WALKS STOOPED OVER, CHIEF MEDICINE MAN and healer of the Hyiakutt nation, who always walked ramrod straight even now that he was in his seventies, trudged slowly up the hill to the hogan of Runs With the Night Hawks to make his routine courtesy call and his perennial complaint.
The flying saucers were stampeding the buffalos.
It was always pretty much the same, or had been in the more than two decades now that Hawks had taken Leave at this time and place. Despite his privileged position and rank, he was required to spend at least one-quarter of the year living with and as one of his people. Generally he didn’t mind, except for minor ordeals like this and the fact that it really put a crimp on ongoing projects. While not impossible to deal with, the wrench of going from electric lighting, air conditioning, and computer filing and research to a log and mud hogan out on the plains with none of those conveniences was quite traumatic.
That, of course, was the point of requiring him to return. One of them, anyway.
He knew that most of the work of his profession had been accomplished by firelight and without any modern amenities, because these hadn’t been invented yet. But the scholars of those ancient days had one major advantage that he did not: They did not know that such amenities and technology existed, or even could exist, so they were incapable of missing them.
The old medicine man showed the wear of his years in his wrinkled face and nearly white long hair, but his eyes showed a certain youthfulness and his gait a pride that said he wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else nor doing anything but what he was doing.
“I greet you, Runs With the Night Hawks, and welcome you back to your lands and people,” the old man said in the melodic tongue of their ancestors. “You have not changed much, although you look a bit saggy in the stomach.”
The younger man smiled. “And I return the greeting, wise and ancient one. Welcome to my poor lodging and my fire. Please sit and talk with me.”
It was a clear, starry night, with only a sliver of moon. The old man settled by his small fire, and Hawks sat opposite, as etiquette dictated.
“You did not happen to smuggle in any of the good hooch, did you, my son?” the old man asked in a mixture of tongues.
The younger man smiled playfully. “You know that it is forbidden to do such a thing, ancient one. There could be many problems for me if I did so.”
The old man looked a bit uneasy, although they played this little game every year.
“However,” Hawks added, “I would be honored if you would share some of my meager ration of medicinal herb.” He took out a large gourd container and handed it over.
The old man took it, pried out the crude cork, and took a big swallow. A look of complete rapture filled his face. “Smooth!” he rasped. “You are a sly one, boy!” He made to hand it back but was stopped by a gesture.
“No, it is yours. A gift, to ward off the chill.”
The old man smiled and nodded thankfully. “We have some hidden stills that make some passable corn, but I am getting too old for it, I fear. One must have the layers of youth inside, for each drink of that removes one layer. I fear I have become layers of gut in debt to the Creator.”
That out of the way, it was time to get into the next level of sociability.
“How does the tribe fare, elder? I have been away a while.”
“Not too badly,” the old man replied. “The nation numbers in the thousands, and the tribe now is almost three hundred. There were many births this past season, and few deaths. Of course, up north the Blackfoot and the damned Lakotas are overhunting their quotas, and in the south the Apaches are overrunning their borders—I fear we may have a war with one or the other before too many more seasons are out. The southern migration is peaceful, but those damned flying saucers keep scaring the buffalo, and there are many difficult and hungry days because of it. We must handle those greedy tribes, and we will, but surely you can do something about those cursed flying things.”
Runs With the Night Hawks sighed. “Each year we have had this problem, and each year I, as tribal representative, lodge protests and am assured that routes will be changed and new studies made, but nothing is ever done. You say I am getting a bit fat, and it is true, but those who might change things are fatter, and the fat is not merely in their bellies.” He sighed. “More than once I have wished I could convene a War Council to do to the administrators what we do with the Sioux.”
“But they are of the People, too! They return at times each year for a season, as you do. Why does this not give them some feel for the problems?”
“You know why. The Upper Council is dominated by Aztecs, Mayans, Navaho, Nez Percé, and others like that.”
“Farmers and city dwellers! None of them could survive out here for a week let alone a season! It is a sad day when policy is made by old women. Particularly old women who were born old women!”
“You are old and wise. You know it is simply numbers. Those who are free to follow the buffalo and ride the winds of the plains can never equal the numbers of those who are farmers and craft-weavers.”
The old man took another drink and sighed. “You know, boy, I often think that they should have gone all the way when they restored us to our lands and ways. My soul is never so filled as when I am out there, under the stars, watching the wind blow the tall grasses like some great sea and hearing the kind whispers of the Creator.”
