TIME PASSED SLOWLY ABOARD THE THUNDER AS IT always did, but shipboard life continued to change. Children were born, expanding the colony even mope; children of two races with different physiologies and needs. Hawks himself was now a proud father. For a man of his cultural background he did not seem at all disappointed or upset that his first child was a girl, whom he and Cloud Dancer named Chaudiqua, a combination of their Hyiakutt names which meant Night Dancer.
Clayben, China, and Star Eagle continued to work on easier methods of penetrating the closed colonial worlds in Master System’s domain, and had some real success. Long-range reconnaissance indicated that Master System had finally managed to process all of its ships so that the access codes were different, and could be altered far more easily and quickly in the future. But with so vast an area and so many ships, stations, Centers, and satellites, it simply was impossible for Master System to change the entire surveillance and communications system, and thus the new challenge was not to feed the systems false information, as had been done with Pirate One, but rather to deflect or confuse those sensors so they would not report an intruder at all.
Thunder was moved to a system off the charts with no habitable worlds for a larger project of Star Eagle’s that was quite ambitious: nothing less than the construction of a small shipyard, entirely robotized, in which ships of new design—small but fast, well armed, and possibly piloted by only one or two people—could be constructed in modular sections using the larger transmuters and then assembled and tested. Part of the idea was not only to match the speed and maneuverability of the Val ships, as well as their firepower, but also to do so without killing any human pilots. Mechanisms had to be created to shield and protect those pilots from the incredible forces of acceleration and battle. The automated fighters of Thunder provided the basic outline for the type of craft they wanted, but did not have punch capability. The required mechanisms added weight and complexity to the new design and caused some problems they were still hammering out.
In the meantime, Vulture had been down on Matriyeh for many months, and there had been no communication with him for most of that period. As before, they had been forced to set him down in a remote and unpopulated area where he, as a Janipurian, had to make his way to civilization and then blend in as only he could. Hawks and the others often thought that they could see Clayben’s point in the great experiment that created Vulture. With a mere five or six Vultures there would be no problem in getting the rings; without one, it would be next to impossible.
As the time dragged on, though, with no word from the strange creature, Hawks began to harbor dark thoughts that they might have to go on without him. Vulture had so many strengths that it was quite natural that he felt himself invulnerable and therefore could become careless. But Vulture would be as helpless as any if surprised by a Val: there were a number of ways to destroy even such a thing as he, including incineration, disintegration, cellular disruption, and chemical baths. Like the werewolves and vampires of ancient legends, Vulture was fearsome—but, like them, he could still be killed. The key so far had been the ignorance of Master System and its minions that such a creature even existed. The records on Vulture had been destroyed, Clayben was on Thunder, and the few surviving scientists who had known about the project had long ago had their memories altered for their own protection. Their luck, however, could not last forever.
It was a great relief, then, when word came that Vulture had at last activated the signaling devices and was requesting a pickup from the surface of Matriyeh. It had been over eight months. Unlike the Janipur mission, they needed to bring Vulture back aboard and analyze both the new mind and new body he had taken on when he had absorbed his native persona, and they also needed first-hand consultation.
The body was that of a tall, thin woman with long, muscular legs and small, firm breasts. The arms, too, were muscular when flexed, showing surprising power. The skin was a very dark brown, so dark as to be almost black, the color extending not just to the skin but to the palms and soles of the feet and other such areas, as well. The black hair was thick and woolly, but the natural curls were much larger than those of an Earth-human of one of the sub-Saharan African races or Melanesians, and the features were delicate and more European than anything else. Save in the the groin, brows, and the underarms, there was no other hair on the body. The large eyes were jet black, and seemed slightly puffy or swollen and protruded more than was natural for an Earth-human. She was naked except for a thin, tough-looking vine hanging on her hips, but wore loose bracelets and anklets made of some vegetable material and dyed green and blue, and she wore earrings and a necklace of carved bones and thin wirelike vines.
She also had body markings on her cheeks, forehead, and around the breasts and groin. These were simple designs that seemed burned or tattooed in, although instead of the lighter discolorations one might expect the outlines were simply a lighter brown, and some, but not all, had been filled with various colors of paint or dye. Aside from that, the skin was remarkably smooth, without the kind of scars that might be expected. The thin, dark vine on her hips proved to be an intricately woven ropelike belt with loops to hold a blow gun fashioned of reeds, a small pouch made of some fibrous material, and she held in her left hand a long spear that was made of a stick or branch, carved straight, on which was mounted a smooth, sharp-pointed stone held on with more of the thin, wirelike vines that fitted into notches in the shaft.
