TIME PASSED SLOWLY ABOARD THE THUNDER AS IT always did,
but shipboard life continued to change. Children were born,
expanding the colony even mope; children of two races with
different physiologies and needs. Hawks himself was now a proud
father. For a man of his cultural background he did not seem at all
disappointed or upset that his first child was a girl, whom he and
Cloud Dancer named Chaudiqua, a combination of their Hyiakutt names
which meant Night Dancer.
Clayben, China, and Star Eagle continued to work on easier
methods of penetrating the closed colonial worlds in Master
System’s domain, and had some real success. Long-range
reconnaissance indicated that Master System had finally managed to
process all of its ships so that the access codes were different,
and could be altered far more easily and quickly in the future. But
with so vast an area and so many ships, stations, Centers, and
satellites, it simply was impossible for Master System to change
the entire surveillance and communications system, and thus the new
challenge was not to feed the systems false information, as had
been done with Pirate One, but rather to deflect or
confuse those sensors so they would not report an intruder at
all. Thunder was moved to a system off the charts with no
habitable worlds for a larger project of Star Eagle’s that
was quite ambitious: nothing less than the construction of a small
shipyard, entirely robotized, in which ships of new
design—small but fast, well armed, and possibly piloted by
only one or two people—could be constructed in modular
sections using the larger transmuters and then assembled and
tested. Part of the idea was not only to match the speed and
maneuverability of the Val ships, as well as their firepower, but
also to do so without killing any human pilots. Mechanisms had to
be created to shield and protect those pilots from the incredible
forces of acceleration and battle. The automated fighters of
Thunder provided the basic outline for the type of craft
they wanted, but did not have punch capability. The required
mechanisms added weight and complexity to the new design and caused
some problems they were still hammering out.
In the meantime, Vulture had been down on Matriyeh for many
months, and there had been no communication with him for most of
that period. As before, they had been forced to set him down in a
remote and unpopulated area where he, as a Janipurian, had to make
his way to civilization and then blend in as only he could. Hawks
and the others often thought that they could see Clayben’s
point in the great experiment that created Vulture. With a mere
five or six Vultures there would be no problem in getting the
rings; without one, it would be next to impossible.
As the time dragged on, though, with no word from the strange
creature, Hawks began to harbor dark thoughts that they might have
to go on without him. Vulture had so many strengths that it was
quite natural that he felt himself invulnerable and therefore could
become careless. But Vulture would be as helpless as any if
surprised by a Val: there were a number of ways to destroy even
such a thing as he, including incineration, disintegration,
cellular disruption, and chemical baths. Like the werewolves and
vampires of ancient legends, Vulture was fearsome—but, like
them, he could still be killed. The key so far had been the
ignorance of Master System and its minions that such a creature
even existed. The records on Vulture had been destroyed, Clayben
was on Thunder, and the few surviving scientists who had
known about the project had long ago had their memories altered for
their own protection. Their luck, however, could not last
forever.
It was a great relief, then, when word came that Vulture had at
last activated the signaling devices and was requesting a pickup
from the surface of Matriyeh. It had been over eight months. Unlike
the Janipur mission, they needed to bring Vulture back aboard and
analyze both the new mind and new body he had taken on when he had
absorbed his native persona, and they also needed first-hand
consultation.
The body was that of a tall, thin woman with long, muscular legs
and small, firm breasts. The arms, too, were muscular when flexed,
showing surprising power. The skin was a very dark brown, so dark
as to be almost black, the color extending not just to the skin but
to the palms and soles of the feet and other such areas, as well.
The black hair was thick and woolly, but the natural curls were
much larger than those of an Earth-human of one of the sub-Saharan
African races or Melanesians, and the features were delicate and
more European than anything else. Save in the the groin, brows, and
the underarms, there was no other hair on the body. The large eyes
were jet black, and seemed slightly puffy or swollen and protruded
more than was natural for an Earth-human. She was naked except for
a thin, tough-looking vine hanging on her hips, but wore loose
bracelets and anklets made of some vegetable material and dyed
green and blue, and she wore earrings and a necklace of carved
bones and thin wirelike vines.
She also had body markings on her cheeks, forehead, and around
the breasts and groin. These were simple designs that seemed burned
or tattooed in, although instead of the lighter discolorations one
might expect the outlines were simply a lighter brown, and some,
but not all, had been filled with various colors of paint or dye.
Aside from that, the skin was remarkably smooth, without the kind
of scars that might be expected. The thin, dark vine on her hips
proved to be an intricately woven ropelike belt with loops to hold
a blow gun fashioned of reeds, a small pouch made of some fibrous
material, and she held in her left hand a long spear that was made
of a stick or branch, carved straight, on which was mounted a
smooth, sharp-pointed stone held on with more of the thin, wirelike
vines that fitted into notches in the shaft.
“You must bear with me,” Vulture said apologetically
in a firm, husky soprano, “but it is more difficult to
readjust from this form than from the others. Let us go to the
village where I won’t feel so—closed in.”
Many of the others crowded around as she entered the central
area of Thunder, and at one point she gestured menacingly
with the spear and said something unintelligible but obviously
threatening. They backed off.
Someone brought her some water and she drank it and sank down on
the grass. Hawks approached and sat opposite, and after a while
Vulture was able to shake off enough of the native personality to
seem almost her old self.
“We were right,” she told him. “The people are
subject to an experiment and they are not quite as human
as they appear. It is a brutal place, but disorganized enough that
some independent movement and actions are possible even over large
distances. It is sobering to see an entire society reprogrammed and
their works wiped out. Their true colonial past exists in
occasional ruins and odd artifacts here and there, and in vaguely
remembered legends and half-truths, but not as a personal sort of
thing. Their very language, while expressive, is clearly
artificial, and as we expected, the north, at least, is more
complex than it appeared.”
Slowly, but with professional thoroughness, Vulture sketched the
basic structure of the society and its people.
They called themselves just the People, and no memories remained
that any other people, or types of people, or other worlds even
existed. There were the great gods who lived in the heavens and
created and judged, the sun being the greatest and the two small
moons the lesser; the stars were reflections of the lights in the
villages of the gods at night. The world itself was filled with
spirits; there were spirits of air, and water, and trees, and
demons in the volcanoes. The People were entirely subject to the
whims and occasional mercies of these spirits and while they were
always praying to or attempting to please or placate them, they
expected little. Life was a constant series of tests by the gods, a
nearly endless cycle, lasting until the gods or some spirits had
mercy and removed them to the heavenly realm, which was thought to
be much like Matriyeh but with abundant food and eternal good
health. To fail the tests of life set by the gods, spirits, and
demons was to suffer; to succeed did not guarantee any reward. To
rebel against the system, to question it or to try to make life
easier, was a heresy that was punished with a slow, agonizing,
tortuous death.
“The point is, you can’t even invent or introduce a
more efficient weapon, nor plant a seed, although such things might
occur to them. It would make things easier and change the tests of
the gods and would be a heresy. There is food, of course,
or they couldn’t survive, but they must spend their whole day
searching for it. They can eat pretty much anything, but they are
constantly on the move. The children are carried on the backs of
their mothers in rope carriers, sometimes two or three at a time,
and guarded communally during hunts. There is a high infant
mortality rate anyway, so they have lots of kids almost constantly
to make up for it. Pregnant people do the same work as ones that
aren’t even when it’s well advanced, as food goes first
to the hunters and gatherers, then to the children. These brands
are tribal markings; the colorations indicate rank and position. In
times or areas of plenty, there’s no problem with other
tribes, but in hard times or when a territory is depleted they
might war with one another.
“They have nothing but their weapons and what ornaments
they can find time and material to make for themselves. They carry
nothing with them on their endless journeys and camp wherever they
wind up with enough food for the day or when darkness falls. It is
far more deserted and desolate than you would think—a million
or less on a continent perhaps thirty million square kilometers.
One might go for days or even weeks without seeing a member of
another tribe, but there’s a lot of ground to cover each day.
The territories aren’t well defined; you go where you have to
and hope you don’t have to fight somebody for it.”
Hawks nodded grimly as the others listened in hushed silence.
“It sounds truly primitive, but you said it was
complex.”
“It is. But before you can understand it, and all the bad
news, you have to understand the basic biological differences
between them and you. They are partially unisexual, which is why
there are no men. I contain within me both sets of sexual
equipment, as do they all, but all but one in a tribal group is
biologically female. That one is the most aggressive, the nastiest,
the most commanding personality, and hormones trigger the
development of male characteristics, including a half-octave dip in
the voice, and the growth of some sparse body hair, and male sex
organs. That one then becomes the tribal group’s only male
and its leader. However, if he loses the respect of the
tribe—such as by cowardice or incompetence—the leader
loses those characteristics, becomes fully female again, and is
chased away into the bush. Within days another will take on the
leader characteristics, sometimes by sheer force of will. There is
occasionally a conflict that must be settled by force, but
that’s rare. Only one can rule at at time, and the gender
change seems to be triggered mentally in both directions.
Naturally, if the leader dies another takes his place, and leaders
have short lifespans because they have to be in the forefront and
take the real responsibility.”
“That certainly explains that mystery,” Hawks
agreed.
“As with most very primitive people, sex is a dominant
part of their lives. Some of these charms are sexual totems, and
phallic symbols are an all-consuming passion. Even rocks of the
right shape take on mystical connotations. The tribal loyalty is
more than just cultural, though—it’s chemical. Once
you’ve had sex with the leader you simply don’t want to
have sex with anybody else, though it’s no blind love or
slavelike submission. You might hate the son of a bitch—which
is not uncommon—but he’s the only one you want. In
fact, if a tribe is in danger of depletion, the only way to
increase its numbers is to stalk members of another tribe, capture
them, and have the leader rape them. I told you it was a brutal
place.”
Raven, the cynical commentator of the group, had been standing
there listening with the others. “I see you don’t have
the male characteristics,” he noted. “That’s not
your style.”
“I couldn’t afford to. Too much responsibility and
visibility. Besides, I don’t think I could maintain it very
long. I duplicate a victim cell for cell, but they are false
cells—duplicates with a difference beyond the ability of most
analyzers to measure, but still false. I can neither bear nor
father children of a race I am merely imitating, nor replicate
myself. Not bearing children can be an advantage down there,
although it’s the lowest status and likely to get you the job
of scout or of testing rope and log bridges to see if they’re
safe, but not fathering children is an unforgivable sin in a
leader. I couldn’t maintain the male aspect very long, so it
wasn’t worm trying.”
“Such a life,” China commented, shaking her head.
“I think I would kill myself.”
“That is the cultural difference. You are not an
individual down there, at least not in the greater sense—you
are the component of a group. Racial survival depends on group
survival. There is not a one there who would consider not
sacrificing herself for the group. Bad luck is attributed to the
will or capriciousness of the gods. To fail the tribe, however, is
the only major dishonor. They would turn on anyone who did and that
one would wish she had chosen death long before she actually died.
Even a captive from another tribe turned to the new tribe would
submerge herself in the new tribe and dismiss the old. It’s
not the way we think, but it’s the only pragmatic means to
survival. Suicide would weaken the group and is therefore a
terrible crime, the worst kind of crime.”
“And what of those crippled, permanently injured, or
deformed?” Hawks asked. “Are they simply
killed?”
“Those who can’t contribute or keep up can’t
be afforded. The people are pretty tough—this skin has the
thickness of aged leather, the major bones are very hard to break,
and the toleration level for pain is incredible—but accidents
do happen, of course. When they do, in honorable service, there is
a ritual done at night. Some of the plants down there produce
powerful drugs that can be given to the crippled and that kill
without pain or agony. Then . . . ” She
stopped and sighed, not quite knowing how they would take it.
“Yes?” Hawks urged gently.
“Then the tribe eats them, so they always remain with the
group. A valiant enemy may also be treated that way, as a mark of
honor and respect. Little is wasted.” She fingered her
necklace. “Some of these were carved from human
bones.”
“So that’s what Master System plans for our
future,” somebody growled, and there were lots of other
murmurings, mostly angry. Hawks put a stop to it.
“Those of you who find this horrifying are ignorant of the
cultures of some of your own ancestors. Nor is it any more terrible
than some of the things some of us supposedly civilized and
cultured people have inflicted on others with our technology. It is
not right when our own kind practices such barbarism, but I think I
understand this culture. I do not like it, but I understand it.
