VISIONS FILTERED THROUGH THE SCREAM . . . A HANDSOME race living in a primitive village by the side of a small, swift-flowing river . . . The village is more a part of than carved out of the surrounding jungle . . . It is very hot all the time; the people wear lots of jewelry, trinkets, but no clothes, yet they do not appear naked, their bodies covered with intricate, multicolored tattoos that have personal meanings . . . The men even have designs tattooed on their faces, but the women do not, instead wearing rings and bone ornaments from their ears and their noses and in their long, black hair . . .
Reflections in a pool . . . a young girl’s face—very young, but already a woman, with sensual features and good figure. Her intricate body tattoos that mark her a woman are still fresh and bright, not worn and faded, and she is proud of them and what they say. She has not yet had a man, but it is being arranged, and she is both excited and scared by that idea . . .
It is a simple world if a hard one, and a simple life in which everybody knew their place in their small universe. It was a life of personal doubts and triumphs, but one in which there were no great questions. They knew there were other tribes, much like them, scattered in the region, but they were few and far between and there was almost no contact. Strangers were always considered dangerous and dealt with accordingly.
Thus, when the warriors had caught in their territory the stranger who did not look quite human, they had not asked questions but simply killed him. He wore multiple layers of cloth in the tropical heat and thick things of hide on his feet, which baffled them, although they salvaged it all and turned it into more practical things. The great knife of metal and some kind of strange colored bone they had never seen before was tough and sharp and finely polished; the chief would make good use of it. The contents of his pack contained more cloth of impossibly fine weave and design and other things that were unusual or inexplicable. They tried melting down the things made of the strange metal but more often there would be an explosion or a roar or it would simply collapse into a gruesome puddle giving off thick, acrid smoke that choked them.
The hair on his face and body made him almost resemble a monkey, but after much debate they decided he was indeed some sort of person and deserved final respect, so they ate him.
And, later, the evil spirits had come from the air, shooting fire from their hands that caused people to fall over, while spears and arrows and darts seemed to just bounce off them. She had run in panic into the woods but they had pursued and she felt a sudden shock as if she had run into a tree and remembered no more.
And always, in the forests and in her mind, was the scream . . .
“That’s all I’ve been able to sort out through the trauma and weave into a kind of sense,” Star Eagle explained. “There’s much more, but even getting those images, you could still feel the singular horror of the event, and this has taken me much time and effort.”
Hawks nodded. Of the company, he was the only one likely to be able to interpret the disjointed scenes, and he was impressed by the results so far.
“They always said Silent Woman came from a southern tribe,” he said, “but I doubt if anyone realized how southern. The type of landscape indicates northern South America, deep in the jungle. Throughout known history, that has been the dwelling place for some of the most primitive people in the western hemisphere. Just where, we can’t be certain—that region could be under Caribe Center or Amazon Center, but the stranger they killed looked to be Brazilian, although it was hard to tell. Some of the artifacts they took off him were pretty sophisticated stuff, though. A field agent, most likely, although what he was doing up in there will probably forever be a mystery. Possibly they had heard rumors of a tech cult working in there—it’s so dense and so remote that you could almost build a Center in there if you had the resources, and no one would know. He was most certainly wearing a tracking device because they located the spot so quickly.” He gave a grim chuckle. “They were searching for enemies of the system and wound up tackling a group that probably never knew there was a system. It is entirely possible that they lived through the last thousand years without Master System even knowing of their existence.”
Cloud Dancer, who was becoming a bit more sophisticated in modern ways, asked, ‘Is that possible?”
“Oh, yes, but only in remote and primitive areas. Parts of Borneo, and the Philippines, a few remote places in Asia and Africa, and in the northern part of South America. They were so primitive and so ignorant that they simply weren’t worth going after. They were already at the level Master System wanted.” He sighed. “You know, in spite of the tattoos and the obvious mental filtering we all do, she was quite a pretty young girl. You would never think of that face and form and Silent Woman in the same context, yet if you stared closely enough you could see how it might be the same person, ravaged, and older.”
“But how did she wind up a slave of the Illinois?”
Star Eagle answered. “I’m working on that. I can’t give you specific scenes but I have some data. They were taken to Amazon Center and put through the usual mill and found to be just what they appeared to be. Most of them had all memories of the incident erased and were put right back in their village, but not her. Somebody important took to her. Since she couldn’t understand anything of what was being said nor even comprehend where she was, it’s impossible to tell who. One thing is for certain—they went to great pains to isolate her from the wonders of Center and to keep her ignorant. They kept her outside in a caged-off area that was very primitive. Then there are big gaps, and the next thing I can find, she’s being paddled up the Mississippi on a trader canoe. You figure it out. She couldn’t.”
“I keep going back to that baby,” Hawks muttered. “That makes no sense unless . . . ” Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “Get Raven. I know he’ll just love this, but I want him to get the trauma scene.”
“But it’s—horrible,” Cloud Dancer protested.
“Uh huh. But I want an experienced field agent to get a good look at those two medicine men. A really good look.”
Raven was shaken by the experience as they all had been, but he nodded sourly. “Medicine men, my ass,” he muttered. “If I ever get my hands on Bends With the Wind or Jonny Motoia I’ll personally take pleasure in snapping their necks real slow.”