“You must bear with me,” Vulture said apologetically in a firm, husky soprano, “but it is more difficult to readjust from this form than from the others. Let us go to the village where I won’t feel so—closed in.”
Many of the others crowded around as she entered the central area of Thunder, and at one point she gestured menacingly with the spear and said something unintelligible but obviously threatening. They backed off.
Someone brought her some water and she drank it and sank down on the grass. Hawks approached and sat opposite, and after a while Vulture was able to shake off enough of the native personality to seem almost her old self.
“We were right,” she told him. “The people are subject to an experiment and they are not quite as human as they appear. It is a brutal place, but disorganized enough that some independent movement and actions are possible even over large distances. It is sobering to see an entire society reprogrammed and their works wiped out. Their true colonial past exists in occasional ruins and odd artifacts here and there, and in vaguely remembered legends and half-truths, but not as a personal sort of thing. Their very language, while expressive, is clearly artificial, and as we expected, the north, at least, is more complex than it appeared.”
Slowly, but with professional thoroughness, Vulture sketched the basic structure of the society and its people.
They called themselves just the People, and no memories remained that any other people, or types of people, or other worlds even existed. There were the great gods who lived in the heavens and created and judged, the sun being the greatest and the two small moons the lesser; the stars were reflections of the lights in the villages of the gods at night. The world itself was filled with spirits; there were spirits of air, and water, and trees, and demons in the volcanoes. The People were entirely subject to the whims and occasional mercies of these spirits and while they were always praying to or attempting to please or placate them, they expected little. Life was a constant series of tests by the gods, a nearly endless cycle, lasting until the gods or some spirits had mercy and removed them to the heavenly realm, which was thought to be much like Matriyeh but with abundant food and eternal good health. To fail the tests of life set by the gods, spirits, and demons was to suffer; to succeed did not guarantee any reward. To rebel against the system, to question it or to try to make life easier, was a heresy that was punished with a slow, agonizing, tortuous death.
“The point is, you can’t even invent or introduce a more efficient weapon, nor plant a seed, although such things might occur to them. It would make things easier and change the tests of the gods and would be a heresy. There is food, of course, or they couldn’t survive, but they must spend their whole day searching for it. They can eat pretty much anything, but they are constantly on the move. The children are carried on the backs of their mothers in rope carriers, sometimes two or three at a time, and guarded communally during hunts. There is a high infant mortality rate anyway, so they have lots of kids almost constantly to make up for it. Pregnant people do the same work as ones that aren’t even when it’s well advanced, as food goes first to the hunters and gatherers, then to the children. These brands are tribal markings; the colorations indicate rank and position. In times or areas of plenty, there’s no problem with other tribes, but in hard times or when a territory is depleted they might war with one another.
“They have nothing but their weapons and what ornaments they can find time and material to make for themselves. They carry nothing with them on their endless journeys and camp wherever they wind up with enough food for the day or when darkness falls. It is far more deserted and desolate than you would think—a million or less on a continent perhaps thirty million square kilometers. One might go for days or even weeks without seeing a member of another tribe, but there’s a lot of ground to cover each day. The territories aren’t well defined; you go where you have to and hope you don’t have to fight somebody for it.”
Hawks nodded grimly as the others listened in hushed silence. “It sounds truly primitive, but you said it was complex.”
“It is. But before you can understand it, and all the bad news, you have to understand the basic biological differences between them and you. They are partially unisexual, which is why there are no men. I contain within me both sets of sexual equipment, as do they all, but all but one in a tribal group is biologically female. That one is the most aggressive, the nastiest, the most commanding personality, and hormones trigger the development of male characteristics, including a half-octave dip in the voice, and the growth of some sparse body hair, and male sex organs. That one then becomes the tribal group’s only male and its leader. However, if he loses the respect of the tribe—such as by cowardice or incompetence—the leader loses those characteristics, becomes fully female again, and is chased away into the bush. Within days another will take on the leader characteristics, sometimes by sheer force of will. There is occasionally a conflict that must be settled by force, but that’s rare. Only one can rule at at time, and the gender change seems to be triggered mentally in both directions. Naturally, if the leader dies another takes his place, and leaders have short lifespans because they have to be in the forefront and take the real responsibility.”
“That certainly explains that mystery,” Hawks agreed.
