THE ILLINOIS VILLAGE WAS IN TURMOIL. Two of their best warriors dead, a dramatic escape by the two whom the chief had called his “playthings,” Chief Roaring Bull himself kidnapped, a slave woman missing, and a boat, supplies, and weapons stolen—it all made the rest of them feel downright insecure. The chief’s eldest son, along with the rest of the clan, met to decide just what action to take.
“They’re long gone,” some argued. “Far downriver in foul weather. If they don’t drown, they’ll be out of reach before we can get the word down to stop them.”
“But it’s bad for business,” others argued. “What if word gets around that this was done to us? Who will fear us and pay us tribute then? It will give the others ideas.”
“They won’t be bragging, if they survive at all,” the first group argued. “The man’s on the run from Council. He won’t even mention this. As for Chief Roaring Bull, they’re certain to kill him when he’s no longer needed, if they haven’t already. You heard what the girls said about that pair. They smelled of death. I say we bottle it up here. Anyone, at any time, who speaks of this to anyone, even among ourselves, shall at the very least lose his or her tongue and suffer torments. Let us tighten our own security and our tongues and go on as before.”
“And what of the chief?” the others responded. “How will we explain his death? It is bound to get out.”
“Everybody knows he was a steady fire drinker. We’ll just say he got drunk and mad at somebody on the river one day and went out there. That’ll explain the body, no matter what the condition. He’s never going to tell anyone different.”
They all looked at Black Bear Foot, the chief’s eldest son and heir apparent. A very imposing man in his own right, he had sat impassively listening to the debate without getting involved. Now the man they would make chief spoke.
“Yes, but what if father manages to come back alive?” he asked nervously. He had not always been the eldest son, but his late half brother had gotten too ambitious too fast. Some of the same men who now offered Black Bear Foot the leadership had encouraged his brother, then lost their nerve and betrayed him when faced with the wrath of Roaring Bull.
“Now listen and hear what I say,” he said gravely. “The two who failed to watch the strangers will take one canoe, and the two who were so afraid of getting wet that they allowed the chief to be taken will go in another. One of you will bring back the chief, or his body, or all four of you will wish that you were dead, though you will not die. Understand?”
They understood, but they didn’t like it.
“Also, send runners south on both sides of the Mississippi to contact our allies. Tell them only the story that Roaring Bull got drunk and was lost on the river and that we seek him and fear his capture by traders who bear grudges against him. Tell them that they will get a great reward if the chief is returned alive and a lesser reward if dead, but if dead, they will get the same great reward if they also return his killers, dead or alive. Got it? Then go!”
Those who would travel left to prepare, but the rest of the council remained in session to work out the details in the chief’s absence. They were still hard at it when two strangers rode right into the village on horseback and stopped all there dead in their tracks.
The man on the brown horse was a Crow from the northwest mountains. An unexpected sight this far from his tribal territory, he was a striking man with a mean and fearsome look about him. He was dressed in full fur and buckskin and had a hard, tough, nasty face that seemed more a natural rock formation than a human feature. His eyes were narrowed and mean-looking, and he chomped on a half-smoked but unlit Caribe cigar. Observers could tell in an instant that he would no more hesitate to kill a man than to swat a fly; to stop him, one would need ten good men, all willing to die themselves.
With him, however, astride a huge black stallion, was a figure even more imposing and out of place. She was very tall, taller than the Crow, who was no little man, and her skin was as black as the blackest night. Her hair, straight and cut very short, was blacker than her skin, and her features were as perfect as finely chiseled black marble. Her clothing, tailored to her statuesque proportions, consisted of a sleeveless tunic made of beaver and mink with pants and even boots to match. Her arms looked smooth, but when they moved, tremendous muscles and great power were evident. Her eyes were cold, her bearing aloof. None needed to be told that these were very dangerous people. Here was a Crow Agency man, one of those who worked for Council security, and with him a visitor from a far place who unquestionably held the same sort of job in some distant land.
They rode right up to the tribal council meeting and halted but did not dismount. The Crow Agency man gave them a look that seemed to chill them all, as if he felt in the mood to massacre an entire tribe. The lady, on the other hand, gave the impression that she’d rather slowly torture them first.
Black Bear Foot decided he really didn’t need this kind of trouble, but he sighed and got up. If his father didn’t come back, this would determine whether he survived to take over. He, too, had a lot of younger half brothers who wouldn’t mind the job in the least.
