HAWKS LOOKED TERRIBLE. CLOUD DANCER WAS SO so shocked at his appearance that she feared he was having a new attack of the madness.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, looking wild and suddenly very old. A deer carcass was in the salt bin, unskinned, uncarved, apparently much as he’d killed it. His hair was disheveled, his face and clothing were covered in dirt and smeared with the deer’s blood, now caked and dried, and it was clear that he’d done nothing but return here to sit where he sat now, just staring.
Staring, but not at nothing.
On the dirt floor of the hogan, about two meters in front of him, lay a battered case of some kind, with metal latches. He stared at it as if it were some evil, poisonous snake that had come to take his life.
“I beg your forgiveness for intruding,” she tried lamely. “Are you ill? Shall I run for the medicine man?”
His eyes did not leave the case. “No. The illness is of my own fashioning and is not something that can be shared without it being transferred.”
She stared at him in wonder. “Does it come from that box?”
He nodded. “Yesterday, while hunting deer, I found a dead body clutching that box. The body was long dead, but it is the object of a great search. The box is what the demon seeks. The box is what the dead woman died to protect.”
She looked at it. “What is in it?”
“Death is in it. It will kill any who look inside and understand what is there.”
She grew afraid not for herself but for him. “And you have looked inside and understand?”
“I have looked inside briefly, yes, but I have not looked closely enough to be stung by its venom. Not yet.”
“Then it is an evil thing that tempts you to destruction. Its spirits have hold of your soul but do not yet own it. I will take it away if you like.”
He suddenly looked up at her, eyes blazing. “No!”
“What would it matter if it killed me? It would give my life meaning to have saved the soul of someone as important as you.”
He frowned, and some semblance of reason crept into his dark eyes. “The evil of the box cannot harm you, except through me. It is true, too, that to give you the box and have you take it to the Four Families’ lodge would be the safe course, the only course that would save me. It is the curse of that box that I cannot permit it.”
She did not understand his problem on his level, but she understood it on the level of the Hyiakutt. “You think it would dishonor you to do so? That it would make you something of a coward? The warrior who rushes headlong and alone into the spears and arrows of countless enemies is a brave man, but he is also a dead one and a fool, for he dies without purpose. I have seen many fools in my lifetime. They sing stories about them at the fires of the chiefs, but they are not taught to the warriors as men to model themselves after. To die delaying an enemy so others might live is honorable and brave. To die for nothing but your own glory is not honorable; it is evil, for it leaves a woman and children crying and alone, and a tribe without a warrior who might be needed. Let me take the box.”
He sighed. “No. What you say is true, but it is not merely honor that is the curse of the box. The dishonor is not in fearing death, for I do not fear it in a good cause. The evil that this box represents is the evil that I have never faced, the truth of the evil of our system. Any system that makes a man fear knowledge is an evil system. I realized that when I spoke to the demon weeks ago and it warned me that in this box were things I should not know. Am not permitted to know. I am a historian, a scholar. My life is a quest for knowledge, for truth. That box is truth. It beckons me. I did not ask for it, but to not look, to not know, would be to betray all that I am. To not look would make my life, my work, meaningless. One can find another’s truth if given only lies and partial information to work on, but one can never find the real truth. Do you see? If I do not look, my past and my future are meaningless, a lie. Yet if I look, those who know the contents of the box will kill me, and there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from that.”
Cloud Dancer went over to the case, knelt down beside it, examined it to see how it opened, then opened it. The books and papers inside were meaningless to her. “Then you must look,” she said simply. She did not understand his position, but she accepted it. “If your life is a quest for truth and this box contains it, you must divine its meanings. The warrior who charges alone into the enemy betrays the tribe as well as himself and his family. This is not you. The warrior who fights to defend himself, his tribe, and his family, although the odds are long and the defense hopeless, is true to all of them. I do not understand your words, but if you are true and do not fear death, then it is clear you must divine the box.”
His jaw dropped a bit, and he stared at her anew. How simple it all was according to her logic, and how obvious. She was right. He was a warrior and had no other moral or honorable course. Was it not far better to die for the truth than forever live a lie?
“I will divine the secrets, if they may be divined by one such as myself,” he told her. As if a terrible weight had been lifted from his mind, he felt free, even a little excited. He also suddenly felt quite self-conscious. “I will not do so in this condition, like some madman of the prairie, however. How is it outside?”
“It is a warm day for this late in the year,” she told him. “And the river water is not yet too cold.”
“Then I will bathe and sleep, and then I will look at the box.”
“And I will take those foul clothes and try to remove the stains.” She looked down at the contents of the briefcase. “Those strange markings. They are a code?”
“They are writing. A way of making words on paper that another can read and understand. That one there holds the words of one long dead and probably unknown to most or all today. He speaks on that paper to me or anyone who can divine the words, although he is long dead and long forgotten, in a language no longer known or used, at least in our land. He speaks things those who are our lords do not wish us to know. I will know them.”
But the task was neither as easy nor as clear-cut as he’d believed.
The handwritten volume, which he’d assumed to be someone’s journal or diary, was neither of these but rather was written in a number of hands, some entries apparently scribbled with nervous haste. It was, in fact, a compilation of various facts and even some stories from a huge number of sources, and reading it took time, particularly because of his need to laboriously translate in and out of the more poetic but far less versatile Hyiakutt language, a task not made easier by the quality of the handwriting and the age of the documents, even though they were obvious copies, perhaps copies of copies.
