They might even share another- longevity. Steve had no proof of this
since he had never met an old super-straight.
Or had he? Could he have Shaken the hand of one in the Oval Office?
Why else would the Family be so different from their loyal
soldier-citizens? How else could people like Malone and other mexicans
like Side-Winder operate for so long on the overground without pulling
a trick?
It would also explain why the President-General took the Talisman
Prophecy so seriously - along with Mute magic. A real true-blue
Tracker, raised from birth in a hi-tech society where the physical
sciences provided an answer for everything, would never, for one
moment, have entertained the idea that some things happened 'by
magic'.
In the Federation, there was a total ban on the discussion of such
intangible concepts, and if ordinary Trackers so much as mentioned the
idea it could earn them a trip to the wall.
More important still was the fact that the President-General knew
something Steve had yet to discover-his true origins and the
circumstances surrounding his birth. They knew he was a Mute and yet
they had condoned the unthinkable: they had allowed him to jack up
Franklynne Delano Jefferson. Not just once, but on a regular basis,
sometimes notching up three or four ball-breaking sessions a night.
There was only one set of circumstances which would permit such a
relationship. Fran was also a Mute. They all were - or had enough
Mute blood in them for it not to matter. Which meant - in theory there
was nothing to stop him from becoming the next but one
President-General...
George Washington Jefferson the 33rd.
It was a mind-blowing notion, and the historical perspective it opened
up was equally disturbing. At what point had Mute blood entered the
veins of the First Family? Or had it always been there?
Mr Snow had told him that Mute and Tracker shared a common ancestry
whose roots ran back to the Old Time - the pre-Holocaust era that the
Iron Masters called the World Before. Super-straights like Clearwater
and Cadillac were living proof of that- and so, it would seem, was
he.
Their existence supported Mr Snow's claim that the Mutes had not
unleashed the Holocaust but were, instead, its principal victims.