“I am Black Bear Foot, acting chief of this tribe until the return of my father,” he said in his native tongue. He didn’t care if they understood it or not: That was their problem. In fact, he kind of hoped that they didn’t share any common languages. Maybe then they’d give up and go away. “If you come in peace and friendship, you are welcome to share our fire and our hospitality,” the acting chief added grudgingly.
“Where’s your father, sonny boy?” the Crow asked in a voice that was deep, raspy, and all-around unpleasant. He spoke excellent Illinois. Black Bear Foot thought the man sounded as a corpse might sound if it could speak.
“You have no call to break the Covenant,” the young, would-be chief responded, deciding that only bravado meant anything to this pair. “If I were to speak that way to someone of my position in the land of the Crow, your people would have my skin stretched across poles. You may have my life and surrender yours, but I will have respect in my own village and among my own people from any visitor.”
The speech seemed to impress and also disturb the Crow.
“You know we act in the name of the Council,” the Crow Agency man said menacingly, but the mere fact that he said it showed some hesitancy. He obviously was not used to having someone stand up to him on anything, except perhaps her.
“You mean you are in the employ of Council. The way you act and treat those who would offer you hospitality is not the Council way or the way of the Covenant. You may act in the name of the Council, but I doubt if the Council would approve of the way you act.”
The Crow smiled, although the expression looked grotesque and unnatural on him. The black woman remained impassive.
“You’re right,” the Crow admitted. There were almost audible sighs of relief from the crowd. “These are extraordinary circumstances, son, and our mission takes precedence over everything else, even the Covenant, but it doesn’t excuse improper manners. You couldn’t manage my name in your language, so just call me Raven. Everybody does. The lady also has an untranslatable name, but the sounds are there. She is called Manka Warlock, and she is in the Caribe what I am in the western mountains. Her mere presence here should show you that this is something very important.”
It did. The Caribe and their tropical islands were placed in the South American District and did not work for Council at all or have authority here even from on high. That, Black Bear Foot suspected, was why the Crow was here: He, too, was out of his normal region, but a Council man was a Council man no matter what his tribe and nation.
“We are looking for a man. Late thirties, Hyiakutt but a linguist and a Council worker on Leave. He might be traveling with a Hyiakutt woman, medium, good build, early thirties. I know what this place is and what it does. They got past us up north; I doubt if they got past you.”
The young man sighed. “They were here. They—picked up supplies and went on this morning down the river.”
The Crow Agency man gave the acting chief a hard look. “Probably about three in the morning with your father as hostage from the looks of things. Don’t worry. I really don’t know those whom we seek, but this village and your father have a reputation that reaches to the upper end of the Missouri. That, and I see the two bodies back there.”
“My father and some of those he trusted were careless,” the young man told him, deciding to tell the truth. “The strangers did not seem dangerous. Their canoe was swamped. They were brought in naked and carrying nothing.”
“Uh huh. Only helpless. So they got you good, took the chief, and you’re all here in a prayer meeting praying to the Great Spirit that they don’t send him back. That about it?”
“No. Even now those responsible are being dispatched to chase them down the river, while runners prepare to notify our allies. I mean to have their hides and my father back alive.”
Raven turned to the woman and spoke in a strange language. “They were here, naked. Lost everything when the canoe went over, probably from that hypno shield. They fought their way out and snatched the chief early this morning. I figure five, maybe six hours tops. What do you think?”
“I think we had better go on the river,” she responded without changing her gaze. “We will never catch them this way, and we would need to be ferried from this point as it is. I think we underestimated our little historian and his native wench, but they have nothing, you say.”
“Nothing tangible, but he wouldn’t be running so hard and so bloody if he hadn’t read ’em all through. He knows what those papers said. He’s the only one in the whole area who could read ’em, and he finds ’em. The hell with the papers. He’s the papers now.”
She nodded. “Very well. He is on the run from Council and from these people. He will not be moving fast but cautiously.”
The Crow switched back to Illinois. “Do you know where he is trying to go?”
“My father said he was trying to reach Nawlins. He is in trouble and needs an ally in Council.”
Raven thought a moment. “Mud Runner! Got to be!” he said in the black woman’s Caribe English.
“Who is this Mud Runner person?”
“Resident Agent. Probably an old pal. He’s set up in the swamps south of Nawlins.”
She nodded again. “Good. That means that he must keep to the river. It is a very long way to Nawlins from here, even longer when you must guard against your own shadow. We will proceed by water.”
“Yeah, but these slobs couldn’t catch their own dinner with a net, and we’re both on unfamiliar ground. We’ll go right past him.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “If so, it will only delay things. We know where he is going.”