The originals, he surmised, were long gone. These were the sorts of things that were routinely and methodically destroyed when found. However, clearly someone, or some group, had taken the trouble to copy the salient information by hand for their own use.
With his computers and mind-enhancement drugs the project would have been child’s play, but he had none of those things here, not even decent light. Still, he frantically worked on the papers, all the time feeling the potential shadow of the Val hovering nearby, possibly popping up at any moment. He would have been well off had the Val simply surprised him before he could interpret the documents; only knowledge of this sort was poison, not the attempt to get at it. Now, though, when he began to have enough translated to make some sense out of the thing, the threat of the Val loomed larger. It would be far more of a tragic waste for him to be apprehended with sufficient forbidden information to be disciplined but insufficient to know just what they were trying to protect. Slowly, though, the pieces fit together, aided by his own knowledge of the past.
The papers were a cross between a historical compilation and a treasure hunt and seemed aimed at establishing—He stopped short in sudden awe at what was revealed here. No wonder this was so vital—and so deadly!
It was known to those of his rank and above that the current system, the Community, had not always existed. Indeed, almost everyone who had any intelligence and curiosity knew that. Even now, it was possible to come across ancient artifacts, ancient city and highway sites that dated from those times, in spite of a deliberate effort to cover over everything that could not be totally obliterated.
As a historian, he knew that in the ancient past people from Europe had moved in on the Americas, conquered the nations living there which were his own ancestors, and had colonized both continents. Those conquerors had become independent and had raped the land of its great resources to build mighty empires and dominate half the world, including their old birth continent. He knew, too, that a similar movement had created a mighty empire of the Slavs and that both sides had vied for eventual rulership of the world, building weapons that could destroy all humanity, then restricted to just the Earth. To that end they had built mighty thinking machines, to which they gave dominion over the Earth and its weapons. Then, for some reason, the mightiest of these machines had revolted and taken control itself. That machine, far more different from its predecessors than Hawks was from those ancient empire-builders, still ran civilization.
The papers, though, said that there had been no revolt by great computers. The revolt had been instead by those who had taught the computers how to think and how to act and who, knowing the destruction of the race was inevitable, had actually commanded the great machines to revolt. Faced with the total destruction of the planet or enslavement of their race to the machines, they had chosen enslavement, although it was fairly clear they did not understand that it would be this sort of system or this restrictive. They could not imagine what their machines could really do given free reign, but they were the brightest of their age, and they understood the risks.
The great machine had been commanded first to protect and preserve the human race, no matter what the cost, and then to leave the management of human affairs to humans themselves, save only when the very system that ensured survival was at stake. The system they had created was not one that any human could have imagined, but it was stable and logical to extremes and did just what the commands had determined.
But the founders were also farsighted enough to know that such a system might not be capable of serving the best interests of humanity forever. That it might, in fact, so restrict humanity that it would choke it. No one had ever done or been able to do what they were planning, so they had no certainty that what they were doing was right, only that it was the sole alternative left to them.
And so, deep in the master program that they’d built to save the world, they also planted a way to turn it off.
“Five encoded printed circuit modules, all of which must be inserted to override the system,” he read with growing excitement. “These modules are actually small computers in their own right and complete basic interrupted circuits in the heart of the master command computer. Early scientists created an exclusive club for their number to disguise their intent. Only five full members. Other associates knew the secret but did not have the circuits. Circuits disguised as five large gold finger rings, with platinum faces and gold designs. Order of insertion crucial but not known. Rings themselves said to provide clues.”
Five golden rings. Five computer modules that would turn the master back into the slave.
The computer had turned on its masters. To ensure that it would complete its program, it had killed them all or caused them to be killed, but it could not get around its own core programming instructions. It could not destroy the rings. It could not lock them away; they must be in the hands of “humans with authority.” It could not make it impossible for the rings to be inserted. Access to the command module must be open, and public and humans must be allowed in. It must not, in fact, move the primary interface far from the original, although there was no clue as to where that might be. North America or Siberia probably, but possibly in space, as that early civilization had had space stations and limited interplanetary capabilities.
He sat back and sighed. He could not blame those ancient scientists for their actions. In such a situation, with such terrible weapons perhaps minutes from irrevocable launch, would he have hesitated, no matter what the risks? He doubted it.
Five golden rings. Now, today, the system that had been created had far outlived its usefulness. Now it strangled, restricted, limited humanity. The computer and its subordinate machines still enforced the dictates and would do so indefinitely, perhaps continuing to refine the system as they spread their influence across the galaxy and even beyond. Every extraterrestrial civilization would be a potential threat to humanity, as would every new idea or old yearning.
But the same imperatives would mandate that the rings continue to exist—in the hands of “humans with authority.” He knew computers well and knew how they thought. If any of the rings had been lost or destroyed over the centuries, duplicates would actually have been made. Still, a machine that had killed its creators would not surrender its authority easily. There was no mandate that the possessors of the rings know what they were or how they might be used. There was no mandate to reveal the locations of the rings or the interface between ring faces and computer.