“If they did, we would have no horses,” Hawks pointed out, not for the first time. “The old days were not all that wonderful. Women were married at first blood and had twenty children, only to lose most at birth or before the age of one. An ancient one was perhaps thirty-five. Diseases and infections ravaged all the People. It was a terrible price that they paid. Perhaps some flying ships scaring the buffalo from time to time is not too great a price to pay for losing the bad parts.”
“I know, I know. You need not lecture me.”
“I am sorry if I offended you. I am a historian, after all. It is my nature to lecture.” He sighed. “I am away too long. I forget myself. You are my guest, and here I am quarreling with you.”
“It is nothing. I am an old man, ignorant of much and riding the plains until my dust becomes one with that carried on the winds. We have had three returned to us from the Lesser Councils this past season. I am of a different world than they, but by choice. Do not mistake my frustrations for contempt. Each person must follow his own course. I am as proud of the accomplishments of those like you as I am when a young one becomes of age and passes the test and chooses the life of a warrior and hunter, and I mourn when those like you are returned to us against their will.”
Hawks frowned. “Anybody I know?”
“I think not. A younger couple, Sly Like Coyote and Song of the Half Moon. I am not sure where they worked, but it was somewhere out beyond the setting sun. Their jobs were meaningless to me, although he was always good with numbers. Not like you. History I can more than comprehend. I could see no use in science which is not practical.”
Hawks nodded gravely. It was one of the fears they all lived with, those who had been chosen, because of some talent or ability, to leave the tribes and go up to the Councils. Then one traded the simplicity of tribal life and the absoluteness of its culture for a far different existence, subject to a tremendous level of authority right up to the Masters themselves. There all the wonders and comforts were available, but the price was always to walk a careful line and never challenge, even accidentally, any part of the hierarchy. No one was so essential that he was not subject to others above, and no one was above being replaced.
He tried to remember the two but could not. Certainly if he discovered their parents and their lineage, he could at least place them, but it wasn’t really worth the bother. What he would want to know—what they had done that had caused them to be returned—neither they nor anyone else he could question could tell him. The only thing certain was that it had been something serious. Even the most petty did not send down subordinates for arbitrary or personal reasons; the procedure was too involved, and the justifications had to be shown and proved up and down the line. Too much had been invested in everyone of Council level to allow anything less.
What had the young man been? Hawks wondered. A computer expert, perhaps? An astronomer, or physicist, or pure mathematician? Years of training, sweat, hard work—all gone. Replaced with other memories, other views, that made them good members of the tribe. Now a man who once, perhaps, dealt with complex equations and a woman who, at the very least, was expert in running his models on sophisticated computer equipment got up each morning and prayed to the spirits and the Creator and had no knowledge of or curiosity about anything beyond the tribe.
“You have not done anything to merit their fate, have you?” the old man asked quietly.
Hawks was startled. “Huh? I hope not. Why do you ask?”
“There has been a demon stalking about in the tall grass. We wonder who or what he is after. Certainly not any of us.”
“A Val? Here?” The thought made him uneasy. He was an obvious target. “For how long now?”
“Four days, perhaps more. I think then that you cannot be the quarry, after all. You are here but two days, after all. They could have picked you up far easier before you arrived here, could they not?”
He nodded. “Yes, that is true. Still, I wonder what the thing can be after? I do not like the idea of one of them around, no matter who the object is.”
He was less confident than he tried to sound. Why would anyone send a Val here? Could it be here on sheer suspicion? He’d been required to get a readout taken before he left to rejoin the tribe, but there were many such readouts being taken at any given time. They weren’t all evaluated. There were only a few Vals on the whole planet; they couldn’t possibly discover anything so minor except by sheer chance.
But chance had brought him what he now felt some guilt about, a chance perhaps more remote than picking his readout at random. No, it was still too much to believe. The old man was right. If suspicions were enough, they’d have picked him up before he left, or at least when he arrived.
The medicine man, sensing the younger one’s disturbance, gently changed the subject. “You have not married. A man your age should have children by now.”
The comment only partially broke his mood. “There are few women of the nation in the Councils and none who are the type who could stand being married to one such as myself.”
“There are many attractive young women with the tribe.”
“That may be true. We have always been blessed that way. But how could I take one of them? Wrench her from this life to the Councils? It would be taking a beautiful sturgeon and placing her in the midst of the high prairie. The same as I would be, after a while, returning here to live. My heart is always with my people, but my mind is a world away.”