“You know them, then?” Hawks thought he had the key now.
“Yeah. Bends With the Wind looked and sounded real authentic there, but he’s no Illinois. He’s a Huron without the haircut. Field agent for the upper lakes. They must have imported him special and given him a good mindprint. The other one’s Motoia—from one of them screwy California tribes, but not a field man. Deputy chief of security at Center, that’s who. This was big, whatever it was.”
“We may never really know, but I think I can guess what happened,” Hawks told them. “You remember China’s father—the experiment to breed a race of superhumans under Master System’s nose? I think this was something like that. Somebody else’s project, of course, totally independent. They needed guinea pigs for their tests and experiments before they risked it on anybody important. She probably was far from the only one, but word leaked out to Master System. The heat was on, and they had to get them out quickly and quietly. They could have just killed them, but that would have wasted a valuable experiment. To disperse them, though, using contacts in North America, would make sense. Later on they could be tracked down and analyzed after everything blew over. It probably sounded like a good bargain to a younger Roaring Bull or his predecessor. She’s your slave, do anything you want with her, but you can’t kill her or sell her. Otherwise, no charge.”
“Yeah, but she was capped off, Chief,” Raven said.
“Mindprinter, probably. Strictly for security. She was stuck with her native language and no other. Couldn’t learn more’n a few words, most likely. That way she’d never be able to tell anything about her past or blow the cover. She also changed too fast. Got fat, got dumpy, got gray and faded and worn and saggy. Clayben might be able to tell more, but it was probably side effects of whatever was done to her. One thing’s for sure—you’ll never be able to find it out from the guy who did it. They tracked ’em down, found she was pregnant, waited for the birth, and then did in the kid real nasty. Why? That was orders. Why that way—well, it made a better cover to declare the child born with birth defects and have a public ceremony. They were a little too enthusiastic about it, though, the bastards. That extra cruelty wasn’t necessary.”
“But why the child?” Cloud Dancer asked. “Why not just kill or take her and avoid all that needless suffering?”
“I doubt if we’ll ever know the whole story,” Hawks told her, “but I suspect whatever was done to these women was a one-shot thing. They were to have one child only. Roaring Bull said she was barren after. If they came in and just took Silent Woman, there would have been resentment. Better to simply wait, kill the child as Master System ordered under the guise of the religious codes, and let it go. They knew the women involved were innocent dupes. I wish I knew what the experiment was. What did they see in that child that warranted such a thing?”
“Beats me,” Raven said, “but they didn’t have to go to those lengths. Maybe they were a bunch of little potential Vultures, or something just as nuts. Speaking of which, any word?”
Hawks shook his head. “No, none, and it’s been a long time. The sheer primitiveness of the place frustrates me. I think sometimes that the fleet off Chanchuk would have been easier. We are good at fighting modern battles, technology against technology, and that sort of problem solving. We’ve gotten the probes in and around Chanchuk in spite of all their efforts.”
“You know we don’t have the strength to go head-to-head with them again. Not for a while. I got to admit I’m gettin’ antsy, too, Chief. We depend on Vulture too much. Still, it’s damn near impossible to do this without an inside man, and there’s just no way to infiltrate these places otherwise. I’d like to get a couple of people down on Chanchuk buildin’ up information, casing the joint, but there’s no way we could get anybody down with access to a Center. We could send some people in and have ’em live the field life, maybe, but they’d be stalled and stuck there until we had our inside man with inside information.”
“There have got to be other ways to do it,” Hawks responded. “Got to be. Suppose the Matriyeh business takes years? Suppose we don’t hear from them even then? Raven, I want to assemble a study team. Some of our experienced people and Star Eagle to work out alternate methods. I don’t want to bite off more than we can chew, but if there are ways, I want to know them. We’re not even halfway yet. Use Savaphoong, too. That bastard knows a lot he isn’t telling us, but I think he’ll be anxious to show he’s valuable. For years he bought and sold information from just about every freebooter ship around. He can access that information the way Clayben did with his programs. Remember, it isn’t just infiltrating. We have to get them out under pressure with minimum cost—and even if we managed all four rings we might have a hell of a fight when we go for Chen.”
Raven shrugged. “I’ll see what if anything we come up with. But our best chance is still Vulture, you know.”
“If Vulture is even alive . . . ”
It had been a harrowing ten days for Vulture, but now it was going to pay off. The forbidden holy area was a deep cleft in the rock where two lava flows had almost, but not quite, merged. The bird and tree symbols were etched into the rock on both sides of the entrance, which then turned sharply, blocking any view of what lay beyond. The symbols were slightly worn but impressively carved in the rock, certainly by some technical means and not by hand. They were too uniform. The detail was quite good, and she couldn’t resist removing the dummy ring from her necklace and comparing the design on it with the ones etched in the rock.
The tree was stylized, but had two clear branches under its canopy, one on the right hanging down a bit more than the one on the left, and on that branch was the figure of an impressive if stylized bird. The ring and the design matched pretty well; to the trained eye there were minor differences, but if they weren’t carefully compared, it was impossible to tell the ring was false. The ring’s image was so much smaller it compensated for some of the flaws.