Still, those of you sickened and repulsed by this should remember
why we are doing what we are doing and against whom. We are not
here to approve or disapprove. Each of us, I suspect, has things in
their own culture they consider normal, proper, and civilized that
would horrify others standing around here now. We need to know
about this place. There is a ring there. Did I guess right about
the unified theology?”
Vulture nodded. “Yes. Oh, there are minor differences but
the whole culture is held together by a common set of gods and
beliefs. The firebearer, which is the oldest female in the
tribe—age is a mark of extreme respect down there, as you
might imagine—and who has the flint stones to make fires, is
the spiritual leader and gets training from the only nontribal
people on the planet. They are quite easy to spot—they shave
their heads and are almost as heavily marked as Silent Woman. They
are called wassun, which basically means
‘truth-bearer.’ They are celibate females—no
leader would dare touch one—and they are the authority. They
remain with a tribe for short periods, and even participate in
tribal activities, but mainly they teach theology to the
firebringer and all others who are interested. They remain with a
tribe until that tribe interacts with another, and then they cross
over and go with the next one. That means their stay might be days
or weeks or longer.”
“Ah!” Hawks said. “And where do they
come from?”
“Well, they don’t officially come from
anywhere—they’re regarded as always there, like the
rest of nature. I only had encounters with two, but it took some
time to determine that it was two, not one. They look and sound
remarkably alike—like identical twins, almost—and are
generally regarded as the same person. I was really tempted to
become one of them but I could never get alone with one of them
long enough to do it. They do more than counsel, though—they
almost interrogate, only so smoothly and professionally you hardly
realize it. They’re looking for any signs of heresies,
deviations from the norm. And they have power. I realized
what they were almost immediately—field agents, although they
don’t realize it. They really believe this guff,
too—I’m convinced of that. But when they talk to the
gods, the gods sometimes answer back, in holy places prohibited to
all but the wassun.”
“Oho! Now we’re getting someplace! So somewhere
there’s a central authority with at least some access to
technology,” Hawks said. “Could it be automated? A
computer buried and self-maintained, for example?”
“I think not. The wassun come from some specific
place and they report back there. I had a crazy idea that makes a
lopsided kind of sense.”
“Go on.”
“Now, the SPF has a division for each race,
right?”
“So we are told.”
“But what good are Matriyehans when their parent world is
reduced like this? Not much. So what if that division were
processed to become essentially the priesthood on Matriyeh? Make
’em all look the same, act the same, spout the same stuff.
Any good psycho lab could do that and Master System could use the
best. Make their commanders the high priestesses someplace, not
necessarily large or fancy—give ’em just enough
technology that they regard as magic to do the job, and take the
reports.”
“Logical, but to what end? And how would they replicate
themselves if they are celibate?”
“Well, celibate doesn’t mean barren. If the racial
bond is chemical—and I can assure you from personal
experience, it is—then maybe theirs is permanent or periodic,
such as one year on, one year off. Who would notice? You’d
have a closed hierarchy dedicated to maintaining the established
order. In other words, everything you need in a Center without all
a Center implies. The important part is that they seem to have
access to technology. They couldn’t wait months for word to
get back that something was going wrong, and they’d have to
have the power to restore order. Not all the big devices like
flyers and lasers, but mystical tools regarded as god-given devices
for maintaining the natural order.
“But now comes the kicker. The system’s fragile. Do
you realize what just one freebooter landing there would do to it?
And it’s at least a century old, maybe more, so that would
have to be taken into account. I kept asking myself why a world
that they know and we know has a ring would be
that undefended.”
“I think I can see where you’re going. I
wouldn’t have wiped the minds of those troopers. There would
have to be a control someplace. A monitoring computer with access
to all the latest tools, able to mindprint the young priestesses
with all the supernatural theology and monitor them.
That’s why there are still survey satellites. If
they get any hint of an alien presence or unauthorized technology,
the priestesshood will become a fully operative SPF division
again, with the knowledge of their own grandparents’
experience to draw upon and whatever technology and support they
need to either deal with the alien menace or call in all the help
they need.” He stopped a moment. “Whew! You
realize what that means?’
“I think so. Stealing the ring would certainly trigger the
system, so they must never know it’s stolen. We can’t
use more than limited technology on the surface because
that’s what all the monitors, human and mechanical, are
looking for. The mere sight or report of anything out of the
ordinary might be enough, we’d be suddenly faced with who
knows what in the way of automated defenses plus a full SPF
division. They’d call in every ship within reach, and this
time they won’t underestimate our strength. Another
battle like the last one could set us back
years.”
“Pickup sticks,” Isaac Clayben said, and they all
turned to him in puzzlement. “An ancient children’s
game in my native land. Nothing more than a bundle of thin,
straight sticks dropped in a heap from a small distance. The object
is to remove each stick without moving or collapsing the rest of
the pile. The one who removes most is the winner. This is like
playing pickup sticks in an enemy minefield, except we don’t
know the nature of the minefield or what will trigger it, so we
must be extremely careful. They must not be permitted even an
accidental chance to learn that we are there or ever were
there.”
Vulture shrugged. “So I get in, and I get the ring
somehow. The moment it leaves its home or somebody important turns
up missing, the alarms ring and it’s all over. You’d
never get me out.”
“Exactly. And I must frankly state that if the alarms go,
those down there would have to be abandoned for the sake of the
rest of us. If they came in full strength, they would easily locate
the fighter and destroy it and install permanent monitors. Contact
would be lost, perhaps for years, perhaps forever. It must be done
right the first time.”
Vulture stared at her creator and all could sense the hatred
there. When and if they had the rings, Clayben would be the new
project for the strange creature, but for now Vulture would keep
her word.
“There is simply no way to do this. We don’t know
where it is, or what we’re facing. And, down there, as one of
them, I react as a native. It’s impossible.”
“Maybe not,” Star Eagle put in through the speaker.
“For one thing, I know where it must be.”
That startled all of them. “What? How?” Hawks
asked.
“One satellite is geostationary, all its channels beamed
to a single location. There can be no other reason for this than to
allow an open channel of communication to the outside. It is in an
area almost eleven hundred kilometers from our fighter station, and
it’s quite central to the continent. It is logical that it is
the religious center, and therefore the one with the ring. It is
probably held by the highest-ranking priestess.”
“Big deal,” Hawks responded. “We don’t
know what’s in there, or who, and we can’t land anybody
even remotely close to that place. To escape detection we had to
set that fighter down in one of the rare holes in the satellite
surveillance, and the other locations are farther away. So
Vulture’s got to be dropped down with nothing but what
she’s got now, traverse eleven hundred kilometers of that
hell without being noticed, scout out the whole place and become
one of the high priestesses with access to the ring the first time,
because anybody who mysteriously disappears will be missed. Then
she takes the ring—and triggers the alarm.”
“We have one ring,” China pointed out. “Those
of us who have seen another state that ours seems identical in all
ways except the design on the face. If we knew the design on the
ring below, we could use ours as a prototype for weight and feel,
manufacture a dummy, and make a switch. I will wager that they do
not put this ring under a microscope.”
Vulture nodded. “I thought of that. I believe I know the
basic design, since it’s on everything owned by the
truth-bearers that I saw. Anybody have paper and pencil? None of my
incarnations has been an artist, but I’ll see what I can
do.”
The only pads and pencils available were in the children’s
nursery, and were quickly rushed in. Vulture made several attempts,
drawing left-handed, before she finally got one that was
approximately correct. A stylized, spindly tree with a tiny figure
of a bird in it. “Damn! That’s just not quite
right!”
“It will do,” Clayben responded. “If their
markings were more exact and you studied them closely enough, we
can pick it up in a mindprint. The whole stone area is only about
three square centimeters, and we know the style and workmanship of
the rings. It could be done. Not well enough to fool a full-fledged
analysis, but certainly, I think, well enough to fool even someone
who wears it daily. One rarely looks at rings; they are taken for
granted. If they eventually notice, the thieves will be long gone.
It is certainly worth a try.”
Vulture sighed. “Even if true, this is a situation where
my . . . talents . . . will be of limited use. If we are correct, then I can eventually
waylay and become a truth-bearer, but I will have to remain that
person until the ring is well away. We just can’t have
someone come in and later turn up missing, without triggering
everything. If they are programmed SPF troopers, then we
can’t pick one up and use her as a prototype either. As I
discovered when I became the sergeant, they all have latent
triggers. Mindprobe one and the subject dies unless a specific
computer code is entered, unique to each individual. We’d get
nothing.”
“Then what would you need?” Hawks asked, wondering if this
would be the one theft they couldn’t work.
“To even attempt it, I have to go along with the
restrictions set by the system. We’d have to go down, cross
all that distance and survive, and we’d all have to be
programmed so that we couldn’t betray ourselves. We
might just pick up a truth-bearer anywhere along the line, or we
might lose someone to another tribe looking to build itself up, and
without proper programming, each of us would be a loaded bomb ready
to go off. To do it convincingly, and unobtrusively, I’d need
a tribe. More important, I’d need a tribe with someone else
as leader, since I couldn’t maintain the post. When we got to
that main installation, I’d have to go in as a truth-bearer
returning for leave or whatever it might be called, scout the
place, locate the ring, and figure out a way to make the switch. It
might well take more people than just me, too. We can’t know
until we get there. We can’t even know if it’s
possible.”
“You expect us to be the tribe?” Hawks asked.
“We can’t spare people like that. We have ships to
staff and only a few who can really qualify.”
“I don’t need a large group. Too conspicuous and
hard to support anyway. What do you expect to do? Go down there,
knock a whole tribe senseless, ship ’em up here one at a
time, and mindprint them? I’m proposing the ultimate heresy
in this den of gods—when push comes to shove I’ve got
to have a group of atheists. I could go back down and try to track
down, isolate, and sedate four of five natives, but that just
increases the risk, and I’d have a small tribe that still
wouldn’t know a Val from a god. Maybe we can’t take
high-tech stuff in, but we might be able to use what they have if
we can recognize it, and we sure have to figure how to avoid
tripping the booby traps. I’m not sure that installation is
gonna be any more advanced that the rest of this world, as far as
the people there are concerned, but we’ll be hip-deep in
people all of whom will suddenly become full-fledged SPF if a slip
is made.”
“We can’t have them all looking like you,”
China pointed out.
“True, but there’s a fair variety down there in
spite of in-breeding. Just keep the basic racial characteristics
the same. Hell, we have those photos. As for the mindprint, I can
become my native persona, Uraa, so completely for that purpose that
only she will come out on the print. Ask Clayben. He designed it
that way.”
The doctor nodded. “It’s true.”
“Plus we’ve got China’s experience in
psychogenetics, psychochemistry, attitudinal programming—the
works. I can work with her and Star Eagle to create what is
necessary to survive down there, avoid exposure, and still get
things done.” She looked at their faces and saw their
hesitancy, their doubts.
“Surely,” Ikira Sukotae said, “there must be
some alternative.”
“Sure. I’ll sneak in, somehow manage to become the
big cheese if I can—and it might take a year or
two—then steal the ring, and make a run for it as the whole
security force is awakened and the alarm goes out to an orbital
defense system designed to destroy anything trying to get on or off
the planet.”
The silence that followed was such that they could hear the air
filtration system.
“The odds for success in this attempt are quite
low,” Star Eagle reported after a lull. “The highest
probability is that the attempt will be judged impossible and the
party will have to trek back and return empty-handed.”
“Permanently stuck in that form for nothing,” China
noted.
“Yes, although I’d say the odds of escaping
detection are even. A truth-bearer missing at the center would be
noticed; one who vanished in the field would be simply written off
as a routine casualty. At least we would have people toughened by
the harsh experience down there and better equipped for a later
try, and we would know just what we were facing and could figure
out an alternative plan while we went after another ring. There are
so many unknowns and variables here, the odds are astronomical that
if an attempt were made it would either be unsuccessful or would
trigger the response we do not want. In that case, those on the
planet would be stuck down there, perhaps permanently. Vulture
might get out by becoming a trooper, but no one else would, and
accomplishing a safe pickup, assuming they avoided capture, would
be next to impossible for a year or more. The odds of actually
stealing the ring undetected without the use of computer aids,
massive intelligence, interpretation, and analysis are pretty slim.