“As with most very primitive people, sex is a dominant part of their lives. Some of these charms are sexual totems, and phallic symbols are an all-consuming passion. Even rocks of the right shape take on mystical connotations. The tribal loyalty is more than just cultural, though—it’s chemical. Once you’ve had sex with the leader you simply don’t want to have sex with anybody else, though it’s no blind love or slavelike submission. You might hate the son of a bitch—which is not uncommon—but he’s the only one you want. In fact, if a tribe is in danger of depletion, the only way to increase its numbers is to stalk members of another tribe, capture them, and have the leader rape them. I told you it was a brutal place.”
Raven, the cynical commentator of the group, had been standing there listening with the others. “I see you don’t have the male characteristics,” he noted. “That’s not your style.”
“I couldn’t afford to. Too much responsibility and visibility. Besides, I don’t think I could maintain it very long. I duplicate a victim cell for cell, but they are false cells—duplicates with a difference beyond the ability of most analyzers to measure, but still false. I can neither bear nor father children of a race I am merely imitating, nor replicate myself. Not bearing children can be an advantage down there, although it’s the lowest status and likely to get you the job of scout or of testing rope and log bridges to see if they’re safe, but not fathering children is an unforgivable sin in a leader. I couldn’t maintain the male aspect very long, so it wasn’t worm trying.”
“Such a life,” China commented, shaking her head. “I think I would kill myself.”
“That is the cultural difference. You are not an individual down there, at least not in the greater sense—you are the component of a group. Racial survival depends on group survival. There is not a one there who would consider not sacrificing herself for the group. Bad luck is attributed to the will or capriciousness of the gods. To fail the tribe, however, is the only major dishonor. They would turn on anyone who did and that one would wish she had chosen death long before she actually died. Even a captive from another tribe turned to the new tribe would submerge herself in the new tribe and dismiss the old. It’s not the way we think, but it’s the only pragmatic means to survival. Suicide would weaken the group and is therefore a terrible crime, the worst kind of crime.”
“And what of those crippled, permanently injured, or deformed?” Hawks asked. “Are they simply killed?”
“Those who can’t contribute or keep up can’t be afforded. The people are pretty tough—this skin has the thickness of aged leather, the major bones are very hard to break, and the toleration level for pain is incredible—but accidents do happen, of course. When they do, in honorable service, there is a ritual done at night. Some of the plants down there produce powerful drugs that can be given to the crippled and that kill without pain or agony. Then . . . ” She stopped and sighed, not quite knowing how they would take it.
“Yes?” Hawks urged gently.
“Then the tribe eats them, so they always remain with the group. A valiant enemy may also be treated that way, as a mark of honor and respect. Little is wasted.” She fingered her necklace. “Some of these were carved from human bones.”
“So that’s what Master System plans for our future,” somebody growled, and there were lots of other murmurings, mostly angry. Hawks put a stop to it.
“Those of you who find this horrifying are ignorant of the cultures of some of your own ancestors. Nor is it any more terrible than some of the things some of us supposedly civilized and cultured people have inflicted on others with our technology. It is not right when our own kind practices such barbarism, but I think I understand this culture. I do not like it, but I understand it. Still, those of you sickened and repulsed by this should remember why we are doing what we are doing and against whom. We are not here to approve or disapprove. Each of us, I suspect, has things in their own culture they consider normal, proper, and civilized that would horrify others standing around here now. We need to know about this place. There is a ring there. Did I guess right about the unified theology?”
Vulture nodded. “Yes. Oh, there are minor differences but the whole culture is held together by a common set of gods and beliefs. The firebearer, which is the oldest female in the tribe—age is a mark of extreme respect down there, as you might imagine—and who has the flint stones to make fires, is the spiritual leader and gets training from the only nontribal people on the planet. They are quite easy to spot—they shave their heads and are almost as heavily marked as Silent Woman. They are called wassun, which basically means ‘truth-bearer.’ They are celibate females—no leader would dare touch one—and they are the authority. They remain with a tribe for short periods, and even participate in tribal activities, but mainly they teach theology to the firebringer and all others who are interested. They remain with a tribe until that tribe interacts with another, and then they cross over and go with the next one. That means their stay might be days or weeks or longer.”
“Ah!” Hawks said. “And where do they come from?”
“Well, they don’t officially come from anywhere—they’re regarded as always there, like the rest of nature. I only had encounters with two, but it took some time to determine that it was two, not one. They look and sound remarkably alike—like identical twins, almost—and are generally regarded as the same person. I was really tempted to become one of them but I could never get alone with one of them long enough to do it. They do more than counsel, though—they almost interrogate, only so smoothly and professionally you hardly realize it. They’re looking for any signs of heresies, deviations from the norm. And they have power. I realized what they were almost immediately—field agents, although they don’t realize it. They really believe this guff, too—I’m convinced of that. But when they talk to the gods, the gods sometimes answer back, in holy places prohibited to all but the wassun.”
