Those blessed with a vivid imagination took it to be a phantom vessel returning to collect the wandering souls of the dead-faces who had perished so far from home, but the boat was as real as the dark plume of smoke that gushed from its funnel then was torn to shreds by the keening wind. Its ghostly appearance was due to the fact that its decks and galleried superstructure were encrusted with snow and ice collected on the long journey from Bu-faro on Lake Iri.
Inside the boat, the huge cargo decks were packed from stem to stern with goods, animals and people. The loading manifest, which ran to several pages, was akin to the one compiled by Noah for the ark. Ten stallions, fifty mares, twenty-five breeding pairs of oxen, a similar number of ox-carts, wheels and sub-assemblies to make a hundred handcarts, pigs, ducks, chickens, a small mountain of farm implements and tools ranging from adzes, anvils, augers, axes, brad awls, chisels, drills and hammers to lathes, mallets, picks, pincers, rakes, saws, spades, shovels and vices; various seed grains and vegetable plants, boxes of dried fish, sacks of rice; cooking pots, pans, nails, knives, needles, thread, buckles, bolts of woven cloth, straw matting, six hand looms, spindles, woollen yarn, dyes, rope, pulleys, chains, candles, tinder boxes, lengths of metal rod, angle iron and flat strip, finished timber; five hundred cross-bows, several box-loads of metal parts for assembling two thousand more on wooden stocks made by the Mutes themselves, five thousand cross-bow bolts, boxes of arrow and spear heads, et cetera, et cetera, and – the biggest prize of all – seven hundred and sixty-eight Mutes from She-Kargo, M’Waukee and San’Paul clans who had journeyed eastwards and had ended up as slaves in the Yama-Shita domain.
Their release had been Cadillac’s proudest achievement.
The wheel-boat sent up the usual salvoes of green rockets to indicate its peaceable intentions, but the beach was deserted as the flat nose ran aground on the sloping shingle. From the wheel house perched on the roof of the top deck, there was no sign of last year’s battle. The piles of bodies had been burned or picked clean by the death-birds; the wreckage of the five wheel-boats had been stripped by hordes of human scavengers and the remaining structures dismantled. Every plank, beam, pillar and bolt had been prised loose and carried away along with the cannon and roundshot by teams of sweating Mutes who recognised them as weapons of war, but did not know how to make them spit sky-fire and earth-thunder.
Cadillac had acquired that knowledge. He knew that the three ingredients of black powder could be found in Plainfolk territory, and that it was possible to grind and mix them by hand. The problem lay in the extraction process; obtaining worthwhile quantities required a degree of cooperation and organisation that was beyond the present capabilities of the Plainfolk. They regarded themselves as warriors and hunters, not workers. If his own plans were to bear fruit, and Talisman was to forge them into a nation, the old ways would have to go, their entire lifestyle would have to change.
Dramatically.…
When the newly-liberated Mutes had unloaded the collection of goods and animals, the wheel-boat captain bade Cadillac a polite farewell and headed for home. None of his fellow officers had returned from the last expedition, but he had heard the stories gathered by the out-stations from the stricken D’Troit and C’Natti clans. He and his crew had no wish to remain a minute longer than necessary on a lake which could throw up a murderous wall of water to the height of the surrounding hills.
Cadillac, Clearwater and Roz – all warmly wrapped against the cold – watched the wheel-boat gather speed as it pulled away from the shore. Around them, the liberated Mutes whooped and yelled, hugged one another and danced for joy.
Roz and Clearwater – who was carrying Sand-Wolf against her chest – turned to Cadillac and gave him two fat kisses, one on each cheek.
‘You’re a genius,’ said Roz lightly. ‘But shouldn’t there be someone here to meet us?’
‘It’s all under control,’ said Cadillac. He interrupted the celebrations of the nearest group of Mutes and asked them to pass the word. Buffalo-Soldier was wanted. Now.
‘The warrior from the Clan Shawnessee?’ asked Roz.
‘That’s right. Their turf is just south of here. We can stay there till the snow melts.’
‘And then move on to Sioux Falls.’
