IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE FOURTH DAY AFTER HAWKS had stolen and used the mindprinter and had begun to have second thoughts about his long-range mission and goals, and by now he was much changed from the scholar who had read what he should have reported and set off on a course to save not only himself but the future of humanity.
At the time—not very long ago, although it seemed an eternity and a world away—he had lived for nothing but his work, had no close friendships or dependencies, and had an exaggerated idea, he knew now, of his importance in the scheme of things. Perhaps it had just been the desire of a lonely and frustrated man approaching middle age to do something that future historians might note and remember. Unable to get back into the head of that man he’d been such a short time ago, he really wasn’t sure. The odd fact was that not a single thing that had been important to him then was in the slightest way important to him now.
He and his wives had achieved an incredible level of self-sufficiency in a very short time, and he had stayed away from human contact as much as possible in his travels since that mindprinting had simplified everything. He had not yet used the rest of the whiskey for trading, as he’d intended, because he hadn’t had to do so. Now, if all worked out, he would trade it for good, rugged, practical clothing and perhaps some better weapons as well, depending on how hard a bargain could be driven. He now saw a chance at something far better than being a footnote in a future history book; he saw a chance, at least as long as his health held out, of starting over brand new and, in a sense, becoming young again.
For Cloud Dancer it had never been clear what they were doing or why. She had attached herself to him initially because he was kind and gentle to her and more than slightly exotic, and she’d fallen in love with him and he with her, and they had married, something not too common in Hyiakutt culture. She understood that he had learned a secret so dangerous that there were many hands raised to track him down and slay him, but they hadn’t caught him yet, and she would be at his side if and when they did. She’d had him exclusively for such a little time, but she was well aware that she had been a partner in the decision to include Silent Woman and that at the time she’d had the power to veto that decision. Cloud Dancer’s life had been pretty unhappy up to meeting Hawks, but Silent Woman’s past was Cloud Dancer’s worst nightmare. Pity had turned quickly to respect for the strange tattooed woman, and Cloud Dancer had participated in the ceremony of blood. She now regarded Silent Woman as one of her own blood and as much her wife as both were the wives of Hawks. The family was not a collection of individuals: The family was One.
The survival program had stripped everything from her concerns except the basics. Her memories were not impaired; it was simply that all she had been was no longer relevant. Family, tribe, nation—their world was now three people in a canoe, and nothing else was important enough to think about. The unit had certain basics that were required. It must be fed. It must find shelter and be hidden from enemies each night. It must be guarded. It must survive. Of necessity the women must be the warriors, and those were the tasks of warriors. She was also a wife. A tribal wife served and supported her husband, gave her body willingly to him, and, if the spirits willed, bore him many fine children. Absolutely nothing but these concerns occupied her thoughts and motivated her actions.
The only way to learn about Silent Woman was to ask yes or no questions, but there was little truly to be learned. She had no memory of her past at all, no memory of where she’d come from or where she had received the tattoo and why, or even of ever having given birth to a child—or, for that matter, ever having had a tongue. The shock and trauma of her horrible times had simply been rejected, blotted out, and locked away forever in some corner of the mind where such things go. She had not in fact even thought in a language anyone could have truly recognized, for it was an amalgam of terms and concepts from dozens of languages strung together in a way that worked but was uniquely her own. It was not a complex language. She did not, even with the English recoder, get much of what Hawks or Cloud Dancer said, because her vocabulary was so limited and her rules so basic.
She had known only that she hated the Illinois passionately but that she never had any other place to go. Her geographical world was the village where she’d lived and The Other Place where all the strangers came from and went to. She was still being constantly amazed that The Other Place was so vast, but it still was a single entity in her mind.
Then she’d seen her masters toying with the captive pair and had known that after the game they would kill the man and make the woman like her, and she hated the Illinois and the village. So, when she had accidentally bumped into Cloud Dancer and realized that they were planning to flee, she had thought only about helping them and hoping that they would take her with them, away from the village to The Other Place. And they had. She had never regarded herself as anything but property, but she knew she preferred to be the property of Hawks, a man both handsome and brave, and in whom there was a gentle streak she had not known before, and some sadness or hurt deep inside as well. She had never thought of being a wife to such a one. In fact, she really had no concept of “wife,” but she understood that to the other two it made her an equal with Cloud Dancer. That was the heady stuff of impossible dreams.
She was not stupid; that was the mistake the others had made. She was, however, almost totally ignorant, having not even the grounding of a sense of tribe and culture as almost any of the others back in the village had. She was already now at a higher level than she could have conceived possible; she wanted only to preserve that. They were her world, all she had or desired. They were everything. She loved them both. Her whole life was nothing but obedience and service. She would love, obey, and serve them even if it meant her death, and she would never survive them.
They were approaching one of the increasingly frequent bends in the river, one that made the water in front seem to vanish and which might be the same river as that seen distantly through the trees on the right. Hawks had decided against trusting such visions after they tried a portage the first time; the water through the trees had turned out to be an oxbow lake, a bend in the river that had been cut off by built-up silt as the river changed its course. He no longer felt the strong urgency he had up north, considering how long they had been on the river without encountering anyone.
