flek, you imbecile, slam on the brake! God, you’re not fit to sew on a fly-button … Okay, Kendip, leave go the pulley: I need you up here to work the power takeoff.’
‘I can’t move, there’s this ooze, see, Jesus I can’t get a foothold and the edge is crumbling, that’s a sheer drop, five hundred feet or more.’
‘I don’t want a Geography lesson, I want action … Scorda, you’re making more of a mess of that rope than it was before. Follow Kendip up, we’ll untangle all that spaghetti from up here.’
‘I’m coming up.’
‘Excellent. We’re communicating.’
Kendip and Scorda emerged, dre
nched skintight, at the rim of the cone. The tractor was parked on the very edge. Sladey kept glancing at the front wheels.
He wanted to be damn sure that if the tractor went over, he himself — never mind the others — didn’t go down with it.
In brilliant light now, Sladey and Scorda dealt with the tangle of ropes jammed around the tractor drum.
Kendip brought the light closer, then tripped.
‘You oaf!’
‘Not so fast Sladey … Look! Up there!’ — Kendip had dropped the lamp. It whipped around, illuminating the steep of the gully. And FlipFlop Kendip felt a conflict he couldn’t identify.
Sladey, struck psychotically silent at what he saw there, strolled forward for three languid paces.
When he found his voice it sounded remote. ‘Hello, Eagle.’
Eagle said nothing, his face stripped of features in the brilliant light, like a portrait on an over-exposed print.
Sladey turned to face Scorda. ‘Eagle has come to help us.’
Eagle said, ‘That’s our spare tractor engine, Sladey.’
Sladey said, ‘Redskin he say, that’s his spare tractor engine.’
Scorda said, ‘I heard.’
Sladey said, ‘Kendip. The spare rope. Under the tractor seat. Fetch the free end.’
Kendip forced himself to misinterpret Sladey’s intentions. ‘It’s no use, Sladey. Eagle will get away.’
Sladey said, ‘Not unless he has an unusually effective reverse gear — and the horse has four-wheel drive into the bargain. Can’t you see, you fool? He can’t turn. Get that rope round him. Lasso him, like in the movies, don’t you like the movies?’
Kendip hesitated. ‘But … What are you going to do once we’ve caught him? He’s bound to tell what he’s seen.’
Sladey found his tongue lubricating his lips. ‘He won’t be telling anybody … Eagle wants the tractor engine back. He thinks we should return it. Scorda, do you think we should return it?’
Scorda didn’t move. ‘No, Sladey, I don’t think we should return it.’ Sladey said to Eagle, ‘Scorda doesn’t think we should return it.’
Eagle said, ‘We better talk.’
Sladey said, ‘Problem is, Eagle, I don’t like people who talk. It’s sort of embarrassing. See what I mean?’
Eagle said, ‘Could you slacken off this rope a bit? It’s getting in the way.’
Sladey said to Scorda, ‘Ease off that rope. I’m talking to Eagle.’
Scorda slackened the rope.
Sladey said to Eagle, ‘This is a little unfortunate.’
Eagle said, ‘I have a suggestion.’
‘And what is this suggestion, Eagle?’
‘It is this, Sladey: You put the engine right back where it belongs, and I won’t say anything about … all this. Okay? Get it? I won’t talk, even the zebra, he won’t talk. All you have to do is return that engine, right now. Okay? A deal?’
Sladey said, ‘That would be a little inconvenient, Eagle.’
‘Yes, I realise you had some perfectly innocent reason for secretly building powerboats in the middle of the night and stealing our only spare tractor engine, but I’m saying put the engine back and —’
‘— and Bob’s your uncle?’
Eagle just said, very quietly, ‘This is when you return the engine, Sladey.’
Sladey said, ‘You’re not in a terribly strong bargaining position, Eagle. Are you?’
Eagle felt panic impeding speech. ‘Okay, you better know. I told Trell I was following you.’
Sladey smiled. ‘You told Trell? You should have said so in the first place. Where was Trell when you told him?’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Oh, it matters all right. Someone else might have heard, you see.’
‘Well, it’s okay, because I got Trell out in the corridor, and I told him in private, and he said, long as Sladey returns the engine, no further action.’
Sladey said, ‘Well, that’s a funny thing, that you spoke to him in the corridor, because I checked very carefully that Trell and Kelda were outside, playing their own games, right the other side of the Ridge from us they were, Eagle, you might even know their patch. And I think they must have got most frightfully wet — if not actually struck by lightning — but if they insist upon getting up to these naughty things, when they ought to be on Deck ZD-One, providing you with an alibi, Eagle, you probably agree with me that they deserved to get drenched.’
Scorda fingered the rope. ‘We’d better be sure, Sladey.’
Sladey said, ‘You shouldn’t be so itchy, Scorda.’