“Perhaps it is too far,” the old medicine man responded. “We will be leaving soon, and only a small number of us will remain when the first snows come. Even when you are with your people, you stay apart. You come as we leave, and you spend little time with the Four Families chosen to remain. You build mountains between yourself and your manhood, between yourself and your people. I will send someone over to help you prepare here and to take some of the routine burdens.”
“No, I—”
“Yes,” the medicine man responded with the finality of power. He had the power and the training. The tribal chief was more of a military officer; the medicine man was the politician. He had made the decision to send Hawks out to be educated and trained and had nominated him for Council. He was very low in the hierarchy of human civilization, but he was still above Hawks.
They spent a little more time in pleasantries and gossip, sharing information and talking about old friends, and at last the old man yawned and bade his farewell. Hawks watched him vanish quickly into the darkness and the winds, and thought.
He did love it here, even when the tribe migrated slowly southward, leaving only the Four Families to represent symbolically the tribe and its territorial rights. They did not own the land; none of the People had any real belief that land could be owned at all. But they were a small tribe in a small nation, surrounded by larger and more powerful nations, and their way of life depended on maintaining territorial rights.
Perhaps the old man had made a mistake, he thought, feeling both the communion with the land and his isolation within it. It would not be the first one, certainly. My heart and my blood are here, in the land and the winds.
There had been a woman once—an unobtainable woman. She had been beautiful and brilliant, a crack anthropologist specializing in the plains tribal systems that had bred them both. When he was young, he had been obsessed with her, for she had been everything he had ever dreamed of in a woman, a wife, a partner. She had mistaken his love, though, for friendship and flattery, and he’d been too shy to force anything lest he alienate and lose her if she rejected him—which, of course, she had, indirectly, by marrying a sociologist from the Jimma tribe of the nation. She had been so happy, she’d wanted him to be the first to know.
There had been nothing then but work, and he had thrown himself into it with a passion, channeling all his energies into productive paths to stave off thoughts of suicide or tinges of madness. Perhaps he was mad. He had often suspected it, but he knew they wouldn’t flag someone for a madness that actually increased work and production.
Her name was Cloud Dancer, and for two days he’d tried to make her life miserable to no avail. She was cute, thin, a head shorter than he, and she appeared slightly built although it was hard really to tell in that loose-fitting, traditional dress she wore. She was thirty but looked younger by far, and if inquisitiveness was any indication, she was bright as well. She was also something of a dynamo: Any Outsider notions that native American women were passive would be blown out of the water in ten minutes with her.
She had taken one look at his little hogan and exclaimed, “This house smells as if only dead things lie within it! I do not understand why men will abide filth when it takes but a few moments to shake what is nature back to the winds and let the spirits of life crowd out the dead space!”
His protests that he didn’t mind things the way they were fell on deaf ears, and soon she was taking out his blankets and extra clothing to be washed or aired as the material required. When she tried to get his straw mattress out the door, he finally had to help, and he found himself involved in the cleanup if only to save what was important to him. She also brought some earthen cookware and some food from the Families’ camp and proved a very fine cook indeed. Her seasonings were expert, though the spices were as hot as hell to his palate, which was accustomed much of the time to blander fare. But he wasn’t going to admit to that to her.
Until Withdrawal, he really couldn’t provide for himself out here in his own native land. There was the irony of it, and also why so much had to come from the Four Families at the start. His salt box, large enough for a medium-sized deer, was full, all right—of salt. He found himself being insulted and badgered to go hunt for himself, and while he knew he wasn’t up for deer and particularly not for buffalo, he did actually manage to catch three fairly good sized catfish in the river.
The fact was, he was beginning to like her and to like a little of the order and domesticity she brought. It was almost like being married, although she went home at night and they did not, of course, share the pleasures of the bed. It was over the hot, spiced fish stew she’d created that he finally gave in and warmed to her. She spoke only Hyiakutt and had lived her life with the tribe, but she had an odd mixture of old and new in her world view. She lived in a supernatural world where spirits dwelled in everything, yet she knew there was a wider world and a different one.
In some ways, she was also a victim of that culture. She had married at fifteen, not an uncommon thing in the tribe. It had not been an arranged marriage, as was the custom, because she had lost her father a year before in an accident and her mother had died even earlier in childbirth. The child had not survived, either. There were no orphans in the tribe; she had been adopted by close kin, but her uncle was old and partly crippled and poor. Screams Like Thunder wasn’t the ideal catch, either; an older man not given to ambition and with a nasty temper, he was not a warrior and hadn’t really ever wanted to be. He was, in fact, a Curer, which was really an assistant to the medicine man, keeping all the paraphernalia in good shape and on hand and aiding in the preparation of herbs and other medicinals. It was not exactly a high-ranking job, but it was as high as he was ever likely to go.
