First Family

by Patrick Tilley

  Steve acknowledged this with a grave nod. ‘I also would be avenged. The sand-burrowers bring me dishonour in your eyes. Let me bring you their heads.’

  As he mulled over the proposition, Blue-Thunder looked past Steve towards the cluster of small islands. ‘How can you cross the big water? Will you not sink like a stone?’

  ‘No, I shall wriggle through it like a snake.’

  ‘When will you go?’

  ‘When night comes.’

  The Mute looked impressed. ‘You have true power.’

  Steve was not about to disillusion him. Like all Trackers, he had been taught to swim in underground pools as part of the daily programme of physical training. He was about to become one of the very few to put the skill to practical use. How odd, he reflected, that the Mutes hadn’t bothered to learn how to swim. But then, in the same thousand years, they hadn’t built boats either, despite their contact with the Iron Masters. And they had other odd ideas – like preferring to sleep out in the open rather than under the trees of a forest, and there was the whole business of Talisman, Mo-Town and the Sky Voices. A year ago he had been openly contemptuous of such things. But now… who could say they were wrong?

  Some time back, there must have been a good reason behind all these ideas. Rational explanations that, despite the formidable memories of wordsmiths like Mr Snow, had gotten lost along the way. There was no doubt that some Mutes possessed extraordinary powers. Whether or not they were ‘magic’ was not important. ‘Magic’, Steve had decided, was just a word that was applied to things, or events, which could not be immediately explained with the present knowledge that was available. Ahh, yes, but available to whom? That was the real question. Steve had already discovered there were different levels of access to information within the Federation, and he had heard from the lips of the President-General himself that the First Family believed in the power of Mute magic. But maybe the Family knew even more. Knew all there was to know. Had they not created, and did they not control COLUMBUS, the guiding intelligence of the Federation? It was not for nothing that, in the thrice-daily prayer of allegiance through which Trackers collectively rededicated themselves, the First Family were described as ‘Keepers of all Knowledge, Wisdom and Truth’.

  The sun sank through the western door, draining the golden warmth from the sky. The clouds that had been fired with glowing pinks and yellows faded to pale mauve and violet then turned a cold, ash grey as the pale, lingering after-light was swallowed by the on-coming dark. To the east, the hills merged with the sky as evening drew its veil over the land. Colours, shapes and dimensions blurred and coalesced to create a new world without depth or form. The islands, now a shadowy silhouette set in a sea of tarnished silver, appeared, at one instant, to be tantalisingly near and, in the next, impossibly far away.

  Runners, sent back by the Bears that had been despatched around the lake, came in to report that there had been no attempt by the sand-burrowers to reach another part of the shore. They were still holed up on the islands.

  It was time to get started.

  The surface of the lake had become ominously still. But not quite still enough. Every now and then, something would rise from the depths and nose the air for a fleeting instant, sending concentric rings rippling outwards across the mirror-like surface.

  Steve had already begun to have second thoughts about the whole enterprise but it was too late to back out. The angry Mutes would not leave until the remaining mexicans had been accounted for. They would wait days or weeks if necessary, bringing to the task the patience and total dedication with which the primitive hunter stalks an elusive prey. The affront to Talisman had to be avenged. The how and why of small anti-personnel mines did not concern them; the techniques by which they could be detected and de-activated were of not the slightest interest. This is why they will never win, thought Steve sadly. But like it or not, this was the side he was currently committed to defend. The trading party was due to start its trek towards the wheel-boats at dawn the day after tomorrow. He had to bring this episode to a quick, bloody conclusion before Karlstrom got the wrong message and before the survivors called up a rapid assist. If AMEXICO sent in air support or mounted a rescue operation the whole situation could rapidly get out of control.

  There was another equally pressing reason for wrapping this disastrous mess up as quickly and cleanly as possible. Steve wanted to be there waiting to welcome Clearwater and Cadillac when they stepped ashore. After what he had been through to get this far he did not intend to let her slip through his fingers again.

