If so, the bone and skin deformations and mental impairment that caused
the Federation to classify them as sub-human did not precede the
Holocaust; it was part of its dreadful legacy. Mutes did not exhale
the poisonous elements that filled the air, and it was not exuded
through the sweat glands on their multi-coloured skins. And touching
that skin did not cause Trackers to develop gangrene. According to Mr
Snow, that was another of the great lies invented by the Federation.
In the oral history of the Mutes, it was the servants of Pent-Agon,
Lord of Chaos, who had unleashed The War of a Thousand Suns by
launching countless numbers of iron birds into the air. Iron birds
which rose into the sky-on plumes of fire, flew in a great arch towards
the stars then returned to earth as falling suns.
Many of these birds, said Mr Snow, had been caged deep in the earth in
underground cities - like those of the Federation; others had burst
free from the bodies of great iron-snakes that travelled on shining
hard-ways. Not the crumbling remains that marked the routes once used
by the giant, man-carrying beetles, but endless ribbons of polished
iron which glittered in the sun like the flawless blades of the
samurai.
In the last six weeks, Steve had seen those shining hard-ways, and a
new kind of iron-snake whose fiery breath was used not to kill, but to
power its massive wheels.
Steam trains, lovingly restored and maintained by the First Family,
running on rails - two ribbons of rolled steel pinned to wooden
'sleepers'. They were part of a grandiose project still several
decades from completion - the rebuilding of the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe railroad which, when eventually connected to rebuilt sections
of the pre-H Southern, and Southern Pacific routes, would link the east
and west coasts of America.
Such trains could have carried the iron birds Mr Snow had spoken of.
Steve, of course, had no knowledge of intercontinental ballistic
missile systems, or the destructive force of nuclear warheads but he
knew about small air-to-ground rockets, and the firework variety made
by the Iron Masters which he had adapted into a propulsion system for
Lord Min-Orota's 'flying-horses'. The 'iron birds' were obviously
large rockets with an explosive warhead.
If it was true - if they had been launched from trains then - reasoned
Steve - it was equally possible that the Founding Father and the Four
Hundred whose names topped the Roll of Honour were directly linked to
those 'servants of Pent-Agon'. If they were, their finger might even
have been on the firing button!
After Fran, anything was possible. It meant adjusting to the idea that