He hadn’t been much of a lover, either. His spirit was willing, even eager, but his flesh was, if not weak, best described as mostly limp. He couldn’t stand the idea that he could not perform in this most basic of masculine areas, especially since he didn’t have the warrior’s proof of manhood by deed. He therefore encouraged—actually ordered and arranged—a set of liaisons with a gentle half-wit who tended some of the animals and socialized very little. She had kind of liked the poor man, whose mind was very childlike but whose physical abilities were quite mature. Her husband had, by circuitous questioning and feigning idle curiosity, discovered that the stand-in lover’s mental limits were the result of an injury at birth and were not likely to be passed on to any children he might sire, and that had settled it.
In the end, suspecting that her husband planned, once she had conceived, to kill the surrogate to eliminate all chance of the affair being discovered, she had found herself unable to go through with it no matter what the pressures. The situation had gotten ugly, and her husband had beaten her and hauled her to the man and then beaten her again. The kindness she’d shown the unfortunate animal handler had been greater than the poor man had ever known, and he wasn’t so childlike that he didn’t understand what was going on. He rushed to protect her, there was a fight, and in the end her husband was dead, his skull crushed.
She had gone to the medicine man and told him everything, and he’d done his best to cover it all up, but this was a small and closed community, and no major scandal could be completely hidden. As usual, suspicion and rumor had gotten the facts wrong—although in the ways of the tribe she should have done what her husband commanded to salvage his honor—and it was generally believed that she had been caught cheating on her husband and that the husband had paid the price. She was made a social outcast, a tainted woman, and was relegated to being a nonperson, a servant, one without property or standing.
Hawks understood well now why the medicine man had selected her for him, although he didn’t appreciate being dragged into all this. She was far too full of life to remain a servant, far too bright to waste, but her only hope of status was remarriage, and she had little chance of competing with all the younger, virginal women from good families with the means to provide generous dowries.
“You are far too gloomy,” she admonished him over the stew. “You sit and brood, and dark storm clouds gather above your head. You will not live a second time, you know. You have let the foul spirits eat at your heart, so you do not know what you might have had.”
He stared at her in wonder. “Do you not ever feel that way? You have so much more cause than I.”
She shrugged. “Yes, of course. It lurks around me all the time and creeps in and takes a bite of my spirit every time I forget to guard against it. Still, there is much beauty in the world, and only one life to see it. If the sorrow crowds out all the joy, then that is worse than death. You are less excusable than I, for you have less cause for it.”
This was getting uncomfortable. It was time for a change of subject.
“Tall Grass told me you were an artist,” he said. “A good one.”
She shrugged again and tried to look modest, but clearly she was pleased. “I weave patterns, do necklaces, headbands, jewelry, that sort of thing. I have also made some inks from the sands of the south plains and done some drawings on treated skins and light woods. It is nothing special, though. My gifts are modest, my work for me.”
“I should very much like to see some of it. Will you bring what you think are some of your best works the next time?”
“Of course, if you like, but do not expect much. I should like, though, to try some small drawings on paper. Until I saw your things in there, I had not realized what a wonder paper is.” She didn’t really say “paper” but rather something that came out as “thin and flexible sheets of wood,” but his mind immediately translated.
“I will find you some, and some writing-sticks as well,” he promised her. He’d brought a rather large supply of pencils.
She took to them with almost childlike delight, and she was good—damned good. The kind of natural talent that couldn’t see its own gifts, because it was so natural, so easy to her that she could hardly comprehend anyone not being able to do it. A stroke here, a stroke there, a bit of shading just so, and suddenly there was a forest scene, or a landscape, or startling portraits of the men and women of her tribe.
A few days later, the Sickness came upon him even as he sat there letting her do his portrait. It came on slowly at first, as it always did, then built rapidly over the next day and a half. He dreaded it, as they all dreaded it who had to return for a season, and it was all the more frustrating because there was nothing to be done about it.
Cloud Dancer became alarmed as he began to develop chills and fever and to throw up anything he’d taken in. “I will send for the medicine man,” she told him, but he stopped her.
“No. He can do nothing. This is a terrible thing, but it will pass. For a while I will grow even sicker, and I may become as mad as if possessed by a demon. You must stay away for your own sake—there is nothing you can do until it passes.”