“Yeah. And if they sic a Val on him, what then?”
“If these pirates had killed him, what then? We can only do the possible and play the odds. From the looks of things here, he might make it, even with a Val on his tail. The Val can’t play the percentages. It must check every little piece of river for him, although it, too, will head for this Mud Runner in the end. We must be certain that we get to them first.”
“You ever think this could put a Val on our tails? Whatever this is, it’s big. Big enough for a guy to throw it all away and go wild. Big enough to send a Val in the first place, and maybe all of ’em.”
“You have always bragged that you could take a Val. If they put one or two on us, then you will get the opportunity to test your theories. Come. We must not remain here long.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Even if these are our kind of people.”
Chief Roaring Bull knew his section of the river like the old hand he was, and he knew balances, shifts, and other ways to manage an overloaded canoe through occasional rough water and tiny whirlpools. They learned a great deal from him and crossed the area where the mighty Missouri dumped into the Mississippi with no more than minor incidents. Hawks kept him aboard for extra safety, but the man was quickly passing from an asset to a liability.
Twice they had been hailed from shore or intercepted by canoe, and twice the old chief had done himself proud talking them out of any potential dangers. It wasn’t that the strangers weren’t suspicious; Hawks had the distinct impression that the four warriors in the canoe knew or at least suspected exactly what was going on. But the barely suppressed snickers on their faces showed that they only took bribes from Roaring Bull; they really didn’t like him any more than anyone else did, and in the absence of a general alarm or big reward, they really weren’t that upset to see the old boy embarrassed and compromised. Besides, they could always claim later that they weren’t really sure and that the chief had had ample opportunities to cause his captors trouble, yet had not.
They passed the site south of the confluence of the rivers where once, Hawks knew, a mighty complex of cities had stood. Nothing was there now; the forests on both sides looked virgin and ancient, and even the foundations of ancient bridges had long ago succumbed to the power of the river.
“It is now time to bid you farewell,” he told the old chief. “Stand up and do not topple the canoe.”
“Stand up? But you said you would let me off when we passed the Missouri!”
“I intend to keep my word. You may leave now.”
The old man looked around. “But we are in the middle of the river!”
“I did not promise any more than this. You can swim. Sooner or later you will make it to shore just by floating and letting the river carry you. By then we will be long gone.”
The old chief glared at him. “A curse on you all, then! I might never know who got you or why, but I look at three of the walking dead here. Sooner or later, perhaps in hours or days, you will encounter someone whom you cannot take. Then it will be over.”
“Jump, fat man. That is our problem.”
With a last angry glance, the old chief jumped into the river and was soon left far behind.
With his weight gone, the canoe became far more manageable and almost enjoyable to use. Little effort was required except to steer away from snags and keep within the current.
“Where do we go now, my fierce warrior?” Cloud Dancer asked.
“Keep an eye out for men digging on a bluff to our right. It might be any time but will probably not be for some hours. I overheard the traders at the village say that there was a team from Council doing some digging along here, and I want to find them.”
“Digging? What sort of digging?”
“They are finding the remains of nations that were here not only before us but before the ones who were here after our ancestors. They will have certain things that we need.”
She turned and looked at him. “Remains? They are grave robbers?”
“When things get ancient enough, it is no longer grave robbing but a way to learn how ancient people lived, worked, and thought. It is why we know so much about our own ancestors.”
She considered that. “Grave robbers. A fancy name they might have for it, but it is disturbing sacred dead.”
He shrugged. If she wanted to think of them as grave robbers, that was fine with him. Of course, archaeologists were grave robbers, anyway; it was the motive, not the act, that was the only difference.
“What will these Council grave robbers have that we could use?” she asked him.
“They will look as if they are of the People, but they will not be. Probably mostly students and apprentices with only a couple of experienced elders. Still, somewhere close and probably hidden from view they will have some of the machines of Council. They will also have supplies and will be unable to do as much to us for getting them as even Roaring Bull was.”
“You mean we are going to rob them?”
He grinned. “Why should it bother you to rob from grave robbers?”
That seemed to satisfy her sense of morality. The big problem was in convincing Silent Woman that no one was to be killed in this or even badly hurt if it could be at all avoided. He needed supplies and things he could trade downriver, but he wouldn’t mind if he could give them all a treatment with a portable mindprinter. A commonality of language would be very helpful indeed, and it was unlikely that these people would have a Hyiakutt cartridge. He could not give Silent Woman a tongue, but he could give her understanding.