She carefully replaced the ring in its holder and tried to decide what to do. She could find out what was in there, of course, but there was a strong possibility that it was booby trapped. It was even remotely possible that there was some visual connection with the computer at the main installation, and it wouldn’t do to have a common native show up on those sensors. It might bring a force far too large to deal with.
That had been the problem with this assignment. Limits. Vulture didn’t like to think she had limits; none of the weapons here could really harm her, and she could eat anyone and become them with all their knowledge and memories. But enough of her could be ripped apart or consumed to make it impossible to effect self-repair, and she was the only one of her kind. If they knew, if they even suspected that one such as she existed, they’d pull out all the stops to capture or kill her. Disrupter fire had allowed her to kill a Val; disrupter fire from a Val could kill her.
She had been here a couple of days. It might be weeks or even months before a truth-bearer happened to be in the area again alone, and she knew from her previous experience as Uraa that within a tribe the truth-bearer was never alone or isolated enough to eat. Eating took time, and in this instance demanded privacy. There was ample food here and shelter, too, but the large tribe that controlled the area was also nearby. She had seen them more than once, and they appeared to be on the verge of splitting, having become too numerous to be manageable by a single chief. Then would come the ritual of the culling, in which the chief would choose a group and essentially divorce them; these would be the ones who didn’t pull their own weight or had in some way irritated the chief. They and their children would be marked, branded, and sent away. Within days, one would develop into a new chief, and they would have to find a new area to live. The ritual was unusual here only because this was a prosperous area, rich in food and shelter and with fewer dangers. This indicated a far higher survival rate than the racial norm.
It also meant a stranger was more likely to be killed than taken in if found by the larger tribe.
The process, however, was not automatic. Chiefs were aggressive and ambitious and wouldn’t mind their tribe growing as large as they could feed and control, but to get too large could lead to new ideas, like planting crops and building permanent settlements, and that was heresy. It was the truth-bearers who forced the ritual culling on the tribes, and so a truth-bearer had to be with them. Vulture thought it unlikely that a priestess in this area wouldn’t take time to drop by the holy place. There would, after all, have to be a report.
It was six more days before something happened, and then Vulture almost missed it. Bored, impatient, and half starved, she’d carved out a hiding place with good shelter against storms and other irritants and just waited. Only her incredibly keen senses woke her to the sound of someone walking through the forest. At first she had trouble locating the sound, and then was very cautious, making certain it was someone alone and not a scout or castaway or some lost individual from a hunting party.
The truth-bearer might have been the same one who caused them all the problems, since they all looked and sounded pretty much alike, but it didn’t matter. The priestess stopped suddenly and tilted her bald head, obviously sensing Vulture’s presence. Vulture was too desperate to care about risks at this point; she removed her necklace and belt and then walked out into the clearing and approached the truth-bearer boldly, then bent on one knee.
“Lost sister?” the priestess asked, confused but hardly frightened. “What be sister name? Why sister be here?”
“Uraa be lost, alone, long time,” she responded. “Uraa beg just . . . touch truth-bearer.” She rose and before the priestess could react, Vulture put her arms around the priestess and hugged.
The truth-bearer stiffened, then froze, mouth agape, eyes wide, unable to move. The process had begun; Vulture began to feed almost immediately.
The two bodies merged together and seemed to flow, to mix into a single mass in which only vague remnants of the human forms were visible. They became a single, bubbling, seething mass; the truth-bearer’s cloak was suddenly freed as the last of the head melted into the great, pulsating mass, and it was caught in a breeze and blew away, catching in a tree. Nothing happened for several minutes, and then from the center of the mass, the top of a head appeared, unfinished, ill-formed, like a new casting of wax around a skull. Slowly, more and more of a human body emerged, with long stringy bits of goo peeling off and collapsing back into the pool. Now it was a full figure, stuck like a plant growing out of the still-pulsating mass, and then the details began to develop. The face, the breasts, the navel, everything began to take shape as if fading into the blank mold from nowhere, until, at last, the naked form of the truth-bearer stood there, while the skin turned the proper dark shade and the bold tattoos came in.
Finally she opened her eyes and looked around, and then stepped from the mass, whole. While the new figure seemed dizzy and uncertain of itself, it forced itself to reach down into the still-seething muck of blood and slime and find first the staff and then the necklace, pouch, and belt of the truth-bearer. They were covered with the muck, but the figure didn’t seem to care. She turned, spotted the cape, which had escaped most of the process, and walked unsteadily to it, picking it up but not putting it on. Then she walked, still unsteady, back into the jungle until she found a place that felt safe and afforded some shelter. Then and only then did she sink down and collapsed into a near-comatose sleep.
When Vulture again opened her eyes, it was very dark, with no way to tell through the dense clouds if it was early in the night or late. It didn’t matter. The new data was already settling in and sorting out in her mind. The memories of Uraa were joining the memories of the others who she had taken over the years, while new memories existed in the duplicated brain of the truth-bearer, the memories and personality of someone quite different.