She was both puzzled and unconvinced. “What is it that makes you so? You speak as if you knew this was coming.”
“I did. It always comes. It must. Up—in Council—we are given many medicines that can do wondrous things. Make us smarter, stronger, healthier, and a hundred other things. But there is a price. There is always a price. Our bodies grow used to the medicines. When the medicines finally go out of the body, as all medicines do sooner or later, the body is not prepared. It has forgotten how to act without the medicines. Until it learns, it will not work well, and I shall be very sick in body and spirit.”
She did not fully understand, but she did know that there were medicinal herbs that could keep one sleepy and ease pain, and she sought them. The Four Families had only a young apprentice medicine man, but he knew some of the things that might help and accompanied her back to Hawks’s lodge. It took more than the two of them, however, to handle him. The quiet, introverted intellectual had turned into a raving, hallucinating lunatic.
Four strong, young warriors from the Families were required to get him tied down and subdued—and even they did not escape without bruises and blackened eyes. The herbs, however, did have a quieting effect.
Cloud Dancer remained with him for the ordeal, which lasted three and a half days, administering the medicines and seeing that he did not do himself injury struggling against the restraints. It was like keeping company with a wild demon, a horrible spirit of the evil netherworld, but, assured by the medicine man that this state was transitory, she stuck it out.
“It is the custom not to let the tribes see this madness,” the medicine man told her, “for they might mistake it for something far worse, although in truth it is agony.”
“Will he be—changed—at the end?” she asked nervously.
“Some. He will be more of the People and less of the Councils. His Hyiakutt nature and upbringing will take command. Otherwise he might not survive out here through the season. The changes will seem far greater to him than to us. He will be weak and crave the medicines for a while, but that, too, will pass.”
When Runs With the Night Hawks was still just a boy, the medicine man of his tribe had identified him as having certain talents and aptitudes that made him better suited for Council than for tribal life. Special tutelage was arranged to check this out and then, when it proved true, to prepare him for a different calling. The Hyiakutt, like most North American nations, had no written language, so he was taught a standardized modified Roman alphabet and sent away for special training in reading and writing. When he was of age, he left his family and his tribe and nation and went to Council schools, where he excelled in many subjects. He became, after intensive schooling, an urbanized modern man in a technological setting, as was necessary for taking a job with the Councils.
In order to keep Council personnel in touch with and understanding of the majority of people for whom they were responsible, all such select officials were required to spend at least a season—three months—every two years with their tribe, living as the tribe lived. To facilitate this “leave” and also to make certain that these people could survive in such a situation, a template was impressed upon their minds to remain hidden until triggered by Withdrawal.
Hawks awoke feeling absolutely lousy but in control of himself once more. It would take a while more for the full effects of Withdrawal to fade, but after so many times he was able to at least live with those effects and accept them. He opened his eyes and saw Cloud Dancer sitting there, patiently working on a traditionally patterned blanket. She looked over at him and put down her work.
“Hello,” he managed, his voice hoarse. He no longer had to concentrate to speak his native Hyiakutt; it was now his primary language, the one in which he thought and which in turn shaped his thought patterns. The other tongues were still there, but now he had to consciously translate them. “How long have you been here?”
“Since the start,” she responded matter-of-factly. “You were very, very sick. How do you feel now?”
“As if a raging herd of buffalo had done dances upon my entire body,” he told her honestly. “I—” He halted a moment. “I am restrained. That bad, was it?”
She nodded. “You are sure you are over this?”
“The madness is gone if that is what you mean. The rest will come with work and time. If you are asking if it is safe to loosen my bonds, the answer is yes.”
She got a knife and cut the strong straps, which had been knotted far too well and too firmly to be untied.
He needed assistance to get up and groaned with pain and dizziness when he did, but he felt the need to get himself back into condition as quickly as possible. Where before it had hardly mattered, now it seemed somehow dishonorable to depend upon Cloud Dancer or the Families one second more than was necessary for food or other supplies.
“I am getting old,” he told her. “Each time it takes longer and is harder to get through. One day I will find it impossible to return to Council on the thought that this would kill me. I almost feel so even now.”
“Why do you just not take their medicine?” she asked him, genuinely curious.