Silent Woman had been excellent on the trip so far. Her eyes showed some life again, and she seemed to be enjoying things. It was impossible, of course, to know what was really going through her mind, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to know. He was afraid he might not like some of the images there.
The old chief had been correct about her tattoos. Her entire torso was covered with them, in many colors, and resembled an intricate design on a blanket. Cloud Dancer, as an artist, had been absolutely fascinated, and Silent Woman did not seem to mind the stares and obvious interest. Rather, she seemed pleased by it and almost proud. Many tribes used tattoos for many things, but Hawks had never seen anyone literally dressed in them. Whoever had done it had been a genuine artist in his or her own right. It was grotesque, but it was a pleasing grotesque, which was just as well: Even if she died old, she would die with that design.
She had been unable to get the massive bloodstains from her dress when they made camp, and when her tattoos were more appreciated than repulsed, she had looked at the nearly naked couple who had taken her from the Illinois and threw the dress into the river. It was more than a gesture; as the only thing she owned and, aside from the shoulder bag, the only tangible remnant from the Illinois village, she was cutting her last ties with the past and starting absolutely clean. Anyway, from a distance, the tattoos made her look clothed.
In the middle of the next day, they spotted the archaeologists’ camp. Hawks pulled the canoe in, and they dragged it up into the brush and hid it as best they could.
The camp was made up of traditional mobile lodges, or tepees, some quite large, although the dig was small and quite limited. A dozen young men and women from a large variety of tribes seemed to be working under the guidance of an older gray-haired man. Most were dressed as primitively as Hawks and Cloud Dancer, although their loincloths were professionally made and hung on fine belts equipped with loops and clips for various tools. Their project looked well along; they were probably in the last stages before packing up.
Cloud Dancer was amazed. The sight of men and women working equally at a hard and exacting task rather than clearly dividing the labor was unusual to her; to see so many from such obviously different nations working and laughing together with no suspicion or animosity was unheard of.
They had clearly decided to live close to the land, and their camp, for the most part, was just like thousands of small tribal camps across the plains, but one tepee, the largest, stood out. For one thing, it had been heavily and cleverly waterproofed. For another, even Hawks had never before seen a tepee whose door shut with a heavy zipper.
These people must have developed solid relations with the local tribes. There was no sign of security. They lived like the natives of the area lived, and unless one knew just what to look for, there was no evidence that this was anything more than a transient village of some strange tribe. At the moment, there were only two people in the camp: a young man and woman who were ostensibly tending the cook fire but who seemed more interested in each other than in the duties at hand. The dig was down an embankment and a good kilometer or more away from the camp itself; the work could be heard in the distance. Hawks began to reconsider his idea of a night attack. Even these people wouldn’t trust that the river wouldn’t bring them some threat in the dark.
‘They probably have local tribesmen come in and guard them for the night,” he told Cloud Dancer.
She looked at the romantic pair. “It would be easy to take those two now. If we wait a bit longer, it is possible we will not even be noticed.”
“Perhaps.” He looked at the sun. “They are sure to break for a midday meal. That is what is on the fire. Let us at least wait until after that and see their routine. I wish no violence if it can be avoided. Those are no threats.”
It appeared that there were always two people remaining in the camp at any one time, though the intervals of the rotation were hard to judge. There was only one random event, when the gray-haired leader and two workers returned carrying something in a large blanket.
“They have dug up a body,” Cloud Dancer hissed.
“The bodies in those places, if they were burial places at all, would have been dust for centuries,” he assured her. “More likely it is an ancient weapon or carving or something that only they would even recognize as such.”
They watched as the workers put the find down and unzipped the big tent. The leader cursed and came back out, fuming at no one in particular. They were using English, one of the two common languages—Spanish was the other—of Council.
“There’s no room left in there even to store this temporarily without risking it,” the leader fumed. “We’re going to have to find some other place for it.”
“Taking it to the village is out,” one of his helpers, a young woman, responded. “They wouldn’t have anything from our dig there on a bet. Probably the best we can do for now is get some canvas, double wrap it, and stake it down and arrange to have it taken out as soon as possible.”
“Well, that’s only part of it,” the chief archaeologist noted. “I think we can get the rest in three or four hours. We’ll chance leaving it here, then wrap and transport the whole.”
Hawks admitted to himself that he’d love to know what they’d found, but curiosity had already brought him enough trouble. He waited until the workers had returned to the dig after a lunch break; again, a pair remained behind to clean up.
“Now is our time,” he told Cloud Dancer. “Try to make Silent Woman understand. We must act quickly. Use the bow to cover me, and if I gesture so, shoot convincingly but not at anyone. Be ready to aid, though, if there is a shout or they try something.”