‘Yes. For the Plainfolk Council. It’d be crazy for us to go all the way to Wyoming in this weather then have to come all the way back again.’
Clearwater brushed a fleck of snow from Sand-Wolf’s face, re-adjusted his hood, then surveyed the cheerful throng of Mutes who milled around them. ‘Do you think they’ll have room for all of us?’
Having got this far, Cadillac had no intention of letting the freed Mutes disperse. They, along with the goods and animals he had acquired, were a vital part of the triumphal entry he planned to make at the second Plainfolk Council. Despite his youth, he wanted to come away from that meeting as the leading policy-maker of the She-Kargo faction.
‘We’ll make our own room,’ he said. ‘We’ve got tents, poles, rolls of sailcloth, food—’ He broke off as Buffalo-Soldier appeared. ‘Just the man I need.’ They both climbed up onto one of the ox-carts to get a clear view over the crowd. ‘Now – where exactly do we go from here?’
Buffalo-Soldier cast a loving eye over the surrounding terrain. ‘Many snows have fallen since I last stood here but that is the one thing I have not forgotten. The smell and the shape of this land is in my blood.’ He pointed in the direction of his home turf. ‘You will find my people beyond the third hill.’
As he spoke, the Shawnessee hunting party, who had been watching the proceedings from a safe distance, decided to send up a ‘white arrow’, a smoking tuft of grass tied to a crossbow bolt. It was the signal used when opposing groups of Mutes wished to parley.
Cadillac watched the trail of white smoke rise towards the dark grey blanket of cloud then curve down towards them. The Mutes clustered around him greeted it with the traditional cry of approval. ‘Heyy-yaaaghh!’
Buffalo-Soldier leapt off the cart and darted forward to join several Mutes who were running towards the point where they expected the smoking arrow to land. When they got there, they formed a loose arc and stood with upturned faces as it fell towards them. The bolt buried its point in the snow-covered ground a few yards in front of where they stood, extinguishing the smouldering tuft of grass.
Cadillac waited expectantly as the Mutes clustered round it. They would be looking for the notches on the shank – the clan mark which established ownership.
Buffalo-Soldier gave a delighted whoop, grabbed the arrow and ran back towards the crowd, waving it excitedly in the air. ‘Shawnessee, Shawnessee. Shawnessee!!’
‘Heyy-yaaaghh!’ The watching crowd of returnees gave a ragged shout as the hunting party rose into view and formed a line along the crest of a rise to the south of the landing beach. Each one raised an arm and displayed the open palm – the traditional sign of greeting.
The crowd responded. ‘Heyy-yaaghh! Heyy-yaaghh! Heyy-yaaghh!’
Cadillac looked down at Roz and Clearwater and turned on his modest ‘man of the moment’ smile. ‘What did I tell you? Stick with me and you can’t go wrong.’
Clearwater eyed Roz. ‘I see what you mean.’ Cadillac was becoming more and more like Steve. But not copying him. It was as if their two personalities were fusing together.…
In Sara-kusa, Aishi Sakimoto and the other leading members of the Yama-Shita family were still shaking their heads over their copy of Cadillac’s shopping list. The baffled whispers quickly became howls of rage and disbelief as the bills from outside suppliers started coming in and the abacus beads clicked to and fro under the nimble fingers of their accounting staff. Day after day the cost of their largesse mounted inexorably, like a rising tide, and with it came the growing realisation they had been duped.
But how? What on earth, they asked each other, had persuaded them to do such a thing?! The Mute witches had made no threats, had conjured up no demons. They had been immensely grateful, and the
family had been delighted to provide them with what they had asked for. Everyone could remember the overwhelming feeling of joy as they waved goodbye to their guests from the dockside, but now that the euphoria had worn off they realised it was not at all what they had intended. These damned grass-monkeys were supposed to have been dismissed with a flea in their ear – instead of which they had sailed away with an emperor’s ransom!
