《The Amtrak Wars I : Cloud_Warrior》20

'There!  You have seen for yourselves how Talisman protects those who
walk in his shadow!"  'Heyyy-yahhh,' murmured the awed clan.

Motor-Head leapt to his feet, his composure regained, and strode
forward.  Cadillac tried to hold him back but was brushed aside.

'Brothers and sisters I Like you, I bow to the Will of Talisman, but I
still say this crow is unworthy to eat and drink and live as one of
us.

If he draws his strength from Talisman, let him prove he is a
warrior!

Let him bite the arrow I' 'HEYY-YAHH!!"  This time the vote was
unanimous.

Steve swayed as the voices thundered in his ears.  Mr Snow and Cadillac
grabbed him by the arms.  'Hey!  Hey!

Come on!  Stay awake!"  whispered Mr Snow urgently.  'If anyone guesses
you're stoked up on Dream Cap they will call a postponement and thread
your face when you're cold turkey."

'Does it hurt?"  mumbled Steve.

'You won't feel too much,' said Mr Snow.

'Just switch off,' muttered Cadillac.  'Don't think about it."

They marched him over to the clan elders.  'Okay,' whispered Mr Snow,
'Kneel down, stretch out your arms sideways and, whatever happens, keep
your fingers straight and your palms flat on ours."

Steve nodded dreamily.  'I know the drill."

Mr Snow patted him on the back of the neck and hissed.

'Head up!  Keep your head up.  Look sharp!"  Mr Snow and Cadillac knelt
facing each other on either side of Steve and offered up a palm for
Steve to lay his outstretched hands on.

Rolling-Stone stepped up to Steve holding the unbroken arrow made by
the luckless Good-Year.  It was stained with blood where it had pierced
his left cheek.  The four-vaned head gleamed dully.  To Steve's
dislocated senses it looked huge.  Far too big to pass between his
jaws.  In his mind's eye he saw it splintering his teeth, ripping
across his tongue...

Rolling-Stone lifted the arrow above his head.

Breathe.  He had to take a deep breath.  Fill his lungs with air to
power the primal scream that would initiate his ordeal.

Like the warlike cry he had been trained to use when delivering a blow
in unarmed combat.  How much would he feel?  How much would it hurt?

Steve had the impression he was both inside and outside himself.  His
mind was beginning to drift away.  Again he could hear voices.

He heard a far-away echoing cry; dimly recognised it as the defiant
Trail-Blazer yell.  HO !-Oh-oh-oh-oh.  He felt a violent blow against
the left side of his face, just ahead of the jaw muscle.  A harsh
grating noise.  Splayed fingers pressing against the right side of his
face.  Skin tightening, tearing.

Something hard and thin pressing down on his tongue.

Choking... mouth filling with blood.  Rising.  Turning, arms
outstretched.  Hands on his legs, steadying him.  Look alert,
Brickman.

Look sharp.  Don't crap out.  This is your big moment.  Fold your arms
slowly.  Take hold of the arrow.

Shit... driven the point into my hand!  Okay... this is the bit these
lumpheads have been waiting for.  Bite the arrow.

Shit.  That hurts I Break you bastard.  Oh, sweet Christopher, it's
tearing my fucking face apart I Bite harder.  Bite through.

Oh, boy.  couldn't have made it without the Dream Cap. Still don't
know whether I can... Hands are sticky.  Got blood everywhere.  Oh, boy
I Think it's breaking... Going to have to - snap - it - up...wards.

uh!  UHH!

Heyyy-YAHHH I The roar from the assembled Mutes washed over him like a
great wave.  His face throbbed.  The inside of his mouth felt swollen,
shapeless.  Willing himself to stay erect, he walked stiff-legged to
the fire and spat the piece of shaft into the flames.  The rows of
misshapen, firelit faces swayed, blurred...

The next thing Steve was conscious of was waking up inside Cadillac's
hut.  He was lying between his sleeping furs.  Mr Snow and the young
wordsmith sat watching him.

Both their faces bore the livid wounds made by the arrow.

Steve sat up on his elbows.  His face felt as if it was on fire.

'How did I get here?"

'You walked,' said Mr Snow.