He gave a dry chuckle. “I cannot refuse. Even now I would gladly take them all in a moment were they offered me. There are things, once taken for long periods, that forever enslave the body. I am no coward, nor am I dishonored by this fact. I was chosen to go and made to take them. Without them I could not have done what I had to do, learn all I had to learn, in the time given to me. The medicines are tools, just as the loom is a tool, or the spear, or the bow, without which the job for which I was chosen could not be done.”
“Do you love this job so much, or is it that the Council way of living is to you a better way than our way?”
He shook his head. “No, no. I do love the work, for it is honorable and good and important to everyone, including the nation and the tribe. As to the way of life—this one is pure and basic, the way the Creator meant us to live. It is free. Their way is dependency and confinement. It is not natural. It is simply a price that must be paid in order to preserve our ways here.” He sighed. “Can you help me up? I would like to get some air.”
She tried to help him up, and he made it part way but then collapsed back on the bed, pulling her down on top of him. He started to mumble apologies, but she laughed them off.
“So, is this a proposition or a proposal?” she teased. “I have been pulled by strength into your bed.”
“I am—sorry . . . ”
“Why? Am I so ugly, so undesirable that you would not want me?”
“No, now, wait a moment! I didn’t mean . . . ”
She saw his discomfort and found it satisfying, but she also knew he was still weak and dehydrated, as well. She got up and looked at him. “You stay where you are. I will prepare some broth and herb teas that will get some strength back into you. I want to see what you are like when you are whole and natural.”
The speed with which he regained his strength and clearheadedness was in no small part due to her help and attentiveness. He knew also that she’d been the one to summon just the right help when he’d needed it, and even through the delirium he had been aware that she’d been there all the time, tending him and speaking soothingly to him.
He didn’t really understand why she did it. Certainly he was someone unusual, both familiar and foreign at the same time, but that didn’t really explain it all. It certainly wasn’t his virile good looks. He was, in fact, rather ordinary looking or a bit worse, his skin mildly pockmarked with scars from a childhood imbalance. It might be because she was looking for any way out of her circumstances, although he didn’t think she had that much deviousness in her. Finally he simply asked her.
She thought about it. “Partly it is because I am doing something useful. Partly it is because you treat me as a person, not a thing, and you do not judge.”
That was simply something he had not considered. Oddly, he felt some anger. Curse you, ancient one! he thought to himself. I have needed her these past days, and now it is clear that she needs me as well.
He thought about her a lot over the next few days, even when she wasn’t there. The trouble was, he did want her, did have a need for someone in his life, but there was no getting around the two worlds. He could not stay, not this time. There was simply too much important work left to do, work that meant much to the future of the Hyiakutt as a nation. There was no rule against his marrying her, but there were rigid rules barring her from access to the medicines and machines that would allow her to adapt, at least somewhat, to the terribly different way things were there. She would be isolated in a place where almost no one spoke her language and where machines did the only work for which she was qualified. Yet it was impossible to explain it to her. She had never even seen plumbing, let alone a toilet; how to explain disposable clothes and dialing up a meal?
Worse, how to explain that the Sioux in Council were not contemptible subhumans and mortal enemies but rather associates who were sometimes pains in the rear?
Once through Withdrawal, he’d always just let himself go and enjoyed his Leaves. Now the medicine man had placed a terrible burden on him—and not totally in ignorance, either—and really spoiled things.
And yet he wanted to see her, wanted her company, wanted her. He took to late-night brooding outside, surrounded only by the trees and the stars, trying to sort out his own mind and his courses of action. And, one of those nights, he had a visitor.
He heard a quiet sound behind him, one that few others would hear, and he turned and peered into the darkness past the campfire.
He saw it after a moment and simply froze, staring at the dark form within the lesser darkness.
It knew that he’d seen it, and it moved slowly, confidently, into the light of the slowly dying campfire.
The thing was big—two meters tall—and roughly manlike in appearance, made of permanently glistening blue-black material. Its face was a mask with two trapezoidal openings for eyes that were the color and sheen of polished obsidian. It moved with a catlike quiet and grace that seemed impossible for one so huge.
“Good evening,” the Val said in a pleasant middle soprano that sounded very human indeed. It spoke in Hyiakutt, not because it had to but because by doing so it demonstrated in two words that it could easily have overheard all that Hawks and the old medicine man had said. It spoke, too, in an incongruous female voice, which told him immediately that its business wasn’t something to do directly with him. The thought did little to calm him.
“Good evening to you,” Hawks responded, trying to keep the dryness in his mouth from showing in his speech or manner. “May I ask what brings you to my fire?”