There was a sudden, loud noise as if some giant spring had suddenly popped its winding and sounded off. Birds flew from the trees and the river in panic, and at almost the same moment something slapped them incredibly hard and overturned the canoe.
Hawks came up for air and looked around, then was relieved to see two other heads break the surface. “Head for the far shore!” he shouted to the two women. “Forget the canoe!”
The sound came again, behind them, and this time the canoe was struck with a full blow. It seemed to rise up, coming apart as it did so, then collapsed into the water as a set of shapeless pieces of skin and frame. The wave from the blow came at them, and they relaxed and let it carry them toward the near shore.
They reached the bank only meters apart and managed to get on shore. There was no thought of remaining in that spot: Another blast of the invisible hand might come at any moment.
Survival wisdom called for them to scatter in three directions and run until pursuit was foiled, but their sense of family overrode that part of it. The land was covered with a shallow film of water out of which a forest grew. There was little shelter and no rocks or other obvious protection. They could only make certain they were all within sight of one another and start running as far in as possible.
“That’s right, Hawks. You just keep running,” a sardonic voice, electronically amplified, said from what seemed to be everywhere. “You’ll find if you keep going this way that the river played a joke on you and doubled back again. If you go right, it’ll be on three sides; if you go left, well, you’ll run into a big surprise.”
They did not pay any real attention to the voice but kept running until, as predicted, they came to a riverbank.
They heard that terrible sound again, and they saw a wall of water coming toward them as if a giant hand were skimming the top. The point was clear. They couldn’t swim across, not there.
Hawks stopped the women and gathered them to him. “It’s no use,” he told them. “I’ve been a romantic fool, damn it all! They just sat here and waited for us to spring their trap!”
“Then if we are surrounded, we must fight our way out or die trying!” Cloud Dancer responded bravely, and Silent Woman nodded assent.
How could he explain to these two infrared sensing devices and a certainty that this area had been cleared of all people so only the fugitives would show up? Or the power of some of the weapons that might be at the disposal of the enemy?
“No,” he responded. “Long ago you told me of the foolish warrior who charged into overwhelming odds only to show his bravery and die a legend. This is not Roaring Bull and his Illinois or even a tribe as we understand tribes. Right now they could send things through the air, as they did that giant unseen hand, that would make us drop in pain or knock us completely out. It makes no sense to even try to die in such a battle when there is still the small but real possibility of a deal. These are men, not demons. They will talk, and so we will talk.”
She was not convinced. “But—”
“I am chief and husband to you both!” he said gruffly. “They will let you leave if you wish. I am what they want. Dissolve the marriage and the tribe here or obey my orders exactly! I permit no other choice!”
Cloud Dancer looked at Silent Woman and frowned, but when she saw the response in the other’s face, she looked back at him, resigned. “Talk, then, husband and chief. We are part of you.”
He looked around at the suddenly silent, still swamp.
“All right!” he shouted. “So what now? Come out with our hands up? You didn’t leave us anything else!”
They did not hear their pursuer approach, although they were more than attuned to such things, but suddenly he was there, not far away. He was ugly as sin, and he held a weapon in his hand that was quite out of keeping with his looks and dress.
“You don’t have to shout,” the Crow Agency man said. “I’m right here. The name’s Raven.”
Hawks stared at him. “I must be vital indeed to send a Crow this far south. Aren’t you hot?”
“Steaming.” He shrugged. “It’s part of the image, you know. You want to tell the ladies not to try anything, that I can knock all of you cold on your asses before you can blink?”
“It is not necessary, Crow,” Cloud Dancer responded, making his nationality sound like a foul and obscene thing. “We understand you.”
Raven was taken aback, then he nodded. “Yeah, English Cross was in that pack, wasn’t it? How’d you like the survival program? I had a part in creating it, which is why I could figure out exactly how you’d act. Damn. Must be a flaw in it. You did get caught, after all.”
Hawks actually felt crushed, but he had to make a brave show of it for the sake of his honor. All that running, all that violence and tension, all that taste of freedom—all illusion. The issue had never been in doubt.
“You’d still be free if you hadn’t stuck to the river,” Raven noted. “Fact is, they’d’a had to send a Val after you to catch you if you just went east or west or even north. The only ones known on Earth the Vals didn’t ever catch were ones that just went into the wild and got kinda swallowed up. ’Course, once you took on the many-colored lady here, it was easy to spot you, but some clothes would have taken care of that.” He sighed. “Well, come along. We got work to do yet.”
“Aren’t you afraid that I’ll tell you why I’m being chased?” Hawks asked, wanting to throw his one weapon. What was death to him was death to all. But that didn’t seem to disturb the Crow.
“Well, I’m damn curious, if that’s what you mean. Cause me a lot of trouble if I knew, I guess, but not as much as you. See, they know that you know, so Master System knows it, too. Can’t change that. But they don’t know if I know until they got you under the machine, and I got you first, so I can cover. Tell me if you want or not. Makes no nevermind to me.”
Hawks stood there, suddenly startled and confused. “What do you mean, they know?” he asked. “Who are they? Or, better yet, who are you?”