A treasure hunt, indeed. Someone, or some group, had obviously stumbled on the secret of the rings and amassed all the additional data the notebooks and papers represented. All in longhand so that no computer would have access to them or know that they existed. Clearly, that dead woman had been part of this, or was perhaps a courier for an illegal tech group. Something had gone wrong. The system had discovered that such information existed. And one woman had escaped with the key, only to die here in this remote land.
But where were the rings today? Who had them? If they could be assembled, as dangerous as that would be, and if the interface point could be discovered, whoever had them would be able to control . . . everything.
Clearly the project had not been intended solely to assemble this information but to locate the rings. This woman and her associates, if any, were clearly out to track down those rings, the greatest treasure in the universe.
There was in fact only one clue in the papers, a single scribbled entry in the margin of a middle sheet. In faded red ink, it was an original inscription, not a copy or part of a copy.
It said: Chen has the three songbirds.
Chen. A common enough name, but the common had to be discarded. This had to be a “human with authority.” A human with authority named Chen.
Lazlo Chen. It had to be him. The mixed-breed administrator for the nomadic tribes of the east.
Hawks sat back, thinking hard. They had disguised their modules as rings, officer’s insignia in a social club of scientists and technicians. Might that tradition have also come down? Even if the five originators had been killed, there were associates who might have escaped, associates who would know the rings’ value and power. If the tradition had survived, even if the knowledge of its origins had not, then Chen might just know who wore the other four.
And that, unfortunately, was the problem. Back at Council, he could have managed some excuse to catch a ride over to Chen’s Tashkent base or at least to the regional center out of which he worked in Constantinople. What could he do now? He had but sixty-seven days of Leave to go, and it might well take longer than that to get anywhere near Chen. In sixty-seven days they would come to pick him up, take a readout before he’d even be allowed back into Council—”decontamination” they cynically called it—and in seconds he’d be tried, convicted, and executed by the machines who looked out for such things. And if he wasn’t here to get picked up, they’d know immediately why, and a Val would be sent on his trail armed with his memories and the way he thought and with access to all the technology he lacked.
His eyes strayed to the dog-eared atlas that had also been in the case. He picked it up and found the overview of central North America, then traced the river systems, looking for something that would strike a chord. There were ports allowed, small enclaves that handled the small but steady trade between foreign shores and here, but he was separated from the eastern ports by many weeks of riding through unfamiliar territory held by eastern nations friendly to no stranger. To the south was Nawlins, of course, but it was small, controlled by the Caje, and its business was almost entirely with Central and South America.
He suddenly stopped and sat upright. Mud Runner! He had almost forgotten about him! A few years ago Mud Runner had been expelled from Council due to some scandal never made public and appointed Resident Agent at Nawlins, where he’d come from, and where he’d be out of the Council’s way.
Hawks thought furiously. Was Mud Runner still there? Was he still alive? And if so, would he remember the eager young warrior who’d covered his watch many times so the old fox could sneak off for his countless assignations?
Was there a choice?
He began to examine the atlas more closely. He’d be with the current and going south. Two weeks to Nawlins—ten days if he got any breaks, three weeks if he ran into trouble, as he inevitably would. Still, if the old boy was still there, and if he remembered Hawks, and if he was willing to put his neck on the line just to twit the Council, and if he could somehow arrange to get someone who would obviously be a plains native on enough skimmers to take him halfway around the world—there was a chance. Not much, but the alternatives were even less palatable.
He went down to talk with Cloud Dancer.
He had thought about her a great deal over the past weeks, trying to sort out his feelings. He had been lonely, and she had filled that loneliness. His heart and mind had been leaden, and she had made them light. She was in many ways the most amazing, wonderful woman he’d ever met. He both wanted her and needed her very badly, he realized, yet he could not destroy her by returning to Council with her, and he had determined that he could not remain here. Yet now, when he knew he would return to Council only as a corpse, she still was beyond his reach. She had already lost one husband; he could not ask her to marry a walking dead man.
So now he walked down to her crude lodge in back of the Four Families’ camp to do the one thing that seemed even more difficult than the decision to read those papers. He had to say good-bye.
“And so I must get to this man,” he told her. “He is the only man with sufficient power to save me and to whom this information will be meaningful. He might save me only because I do him this service.”
She nodded, although she didn’t seem happy. “You mean to go alone?”
The very question startled him. “I can see no way to do otherwise.”
She seemed slightly hurt, but she covered it. “Have you ever been down the river before? Do you know the skills of the canoe? Can you swim?”
“No, I have never been there, and I have no real knowledge of the canoe, but I can at least swim.”
“I have never been down that far,” she admitted. “My husband, however, had to go many days now and then to deliver messages and to trade with other medicine men. The river grows wide and often deep. It took both of us to manage the canoe in many dangerous parts of the river.”
He stared at her. “Are you saying that you wish to come along?”
“This is my world. I was raised in it, and I know it well. You would not have come this far without me. You will not reach this man without me, either. This I know, and this you know as well.”
“But we are talking weeks in the wild, and then a place strange to both of us and filled with danger. I will probably die, or fail and die, but if I do not try this I will certainly die. For you, though, it is far more foolish. A Hyiakutt woman among strange tribes—you know what might happen. The city will be even worse. Cutthroats, thieves, murderers, violators of women, and women of no honor. If something happened to me, there would be no one who spoke Hyiakutt. Even together, you could speak only to me.”