That’s assuming the group survived in that environment long
enough to get to the installation and back in the first
place.”
Hawks thought for a moment, then said, “This may be a
great blow to your ego, Star Eagle, but human beings existed in
great numbers at a high level of culture and civilization long
before computers. The big trick here is to keep our operation on
the level of the culture of Matriyeh—all the way—while
being aware enough not to step in any of the technological and
anachronistic traps. You may be right. This might only be an
intelligence mission, or it might fail. The risks are certainly
great. But right now I’d say it’s the better of the two
choices open to us. There is a lot of activity now around Chanchuk,
and we’re sending out ships on long-range surveys trying to
find if there is any other unusual activity that might tip us off
as to the whereabouts of the fourth ring. Here is where
they’re overconfident. Here is where they are
convinced that the odds are so much against us we won’t even
make the attempt until we have to. I say we give it a
try.”
Raven looked around and gave everyone a thin, humorless smile.
“Any volunteers?” he asked.
Hawks, in fact, was not looking for any volunteers, at least not
yet. There was a lot of research and technical data to accumulate
first, plus work with Vulture to computer-model the sort of
mindprint he wanted and determine just what the best attributes of
survival might be. In the meantime, Hawks dispatched
Kaotan to supplement Bahakatan and
Chunhoifan in surveying the known colonial worlds for any
signs of unusual activity there. Without the fourth ring the first
three were nothing, and he would have liked nothing better than to
go after number four before tackling Chanchuk. If they had three,
Master System would know just where to expect them, and if he had
to fight one more major battle anyway, it might as well be in the
spot where he probably had to fight one anyway.
By the time they had to, he hoped they might figure out a way to
win.
Although Clayben could put ideas into programs better than any
of them, Vulture worked mostly with China and Star Eagle on the
aims. The creature had no desire to ever be subject to
Clayben’s control again, and didn’t trust him a bit.
And of all the things to fear in all this, Clayben feared his
creation most of all.
By the time Star Eagle had read, picked, probed, and analyzed
the Uraa personality as much as was possible, and chose and modeled
the genetic information, Hawks had a pretty good idea of who he
wanted to go and why. He discussed it all with Raven first, and was
very much surprised to find that the Crow was in agreement.
“She’s the logical choice. The only choice
for leader among this group for a place like that,” Raven
said simply.
“I just thought you and
she . . . ”
“Look, they tinkered a little with her head on Melchior,
but that was just to give her some kind of loyalty so she could be
kept under control. Nobody I know of messed with my
noggin. She ain’t even good in bed. More like fightin’
a war and tryin’ not to get hurt. The only thing I wanted to
always make sure of is that she was always on my side. No, I can
get—satisfied—here if I feel the need, Chief. Tell the
honest truth, if Ikira was a meter taller or me a meter shorter and
she had a little more liking for men and a lot less for women,
she’d be my choice of this lot.”
“You sure you wouldn’t like this one yourself? You
were a field agent by choice all those years and you were in some
pretty tough scrapes over the years.”
He sighed. “Chief, there ain’t no question this is
Manka’s meat. The kind of world just made for somebody with
her personality and charm. She has to go. I think she
already figured that. And under this kind of setup, I tell you
she’ll be the leader and therefore the male in the pack. Now,
I ain’t got nothin’ against bein’ a
woman—face it, everybody’s always damned curious how
it’d be to be the other way, and I’m gettin’ on
in years and have nothin’ much to lose—but under that
system, I’d be physically bound to Manka as my lord and
master. If we got to put more down to pull them out or reinforce
them, I’ll do it. I won’t like it, but I’ll do
it. But that second part’s just askin’ too
much.”
Hawks nodded sympathetically. “All right. Accepted. I just
kind of figured you were used to working as a team and, besides,
this is probably the closest race to our own we’re going to
have to deal with.”
“I know, and it’s tempting for that reason. But
she’s much too mean to die, Chief, and I’ll be damned
if I’ll spend the rest of my days as one of her harem.
Otherwise, you’re right. This is my meat. Any ideas on the
others?”
“Yes. It might surprise you to know I have a couple of
volunteers.”
“Huh?”
“Lalla Paschittawal and Suni Banderesh. They’re
pretty tough characters but they’ve lost their husbands and
their ship and they are like fish out of water around here. I
thought of them as pilots for some of the smaller ships we’re
building, but this doesn’t necessarily preclude that. They
took hits right off and never really got their licks in. They want
to get even. They want to thumb their noses at Master System. Most
of all, I think they want release from the unremitting boredom
they’ve had since the battle.”
“Okay, that’s four. Is that enough?”
“If nobody died down there, yeah, but you and I know the
odds of even getting to the damned place, let alone back, in one
piece. Vulture wants seven, herself included.”
“Seven! But who else is nutty enough for this
one?”
“Let’s call in Warlock and ask her.”
Raven’s sense had been correct. Manka Warlock had been
expecting to be summoned, and she was not adverse to the idea.
“Judging from Vulture, I won’t even have to change my
appearance much,” she noted. “A little blacker, a lot
tougher.”
“It’s far more alien on the inside, but you’re
probably right.” He told her about the two Indrus
widows’ offer.
“They have motivation, but I wonder if they are too
civilized. We will check them out and see. Anybody else?” She
looked at Raven, and Hawks got her thought.
“I’d rather save Raven. You two have unique
qualifications as experienced field agents. I’m willing to
risk one of you but not both.” There. That got the Crow off
the hook, and he could see the gratitude in the field agent’s
eyes. Hawks decided he was owed a favor.
Warlock sounded disappointed, but accepted the logic of it.
“Very well, then, who else?”
“You tell me.”
She thought a moment. “If we will not have Raven, then I
think we should have Captain Santiago.”
“Maria? Why?”
“She is without a command or crew, she has reason to want
revenge as much as the others, and she is tough. I have learned
through this that no one gets to be captain of a freebooter ship
without being tough, and she was the undisputed mistress over two
big men and two different colonial life forms. She may need to
unlearn some of her dependence on high-tech weapons, but I believe
she can be taught. She is a survivor. If anything happens to me,
she is capable of command.”
“All right, I’ll talk to her about it, anyway.
Anybody else?”
“Let us summon her now and see if she has the will.
Perhaps she will have some suggestions.”
It was done. Hawks hated these kind of sessions, but there was
no getting around them. At least Sabir and the Chows seemed to have
adjusted and accepted their forms, although it was true they still
tended to socialize more with the Earth-humans aboard than with the
Janipurian refugees they’d impersonated.
Captain Santiago was not exactly thrilled with the idea, but she
realized why she had been nominated. She asked for time to think it
over, but within hours returned and agreed. “On one
condition, though.”
“Yes?” Hawks was willing to go to any lengths within
reason.
“You need a couple more, right?”
“Yes. We could go with you five, but if you have any
ideas, let’s hear them.”
“Midi Ng, at least, and hopefully the rest of that crew of
cowards.” Ng was the pilot who commanded Espiritu Luzon
in the engagement that cost Santiago her ship and crew.
“It’s about time they paid up.”
Warlock grinned, showing she shared the sentiments.
Hawks sighed. “I wish we could send the whole batch.
Savaphoong gave the orders, but he also gave us the murylium
shipment and you and the other freebooters. You owe him for that,
but we’ll do it anyway—my way. Those five brainless
beauties would be nice for this, but they’re transmutees. We
can’t change them, only reprogram them—which I will do
if I need warm bodies. I’d also ask for Autoro but I
wouldn’t want to take any chance that he’d wind up in
command down there, even by accident.” Autoro was
Savaphoong’s bodyguard and enforcer and the only other free
man he’d taken out of Halinachi with him. “Midi’s
girlfriend, Tae-Jin Chun, however, is proud of her martial arts
abilities and was the Espiritu’s weapons officer.
Anybody as small as she is who can act as a bar bouncer is somebody
who’ll be very useful down there.”
“They’re gonna say no,” Raven said flatly.
Hawks shrugged. “I’m going to talk with Savaphoong
first. I think by the time we’re through, they’ll
realize that they don’t have a choice. They owe him their
lives, and he owes for the Indrus and the San
Cristobal. I think he knows it.”
Savaphoong wasn’t buying at all, and he was quite miffed
that anyone would even consider using anything of his again.
“We did our part, and we continue to support you,” he
said, sipping a drink mixed in his luxurious bar by his personal
slaves on the Espiritu Luzon, where he had lived in luxury
since coming aboard. “I know what the others think, but we
took damage in that battle and did the only prudent thing we could
to save at least one ship out of three.”
Hawks settled back in the comfortable chair he’d been
given and looked squarely at the old entrepreneur. “You force
me to put my cards on the table early. Up to now you’ve been
acting like you have some kind of special privilege or position
here, and up to now, thanks to your previous help, I’ve been
willing to go along. No more. Then, I didn’t need you, but
after the battle, I considered you a potential risk as well as an
ally. I know about the small explosion you rigged in the stern tubes
to show real damage rather than just the shaking up you actually
got. Don’t bother denying, I have the battle recordings
recovered from the wreck of the Indrus and the sensor
readings from Kaotan and Thunder. An explosion,
even a very small one, is difficult to control. It affected your
port steering mechanism.”
“Indeed, that was part of our problem. So what?”
“You couldn’t have moved into the position you took
opposite Indrus and San Cristobal if that
mechanism had been damaged before the Val attacked. You
couldn’t have steered that way. You could have gotten there,
but it would have taken many complex maneuvers you didn’t
make. I’m no pilot, but Santiago is an experienced captain,
and Star Eagle is nothing else but. Once I saw that, I had no
hesitancy in approving Star Eagle’s request that when this
ship was inside for repairs, we make a few adjustments. You take
off without Star Eagle’s codes, and you explode. You try
something even then, and Star Eagle can assume remote command,
including life support.”
Savaphoong almost dropped his drink. “By what
right . . . ”
“I am the commander of this fleet. Me. I was
elected, and then affirmed by the council of which you are only one
member. I command every ship and every person in this community.
Every ship. Every person. Would you like to put
this to a vote of the captains when they come in?
They’ve all seen the recordings, too. At this point,
the only thing that is saving you from the mob, the mindprinter,
and maybe the transmuter, is me. I’m doing so out of
pragmatism and past considerations, but you used up most of that
reservoir when you cost me two ships and five good lives. Now
you’re getting the rest of it, and the scales are even.
Either you and another of your choice go down there, or you get to
remain here in luxury by giving me the two people we want. I may
need you or the others or the ship later on, but not now. If I do,
I’ll have them—and you—or you will not be there
for the payoff if there is one. Which is it? You? Or
them?”
Savaphoong sank back into his chair, visibly shaken. For a
moment, he just stared off into space, oblivious to his company.
Finally he said, “You do not pull your punches, do
you?”
“I can’t afford to. We—all of us—are
living on borrowed time. I told you when you signed on that it
would be permanent—once in, nobody gets out. It is a luxury
we can’t afford. As long as it doesn’t jeopardize this
mission or its people, I allow what I can, but don’t
overestimate your importance or power.”
“I’ve had men shot for far less than this, you
know,” Savaphoong said, not threateningly but actually rather
casually.
“That was Halinachi and the hard climb up to build
it.”
“I didn’t build it. I took it. Jamie, there,”
he said, pointing to one of the slaves, “is the old owner. I
keep him around because it amuses me to do so.”
“You try to take this from us—” Hawks
responded in the same sort of tone. “Go ahead. You might even
get me, and perhaps a few others, but in the end you will envy
Jamie his brainless happiness. I have far too many deadlier things
to worry about than you, Savaphoong. I do not lose sleep over you,
but perhaps you should lose some sleep over me.”
“I might very well. All right, you can have them. Enjoy
yourself, señor. I admit that you have me, but I have not exhausted
all my bargaining chips yet.”
Hawks stared at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Now. It is not yet the time to need them, and if
I use them now I will have no further reason for existence, will I?
Do not worry. It is all locked up in here,” he said, tapping
his head, “and while it might be destroyed, even our friend
Clayben could not get it out of me. You just let me be, and you
will not regret it, my friend. When it is time, I have things you
still need.”