“Oho! Now we’re getting someplace! So somewhere there’s a central authority with at least some access to technology,” Hawks said. “Could it be automated? A computer buried and self-maintained, for example?”
“I think not. The wassun come from some specific place and they report back there. I had a crazy idea that makes a lopsided kind of sense.”
“Go on.”
“Now, the SPF has a division for each race, right?”
“So we are told.”
“But what good are Matriyehans when their parent world is reduced like this? Not much. So what if that division were processed to become essentially the priesthood on Matriyeh? Make ’em all look the same, act the same, spout the same stuff. Any good psycho lab could do that and Master System could use the best. Make their commanders the high priestesses someplace, not necessarily large or fancy—give ’em just enough technology that they regard as magic to do the job, and take the reports.”
“Logical, but to what end? And how would they replicate themselves if they are celibate?”
“Well, celibate doesn’t mean barren. If the racial bond is chemical—and I can assure you from personal experience, it is—then maybe theirs is permanent or periodic, such as one year on, one year off. Who would notice? You’d have a closed hierarchy dedicated to maintaining the established order. In other words, everything you need in a Center without all a Center implies. The important part is that they seem to have access to technology. They couldn’t wait months for word to get back that something was going wrong, and they’d have to have the power to restore order. Not all the big devices like flyers and lasers, but mystical tools regarded as god-given devices for maintaining the natural order.
“But now comes the kicker. The system’s fragile. Do you realize what just one freebooter landing there would do to it? And it’s at least a century old, maybe more, so that would have to be taken into account. I kept asking myself why a world that they know and we know has a ring would be that undefended.”
“I think I can see where you’re going. I wouldn’t have wiped the minds of those troopers. There would have to be a control someplace. A monitoring computer with access to all the latest tools, able to mindprint the young priestesses with all the supernatural theology and monitor them. That’s why there are still survey satellites. If they get any hint of an alien presence or unauthorized technology, the priestesshood will become a fully operative SPF division again, with the knowledge of their own grandparents’ experience to draw upon and whatever technology and support they need to either deal with the alien menace or call in all the help they need.” He stopped a moment. “Whew! You realize what that means?’
“I think so. Stealing the ring would certainly trigger the system, so they must never know it’s stolen. We can’t use more than limited technology on the surface because that’s what all the monitors, human and mechanical, are looking for. The mere sight or report of anything out of the ordinary might be enough, we’d be suddenly faced with who knows what in the way of automated defenses plus a full SPF division. They’d call in every ship within reach, and this time they won’t underestimate our strength. Another battle like the last one could set us back years.”
“Pickup sticks,” Isaac Clayben said, and they all turned to him in puzzlement. “An ancient children’s game in my native land. Nothing more than a bundle of thin, straight sticks dropped in a heap from a small distance. The object is to remove each stick without moving or collapsing the rest of the pile. The one who removes most is the winner. This is like playing pickup sticks in an enemy minefield, except we don’t know the nature of the minefield or what will trigger it, so we must be extremely careful. They must not be permitted even an accidental chance to learn that we are there or ever were there.”
Vulture shrugged. “So I get in, and I get the ring somehow. The moment it leaves its home or somebody important turns up missing, the alarms ring and it’s all over. You’d never get me out.”
“Exactly. And I must frankly state that if the alarms go, those down there would have to be abandoned for the sake of the rest of us. If they came in full strength, they would easily locate the fighter and destroy it and install permanent monitors. Contact would be lost, perhaps for years, perhaps forever. It must be done right the first time.”
Vulture stared at her creator and all could sense the hatred there. When and if they had the rings, Clayben would be the new project for the strange creature, but for now Vulture would keep her word.
“There is simply no way to do this. We don’t know where it is, or what we’re facing. And, down there, as one of them, I react as a native. It’s impossible.”
“Maybe not,” Star Eagle put in through the speaker. “For one thing, I know where it must be.”
That startled all of them. “What? How?” Hawks asked.
“One satellite is geostationary, all its channels beamed to a single location. There can be no other reason for this than to allow an open channel of communication to the outside. It is in an area almost eleven hundred kilometers from our fighter station, and it’s quite central to the continent. It is logical that it is the religious center, and therefore the one with the ring. It is probably held by the highest-ranking priestess.”