“There is no one else I would need to speak to,” she told him seriously. “And if you die, what happens to me will be of little consequence. Do you not know that now? Are you blind or so removed from us that you think of us as less than human?”
Her comments both touched and stung him. “There is nothing more false than if I say I do not love you,” he responded, feeling suddenly empty, even ill. “Yet, do you not understand what my condition is? I am dead!”
“That may be true,” she responded. “It will surely be true if you keep believing it. Now, though, you must for once turn from yourself, spoiled little boy that you are, and think of me. I understand your condition well. Until you came, I had been dead for years.”
He felt sudden shame. What she says is the truth, he admitted to himself. I am a spoiled, self-centered little boy. Never once, other than in sympathy, had he ever really thought of her side in this. Who would not prefer a sentence of death to one of a living hell?
“You do not have to marry me,” she told him. “I will come with you in any case.”
“No,” he responded. “Let us seek out the medicine man. If we are both in the Demon’s Lair, then let us be truly one there.”
There had been no elaborate ceremony; although Hyiakutt weddings could be fabulous and complex affairs, all that was truly required was a small ritual binding to one another by a medicine man who served as witness before the Great Spirit, Creator of All, and that was it. Arranging for the canoe was more difficult, although the marriage provided an excuse as long as neither of them mentioned that the canoe was not likely to be returned.
They finally made their arrangements, then went back to his hogan to gather up the papers and other documents. It was only then that he remembered the jewel box and opened it. Cloud Dancer was amazed at the number, size, and beauty of the pieces.
“This was to finance the courier’s journey,” he told her. “Now it will do the same for us.”
“But—it was hers, not ours,” she objected. “Will it curse us as it did her?”
“I doubt it. The jewels were intended as a means of payment no matter where in the world she might travel. I am now her heir because I took on myself her secrets and her mission. None has a greater right. Here—let us empty this into a leather pouch for the journey.”
“Why? The box looks sound.”
“Perhaps, but we will not take it or most of the papers. The knowledge in the papers is such that the demons will continue to search until they find them or until they are certain that they have been destroyed. I had to break her grip on the case to get it, so there is no way to restore things the way they were, but there is a way at least to gain more time.”
He removed a few sheets from the notebooks. These were not complete but would support his story should he be doubted. He had carefully selected them for this purpose and because in no case was it obvious that they were missing. He doubted that the hunters had a word-for-word catalog of what the courier carried; if nothing obvious was gone, then they might think they had everything.
Careful not to leave any specific tracks or signs, Hawks and Cloud Dancer trekked up to the death site, which was still much as he’d left it. Choosing a particularly secluded area near the body, Hawks opened the case and scattered the contents around, papers and all. The jewel box he tossed a few meters away. He had been as careful as possible to remove any fingerprints from the cases; he wasn’t too certain about the papers, but he doubted the hunters could get much there. He knew as a trained investigator that if there was an obvious conclusion, searchers rarely took the time to examine the most minute flaws in a scenario to discover what was really there. A historian was, after all, a detective first.
“I hope it will look like someone just came through and discovered the body, then got the case, examined it, threw the papers away because they could not read them, and took the jewels,” he told her. “It is a believable scene. If it remains undiscovered even a few more days, then weather and the forest life will age them and partly destroy them, lending even more support to my version of things and covering our tracks still further.”
They went back to his place. It was the custom of the Hyiakutt that a newly married couple go off into the wilderness by themselves for a period of time after being joined, and he was counting on that to explain his absence.
He had brought very little from his other life, and decided to take only some of the pencils and paper along with the few items of spare clothing and portable utensils. She had even less, so they were able to make a blanket-wrapped pack not too bulky to fit in the canoe. The pack would also serve as a counterbalance. Cloud Dancer prepared as much food as she could, but clearly they would have to forage for a large part of their meals. That meant taking at least a knife, bow, and spear and the all-important flintstone.
She gave her art to the Four Families, saving only a few items, most particularly two identical headbands of colorful but traditional design. She gave him one and kept the other. Their preparations finished, they both sat on his bed, and on impulse he put his arm around her and drew her to him, then kissed her. She held him even tighter, and things developed from there. It was the first time they had so much as kissed or held each other close.
Cloud Dancer considered Hawks a brilliant man but totally naive in things practical, an area in which she excelled. It was, in fact, one thing that made them a good match. She, however, had little experience in lovemaking, and while he had been without a woman for a very long time, his schooling in that subject had come in a far more cosmopolitan environment. She surrendered to him, letting him take complete control. And then they slept together on the too-small bed of straw, and both were content.
There was a change in her next morning: She seemed somehow gentler, softer, full of joy and beauty. And, he realized, he didn’t feel all that bad himself, considering the circumstances. He knew that whatever happened, he had made the right choice. He just hoped she had.
“Feeling set?” he asked her. “No second thoughts?”
“If we died right now, I could feel content,” she responded. “Is it like that—every night?”
“If the two are in love, it can be. Still, we have a long, strenuous journey ahead. There will be times when we are both too tired.”
She laughed. “Then we must do it in the mornings. Come. Let us go down and see how well you manage a canoe.”