At the second Plainfolk Council, Roz and Clearwater were content to let Cadillac steal the limelight. The freed Mutes were given a rapturous welcome from their clansmen; the animals, tools, weapons and other goods were shared out between the various bloodlines. Everyone undertook to make weapons, but some clans were allotted specific tasks – the breeding of horses, oxen, pigs and poultry which would then be traded as their numbers grew; others took on the job of making carts and simple sailboats for use on the lakes and rivers. In the years to come, transportation and communications would play a key role in bringing and holding the Plainfolk together.
Striking the balance wasn’t easy, but eventually a consensus was reached and no one was left feeling deprived. The plan was to build on the inter-clan trading that had proved so successful the previous year, but Cadillac proposed that from now on, bartering should be a year-round process. Delegations from each clan would still meet at the annual Plainfolk Council, but the venue should be changed from year to year. So far, these gatherings had managed to avoid the attention of ‘arrowheads’ from the Federation, but they could not expect to remain immune to attack from the air.
Cadillac also won the delegates’ support for two other parts of his master plan: first, the setting up of a skills cadre, formed by the newly-returned Mutes. Aided by wordsmiths from the three bloodlines, they would draw together everything they had learned about animal husbandry, crop cultivation and the other occupations which had filled their working day. The wordsmiths would help to organise this information into a coherent body of knowledge, and the ex-slaves – who had already broken through the mental barriers that separated one clan from another – would become the first generation of itinerant teachers who would train others to pass on what they had learned, and so the process would be repeated until all the Plainfolk were versed in the ‘New Ways’.
The second proposal involved the election of equal numbers of male and female delegates to a permanent council which would travel around the territory held by the Plainfolk, visiting the various clans to bring them up to date with what was happening elsewhere, check on how they were progressing and settle any disputes that had arisen with their neighbours.
Cadillac knew that the changes he was trying to introduce were not going to bring peace and harmony overnight, but when the Second Council broke up and the delegations departed, he had every reason to feel satisfied with what had been accomplished. Best of all, he had established his authority and, despite his youth, had gained the respect previously accorded to his much-loved teacher, Mr Snow.
Through the late spring and summer, as Roz’s child grew within her, and Sand-Wolf learned first to crawl, then attempted to take his first faltering steps, Clearwater was never far from her side. Both had now settled down to life with the Clan M’Kenzi, and had become firm friends of Magnum-Force, the clan’s female wordsmith.
Cadillac, now heavily into his role as the first of The Chosen, was totally immersed in his twin tasks as head teacher and member of the roving Plainfolk Council. Both took him away for weeks at a time, but he had promised faithfully that he would be at Roz’s side during the last month of her pregnancy from mid-August to mid-September when the baby was due.
All the Plainfolk knew of the eruption – the word that the great mountain in the West had spoken with a tongue of flame had been passed around during the gathering at Sioux Falls. Everyone’s expectations had been raised, but Cadillac still had no idea that the Sky Voices had told Roz she was carrying Talisman.
An inner voice also told her she should pass on the parts of her medical knowledge that could be usefully applied in a world where there were no thermometers, stethoscopes or diagnostic instruments of any kind, no antibiotics, sterile bandages, swabs, IV-drips, scalpels, suture needles, thread, clamps – in a word, nothing.
Apart from Dream Cap – a narcotic used as a painkiller – all the Mutes had were herbal remedies to cure sickness, stop infection and heal wounds. They knew how to set simple bone fractures and amputate limbs, and there was the occasional shaman, like Mr Snow, who had ‘healing hands’, but basically, only the healthy survived. The process of natural selection.
As a doctor, Roz’s primary concern was the coming birth of her child. Her studies had covered the various stages of pregnancy and childbirth and it was this, above all, that she wanted to pass on to Clearwater. All clans had female elders who acted as midwives, but their knowledge was based on practical experience and observation. It was totally unscientific and they had very little idea of what happened inside the womb. The fact that infant mortality was relatively low and complications few was entirely due to the basic toughness and physical fitness of female Mutes.
Roz had Mute blood in her veins, but she had been brought up in a softer environment, inoculated against infection and knew far too much for her own peace of mind about the changes taking place inside her body and the dozen and one things that could go wrong.