It was Hawks’ turn to rise from his chair. “You know
where the fourth ring is?”
Savaphoong just smiled, satisfied to win at least a minor round.
“I do not say what I know. I will, my friend, when it is
time.”
Hawks wanted to throttle the man, and promised himself later
vengeance, but he had more important things on his mind now. He
went below to see the two women who shared a luxurious cabin and
found that they had already been tipped. He suspected they were
listening in to the conversation.
“We will not do it!” Midi said firmly, always the
spokeswoman for the pair. “He does not own us! We are not his
slaves!”
“Yes you will,” Hawks responded icily. “And
I’ll explain why very simply. He saved your neck and we saved
your skin. You’re experienced pilots but you’ve
contributed nothing—except following his orders and letting
two ships be smashed. He’s disowned you. You know what went
on. He’s throwing you to the wolves to save his own skin,
just like he threw those ships to the wolves to save his. Why
should he care about you any more than he did about them?
You’re just employees—and you’ve been fired.
You’re being thrown out of this cozy little love nest, and
the only place you can come is Thunder. I am telling him
that he will either present himself tomorrow morning at oh seven
hundred to Manka Warlock on the common in Thunder or
present you. No other ship will take you. Now, you do have
choices. You can report. You can commit mutual suicide—no one
will grieve for you, I assure you. Or you can leave, but taking no
equipment with you. I’ve just explained to your ex-employer
that everything here is common property. You report, or kill
yourselves, or you will both be thrown stark naked out the nearest
airlock.”
He turned and left the cabin, then got on his spacesuit and
exited the ship, walking down to the airlock entry port of
Thunder and back inside. He was slightly ashamed of
himself for feeling so, but by god he felt good!
Manka Warlock had volunteered to be the test case for the
transmuter template Star Eagle had worked out using the genetic
information from Vulture. Outwardly, the change was noticeable but
far less extreme than in any of the others who had or would undergo
the process. Her creamy brown skin was now much darker, and her
mane of woolly hair changed from tiny curls to large ones. She had
been tall and muscular and was still tall and muscular, if more so
than before. Her features had always been fine and delicate, a
mixture of French and Ashanti ancestors, and these needed no
changes. They did add the brands, mathematically chosen to be
consistent with Matriyehan practice yet unique, as well as filling
most of them with colored dyes consistent with local culture and
chemically identical to those on Vulture. It gave Warlock a fiercer
appearance she liked, but she looked and sounded much like the old
Manka. Some bone and local twine jewelry and ropelike bracelets and
anklets also taken from Vulture’s patterns completed her
appearance.
One major difference was her skin, which looked and felt normal
to her but was hard and tough, almost like hide, to anyone else.
She held a finger over a lighted match and barely noticed it, and
when she pinched it out with her fingers, she did not get burned.
The most marked difference, however, was in her apparent physical
age. Manka Warlock had been good-looking in her forties; she was a
stunning sixteen. She did not, however, take the Matriyeh mindprint
program they had worked out. That would be last.
Decked out as she was in her Matriyehan fierceness, she met with
the others who would be her team. “Those of you who
volunteered or got talked into this may reconsider,” she told
them. “Otherwise, by tonight, there will be no turning back.
I want you in Matriyehan bodies, getting used to them, and feeling
their power and potential as soon as possible. We have prepared a
very large room in the office section and we will go there and
remain there, cut off from the rest, while you train and learn the
things that will keep you alive down there. On Matriyeh there will
be no margin for error, and the lives of others might depend on the
actions or inactions of any one of you. The mindprinter can give
you all the information you need, but it cannot give you skills or
increase your reaction times or fine-tune your reflexes. Partly it
will be a case of unlearning what you take for granted. Pistols and
rifles, computers and data banks, armor and shields—and even
the little things, like food acquisition and preparation in a
primitive environment, medicines and medical kits, and even such
basic things as matches. I am going to train you until you think
and act as one. I am going to try to make certain you stay alive
because that is how I will stay alive.” She paused.
“Anyone have second thoughts?”
“Many,” Maria Santiago said, “but as a
captain, I have never asked anyone to do anything that I, myself,
was unwilling to do nor turned from my responsibility.
Besides,” she added, “it is not, thank God, some
four-footed beast or whatever else they might be on Chanchuk or the
other place. I worked hard climbing up to be a captain. If I can
survive down there, I can survive anywhere and be captain
again.”
Warlock nodded, liking the captain immediately. She would be a
valuable ally. She turned to the Indrus widows. “And
you?”
“We have only one goal,” Suni Banderesh said for the
both of them. “We wish no more like us from the ruins of
Chunhoifan or Bahakatan or even Thunder.
Perhaps we exist to help in this. Neither of us look forward to it,
but we believe in it.”
“Very good.” Warlock turned to the last two, the
ones who had been forced to come. “I asked for you two,
because you’re tough, sassy bitches with a killer’s
instinct. I know you don’t feel any guilt at what you did,
but that is beside the point. In this, you will atone or you will
die. If you do not die, it will be because you have shaken your
selfishness and become full members of the team, in which case you
might even become full human beings someday.”
“I am surprised you want us, considering your
opinion,” Midi Ng replied sourly. “You think we failed
your company once. What if we fail you again?”
Warlock grinned evilly. “You see, that is the thing. If
you fail us, it will also mean your own lives. If you
deliberately fail any of us, I promise you that you will
truly be in hell. If any of the others of us survives your actions,
or lack of them, you will not. If they do not—then you better
have the ring, or you will be left down there to live out the
remainder of your miserably short lives.”
The transmuting process was a swift one. Since Star Eagle could
subtract but not add mass, all five would remain shorter than
Warlock, some by a fair amount. Only Santiago, who was chunky and
wide thighed, gave the pilot any room to play; her 157 centimeters
could become 164 using that excess mass while also slimming her
down, making her the second tallest but still almost a head shorter
than Warlock. Star Eagle retained the best of their original
features, flattering them wherever possible, within the racial
limits set by the Matriyehan genetic code. Only Ng and Chun, whose
features were strongly Asian, needed any substantial makeover, and
they were the only ones who could not be recognized on sight by any
who had known them before. Their physical ages ranged from fourteen
to sixteen, and the only thing that really disturbed any of them
was the branding marks that to them defaced their faces and
bodies.
“Now we will go and begin our training,” Warlock
said. “None but Vulture and I wear the colors of rank and the
ornaments of honor. Those you will have to earn, and we alone will
decide them. From this point on we will see only one person from
the outside until we are ready to go down—and when that will
be is when Vulture and I say it shall be.”
The one and only outsider allowed, at Warlock’s request,
was Silent Woman. It seemed an odd choice at the start, and both
Hawks and Cloud Dancer had initially objected, “We do not
even know if she really understands any of this,” Cloud
Dancer said. “Nor do we know how she will take to you all,
like that, in there.”
“She understands what is necessary,” Warlock
replied. “At the moment, she is the most valuable one on this
ship to us. She survived a culture and an environment gentler only
by degrees than the one we must go to, and she has shown skills in
those areas where modern folk are weakest. It was you who told us
of the unerring knife throws back on Earth, and the silent,
animal-like way she managed to approach and then kill two men. I
need someone to teach those skills. I do not propose she join us,
just teach us.”
Hawks thought of the small, fat, middle-aged woman of unknown
tribe who was colorfully tattooed from the neck down and who had
spent her life in slavery, her tongue cut out to stop her screaming
as they killed her malformed only child in front of her. She had
been mostly bewildered by all this, but seemed to have found her
place in the nursery caring for the young children of others. But
she had been deadly and cunning in an almost animal-like
way when she had chosen to make her escape with Hawks and Cloud
Dancer. It was easy to forget that.
She did seem bewildered and perhaps a bit frightened at
first by the seven strange women, but she knew and recognized
Warlock and seemed to understand what she was to do, not so much by
words as by patient illustration. Even Hawks had to admit the
brilliance of using her in the end. She knew far more than knives;
she knew how to exist with what was on hand, to weave vines into
useful things, to patiently select and shape stone and bone into
anything from weapons to ornaments. Within a week she was acting
very apologetic to Cloud Dancer about neglecting the kids and
spending almost all her time in Manka Warlock’s training
room.
According to China, who could interface with Star Eagle and tap
into the great ship’s communications and monitors, Silent
Woman was doing very well in there while most of the others were
suffering badly. Tae-Jin Chun, for example, was very proud of her
black belts in some of the more esoteric martial arts, but
eventually Warlock had badly beaten the former bouncer while barely
getting bruised herself. There was clearly more than one mistress
of those arts, as later lessons were to show, and Warlock’s
only problem was that she needed Vulture and Silent Woman to keep
her from killing rather than forcefully demonstrating to her
pupils.
There was no getting around the fact that Manka Warlock liked
hurting people and if she gave a damn about being hurt, it never
showed. If she ever got tired or weak or frustrated, that never
showed, either. She did everything they did, and took everything
they took, and she did it better. It was a mark of her strength
that after seven weeks, they hated her so much that not one of them
broke.
It was about this time that Silent Woman approached Hawks. She
still could only communicate in a basic sign language; there was no
way to know what language was hers. Even mindprinters with language
programs seemed to have only slight effect, since they
cross-referenced ideas from the language you knew, and it was by no
means certain that in her mental state Silent Woman really had a
language as the rest thought of one. Even now, Hawks had some
problems understanding her, but finally he figured it out. By his
own code of honor, she was as much his wife as Cloud Dancer was,
and it was clear suddenly what she had in mind.
In very basic terms, she wanted a divorce.
Once he go that idea, he could guess the rest. “You want
to go, don’t you?” he said aloud, then signed it as
best he could.
She nodded. She made cradling motions, then pointed in the
general direction of Warlock’s lair. For a moment he thought
she wanted to care for any babies they might have, or perhaps she
understood the change in the others, and that perhaps, she, too,
could be restored to function and youth, but finally he realized
that it was a more basic, uncomplicated idea. They need me, she was saying. She seemed to understand
that they were being prepared to go into very primitive areas, and
while they had learned well, she was unsure that they would all
have a good chance unless she were there to help and reinforce the
lessons.
In fact, ever since the true potential of the transmutters was
known to him, Hawks had been tempted to use them on her, to give
her a new tongue and perhaps beauty and fertility, but he had no
real way of conveying that to her or finding out what she really
wanted and Clayben and the others had been very nervous about doing
anything to or with someone who was, in Clayben’s words,
“clearly a functioning psychotic.” Now she was asking
for it and Hawks didn’t know what to do. He did, of course,
what he always did when he was in such a dilemma: he called in
Cloud Dancer.
“I believe we should let her,” Cloud Dancer said
without much hesitation. “Although I love her and am
frightened for her, it is what she wants and perhaps what she was
born to do. Perhaps she could save some lives down there—and
perhaps, live or die, she might have her only chance of regaining
her soul.”
Hawks sighed. “And the hellish thing is, we might never
really know if we’re doing the right thing. But, all right.
If Warlock and Vulture agree and Clayben is willing, we’ll
give it a try.”
Since being taken prisoner with Hawks and Cloud Dancer, Silent
Woman had lived in a world totally of magic and incomprehensible
mystery and she hated it as much as she loved the people around
her. Now she expected that magic to reward her for loyal service
and suffering and give her purpose once again.
Clayben was nervous about it. Not the physical part—that
was easy. It would be the mindprinting at the end that would be the
problem. “Still,” he said, “whatever language she
uses, primitive and basic thought it may be, should provide
reasonable matches for this Matriyehan tongue. It’s my guess
that she will function better down there than here.”
Warlock was delighted, and Vulture relieved. Oddly, the
changeling’s one concern was that, once down, it would be
Silent Woman in charge. He only hoped they could make her
understand that the object of it all wasn’t just to survive
down there, but to steal something.
She was quite fat, which gave Star Eagle a great deal of mass to
work with. He understood how she had suffered and how hard this all
was, and he made her almost a primal sixteen-year-old Matriyehan
goddess. When she first stepped down from the transmuter, looking
in a mirror, and saw herself, she traced the whole outline of her
body on the mirror, felt her whole body, and then she cried.
Silently.
There was no longer a single thing physically wrong with her,
and she almost choked on the tongue a few times, but Silent Woman
remained as mute and almost as enigmatic as ever.