“I’m a handyman with big ambitions,” the Crow answered him. “Got you kind of tossed in my lap by a colleague. My fat comes when I deliver you, even if it’s split.”
Even Cloud Dancer was starting to get the idea. “You are not from Council,” she said suspiciously.
“Well, in a manner of speaking I am. Officially I work for the Agency, which works for the Council under contract. Not this one, though. You’re too plenty important to trust to mere people. I’m sure the Val’s either right behind us or just ahead of us, but it don’t matter. We’re gonna leave him running in circles for a while. By the time they get the idea, our part will be done.”
Hawks wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. He had been prepared to deal with the logic of Master System, even though the odds were slim, but with a new player in the game, he was in as bad a position as before, only at the mercy of an unknown third party.
“Who are you working for?”
“The same man that the courier was working for. As you know, she didn’t make it. I assume she made contact with you and passed it along.”
“She’s dead,” he told the Crow. “She died maybe a day or so after she landed, probably from injuries suffered in the crash. I found her body and her papers.”
“Uh huh. And you read them, I guess.”
“You know I did.”
“Not until that moment. Thanks. So this hasn’t been for nothing. Now, come along. I don’t want to meet any Vals around here. We can fill in the story later.”
“All of us?” Cloud Dancer asked him.
“You bet, lady. I want all three of you, and just the way you are suits me fine.”
Hawks’s initial fear and then resignation were slowly being replaced by anger. Council chasing him was one thing, but this was some mercenary, some bounty hunter. Also, though his lack of clothing felt quite natural, it was somewhat demeaning among strangers, and particularly around men like this one.
Raven had a fairly elaborate camp set up in the center of the peninsulalike area: a small portable dome that bristled with antennae and detectors. It was only now that the Hyiakutt man realized that their captors were probably few in number—everything could be remotely run from here. Still, this was high-class equipment, Upper Council level at least, and he wondered where one like Raven would get access to it for an unauthorized or freelance mission.
The answer to that was revealed when they met the Crow’s companion. Both Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman gawked with a mixture of fear and wonder at this new woman, who was so tall, so muscular, and so very black. Cloud Dancer had never seen anyone before who was not of the People, and from Silent Woman’s reaction it was clear that she had never seen anyone like this.
Manka Warlock got some pleasure out of such reactions. She’d been getting a lot of them on this trip, and it served to keep the common folk of North America off balance. They weren’t sure if she was a human or a demon, and after a couple of weeks with her, Raven wasn’t all that sure, either. She was proud, vain, aristocratic, and genuinely amoral. Raven, it was true, would do almost anything for the right payoff, but he knew when it was right or wrong—he just did it anyway. To Warlock, people were divided into two basic categories: useful and irrelevant. It was clear that deep down she believed herself to be vastly superior to other human beings and immortal as well. She had on this trip done things like blast a tree because when she pushed one of its branches out of the way, it came back and struck her. Now she looked at the three captives less as a goddess would look at her creations than as a laboratory scientist examining her test rats. She gestured with a riding crop held in her left hand.
“How utterly quaint and primitive,” she said in her heavily Caribe-accented English. “Do they have fleas?”
“They bite, sometimes,” Hawks responded, irritated.
Her face took on an ugly, maniacal expression, and the hand holding the riding crop twitched. Raven stepped in.
“Enough!” he said. “You wanted him—there he is. Go ahead—do what you want, but remember why you are here and who you are working for.”
The hand stilled, and some semblance of sanity crept back into her eyes, but the look was still there.
“Very well,” she responded. “I will take some lip, for a while, but do not try my patience, nature man. There are things for which I would willingly surrender even as fat a price as you would bring. You—all of you—belong to me now, as a dog, a horse, or even a blanket belongs to someone. You are mine until I choose to sell you. You are within a forcefield keyed to the two of us now. You cannot leave without the both of us, and no matter what happened, you would never get my cooperation to open it.”
“That won’t work on them,” Raven told her. “You don’t understand the cultures here. Just achieving rank or manhood means undergoing tortures that are pretty bad. Death is meaningless as a threat. If you kill them when they are captives, they will go to a greater heavenly reward than if they died in bed.”
“The females, however, are disposable,” she noted curtly.
“Bullshit. If he gave in to save either one, he’d lose all respect in their eyes and be a dead man to them anyway. The reverse is also true. You got me into this because, hard as it is to believe, they are members of my race. I got in because I liked the potential payoff. You decide right now between the payoff and your ego.”
She turned on her partner. “You insect! How dare you speak so to me!”
“Come on—try and kill me. Maybe you will. If you do, you’ll wind up killing them, too, and then you’ll be all alone when he starts looking for blame. You decide right now whether you want to be crazy or you want to buy a one-way ticket to Melchior.”
That seemed to get to her, and she hesitated; there was even a flash of doubt across her face. She was one level up from Roaring Bull, Hawks thought, but deep down there were a lot of things that scared her as well. She knew it, and she knew that Raven not only knew it but had just exposed it, and she hated him all the more for it, yet she also accepted it as fact.
“Tend to them, then. I will call in the skim, and we will get this on the road.” She turned and walked back into the small dome.
“Your partner’s a psychotic,” Hawks noted calmly. “Sooner or later they’re not going to be able to cover that up anymore from Master System.”