“What if that happens?” she asked.
“Then we silence them, grab what we can, and run. I said I wanted no bloodshed, but if it is them or us, I choose us.”
She nodded, and he simply got up and walked boldly into the archaeologists’ camp. The two there didn’t even see him at first, and when they did, they stared nervously at him.
“Just relax and don’t call out,” he said in his accented English. “I wish no one to get hurt, but there are others in the bushes and trees over there who are covering me.”
The pair looked appalled. “Who the hell are you?” the young man asked. “We have permission from the treaty holders to be here.”
“I am obviously not with the treaty holders,” Hawks responded, “and I have very little time. This is a robbery, but a limited and civilized one if you just relax and keep back.”
“He’s bluffing,” the woman said toughly. “He has no one in the trees.”
Hawks made the gesture, and an arrow flew, landing within half a meter of the young man’s left foot.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” the young man asked him.
“Who I am is irrelevant. Let’s just say that Council would like to talk to me right now, and I am in no mood to talk with them. I will not disturb your dig or your findings. Take care just to stand there and do or say no more. I do not need warriors in the woods to threaten you. All I need do is tell you a simple fact that I know, and you and everyone here will be killed by Council. Understand?”
They understood. They knew the way the rules worked and probably why he was now on the run. Forbidden knowledge. It was a sore point among all the scholars working in the undercouncils.
Hawks went over to the big tepee, unzipped it, and stepped inside. There was a small battery light just inside the doorway, and he switched it on.
The place was a mess, that was for sure. What he wanted was a weatherproof box about a meter deep and fifty centimeters high, probably with a handle on it and weighing about twenty kilograms. Not light but very well balanced. He had no trouble finding it, since it was one of those items that were used often enough that they were never pushed away in storage. In another pack were a dozen cartridges, each labeled in black marker. He then located the small emergency communications pack and made short work of it—he didn’t want them calling in until he was well away. The machines could be easily traced when used, but he intended to be finished with them before somebody was told to look.
He went back out and was pleased to see that there was no surprise welcoming committee and that the pair were just standing there, still staring, not quite knowing what to do. Their eyes widened when they saw what he was taking. This was unprecedented, unheard of. Field expeditions had found themselves under siege, even looted and their members killed, but the systematic theft of a portable mindprint machine was something that simply had never occurred to either of them, nor could they understand it.
Hawks was not, however, particularly single-minded. “Where’s the liquor cabinet?” he asked them.
‘The what?”
“Come on—I’m running out of time and patience! Where does he keep the booze?”
There was something in his tone that convinced them. Never argue with a desperate and dangerous man, that was the rule. Just get the law after him.
“In there,” the woman replied, gesturing. “A case in Dr. Kakukua’s tepee.”
He beckoned for Silent Woman and gave her directions. The two young people watched, fascinated and horrified by the strange, silent, naked woman with the garish tattoos, although both made a note that it would make descriptions of the criminals rather easy. The doctor, Hawks saw, had only high-quality stuff, none of that rot-gut brewed by the Illinois. He wished he could take it all, but Silent Woman was limited by the boxes to about twenty half-liter bottles. That was good enough.
“All right—now you remain here for a while,” he told them. “I’m leaving someone over there to make sure we are well away before you go running off to bring the others here. They’ll shoot a lone arrow into the dirt as they leave and run for it. You count to five hundred after that and we’ll be gone.”
He and Silent Woman ran back into the bush. “Stay here a couple of minutes,” he told Cloud Dancer. “If they make an early break, give them a real scare. Otherwise, give us a few minutes, then run for the canoe. We have to be out of here and hopefully out of range before they get their wits.”
She nodded, and he and Silent Woman made for the canoe, then waited nervously for Cloud Dancer. She finally arrived and jumped in as he pushed off.
“I thought you weren’t going to come,” he said, relieved. “I was about to come and rescue you.”
She laughed. “The woman got really brave and decided that no one was left. I sent an arrow so close to her that I believe they will be standing as still as carvings many years from now!”
They sailed by the dig and then continued on as far south as they dared. He decided that they would make camp on the east shore that evening. That way, any search parties would have to cross the river into lands held by other nations. However, he decided first to make temporary camp, use the machine, then leave it there and continue on as far as they could until dark.
He found a good landing where there was no sign of human habitation and good cover, then proceeded to unpack and set up the machine. Both women stared at it nervously. Neither had ever before seen a true independently powered machine, and such things were spoken of as having the darkest magic.