TIME PASSED SLOWLY ABOARD THE THUNDER AS IT always did,
but shipboard life continued to change. Children were born,
expanding the colony even mope; children of two races with
different physiologies and needs. Hawks himself was now a proud
father. For a man of his cultural background he did not seem at all
disappointed or upset that his first child was a girl, whom he and
Cloud Dancer named Chaudiqua, a combination of their Hyiakutt names
which meant Night Dancer.
Clayben, China, and Star Eagle continued to work on easier
methods of penetrating the closed colonial worlds in Master
System’s domain, and had some real success. Long-range
reconnaissance indicated that Master System had finally managed to
process all of its ships so that the access codes were different,
and could be altered far more easily and quickly in the future. But
with so vast an area and so many ships, stations, Centers, and
satellites, it simply was impossible for Master System to change
the entire surveillance and communications system, and thus the new
challenge was not to feed the systems false information, as had
been done with Pirate One, but rather to deflect or
confuse those sensors so they would not report an intruder at
all. Thunder was moved to a system off the charts with no
habitable worlds for a larger project of Star Eagle’s that
was quite ambitious: nothing less than the construction of a small
shipyard, entirely robotized, in which ships of new
design—small but fast, well armed, and possibly piloted by
only one or two people—could be constructed in modular
sections using the larger transmuters and then assembled and
tested. Part of the idea was not only to match the speed and
maneuverability of the Val ships, as well as their firepower, but
also to do so without killing any human pilots. Mechanisms had to
be created to shield and protect those pilots from the incredible
forces of acceleration and battle. The automated fighters of
Thunder provided the basic outline for the type of craft
they wanted, but did not have punch capability. The required
mechanisms added weight and complexity to the new design and caused
some problems they were still hammering out.
In the meantime, Vulture had been down on Matriyeh for many
months, and there had been no communication with him for most of
that period. As before, they had been forced to set him down in a
remote and unpopulated area where he, as a Janipurian, had to make
his way to civilization and then blend in as only he could. Hawks
and the others often thought that they could see Clayben’s
point in the great experiment that created Vulture. With a mere
five or six Vultures there would be no problem in getting the
rings; without one, it would be next to impossible.
As the time dragged on, though, with no word from the strange
creature, Hawks began to harbor dark thoughts that they might have
to go on without him. Vulture had so many strengths that it was
quite natural that he felt himself invulnerable and therefore could
become careless. But Vulture would be as helpless as any if
surprised by a Val: there were a number of ways to destroy even
such a thing as he, including incineration, disintegration,
cellular disruption, and chemical baths. Like the werewolves and
vampires of ancient legends, Vulture was fearsome—but, like
them, he could still be killed. The key so far had been the
ignorance of Master System and its minions that such a creature
even existed. The records on Vulture had been destroyed, Clayben
was on Thunder, and the few surviving scientists who had
known about the project had long ago had their memories altered for
their own protection. Their luck, however, could not last
forever.
It was a great relief, then, when word came that Vulture had at
last activated the signaling devices and was requesting a pickup
from the surface of Matriyeh. It had been over eight months. Unlike
the Janipur mission, they needed to bring Vulture back aboard and
analyze both the new mind and new body he had taken on when he had
absorbed his native persona, and they also needed first-hand
consultation.
The body was that of a tall, thin woman with long, muscular legs
and small, firm breasts. The arms, too, were muscular when flexed,
showing surprising power. The skin was a very dark brown, so dark
as to be almost black, the color extending not just to the skin but
to the palms and soles of the feet and other such areas, as well.
The black hair was thick and woolly, but the natural curls were
much larger than those of an Earth-human of one of the sub-Saharan
African races or Melanesians, and the features were delicate and
more European than anything else. Save in the the groin, brows, and
the underarms, there was no other hair on the body. The large eyes
were jet black, and seemed slightly puffy or swollen and protruded
more than was natural for an Earth-human. She was naked except for
a thin, tough-looking vine hanging on her hips, but wore loose
bracelets and anklets made of some vegetable material and dyed
green and blue, and she wore earrings and a necklace of carved
bones and thin wirelike vines.
She also had body markings on her cheeks, forehead, and around
the breasts and groin. These were simple designs that seemed burned
or tattooed in, although instead of the lighter discolorations one
might expect the outlines were simply a lighter brown, and some,
but not all, had been filled with various colors of paint or dye.
Aside from that, the skin was remarkably smooth, without the kind
of scars that might be expected. The thin, dark vine on her hips
proved to be an intricately woven ropelike belt with loops to hold
a blow gun fashioned of reeds, a small pouch made of some fibrous
material, and she held in her left hand a long spear that was made
of a stick or branch, carved straight, on which was mounted a
smooth, sharp-pointed stone held on with more of the thin, wirelike
vines that fitted into notches in the shaft.
“You must bear with me,” Vulture said apologetically
in a firm, husky soprano, “but it is more difficult to
readjust from this form than from the others. Let us go to the
village where I won’t feel so—closed in.”
Many of the others crowded around as she entered the central
area of Thunder, and at one point she gestured menacingly
with the spear and said something unintelligible but obviously
threatening. They backed off.
Someone brought her some water and she drank it and sank down on
the grass. Hawks approached and sat opposite, and after a while
Vulture was able to shake off enough of the native personality to
seem almost her old self.
“We were right,” she told him. “The people are
subject to an experiment and they are not quite as human
as they appear. It is a brutal place, but disorganized enough that
some independent movement and actions are possible even over large
distances. It is sobering to see an entire society reprogrammed and
their works wiped out. Their true colonial past exists in
occasional ruins and odd artifacts here and there, and in vaguely
remembered legends and half-truths, but not as a personal sort of
thing. Their very language, while expressive, is clearly
artificial, and as we expected, the north, at least, is more
complex than it appeared.”
Slowly, but with professional thoroughness, Vulture sketched the
basic structure of the society and its people.
They called themselves just the People, and no memories remained
that any other people, or types of people, or other worlds even
existed. There were the great gods who lived in the heavens and
created and judged, the sun being the greatest and the two small
moons the lesser; the stars were reflections of the lights in the
villages of the gods at night. The world itself was filled with
spirits; there were spirits of air, and water, and trees, and
demons in the volcanoes. The People were entirely subject to the
whims and occasional mercies of these spirits and while they were
always praying to or attempting to please or placate them, they
expected little. Life was a constant series of tests by the gods, a
nearly endless cycle, lasting until the gods or some spirits had
mercy and removed them to the heavenly realm, which was thought to
be much like Matriyeh but with abundant food and eternal good
health. To fail the tests of life set by the gods, spirits, and
demons was to suffer; to succeed did not guarantee any reward. To
rebel against the system, to question it or to try to make life
easier, was a heresy that was punished with a slow, agonizing,
tortuous death.
“The point is, you can’t even invent or introduce a
more efficient weapon, nor plant a seed, although such things might
occur to them. It would make things easier and change the tests of
the gods and would be a heresy. There is food, of course,
or they couldn’t survive, but they must spend their whole day
searching for it. They can eat pretty much anything, but they are
constantly on the move. The children are carried on the backs of
their mothers in rope carriers, sometimes two or three at a time,
and guarded communally during hunts. There is a high infant
mortality rate anyway, so they have lots of kids almost constantly
to make up for it. Pregnant people do the same work as ones that
aren’t even when it’s well advanced, as food goes first
to the hunters and gatherers, then to the children. These brands
are tribal markings; the colorations indicate rank and position. In
times or areas of plenty, there’s no problem with other
tribes, but in hard times or when a territory is depleted they
might war with one another.
“They have nothing but their weapons and what ornaments
they can find time and material to make for themselves. They carry
nothing with them on their endless journeys and camp wherever they
wind up with enough food for the day or when darkness falls. It is
far more deserted and desolate than you would think—a million
or less on a continent perhaps thirty million square kilometers.
One might go for days or even weeks without seeing a member of
another tribe, but there’s a lot of ground to cover each day.
The territories aren’t well defined; you go where you have to
and hope you don’t have to fight somebody for it.”
Hawks nodded grimly as the others listened in hushed silence.
“It sounds truly primitive, but you said it was
complex.”
“It is. But before you can understand it, and all the bad
news, you have to understand the basic biological differences
between them and you. They are partially unisexual, which is why
there are no men. I contain within me both sets of sexual
equipment, as do they all, but all but one in a tribal group is
biologically female. That one is the most aggressive, the nastiest,
the most commanding personality, and hormones trigger the
development of male characteristics, including a half-octave dip in
the voice, and the growth of some sparse body hair, and male sex
organs. That one then becomes the tribal group’s only male
and its leader. However, if he loses the respect of the
tribe—such as by cowardice or incompetence—the leader
loses those characteristics, becomes fully female again, and is
chased away into the bush. Within days another will take on the
leader characteristics, sometimes by sheer force of will. There is
occasionally a conflict that must be settled by force, but
that’s rare. Only one can rule at at time, and the gender
change seems to be triggered mentally in both directions.
Naturally, if the leader dies another takes his place, and leaders
have short lifespans because they have to be in the forefront and
take the real responsibility.”
“That certainly explains that mystery,” Hawks
agreed.
“As with most very primitive people, sex is a dominant
part of their lives. Some of these charms are sexual totems, and
phallic symbols are an all-consuming passion. Even rocks of the
right shape take on mystical connotations. The tribal loyalty is
more than just cultural, though—it’s chemical. Once
you’ve had sex with the leader you simply don’t want to
have sex with anybody else, though it’s no blind love or
slavelike submission. You might hate the son of a bitch—which
is not uncommon—but he’s the only one you want. In
fact, if a tribe is in danger of depletion, the only way to
increase its numbers is to stalk members of another tribe, capture
them, and have the leader rape them. I told you it was a brutal
place.”
Raven, the cynical commentator of the group, had been standing
there listening with the others. “I see you don’t have
the male characteristics,” he noted. “That’s not
your style.”
“I couldn’t afford to. Too much responsibility and
visibility. Besides, I don’t think I could maintain it very
long. I duplicate a victim cell for cell, but they are false
cells—duplicates with a difference beyond the ability of most
analyzers to measure, but still false. I can neither bear nor
father children of a race I am merely imitating, nor replicate
myself. Not bearing children can be an advantage down there,
although it’s the lowest status and likely to get you the job
of scout or of testing rope and log bridges to see if they’re
safe, but not fathering children is an unforgivable sin in a
leader. I couldn’t maintain the male aspect very long, so it
wasn’t worm trying.”
“Such a life,” China commented, shaking her head.
“I think I would kill myself.”
“That is the cultural difference. You are not an
individual down there, at least not in the greater sense—you
are the component of a group. Racial survival depends on group
survival. There is not a one there who would consider not
sacrificing herself for the group. Bad luck is attributed to the
will or capriciousness of the gods. To fail the tribe, however, is
the only major dishonor. They would turn on anyone who did and that
one would wish she had chosen death long before she actually died.
Even a captive from another tribe turned to the new tribe would
submerge herself in the new tribe and dismiss the old. It’s
not the way we think, but it’s the only pragmatic means to
survival. Suicide would weaken the group and is therefore a
terrible crime, the worst kind of crime.”
“And what of those crippled, permanently injured, or
deformed?” Hawks asked. “Are they simply
killed?”
“Those who can’t contribute or keep up can’t
be afforded. The people are pretty tough—this skin has the
thickness of aged leather, the major bones are very hard to break,
and the toleration level for pain is incredible—but accidents
do happen, of course. When they do, in honorable service, there is
a ritual done at night. Some of the plants down there produce
powerful drugs that can be given to the crippled and that kill
without pain or agony. Then . . . ” She
stopped and sighed, not quite knowing how they would take it.
“Yes?” Hawks urged gently.
“Then the tribe eats them, so they always remain with the
group. A valiant enemy may also be treated that way, as a mark of
honor and respect. Little is wasted.” She fingered her
necklace. “Some of these were carved from human
bones.”
“So that’s what Master System plans for our
future,” somebody growled, and there were lots of other
murmurings, mostly angry. Hawks put a stop to it.
“Those of you who find this horrifying are ignorant of the
cultures of some of your own ancestors. Nor is it any more terrible
than some of the things some of us supposedly civilized and
cultured people have inflicted on others with our technology. It is
not right when our own kind practices such barbarism, but I think I
understand this culture. I do not like it, but I understand it.