“Routine business. You are the only Outsider here at this moment or within many days’ distance. Legally, anyway. As such, you provide something of an—attraction.”
“You seek one of my people?”
“No. Carmelita Mendelez Montoya is her name.”
His eyebrows rose. “Español?”
“No. Caribbean.”
That was almost as outlandish as Spanish. Most of the islands had not been restored, but rather new societies had been created out of the cultures that were there. There was, simply put, no native stock surviving there to restore.
“What would a Caribe be doing up here?”
The Val switched to Classical English but still maintained that woman’s voice. “Running. It is a very large, desolate land, easy to get lost in. We spotted the wreck of her skimmer on satellite photos two weeks ago. Unfortunately, by the time I was dispatched to the scene, it appeared that everything from people to herds of thundering buffalo had been through there. Since then I have picked up signs that she has been moving in this direction, but nothing concrete. The area has been sensitized to those not keyed to it. She cannot get out. She has already lasted far longer than I would have thought she could. Still, the region here is lightly populated and it is monitored. She has not as yet contacted anyone. Her supplies must be running out by now. She will have to make contact with someone soon or starve.”
“And you think I’m a likely candidate. Why? And what’s she done?” He, too, switched to English; although translating was something of a struggle for him, English was more convenient for the sort of words needed to put the conversation into less than metaphorical statements.
“What she has done is irrelevant. I only apprehend. I do not judge. As you should well understand, it is best that you not know, in any case. As to why you, it is simple deduction. She is physically and culturally out of place. She speaks Español, some Creole, and Caribe dialects of them at that. I have determined that she must have been close enough to see your skimmer put down and discharge before leaving. That marks you as someone from Outside. The civilization of your own people is so different from hers, it must look to her like bands of savages. She will be frightened to go to them and unsure as to what help they could offer if they didn’t kill her or eat her.”
Even a Val couldn’t be allowed to get away with that one. “My people are a highly cultured race. They kill only when they have to, and eating people would be repugnant!”
“I mean no offense, and I know what you say is truth. I apologize for any slur you might have inferred. Understand that I have her inside of me. I am going on the way she thinks.”
He nodded, somewhat mollified. If he hadn’t wanted to meet this fugitive before, he wanted to meet her even less now. The Val, however, was correct. Inside its head was the complete readout of this Montoya’s entire record, essentially a copy of her memories and personality up to no more than a few months ago at best. That was the true edge the Val had and the reason why it was alleged that no one ever escaped them. And few had.
“Do what you have to do, but I do not wish to be involved,” Hawks told it. “Apprehend her away from here. Unlike some people, I treasure the time I have in my homeland. This intrusion is not welcome.”
“I understand, but you must understand me as well. There is only one of me. There are only three of my kind in this whole system. I can compute probabilities based upon all my information, but there are always unknowns, variables beyond my ability to include. I cannot merely stand around here in the shadows staking this area out. I can only come here and state that if you see her or she contacts you, you will calm her and shelter her here and when possible go down to the Four Families’ camp and use the emergency trigger.”
Hawks bristled, partly in frustration. He didn’t want to turn this unknown woman, or anyone, over to a Val or anyone else, and now he would have to. When they finally caught her, they’d do a readout and know if she’d talked to him and, if so, what had been said. If they didn’t like the way he had performed, the next readout taken would be his.
“I resent being placed in this position,” he told the creature. “This is my land, my people, my way. My parents are buried near here. This is not the Councils; this is not the Presidium. Neither you nor she have any right here. And on this land, in this time, I am Hyiakutt, and I obey Hyiakutt law and custom. If she presents no danger to my people, I will, if she comes, offer her food and shelter as I would anyone from a strange nation passing through. If you come, she must go with you, but I will not be your surrogate. Not here.”
The great hulking form of the Val was silent for a moment. “Fair enough,” it said finally. “But I would not advise you to probe why she is here or why she is wanted. If I cannot find her, I cannot control her. Every moment she is near puts you at risk. Weigh that. I am not well versed in the details of every tribe and nation in this area, but I am unaware that any requires suicide to protect a stranger. Good night to you, sir.”
The great creature turned and was quickly and silently lost in the darkness. Hawks continued to stare after it long after it had left, and he did not go in to sleep for another hour.
All these complications! he reflected with self pity. It was almost as if the world were conspiring against him.
Still as death, Hawks had been waiting in an almost trancelike state for over an hour as the chill, predawn mist rolled over him. Still, he was determined. After four mornings, he was going to get himself a deer.