Raven sighed. “Yeah, I know. I sure as hell don’t plan no long-term relationship with her. Still, she’s really good at what she does, and she’s useful to lots of powerful folks. That brings me back to you three.”
“You spoke the truth to her,” Cloud Dancer put in. “I suppose even a Crow understands some things.”
“Listen, lady, you’re in no spot to bargain, and you are just along for the ride ’cause I want your boy here to be reasonably happy and comfortable.”
“And perhaps because you might need three helpers if Warlock goes completely over the edge of the cliff,” Hawks added.
Raven shrugged. “Could be you’re right. Now it’s time for some serious talk, though. Have a seat on the ground, here.”
They all sat and stared at the Crow.
“Now, here’s the story,” he began. “A while back, down in South America someplace, an illegal tech group got hold of some old papers. Hawks, you know what was in them. I don’t, except that they’re some big knife at the throat of Master System. Forbidden stuff. Well, some of ’em had connections, and they traced something in the stuff to Lazlo Chen, of all people. How a half-breed administrator from the middle east figures into something like this I don’t know, either. Whatever it was, they got the idea that only Chen could help them, and for some reason they thought he would. They made some contacts among their version of people like me, and that finally got the word to Chen. What the message was, again I got no idea, but it interested him. Intrigued him. They wanted some kind of real fat deal for the stuff, and that he wasn’t about to do or couldn’t do. So he used his connections and got them raided, and all were killed, but the right folks got the papers. These started a clandestine courier network that crossed into the Caribe region.”
“And that’s where Laughing Lady in there comes in, I suppose,” Hawks responded, interested.
“Yeah, sort of. She’s worked her way up to the top of the Security Agency there with blood and hard work, anyway. Probably got worse the higher she got or she never would have gotten that far. Well, she worked out a system of transfers. Island to island, then to someplace up north where it was to be handed to somebody for Siberia, then somebody else in China, and finally to Chen.
“As you know, something went wrong. Master System learned about at least the existence of the papers and pushed every panic button in the world. Now, you tell me the courier crashed, got hurt bad, and died, and you found it and read it. All of a sudden you take off. Of course, since it was one of her girls, Warlock was dispatched to find out who the traitor was working for, and because she didn’t know the territory at all, she got hold of me. I was one of the few not on the case but on routine patrol duties, so I won’t be missed, and I’ve done a few jobs for the Caribes before. We set out to get you before the real hunters did, and we did—so far, anyway. Now we deliver, the boss man covers our trails and our asses, and that’s it for us.”
The story was so absurd, it had to be true, and Hawks laughed. “Chen. You’re working for Chen!”
“Yeah, so that’s not exactly hard to figure. What’s so funny?”
“That’s just who I started out to find. He’s the only one who could really use this stuff, and he has the power to get me off the hook as well.”
“Figured it was something like that. Mud Runner couldn’t have helped, anyway. His stuff’s wired direct into Master. He’d have apologized profusely and got drunk for a week after to cure his remorse, but he’d have still skinned you alive. So, we’re the best thing could’a happened for your long-term future and interests. It’s so far to Chen, you couldn’t go any further without coming back. You’d’ve never made it. Now, ’cause neither of us can rightly trust you, there’s several ways you can travel on this.”
“I’m listening,” Hawks said.
“Well, we can knock you cold, keep you out, and carry you in. That’s one. Lots of trouble for us but effective. Or you can take a hypno and lock it in with a printer until we unlock it over there. Or you can be bound, gagged, and chained. What do you think?”
Hawks could see the man’s reasoning. Traveling the distance to Chen might take some time and might even involve transfers as risky and elaborate as those for the documents—which had failed. Either knocking them cold or chaining them carried greater risks of discovery and would involve more people in moving and guarding them. On the other hand, Raven knew that both Hawks and Cloud Dancer had broken a hypno coming out of Hyiakutt country, so he couldn’t be certain that a hypno would really take or for how long. He wanted cooperation on the hypno before he’d risk it.
“What sort of hypno?” Hawks asked. “One like your partner would give?”
“Nothing too bad. Something to make a good cover and guard our backs is all. You all would be put back in original condition at the other end. I wouldn’t want to deliver you any other way—but if we get spot-checked, I wouldn’t want whatever you know leaking out, or even that you know something worth leaking, if you get my meaning.”
They did. “Why take us?” Cloud Dancer put in. “We both will go with him anywhere, of course, but why do you bother with us?”
“Lady, I don’t know what I’m dealing with here, and I don’t really want to know. Chen may hear him out, then kill all of you, or turn you into pets or the walking dead for all I know. But he might also embrace your husband here like he was the greatest hero of Earth history and put him in a real high and influential position with lots of power. Taking you costs me very little. Not taking you could cost me later. Now, what about it, Hawks?”
It was not a difficult decision, although it was a serious one. He could monitor his wives’ treatment first, but anything he did to guard could be circumvented by the portable mindprinter after, and Raven’s cartridges would be security-oriented and not at all benign. He didn’t even like to think what Warlock’s library must be like.