Still, those of you sickened and repulsed by this should remember
why we are doing what we are doing and against whom. We are not
here to approve or disapprove. Each of us, I suspect, has things in
their own culture they consider normal, proper, and civilized that
would horrify others standing around here now. We need to know
about this place. There is a ring there. Did I guess right about
the unified theology?”
Vulture nodded. “Yes. Oh, there are minor differences but
the whole culture is held together by a common set of gods and
beliefs. The firebearer, which is the oldest female in the
tribe—age is a mark of extreme respect down there, as you
might imagine—and who has the flint stones to make fires, is
the spiritual leader and gets training from the only nontribal
people on the planet. They are quite easy to spot—they shave
their heads and are almost as heavily marked as Silent Woman. They
are called wassun, which basically means
‘truth-bearer.’ They are celibate females—no
leader would dare touch one—and they are the authority. They
remain with a tribe for short periods, and even participate in
tribal activities, but mainly they teach theology to the
firebringer and all others who are interested. They remain with a
tribe until that tribe interacts with another, and then they cross
over and go with the next one. That means their stay might be days
or weeks or longer.”
“Ah!” Hawks said. “And where do they
come from?”
“Well, they don’t officially come from
anywhere—they’re regarded as always there, like the
rest of nature. I only had encounters with two, but it took some
time to determine that it was two, not one. They look and sound
remarkably alike—like identical twins, almost—and are
generally regarded as the same person. I was really tempted to
become one of them but I could never get alone with one of them
long enough to do it. They do more than counsel, though—they
almost interrogate, only so smoothly and professionally you hardly
realize it. They’re looking for any signs of heresies,
deviations from the norm. And they have power. I realized
what they were almost immediately—field agents, although they
don’t realize it. They really believe this guff,
too—I’m convinced of that. But when they talk to the
gods, the gods sometimes answer back, in holy places prohibited to
all but the wassun.”
“Oho! Now we’re getting someplace! So somewhere
there’s a central authority with at least some access to
technology,” Hawks said. “Could it be automated? A
computer buried and self-maintained, for example?”
“I think not. The wassun come from some specific
place and they report back there. I had a crazy idea that makes a
lopsided kind of sense.”
“Go on.”
“Now, the SPF has a division for each race,
right?”
“So we are told.”
“But what good are Matriyehans when their parent world is
reduced like this? Not much. So what if that division were
processed to become essentially the priesthood on Matriyeh? Make
’em all look the same, act the same, spout the same stuff.
Any good psycho lab could do that and Master System could use the
best. Make their commanders the high priestesses someplace, not
necessarily large or fancy—give ’em just enough
technology that they regard as magic to do the job, and take the
reports.”
“Logical, but to what end? And how would they replicate
themselves if they are celibate?”
“Well, celibate doesn’t mean barren. If the racial
bond is chemical—and I can assure you from personal
experience, it is—then maybe theirs is permanent or periodic,
such as one year on, one year off. Who would notice? You’d
have a closed hierarchy dedicated to maintaining the established
order. In other words, everything you need in a Center without all
a Center implies. The important part is that they seem to have
access to technology. They couldn’t wait months for word to
get back that something was going wrong, and they’d have to
have the power to restore order. Not all the big devices like
flyers and lasers, but mystical tools regarded as god-given devices
for maintaining the natural order.
“But now comes the kicker. The system’s fragile. Do
you realize what just one freebooter landing there would do to it?
And it’s at least a century old, maybe more, so that would
have to be taken into account. I kept asking myself why a world
that they know and we know has a ring would be
that undefended.”
“I think I can see where you’re going. I
wouldn’t have wiped the minds of those troopers. There would
have to be a control someplace. A monitoring computer with access
to all the latest tools, able to mindprint the young priestesses
with all the supernatural theology and monitor them.
That’s why there are still survey satellites. If
they get any hint of an alien presence or unauthorized technology,
the priestesshood will become a fully operative SPF division
again, with the knowledge of their own grandparents’
experience to draw upon and whatever technology and support they
need to either deal with the alien menace or call in all the help
they need.” He stopped a moment. “Whew! You
realize what that means?’
“I think so. Stealing the ring would certainly trigger the
system, so they must never know it’s stolen. We can’t
use more than limited technology on the surface because
that’s what all the monitors, human and mechanical, are
looking for. The mere sight or report of anything out of the
ordinary might be enough, we’d be suddenly faced with who
knows what in the way of automated defenses plus a full SPF
division. They’d call in every ship within reach, and this
time they won’t underestimate our strength. Another
battle like the last one could set us back
years.”
“Pickup sticks,” Isaac Clayben said, and they all
turned to him in puzzlement. “An ancient children’s
game in my native land. Nothing more than a bundle of thin,
straight sticks dropped in a heap from a small distance. The object
is to remove each stick without moving or collapsing the rest of
the pile. The one who removes most is the winner. This is like
playing pickup sticks in an enemy minefield, except we don’t
know the nature of the minefield or what will trigger it, so we
must be extremely careful. They must not be permitted even an
accidental chance to learn that we are there or ever were
there.”
Vulture shrugged. “So I get in, and I get the ring
somehow. The moment it leaves its home or somebody important turns
up missing, the alarms ring and it’s all over. You’d
never get me out.”
“Exactly. And I must frankly state that if the alarms go,
those down there would have to be abandoned for the sake of the
rest of us. If they came in full strength, they would easily locate
the fighter and destroy it and install permanent monitors. Contact
would be lost, perhaps for years, perhaps forever. It must be done
right the first time.”
Vulture stared at her creator and all could sense the hatred
there. When and if they had the rings, Clayben would be the new
project for the strange creature, but for now Vulture would keep
her word.
“There is simply no way to do this. We don’t know
where it is, or what we’re facing. And, down there, as one of
them, I react as a native. It’s impossible.”
“Maybe not,” Star Eagle put in through the speaker.
“For one thing, I know where it must be.”
That startled all of them. “What? How?” Hawks
asked.
“One satellite is geostationary, all its channels beamed
to a single location. There can be no other reason for this than to
allow an open channel of communication to the outside. It is in an
area almost eleven hundred kilometers from our fighter station, and
it’s quite central to the continent. It is logical that it is
the religious center, and therefore the one with the ring. It is
probably held by the highest-ranking priestess.”
“Big deal,” Hawks responded. “We don’t
know what’s in there, or who, and we can’t land anybody
even remotely close to that place. To escape detection we had to
set that fighter down in one of the rare holes in the satellite
surveillance, and the other locations are farther away. So
Vulture’s got to be dropped down with nothing but what
she’s got now, traverse eleven hundred kilometers of that
hell without being noticed, scout out the whole place and become
one of the high priestesses with access to the ring the first time,
because anybody who mysteriously disappears will be missed. Then
she takes the ring—and triggers the alarm.”
“We have one ring,” China pointed out. “Those
of us who have seen another state that ours seems identical in all
ways except the design on the face. If we knew the design on the
ring below, we could use ours as a prototype for weight and feel,
manufacture a dummy, and make a switch. I will wager that they do
not put this ring under a microscope.”
Vulture nodded. “I thought of that. I believe I know the
basic design, since it’s on everything owned by the
truth-bearers that I saw. Anybody have paper and pencil? None of my
incarnations has been an artist, but I’ll see what I can
do.”
The only pads and pencils available were in the children’s
nursery, and were quickly rushed in. Vulture made several attempts,
drawing left-handed, before she finally got one that was
approximately correct. A stylized, spindly tree with a tiny figure
of a bird in it. “Damn! That’s just not quite
right!”
“It will do,” Clayben responded. “If their
markings were more exact and you studied them closely enough, we
can pick it up in a mindprint. The whole stone area is only about
three square centimeters, and we know the style and workmanship of
the rings. It could be done. Not well enough to fool a full-fledged
analysis, but certainly, I think, well enough to fool even someone
who wears it daily. One rarely looks at rings; they are taken for
granted. If they eventually notice, the thieves will be long gone.
It is certainly worth a try.”
Vulture sighed. “Even if true, this is a situation where
my . . . talents . . . will be of limited use. If we are correct, then I can eventually
waylay and become a truth-bearer, but I will have to remain that
person until the ring is well away. We just can’t have
someone come in and later turn up missing, without triggering
everything. If they are programmed SPF troopers, then we
can’t pick one up and use her as a prototype either. As I
discovered when I became the sergeant, they all have latent
triggers. Mindprobe one and the subject dies unless a specific
computer code is entered, unique to each individual. We’d get
nothing.”
“Then what would you need?” Hawks asked, wondering if this
would be the one theft they couldn’t work.
“To even attempt it, I have to go along with the
restrictions set by the system. We’d have to go down, cross
all that distance and survive, and we’d all have to be
programmed so that we couldn’t betray ourselves. We
might just pick up a truth-bearer anywhere along the line, or we
might lose someone to another tribe looking to build itself up, and
without proper programming, each of us would be a loaded bomb ready
to go off. To do it convincingly, and unobtrusively, I’d need
a tribe. More important, I’d need a tribe with someone else
as leader, since I couldn’t maintain the post. When we got to
that main installation, I’d have to go in as a truth-bearer
returning for leave or whatever it might be called, scout the
place, locate the ring, and figure out a way to make the switch. It
might well take more people than just me, too. We can’t know
until we get there. We can’t even know if it’s
possible.”
“You expect us to be the tribe?” Hawks asked.
“We can’t spare people like that. We have ships to
staff and only a few who can really qualify.”
“I don’t need a large group. Too conspicuous and
hard to support anyway. What do you expect to do? Go down there,
knock a whole tribe senseless, ship ’em up here one at a
time, and mindprint them? I’m proposing the ultimate heresy
in this den of gods—when push comes to shove I’ve got
to have a group of atheists. I could go back down and try to track
down, isolate, and sedate four of five natives, but that just
increases the risk, and I’d have a small tribe that still
wouldn’t know a Val from a god. Maybe we can’t take
high-tech stuff in, but we might be able to use what they have if
we can recognize it, and we sure have to figure how to avoid
tripping the booby traps. I’m not sure that installation is
gonna be any more advanced that the rest of this world, as far as
the people there are concerned, but we’ll be hip-deep in
people all of whom will suddenly become full-fledged SPF if a slip
is made.”
“We can’t have them all looking like you,”
China pointed out.
“True, but there’s a fair variety down there in
spite of in-breeding. Just keep the basic racial characteristics
the same. Hell, we have those photos. As for the mindprint, I can
become my native persona, Uraa, so completely for that purpose that
only she will come out on the print. Ask Clayben. He designed it
that way.”
The doctor nodded. “It’s true.”
“Plus we’ve got China’s experience in
psychogenetics, psychochemistry, attitudinal programming—the
works. I can work with her and Star Eagle to create what is
necessary to survive down there, avoid exposure, and still get
things done.” She looked at their faces and saw their
hesitancy, their doubts.
“Surely,” Ikira Sukotae said, “there must be
some alternative.”
“Sure. I’ll sneak in, somehow manage to become the
big cheese if I can—and it might take a year or
two—then steal the ring, and make a run for it as the whole
security force is awakened and the alarm goes out to an orbital
defense system designed to destroy anything trying to get on or off
the planet.”
The silence that followed was such that they could hear the air
filtration system.
“The odds for success in this attempt are quite
low,” Star Eagle reported after a lull. “The highest
probability is that the attempt will be judged impossible and the
party will have to trek back and return empty-handed.”
“Permanently stuck in that form for nothing,” China
noted.
“Yes, although I’d say the odds of escaping
detection are even. A truth-bearer missing at the center would be
noticed; one who vanished in the field would be simply written off
as a routine casualty. At least we would have people toughened by
the harsh experience down there and better equipped for a later
try, and we would know just what we were facing and could figure
out an alternative plan while we went after another ring. There are
so many unknowns and variables here, the odds are astronomical that
if an attempt were made it would either be unsuccessful or would
trigger the response we do not want. In that case, those on the
planet would be stuck down there, perhaps permanently. Vulture
might get out by becoming a trooper, but no one else would, and
accomplishing a safe pickup, assuming they avoided capture, would
be next to impossible for a year or more. The odds of actually
stealing the ring undetected without the use of computer aids,
massive intelligence, interpretation, and analysis are pretty slim.
