EPILOGUE: TWO CHARACTERS MEET IN DIFFERENT
SEASONS
THE VILLAGE SITE LOOKED GOOD, AND THE WOMEN and
children poured out of the Four Families’ lodge to greet the
first arrivals.
The tall, middle-aged, gray-haired man in weathered buckskins
eased himself carefully off his horse and groaned as he stood and
touched the ground. It was good that he had spent this season with
the people, for he was getting too damned old and worn to do this
any more.
He tended to his horse, then made his way, slowly and creakily,
over to the lodge area. A figure sat there in front of the lodge,
leaning back on an old wooden chair. He wore a cotton shirt and
jeans and had fancy leather boots on that looked a bit too new for
the character, and on his head was a broad, cream-color new-looking
cowboy hat. He was smoking a cigar and he did not get up as the old
man approached, but watched him.
When the Hyiakutt elder was almost to him, the man with the hat
said, “It’s about time. I been stuck here a week
waiting for you.”
Runs With the Night Hawks stood there and stared at the other.
“Where the hell did you come from?” he asked.
“And what gave you the idea to dress up like that?”
The cowboy shrugged. “I couldn’t exactly be one of
your people, so I figured I’d come as close to character as I
could. I kind’a like it, but I ain’t too sure the world
is ready for a half-human Hungarian cowboy.”
Hawks settled down on the edge of the boardwalk porch.
“And to what do I owe this visit?”
“Just checking in. You know. I figured I’d catch you
up on the gossip and see just how you were doin’ and what you
were thinkin’ of doin’ next.”
“It’s my first and only season on the southern
plains, I promise you.” Hawks groaned. “I may well die
from it, or, perhaps, more frightening considering how I feel, I
may not die from it. At least now I’ve had the time
to work out my own history and an account of the whole rings quest.
It was very difficult, you know, to do that. It sounds so damned
mythic, and so heroic. It is difficult not to sound
self-serving.”
Arnold Nagy laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about
that. From what I hear, all autobiography is self-serving.
Can’t be otherwise. Isn’t that what guys in your
business do? Compare all the evidence and then separate the ego
from the meat?”
Hawks shrugged. “That’s one way to look at it, I
suppose.”
“Where are Cloud Dancer and the kids?”
“A bit back, with the main body. They’ll be here in
a day or two. When we got back up into this area I just decided I
needed a little time alone, out there. That’s what Raven said
he used to do to regain his humanity. Just go out alone for a
while, camp out in the bush under the stars, try to sort things
out.”
“And did it work?”
Hawks snorted. “Rained on me the last three days solid.
This is the first decent weather since I left. I was born to this
kind of life, Nagy, but I was snatched away young. Too young. I
can’t do it any more. Oh, the kids had one hell of a time. We
took nine of China’s children out there, too, you know.
Adopted them into the tribe. Some of them now speak Hyiakutt better
than I do. Now it’s time to go back, with all the records and
recordings at hand, and write all this up for whatever posterity we
may have.”
“And then what?” Nagy asked him. “Back here
for good?”
“No. As much as my spirit is here, my flesh is beyond
redemption. And there is something else, too. Not the electronic
toilets and computer data and all the rest of so-called modern
civilization, but something basic. We’ve changed, and the
people here have not. A loss of innocence, Cloud Dancer called it
once.”
“I think I understand. Partly for that reason I’m
gonna be heading out soon. Out there.” He gestured skyward
with his head. “Nothing to fear but adventure now, and
they’re converting ships for human use at a great rate. Bute,
Vulture, Min, and Chung have a new ship all nicely outfitted for
their own forms. You know that transmutation was so complete that
little sucker Vulture has all three of them pregnant now?
That’s gonna be a hell of a Chanchukian spacefaring dynasty.
The Alititian crowd is done modifying Kaotan and may well
have the only water-breather freebooter ship in history. More and
more freebooters and ships are coming out of the woodwork, and
Chunhoifan and Bahakatan are so fancy in their
modifications and have so much damned pull, they’re carving
out the prime trade routes for themselves. Maria and Midi,
they’re getting their own ship and are talking about an
all-Matriyehan freebooter tribe. Talk of something scary, you think
about that for a minute.”