“Big deal,” Hawks responded. “We don’t know what’s in there, or who, and we can’t land anybody even remotely close to that place. To escape detection we had to set that fighter down in one of the rare holes in the satellite surveillance, and the other locations are farther away. So Vulture’s got to be dropped down with nothing but what she’s got now, traverse eleven hundred kilometers of that hell without being noticed, scout out the whole place and become one of the high priestesses with access to the ring the first time, because anybody who mysteriously disappears will be missed. Then she takes the ring—and triggers the alarm.”
“We have one ring,” China pointed out. “Those of us who have seen another state that ours seems identical in all ways except the design on the face. If we knew the design on the ring below, we could use ours as a prototype for weight and feel, manufacture a dummy, and make a switch. I will wager that they do not put this ring under a microscope.”
Vulture nodded. “I thought of that. I believe I know the basic design, since it’s on everything owned by the truth-bearers that I saw. Anybody have paper and pencil? None of my incarnations has been an artist, but I’ll see what I can do.”
The only pads and pencils available were in the children’s nursery, and were quickly rushed in. Vulture made several attempts, drawing left-handed, before she finally got one that was approximately correct. A stylized, spindly tree with a tiny figure of a bird in it. “Damn! That’s just not quite right!”
“It will do,” Clayben responded. “If their markings were more exact and you studied them closely enough, we can pick it up in a mindprint. The whole stone area is only about three square centimeters, and we know the style and workmanship of the rings. It could be done. Not well enough to fool a full-fledged analysis, but certainly, I think, well enough to fool even someone who wears it daily. One rarely looks at rings; they are taken for granted. If they eventually notice, the thieves will be long gone. It is certainly worth a try.”
Vulture sighed. “Even if true, this is a situation where my . . . talents . . . will be of limited use. If we are correct, then I can eventually waylay and become a truth-bearer, but I will have to remain that person until the ring is well away. We just can’t have someone come in and later turn up missing, without triggering everything. If they are programmed SPF troopers, then we can’t pick one up and use her as a prototype either. As I discovered when I became the sergeant, they all have latent triggers. Mindprobe one and the subject dies unless a specific computer code is entered, unique to each individual. We’d get nothing.”
“Then what would you need?” Hawks asked, wondering if this would be the one theft they couldn’t work.
“To even attempt it, I have to go along with the restrictions set by the system. We’d have to go down, cross all that distance and survive, and we’d all have to be programmed so that we couldn’t betray ourselves. We might just pick up a truth-bearer anywhere along the line, or we might lose someone to another tribe looking to build itself up, and without proper programming, each of us would be a loaded bomb ready to go off. To do it convincingly, and unobtrusively, I’d need a tribe. More important, I’d need a tribe with someone else as leader, since I couldn’t maintain the post. When we got to that main installation, I’d have to go in as a truth-bearer returning for leave or whatever it might be called, scout the place, locate the ring, and figure out a way to make the switch. It might well take more people than just me, too. We can’t know until we get there. We can’t even know if it’s possible.”
“You expect us to be the tribe?” Hawks asked. “We can’t spare people like that. We have ships to staff and only a few who can really qualify.”
“I don’t need a large group. Too conspicuous and hard to support anyway. What do you expect to do? Go down there, knock a whole tribe senseless, ship ’em up here one at a time, and mindprint them? I’m proposing the ultimate heresy in this den of gods—when push comes to shove I’ve got to have a group of atheists. I could go back down and try to track down, isolate, and sedate four of five natives, but that just increases the risk, and I’d have a small tribe that still wouldn’t know a Val from a god. Maybe we can’t take high-tech stuff in, but we might be able to use what they have if we can recognize it, and we sure have to figure how to avoid tripping the booby traps. I’m not sure that installation is gonna be any more advanced that the rest of this world, as far as the people there are concerned, but we’ll be hip-deep in people all of whom will suddenly become full-fledged SPF if a slip is made.”
“We can’t have them all looking like you,” China pointed out.
“True, but there’s a fair variety down there in spite of in-breeding. Just keep the basic racial characteristics the same. Hell, we have those photos. As for the mindprint, I can become my native persona, Uraa, so completely for that purpose that only she will come out on the print. Ask Clayben. He designed it that way.”
The doctor nodded. “It’s true.”
“Plus we’ve got China’s experience in psychogenetics, psychochemistry, attitudinal programming—the works. I can work with her and Star Eagle to create what is necessary to survive down there, avoid exposure, and still get things done.” She looked at their faces and saw their hesitancy, their doubts.
“Surely,” Ikira Sukotae said, “there must be some alternative.”
“Sure. I’ll sneak in, somehow manage to become the big cheese if I can—and it might take a year or two—then steal the ring, and make a run for it as the whole security force is awakened and the alarm goes out to an orbital defense system designed to destroy anything trying to get on or off the planet.”