Still, he knew now that there was only one course open to him. The Crow had spoken the truth when he had said that Chen would want him, at least, in original condition. He could only trust that it applied to all. Raven also was speaking the truth about Mud Runner; it had always been the longest of long shots at best, and reality was obscured when unvoiced. Going wild was an equal if more romantic illusion. Silent Woman, at least, could not be kept hidden forever, and he could not abandon her any more than he could abandon Cloud Dancer. Chen was the only chance to preserve any possibility of a future for the family and tribe.
“We will take the hypno and mindprint,” he responded. “If it is your kit.”
“Of course. Well, we’d better get started, then. The skimmer will be here at dusk, and then you have one to three days of travel ahead, depending on the heat.”
The program was devastating, as he had known it would be, but it was the most secure both for their captors and for protection en route. The fact was, once Raven had set it up and turned it on, none of them were aware of anything beyond that point. There were blurs, bright lights, confusing shouts in unknown tongues, and hundreds of other fleeting sensations, but none of it made sense, nor was there any time sense. There also, however, were no worries or concerns. Those had ceased to exist with the rest of the world.
Hawks awoke with the usual feeling of dizziness and disorientation that came from having undergone both hypnotics and mindprinting, but he recovered quickly. He was lying on a plush rug of some kind inside a large tent, and it was warm and dry. His first thought was for his wives, and when he did not see them, he was worried. He got up and tried to get his bearings.
“Looks like you made it,” Raven’s voice came to him. He looked up and saw the Crow sitting back and relaxing on a low fur-covered divan, a half-smoked cigar in his mouth. Even at this point, Hawks couldn’t resist wondering if Raven had all of his cigars presmoked halfway down.
“I promised you they’d be here, and they’re here,” the Crow went on. “You are just gonna have to wait to see them, though. You got to get ready to see the big man. After him, then we have a happy reunion or whatever.”
“I want to see them now!”
Raven sighed. “Listen, Hyiakutt. You’re not in North America now, and Council’s on the other side of the world. I got to tell you it was pretty hairy just getting you this far, and you wouldn’t be here without me. A couple of people died to ensure that nobody but us even knows it. You’re here because you couldn’t resist knowing nasty things you knew you shouldn’t touch. I didn’t put you in this spot, I only brought you. Now you see the big man you said you wanted to see anyway. You trusted me with the hypno that got you here. Keep playing it my way.”
Hawks sighed and nodded. The Crow was right, and he knew it. He was in no position to bargain now. Best to see it through. It might not make any real difference, anyway. By Raven’s own admission, Chen had betrayed the first discoverers of the rings who’d contacted him. There was no reason why such a man would treat Hawks any better.
“These people bathe about once a century,” the Crow noted. “But they have a set of rules and procedures. We’ll get you looking as decent as we can.”
Hawks’s brows rose. “Then we are not in Tashkent Center?”
“What do you take Chen for? We lifted you out illegally, and we smuggled you all the way here illegally and, since I haven’t seen either a security force or any sign of a Val yet, successfully. You’re out in a tent city somewhere in the steppes of the Caucasus. He got here with his whole retinue just about an hour and a half ago, all riding camels, if you can believe it. I heard of ’em but never saw one before. I don’t care how much water they hold, I’ll take a horse or even an ornery mule every time.”
Getting prepped for an audience with Lazlo Chen was not an onerous experience, even if it was a disconcerting one. He was taken in to a small horde of women dressed in exotic clothing that masked just about everything except their eyes, all of whom talked in a language unrelated to anything he had ever heard before. Laughing and giggling, they washed him with cloths rinsed in a large basin of tepid water, clipped his nails, combed his long black hair and trimmed it, although he refused to let them cut it. Then he was given dark wool pants tucked into tall leather riding boots and a shirt of the same material dyed red and worn like a vest, and he was ready. Raven, who still wore his traditional buckskins, checked him over approvingly.
“All right, now. You look like you’re ready to raid the peasant villages,” the Crow noted in his usual sneering tone. “How’s it feel?”
“It itches,” Hawks complained.
Raven shrugged. “So it itches. If you’d had any decent clothes on when I picked you up, then this wouldn’t have been necessary. Now I’ll give you the protocol, and you will follow it exactly no matter how demeaning it is simply because he has to keep up the show for the locals and you want to keep on his good side. He’s willing to keep it in English, so there’s no languages to learn, simply because he knows it and absolutely nobody else around him, including his aides from Center, does. It ain’t too popular a tongue in these parts. And remember who you’re dealing with, even if he tries to get chummy.”
Hawks nodded. After Roaring Bull, then Manka Warlock and Raven, he had finally made it up the hierarchy to a Lord of the Middle Dark. He had never met the Council Emperor or seen him, but this was one of equal stature at least.
They brought him to an enormous tent erected on the great plains of what had once been the south central region of the USSR, and before that the domain, or route, of legendary conquerors. He felt as if he had somehow slipped back in time to some ancient day when Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde had overrun and ruled the area in their attempt to establish a worldwide empire.