Hawks chuckled. “China, of course, is overseeing the
reactivation and work on Master System and the mountain complex. I
know that. We are in touch. I understand her genius now, far more
than I did before, and also her torment. The only way out for her,
to keep from a still-long life of sexual slavery, is essentially to
surrender her humanity. I hope her choice is the right
one.”
“Well, maybe there’s some hope in between there, as
well. I’m told that the multiple transmuter pass problem
might be solvable. The limitation was real physics, not some Master
System trick, but once it got to that point, the old computer
figured it was a good place to stop. After all, can’t have
those colonials ever thinking they can get back, right? Not that
any want to, after all this time.”
“That may be another of the ironies of all this. She might
have to make her choice in order to develop and solve that problem.
Which reminds me, how are the Chows?”
Arnold Nagy sighed. “Well, Chow Dai is gonna have to hope
for that breakthrough, as you know. Without the transmuter option
they had to amputate both arms and rebuild some of the chest and
insides. It was a near thing. She’s okay—the robot
prosthetics are good—but the Janipurian form isn’t well
suited to that kind of thing, what with the dual-purpose limbs.
She’s basically got four legs and no hands. They
haven’t fully decided yet, but they’re talking about
going back to Janipur with the natives you held—and the kids,
of course—so they can be in a more normal environment for
them. They want some land, they want to farm. I think it can be
arranged.”
Hawks nodded. “We owe them more than that. Chow Dai in
particular. Who would have thought that at the last moment, in
crisis, it would be that simple, illiterate girl who would solve
the puzzle of the rings?”
Nagy nodded. “Yeah. And you will never know how close it
was, too. I damned near got my head blown off!”
“And you? What of you?”
Nagy shrugged. “Well, Ikira discovered that being a
goddess on Matriyeh was a pretty lonely life and not much to her
tastes. I think we’ll be able to start a project there to
raise the living standards without her. And she’s a
half-breed like me, only she’s firmly programmed in that
goddess role. We got to thinking, her and I, that with all this
interstellar human travel coming into its own, it was about time to
establish a nice trading and rest and relaxation joint out there in
the center of the action. I’m uniquely qualified to be the
only one who can really keep up with her, you know. Maybe
we’ll get Warlock as chief of security. That would
be something, wouldn’t it?”
Hawks had to laugh. “I can see you, in that outfit,
hosting the wild and woolly of the spacelanes. The two of you will
rival Master System in wealth and power in a few years!”
Nagy looked at him and frowned. “And you? What about you?
You get at least one shot at the transmuter yet, except maybe for
those ornamental cheekbones. Maybe more if they solve that
transmuter problem.”
“Cloud Dancer and I have discussed the transmuter but we
have not yet decided upon it. My time is past, Nagy. My destiny is
fulfilled. I’m an old man now, writing his memoirs and
waiting for his first grandchild.”
Nagy sat up. “Now, that’s bullshit and you know it!
You’re stuck in autumn, old man, when things are turning
brown and the earth is growing cold and there is only winter ahead.
Look around you, man! It’s spring!”
“Your winter is past, Nagy, not mine. The others
might well be different, too. I have relinquished my ring. In the
many long years aboard Thunder only once did I try that
interface with Star Eagle, never again. You and I know that
there’s only one way to keep Master System honest, and
that’s the virtual interface. Human and machine become one,
then, now, and forever. Somehow I just can’t see that as an
improvement. They should turn it off. Shut it down. Let us get
back, for good or evil, on our natural track.”
Nagy nodded. “I heard your arguments before. But it
ain’t gonna happen, and you and I know it. You can’t
separate China from her toy, and you can’t just let things
run wild again. The fact is, without some maintenance many of those
worlds out there and many of the cultures here simply
couldn’t exist. It went too far, Hawks. Without wiping out
whole cultures and civilizations, there’s no way we can put
anything back the way it was, and who’s to say we should?
Master System wasn’t the disease, it was the cure. A drastic,
nasty cure to be sure, but it was the only cure available for a
terminal illness. A preemptive nuclear strike had actually been
launched and the retaliation already ordered. The figures
are clear. We had only one world then, and very limited space
capability. That damned computer saved the human race, just like it
was supposed to.”