The silence that followed was such that they could hear the air filtration system.
“The odds for success in this attempt are quite low,” Star Eagle reported after a lull. “The highest probability is that the attempt will be judged impossible and the party will have to trek back and return empty-handed.”
“Permanently stuck in that form for nothing,” China noted.
“Yes, although I’d say the odds of escaping detection are even. A truth-bearer missing at the center would be noticed; one who vanished in the field would be simply written off as a routine casualty. At least we would have people toughened by the harsh experience down there and better equipped for a later try, and we would know just what we were facing and could figure out an alternative plan while we went after another ring. There are so many unknowns and variables here, the odds are astronomical that if an attempt were made it would either be unsuccessful or would trigger the response we do not want. In that case, those on the planet would be stuck down there, perhaps permanently. Vulture might get out by becoming a trooper, but no one else would, and accomplishing a safe pickup, assuming they avoided capture, would be next to impossible for a year or more. The odds of actually stealing the ring undetected without the use of computer aids, massive intelligence, interpretation, and analysis are pretty slim. That’s assuming the group survived in that environment long enough to get to the installation and back in the first place.”
Hawks thought for a moment, then said, “This may be a great blow to your ego, Star Eagle, but human beings existed in great numbers at a high level of culture and civilization long before computers. The big trick here is to keep our operation on the level of the culture of Matriyeh—all the way—while being aware enough not to step in any of the technological and anachronistic traps. You may be right. This might only be an intelligence mission, or it might fail. The risks are certainly great. But right now I’d say it’s the better of the two choices open to us. There is a lot of activity now around Chanchuk, and we’re sending out ships on long-range surveys trying to find if there is any other unusual activity that might tip us off as to the whereabouts of the fourth ring. Here is where they’re overconfident. Here is where they are convinced that the odds are so much against us we won’t even make the attempt until we have to. I say we give it a try.”
Raven looked around and gave everyone a thin, humorless smile. “Any volunteers?” he asked.
Hawks, in fact, was not looking for any volunteers, at least not yet. There was a lot of research and technical data to accumulate first, plus work with Vulture to computer-model the sort of mindprint he wanted and determine just what the best attributes of survival might be. In the meantime, Hawks dispatched Kaotan to supplement Bahakatan and Chunhoifan in surveying the known colonial worlds for any signs of unusual activity there. Without the fourth ring the first three were nothing, and he would have liked nothing better than to go after number four before tackling Chanchuk. If they had three, Master System would know just where to expect them, and if he had to fight one more major battle anyway, it might as well be in the spot where he probably had to fight one anyway.
By the time they had to, he hoped they might figure out a way to win.
Although Clayben could put ideas into programs better than any of them, Vulture worked mostly with China and Star Eagle on the aims. The creature had no desire to ever be subject to Clayben’s control again, and didn’t trust him a bit. And of all the things to fear in all this, Clayben feared his creation most of all.
By the time Star Eagle had read, picked, probed, and analyzed the Uraa personality as much as was possible, and chose and modeled the genetic information, Hawks had a pretty good idea of who he wanted to go and why. He discussed it all with Raven first, and was very much surprised to find that the Crow was in agreement.
“She’s the logical choice. The only choice for leader among this group for a place like that,” Raven said simply.
“I just thought you and she . . . ”
“Look, they tinkered a little with her head on Melchior, but that was just to give her some kind of loyalty so she could be kept under control. Nobody I know of messed with my noggin. She ain’t even good in bed. More like fightin’ a war and tryin’ not to get hurt. The only thing I wanted to always make sure of is that she was always on my side. No, I can get—satisfied—here if I feel the need, Chief. Tell the honest truth, if Ikira was a meter taller or me a meter shorter and she had a little more liking for men and a lot less for women, she’d be my choice of this lot.”
“You sure you wouldn’t like this one yourself? You were a field agent by choice all those years and you were in some pretty tough scrapes over the years.”
He sighed. “Chief, there ain’t no question this is Manka’s meat. The kind of world just made for somebody with her personality and charm. She has to go. I think she already figured that. And under this kind of setup, I tell you she’ll be the leader and therefore the male in the pack. Now, I ain’t got nothin’ against bein’ a woman—face it, everybody’s always damned curious how it’d be to be the other way, and I’m gettin’ on in years and have nothin’ much to lose—but under that system, I’d be physically bound to Manka as my lord and master. If we got to put more down to pull them out or reinforce them, I’ll do it. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it. But that second part’s just askin’ too much.”