Steve touched his cheeks gingerly, measuring the extent of the damage
with his fingertips.  'Thanks for helping me out,' he mumbled.  'If it
hadn't been for that Dream Cap..."

Cadillac pointed to Mr Snow.  'It was his idea."

Mr Snow waved dismissively.

'I don't know how you guys managed without it."

Mr Snow began to smile but it hurt too much.  'The Mutes have learned
to get used to pain."  He leaned forward and gripped Steve's wrist.

'Congratulations.  You did well.

Everybody was very impressed."

'Aww, come on,' said Steve.  'It was a total cop-out.  I'm a fraud."

'True,' replied Mr Snow lightly.  'But only the three of us know
that."

He saw Steve's face fall.  'Don't run yourself down too much.  Not
everyone could have gone through with it - even with the help you
had."

'So welcome to warriorhood."  Cadillac extended his palm.

Steve gave Cadillac's hand the traditional downward slap then offered
his palm in return.  'Laying on the hand of friendship' was the Mute
equivalent of the Tracker handshake - but was not lightly bestowed on
strangers.

'That bit with the hammer,' began Steve.  'The way it exploded just as
Motor-Head was about to knock my brains out.  You ran things a mite too
close for comfort but it was great timing.  How'd you rig that?"

Mr Snow exchanged a look with Cadillac before replying.

'We didn't rig anything.  These things happen."

'You mean -' Steve laughed woodenly.  Like the others, his face was too
painfully stiff to open his mouth properly.

'- that stuff about me being in Talisman's shadows was for real?  Does
this guy actually exist?"

'Talisman has always existed,' said Mr Snow quietly.

'You mean he lives somewhere."

'Talisman lives everywhere."

'Wait a minute,' said Steve.  'Let me get this straight.  Are we
talking about a real live person?"

'Now and then, yes."

'What does that mean?"

Mr Snow sighed patiently.  'When the time comes for him to walk the
earth, Talisman will manifest himself as a human being."

'Okay,' nodded Steve.  'Where is he now?"

The old wordsmith threw up his hands.  'What a dumb question!  What
does it matter where he is?  He's around!"  'Around?"

'Yes!  The way the sky is around the earth.  The way heaven is around
the stars!"  Steve considered this abstraction, trying to make some
sense of it.  'I see.  He's like the other, uhh - person you say lives
in the sky - Mo-Town."

'He is greater than Mo-Town.  She is the mother of the Plainfolk.

Talisman is Ruler of All."

Steve nodded again.  'Got it.  Are they, uhh - related?"

'Yes,' said Mr Snow.  'Talisman is both the son and the father of
Mo-Town."

Steve frowned.  'But that doesn't make sense."

'Not to you,' said Mr Snow.  'Not now, anyway.  But before you laugh
off the whole idea just remember he saved your ass.  Think about
that."

'I will,' said Steve, with as much sincerity as his wounded face would
allow.  He had already earmarked the conversation as eminently
forgettable.  How sad, he reflected that two such amiable ostensibly
bright guys could cherish such batty notions.  On the other hand, it
made life a whole lot easier for the Federation.  While the Plainfolk
were waiting for their great mother and father in the sky to come to
their aid on wings of thunder, the Trail-Blazers would proceed to take
them apart with the aid of some good old-fashioned firepower.  Still,
it was odd about the way that stone hammer had exploded...

Steve mentally pigeonholed the problem and tuned back onto the two
wordsmiths.  'Does the fact that I've got this, uhh, Talisman rooting
for me mean that your friend Motor-Head will be off my back from now
on?"

Cadillac shook his head.  'Not necessarily.  Now that you have both
bitten the arrow it means that he can challenge you in single
combat."

'He could not do that before,' explained Mr Snow.  'In his eyes, you
had no standing.  But now you are a warrior..."  He spread his palms.

'Terrific,' said Steve.  'What are the chances of him pulling permanent
guard duty at your furthest lookout point?"

'Slim,' replied Mr Snow.

'But - can't you tell him to lay off?"  said Steve anxiously.

'I thought you ran things round here."

'Ahh, Rolling-Stone is the chief clan elder.  There are certain areas
where the clan seeks my advice but..."  Mr Snow shrugged.