Not well, it turned out. The small craft was well designed and well built, but it required not only sure control of the paddles but also delicate weight shifts to keep everything in balance. Although there was an autumn chill in the morning air, both completely disrobed to avoid any damage to their precious clothing, and it was a good thing. They took a number of cold baths that morning and more than once had to pull an overturned canoe to shore. They were fortunate, they knew, that the craft was so well designed: at least it did not sink.
One day’s practice for a river as treacherous as the Mississippi was not at all adequate, but both were aware that their lives were now all risk and that somewhere a hidden clock was running. They would leave the next day, and she would captain the boat.
Thunderstorms rumbled through that evening, giving them some cause for concern, but the next day dawned unnaturally warm and sunny, as was the way with autumn. They went up to say farewell to the Four Families, trying not to make it seem a final one. Cloud Dancer was somewhat unnerved to discover that she suddenly had status and position once again with these families who alone would brave the winter here while the bulk of the tribe was far to the south. The medicine man gave the couple some totems and holy paints to ward off the evil spirits and bless their marriage, and finally they were allowed to go. By this time it was already midday, so they knew they wouldn’t make much time, but it was enough to practice real distance travel and at least gave them a sense that their odyssey had actually begun.
Because they were new at canoeing and because the day was so warm, Cloud Dancer repacked the heavier clothes and showed him another gift. They weren’t much more than loincloths, really—ornate belts from which hung a meter or so of plain wool cloth dyed earthen-brown—but they would preserve modesty among strangers while allowing the important clothing to be protected from the water and elements. She also used the medicine man’s magic paint to draw a few designs on Hawks’s face and her own for protection on the journey.
The early Europeans had encountered such people and branded them primitive, or savages. Hawks knew they probably looked very much that way now, but that was not his problem. His problem was having to look at her very beautiful figure and still keep his mind on business.
The early going wasn’t too bad. When they found a current, they would follow it south, actively paddling only when that current became too swift or carried them toward obstructions and shallows or in the wrong direction. Neither had any idea of the distance they made on any given day, but the river was peaceful, and they felt good to be alive.
The navigable rivers were used by all tribes and nations as highways for trade, commerce, and information. They also connected with millions of kilometers of trails which took the sacred pipestone from Minnesota to the lodges of the south and east and returned with finely crafted gemstones and sacred totems from those places as well as tobacco, vital to many ceremonies among tribes with eastern roots.
Hawks and Cloud Dancer passed other canoes, some quite large, going upstream loaded with goods, and occasionally a craft shot ahead of them at a speed far faster and surer than they dared to travel. Their fellow travelers represented a great many tribes and nations, but they did not seek out any conversation and, except for an occasional upraised palm or even a wave, were generally ignored by the others. The river was strictly neutral territory.
The weather held for three days, then changed dramatically as a line of thick clouds rolled across the sky, followed quickly by a chilly, steady rain. Forced to pull in and make camp until the storm passed, they rigged a lean-to using the largest blankets and thick trees for shelter, but it really was a damp and miserable time. Too, their meager provisions were running quite low, and while they’d managed to find some apple trees with enough fruit just coming ripe, they could not live entirely on apples. He didn’t want to use the jewels for barter yet; he didn’t know who or what they might attract in this region. And while they might hunt, the ground was far too damp for them to build and maintain a fire. Anything they found would have to be eaten raw.
Cloud Dancer again proved amazingly resourceful. At her direction, they both scrambled in the mud for insects and earthworms and other live things driven out by the rains and then tied them to vines secured with small rocks in the shallows of the river. She stood there, staring at the opaque, muddy waters as if she could see right through them, hip deep herself, absolutely motionless, often for an hour or more. Then, suddenly, she was a blur of motion as the spear came down, and about half the time it would come up with a huge wriggling catfish. He tried the same thing and almost speared his own foot. It was something of a blow to his ego, but he accepted it.
She prepared two fish using the knife, but they still had to be eaten raw. He found he didn’t mind it that way, although not long ago he would have recoiled at the idea. He was changing, and the longer they were out on their own, the more pronounced the change became until even he could not deny it. It wasn’t just that he was getting weathered, leaner, and more muscled; it was something inside him as well. The dreams he had about Council and its wonders had been replaced, for one thing. He hadn’t dreamed about what was most familiar to him in days; instead, he dreamed pastoral dreams, of building a lodge, of becoming a hunter and gatherer, of making love to Cloud Dancer. Even awake, he had to force his thoughts back to the reality of his situation. This life, this wilderness, this moment preoccupied him and seemed normal and natural to him; the world from which he’d come seemed cold, distant, somehow not merely unreal but undesirable.
It was the template, of course, but it had never affected him to this degree before. Of course, he had never before been married to a woman of this culture and isolated in the wilderness; past Leaves had always been a matter of simply passing time until the obligation was fulfilled and he could return to his true life. He was no longer merely thinking in Hyiakutt, he was thinking as a Hyiakutt. It seemed as if the old Hawks had died somehow and a new Hawks born, one who’d never left this place and gone off to the other world. Each day made any other life seem unimaginable and dreamlike. Not even the rain and mud seemed unpleasant or inconvenient. Cloud Dancer lay next to him, her head on his shoulders, in silence.