Hawks nodded sympathetically. “All right. Accepted. I just kind of figured you were used to working as a team and, besides, this is probably the closest race to our own we’re going to have to deal with.”
“I know, and it’s tempting for that reason. But she’s much too mean to die, Chief, and I’ll be damned if I’ll spend the rest of my days as one of her harem. Otherwise, you’re right. This is my meat. Any ideas on the others?”
“Yes. It might surprise you to know I have a couple of volunteers.”
“Huh?”
“Lalla Paschittawal and Suni Banderesh. They’re pretty tough characters but they’ve lost their husbands and their ship and they are like fish out of water around here. I thought of them as pilots for some of the smaller ships we’re building, but this doesn’t necessarily preclude that. They took hits right off and never really got their licks in. They want to get even. They want to thumb their noses at Master System. Most of all, I think they want release from the unremitting boredom they’ve had since the battle.”
“Okay, that’s four. Is that enough?”
“If nobody died down there, yeah, but you and I know the odds of even getting to the damned place, let alone back, in one piece. Vulture wants seven, herself included.”
“Seven! But who else is nutty enough for this one?”
“Let’s call in Warlock and ask her.”
Raven’s sense had been correct. Manka Warlock had been expecting to be summoned, and she was not adverse to the idea. “Judging from Vulture, I won’t even have to change my appearance much,” she noted. “A little blacker, a lot tougher.”
“It’s far more alien on the inside, but you’re probably right.” He told her about the two Indrus widows’ offer.
“They have motivation, but I wonder if they are too civilized. We will check them out and see. Anybody else?” She looked at Raven, and Hawks got her thought.
“I’d rather save Raven. You two have unique qualifications as experienced field agents. I’m willing to risk one of you but not both.” There. That got the Crow off the hook, and he could see the gratitude in the field agent’s eyes. Hawks decided he was owed a favor.
Warlock sounded disappointed, but accepted the logic of it. “Very well, then, who else?”
“You tell me.”
She thought a moment. “If we will not have Raven, then I think we should have Captain Santiago.”
“Maria? Why?”
“She is without a command or crew, she has reason to want revenge as much as the others, and she is tough. I have learned through this that no one gets to be captain of a freebooter ship without being tough, and she was the undisputed mistress over two big men and two different colonial life forms. She may need to unlearn some of her dependence on high-tech weapons, but I believe she can be taught. She is a survivor. If anything happens to me, she is capable of command.”
“All right, I’ll talk to her about it, anyway. Anybody else?”
“Let us summon her now and see if she has the will. Perhaps she will have some suggestions.”
It was done. Hawks hated these kind of sessions, but there was no getting around them. At least Sabir and the Chows seemed to have adjusted and accepted their forms, although it was true they still tended to socialize more with the Earth-humans aboard than with the Janipurian refugees they’d impersonated.
Captain Santiago was not exactly thrilled with the idea, but she realized why she had been nominated. She asked for time to think it over, but within hours returned and agreed. “On one condition, though.”
“Yes?” Hawks was willing to go to any lengths within reason.
“You need a couple more, right?”
“Yes. We could go with you five, but if you have any ideas, let’s hear them.”
“Midi Ng, at least, and hopefully the rest of that crew of cowards.” Ng was the pilot who commanded Espiritu Luzon in the engagement that cost Santiago her ship and crew. “It’s about time they paid up.”
Warlock grinned, showing she shared the sentiments.
Hawks sighed. “I wish we could send the whole batch. Savaphoong gave the orders, but he also gave us the murylium shipment and you and the other freebooters. You owe him for that, but we’ll do it anyway—my way. Those five brainless beauties would be nice for this, but they’re transmutees. We can’t change them, only reprogram them—which I will do if I need warm bodies. I’d also ask for Autoro but I wouldn’t want to take any chance that he’d wind up in command down there, even by accident.” Autoro was Savaphoong’s bodyguard and enforcer and the only other free man he’d taken out of Halinachi with him. “Midi’s girlfriend, Tae-Jin Chun, however, is proud of her martial arts abilities and was the Espiritu’s weapons officer. Anybody as small as she is who can act as a bar bouncer is somebody who’ll be very useful down there.”
“They’re gonna say no,” Raven said flatly.
Hawks shrugged. “I’m going to talk with Savaphoong first. I think by the time we’re through, they’ll realize that they don’t have a choice. They owe him their lives, and he owes for the Indrus and the San Cristobal. I think he knows it.”