'So what do I do now?"  asked Steve.

The old wordsmith savoured his reply.  'Well... you can -either start
practising your knife-work - or start praying to Talisman.  Preferably
both."  He uncrossed his legs, patted Steve on the shoulder and got
up.

'I'll see if I can get you a blade,' said Cadillac.  'Meanwhile it
might be better to stay indoors."  He followed Mr Snow OUt.

'Make it a long one,' Steve shouted, as they went through the door
curtain.  'Or give me my rifle back - if you've still got it."  Some
chance.  Still, it was worth a try.  Steve cursed inwardly.  What a
situation.  After all he'd been through.  All that mumbo jumbo - only
to learn that the biggest ape on the campus was out there waiting for a
pretext to jump on his bones.  Christopher Columbus!

When they were safely out of sight of the hut, Cadillac and Mr Snow
slapped hands, pushed each other and fell about laughing until tears of
joy and pain ran down their wounded, swollen jaws.

'Did you see his face?  I' choked Mr Snow.  He collapsed in a new
burst of laughter, clutching his cheeks.  'Oh, dear, this is doing me
no good at all!"  'Do you think we ought to tell Motor-Head to lay
off?"

'No leave it.  Let Talisman look after his own.  Oh, dear...

our Mr Brickman takes things so seriously.  And he's so blind!  Do you
think they're all like that?"  Mr Snow wiped the tears from his eyes
with the back of his hand.  'Yes... I'm going to be really sorry to
lose him."

FIFTEEN

With the aid of a daily application of Mr Snow's antiseptic red leaf
mash, the wounds in Steve's face healed rapidly, leaving pale,
cross-shaped scars.  In the days that followed the 'ceremony, Steve
found that many of the M'Calls who had cold-shouldered him had adopted
a more relaxed attitude.  From being a despised, disarmed intruder he
became an object of good-natured curiosity and for the first time began
to attract a small crowd of followers who, when challenged, revealed
with an engaging shyness that they wanted to ask him questions.  Not
that, as it turned out, they were particularly interested in the
answers, for they would soon be forgotten.  They just wanted to hear
him speak.

Along with this newly-acquired social acceptability, Steve was accorded
the additional privilege of an invitation to Mr Snow's hut where, in
the company of Cadillac, he was introduced to rainbow grass.  Because
Buck McDonnell ran what was called a 'tight train', the whispers about
its availability and covert use by some trail-hands had not reached
Steve's ears while aboard The Lady.

Steve accepted the proffered pipe and sniffed it cautiously before
taking an experimental puff.  Despite the use of grass by Trackers on
overground expeditions, smoking was not a permitted social activity
within the Federation; indeed, to most people, the idea would have
seemed absurd.  Since cigarettes did not exist, the need for them
simply did not arise.

The first intake of smoke made Steve cough and retch.

The second, taken down into the lungs, nearly choked him but induced an
agreeable lightheadedness; the third turned his ears into wings.  The
fourth prompted Mr Snow to take the pipe away from him.

'Hey, hey, hey, slow down.  What are you trying to do start a fire?"

Steve giggled lopsidedly.  'Sorry."

'So you should be,' said Mr Snow severely.  'You and that other
sonofabitch burned a good two acres of this stuff.

We're all still very sore about that."

Having a hole punched through his face produced another, less
desirable, side-effect.  Night-Fever, one of the dozen or so female
Mutes who took it in turn to bring Steve his food, began to favour him
with hot-eyed glances.  She had woven his broken pieces of arrow into a
necklace made of thin plaited strips of buffalo hide and, after
presenting it to him, had taken to squatting for hours on end outside
his hut.

Since, in terms of looks, Steve rated her near the bottom of an
unprepossessing heap, her thinly concealed desires were an unwelcome
development which, added to the lurking danger of an equally unwelcome
attack upon his person by Motor-Head, should have prompted him to put
his plan for building a hang-glider to Cadillac, but he did nothing.

He drifted, gripped by a kind of mental languor, mesmerised by the
luminous eyes that had met his across the clearing; his waking hours
and his dreams haunted by evanescent images of the face he had glimpsed
in the firelight; images that aroused feelings which he was unable to
put into words because - like 'freedom' - they had been deliberately
omitted from the Federation dictionary.