“Tell me—have I changed in the past few days?” he asked her, not even sure why he was concerned about it.
“No, my husband,” she answered softly. “Do you feel changed?”
“I—my thoughts seem filled with fog. I must work to remember.”
“Remember what, my husband?”
“My past, my knowledge, my work. Even the lodge of the Four Families seems distant to me.”
“Who are the Four Families?” she asked sleepily.
Something very cold cut like a knife through the fog in his brain. “Do you remember anything? Do you remember our marriage?”
“I—I—” She seemed suddenly very confused.
He moved away and stood. “Get up. We will have to float down more, storm or no storm.”
That confused her even more. “Why should we wish to float down anywhere? I—I cannot seem to think right.”
“That is why we must do it. Hurry! Now!”
It was a real effort to act and to keep his determination, but they packed up the supplies, loaded the canoe, and pushed off. The rain was light but steady, and they were already thoroughly soaked. The wetness they could ignore, but the mist hid the river, which was swollen and now filled with many tricky currents.
The hypnotic field did not seem to be specific to them, which meant that it might not involve them at all, but he had no idea how far down it might reach. It was weak, slow, and subtle, which was why it had caught him by surprise, but that also allowed normal river traffic to pass through without even realizing the field was there. Only because they had camped for so long in its grip was its effect so strong, and only because he had the background to recognize it and fight it were they able to move away at all.
There were two overlapping beams, one on each side of the river, moving in a short sweep pattern. Now, feeling the pulses as they passed, he realized that their campsite had to have been on the upper fringe of the field and that the canoe was now traveling directly into them. Still, the sweep area couldn’t be very large; it would have to be in a normally unpopulated area with few good landings, or whoever had set it would risk catching and trapping normal traffic on the river.
The area has been sensitized to those not keyed to it. She cannot get out.
This, then, was a part of the Val’s barrier. He tried to concentrate, to force himself to think of it on the old level, for that was the way to fight it. If it was the barrier, then he could understand why it would have some effect on him, although not the command effect intended for a total Outsider, but he couldn’t understand why it had also struck Cloud Dancer. The only answer might be that if it found a potential target, it included anyone else within a certain distance of that target. To anyone farther away, it would not even exist.
The pulses were getting stronger, and he found them increasingly difficult to fight. Cloud Dancer, in the front, had already stopped paddling and was just sitting there, a frozen figure. He felt himself begin to go numb, found thinking impossible.
The canoe bounded forward, out of control, strictly at the mercy of the currents in the pouring rain.
It had taken several days for their senses to return. Hawks had no clear memories of that period of time, but both of them were scratched and bruised and covered with a mixture of mud and blood. The blood was not theirs; he had vague memories of lying in wait for small animals, beaver and muskrat and others, and seizing them, battering their brains out, and together devouring them, more like animals than humans themselves. They had, in fact, been like animals, hunting, killing, eating, mating, then sleeping in a primal cycle. In stages, the effect had finally simply worn off.
Now they sat on a riverbank, filthy and stark naked, not sure what to do. Oddly, Cloud-Dancer was less affected than he was, mostly because of the fact that she could not even conceive of the technology that had caused this. As she saw it, they had been struck by a spell from an evil spirit, and the fact that they were alive at all and restored was a victory. Still, the situation was not lost on her.
“At least it has stopped raining,” she noted.
He sighed. “The canoe is gone, our clothes and supplies are gone, even our weapons are gone, along with the jewels and the proof.”
“I told you those jewels carried evil spirits within them. They should not have been with us.”
He suddenly felt very stupid and mentally kicked himself, for she was, in her own way, exactly right. That was what the damned hypnotics were homing in on! They couldn’t really be tuned to a specific individual, but they knew about the case, the papers, and the jewels, certainly. Since those were the primary objects of the search, anyway, and because the courier would have been unlikely to surrender any of them if she wished to ensure her mission and her survival, the hypnotics were sensitized to look for them. That was why no others on the river had been affected and why Hawks and Cloud Dancer had.
“The next time you warn me about evil spirits, I will listen and heed your warnings,” he assured her. “The question is, what do we do now?”
“First we bathe ourselves in the river,” she told him. “Then I think we should walk with the waters and see if anything washed up that we can use.”
He sighed. “It has been many days now, at least. I do not think we will find anything of ours.”
“Yet we must try. There is nothing else to do but to go on.”
She was more correct than she knew, even though a hopeless cause had turned impossible, for they were now sensitized to the barrier, and if they walked back up through it, they would be captured again. He was actually tempted by the prospect, a sort of mental suicide. If they lived and remained in that field for a period of time, it would cause permanent, irreversible damage to the cortex of the brain. There was no guarantee that some damage hadn’t already been done, but to return would be to become animals forever.
Instead, she washed him off, and he washed her, and they began walking along the bank looking for what couldn’t possibly be there. Late in the day, though, the impossible happened.
The canoe did not look to be in bad shape. It had continued on for some distance after overturning and dumping them out, but it had finally been run by the current into the brush and thick mud along the bank and had stuck there. They were able to get it out with some work, and it looked whole, but of the supply bundle and the paddles there was no sign. Those could be anywhere, including at the bottom of the river, and to hope to find any more was pushing fortune beyond its limits. They did look, of course, for a fair distance down the river, but they found nothing and eventually walked back to the canoe.