Certainly the setting seemed bleak and primitive enough, with torches lighting the way to the tent and oil lamps within. The floor of the tent was lined with plush rugs, and off to one side there was a table with an ornate chess set apparently showing a game in progress. An ornate, thronelike chair sat on a raised platform to the rear of the tent, its arms and back covered with complex designs. Still, the place stank. Unimpressed with the primitive grandeur, Hawks couldn’t help but wonder if any of these people ever bathed or wiped themselves.
Lazlo Chen entered confidently, leaving his guards outside. He was certainly an imposing figure, close to two meters high and perhaps a hundred and fifty kilos. Oddly, he did not look fat but rather enormous and powerful. In spite of the fact that his family name was Han Chinese, he clearly owed his looks and size to Mongol and perhaps Cossack ancestry as well. He had long, black hair streaked with gray and a thick, full beard of the same color mix, and he wore a crimson turban and colorful, if baggy, Occidental clothing. He also wore golden earrings studded with enormous rubies and had other jewelry on his person and his garments—but there was only one piece that interested Hawks.
The Hyiakutt did as he had been instructed and knelt, bowed his head, and awaited recognition. Chen took a seat on the throne, then looked at the man before him.
“Oh, please do stand up. Sorry to keep you waiting, old boy,” Chen said in a cheerful, casual tone. “But I’m a busy man, and even arranging to get the two of us together this one time has been something of a bother.” His accent was not exotic but casual and without any distinguishing regionalisms. It was about as pure as English ever got. Hawks soon discovered, though, that Lazlo Chen’s accent shifted to match the other speaking to him. The man was a born master linguist. The Hyiakutt historian stood and found he was still below eye level.
“I appreciate the effort, my lord,” Hawks responded politely. “I have put many people to much trouble to gain this audience with you.”
Lazlo Chen looked at him with bright, penetrating eyes, and a trace of a smile crept onto his face. “You came because of the ring. You came because you were sick and tired of being one of the sheep.”
Hawks was startled. “Do you read my mind, then?”
Chen chuckled. “It is easy to read a man’s mind when one understands him so well. When I entered, you thought something like, well, ‘Here is this primitive throwback wearing on his ring finger something of which he can’t possibly know the import. How will I deal with him for it?’ ”
“I—I was not so unflattering, but I do admit to the rest of it. I take it now, though, to mean that you know exactly what you have.”
“I do, and yet I do not,” the Emperor admitted. “Here—come close and look at it. I have done so for two decades now.”
Hawks approached, fascinated in spite of himself. After enduring so much for so long, he would not be denied at least the sight of the objective.
The ring was not, as he had feared, plain or ugly but a thing of great beauty, shimmering gold in the lamplight, studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious gems. Set into the front on a bed of pure jade was a symbol in bright silver so perfect, it could not have been cut by human hands no matter how exacting the artisan. Three tiny, perfect birdlike creatures flanking a diamond set in such a way that each of the birds stood at the point of a triangle.
“It is the curse of one who wears the ring that he cannot exhibit inordinate curiosity about it,” Chen told him. “Part of the master program compels the computers to ensure that all five are always in human hands. If one is destroyed, they must make another—it is quite ironic, in fact. No one is exactly compelled to be told the meaning and use of the rings, but if someone finds out, as you have, it becomes dangerous to you and to me. Any attempt to search out the owners of the other four baubles is, of course, dealt with. I have no desire to be ‘dealt with,’ as I’m sure you will understand.”
Hawks nodded. “You have subjected it to testing, though?”
“I have. Inside its beautiful exterior, under the jade and bonded to the ring in a way we can but guess upon, there is in effect an incredibly tiny computer. Unfortunately, someone conveniently lost the operating manual. It became the signet of the Chairman of the Presidium, the rank that I currently hold. It has long been suspected of being more than symbolic.”
Hawks couldn’t keep his eyes off the ring. “It is beautiful,” he sighed.
“Yes, indeed it is, and that is fitting. I suspect our ancestors who designed the things had something of a sense of myth, or at least a sense of humor. The magic rings of power that will unlock the secrets of the universe. Myths and stories of such things are as old as man himself. In those days a Jason or a Sinbad would set out on an expedition to get the magic things from the evil rulers and creatures who possessed them, battling every obstacle of man, nature, and the supernatural. Now, thanks to the diaspora, the baubles are scattered amongst the stars, although by the terms of our magic spell—or program, as we crudely know it today—they all still exist, and all exist in the hands of human beings who can use them. We have all the makings here of a modern myth, and it would be a tragedy if the objects did not look as grand as they were reputed to be. They are important enough to be forbidden knowledge. You tell me why.”
“The builders of the Master System knew that what they did was unprecedented and unpredictable. They could not create it without a means to turn it off or at least to subjugate it to human will. Master System is compelled by its very core program to retain the rings, and in the hands of human authority. Humans with power and position, like yourself, my lord. It must also preserve the interface and make it possible for the humans, all five, to activate the override. The rings themselves are only parts of the code. They must all be present and inserted in a proper order. If that is done, Master System will submit to the orders and control of the five.”
“I have suspected something of the sort through other sources, but this is absolute confirmation. I shall want all the details you can remember from the old documents. Naturally, this is all being recorded.”