It seemed that truth-bearers had both names and ratings, although such things were not for the masses. The masses were ignorant, and must be kept so, lest they overpopulate themselves and grow and destroy their people and their world. The Chosen Ones were the discipline and guardians of the masses, and theirs was a sacred duty. She was Omaqua, Flower of the Spirits, a Guardian Third Rank. Even the truth-bearers didn’t have much long-term time sense, but Vulture made her out to be perhaps nineteen or twenty.
She had been born and raised in the land of the Chosen Ones in the Middle Country, which was forbidden to the masses and guarded by steep mountains, the way in and out known to only a few. There, below the Great Temple carved out of the side of an inner mountain, was a valley containing something unique on Matriyeh—a village with cultivated land. It was not much of a village, really—huts made out of straw and bamboolike materials, the land carefully tended by the young who lived there—but compared to the rest of the continent it was remarkable.
The permanent residents were few; these were the elder priestesses, the leaders of the whole religion and its authority and inspiration, who had survived long years in the field and shown their devotion and their toughness. That was the first rank.
The second rank was the long-experienced truth-bearers, those who had been out in the field for a long time and knew the land and tribes and people and had undergone much. They supervised broad territories and correlated reports from the subordinates, and returned to the village at regular intervals to teach the young.
When each of the young reached puberty, they were then put through a purifying ritual in the Great Temple, and were given drugs so that each was for a period the male and for a period the female, until all were impregnated.
Each was expected to bear and nurse two children; by this time they would be fifteen or sixteen, and would then undergo a second and far more dramatic ritual. To Omaqua, they were hazy but wondrous memories of the Great God and the Earth-Mother taking her into their spiritual tribe. Out of this would come the tattoos, small variations in which made each look unique, and a new name, and they became physically neuter. They lost all their hair, even pubic hair, save only their brows and lashes, and became hard, lean, and muscular, and their appearance was now the same as all the other truth-bearers. They even lost interest in their children; the masses were their children now.
Then began what must have been a year of training, including field trips to some tribes outside, to ease the new truth-bearer into the job. Second-rank priestesses taught them, often forcing harsh decisions on the young ones, drilling them constantly and punishing them unmercifully until they all thought the same and all knew the same. When they were perfect, and only when they were perfect, did the second rank send them out, the only loners in a world of collectives, to administer the truth and guard the masses from heresy.
Vulture almost felt sorry for them. They spent all their time chanting and reciting the creed and law to themselves over and over, performing every ritual, and acting according to procedure in all cases when with tribes. They were the most thoroughly brainwashed individuals she’d ever seen, and lived lives where the only joy was living almost entirely in the spiritual world they had been taught to believe was real. Omaqua had not been the one who had visited them in the cave, but the truth drug, a hypnotic to which the priestesses were immune, was one tool that could be used in some cases. There were many other drugs, as well, and they could be drawn from the holy places.
Things were both good and bad. No longer subject to biochemical whims and linkages and trained to operate as a loner and individual, she was now far better suited for the mission and would find it easier to operate as Vulture. She could also literally protect a tribe if she wanted, since they would not be attacked with a truth-bearer in the way, and she could mediate between two groups with great authority. She also had imprinted in her memory the specifics and locations of more than forty tribes, as well as their territories and the best routes for safely getting between them. Unfortunately, natural hazards and lava snakes and misum didn’t know the privileged role of truth-bearers, which was why longevity in the field was the primary prerequisite for advancement to second rank—that and not making mistakes.
Basically, third-rankers couldn’t go home again—ever. They had to be promoted. Well, she thought, that wouldn’t be an insurmountable problem in the long run. Sooner or later one of the Holy Sisters would have to show up for a report, and, if alone, could provide a quick promotion for Vulture. If not alone, well, terrible things happened to people in the field.
It was a good thing she hadn’t tried the holy place earlier, it was more than just booby trapped, it was first a psychological and then a physical horror. Such things, however, no longer concerned her. She waited three hours until dawn, then sought out the stream and washed the cloak, herself, and peeled off the now-putrid goo from the staff and necklace. The bag she did the best she could with; she couldn’t really clean it completely and save all the stuff in the compartments inside.
Finally she was ready. She checked where the mass that had given birth to her had been, and it was now rotten, smelling of carrion and overrun by insects. Such was the remains of Uraa, let her rest. She almost forgot Uraa’s artifacts, but remembered and went back for them. They weren’t worth much, but the necklace contained a very large charm of particular importance. Eventually she’d have to figure out a way to put it permanently on her new necklace, which had the intricately carved religious totems, but for now she just put it in the bag.
Almost immediately after she entered the passage beyond the symbols of bird and tree, she was assaulted by demonic noises, terrible howls and shrieks, and visions of terrible monsters looming ghostly in front of her. She said the required prayers and made the proper signs almost habitually; the demon guardians didn’t worry her since she was used to them, but they would have scared even the toughest chief on Matriyeh half to death. Beyond them was the Wall None Can See But Kills. Again, it was simply a matter of standing in a particular spot and saying the holy prayers of supplication to make it vanish, but only truth-bearers knew those prayers and those symbols and exactly where to stand. Vulture knew that she would have easily walked straight into that lethally charged forcefield if she’d tried it earlier, and something like that might well have killed even her.