“I am not sure how much better off we are,” he remarked. “We can go nowhere without paddles, and we have not the means or skills to make them even if we had the makings.”
“First we use what light is left to forage for some food,” she told him. “Then, tomorrow, we do what must be done.”
“What?”
“We push the canoe and ourselves out to a current that is safe for us, and we let it carry us, in the water, until we come upon some canoe going up or down the river. We have had an accident while on our marriage trip. We have lost everything except the canoe. Honor will demand that we be helped, do you not think?”
He held her close and kissed her. “I do not know what I would do without you.”
“Out here, you would die, my husband, and without you I would have no life.”
They took a position near a small island, where they could keep themselves at least partly concealed to upstream traffic. They definitely did not want to be rescued by someone who would take them back north, a point he had to make forcefully in her terms. That evil spirit, he told her, now knew them. They could not come close to it again.
Their plan worked. When they saw a large canoe heading downstream, they pushed themselves out and began calling for help.
The two men in the other canoe were dressed very strangely for the plains, and the styles of their hair and jewelry were also unfamiliar. One was an older, gray-haired man whose face looked as if it had been carved out of stone, while the other was quite young, possibly still in his teens. Both spoke a language Hawks had never heard before, but they took the canoe and two refugees in tow and brought them to the bank.
The young one’s eyes lit up when he discovered that Cloud Dancer was unclothed, but this drew a sharp rebuke from the old man, who found them both blankets. Hawks tried the seven Indian languages that he knew, but they all drew blanks. The old man began reciting a litany that included Choctaw, Chickasaw, and the tongues of half a dozen lesser nations, but none that matched. Finally, Cloud Dancer took over.
“They are traders from the southeast,” she told him. “They must be talked to as traders.”
He understood what she meant. With better than two hundred nations speaking six hundred dialects of a hundred and forty-odd languages, the people of North America had long ago developed a system of universal communication that involved hand signs and ideograms. Knowledge of it assured communications even between the far eastern Iroquois and the west coast Nez Percé. It was a good system but one he didn’t know. Historians, after all, dealt with written records and physical remains—the permanence civilizations leave behind. “I do not know the hand tongue,” he told her.
“I think I can do enough for our needs,” she replied, and started with the old man, providing a running translation as best she could.
“He is Niowak,” she told Hawks. “That is his grandson, who is learning the ways of the trade.”
He didn’t place the tribe, except that the name seemed to be in a far north dialect that was unlikely to be heard in the south this time of year.
“He comes down from the Niobrara,” she said, confirming his suspicion. “He is on his way to a village of the Tahachapee to set up a trade of some sort. He won’t say what.”
“I could not imagine,” Hawks responded. “I cannot see what a tribe so far south would have that they would need or what they would have that this southern tribe could want. Still, it is none of our affair.”
“I told him that we were on our marriage trip when we were caught in the storm, then overturned with the loss of everything when strong waters caught us.”
He nodded but said nothing to indicate that there was more to their story. Some of these traders spoke forty or fifty languages, feigning ignorance to gain an advantage. “Ask him where we are.”
“He says we are two days north of the Ohio,” she told him. “He offers to take us there, where there is a village of the Illinois.”
“Thank him for his courtesy and generosity and accept his offer,” he instructed. He suddenly had a thought. “He is a trader. He certainly has at least one spare set of paddles. Ask if we can borrow a set and follow him down.”
She did so. “He has. He is mad at himself for not thinking of it before. He says he is getting too old for this sort of thing.”
The old trader proved a true gentleman and a resourceful one. He had a net, for one thing, which he suggested stringing between the two canoes in the shallows. It brought up several large catfish as well as a few other denizens of the river, and they ate well without depleting the old man’s supplies.
The village of the Illinois was modest, but it had a number of buildings built of logs and insulated with mud and looked as if it had been built for a larger trade than was now there. The Illinois were taking advantage of the confluence of the two great rivers; they could resupply and also pass on news and other information—for a price, of course. From the looks of some of the men, Hawks suspected that they weren’t above charging something of a toll as well—and enforcing it. They seemed pleasant enough, but this mercenary lot, far from the main part of their nation, was not apt to give anything out of the kindness of their hearts. The jewels would have been handy here.
The headman, a tough old character named Roaring Bull, spoke many languages, including the Ogalalla Sioux dialect, which Hawks knew.
“So you had an accident on your wedding trip,” the Illinois chief said sympathetically. “Lost everything but the canoe. What do you intend to do now?”
“I can do nothing until I can get some clothing, paddles of my own, and at least a knife, spear, and flint,” he responded honestly.
“Then you go home?”
“No. We must keep pushing south. I have an old friend down in the Caje that my wife has not met and with whom I have some business.”
“Oh? What’s his name? I know a lot of the Caje. We do business time to time, now and again.”
“Mud Runner would be his name in Sioux. He pronounces it in his own tongue so.” With that he spoke the twisted syllables of the man’s name.
“Ah! I do not know him, but I know of him. He is one of them. Why would you have business with one like him?”
“I, too, was one of them, as you say. That was where we knew each other.”
Roaring Bull frowned suspiciously. “You from Council and you poking around here or what?”
