Earth-Thunder

by Patrick Tilley

  Nice one, Stevie…

  While he was trying to work out an appropriate way of introducing himself, death and deliverance dropped out of the sky. A blue ’Hawk came round the far edge of the larch forest behind his starboard wing and swept in at zero feet with all six barrels pumping steel. The line of Mutes attempted to scatter, but the ’Hawk pilot had positioned himself well, catching the line end on. All fourteen went down spraying blood as the needle-point rounds scythed through their bodies.

  Steve threw the cockpit cover open, and hauled himself out with infinite care. He could no longer put any weight on his left ankle. Terrific.… He shifted his butt onto the rim of the cockpit and watched the Skyhawk make a climbing turn to port. Steve shuffled along to the port side emergency panel, released the catch, and got his hands on the survival kit. He tossed the rations and first aid packages aside, revealing the loaded pistol in its neatly packed shoulder-holster. Pocketing the spare magazines, he pulled out the pistol, then limped back towards the cockpit and stood with his right hand thrust inside, concealing the gun.

  He was hoping the Skyhawk pilot might land and offer a lift on his buddy frame. If he did, Steve planned to shoot him and move on. But the Skyhawk did not land. It continued to circle overhead.

  Commander Bob Carroll was not in a rescuing mood today.…

  Steve gazed up at the ’Hawk and tried to work out what to do. The problem was solved by the arrival of a camouflaged SkyRider. The kind used by AMEXICO. Definitely not good news.

  The SkyRider made a low pass over Steve’s position, then climbed back to make an approach and landing on his port side, bumping to a halt about eighty yards away. Beyond the effective range of his air pistol. The pilot kept the engine running. The passenger canopy opened. A helmeted figure in camouflage fatigues got out, came round the nose of the SkyRider and stood watching him.

  Steve tightened his grip on the hidden pistol.

  A second helmeted figure came out from behind the SkyRider carrying a rifle. He went down on one knee and took aim. The rising sun that warmed Steve’s back flared briefly off the lens of a telescopic sight as a triple volley tore into his right shoulder, slamming him back against the cockpit. The pistol flew out of his hand as it jerked open, bounced off the seat and fell beyond reach.

  It doesn’t hurt, Brickman! Nothing hurts any more. Steve straightened up and put his weight on his good leg as the first helmeted figure pulled a pistol from his shoulder holster and walked towards him. As he got closer, he raised his helmet visor.

  ‘Hiya, John. So this is how it goes, huh?’

  Chisum nodded and levelled the pistol at Steve’s chest. The three barrels were barely a foot away. ‘I hope you understand. This is nothing personal.’

  Steve gave a tired laugh, remembering Malone. Forgive me lit—…

  … tle sister! A short agonised cry burst from Roz’s lips as she was hurled backwards from the water pan by an invisible blow to her chest. The force lifted her off her knees and sent her sprawling on the dusty ground. Cadillac, Clearwater and Mexi rushed to pick her up, carrying her by the arms and legs to where a blanket had been spread out. Cadillac knelt down and cradled her head. Roz looked shocked and bewildered. Her eyes moved desperately from face to face but didn’t seem to focus.

  ‘Oh, Sweet Mother!’ cried Cadillac. He threw out a hand to try and staunch the blood that welled from a jagged hole between her breasts.

  Roz gripped Clearwater’s wrist fiercely. ‘The knife! Use the knife! Save my child!’

  Clearwater began loosening the thongs that held Roz’s leather bodice together. There was blood everywhere. She turned to Mexi. ‘Quick! Unwrap her skirt, then bring the cloths and water.’

  As the woman got busy, Clearwater ran to fetch the knife which lay on the whetstone. When she returned, Roz’s eyes had started to glaze. Clearwater straddled her right thigh and told Mexi to hold her down her other leg.

  ‘What are you going to do?!’ cried Cadillac.

  Clearwater blocked his outstretched hand and pushed it away. ‘What she asked me to do! Be strong!’ She took a deep breath, called upon Mo-Town to aid her, then placed the knife against Roz’s distended belly and made a lateral cut through the skin and then another deep cut through the abdominal wall. A crescent-shaped gap opened up, exposing the swollen uterus, covered with a film of blood. Clearwater began to cut it open from the top down, to free the unborn foetus within.

  Cadillac gave an anguished shout then shut his eyes and held onto Roz as her life drained away. He heard the sucking cry of a new-born child.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ said Clearwater.

  Cadillac looked up. The lower half of Roz’s body had been covered up. The baby lay on a clean cloth, its umbilical severed and tied. Mexi cleaned its eyes and finished drying it then passed it to Clearwater, who cradled it tenderly and let it suckle her left breast.

  Cadillac read the comforting message in her eyes. The shared sorrow, the shared love. Their lives had come together again. The bond between them had always been. Now it would take on a new richness, for they both knew that within them lived the spirit of the one the other had loved and lost. As long as they drew breath, Roz and Steve would never die.