Scorda said, ‘We do have the rope, Sladey. We could find out. Eagle won’t like the rope.’
Sladey said, ‘There’s something terribly vulgar about you, Scorda. Why flog a dead horse when there’s a real live one?’
Kendip the Flipflop exclaimed, ‘Jesus! You’re not going to flog him?’
Sladey said, ‘No, I’m not going to flog him. What good would that do? I’m a practical person, Kendip. You have to learn to be practical, you know.’
It was at that moment Eagle knew two things. First, he knew for certain what Sladey was going to do. Second — and this seemed strange indeed — Eagle knew he wasn’t going to cry.
He even tried to work out why this was so. Was it that terror had gone completely round the dial? — Am I so numbed with it that it’s turned into something different? … Eagle had to rule this out. The terror was overrunning, like a reactor out of control. Why, then, wasn’t he going to cry? He couldn’t do the sum. Perhaps it was that Sladey’s cruelty was so alien to all that Eagle believed in, about people and love and knowledge and beauty and God, that there simply was no indicator on the instrument panel of his mind that would nail the flaw.
‘Scorda,’ commanded Sladey, in an oddly detached voice, ‘Unhitch the other end of Eagle’s rope from the tractor seat. Kendip, help Eagle off his horse.’
Something inside Eagle screamed. But his face was set hard. His eyes were gazing beyond Sladey as if he were penetrating the future — not of himself, but of the living universe.
Kendip stammered, ‘This is … this is murder! Can’t you understand, you guys? We have a murder here!’ He backed away, shouting at Scorda, ‘Stop him! You crazy? Are you all crazy? Help me hold Eagle, for Christ sake!’
Nobody moved.
Sladey said, ‘Scorda, hold Kendip back from Eagle.’
Sladey reeled-in Eagle from the cable drum.
Eagle’s face was the same, but glazed. He thought, I’m dead, I’m dead, that cable makes no difference, does it?, it won’t matter, falling over the cliff, I can feel it pulling, the cable drum is unwinding, I can see it clearly, it doesn’t mean anything now, I love Kelda, shouldn’t I have told her just once? will she know?
Will she know that everything I did or tried to do was because I must have had happy parents and I wanted to be a parent, have children by her, will she know that?
Will she catch a glimpse in her mind of that cable drum, it fascinates me, I watch it winding up as it unwinds me, and there’s Sladey’s face in the spotlight, he doesn’t exist, he never did, he’s an X-ray plate, frightened, oh how terribly frightened he is.
I can hear my own voice screaming now, I have lost my balance and the rocks down below are coming up toward me terrifically fast, everything is racked with my screams, and yet it’s not me as I know me, because I can’t believe that anyone —
*
By morning, Trell and Kelda knew.
And when they could stop crying for a few minutes Kelda said, ‘Trell, what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to keep myself in control and so are you. I am not going to avenge him because nothing could be enough, does that sound mad?’
‘No. Nothing is enough. Is Huckman going to get his way? — all along the line?’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’ Kelda said, ‘I’m going to go on crying now.’
‘So am I.’
Minus One
The computer said — rather hesitantly for a computer — ‘I can no longer guarantee to support you, Trell-484.’
‘Are people deliberately programming you against me and my leadership, and Kelda’s leadership, and are you allowing this to happen?’
‘Trell-484, I have to … to think of the survival of the fittest.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘What it says.’
‘You mean, the survival of the most ruthless? — Is that what you mean?’
‘Among other things, yes. There are so few of you —’
‘— So few of us that the law of the jungle prevails! — Controller, where is Eagle?’
‘I have no information on the matter.’
‘I repeat, where is Eagle-100?’
‘I do not know.’
‘You must have some idea. His horse was brutally killed and then buried to the north of Kasiga Ridge. We dug up the carcass. There was human blood on that horse, Controller. We analysed it.’
‘You have no proof that Eagle had been riding it.’
‘The evidence is remarkably strong. Eagle always rides the stallion he calls “Zebralegs”. Now the animal is found dead and Eagle has gone missing.’
‘That proves nothing.’
‘Tell me Eagle’s blood group, Controller.’
‘That’s confidential information.’
‘And this is a confidential computalk. What’s his blood group?’
‘I regret I am not empowered to tell you that, Trell.’
‘Controller, the blood we found on the horse was Group A, Rhesus negative … Rhesus negative, Controller. A rare enough blood group, surely, to make identification possible?’
‘Who analysed it?’
‘I’m not mentioning any names to you.’
‘Nembrak. What do you take me for? … And if Nembrak wants to get on in this community he should stay away from you, Trell. The name “General Motors” — which I believe you’ve coined for the workshop — is hardly one suitable for dissidents.’
The Chromosome Game Page 22