Most of the cartridges were of local languages or the languages of some of the members of the dig, obviously chosen so they could get to know each other better. There also were reference recordings on the culture and the site itself and on uniform excavation procedures, essential for that kind of tedious work. Hawks wanted the two standards, labeled eng-x and espan-x. These would give a basic overlay, causing the brain to associate words, terms, and phrases it already knew with the proper English or Spanish terms. It was not a cram course in the nuances of the languages; nobody using them would lose an accent or know words and terms without cross-references no matter what the size of the basic dictionary, but it would allow for communication.
He picked English simply because it had the largest vocabulary of all the known languages and as such was bound to have the best matches for esoteric languages. He knew it worked well in translation from Hyiakutt; he had no idea what language Silent Woman had used.
Cloud Dancer looked suspiciously at the box. “What does it do?”
“It will teach you the tongue I used with the students. A tongue harsh to the ear but useful, since it is used so much. We cannot use it to teach Silent Woman Hyiakutt, so we must use this language so all three of us can communicate. It will also be useful should we come up against anyone from Council or in the camp of the Mud Runner and beyond. Please. You must do this, for me and for her sake.”
She was dubious. “Can you not just run it on Silent Woman and translate?”
“Come on! It is a simple device. You saw what cooperation it brought from the digger camp. Besides, look at Silent Woman. If you do not do it, she certainly will not.” He suddenly found another cartridge on which was written in English, survival.
“This one, too, is useful,” he told her. “I believe it teaches how to survive in the wilderness with nothing at all. Emergency training. We may all need this. Please—sit. It does not hurt. You feel a little sleepy, and then you know it all.”
She looked nervously at Silent Woman, then at him, and sighed. “Very well. What do I do?”
“Just lie down here and get as comfortable as you can. I put this thing on your head, so, so that the small points here contact all around. There.”
He inserted the cartridge, then turned the power on. There was no real noise, but three small lights blinked on. Silent Woman stared as if suddenly faced with a three-headed cat.
He punched the feed button, then sat back to wait the few minutes this program took to run. Silent Woman just sat and stared, suspicious but not really afraid.
When the machine clicked off, Cloud Dancer was asleep. Taking advantage of that, Hawks withdrew eng-x and inserted survival. To run it on all three did not present much of a risk, he decided, and it might just be useful.
She was still asleep when survival clicked off, and he roused her. She opened her eyes, looked into his, smiled, got up, then settled back down a meter or two away.
Silent Woman was more difficult to persuade, but she certainly trusted them by now, and she had seen no terrible effects on Cloud Dancer. She knew that the man would not do anything to harm his woman, so she accepted the mantle with a little nervousness.
Eng-x ran its course, and he ran survival once again. She, too, fell asleep and had to be coaxed to move away. He certainly intended to run survival on himself. He needed it more than either of the women.
Survival was everything he had hoped for and more—perhaps too much more. He found himself able to know instantly if berries were edible or poisonous, which water was safe and which was not, how to find shelter or make it under almost any conditions, how to keep from drowning, how to fashion weapons from the crudest materials found on the forest floor, and how to use them. It was also, however, a conditioning program that attacked inhibition. The concept of eating raw frog or a huge accumulation of crushed insects, for example, was no longer at all disgusting, and the concept of modesty was thrown out entirely.
The program was intended to be taken in the field while surrounded by friends and co-workers who would quickly reintroduce reality and perspective. It then remained as a silent rider to the consciousness, ready if needed but otherwise not evident. It was a way of grafting the survival skills of the most primitive savage onto the most civilized of personalities so that if they got into trouble, they would have a chance to survive until they could be rescued. It was not intended to be used by someone who already needed it and was mostly in the uncivilized condition it assumed.
He awoke first and looked over at the sleeping women. He knew who he was and who they were; all his memories were intact, along with his sense of purpose. He was acutely aware of danger, and he wanted to act fast. His tattered loincloth caught on a bush as he got up warily, and he reached down, snapped the thin rope in two, and threw the garment away. It was an encumbrance. Clothing for protection against the elements would have been practical; he could not even conceive of why he’d clung to that thing so long. Better under these conditions to toughen the skin.
They had all been so tired that they’d slept much longer than they should have. The alarm had surely been raised by now. He took the small mindprint machine and the cartridges down to the river and threw them in. When both did not sink immediately, he jumped in, and with a little help they filled and went down.
Cloud Dancer was awake when he returned, and she looked at him approvingly. It was the nature of things now that he didn’t even notice that she, too, had shed her modesty cloths. He switched to English to see if it all had worked. “How do you feel?”