“But at what cost, Nagy? At what cost?”
“On the personal level—great. But in the long term?
I’m not so sure about the long-term cost. A thousand years
later we all still lived. There are no signs of colonial worlds out
there that have died out. Not one. And the system could still
produce people like you and China and Cloud Dancer and Raven and
all the rest. You got so fixated on Raven’s death you forgot
his message. We had a system that worked, all right, but at the
cost of human values—honor, morality, courage of spirit, art,
beauty. Not just the big things but the little ones. The magic in a
child’s laughter, or within a raindrop on a leaf. But they
weren’t really lost, not in the individual. Not even in one
as jaded as Raven. That’s what the Vals saw, in each
individual, as they read the mindprints and thoughts and memories
and sensations and analyzed them. Deep down, no matter what the
form, no matter what we breathed or what color was our sky, no
matter where our home was or what gods we worshipped, we never lost
that. The Vals knew, and they compared, and they caught a bit of it
themselves. That was the true enemy, Hawks, that Master System
couldn’t stamp out. That was the enemy that really did it
in.”
Hawks sighed. “Maybe you’re right. The fact is,
Nagy, we’re at another crossroads. With freedom in space,
with contact and perhaps trade or at least an exchange of history
and knowledge between the colonials, there could be something brand
new out there—provided the new masters of this race
don’t take to rationing and controlling spaceships once
again. You—and your more mechanical brethren—are a new
race, a new factor. You can dominate, or be dominated, or you can
be the cops on the beat, the middlemen between the rulers and the
subjects who keep all sides honest. We are an old race, Nagy, but
young as the universe goes. Now we stand once more, as our
ancestors did back in that mountain complex, faced with a possible
new spring for our people or an even more devastating winter.
Perhaps that is what I fear most. Perhaps I am afraid of knowing
the road we will take.”
Nagy shook his head from side to side. “Maybe you should
remember the Thunder. Lots of people from very different
backgrounds who were willing to sacrifice their forms, their
cultures, even their lives for a goal that was so unselfish that
many who paid the biggest price got no reward and are trapped as
beings they never wished to be. A floating colonial mix, too. Not
just of the colonial types they were forced to become but the
varying races of the freebooter ships.”
“I think often of the Thunder,” Hawks
replied. “In many ways it is the ideal that humans have
searched for. Cloud Dancer once disliked Raven simply because he
was a Crow. How absurd that distinction seems now! Humans have
historically distrusted and disliked one another to the point of
murder and war over such minor differences as religion, color,
language, and the like. That’s one rationale Master System
had for keeping each colonial world a homogenous race and culture.
Yet my children could never truly comprehend why a Crow or a Sioux
or a Cheyenne—or a Janipurian or a Chanchukian or even an
Alititian—should be judged in any way but by what kind of
people they are. But such things have always worked on a small
scale, Nagy, particularly when we are crisis-driven or bound
together by mutual self-interest, but never in the mass. That is
our tragedy. Never in the mass.”
Arnold Nagy shrugged. “Well, we gave everyone a tomorrow,
and that’s something. Maybe the Thunder is atypical,
but it stands as an example of what good people can do and should
strive for,” he said. “For me, after years cooped up in
that fancy mausoleum out there waiting out the exploits of the
legends I helped assemble, every day’s a crossroads and every
path is new. You don’t just lie out here and stare at the
stars, Hawks! You’ll just get rain in your face. You reach
out and you grab them sons of bitches and you live!”
He paused a moment. “And you can start by coming over here
and sampling some of the most amazing bourbon that I have
ever discovered. One of those little things, I admit, but proof
positive there are many things of wonder out there to be
discovered.”
Hawks got up and went over to where Nagy’s packs lay and
waited while the man withdrew a flask and passed it to him. The
Hyiakutt took it and drank deeply, then froze, like a living
statue, for what seemed like several minutes. Then, slowly, a smile
crept over his craggy, tattooed face and he looked at the flask as
a child might regard a favorite new toy.