Finally she reached the shrine. All the forbidden places looked different but were actually quite uniform, with the same demonic horrors, forcefield, and the shrine. They were always at sources of fresh water—this one had a small waterfall—and they all had a small gardenlike area at the center of which was a stone tree that looked just like the symbol. On its right branch was a large stone bird unlike anything on Matriyeh. For the first time the symbol was made large enough to see that the tree bore some odd kind of fruit, but she couldn’t make out what it was. Vulture submerged her mind and became completely Omaqua. She removed her belt and bag, her cape, and all necklaces and other ornaments and was totally nude. She walked to the stone tree and bird, and prostrated herself in front of it.
“Spirit of Holy Place, hear Omaqua the Low Ranked. Give Omaqua spirit blessing.”
And a voice, a male voice that was gentle and quiet yet had great power within it, said, “Speak.”
And Omaqua spoke, and told everything that had happened to her since her last report. She confessed every doubt and error, she told of everyone she met, of all the things she observed, the disputes settled, the rituals performed—everything. Omaqua truly felt that she was in the presence of a great spirit, and that compared to it, she was less than a bug. She truly worshipped and wanted only to be commanded.
“Omaqua imperfect,” the voice responded when she’d finished. “Need to purify. Rise. Embrace tree.”
She trembled and did as instructed, wrapping her arms and legs around the trunk of the stone carving. Suddenly she was drawn and stuck to it as if by some great and powerful magnet and could not move. What followed was a strange and terrible afternoon, as one after the other every one of her confessed sins, doubts, and errors was paraded before her mind and dealt with over and over again with painful shocks. At first she cried out, but even that brought punishment.
There was no instruction, no admonition. As each guilty thought was presented, she had to welcome the pain and work out for herself what was wrong and why, and then it was eliminated from the sequence. Finally, when all errors and sins were dealt with, the range of mental emotions was played. Mercy, compassion, even guilt were sins that had to be banished from the soul. One had to be cold, unfeeling, totally objective in all things, and devout and obedient only to the spirit world.
Vulture had the ability to cut herself off from this, to bury herself in a dark corner while it went on. It was this same ability that would allow her to pass a stringent mind-probe from the most skillful psychophysicist, even a computer. The mechanism for the “cleansing,” however, was far easier to understand and elude. The tattoos themselves were some sort of conductors through which other remote devices could operate directly on the nervous system and pain centers. It was clear that the ritual that made a girl a priestess was similar to the conditioning process that Thunder used to make its own Matriyehans or Janipurians.
It ended, however, in a rush of religious ecstasy for Omaqua, in which the pleasure centers were directly tapped and every physical sensation of pleasure was released at once. No wonder they went through it without complaint, even with excitement—the payoff was extraordinary.
Eventually it was so much, she passed out from sheer pleasure.
The recovery was rather slow; she gradually woke up with all her pleasure cells tingling, not even able to think, and she lay there and let it slowly fade over several hours. There was a deep longing for it to return, of course, but mostly there was a feeling of gratitude that such an experience had been permitted. There was near rapture at being the lowest slave of the lowest of spirits. Eventually she would attain perfection, a time when there was no punishment, no cleansing, needed, and that was what every truth-bearer strived for.
Vulture worried that perhaps a total mindprint could be taken this way. If so, hers would be seamless until she met this strange girl near the gates of this shrine and then there would be only the memory of waking up, bathing, and cleaning, and then coming here—a gap that a computer would notice. She doubted, though, that anything that elaborate could be done without a complete mindprinter being present. More likely this was just a preprogrammed sequence the truth-bearers could trigger. They did it—pain, pleasure, and judgment—to themselves in response to the proper signals.
It sure as hell kept the priestesshood honest.
The next morning, she ritually bathed in the pool and then spent the whole day in prayer and supplication. On the third morning, the spirit revealed to her the cache that was always there, with fresh drugs and other things, as well, such as the purification vessel. She undid the stopper and poured a measure into a gourd cup and then drank it while sitting in front of the tree. It put her almost at once into a stupor, and Vulture had to act fast to keep from being trapped as she had been with the magic sand. That, however, had been inhaled; this was drunk, and took longer. Knowing it was coming and how it worked, she had been able to prepare for it.
Vulture thought that it was going to be simply another recitation of the drills of truth-seeking, since Omaqua had no memories of anything else in past shrines, but it was not. It was a command in a language Omaqua didn’t even realize she knew. Vulture, however, did know it, although in a different form. It was spoken in a crisp, sexless voice—and it was French.
“We believe that demons from the stars might be here in our own form. These demons will be very difficult to tell from normal people, but we are particularly concerned about their chief. Continue administering the compulsive hypnotics to all chiefs and be alert for anything odd or unusual, any heresies of even the slightest degree, in anyone. Anyone expressing curiosity about the location or even the existence of the Holy Temple is to be immediately reported and tracked. They are dangerous and will kill even a priestess so if they cannot be contained with drugs do nothing overt or suspicious, but report immediately. Until further notice, you are to do a cleansing whenever you are within one day of a shrine, even if the two are very close together. All strays are to be drugged and interrogated. Second-rank personnel are deployed in the area surrounding the accesses to the Holy Temple. You are to obey their orders without question as if they came from the gods themselves. Any command given in the Holy Tongue is to be obeyed instantly. Condition Orange. Repeat, Condition Orange.”
