Given the favourable circumstances in which he found himself, Steve decided it was wiser to accept the situation without comment, but it raised several questions that were impossible to ignore. The problem was – how could he discover the answers without jeopardising his newly-acquired life-style and the prospects of further promotion?
His delicate balancing act inside the First Family was not the only problem he had to contend with. Clearwater was still held in ‘soft confinement’ at the Life Institute. Her shattered left thigh was mending well and she was expected to take her first tentative steps in September – the same month in which the Plainfolk were due to hold their first council at Sioux Falls: an item of news which Steve had not yet passed on to his masters. The child Clearwater was carrying within her was scheduled for delivery in mid-December. The official Federation calendar – designed for an underground world untouched by the passing seasons – had discarded the twelve pre-H months in favour of four quarters and three terms, but even after nine centuries old habits die hard.
The fact that he had actually fathered a child was something else Steve found difficult to accept. And he was not quite sure how he was meant to react to the situation. From the moment he was old enough to understand, Steve had been taught that the President-General was the Father of All Life, but now even that – one of the basic tenets of Trackerdom – was no longer true.
His feelings for Clearwater had not changed, but they were now tinged with a certain confusion and more than a little guilt. He kept telling himself that his physical relationship with Fran was nothing more than a smart career move; a means by which – through his new status and the valuable contacts he was making – he would be better able to organise their escape from the Federation.
But although he wanted to secure freedom for Clearwater and her child – their child – he was beginning to lose the absolute certainty that his future lay with the Plainfolk. Steve was confident that in any contest for leadership of The Chosen, he would beat Cadillac hands down, but it was no longer that simple. The emergence of Roz as the fourth element in the equation had upset his calculations. Their guard-mother’s revelation that they had been exchanged for her own new-born children, and as a consequence might not be related by blood, had undermined the kin-folk bond. They might still be linked by the mind-bridge but Roz was no longer under his control – the little sister content to bask in his shadow.
Steve could not understand why the mysterious force that the Mutes called ‘destiny’ – and which had so favoured him – had brought Roz and Cadillac together, but he knew his rival would grab this heaven-sent opportunity to even the score. He would make the most of the situation and might even succeed in turning Roz against him. If she were to place her new, frightening power at Cadillac’s disposal, it would be a whole new ball-game.
And where would Clearwater – who from his own observations while on the Red River wagon-train had developed an unexpectedly close rapport with Roz – stand in all this?
It was, Steve decided, a potentially dangerous situation. If he did not tread carefully, he could find himself the odd man out. And if that was so, it would be better off to remain where he was – in the Federation. But how could he sell that idea to Clearwater?
The short answer was – he couldn’t. She would regard it as a complete and utter betrayal. And half of him agreed with her. Her return to the Plainfolk had been promised by Mr Snow. Steve had seen enough to convince him that prophetic visions and utterances were not to be taken lightly, but the other, darker half of his psyche found itself increasingly attracted to an alternative scenario based on the breathtaking supposition that the First Family themselves might be super-straights or, at the very least, were Trackers who had interbred with this rare, gifted type of Mute.
Steve had no hard proof, but once the germ of this idea had entered his head, it began to make more and more sense. Externally, super-straight Mutes were indistinguishable from Trackers. They also shared one important attribute with the known members of the First Family – both were immune to atmospheric radiation. They might even share another – longevity. Steve had no proof of this since he had never met an old super-straight. Or had he? Could he have shaken the hand of one in the Oval Office?
Why else would the Family be so different from their loyal soldier-citizens? How else could people like Malone and other mexicans like Side-Winder operate for so long on the overground without pulling a trick?
It would also explain why the President-General took the Talisman Prophecy so seriously – along with Mute magic. A real true-blue Tracker, raised from birth in a hi-tech society where the physical sciences provided an answer for everything, would never, for one moment, have entertained the idea that some things happened ‘by magic’. In the Federation, there was a total ban on the discussion of such intangible concepts, and if ordinary Trackers so much as mentioned the idea it could earn them a trip to the wall.
More important still was the fact that the President-General knew something Steve had yet to discover – his true origins and the circumstances surrounding his birth. They knew he was a Mute and yet they had condoned the unthinkable: they had allowed him to jack up Franklynne Delano Jefferson. Not just once, but on a regular basis, sometimes notching up three or four ball-breaking sessions a night.
There was only one set of circumstances which would permit such a relationship. Fran was also a Mute. They all were – or had enough Mute blood in them for it not to matter. Which meant – in theory – there was nothing to stop him from becoming the next but one President-General … George Washington Jefferson the 33rd.
It was a mind-blowing notion, and the historical perspective it opened up was equally disturbing. At what point had Mute blood entered the veins of the First Family? Or had it always been there?
Mr Snow had told him that Mute and Tracker shared a common ancestry whose roots ran back to the Old Time – the pre-Holocaust era that the Iron Masters called the World Before. Super-straights like Clearwater and Cadillac were living proof of that – and so, it would seem, was he. Their existence supported Mr Snow’s claim that the Mutes had not unleashed the Holocaust but were, instead, its principal victims.