Escape was still Steve's ultimate objective but all his plans and his
byzantine schemes to manipulate his captors had been put on the back
burner.  His primary task now was to find out who that face belonged
to.  He was plagued by an urgent need to assuage the feelings its
mysterious beauty had inspired.  Steve had, quite simply, fallen in
love but, as he had not heard the word mentioned until his conversation
with Mr Snow and still did not properly comprehend what it meant in
practical human terms, he was fated to remain in the words of a song
from the Old Time - bewitched, bothered and bewildered.

Who was she?  And where was she?  Steve was pretty sure he had explored
the whole area in and around the settlement and encountered, at one
time or another, virtually the whole clan but, since the night he had
bitten the arrow, he had not caught even a glimpse of his elusive
quarry.  Since being captured he had learned enough about the Plainfolk
society to know that she was not a visitor.  The fact that she was
being kept apart from the other M'Calls must mean that she was either
regarded as something special by the clan or she was being kept hidden
because of him.

Or both.

What was it the M'Calls did not want him to discover?

As he had promised, Cadillac duly furnished Steve with a long-bladed
hunting knife.  Not the usual Mute sharp iron, but standard
Trail-Blazer issue.  At first Steve thought it was his own but, when he
took a closer look, he found the initials 'L.K.N."  etched on the
handle: Lou Kennedy Naylor, who had been inexplicably attacked by
Fazetti and brought down over the forest.  Steve's hopes that the
M'Calls might also have kept bits of Naylor's Skyhawk and possibly his
own received a fresh boost.  'Thanks."  He hefted the blade.

'Aren't you worried I might kill somebody?"

Cadillac pursed his lips and shrugged.  'llnless you killed in single
combat your death would be inevitable, slow and terrible.  A wasted
gesture.  Where would be the profit in that?"

'When you put it that way, none, but -' Steve hesitated.

'Didn't Mr Snow tell everybody that Talisman's shadow was upon me?

Doesn't that mean I'm under his protection?"

'Yes, it does,' admitted Cadillac.

'Then if he really exists and is as powerful as you guys say he is,
nothing can happen to me."  Steve flipped the knife jauntily into the
air and caught it again by the handle.  'He saved me from death in the
cropfields, and from Motor-Head's hammer, so -' Cadillac's eyes gleamed
as he grasped the thrust of Steve's argument.  'He may save you again
but only if you conduct yourself like a warrior."

Steve watched Cadillac walk away.  There was no doubt about it, the
two mouthpieces for the M'Calls had a whole bagful of great exit
lines.

They probably sat around rehearsing them in Mr Snow's hut.  He
reflected on Cadillac's veiled warning.  These guys and their gods.

They tried to convince you that everything was already worked out,
every move preordained by someone living way up beyond the clouds, but
they always left themselves a way out in case things didn't happen as
predicted.

There was only one power that worked.  Manpower.  And the Federation
knew how to organise that.  When they had won back the overground and
wiped out the Mutes they would change the face of the earth.  The
forces of Nature at the heart of the so-called Mute magic would be
observed, analysed, understood, and harnessed.  The Sky Voices that
supposedly gave Mr Snow his marching orders would find that no one was
listening; Mo-Town and Talisman would be reduced to a couple of
laugh-lines in the history archives.

Peripheral data.  There would be no place for any of that crap in the
New America the Federation was going to build.  Just hard work and good
living.  That was the difference between the smoke-filled fantasies of
the Mutes and the vision that fired the Trackers.  Thanks to the genius
of the First Family, the blue-sky world was within their grasp: could
be won by the strong and the brave.  The bones of the Mutes would be
buried under the gleaming cities that would rise from the empty sunlit
plains.  Yes...

Still, it was odd the way that stone hammer exploded...