Carefully, sparing no detail, the Hyiakutt complied. He was surprised at how much he remembered and how easily it came to him, then guessed that some sort of enhancement had been given him along with the restoration program. Finally he was through, and Chen sat and thought for a while in silence. Then the Emperor said, very quietly, “I know the location of three of the other four.”
Hawks stared at him. “Then you have the makings of a dangerous bargain, my lord.”
“I do not bargain, particularly over something such as this. The rings must belong to humans of power and influence, you say. The fact is, almost anyone who could somehow acquire one, even steal it, would be a human of power and influence by the very act. On the scant evidence that it was something akin to what you now tell me it is, I have begun preparing. It is not an easy task to do so; one little slip can mean discovery and death even for one such as myself.”
“You mean to get the rings, then. All of them.”
“Indeed. I actually leaked the scant legends and clues to the rings around this whole world. Perhaps a tenth of all those pitifully few who are literate have heard the rumors. I cast lines randomly into the lake, and now I have pulled in the big fish. The group who amassed that documentation did not do so at my behest, but I was looking all over this world for signs that the bait was taken. One achieves greatness with great risks or one remains a sheep and deserves to.”
Hawks’s heart sank. “I’m no trout at the end of your line.”
“Oh, but you are. Why did you read it when you knew it was forbidden knowledge sure to cause you agony? Why did you then decide to try and reach me with that knowledge? Self-preservation? Nonsense! You might have convinced yourself of that, but the fact is, if you were that sort of a man, you would never have read it in the first place. So why did you set out? Do you really know yourself as well as I know you?”
Hawks remained silent.
“You came,” Chen said, “because you needed to believe that there was some way out of this mess. Way in the back of your mind, perhaps deep in your subconscious, you want those five rings united. You want the rule of the computer, the stifling of humanity, to end. You want to believe that it can end. The others—the ones who could come and did not—are sheep. They are either satisfied with things as they are, or they fear the consequences of any changes, any real freedom. They are complacent—or afraid. You feared you would find the tale a lie. They fear discovering that it is the truth.”
Hawks’s emotions were in turmoil, but he knew just where he stood and why. It was one thing to challenge the grip of the almighty Master Program, one thing to pray for, even work for, a crack in that system, but even in the incredibly unlikely event that it was possible both to gather the rings and to discover how to use them, it was now for what? For Lazlo Chen, who dreamed of empire? Who dreamed, in fact, of godhood? He had been this route before and answered yes. Now he was not so certain of his logic.
“The system is stagnant,” he told the Director. “This is not a healthy long-term condition for humanity to be in, and the longer it goes on, the less able anyone will be to stop it. It might already have gone too far. Still, there is some merit in the system. Without the computer revolt there would be no humanity. We are held back to a degree, but we are free within our own worlds and the limitations placed upon us. There are no prying eyes here governing our going to the bathroom or even monitoring this conversation. It is irrelevant to the computers. We are in a rut, but we have been in ruts before. I admit I am dissatisfied with the situation, but as a historian I must also weigh the alternatives.”
Chen got up and slowly paced in front of the throne. He was an imposing figure, and the act did more to enhance his superior position than being seated had.
“It is true that we are not slaves,” Chen admitted. “Do you know what we are? Pets. Pets and experimental animals. We have long lives with ourselves as the primary cause of death. Set us back many centuries, remove vast parts of our populations to the stars, and then wind us up and see what we can make—just so long as we don’t try and gain control of the old technology. We are the interstellar empire our ancestors dreamed of, yet we are not the emperors of it. We are interstellar traders whose product is people and skills and ideas, and here we are, you and I, sitting in a tent in the middle of a godforsaken steppe surrounded by camels, illuminated by torchlight, and drowning in a sea of faces that daily grows more joyously ignorant, more stupid, and more complacent. I rule an area larger than any empire in human history, yet I rule garbage!”
“What you say may be true,” Hawks admitted. “Yet you must pardon me, mighty ruler, if I point out that the alternative you offer is yourself. I think it is irrelevant how wise and kind and good you might be or how wondrous your vision—I wonder now if any human being is capable of assuming such power without being driven mad by it. I once believed, not long ago, that any human rule was preferable, but I forgot that the absolute rulers of the past had limits. There can be only one Master System. There will never be two to compete. The power is beyond challenge.”
“Indeed? And what would you have done if you’d had all five rings and the secret of their use?”
“Mankind is primitive once more, but also self-reliant and in a broad sense not ignorant at all. We have our histories, our cultures, and we are a self-sufficient lot these days. I would shut the master computers down and let things proceed on their own, without limits or chains, after that, even if it took thousands of years to rise once more and unite our people.”
“You are wrong on many counts, my friend,” Lazlo Chen responded. “First and foremost you are wrong that there can ever be only one Master System. We here in the Centers, and out in the other worlds as well, are getting away with a great deal under Master System’s collective nose at the moment because it is preoccupied. For centuries it has spread and spread its rule and its system with it, but it has now run into something it cannot break. Far beyond us, Master System is preoccupied in a protracted war. It does not involve living beings, I don’t think, but it is stalemated and continues on because neither side can yield or gain. The systems here have started to loosen, to become even more lightly controlled than before. Many have taken advantage of this, and there is now an awareness by the Master System that it has been neglecting its back. The easiest way to protect itself is to tighten our leashes. Eliminate the Centers. Eliminate all of the technical class. Revert us all to total, primitive barbarism and buy thousands of years of freedom from worry. A prototype experiment of this sort is already under way out there in space.”