  He laid Roz gently to rest on the blanket, kissed her still warm lips then reached out to touch their child. The baby’s head was perfectly formed and covered with wispy white hair. She was smooth-boned with a pale flawless body and dark arms – like wings.

  And they called her Snow-Raven.

  CODA

  JUNE – 2994 AD

  In Ne-Issan, the two-year civil war continued to erupt intermittently along the borders of the rival domains without any clear-cut victory in sight. The Yama-Shita and Min-Orota had gained control of the Toh-Yotas’ northern domain, but the Ho-Nada, Hase-Gawa and Naka-Jima, the Toh-Yotas’ northern allies, refused to be cowed. They had driven north across the domain of the Fu-Jitsu and now held a long stretch of the southern bank of the San-Oransa.

  In the south, the Da-Tsuni had ‘agreed’ to put itself under the joint protection of the Progressive San-Yo and Hi-Tashi. Elsewhere, old allegiances had held, but with the collapse in the power of the Toh-Yota shogunate, the domains had reverted to completely independent fiefdoms who were more than happy not to have to pay taxes to a centrally-run government. Indeed, there were more than a few domain-lords who – while giving their support to the main protagonists – were secretly hoping that neither succeeded in taking control of the country.

  Faced with having to replenish the family coffers to meet the costs of the seemingly endless war, Aishi Sakimoto, now domain-lord of the Yama-Shita, had sent the giant wheel-boats westwards again. Supported by sea-soldiers, the crews were making two or more trips a year into the territory occupied by the D’Troit, the C’Natti and San’Louis. But the trade was now one-way. Small groups of Mutes were lured to the boats with the promise of goods, plied with sake then herded aboard in an inebriated state to awaken in chains.

  This new method had helped the Yama-Shita reap rich rewards, but with no control from the centre, and no need for other domain-lords to obtain expensive trading licences, the Ko-Nikka family, financed by their neighbours the Se-Iko, was once again seeking to muscle in on the Great Lakes trade – putting a severe strain on their war-time alliance. And in the south, the Dai-Hatsu and Hi-Tashi were also venturing across their borders to bring back Southern Mutes, threatening the Yama-Shitas’ previous monopoly of the slave trade, and causing some members of the family council to view the murder of the Shogun as a serious and costly mistake.

  Deep within the earth-shield, an inexplicable fault in the computer-controlled signalling system switched a speeding east-bound shuttle onto the long passing loop occupied by a stationary westbound train between Santa Fe and Fort Worth. It was the kind of accident that all the experts said could not happen. There were too many fail-safe measures built into the system, and when the handful of shocked survivors staggered out of the tunnel at Fort Worth, the official rea
ction was one of stunned disbelief.

  This was the most serious failure to date, but it had been preceded by a worrying series of minor glitches in the multitude of systems controlled by COLUMBUS. Elevators froze and declared themselves to be overloaded when empty, turnstiles suddenly locked up or rejected valid IDs, lighting circuits failed to switch on, power lines suddenly went down, work-stations screened gobbledy-gook instead of data and vid-phone calls kept being mis-routed.

  There had always been service faults, but the mounting number of irritating incidents seemed to point to a deeper, mysterious malaise within COLUMBUS itself.

  Now two and a half years old, Lucas Brickman was displaying a lively intelligence and had impressed his guardians with his key-board skills. His ability to interact with the computer screen and his almost intuitive understanding of machine logic had already made him top of his class at the primary school unit he was attending. At this stage in his education, computers were used to play simple learning games, but his tutors gave him every encouragement. Some of those who watched over him even cherished the hope that when he grew up, Lucas would help to identify and eradicate the virus that was causing COLUMBUS to malfunction.

  No one suspected that his mind was the source of the illness and not the cure. And they continued to nurture him, for this, they believed, was the Talisman, and they had made him one of their own.

  In the hills of Wyoming, Cadillac sat on the ground facing his audience of young children from the Clan M’Kenzi and told them the story of the War of a Thousand Suns. The story he had heard so often from the lips of Mr Snow.

  It was not new to the eighty-three half-naked cubs clustered in a half-circle before him, but it did not matter. The children sat spellbound, hanging on every word, just as they had on the very first occasion he had taken the place of Magnum-Force after his return from the Eastern Lands. Most of them did not remember that he had told them the same story a few weeks ago. But then, most of them hardly remembered anything for very long and never would.

  But Cadillac could. Cadillac remembered everything he had seen and heard in his own adventure-filled life together with everything that Mr Snow, his guide and mentor, had passed on to him about his own life and the series of events that made up the nine hundred year history of the Plainfolk. Events passed on by successive generations of wordsmiths whose lives stretched back to the uncounted span of years known as the Old Time when the world trembled before the feats of Heroes with Names of Power.

  Cadillac circled his hands in the air above his head as he described how the ancestors of the She-Kargo had come from beyond the dawn, on the backs of giant birds whose beating wings made the noise of a mighty waterfall.