“Different,” she answered, her accent rather exotic but understandable. “Yet I cannot say how.”
“Awake, Silent Woman,” he ordered curtly. “We have all slept too long, and we must be well away from here before our enemies are upon us.”
None of them could really comprehend the difference, but it was major. They no longer felt loyalty or longing for tribe and nation or even much kinship with it. Their tribe consisted only of the three of them. The first priority was the survival of the tribe, and then the individuals, no matter what the cost. The land was full of enemies: only the tribe could be trusted. As the only male of the tribe, Hawks was chief by default, and that was simply accepted by them all.
Silent Woman was almost ecstatic to discover she could understand their speech. It was a kind of wondrous magic that reestablished her in the world.
“Hereafter we will use only this speech,” he told Cloud Dancer. “It was always a tongue used to unite tribes; let it serve to unite us. Silent Woman, I see that you understand us now.”
She nodded, mouth still open in wonder.
“Let us get far away from here, as far as we can. We do not know if the transmission from the machine was picked up, but we must assume that our enemies will be upon us at any moment.”
They went back down to the canoe, which, in their new mind-set, seemed a real luxury to them. They crossed the river before the light failed and continued south, slowly and very near shore, looking for a proper camp. Then, working as a team, they left the river, methodically covered or disguised all traces that anyone had ever landed there, and carried the canoe well inland.
Academically and from old experience, Hawks understood what was going on—what the program was designed to do and what it was doing to them—but he did not fight it. It was the first thing he’d done by chance that had turned out right, and he was going to use it. Neither woman, of course, could understand the process and know how to fight it, anyway. For all the People, the priorities were family, then tribe, then nation. By accident, the survival program had reoriented those three categories to go with different labels. Their loyalty was to him now, and he to them—they were their own tribe. The threatening wilderness and the treacherous yet mighty river were their friends and allies against all other tribes and nations.
He got one of the bottles from the archaeologist’s pack and opened it. Primitive hunter-gatherers they might now be, but they could neither hunt nor gather in this darkness and strange wood. Food would wait until dawn.
“There is energy in this fire drink, which is called bourbon,” he told them. “We must use it for now, although too much will cause dullness and throbbing heads the next day. Drink in celebration, for now we are one.”
They drank, all coughing as it made its way down. “It is like a fire inside that warms,” Cloud Dancer noted. “Now I see why it is called fire drink.” But they finished it off.
When the bottle was empty, he broke it on a stone and washed the sharp point in the river. “Until now I had a wife who stands here. Now I have two wives, and they are proven warriors as well, as brave as any man and as skilled.” Silent Woman gave a short gasp, and he realized that until now she’d still considered herself a slave—his slave. “Tonight we will mix our blood and bind ourselves forever to one another.”
Three cuts on three wrists were joined one after the other, then all together. And then, full of togetherness and in the knowledge that they were as safe as they could expect and could do nothing more until morning, and being loosened with bourbon, the two ministered to him and he to them on the forest floor, and they slept entwined together.
“You assholes just stood there and let him steal a damned mindprint machine?” Raven was aghast.
“And twenty bottles of good bourbon,” the archaeologist chief added mournfully. “It was only a portable unit. Not programmable. I can’t imagine what good it’ll do him.”
“It’ll make those bitches linguists,” Raven replied. “Make it a lot easier moving south. You tell me quick what the nonlanguage cartridges were. I want to see just who and what we’re dealing with now.”
The survival cartridge’s importance did not escape the Crow. “They’ve shown themselves to be right resourceful up to now,” he told Warlock. “Now they can avoid all human company and still fill their bellies. Probably do better with the canoe, too.”
“I have studied the charts,” she responded. “If they get south of the Arkansas, they are going to be in a region that is heavily populated and thickly traveled. He picked this place because it is of Council; his actions here will not affect his relations with the tribes. Down there he cannot escape detection or at least notice. The tattooed woman stands out in any situation. I cannot understand why he keeps her along. He must know that.”
“Oh, he’ll keep her,” the Crow assured Warlock. “He’s incurred an obligation, and that’s an honorable man there. Still, the more people, the harder to use sensors to find a camp. We can’t hardly roust every camp we find. Some of the tribes down there get a mite touchy and wouldn’t be at all impressed with Council. My feeling is that we ought to pack it in, call in a skimmer, and wait for ’em at Mud Runner’s place.”
“Only as a last resort. If we were to spook him there, in those swamps, we might get him killed or lose him forever. We don’t know where he thinks he’s going, but he does, and he is one single-minded man. Whatever he knows, he believes it is worth any price.”