That’s assuming the group survived in that environment long
enough to get to the installation and back in the first
place.”
Hawks thought for a moment, then said, “This may be a
great blow to your ego, Star Eagle, but human beings existed in
great numbers at a high level of culture and civilization long
before computers. The big trick here is to keep our operation on
the level of the culture of Matriyeh—all the way—while
being aware enough not to step in any of the technological and
anachronistic traps. You may be right. This might only be an
intelligence mission, or it might fail. The risks are certainly
great. But right now I’d say it’s the better of the two
choices open to us. There is a lot of activity now around Chanchuk,
and we’re sending out ships on long-range surveys trying to
find if there is any other unusual activity that might tip us off
as to the whereabouts of the fourth ring. Here is where
they’re overconfident. Here is where they are
convinced that the odds are so much against us we won’t even
make the attempt until we have to. I say we give it a
try.”
Raven looked around and gave everyone a thin, humorless smile.
“Any volunteers?” he asked.
Hawks, in fact, was not looking for any volunteers, at least not
yet. There was a lot of research and technical data to accumulate
first, plus work with Vulture to computer-model the sort of
mindprint he wanted and determine just what the best attributes of
survival might be. In the meantime, Hawks dispatched
Kaotan to supplement Bahakatan and
Chunhoifan in surveying the known colonial worlds for any
signs of unusual activity there. Without the fourth ring the first
three were nothing, and he would have liked nothing better than to
go after number four before tackling Chanchuk. If they had three,
Master System would know just where to expect them, and if he had
to fight one more major battle anyway, it might as well be in the
spot where he probably had to fight one anyway.
By the time they had to, he hoped they might figure out a way to
win.
Although Clayben could put ideas into programs better than any
of them, Vulture worked mostly with China and Star Eagle on the
aims. The creature had no desire to ever be subject to
Clayben’s control again, and didn’t trust him a bit.
And of all the things to fear in all this, Clayben feared his
creation most of all.
By the time Star Eagle had read, picked, probed, and analyzed
the Uraa personality as much as was possible, and chose and modeled
the genetic information, Hawks had a pretty good idea of who he
wanted to go and why. He discussed it all with Raven first, and was
very much surprised to find that the Crow was in agreement.
“She’s the logical choice. The only choice
for leader among this group for a place like that,” Raven
said simply.
“I just thought you and
she . . . ”
“Look, they tinkered a little with her head on Melchior,
but that was just to give her some kind of loyalty so she could be
kept under control. Nobody I know of messed with my
noggin. She ain’t even good in bed. More like fightin’
a war and tryin’ not to get hurt. The only thing I wanted to
always make sure of is that she was always on my side. No, I can
get—satisfied—here if I feel the need, Chief. Tell the
honest truth, if Ikira was a meter taller or me a meter shorter and
she had a little more liking for men and a lot less for women,
she’d be my choice of this lot.”
“You sure you wouldn’t like this one yourself? You
were a field agent by choice all those years and you were in some
pretty tough scrapes over the years.”
He sighed. “Chief, there ain’t no question this is
Manka’s meat. The kind of world just made for somebody with
her personality and charm. She has to go. I think she
already figured that. And under this kind of setup, I tell you
she’ll be the leader and therefore the male in the pack. Now,
I ain’t got nothin’ against bein’ a
woman—face it, everybody’s always damned curious how
it’d be to be the other way, and I’m gettin’ on
in years and have nothin’ much to lose—but under that
system, I’d be physically bound to Manka as my lord and
master. If we got to put more down to pull them out or reinforce
them, I’ll do it. I won’t like it, but I’ll do
it. But that second part’s just askin’ too
much.”
Hawks nodded sympathetically. “All right. Accepted. I just
kind of figured you were used to working as a team and, besides,
this is probably the closest race to our own we’re going to
have to deal with.”
“I know, and it’s tempting for that reason. But
she’s much too mean to die, Chief, and I’ll be damned
if I’ll spend the rest of my days as one of her harem.
Otherwise, you’re right. This is my meat. Any ideas on the
others?”
“Yes. It might surprise you to know I have a couple of
volunteers.”
“Huh?”
“Lalla Paschittawal and Suni Banderesh. They’re
pretty tough characters but they’ve lost their husbands and
their ship and they are like fish out of water around here. I
thought of them as pilots for some of the smaller ships we’re
building, but this doesn’t necessarily preclude that. They
took hits right off and never really got their licks in. They want
to get even. They want to thumb their noses at Master System. Most
of all, I think they want release from the unremitting boredom
they’ve had since the battle.”
“Okay, that’s four. Is that enough?”
“If nobody died down there, yeah, but you and I know the
odds of even getting to the damned place, let alone back, in one
piece. Vulture wants seven, herself included.”
“Seven! But who else is nutty enough for this
one?”
“Let’s call in Warlock and ask her.”
Raven’s sense had been correct. Manka Warlock had been
expecting to be summoned, and she was not adverse to the idea.
“Judging from Vulture, I won’t even have to change my
appearance much,” she noted. “A little blacker, a lot
tougher.”
“It’s far more alien on the inside, but you’re
probably right.” He told her about the two Indrus
widows’ offer.
“They have motivation, but I wonder if they are too
civilized. We will check them out and see. Anybody else?” She
looked at Raven, and Hawks got her thought.
“I’d rather save Raven. You two have unique
qualifications as experienced field agents. I’m willing to
risk one of you but not both.” There. That got the Crow off
the hook, and he could see the gratitude in the field agent’s
eyes. Hawks decided he was owed a favor.
Warlock sounded disappointed, but accepted the logic of it.
“Very well, then, who else?”
“You tell me.”
She thought a moment. “If we will not have Raven, then I
think we should have Captain Santiago.”
“Maria? Why?”
“She is without a command or crew, she has reason to want
revenge as much as the others, and she is tough. I have learned
through this that no one gets to be captain of a freebooter ship
without being tough, and she was the undisputed mistress over two
big men and two different colonial life forms. She may need to
unlearn some of her dependence on high-tech weapons, but I believe
she can be taught. She is a survivor. If anything happens to me,
she is capable of command.”
“All right, I’ll talk to her about it, anyway.
Anybody else?”
“Let us summon her now and see if she has the will.
Perhaps she will have some suggestions.”
It was done. Hawks hated these kind of sessions, but there was
no getting around them. At least Sabir and the Chows seemed to have
adjusted and accepted their forms, although it was true they still
tended to socialize more with the Earth-humans aboard than with the
Janipurian refugees they’d impersonated.
Captain Santiago was not exactly thrilled with the idea, but she
realized why she had been nominated. She asked for time to think it
over, but within hours returned and agreed. “On one
condition, though.”
“Yes?” Hawks was willing to go to any lengths within
reason.
“You need a couple more, right?”
“Yes. We could go with you five, but if you have any
ideas, let’s hear them.”
“Midi Ng, at least, and hopefully the rest of that crew of
cowards.” Ng was the pilot who commanded Espiritu Luzon
in the engagement that cost Santiago her ship and crew.
“It’s about time they paid up.”
Warlock grinned, showing she shared the sentiments.
Hawks sighed. “I wish we could send the whole batch.
Savaphoong gave the orders, but he also gave us the murylium
shipment and you and the other freebooters. You owe him for that,
but we’ll do it anyway—my way. Those five brainless
beauties would be nice for this, but they’re transmutees. We
can’t change them, only reprogram them—which I will do
if I need warm bodies. I’d also ask for Autoro but I
wouldn’t want to take any chance that he’d wind up in
command down there, even by accident.” Autoro was
Savaphoong’s bodyguard and enforcer and the only other free
man he’d taken out of Halinachi with him. “Midi’s
girlfriend, Tae-Jin Chun, however, is proud of her martial arts
abilities and was the Espiritu’s weapons officer.
Anybody as small as she is who can act as a bar bouncer is somebody
who’ll be very useful down there.”
“They’re gonna say no,” Raven said flatly.
Hawks shrugged. “I’m going to talk with Savaphoong
first. I think by the time we’re through, they’ll
realize that they don’t have a choice. They owe him their
lives, and he owes for the Indrus and the San
Cristobal. I think he knows it.”
Savaphoong wasn’t buying at all, and he was quite miffed
that anyone would even consider using anything of his again.
“We did our part, and we continue to support you,” he
said, sipping a drink mixed in his luxurious bar by his personal
slaves on the Espiritu Luzon, where he had lived in luxury
since coming aboard. “I know what the others think, but we
took damage in that battle and did the only prudent thing we could
to save at least one ship out of three.”
Hawks settled back in the comfortable chair he’d been
given and looked squarely at the old entrepreneur. “You force
me to put my cards on the table early. Up to now you’ve been
acting like you have some kind of special privilege or position
here, and up to now, thanks to your previous help, I’ve been
willing to go along. No more. Then, I didn’t need you, but
after the battle, I considered you a potential risk as well as an
ally. I know about the small explosion you rigged in the stern tubes
to show real damage rather than just the shaking up you actually
got. Don’t bother denying, I have the battle recordings
recovered from the wreck of the Indrus and the sensor
readings from Kaotan and Thunder. An explosion,
even a very small one, is difficult to control. It affected your
port steering mechanism.”
“Indeed, that was part of our problem. So what?”
“You couldn’t have moved into the position you took
opposite Indrus and San Cristobal if that
mechanism had been damaged before the Val attacked. You
couldn’t have steered that way. You could have gotten there,
but it would have taken many complex maneuvers you didn’t
make. I’m no pilot, but Santiago is an experienced captain,
and Star Eagle is nothing else but. Once I saw that, I had no
hesitancy in approving Star Eagle’s request that when this
ship was inside for repairs, we make a few adjustments. You take
off without Star Eagle’s codes, and you explode. You try
something even then, and Star Eagle can assume remote command,
including life support.”
Savaphoong almost dropped his drink. “By what
right . . . ”
“I am the commander of this fleet. Me. I was
elected, and then affirmed by the council of which you are only one
member. I command every ship and every person in this community.
Every ship. Every person. Would you like to put
this to a vote of the captains when they come in?
They’ve all seen the recordings, too. At this point,
the only thing that is saving you from the mob, the mindprinter,
and maybe the transmuter, is me. I’m doing so out of
pragmatism and past considerations, but you used up most of that
reservoir when you cost me two ships and five good lives. Now
you’re getting the rest of it, and the scales are even.
Either you and another of your choice go down there, or you get to
remain here in luxury by giving me the two people we want. I may
need you or the others or the ship later on, but not now. If I do,
I’ll have them—and you—or you will not be there
for the payoff if there is one. Which is it? You? Or
them?”
Savaphoong sank back into his chair, visibly shaken. For a
moment, he just stared off into space, oblivious to his company.
Finally he said, “You do not pull your punches, do
you?”
“I can’t afford to. We—all of us—are
living on borrowed time. I told you when you signed on that it
would be permanent—once in, nobody gets out. It is a luxury
we can’t afford. As long as it doesn’t jeopardize this
mission or its people, I allow what I can, but don’t
overestimate your importance or power.”
“I’ve had men shot for far less than this, you
know,” Savaphoong said, not threateningly but actually rather
casually.
“That was Halinachi and the hard climb up to build
it.”
“I didn’t build it. I took it. Jamie, there,”
he said, pointing to one of the slaves, “is the old owner. I
keep him around because it amuses me to do so.”
“You try to take this from us—” Hawks
responded in the same sort of tone. “Go ahead. You might even
get me, and perhaps a few others, but in the end you will envy
Jamie his brainless happiness. I have far too many deadlier things
to worry about than you, Savaphoong. I do not lose sleep over you,
but perhaps you should lose some sleep over me.”
“I might very well. All right, you can have them. Enjoy
yourself, señor. I admit that you have me, but I have not exhausted
all my bargaining chips yet.”
Hawks stared at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Now. It is not yet the time to need them, and if
I use them now I will have no further reason for existence, will I?
Do not worry. It is all locked up in here,” he said, tapping
his head, “and while it might be destroyed, even our friend
Clayben could not get it out of me. You just let me be, and you
will not regret it, my friend. When it is time, I have things you
still need.”