There was a sudden rustling off to his right, and his eyes came open, every sense suddenly alert. He risked a look and for a moment saw nothing. Then, barely visible in the mist, he saw them: two, no, three deer, all yearling does, slowly wandering in search of good food to eat while the mists still protected them.
Slowly, by feel, he threaded his arrow and brought his bow up, so silent that the deer could have no idea he was there. The wind, too, was right, masking any scent they might pick up. He picked his spot and drew back the arrow tight, then froze, waiting for them to come to him.
It seemed an eternity before they started to move in the right direction. He practiced his breathing and tried to ease his tense muscles. The lead deer seemed to sense something wrong and stopped for a moment but then continued on, right into his line of fire.
Now! The arrow was loosed and struck the deer in the side. The animal reared, and the other two bounded away, but he was quick and got a second arrow up and flying before the wounded animal, still in shock, could make a move.
Then he was out and throwing his balanced rope at the deer’s hind feet even as it began to move. It went down with a crash and lay there thrashing while he carefully administered the fatal arrow.
It was a good, clean kill. A lot of meat and smooth doeskin for a better lining on his clothes. He knew he had to move fairly quickly, though. The sun would be up in less than an hour, and the scavengers would also be out, spoiling the kill. He had tied his horse a good hundred meters down and away, but he turned now to go quickly and get her and assemble the wood and skin stretcher so that the deer could be rolled onto it and carried home.
He made his way directly, ignoring the paths, but less than halfway there he discovered something else and stopped dead, all elation, even all thoughts of the kill, suddenly gone.
The body had been there for some time. It was dressed in a tight black synthetic outfit and leather boots. It was not a pretty sight; the scavengers had been at her, and the flesh was crawling with insects and maggots.
He knew in a minute who it must be and understood why the Val had been out so long with nothing to show. She could have lain here until she rotted completely before being found without a search party.
In her stiff hand was a briefcase barely touched by the elements busily adding her to the woodlands. She also wore a standard emergency pack on her back, but from the looks of it she’d had little chance to use it, and it was filled with creepy-crawlies.
He had to break the fingers to release the briefcase. He backed away from her and the grisly feast that had been going on perhaps for weeks and examined the briefcase itself. It was not a courier model but something one would have procured for personal use. Like most manufactured items these days, it was cheap, and, while it had a lock, it did not appear booby-trapped. Almost on impulse, he pushed on the two red points inset in the case and was startled to hear it unlatch. The thing wasn’t even locked!
There was no way anyone could have resisted looking inside. Some were the usual sorts of things one might expect of a woman traveling in unknown territories—some maps, an atlas of North America, even a guidebook to the Plains Nations with sample phrases. He wasn’t surprised to find that the Hyiakutt weren’t even mentioned.
Beyond those, there was a small wooden box with an antique key lock, the miniature key still in it, and an ancient-looking thick book that seemed about to fall apart at a touch. He examined it with the care of a professional historian. The pages were copies, not originals, which was just as well, as the date on the book, recorded in a firm hand, was more than six hundred years old. Still, even the copy was old—perhaps a century, perhaps more.
It appeared to be somebody’s journal or diary. He put it aside for a moment, reluctantly, and turned to the case. The small key turned easily, and the lid came up. He was unprepared for the sight, however.
Jewelry. Gems, some in exquisite settings, many looking like heirlooms. There was some doubt in his mind that the things were real. Did diamonds and rubies and emeralds come that large? And was that pure gold?
He closed the box and relocked it. Clearly the diary or whatever it might be was the reason why somebody very important would requisition and dispatch a Val to this area. The jewels—suddenly he understood. A universal currency of sorts. A Caribe would think like that, not realizing how little such things meant to the People of North America. Still, it was not a bad choice at that, for they were finished gems and would be works of art in any tribal council.
Suddenly he was very aware of his situation. He replaced the briefcase and almost replaced the jewels, then changed his mind. If the Val did find her, it would see the broken fingers and the detached briefcase and would know that someone had found her first. If the jewels were not missing, it was as much as pointing a sign straight to his door.
He had not yet decided what to do about the book. For anyone who could read it, and particularly for a historian, it was irresistible, yet reading it could mean death—or worse. He would not make that final decision immediately. Instead, he continued on down and got his horse, then went back along the regular trail to his fallen deer and did what he had originally intended to do. Only, under the carcass, on the unmarked side, where no blood would flow, he hid the jewel box and the book.
He knew now that he had a decision to make that made his previous problems seem like child’s play.