“Well, I got to admit I don’t like the odds down there,” he said. “He’s a stranger there, true, but so are we, and, pardon, we’re just as conspicuous as he is. Those swamps have defeated just about everybody who ever tried to beat ’em rather than live with ’em. You got any ideas?”
“Just one. We have the advantage that we know he must stick close to the river and probably on it. Time is pressing him. The river is the only fast way to go. We know what they look like and where they are going. We must stop chasing them and get ahead of them. Let me see the current charts.”
They looked over the river course and the latest information. Charts of the Mississippi were always out of date, but this one was close. Warlock pointed a long finger at a spot well to the south. “There,” she told him. “It is narrow, and see how it loops around. We could get two cracks at them there.”
He nodded. “Okay. As long as they don’t portage through the neck here.”
“That is a chance I am willing to take. They have no charts; the river is full and could flood down there at any time. They can’t portage across every oxbow or they would eat far more time than sticking to the water. I think they will come by there in a canoe in about three days. If we call in a skimmer, we can be there in a few hours and have that much time to prepare.”
He nodded. “All right, I’ll go with that. Better than the swamps, anyway. If we miss ’em, though, then it’s Mud Runner or nothing.”
She smiled enigmatically. “Then we will see if he lives up to his legendary reputation as a ladies’ man.”
Ordinarily the programs and data fed by a portable mindprinter faded as time went on; only a Master System unit could lock in permanent changes. However, it was also true that the more a skills program was used, the more entrenched it became: If you lived it and used it, it often integrated into the mind and achieved a level of permanency. Hawks insisted that the two women literally think in English and only in English.
Though a stronger imprint, the survival program was supposed to be emergency medicine, something carried in the hope that it would never be used. Under those conditions, it required regular retreatment with the machine. Once in use, however, the effects would last as long as necessary. Used too long, it could take on a life of its own, stripping away the last vestiges of a complex and refined culture like the Hyiakutt’s and leaving only the savage primitive. It was designed to do this to one born and raised in the high-tech, pampered world of Council; the women came from cultures that were no less complex or primitive than Council in their own ways, but they were cultures much closer to the land. There was less civilization to strip away. The authors of the survival program simply assumed that any such problems could be fixed once the person was located and rescued. An easy job for Master System—but they could never meet up with a Master System connect.
Hawks let it happen. Food, at least, was no problem now. What they had been best at before they were expert at now. His bowmanship was so perfect, it amazed him; Cloud Dancer could spear something almost instinctively, and Silent Woman could bring down birds in flight with stone or knife. The programming was geared to using what you had, and from the standpoint of survival they had quite a bit.
Minor ills, bruises, aches, and pains simply did not bother them anymore. Fearing a major break or injury, Hawks urged quiet caution.
He also began to entertain doubts about Mud Runner. What if the Resident Agent didn’t remember this wild man as his old friend? What if he turned them in? What if, most probable, he just couldn’t help? He had to be made to help, even if it meant telling him about the rings and their secret and thus passing on the obligation. Hawks didn’t really want to do that anymore; now his thoughts ran in a different direction.
The fact was, he admitted to himself, that right now he was as happy as he had ever been. He felt both free and loved. He began to think about ways to fake his own death, to throw off pursuit. Perhaps truly to found a new tribe and live this life, which was satisfying. He was approaching middle age, not a good time to go wild, but he was in excellent health. There were programs that could erase a lifetime and alter forever a personality. Mud Runner might well have these. For the first time he began to doubt his mission.
Why had he run? Because insatiable curiosity had forced him to read those papers and learn their deadly contents. He had fooled himself into thinking that it was some sort of noble mission to save humanity, but it was really just a bid to save his own neck. Until now his alternatives had been either to remain with the Hyiakutt or return to Council, but now there was another alternative.
If the bottom-line idea was to save his life and the lives of Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman, then which promised more? Passing on the information and depending on some Lord of the Middle Dark to save and protect them from Master System? Or, perhaps, logic. A readout into a full mindprint machine would show that he had passed his knowledge to no one. A second record showing that all his knowledge had been erased, along with his past, and replaced with that of a primitive hunter-gatherer might not absolutely take the heat off, but Master System would be unlikely to send a Val or expend much effort on him. Death was the sentence only because Master System did not trust its own demon lords. But if no demon lord were involved . . .
Humanity could save itself. Someone had discovered the ancient knowledge; others would over time. What he had here was worth a thousand Master Systems.