It was Hawks’ turn to rise from his chair. “You know
where the fourth ring is?”
Savaphoong just smiled, satisfied to win at least a minor round.
“I do not say what I know. I will, my friend, when it is
time.”
Hawks wanted to throttle the man, and promised himself later
vengeance, but he had more important things on his mind now. He
went below to see the two women who shared a luxurious cabin and
found that they had already been tipped. He suspected they were
listening in to the conversation.
“We will not do it!” Midi said firmly, always the
spokeswoman for the pair. “He does not own us! We are not his
slaves!”
“Yes you will,” Hawks responded icily. “And
I’ll explain why very simply. He saved your neck and we saved
your skin. You’re experienced pilots but you’ve
contributed nothing—except following his orders and letting
two ships be smashed. He’s disowned you. You know what went
on. He’s throwing you to the wolves to save his own skin,
just like he threw those ships to the wolves to save his. Why
should he care about you any more than he did about them?
You’re just employees—and you’ve been fired.
You’re being thrown out of this cozy little love nest, and
the only place you can come is Thunder. I am telling him
that he will either present himself tomorrow morning at oh seven
hundred to Manka Warlock on the common in Thunder or
present you. No other ship will take you. Now, you do have
choices. You can report. You can commit mutual suicide—no one
will grieve for you, I assure you. Or you can leave, but taking no
equipment with you. I’ve just explained to your ex-employer
that everything here is common property. You report, or kill
yourselves, or you will both be thrown stark naked out the nearest
airlock.”
He turned and left the cabin, then got on his spacesuit and
exited the ship, walking down to the airlock entry port of
Thunder and back inside. He was slightly ashamed of
himself for feeling so, but by god he felt good!
Manka Warlock had volunteered to be the test case for the
transmuter template Star Eagle had worked out using the genetic
information from Vulture. Outwardly, the change was noticeable but
far less extreme than in any of the others who had or would undergo
the process. Her creamy brown skin was now much darker, and her
mane of woolly hair changed from tiny curls to large ones. She had
been tall and muscular and was still tall and muscular, if more so
than before. Her features had always been fine and delicate, a
mixture of French and Ashanti ancestors, and these needed no
changes. They did add the brands, mathematically chosen to be
consistent with Matriyehan practice yet unique, as well as filling
most of them with colored dyes consistent with local culture and
chemically identical to those on Vulture. It gave Warlock a fiercer
appearance she liked, but she looked and sounded much like the old
Manka. Some bone and local twine jewelry and ropelike bracelets and
anklets also taken from Vulture’s patterns completed her
appearance.
One major difference was her skin, which looked and felt normal
to her but was hard and tough, almost like hide, to anyone else.
She held a finger over a lighted match and barely noticed it, and
when she pinched it out with her fingers, she did not get burned.
The most marked difference, however, was in her apparent physical
age. Manka Warlock had been good-looking in her forties; she was a
stunning sixteen. She did not, however, take the Matriyeh mindprint
program they had worked out. That would be last.
Decked out as she was in her Matriyehan fierceness, she met with
the others who would be her team. “Those of you who
volunteered or got talked into this may reconsider,” she told
them. “Otherwise, by tonight, there will be no turning back.
I want you in Matriyehan bodies, getting used to them, and feeling
their power and potential as soon as possible. We have prepared a
very large room in the office section and we will go there and
remain there, cut off from the rest, while you train and learn the
things that will keep you alive down there. On Matriyeh there will
be no margin for error, and the lives of others might depend on the
actions or inactions of any one of you. The mindprinter can give
you all the information you need, but it cannot give you skills or
increase your reaction times or fine-tune your reflexes. Partly it
will be a case of unlearning what you take for granted. Pistols and
rifles, computers and data banks, armor and shields—and even
the little things, like food acquisition and preparation in a
primitive environment, medicines and medical kits, and even such
basic things as matches. I am going to train you until you think
and act as one. I am going to try to make certain you stay alive
because that is how I will stay alive.” She paused.
“Anyone have second thoughts?”
“Many,” Maria Santiago said, “but as a
captain, I have never asked anyone to do anything that I, myself,
was unwilling to do nor turned from my responsibility.
Besides,” she added, “it is not, thank God, some
four-footed beast or whatever else they might be on Chanchuk or the
other place. I worked hard climbing up to be a captain. If I can
survive down there, I can survive anywhere and be captain
again.”
Warlock nodded, liking the captain immediately. She would be a
valuable ally. She turned to the Indrus widows. “And
you?”
“We have only one goal,” Suni Banderesh said for the
both of them. “We wish no more like us from the ruins of
Chunhoifan or Bahakatan or even Thunder.
Perhaps we exist to help in this. Neither of us look forward to it,
but we believe in it.”
“Very good.” Warlock turned to the last two, the
ones who had been forced to come. “I asked for you two,
because you’re tough, sassy bitches with a killer’s
instinct. I know you don’t feel any guilt at what you did,
but that is beside the point. In this, you will atone or you will
die. If you do not die, it will be because you have shaken your
selfishness and become full members of the team, in which case you
might even become full human beings someday.”
“I am surprised you want us, considering your
opinion,” Midi Ng replied sourly. “You think we failed
your company once. What if we fail you again?”
Warlock grinned evilly. “You see, that is the thing. If
you fail us, it will also mean your own lives. If you
deliberately fail any of us, I promise you that you will
truly be in hell. If any of the others of us survives your actions,
or lack of them, you will not. If they do not—then you better
have the ring, or you will be left down there to live out the
remainder of your miserably short lives.”
The transmuting process was a swift one. Since Star Eagle could
subtract but not add mass, all five would remain shorter than
Warlock, some by a fair amount. Only Santiago, who was chunky and
wide thighed, gave the pilot any room to play; her 157 centimeters
could become 164 using that excess mass while also slimming her
down, making her the second tallest but still almost a head shorter
than Warlock. Star Eagle retained the best of their original
features, flattering them wherever possible, within the racial
limits set by the Matriyehan genetic code. Only Ng and Chun, whose
features were strongly Asian, needed any substantial makeover, and
they were the only ones who could not be recognized on sight by any
who had known them before. Their physical ages ranged from fourteen
to sixteen, and the only thing that really disturbed any of them
was the branding marks that to them defaced their faces and
bodies.
“Now we will go and begin our training,” Warlock
said. “None but Vulture and I wear the colors of rank and the
ornaments of honor. Those you will have to earn, and we alone will
decide them. From this point on we will see only one person from
the outside until we are ready to go down—and when that will
be is when Vulture and I say it shall be.”
The one and only outsider allowed, at Warlock’s request,
was Silent Woman. It seemed an odd choice at the start, and both
Hawks and Cloud Dancer had initially objected, “We do not
even know if she really understands any of this,” Cloud
Dancer said. “Nor do we know how she will take to you all,
like that, in there.”
“She understands what is necessary,” Warlock
replied. “At the moment, she is the most valuable one on this
ship to us. She survived a culture and an environment gentler only
by degrees than the one we must go to, and she has shown skills in
those areas where modern folk are weakest. It was you who told us
of the unerring knife throws back on Earth, and the silent,
animal-like way she managed to approach and then kill two men. I
need someone to teach those skills. I do not propose she join us,
just teach us.”
Hawks thought of the small, fat, middle-aged woman of unknown
tribe who was colorfully tattooed from the neck down and who had
spent her life in slavery, her tongue cut out to stop her screaming
as they killed her malformed only child in front of her. She had
been mostly bewildered by all this, but seemed to have found her
place in the nursery caring for the young children of others. But
she had been deadly and cunning in an almost animal-like
way when she had chosen to make her escape with Hawks and Cloud
Dancer. It was easy to forget that.
She did seem bewildered and perhaps a bit frightened at
first by the seven strange women, but she knew and recognized
Warlock and seemed to understand what she was to do, not so much by
words as by patient illustration. Even Hawks had to admit the
brilliance of using her in the end. She knew far more than knives;
she knew how to exist with what was on hand, to weave vines into
useful things, to patiently select and shape stone and bone into
anything from weapons to ornaments. Within a week she was acting
very apologetic to Cloud Dancer about neglecting the kids and
spending almost all her time in Manka Warlock’s training
room.
According to China, who could interface with Star Eagle and tap
into the great ship’s communications and monitors, Silent
Woman was doing very well in there while most of the others were
suffering badly. Tae-Jin Chun, for example, was very proud of her
black belts in some of the more esoteric martial arts, but
eventually Warlock had badly beaten the former bouncer while barely
getting bruised herself. There was clearly more than one mistress
of those arts, as later lessons were to show, and Warlock’s
only problem was that she needed Vulture and Silent Woman to keep
her from killing rather than forcefully demonstrating to her
pupils.
There was no getting around the fact that Manka Warlock liked
hurting people and if she gave a damn about being hurt, it never
showed. If she ever got tired or weak or frustrated, that never
showed, either. She did everything they did, and took everything
they took, and she did it better. It was a mark of her strength
that after seven weeks, they hated her so much that not one of them
broke.
It was about this time that Silent Woman approached Hawks. She
still could only communicate in a basic sign language; there was no
way to know what language was hers. Even mindprinters with language
programs seemed to have only slight effect, since they
cross-referenced ideas from the language you knew, and it was by no
means certain that in her mental state Silent Woman really had a
language as the rest thought of one. Even now, Hawks had some
problems understanding her, but finally he figured it out. By his
own code of honor, she was as much his wife as Cloud Dancer was,
and it was clear suddenly what she had in mind.
In very basic terms, she wanted a divorce.
Once he go that idea, he could guess the rest. “You want
to go, don’t you?” he said aloud, then signed it as
best he could.
She nodded. She made cradling motions, then pointed in the
general direction of Warlock’s lair. For a moment he thought
she wanted to care for any babies they might have, or perhaps she
understood the change in the others, and that perhaps, she, too,
could be restored to function and youth, but finally he realized
that it was a more basic, uncomplicated idea. They need me, she was saying. She seemed to understand
that they were being prepared to go into very primitive areas, and
while they had learned well, she was unsure that they would all
have a good chance unless she were there to help and reinforce the
lessons.
In fact, ever since the true potential of the transmutters was
known to him, Hawks had been tempted to use them on her, to give
her a new tongue and perhaps beauty and fertility, but he had no
real way of conveying that to her or finding out what she really
wanted and Clayben and the others had been very nervous about doing
anything to or with someone who was, in Clayben’s words,
“clearly a functioning psychotic.” Now she was asking
for it and Hawks didn’t know what to do. He did, of course,
what he always did when he was in such a dilemma: he called in
Cloud Dancer.
“I believe we should let her,” Cloud Dancer said
without much hesitation. “Although I love her and am
frightened for her, it is what she wants and perhaps what she was
born to do. Perhaps she could save some lives down there—and
perhaps, live or die, she might have her only chance of regaining
her soul.”
Hawks sighed. “And the hellish thing is, we might never
really know if we’re doing the right thing. But, all right.
If Warlock and Vulture agree and Clayben is willing, we’ll
give it a try.”
Since being taken prisoner with Hawks and Cloud Dancer, Silent
Woman had lived in a world totally of magic and incomprehensible
mystery and she hated it as much as she loved the people around
her. Now she expected that magic to reward her for loyal service
and suffering and give her purpose once again.
Clayben was nervous about it. Not the physical part—that
was easy. It would be the mindprinting at the end that would be the
problem. “Still,” he said, “whatever language she
uses, primitive and basic thought it may be, should provide
reasonable matches for this Matriyehan tongue. It’s my guess
that she will function better down there than here.”
Warlock was delighted, and Vulture relieved. Oddly, the
changeling’s one concern was that, once down, it would be
Silent Woman in charge. He only hoped they could make her
understand that the object of it all wasn’t just to survive
down there, but to steal something.
She was quite fat, which gave Star Eagle a great deal of mass to
work with. He understood how she had suffered and how hard this all
was, and he made her almost a primal sixteen-year-old Matriyehan
goddess. When she first stepped down from the transmuter, looking
in a mirror, and saw herself, she traced the whole outline of her
body on the mirror, felt her whole body, and then she cried.
Silently.
There was no longer a single thing physically wrong with her,
and she almost choked on the tongue a few times, but Silent Woman
remained as mute and almost as enigmatic as ever.