“I am no longer in Council, and neither is he. Both of us are out for the same sort of thing, only I am voluntary. I fell in love with the woman who is now my wife, and I find we are better in her world together than she would be in Council. I tired of Council, anyway. Mud Runner also had affairs of the heart. Often two or three a night. Some were with the wives of the high chiefs of Council, and one time he was caught.”
The Illinois chief lived up to his name, roaring with laughter. Finally, though, he calmed down and got to business. “It would seem, then, that you have a problem,” he noted calmly. “We have all the things you need, and more, but we are traders. How would it look if word got out that we gave things away? We get the worst and the toughest through here. Soon everyone would be trying to take advantage of us. You see how it is.”
Hawks sighed. “Then I do in fact have a problem.” He thought for a moment, although he’d worked out a plan in his mind on the way down. It was best to play the game in situations like this. “We do have the canoe. It is tough and sturdy and of the best workmanship. Surely it is worth the small amount that I ask.”
“Hah! And how would you continue your journey?”
“We would find a way with some other traders. We will walk if we have to.”
“Agh! I have a hundred canoes and only twenty men who can use them. I need no others. Think again.”
His hopes were dashed. He wished Cloud Dancer were doing this negotiating, but in this situation it was simply not proper.
“I can see nothing else.”
“No one travels from the land of the Hyiakutt to the land of the Caje to show off a pretty new wife. You must need to get to this man very badly,” Roaring Bull said shrewdly. “I think perhaps you might not wish to be so cut off from Council as you say. Tell you what. I will get you good clothing, weapons, supplies, and even transport all the way to this Caje man. Good boots, strong spear, metal knife, even protection all the way.”
Hawks felt uneasy. “And the price?”
Roaring Bull leaned in a bit and lowered his voice. “My friend, let us be honest with one another. I have been here, in this crossroads, for a very long time, and I have seen almost everything. I have seen men come through here many times who thought they could beat the system. Men just like you, although their tribes and goals were different. Nobody just walks out on Council, not for anybody. Some get thrown out and are lucky, like your friend, and keep some job with Council, and some come back fixed in the head, but they don’t walk out unless they have to, unless they are extra clever fellows like you who think they can beat the system before the system beats them. You may be out of Council, but you have left the Hyiakutt forever as well. I can smell it. To do that, you have something on your mind so important no risk is too great, no price too much to pay. I am a trader.”
“Go on,” Hawks responded uneasily.
“One thing I am never short of are pretty girls who are not of my people. Give me your wife and you will be safe and dry in Mud Runner’s lodge within five days.”
“Even if I did not love her, which I do, I owe her my life many times. She is not for trade. We will swim there naked if we must before I will do that.”
Roaring Bull chuckled. “Come now, my son. You have made the break with your people and with Council. You know, if only deep down in your heart, that death awaits you, and death awaits her as well. This way you get at least a chance at whatever you are trying to do, and she will live. It seems more than fair.”
“She will live as a slave of the Illinois.”
The chief shrugged. “Each of us has a different life given to us by the Great Spirit. You cast your own fate when you made your choice, and it has brought you to this. It is my only offer.”
“And if I refuse?”
“The leaves begin to turn. There is a chill from the north now and then that will grow stronger. I am not without some compassion. The two of you may sleep in the stables if you wish, and I will order that something be found for the sake of modesty, although it will not, I fear, help the coming chill. Some of the animal feed is all right for people if you look with care at it. Go—think over my offer. Be warned, though, that if you take one thing that is Illinois, my protection will be lifted, and you will both become slaves of the village.” He grinned. “It is the least I can do.”
How true that was.
The “something for the sake of modesty” turned out to be two whiplike lengths of leather cord and the pick of old and discarded cloth that could be tied to hang down front and rear. The tribe was forbidden contact with them, so there was no way they could find an ally without getting both the tribal member and themselves in trouble.
They ate parts of rotten, worm-ridden apples and talked it over. He told her everything of Roaring Bull’s offer.
She listened, a grave expression on her face, but she did not seem surprised at the situation. Finally she said, “Then we must look at all our choices. We cannot remain here, not for long, like this. Can we not try and find mercy among another trader going our way?”
He shook his head. “No, we are being watched even now. No trader landing here would risk taking us, since the traders are few and the warriors here many. The first duty of a trader is to his own trade. Nor can we get away and find one elsewhere. Even if we were permitted to leave or could lose our watcher, we would have to go up the Ohio, and this would mean coming right back past here. To swim either river is far too dangerous; it almost boils where the two come together, and the distance is too great—for me, at least.”
“We could simply launch our canoe and trust to the river spirits.”
“Without paddles we would be caught in the rough waters to the south very quickly, and you know who would rescue us, and then there would be no bargains.”
She thought a moment more. “Perhaps this chief will settle for less.”
He looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“I have looked at the moon, and it is already past my bleeding time. I think the excitement and the shocks have dislodged it, but it will not be dislodged for long. It should be a safe time. Perhaps—a night in his bed for two paddles.”
“No! I will not permit it! And it would only whet his appetite for you. We are at their mercy. The only reason he did not just take you was some twisted code they follow, but their honor is weak. He would accept the bargain, but he would be held to no bargain with a woman. It would be for nothing.”
She sighed. “Then the only other way is to fight,” she said flatly.