  The funeral pyre, which had burned fiercely throughout the day, was now a ragged square slab of glowing embers some two or three feet thick at the centre. The heat it gave off was tremendous and now that it was dark, the rocky floor and sides of the draw were bathed in its bright orange glow. Conscious that the three mexicans would probably be watching – possibly through binoculars – Steve stepped out of the circle of light into the enveloping dark and walked halfway around the lake escorted by Blue-Thunder and three of his Bears.

  Steve had swum long distances but only within the comforting confines of a sanitised, sparkling-blue pool – and within easy reach of the edge. He was confident he had the strength to reach the islands but he was not overjoyed at the prospect of having to traverse such a huge stretch of open, and possibly hostile, water.

  As a precaution, Steve had prepared buoyancy bags using four large deerskin pouches borrowed from members of the posse. The inflated bags were primarily to support a light frame-work of branches on which he had tied a fully-loaded air rifle, a machete, and his combat knife. He had debated whether to take his quarterstaff and decided to leave it behind. It was a lethal weapon but it would be of no use if he could not get within range. If the three remaining mexicans were on the ball, they could drop him with a single volley at seventy-five yards – and more than twice that distance if their rifles were fitted with infra-red night scopes.

  Finding a satisfactory spot, he stripped down to his underpants – the only item of Tracker clothing he had retained – and donned the sleeveless flotation jacket that the helmsman had been wearing. He exchanged the traditional hand slap with his escort then slipped quietly into the water, pushing the bag-raft ahead of him. To break up its outline, he had covered it with leafy twigs. The water was cold, but not unbearably so. He tried not to think about the dreadful nameless things that might be lurking beneath the surface. A couple of hundred yards out from the shore, when something slimy brushed across his belly, he began to think that the Mute’s decision to stay on dry land wasn’t so stupid after all.

  At the halfway point, after several brushes with the unseen denizens of the lake, Steve was relieved to find he was still in one piece. Having overcome the wave of panic generated by the first unwelcome contacts and the inevitable nightmare visions of needle-sharp teeth gnawing at his dong, he proceeded with growing confidence, his mind now concentrated on the task that awaited him once he reached dry ground.

  The second half-mile seemed shorter than the first. As he drew closer, the broken clouds drifted further apart, uncovering more of the star-studded sky. The islands – of which there were five – were no more than rocky islets on which stunted trees and scrub had gained a tenacious toe-hold. The two nearest Steve were giant, steep-sided chunks of stone with virtually no cover and, of the others, only one measured more than fifty yards across.

  In the distant past, even before what the Mutes called the Old Time, subterranean earth movements had forced the rocky bed of the lake to bulge upwards and peak above the present water level. Subsequent faulting had exposed striated layers of rock, like a pack of ice cream wafers that had been snapped in two, and several thousand years of wind and rain had smoothed off the rough edges.

  Steve paddled silently towards the largest islet. No lights pierced the dark. Everything was deathly still; the only sounds his own breathing and the light slip-slap of water rippling against the flank of the rocks ahead which rose sheer out
of the water to a height of four or five feet. Towing the bag-raft behind him, Steve used his free hand to haul himself sideways around the islet, looking for a suitable place to come ashore.

  Given the fact that the Mutes could not swim and would not cross deep water, the islet made an ideal refuge. Steve found it hard to understand why the mexicans had chosen to camp overnight on the shore instead of crossing directly to the islet. The only explanation he could think of was that they had reached the lake during the evening and had been reluctant to make the boat trip at night. He, himself, had adapted with remarkable ease to overground conditions; a fact which led him to forget that the majority of Trackers were extremely nervous of the dark – and that included most wingmen and mexicans. And very few would have dared swim the lake – even in daylight.

  Treading water, Steve felt his toes brush against a ridged shelf of rock that enabled him to stand chest deep under the overhanging branches of a tree. The gnarled roots snaked over the cracked slabs of stone like the sclerotic veins on the back of an old man’s hand. Steve transferred his armoury from the bag-raft to a cleft in the rock then climbed ashore himself. His first act was to fix the sheathed combat knife around his right calf and strap on the belt carrying the machete. He left the raft floating in the water. It would not drift far and, with its covering of branches, would be less likely to arouse suspicion.