If so, the bone and skin deformations and mental impairment that caused the Federation to classify them as sub-human did not precede the Holocaust; it was part of its dreadful legacy. Mutes did not exhale the poisonous elements that filled the air, and it was not exuded through the sweat glands on their multi-coloured skins. And touching that skin did not cause Trackers to develop gangrene. According to Mr Snow, that was another of the great lies invented by the Federation.
In the oral history of the Mutes, it was the servants of Pent-Agon, Lord of Chaos, who had unleashed The War of a Thousand Suns by launching countless numbers of iron birds into the air. Iron birds which rose into the sky on plumes of fire, flew in a great arch towards the stars then returned to earth as falling suns.
Many of these birds, said Mr Snow, had been caged deep in the earth in underground cities – like those of the Federation; others had burst free from the bodies of great iron-snakes that travelled on shining hard-ways. Not the crumbling remains that marked the routes once used by the giant, man-carrying beetles, but endless ribbons of polished iron which glittered in the sun like the flawless blades of the samurai.
In the last six weeks, Steve had seen those shining hardways, and a new kind of iron-snake whose fiery breath was used not to kill, but to power its massive wheels. Steam trains, lovingly restored and maintained by the First Family, running on rails – two ribbons of rolled steel pinned to wooden ‘sleepers’. They were part of a grandiose project still several decades from completion – the rebuilding of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad which, when eventually connected to rebuilt sections of the pre-H Southern, and Southern Pacific routes, would link the east and west coasts of America.
Such trains could have carried the iron birds Mr Snow had spoken of. Steve, of course, had no knowledge of intercontinenta
l ballistic missile systems, or the destructive force of nuclear warheads but he knew about small air-to-ground rockets, and the firework variety made by the Iron Masters which he had adapted into a propulsion system for Lord Min-Orota’s ‘flying-horses’. The ‘iron birds’ were obviously large rockets with an explosive warhead.
If it was true – if they had been launched from trains then – reasoned Steve – it was equally possible that the Founding Father and the Four Hundred whose names topped the Roll of Honour were directly linked to those ‘servants of Pent-Agon’. If they were, their finger might even have been on the firing button!
After Fran, anything was possible. It meant adjusting to the idea that George Washington Jefferson the 1st had neatly shifted the blame for the Holocaust onto the Mutes and – even more incredible still – the nine-hundred-year war of retribution waged by the soldier-citizens of the Federation against the Plainfolk and their southern cousins in the name of racial purity was being led by a carefully-bred selection of super-straights!
Were it not for the scale of suffering involved the idea would have been absurd – laughable even. But it also presented Steve with an exciting opportunity – and a difficult choice. He could either try and escape with Clearwater and her child and face all the hassle and uncertainty that joining up with Cadillac and Roz would entail or … he could stay where he was and ride the wire.
All the way to the top.…
This was no longer a case of them and us; the outgunned underdog fighting a ruthless and vastly more powerful opponent. It was Mute against Mute – except that one side held all the cards, and had the soldier-citizens of the Federation to fight its battles.
Steve was forced to admire the First Family’s duplicity. One could not ignore the fact they were a ruthless bunch, with the killer-instinct of the D’Troit, but they were also extremely smart cookies. Always one step ahead of the game – and that was exactly the way Steve liked to play it.
If he grasped this opportunity wholeheartedly, allied himself to the First Family body and soul, he could have the best of both worlds. He could have power and freedom, the space to breathe and all the hi-tech gadgetry that made life easier. And he might even get to grind Cadillac’s nose in the dust.
But there was more to it than just besting his rival. As he developed these ideas in his mind, Steve saw an even grander opportunity ahead. If he managed to manoeuvre his way into the highest reaches of the Family, he might be able to halt the present policy of extermination. Instead of setting Tracker against Mute, the First Family could use their manipulative skills in a positive way, making it possible for the Mutes to be accepted for what they really were – fellow human beings.
None of this could happen overnight, but gradually, rigidly-held attitudes could soften, bringing about an eventual reconciliation in which both parties accepted each other’s right to exist side-by-side in the blue-sky world.
It was not an impossible dream, but Steve knew he could never persuade Clearwater to share it. And it wasn’t just a moral dilemma that confronted him. Even if she consented to stay and he succeeded in getting her released from the Life Institute after the birth of her child, how on earth was he going to maintain his relationship with her and keep Fran happy at the same time?
Steve’s future sleeping arrangements was just one of the problems associated with Clearwater. Another arose from the fact that they were unable to discuss any of these startling discoveries and tentative conclusions. Once again, he had no hard proof, but he had to assume that the unit in which she was housed at the Life Institute contained hidden microphones – and probably miniature video cameras too.
Way back – it seemed a lifetime ago – when he was returning in chains on the shuttle to Grand Central to face a Board of Assessors and a charge of desertion, Roz had reached out to him over the mind-bridge, warning him to be careful and telling him that they were watching her. And it hadn’t been some meat-loaf dogging her footsteps. When they’d showered side by side aboard Red River, Roz had told him of the video-tapes Karlstrom had played back to her. Tapes which recorded the wounds that appeared in her face at the same moment Steve submitted to a Plainfolk test of courage known as ‘biting the arrow’. There had even been a hidden camera trained on her while she was asleep!