“Well,” said Hawks at last. “I suppose
it’s a start . . . ”
EPILOGUE: TWO CHARACTERS MEET IN DIFFERENT
SEASONS
THE VILLAGE SITE LOOKED GOOD, AND THE WOMEN and
children poured out of the Four Families’ lodge to greet the
first arrivals.
The tall, middle-aged, gray-haired man in weathered buckskins
eased himself carefully off his horse and groaned as he stood and
touched the ground. It was good that he had spent this season with
the people, for he was getting too damned old and worn to do this
any more.
He tended to his horse, then made his way, slowly and creakily,
over to the lodge area. A figure sat there in front of the lodge,
leaning back on an old wooden chair. He wore a cotton shirt and
jeans and had fancy leather boots on that looked a bit too new for
the character, and on his head was a broad, cream-color new-looking
cowboy hat. He was smoking a cigar and he did not get up as the old
man approached, but watched him.
When the Hyiakutt elder was almost to him, the man with the hat
said, “It’s about time. I been stuck here a week
waiting for you.”
Runs With the Night Hawks stood there and stared at the other.
“Where the hell did you come from?” he asked.
“And what gave you the idea to dress up like that?”
The cowboy shrugged. “I couldn’t exactly be one of
your people, so I figured I’d come as close to character as I
could. I kind’a like it, but I ain’t too sure the world
is ready for a half-human Hungarian cowboy.”
Hawks settled down on the edge of the boardwalk porch.
“And to what do I owe this visit?”
“Just checking in. You know. I figured I’d catch you
up on the gossip and see just how you were doin’ and what you
were thinkin’ of doin’ next.”
“It’s my first and only season on the southern
plains, I promise you.” Hawks groaned. “I may well die
from it, or, perhaps, more frightening considering how I feel, I
may not die from it. At least now I’ve had the time
to work out my own history and an account of the whole rings quest.
It was very difficult, you know, to do that. It sounds so damned
mythic, and so heroic. It is difficult not to sound
self-serving.”
Arnold Nagy laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about
that. From what I hear, all autobiography is self-serving.
Can’t be otherwise. Isn’t that what guys in your
business do? Compare all the evidence and then separate the ego
from the meat?”
Hawks shrugged. “That’s one way to look at it, I
suppose.”
“Where are Cloud Dancer and the kids?”
“A bit back, with the main body. They’ll be here in
a day or two. When we got back up into this area I just decided I
needed a little time alone, out there. That’s what Raven said
he used to do to regain his humanity. Just go out alone for a
while, camp out in the bush under the stars, try to sort things
out.”
“And did it work?”
Hawks snorted. “Rained on me the last three days solid.
This is the first decent weather since I left. I was born to this
kind of life, Nagy, but I was snatched away young. Too young. I
can’t do it any more. Oh, the kids had one hell of a time. We
took nine of China’s children out there, too, you know.
Adopted them into the tribe. Some of them now speak Hyiakutt better
than I do. Now it’s time to go back, with all the records and
recordings at hand, and write all this up for whatever posterity we
may have.”
“And then what?” Nagy asked him. “Back here
for good?”
“No. As much as my spirit is here, my flesh is beyond
redemption. And there is something else, too. Not the electronic
toilets and computer data and all the rest of so-called modern
civilization, but something basic. We’ve changed, and the
people here have not. A loss of innocence, Cloud Dancer called it
once.”
“I think I understand. Partly for that reason I’m
gonna be heading out soon. Out there.” He gestured skyward
with his head. “Nothing to fear but adventure now, and
they’re converting ships for human use at a great rate. Bute,
Vulture, Min, and Chung have a new ship all nicely outfitted for
their own forms. You know that transmutation was so complete that
little sucker Vulture has all three of them pregnant now?
That’s gonna be a hell of a Chanchukian spacefaring dynasty.
The Alititian crowd is done modifying Kaotan and may well
have the only water-breather freebooter ship in history. More and
more freebooters and ships are coming out of the woodwork, and
Chunhoifan and Bahakatan are so fancy in their
modifications and have so much damned pull, they’re carving
out the prime trade routes for themselves. Maria and Midi,
they’re getting their own ship and are talking about an
all-Matriyehan freebooter tribe. Talk of something scary, you think
about that for a minute.”