“Oui, mon commandant,” Omaqua responded.
“You will not consciously remember this message or this tongue, but you will obey all instructions. Now, you will put all that is past out of your mind, and you will go away as new and spread the truth and live in perfection. Upholding the truth and the guard, attaining personal perfection, and absolute obedience are your sole reasons for living. Now, awaken, and go!”
She awoke, feeling newly born and wonderful. Vulture was startled, as well, by the transformation; even she couldn’t access that message nor anything at all in French from anywhere in Omaqua’s memory. That was one hell of a mindprinter program. Only the fact that she had been monitoring from her external memory outside Omaqua’s mind made the experience real at all. But several suspicions had been confirmed and new knowledge gained.
There were two people, two personalities, in each priestess’ body. One the humble and ever-vigilant Matriyehan truth-bearer, the other a dedicated soldier in the SPF. Somewhere back in there, an entire third personality was possibly submerged. Could it be, perhaps, a mindprint of the first members, the ones trained and raised in space as soldiers? Possible. At least it confirmed that every fear the rebels had had was true, including the fact that they were already suspected of being on Matriyeh.
It had to be driving Master System mad that such a long time had passed after Thunder’s big success without any sign of an attempt on another ring. The more that passed, the more paranoid the big master machine would become that it was missing something obvious. Of course, it was also a bit ironic. Because of its own elaborate plan, there wasn’t much it could do to this world that it hadn’t already done.
Vulture left the shrine feeling much more in control again, although it still wasn’t going to be easy surviving in this place nor even getting back to the valley, something which, after provisioning herself, was absolutely essential. Too much time had been wasted, but she now had some of the tools and authority needed to get the job done. At least the way back would be relatively open; no more dangerous diversions into lava-snake country to avoid being spotted. Truth-bearers came and went as they pleased and explained to no one, and if she got into trouble this time she would not hesitate for a moment to yell for help.
Still, it was a journey of many days, and not for the first time did Vulture curse the fact that the culture here didn’t even allow for domesticated animals of the sort one could ride in a hurry.
It was a stormy day when Vulture reached the main pass into the valley. The swirling clouds above were matched by solid clouds below; the only clearing was the space, perhaps two or three hundred meters, between lower and upper cloud layers that was the region of the pass. The cruel, dangerous, and spectacular Matriyeh lightning was everywhere, going from upper to lower layer and, finally, beneath the impenetrable lower fog.
Not far away she could hear the deep hisses and roars of lava snakes disturbed and frightened by the lightning, and she stopped short of the start of the fog-shrouded area, wondering if it was safe or even good sense to continue. If visibility waned all the way to the valley, then it would be a dangerous descent and not one to be attempted now. Still, the storm looked stationary; the pattern was circular and when that happened it might last for days. She decided to risk it, at least for a ways. The trail was reasonably marked by the impressions even bare feet made on rocks over the years.
Even so, it was a nerve-wracking descent, with visibility quickly decreasing to less than a meter, and the trail more identifiable by feel than by sight. At just about the point where she was deciding to go back up and wait for the fog to lift, it began to thin, but that was only a slight improvement as now the rain began. Below her the dark-green forest was swept by wind and rain while patches of white and gray fog churned above. Here and there the yellow-orange fingers of lightning snaked down and struck, accompanied by thunderous roars that echoed up and down the valley and bounced off mountain walls, often starting rock slides that began slowly and then gathered force as they crashed down into the valley below.
I must be an idiot to be out wandering in this stuff, Vulture thought sourly. Even the toughest tribe members down there were under shelter someplace and praying to appease the storm demons. She knew she, too, had to find shelter and food and wait it out herself; there was no chance of finding her old tribe while this went on except through sheer luck, and that luck had already been pressed far enough.
Once under the relative shelter of the forest canopy, she set about finding that shelter, eventually settling on a deep depression inside a rocky outcrop. The area showed signs of recent use, but there was no one there now. Food would have to wait for the rain to stop.
It took two and a half days for Vulture to find Manka tribe, and the only reason it was easy was because of the large amount of smoke rising from its midst. She was too late; the battle had already happened, and now the dead were being tended to. It appeared to have been quite bloody; numerous corpses were being piled up beside the makeshift pyre for the firebearer’s attention. There was no way to tell who had won or how many the new tribe contained without getting in close enough to identify individuals. Well, Vulture thought sadly, if there’s any good time for a priestess to show up it’s now. Except on a personal level it was almost irrelevant who’d won. This was now a major tribe and not one that could move unobtrusively into forbidden territory.
First things first, Vulture decided. First we find out who won and how many survivors of our original band are left, then we go from there. She walked boldly past the perimeter guards and into the gathering, toward the fire.
She estimated the group to be about fifty adults, many of whom were sullen and on their knees, hands and feet bound, under the watch of a few guards. Those would be the losers waiting to be made members of the new tribe.