  Squatting down against the trunk of a tree with the rifle laid across his knees, Steve relaxed his body and opened his mind to the earth, the silence and the darkness. After several minutes of total absorption, he became imbued with a mental impression of the islet and was able to decipher the broader details of the terrain.

  A rising half-moon joined the uncovered stars, casting its pale glow on the lake and turning the trees ahead of him into dim silhouettes. Here and there, thin moonbeams found a path through the terraced maze of leaves to create ragged rock-pools of light. Somewhere ahead lay his quarry. The odds were three to one in their favour and they were probably on familiar ground but he had the advantage of surprise.

  Drawing his knife, Steve slid the blade into a patch of earth until it met the underlying rock. The layer was barely two inches thick. Not deep enough to bury anti-personnel mines and besides the island was too small and lacked proper cover. Any explosion would risk killing as many defenders as attackers. He was being over-cautious. The islet, which was about two hundred yards long by eighty wide, did not need to be defended. The lake made it impregnable, for who – apart from other mexicans – could be expected to reach it?

  Steve decided to explore the centre of the islet first. By keeping to the middle, where the darkness was almost total and the ground higher, he could rest concealed while everything between him and the encircling shore stood out against the moon-struck surface of the lake. His stealthy text-book tactics masked his presence but served no other useful purpose. There were no trip wires, no pits with collapsing roofs and sharpened stake-floors to fall into, no strangling sky-nooses tied to sprung saplings, no deadly porcupine rock-balls poised to swing down like giant pendulums to crush and spear the unwary; not one of the horrors which grizzled ‘Blazers like Bad News Logan used to describe in gory detail to each new batch of wet-feet.

  Steve moved forward, his bare feet making no sound on the cool hard rock he had chosen in preference to the softer but potentially treacherous layer of pine needles and dead twigs. At the opposite end of the island he saw the squat outlines of the skimmer. It lay on a wide flat slab of rock that sloped down into the water making a natural slipway up which it had been driven. Crawling closer to the skimmer, Steve saw what had not been visible before: a camouflaged sleeve draped over the side near the bow. A sleeve that contained a lifeless arm ending in a half-closed hand with stiff, contorted fingers; an arm that belonged to someone lying face down on the slatted floor inside. The Bears who had shot blindly into the whirling smokescreen had not wasted their precious metal bolts One down, two to go…

  A few yards further inland, Steve spotted an air rifle and a backpack. The way they were lying told him they had been jettisoned by someone who was not planning to use them again in a hurry. The two remaining mexicans could not be far away – might even have him in their sights…

  Steve retraced his steps cutting across the middle of the islet to approach the sloping rock beach from the other side. Once again he picked his way over the bare patches of stone, skirting round the pools of moonlight. Now that he was almost naked, the Mute body markings he had adopted made an ideal camouflage and it was possibly this that saved his life as the triple volley, fired at close range, ripped through the air.

  Chu-witt, chu-witt, chu-witt!

  Steve threw himself to the right as he felt the scorching blow on his left side and scrambled behind a tree. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he held his breath, listening for any sound that might betray the position of his attacker. Nothing moved and the only thing he could hear was the thunderous beat of his own heart. Reaching across with his right hand he made a quick assessment of the damage. Blood seeped through his fingers but he had been lucky. One round had gouged through the skin as it glanced off the fourth rib, a second had blazed a diagonal stripe across the underside of his raised forearm and the third had nicked the outside of his left arm just above the elbow. He flexed his arm experimentally. It hurt like hell but still functioned.