Deciding that it was better to be prepared than spend his time trying
to avoid the threatened confrontation with Motor-Head, Steve borrowed a
machete and cut himself a quarterstaff which he carried with him
everywhere.  He constructed a dummy opponent from branches and grass
and practised daily until he could wield the staff as effortlessly as
he had in the Flight Academy.  His use of the staff attracted the
attention and interest of the M'Call Bears, and Steve soon found
himself giving lessons to a class that grew rapidly to around fifty,
and included the fearsome Motor-Head.  The big Mute scorned the
protective pads of wood and leather that Steve had insisted his pupils
must make and wear and stuck with his own stone decorated helmet and
body armour.

In their practice bouts, Steve found Motor-Head fearless, apparently
impervious to pain, and a fast learner.  What he lacked in technique he
made up for in speed and strength and it was only Steve's arduously
acquired superior skill and mental discipline that kept him out of
serious trouble.  His encounters with Motor-Head acquired an extra
edge; became needle matches which, despite Steve's rule that practice
bouts should end after landing two strokes in the alloted 'kill' zones,
were only terminated when Motor-Head was.  brought, temporarily, to his
knees.  It was clear that the powerfully muscled Bear did not intend to
give up until he had regained his position as paramount warrior and had
beaten Steve into the ground.

Steve considered taking a dive to placate Motor-Head's pride but, on
this occasion, his stubborn streak won over his natural guile.  Since
his capture, his corn-coloured hair had grown out of its natural
crew-cut shape and was hanging onto the nape of his neck and over his
ears.  Siezed by an unreasoning defiance, he got Night-Fever to weave a
thin plait in his hair interlaced with a strip of the blue solar cell
fabric, and each time he beat Motor-Head, he added another ribboned
plait.  Steve knew he was asking for trouble by baiting Motor-Head with
such a provocative coiffure but he was confident that his skill with
the quarterstaff allied to his superior intelligence and sixth sense
could outsmart this formidable but half-witted fighting machine.

His instruction of the Bears in the use of the quarterstaff enabled him
to make a more objective assessment of their learning ability.  Like
all Trackers, Steve had been brought up to believe that all lumpheads
were dummies.  Since meeting Cadillac and Mr Snow he knew this was not
the case, but he had had first hand experience of the average Mute's
inability to remember.  The mistake he and the rest of the Federation
had made was in equating a Mute's faulty memory with low
intelligence.

Steve came to realise that his captors could not only absorb
information; they could retain it.  What was missing was the
information retrieval system.

Their brains were like computers into which data could be fed but which
had no print-out facility.  The Mutes could put two and two together
but they couldn't tell you the answer was four because the link between
the memory centre and the speech centre kept breaking down.  In some,
the link was so intermittent as to be virtually nonexistent, in others
- like Three Degrees - the down-time on the memory link was minimal, or
limited to specific areas of knowledge.  The old Mute had thus been
able to acquire his wood-working skills and - as he went on to
demonstrate recognise Steve on some days but not know who the hell he
was on the next.  The limited specific memory facility enabled, for
example, the M'Call Bears to acquire and retain fighting and hunting
skills but even this, it appeared, was prone to the odd line fault.

Which, Steve imagined, could be bad news if it happened in the middle
of a rumble over your home turf.

There was a third memory factor which Steve had noticed but did not
fully understand.  When he had watched Three Degrees make the pair of
crutches, he had noted how Cadillac's presence had aided the old
lumphead in his task.

Somehow, through the odd spoken word or his physical proximity,
Cadillac had helped complete the memory circuits when Three Degrees
hands had faltered.  Steve had already seen enough to convince him that
the clan could interreact without the need for words.  He had ascribed
this ability to a sense of awareness - a word-concept that had come to
him out of the blue.  When he had smoked grass with the two wordsmiths
his vision had been affected to the point where he began to think he
could see some kind of aura, or higher self, extending beyond the
limits of their physical bodies.  Steve's brain began to flounder among
such unfamiliar concepts.  Hallucinogenic drugs, heightened states of
consciousness and sensory distortion were totally unknown within the
Federation.  Did the two wordsmiths play some shadowy role in which,
with their superior intelligence, they acted as a kind of control
mechanism for the clan?  A group memory.  A ... Steve searched for the
word, trying to reach for something he had been aware of during his
trip along the rainbow road.  A kind of...

overmind?  Or were they merely the channel for a power that came from
somewhere else?