The arrival of a truth-bearer stirred more excitement than concern. It would be taken as a sign by the victor that the gods blessed their ascension to the top in this valley.
The sight of Silent Woman standing as firebearer reassured Vulture a little, although it didn’t mean victory for Manka. The other firebearer might have been killed, for example. There were signs of fresh wounds on several of the women, and even Silent Woman had a deep gash on her arm and another along her left thigh. This had been no picnic. Such warfare was not at all rare on this world and only the toughest, most vicious members would survive.
A very young looking woman wearing a couple of sisu-leaf bandages and with a number of freshly healed scars on one cheek came up to Vulture and kneeled. “Oosa greet Truth-bearer,” she said softly, as if Vulture were expected. “Wait. Oosa bring chief.”
“What chief Oosa bring?” the new truth-bearer asked. “This be what tribe?”’
“Maka tribe, holy truth-bearer.”
“Sosa?”
The girl gestured slightly to the pile of corpses.
“Go. Bring great Maka chief,” Vulture instructed, and Oosa was off. So at least Warlock and Silent Woman remained, but how many more of the original eight survived?
Manka Warlock had been in one hell of a fight and it showed. She had several wounds under treatment and she was limping, although not badly. It was clear from her bearing, though, that she was mighty pleased with herself. The day’s work, for all its cost, was probably the most fun the bloodthirsty security agent had had in years, and it must have been quite impressive—the kind of stuff you tell and embellish over evening fires for years to come. Before, the tribe members had mostly looked upon her as anyone does on their boss or leader; now the looks were absolutely radiant, adoring. She did not kneel but merely said, “Maka greets truth-bearer at time of great victory.”
Vulture recognized Maria Santiago and Midi in the adoring retinue, and a couple of others added to the tribe before she’d left, but those plus Silent Woman were the only familiar faces.
For the time being, Vulture had to suppress everything but the truth-bearer persona and say all the right things, do all the right rituals and prayers, and preside over a most unpleasant banquet of human flesh. From their point of view, it was not as barbaric as it seemed, of course; it was the highest honor to a foe who had fought valiantly and hard, and it was believed to transfer the finest attributes of a dead warrior to the victors. Fortunately for Vulture’s sense of propriety, though, truth-bearers never partook of such fare, being blessed of the gods and above need of that sort of thing.
The ritual was a natural conclusion to the biochemical trigger Maka was even now experiencing, wherein she would become sexually insatiable for several days, bringing all the losing survivors into her tribe and under her control and reasserting supremacy among her own. It would die down quickly, but from that point they would be one tribe, one unit.
Finally, when all the victors had partaken of the cannibal feast, the rest of the remains were thrown into the fire. The next day, the survivors of the losing side would sift through that pile and find bones from which new totems would be fashioned for Maka tribe.
Vulture decided that information was what was needed first, and picked Maria Santiago to isolate. She was tough and smart and the best one to start with. One did not question a truth-bearer’s actions; it was unthinkable. Only Maka could object, and Maka was preoccupied with other duties. Thus it was easy to isolate Man one night and induce some magic from the substances in the truth-bearer’s bag of chemical tricks.
Vulture figured that any hypnotic drug strong enough to push them all over the line was strong enough to bring them back. To insure privacy, it would also all be done in an alien tongue, which only the Thunder team could understand although not speak themselves. Thanks to the dozen or so people the creature had been before, it had command of many languages and was not inhibited by any mindprinter program. Vulture chose Spanish because it was Santiago’s native tongue, the one in which she thought when not mind-altered, and therefore the one probably easiest to reach. When Santiago was clearly under the drug, seated near a tree and far from the rest of the tribe, Vulture began.
“Mari feel good,” she started in Matriyehan. “Mari feel safe. Mari not see, hear, smell, feel but truth-bearer. Just Mari and truth-bearer be. No other. No tribe. No Earth-Mother. Nothing.”
Mari smiled, eyes closed, completely relaxed. Vulture switched to Spanish. It might not have been Mari’s dialect, but it was closer than anything else. Any responses, of course, would have to be in Matriyehan.
“Who are you?” Vulture asked.
“Mari Maka,” breathed the girl.
“Where was Mari Maka born?”
“Earth-Mother bear Mari Maka.”
“Who is Maria Santiago?”
She frowned, then looked confused, eyes still closed. “Mari—not—know,” she responded, but the inner conflict was already clear.
“Capitan Maria Santiago, commander of the spaceship San Cristobal, freebooter and leader, come forth! The Thunder calls you!”
Her face twisted up; she was clearly confused and fighting Vulture’s command. “All dead,” she responded. “Maria tribe all dead. Be Maka tribe now.”
Vulture was no psychiatrist; she was not really human at all, but all those minds inside her, all those memories, male and female, professional and commoner, gave her a unique understanding of the human mind. Suddenly she realized why it had been so easy for them to go native, to fall into this trap.