Standing under or close to running water appeared to be the only way to have an untaped head-to-head. And you could bet your ass that the Family had come to the same conclusion and were working on that one too. Sub-aqua conversations might be safe for the moment but they weren’t a viable option in the present situation. It would look a bit odd, to say the least, if he suddenly took to scrubbing himself down at the Life Institute in the next shower stall to an enemy prisoner. Because that – despite the relative luxury of her surroundings – was what Clearwater was.
The medical skills of the Federation were dedicated to making her whole, but those same skills were also being used to scrutinise every aspect of her physiology. Bone, organs, tissue, every nerve, brain and blood cell had come under or was due for microscopic examination.
Clearwater was the first really powerful summoner to fall into the hands of the Federation. Before her capture, to reinforce his image as a loyal soldier-citizen, Steve had already told Karlstrom about some of the things he’d seen her do – including her feats of magic at the Heron Pool. Which was just as well, because his testimony confirmed and fleshed out the garbled second- and third-hand reports AMEXICO had received from other sources inside Ne-Issan.
But Steve hadn’t told the full story. No one, including Karlstrom, knew that she could plant a delayed mental imperative inside somebody’s brain, which would cause them to say or do whatever she required. Steve was keeping that to himself in case he needed Clearwater’s help to get them both out of a tight corner.
Although the Family had taken the precaution of housing Clearwater in an overgound annexe, they did not feel unduly threatened by the destructive powers of her earth-magic. Soon after their arrival, Steve had been at the foot of her bed when Karlstrom had issued his double-edged warning. One false move on her part would lead to his immediate execution – and vice versa. Comprendo …?
Si, si commandante.…
This meeting had preceded his heart-warming interview with the President-General and his promotion to captain but he imagined the threat still held good. And with his elevation to membership of the First Family it meant he had even more to lose.
Steve had no intention of rocking the boat but the knowledge that his life depended on Clearwater’s good behaviour was a sobering reminder of just how precarious his position was. He had finally got his feet firmly on the golden ladder only to discover that the rungs could snap from under him at any moment. Steve was sure that Clearwater would not put the life of her unborn child at risk, but that only took them up to mid-December. If she then started to develop itchy feet and he appeared to be dragging his it could make things very difficult.
Not good. Not good at all.
Steve tried to remind himself why and how they’d both landed in this mess. He had put Clearwater into the hands of the Federation because that was the only way to save her life. And he’d wanted her to live because of the feelings she had aroused in him. She was the only person he really cared about, and it was through their relationship that his eyes, heart and mind had been opened.
For the first time he had been able to see the world as it was, in all its rich variety, its endless possibilities, and he had also discovered the untapped potential within himself which, if allowed to flower, would enable him to become his true self.
It was knowing how he felt about Clearwater which had driven Roz into that jealous rage. But she had changed. That was how it was in life. Nothing stayed the same; it was a constant cycle of growth and decay. People changed, feelings changed, and if you wanted to change the world then, well … sometimes people got hurt in the process. Steve knew that if he had allowed his emotions to get the better of him, he could never have gunned down Commander Har
tmann and the other crewmen he’d served with aboard The Lady from Louisiana. But it had to be done. He had found the strength to take the tough decision, to do the hard thing. Just like the First Family.
And now he had to do so again. When the time was right, he had two ways to go. Escape with Clearwater and her child, or come up with a plan that would get them out and leave him behind, without a shred of evidence to link him with their departure. Steve was confident he could figure out the mechanics of either scenario, but he was sorely tempted to go for the second, which would leave him free to climb the ladder – secure in the knowledge that with Clearwater gone, it would not break under him.
Steve tried to convince himself that staying behind was not the softer option. He might escape the daily grind of material existence but there were other pressures, other dangers. And it would involve sacrificing everything he had gained through knowing Clearwater and returning her love. Severing their relationship would mean the slow death of the soul. That was the price of reaching the pinnacle of power. And at some point during the next five months he had to decide whether he was prepared to pay it.
There was someone else who wanted to remove Clearwater from the Federation. Commander-General Ben Karlstrom, a.k.a. Mother, a member of the First Family and head of AMEXICO, the top-secret organisation to which Steve belonged.
Karlstrom’s present anxiety could have been allayed just as easily by having Clearwater thrown down one of the many thousand-foot deep ventilation shafts after administering – for safety’s sake – a massive, surreptitious dose of tranquillisers. But in the present circumstances that was not a viable option.
It was the President-General who had ordered the capture of Mr Snow, Cadillac and Clearwater, and he had now allowed himself to be persuaded that the child Clearwater was carrying might be the Talisman. A scan of a gene sample from the four-month embryo had revealed the three vital ‘markers’ – the divine fingerprint which, according to the opportunist quacks running the psionics department, would have to be present in the individual destined to become the Thrice-Gifted One – wordsmith, summoner and seer.
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