  They had landed at a place called O-Haya, by the side of a great lake. To celebrate their arrival, they killed and roasted the birds and feasted on them all summer long then, when winter came, they used the frozen waters of the lake to build a great settlement full of towering pillars of ice that glowed with all the colours of the rainbow and whose tops were lost in the clouds.

  In the War of a Thousand Suns, the city had melted and flowed back into the lake. Cadillac rippled his fingers up the length of both arms as he described how the falling Suns had burned the flesh from the bones of men and beast, and turned the bones to ashes that were sucked up to the heavens in a huge column of fire and smoke as tall as the sky.

  Every living thing perished except for an old man called She-Kargo and an old woman called Me-Sheegun and their children. She-Kargo had fifteen sons, all of them brave warriors, tall and strong as bears; Me-Sheegun had fifteen beautiful daughters. Hearing the prayers of the elders, the Great Sky Mother touched the hearts and minds of their children so that when the match was made and they were called forth in pairs to exchange the blood kiss, each son and daughter found favour in each other’s eyes and was forever content with their chosen mate.

  And their children, and their children’s children, grew strong and multiplied and moved westwards into the lands of the Minne-Sota, the Io-wa, Da-Kota and Ne-Braska, killing all those who resisted them, and making soul-brothers of all those who laid the hand of friendship upon them.

  Cadillac broke off as he saw Clearwater running towards him, her long dark hair flowing free. It was hard to believe there had been a time when it was thought she might never walk again. He rose and stepped forward to meet her. He sensed from her expression she was hiding something but could not tell whether it was excitment or anxiety.

  She extended a beckoning hand. ‘Come – quickly.’

  ‘Why?’ He became alarmed. ‘Is it Snow-Raven? Has anything –?’

  ‘Don’t ask questions. Just follow me.’

  Cadillac told the children to await his return and ran after Clearwater up the wooded slope. Beyond the first stand of pines was a small clearing. Sand-Wolf, the boy-child Clearwater had brought from the Federation, stood waiting among the trees at its edge. Now a sturdy two and half, he had become fiercely protective of his younger clan-sister.

  As Cadillac reached him, Sand-Wolf pointed solemnly towards the centre of the clearing where Snow-Raven sat on her hands and knees amongst the flame-coloured grass. Roz’s daughter who, in the last twenty-two months, had become their own. A shaft of sunlight, raying through the pollen-filled air, lit up her olive-skinned body with its dark arms, and turned her shock of white hair into a glowing crown.

  She looked up at her parents as they approached and, for the first time, Cadillac saw in her pale blue eyes the same gentle mischief that had been the hallmark of Mr Snow. And then he saw something that caused him to fall to his knees in front of her. Rising from the ground between her outspread fingers was a slim green blade of grass. It had begun.…

  ‘Man-child or Woman-child the One may be.…’

  Cadillac felt Clearwater’s hands on his shoulders. He looked up at her. ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘From the very beginning. Before she was born. Before I went into the Federation. Before you met the cloud-warrior. The knowing has always been within me. You, Roz, Steve and I were chosen for this task a long long time ago.’

  She knelt beside him. And together they remembered the words of the Old One. ‘You are the sword and shield of Talisman.’ Under their loving care and protection, Snow-Raven would grow straight and strong like the Heroes of the Old Time. She would become the Thrice-Gifted One, wordsmith, summoner and seer. She would forge the Plainfolk into a mighty nation, and would call upon the earth to rise up and crush the dark cities of the sand-burrowers. Human-kind would be freed from the chains of its past.

  This first fragile blade of green grass was a harbinger of the changes to come. More and more would spring into life in the years ahead, spreading far and wide. Death would be driven from the air and the blood would be drained from the earth. Soul-sister would join hands with soul-brother and the land would sing of Talisman.

  For the power within her was the power of The Word.…

  Discover books by Anthony Sampson published by Bloomsbury Reader at

  www.bloomsbury.com/PatrickTilley

  Fade-Out

  Mission

  The Amtrak Wars: Cloud Warrior

  The Amtrak Wars: First Family

  The Amtrak Wars: Iron Master

  The Amtrak Wars: Blood River

  The Amtrak Wars: Death-Bringer

  The Amtrak Wars: Earth-Thunder

  A Note on the Author

  Patrick Tilley was born in Essex in 1928, but spent his formative years in the border counties of Northumbria and Cumbria. After studying art at King’s College, University of Durham, he came to London in 1955 and rapidly established himself as one of Britain’s leading graphic designers. He began writing part-time in 1959.

  In 1968 he gave up design altogether in favour of a new career as a film scriptwriter. Work on several major British-based productions was followed by writing assignments in New York and Hollywood. His books have been translated into several languages, and have achieved cult-novel status.r />
  For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.

  This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  First published in Great Britain 1990 by Sphere Books Ltd

  Copyright © 1990 Patrick Tilley

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The moral right of the author is asserted.

  eISBN: 9781448212514

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