Maria had lost her ship; she’d lost her command. Was there guilt there, even though it hadn’t been her fault? Was this the punishment of a commander who’d lost her ship and somehow survived while many of the crew did not? Did she somehow feel she had to be punished for not joining them? Or was it a combination of things? On Matriyeh, any defeat of a chief meant death or abject subjugation. Had, somehow, the Matriyehan values bridged the cultures, so that she had begun to look upon, even dwell upon, the loss of her ship and some of the crew in totally Matriyehan terms? How could it be otherwise, since she was forced to think Matriyehan?
And the others? The two Indrus women had lost everything, too. In Matriyehan terms they were nothing unless they were members of a tribe, and here they were. And with the biochemical link, Matriyehans of a previous tribe had an obligation to put any previous tribe and loyalty and friendships from their minds. They had been made members of a new tribe, with new loyalties, and everyone else was gone from the old life anyway. It had taken only that slight hypnotic push to allow them to do what their impulses and inner voices were urging them to do all along. It removed that veneer of civilization that had kept them fighting to retain control.
Had they underestimated Master System? Was this the trap of Matriyeh, in which the very language, values, and biochemistry worked to make any alien a true member of this violent society? They were on the edge of control as it was, and it took only the single act of the drug to cut the last link, the last intellectual fight between alien and native. It was the power of that very pull, which Vulture hadn’t really understood, that caused her to want more people down with her on this mission. It was insidious. If you came as an alien, you tripped every damned alarm in the quadrant. If you came as a Matriyehan, the whole thing was designed to make you totally Matriyehan.
Warlock? She never much believed in missions and causes anyway. She just liked to hurt and kill people; she always had been a sadomasochist. To her, as chief, Matriyeh must be a fantasy come true. As for Midi and Taeg—they’d been cast out by their boss, threatened with death unless they joined up and came down, and they were at the mercy of ones they had betrayed up in space. They had no stake in the mission—they’d just gotten out of Halinachi when they could with their boss—and had nowhere else to go. All things considered, they were better off and more secure down here in this hell than they were anywhere else.
And that left Vulture out on a limb. Could any of them be brought back? It was far easier for the first truth-bearer to cut the thread, giving them what every fiber of their being was craving, than to retie it.
“You can have a new ship, Maria Santiago,” Vulture whispered soothingly. “You can have your revenge on the whole system of evil that caused you to lose the first. You are strong. You are tough. You can fight the great evil or you can run from it and be Mari forever. Will you fight or will you run away?”
It was a difficult struggle within her, for she had locked out the past willingly but now it was being forced through the doorways of her mind. The response, when it came, was frustratingly Matriyehan.
“Not Mari place choose fight or run. Chief say fight, Mari fight. Chief say run, Mari run. Mari no chief no more.”
Vulture spat in frustration, growing angrier by the moment. “Look up, Mari. Look at the sky. Look beyond the sky to the stars, to space, to many suns and many worlds. It is your birthplace. You loved it once, and were willing to fight and die for it. To be free among the stars, almost a goddess. No holds, nothing but the stars and love and adventure. Feel the thrill of first thinking of this as a young girl. Think of San Cristobal not as something lost but as something gained. If it meant so little to you that you can snuff it out, then why was it important at all? Remember your loves, Maria Santiago! Remember your dreams!”
And she looked up, and her eyes grew wide, and she remembered. Had Vulture used Matriyehan or Maria been limited so that she could not even understand any language but that one, it might have been a lost cause, But the old tongue and the strong, evocative images it could create in its melodic, poetic tones touched something that was always there inside her. Forty years could not be so shut out when it had to be confronted in that frame and context. She saw, and remembered; remembered the poverty, the early struggles, the sense of accomplishment and achievement, the romance of the stars as well as the work involved. Why was it worthwhile? Why was it important? Was not the struggle, the fight to get what she had attained, and to keep it, equally important?
Fight it . . . Fight it . . . Did you work all that time, all that hard, to be chief or slave? Fight it . . .
She was still under the drug, but suddenly Vulture heard her utter, “Wha—what happen? What Mari do? . . . ”
“I am truth-bearer, and I am Vulture,” said the other, sighing with relief. “Vulture and truth are one. Now, say—what happened to the others?”
“Taeg . . . two spears in chest . . . gone. Dead. Aesa . . . have no heart to fight. Act, not do when kill or be killed . . . Midi . . . first no fight . . . then fight like demon . . . Suni first no fight, then see Aesa fall. Go crazy—kill, kill, kill. Still crazy in head, like animal. Euno . . . when first spear nick belly with child . . . become like wounded kutu, kill many, many Sosa tribe . . . They break . . . run. We chase . . . ”
Vulture nodded. And now there were six, she thought, and one of those is power drunk, another is still a psychotic mute, the third has gone violently mad, and a fourth was most likely worshipping her chief and figuring she finally had a replacement for Savaphoong.
Maria Santiago suddenly went wide-eyed in horror, staring at the tattooed, bald visage that was now Vulture, thinking much the same.
“Now what can sky tribe do?” she asked plaintively.
Vulture wished she knew. “Would Mari go back to sky now?”
She shook her head slowly from side to side. “No. Go back with finger bracelet or not go back ever.”
Even at a time like this, it was damned good to hear that again. No matter what, when her personal frenzy died down, it would be most convenient and necessary to have a little private talk with Manka Warlock.