There was also one extra factor the video-texts hadn’t covered – the telepathic link with Steve and its bizarre side-effect which caused her body to reproduce wounds inflicted on him. Roz wasn’t plagued with every cut, bruise or knock Steve suffered; the wounding or injury had to be accompanied by a severe emotional shock. It was mental trauma that was the trigger, and the basis for Roz’s unexpressed fears that Steve might unknowingly endanger the life of her unborn child.
Clearwater understood this without being told, for Steve was also uppermost in her mind. Her love for him had not diminished. She continued to hope that he would find his way back to them, and the knowledge that her soul-sister shared her feelings drew them even closer together. Now, when Roz’s mind reached out towards Steve, Clearwater’s thoughts travelled with her and in that moment they became one.…
Steve had got the message, but so far he had been denied the means and the opportunity to escape. From New Year’s Day through spring and summer, he had been working below ground, war-gaming in the Simulation Room, and learning Japanese in the language lab.
With Fran’s help, he was becoming increasingly fluent, and had even managed to impress Major Fujiwara. The Major had been assigned to the Eastern Desk, but had hinted that he might soon be leading his team back into Ne-Issan to try and re-establish a network using known agents which would be run directly from the Federation.
Steve knew there was little hope of being given another field assignment in the near future. With Karlstrom’s tacit approval, he had been trawling through AMEXICO’s private data bank and passing on enticing morsels to John Chisum. With Fran, he was now a regular visitor to Bull Jefferson’s train, and had even been awarded the privilege of stoking the fire-box and in July – as a special treat for his birthday which had come and gone – he was allowed to drive it over a fifty mile stretch of track and toot the whistle.
And these men were going to rule the world. It was insane.…
Near the middle of August, Karlstrom met the other AMEXICO operative who was working inside Bull Jefferson’s camp. ‘Is everything in place?’
‘Yes. What about Brickman?’
‘Brickman?’
‘Aren’t you planning to tip him off?’
‘No. He’s served his purpose – and he knows too much.’
The operative smiled. ‘Don’t we all?’
‘There’s a difference. Brickman is concealing information. You’re not.’ It was Karlstrom’s turn to smile. ‘At least, nothing of any importance.’ Which was not the case with Brickman. Karlstrom now knew about Steve’s chance meeting with Annie and Bart Bradlee and his conversation in the stalled elevator with Sutton.
Karlstrom had called Crazy Uncle Bart and asked him to apply some pressure. Fearing she might lose custody of Lucas, Annie had immediately revealed her indiscretion.
Given her relationship with Brickman it was a forgiveable lapse. But the young man had said nothing, and to Karlstrom that spelled bad news. Given Brickman’s track record, he could not risk him gaining access to his son. Now or later.
Steve had said nothing because Roz had come through to explain the painful sacrifice he and Clearwater had to make. He had already abandoned any idea of rescuing his son – but Karlstrom didn’t know that. Which was a pity, because if he had, and had then proceeded to ask himself why, the Federation might have avoided the trouble that was coming their way.
But that was not how it was meant to be.…
At the end of the second week in August, Steve and Fran boarded Bull Jefferson’s train to inaugurate a newly completed 200-mile stretch of line from Grand Central to Eisenhower/San Antonio. As this was a special celebration, everyone was dressed up ‘Southern style’; Steve in the rebel grey, and Fran in a full-skirted walking-out dress made up in her favourite colour – buttercup yellow.
They steamed out of the yard to the sound of music, piped from the concealed speakers inside the wagons. Everyone joined in with the recorded voices, echoing the words and bouncing to the rhythm of a song about a railroad called ‘The Aitchison, Topeka and Santa Fe’.
The railway took them outside the protected borders of Cloudlands, but the First Family had ensured their privacy by erecting a chain link fence backed up by robot watchtowers at a distance of one mile on either side of the railway line. It was along this wide corridor, adorned with landscaped clumps of trees and small grass-fringed lakes, that Bull Jefferson’s three-car train now travelled at a steady fifty miles an hour.
Earth-Thunder Page 45