  From the angle and direction of the shots Steve was able to deduce roughly where the rifleman was and that he had fired from a prone position. He sat there without moving and reviewed the situation. He had been hit by one volley from a single rifle and he had not fired back. As far as his attacker knew he might be lying dead but even now, half-an-hour later, there had been no follow-up. Interesting. He had clearly lost the element of surprise but he still retained one big advantage – mobility. Steve was now convinced that the two mexicans were both badly wounded. Neither of them was going anywhere but they were still dangerous. Steve was in no hurry to get himself killed. He would wait till first light.

  Keeping close to the wide trunk of the tree behind which he had been sheltering, Steve rose slowly to his feet and studied the layout of the branches. Once again his luck held. The vestigial stump of a limb lost some time before the tree acquired its middle-aged spread offered a foothold from which he could reach up to grasp the lowest branch. Slinging his rifle across his back, he stepped up onto the trunk and kept going. Steve had never climbed a tree before but he approached it with the same confidence with which he had first scaled the tower frame designed to test the nerves of wingmen on the Academy’s underground assault course. Some thirty feet in the air, he found a wide, three-limbed fork on which he could lie without danger of falling. He hung the rifle from the shattered stump of a smaller branch then made himself as comfortable as he could and dozed fitfully.

  When he woke, it was not yet dawn but it was light enough for Steve to take stock of his surroundings. The world was wrapped in white. A thick, eerie blanket of mist now covered the surface of the lake, washing up over the ground below to swirl about the trunks of the trees like the ghost of some prehistoric sea. By moving to higher or lower branches on the far side of the trunk, Steve was able to peer down through the leaves. He glimpsed the veiled prow of the beached skimmer. His quarry was still on the island. The fact that both mexicans now knew they had a visitor but had passed up the ideal moment to escape was proof that Steve’s original hunch had been correct. They were still here because they didn’t have the strength to haul the boat back in the water.

  The cold dead feeling that had formed in the pit of his stomach when facing Deep-Six welled up again. He had watched Blue-Thunder despatch the badly-injured Mute warriors. Now he was going to have to do the same thing to his own kind. But for his victims, and for him, it would be nothing more than a cold-blooded act of butchery. How could it be otherwise? Trackers only comprehended the functional, finite world of the living. The notion of some kind of an after-life simply did not enter their heads. You were g
iven life by the First Family. The sole reason for being alive was to help secure the future of the Federation. Your on-line performance was the only thing that counted. Death was simply the cessation of all brain and body functions, the end of the work cycle; the moment when the Man Upstairs pulled the plug. When the bag-men came to carry you away that was it. Terminada. The last emotion registered by the fast-fading consciousness of the two beleagured mexicans would be an overwhelming sense of betrayal. It was a fitting epitaph on the brave new world created by the First Family.

  Steve waited until the mist cleared then climbed down to one of the lower branches where he could see the mexican with the rifle. He was lying slumped against a rock with the barbed tip of a crossbow bolt sticking up out of the inside of his left thigh just below his crotch. His pants and the ground between his splayed legs were soaked in blood. With his right hand he was keeping the tension on a tourniquet made with a webbing belt and the handle of his combat knife but every now and then the blood would spurt from the severed main artery. His left hand was curled around the trigger guard of the rifle but to fire it with any accuracy he was obliged to rest it awkwardly on his right leg or forearm without looking through the sights – a limiting factor which had probably saved Steve’s life the previous night.

  Steve aimed at the mexican’s chest and put a volley through his heart. The impact slammed the mex back against the rock, arms spread wide. The rifle flew from his hand then his limp body toppled sideways onto the ground, the left arm still outstretched in a dying effort to reach it.

  Steve dropped cautiously to the ground, using the tree as cover while he scanned the ground ahead. He spotted the pregnant female mex over to his right, lying propped up against a tree with her back to him, her arm lying limply by her side, hand empty, palm upwards. He retreated and came up on the other side. Same story, no movement. Steve took another careful look around then edged closer, rifle at the ready. Okay, this is it. He stepped out in front of her, the barrel-cluster aimed at her chest. She looked up at him, her pale eyes still ablaze in her exhausted face. He was right. She had looked familiar. It was Donna Marie Lundkwist.