Hawks chuckled. “China, of course, is overseeing the
reactivation and work on Master System and the mountain complex. I
know that. We are in touch. I understand her genius now, far more
than I did before, and also her torment. The only way out for her,
to keep from a still-long life of sexual slavery, is essentially to
surrender her humanity. I hope her choice is the right
one.”
“Well, maybe there’s some hope in between there, as
well. I’m told that the multiple transmuter pass problem
might be solvable. The limitation was real physics, not some Master
System trick, but once it got to that point, the old computer
figured it was a good place to stop. After all, can’t have
those colonials ever thinking they can get back, right? Not that
any want to, after all this time.”
“That may be another of the ironies of all this. She might
have to make her choice in order to develop and solve that problem.
Which reminds me, how are the Chows?”
Arnold Nagy sighed. “Well, Chow Dai is gonna have to hope
for that breakthrough, as you know. Without the transmuter option
they had to amputate both arms and rebuild some of the chest and
insides. It was a near thing. She’s okay—the robot
prosthetics are good—but the Janipurian form isn’t well
suited to that kind of thing, what with the dual-purpose limbs.
She’s basically got four legs and no hands. They
haven’t fully decided yet, but they’re talking about
going back to Janipur with the natives you held—and the kids,
of course—so they can be in a more normal environment for
them. They want some land, they want to farm. I think it can be
arranged.”
Hawks nodded. “We owe them more than that. Chow Dai in
particular. Who would have thought that at the last moment, in
crisis, it would be that simple, illiterate girl who would solve
the puzzle of the rings?”
Nagy nodded. “Yeah. And you will never know how close it
was, too. I damned near got my head blown off!”
“And you? What of you?”
Nagy shrugged. “Well, Ikira discovered that being a
goddess on Matriyeh was a pretty lonely life and not much to her
tastes. I think we’ll be able to start a project there to
raise the living standards without her. And she’s a
half-breed like me, only she’s firmly programmed in that
goddess role. We got to thinking, her and I, that with all this
interstellar human travel coming into its own, it was about time to
establish a nice trading and rest and relaxation joint out there in
the center of the action. I’m uniquely qualified to be the
only one who can really keep up with her, you know. Maybe
we’ll get Warlock as chief of security. That would
be something, wouldn’t it?”
Hawks had to laugh. “I can see you, in that outfit,
hosting the wild and woolly of the spacelanes. The two of you will
rival Master System in wealth and power in a few years!”
Nagy looked at him and frowned. “And you? What about you?
You get at least one shot at the transmuter yet, except maybe for
those ornamental cheekbones. Maybe more if they solve that
transmuter problem.”
“Cloud Dancer and I have discussed the transmuter but we
have not yet decided upon it. My time is past, Nagy. My destiny is
fulfilled. I’m an old man now, writing his memoirs and
waiting for his first grandchild.”
Nagy sat up. “Now, that’s bullshit and you know it!
You’re stuck in autumn, old man, when things are turning
brown and the earth is growing cold and there is only winter ahead.
Look around you, man! It’s spring!”
“Your winter is past, Nagy, not mine. The others
might well be different, too. I have relinquished my ring. In the
many long years aboard Thunder only once did I try that
interface with Star Eagle, never again. You and I know that
there’s only one way to keep Master System honest, and
that’s the virtual interface. Human and machine become one,
then, now, and forever. Somehow I just can’t see that as an
improvement. They should turn it off. Shut it down. Let us get
back, for good or evil, on our natural track.”
Nagy nodded. “I heard your arguments before. But it
ain’t gonna happen, and you and I know it. You can’t
separate China from her toy, and you can’t just let things
run wild again. The fact is, without some maintenance many of those
worlds out there and many of the cultures here simply
couldn’t exist. It went too far, Hawks. Without wiping out
whole cultures and civilizations, there’s no way we can put
anything back the way it was, and who’s to say we should?
Master System wasn’t the disease, it was the cure. A drastic,
nasty cure to be sure, but it was the only cure available for a
terminal illness. A preemptive nuclear strike had actually been
launched and the retaliation already ordered. The figures
are clear. We had only one world then, and very limited space
capability. That damned computer saved the human race, just like it
was supposed to.”