“Once I thought in cosmic terms and with cosmic ambitions, my lord,” Hawks responded carefully. “Then this circumstance forced me to the other extreme and down to a level as basic as you describe. I am not like you. Your position, ambitions, and reach are your personal as well as professional goals. I, who am on a far lower level, find that I must choose between the personal—the spiritual, if you will—and cosmic aims and ambitions. My role in this is done.”
Lazlo Chen’s sharp eyebrows rose. “Indeed? The primitive life? The romance of nature? For how long? A week? A month? Five years? What is that?”
“Enough,” Hawks answered.
“A waste. You have allowed your romanticism to blind you. You are a technological man, a scholar of intense training and excellent abilities. An analytical mind whose study is human behavior. Yet you are a risk taker, a man who in a primitive land could wind up literally naked and defenseless and yet survive and beat the odds. There are precious few such men. Such men are dangerous, even to the system. Few such men are ever in the position that you are, where they reveal themselves to others and to their own inner selves. I need such men myself. What you need is a sense of reality combined with a broader romantic vision. I cannot let you go, you know. They will never stop hunting for you, and no matter what tricks I played with your mind, they could reach in and perhaps find me there. I could reorient you to my service, but again not without pointing a strong finger right back at me. So, if you will not accept my vision, what would you have me do with you?”
“You mean to kill me, then.”
“I hope not. Again, it would be such a waste. Friend Raven has been most convincing that no threat of death, no hostages, would turn you, not even temporarily and certainly not for the long haul. Securing the rings will be no easy task. So what do I do with you?”
Hawks had an uneasy feeling. “My lord—where are my wives?”
“We must find a way to turn you to our advantage,” Chen continued. “First, we must store you until we can get you away. Second, we must put you in a secure spot where we can examine the best things to do without a lot of messy interference. Very well, I will send you now to your women and show you what primitive really means. It will keep you all secure until I can arrange transit to Melchior. You’ve heard of Melchior?”
“Only that it is a security prison, my lord. Somewhere in space.”
“It is a private research facility run by highly creative people, and it is not under Master System because no one ever leaves there. The Presidium controls it, and I control the Presidium. I will set them a task and see if they can be as creative as they are supposed to be. Very well. You are dismissed for now. They will take you to your holding point and your women. Go. But in all cases, remember this: I will have those rings!”
Hawks bowed, feeling totally dejected, then turned and walked out to the waiting guard. Chen watched him go, then gestured. Two figures emerged from behind the curtains in back of his throne. “You saw and heard?”
“What will you do with him, my lord?” Manka Warlock asked.
“First he is going to get a lesson in vulnerability. He is being taken to my private base, well below ground and far to the south, where I had his wives sent. There he will be reunited with them in my extensive underground garden, sealed off from all else by a forcefield. That will be his first educational step. Then we will send them all to Melchior as quickly as it can be arranged. It will be difficult, since Master System must not be permitted an identifier or even to know that they are there instead of somewhere in the North American wilds playing house. Both of you have been detached from your various details and placed in the service of the Presidium. You will go along.”
Raven, in particular, was upset. “But—my lord! Up there!”
“Indeed. I want you both to have expanded training. This will be—delicate.”
Warlock seemed as pleased as Raven was not. The Presidium!
“And just what’s supposed to happen after Melchior?” Raven asked him, forgetting all the formalities.
Chen didn’t notice. “There they will be put through the works, but nothing permanent, while they broaden their view of the universe and get a better orientation on their own attitudes. They will also be introduced to any others useful to them. Finally, they will be given a way out. The first successful escape in the history of Melchior. They will be given a place to go, although they won’t realize this. Finally, they will be forced into a quest for the other four rings, although they won’t believe that it is for me. Hawks will suspect, but it will be irrelevant. Master System will set Vals to stalk him. He will always be hunted and afraid. He will have to get the rings or commit suicide in despair. His romantic vision cannot be realized without the rings taking the heat off, as it were. He wishes to run from responsibility, become a child again, but he will not. It is not within him. Precautions will be taken, of course, so that nothing will be traced back to me.”
“You seem very sure of this,” Warlock noted. “How can you be certain that you will be able to control him through this?”
“I can’t and won’t. Perhaps I can help here and there, but that’s about all. Most, perhaps he, will die in the quest, anyway, but there will be more all the time. You see, I don’t have to control him. No matter what happens, he knows I have this ring. In the end, he must come for it. He or his successors, once started on this quest, will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes. It might well be years. Still, no matter what, in the end they will have to bring the other four rings back to me while I sit here the innocent potential victim, not the instigator. I don’t even know if it’s possible to assemble the rings. I intend to find out. I must find out. And the two of you will help me.” Raven looked past Chen to Manka Warlock and wondered. If all five rings were in one spot, it would be up for grabs to anyone, from Master System to Chen to—well, him and Warlock. He didn’t much like the terms and conditions, but this damned thing had real long-term possibilities.