“But at what cost, Nagy? At what cost?”
“On the personal level—great. But in the long term?
I’m not so sure about the long-term cost. A thousand years
later we all still lived. There are no signs of colonial worlds out
there that have died out. Not one. And the system could still
produce people like you and China and Cloud Dancer and Raven and
all the rest. You got so fixated on Raven’s death you forgot
his message. We had a system that worked, all right, but at the
cost of human values—honor, morality, courage of spirit, art,
beauty. Not just the big things but the little ones. The magic in a
child’s laughter, or within a raindrop on a leaf. But they
weren’t really lost, not in the individual. Not even in one
as jaded as Raven. That’s what the Vals saw, in each
individual, as they read the mindprints and thoughts and memories
and sensations and analyzed them. Deep down, no matter what the
form, no matter what we breathed or what color was our sky, no
matter where our home was or what gods we worshipped, we never lost
that. The Vals knew, and they compared, and they caught a bit of it
themselves. That was the true enemy, Hawks, that Master System
couldn’t stamp out. That was the enemy that really did it
in.”
Hawks sighed. “Maybe you’re right. The fact is,
Nagy, we’re at another crossroads. With freedom in space,
with contact and perhaps trade or at least an exchange of history
and knowledge between the colonials, there could be something brand
new out there—provided the new masters of this race
don’t take to rationing and controlling spaceships once
again. You—and your more mechanical brethren—are a new
race, a new factor. You can dominate, or be dominated, or you can
be the cops on the beat, the middlemen between the rulers and the
subjects who keep all sides honest. We are an old race, Nagy, but
young as the universe goes. Now we stand once more, as our
ancestors did back in that mountain complex, faced with a possible
new spring for our people or an even more devastating winter.
Perhaps that is what I fear most. Perhaps I am afraid of knowing
the road we will take.”
Nagy shook his head from side to side. “Maybe you should
remember the Thunder. Lots of people from very different
backgrounds who were willing to sacrifice their forms, their
cultures, even their lives for a goal that was so unselfish that
many who paid the biggest price got no reward and are trapped as
beings they never wished to be. A floating colonial mix, too. Not
just of the colonial types they were forced to become but the
varying races of the freebooter ships.”
“I think often of the Thunder,” Hawks
replied. “In many ways it is the ideal that humans have
searched for. Cloud Dancer once disliked Raven simply because he
was a Crow. How absurd that distinction seems now! Humans have
historically distrusted and disliked one another to the point of
murder and war over such minor differences as religion, color,
language, and the like. That’s one rationale Master System
had for keeping each colonial world a homogenous race and culture.
Yet my children could never truly comprehend why a Crow or a Sioux
or a Cheyenne—or a Janipurian or a Chanchukian or even an
Alititian—should be judged in any way but by what kind of
people they are. But such things have always worked on a small
scale, Nagy, particularly when we are crisis-driven or bound
together by mutual self-interest, but never in the mass. That is
our tragedy. Never in the mass.”
Arnold Nagy shrugged. “Well, we gave everyone a tomorrow,
and that’s something. Maybe the Thunder is atypical,
but it stands as an example of what good people can do and should
strive for,” he said. “For me, after years cooped up in
that fancy mausoleum out there waiting out the exploits of the
legends I helped assemble, every day’s a crossroads and every
path is new. You don’t just lie out here and stare at the
stars, Hawks! You’ll just get rain in your face. You reach
out and you grab them sons of bitches and you live!”
He paused a moment. “And you can start by coming over here
and sampling some of the most amazing bourbon that I have
ever discovered. One of those little things, I admit, but proof
positive there are many things of wonder out there to be
discovered.”
Hawks got up and went over to where Nagy’s packs lay and
waited while the man withdrew a flask and passed it to him. The
Hyiakutt took it and drank deeply, then froze, like a living
statue, for what seemed like several minutes. Then, slowly, a smile
crept over his craggy, tattooed face and he looked at the flask as
a child might regard a favorite new toy.
“Well,” said Hawks at last. “I suppose
it’s a start . . . ”