Savaphoong wasn’t buying at all, and he was quite miffed that anyone would even consider using anything of his again. “We did our part, and we continue to support you,” he said, sipping a drink mixed in his luxurious bar by his personal slaves on the Espiritu Luzon, where he had lived in luxury since coming aboard. “I know what the others think, but we took damage in that battle and did the only prudent thing we could to save at least one ship out of three.”
Hawks settled back in the comfortable chair he’d been given and looked squarely at the old entrepreneur. “You force me to put my cards on the table early. Up to now you’ve been acting like you have some kind of special privilege or position here, and up to now, thanks to your previous help, I’ve been willing to go along. No more. Then, I didn’t need you, but after the battle, I considered you a potential risk as well as an ally. I know about the small explosion you rigged in the stern tubes to show real damage rather than just the shaking up you actually got. Don’t bother denying, I have the battle recordings recovered from the wreck of the Indrus and the sensor readings from Kaotan and Thunder. An explosion, even a very small one, is difficult to control. It affected your port steering mechanism.”
“Indeed, that was part of our problem. So what?”
“You couldn’t have moved into the position you took opposite Indrus and San Cristobal if that mechanism had been damaged before the Val attacked. You couldn’t have steered that way. You could have gotten there, but it would have taken many complex maneuvers you didn’t make. I’m no pilot, but Santiago is an experienced captain, and Star Eagle is nothing else but. Once I saw that, I had no hesitancy in approving Star Eagle’s request that when this ship was inside for repairs, we make a few adjustments. You take off without Star Eagle’s codes, and you explode. You try something even then, and Star Eagle can assume remote command, including life support.”
Savaphoong almost dropped his drink. “By what right . . . ”
“I am the commander of this fleet. Me. I was elected, and then affirmed by the council of which you are only one member. I command every ship and every person in this community. Every ship. Every person. Would you like to put this to a vote of the captains when they come in? They’ve all seen the recordings, too. At this point, the only thing that is saving you from the mob, the mindprinter, and maybe the transmuter, is me. I’m doing so out of pragmatism and past considerations, but you used up most of that reservoir when you cost me two ships and five good lives. Now you’re getting the rest of it, and the scales are even. Either you and another of your choice go down there, or you get to remain here in luxury by giving me the two people we want. I may need you or the others or the ship later on, but not now. If I do, I’ll have them—and you—or you will not be there for the payoff if there is one. Which is it? You? Or them?”
Savaphoong sank back into his chair, visibly shaken. For a moment, he just stared off into space, oblivious to his company. Finally he said, “You do not pull your punches, do you?”
“I can’t afford to. We—all of us—are living on borrowed time. I told you when you signed on that it would be permanent—once in, nobody gets out. It is a luxury we can’t afford. As long as it doesn’t jeopardize this mission or its people, I allow what I can, but don’t overestimate your importance or power.”
“I’ve had men shot for far less than this, you know,” Savaphoong said, not threateningly but actually rather casually.
“That was Halinachi and the hard climb up to build it.”
“I didn’t build it. I took it. Jamie, there,” he said, pointing to one of the slaves, “is the old owner. I keep him around because it amuses me to do so.”
“You try to take this from us—” Hawks responded in the same sort of tone. “Go ahead. You might even get me, and perhaps a few others, but in the end you will envy Jamie his brainless happiness. I have far too many deadlier things to worry about than you, Savaphoong. I do not lose sleep over you, but perhaps you should lose some sleep over me.”
“I might very well. All right, you can have them. Enjoy yourself, señor. I admit that you have me, but I have not exhausted all my bargaining chips yet.”
Hawks stared at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Now. It is not yet the time to need them, and if I use them now I will have no further reason for existence, will I? Do not worry. It is all locked up in here,” he said, tapping his head, “and while it might be destroyed, even our friend Clayben could not get it out of me. You just let me be, and you will not regret it, my friend. When it is time, I have things you still need.”
It was Hawks’ turn to rise from his chair. “You know where the fourth ring is?”
Savaphoong just smiled, satisfied to win at least a minor round. “I do not say what I know. I will, my friend, when it is time.”
Hawks wanted to throttle the man, and promised himself later vengeance, but he had more important things on his mind now. He went below to see the two women who shared a luxurious cabin and found that they had already been tipped. He suspected they were listening in to the conversation.
“We will not do it!” Midi said firmly, always the spokeswoman for the pair. “He does not own us! We are not his slaves!”
“Yes you will,” Hawks responded icily. “And I’ll explain why very simply. He saved your neck and we saved your skin. You’re experienced pilots but you’ve contributed nothing—except following his orders and letting two ships be smashed. He’s disowned you. You know what went on. He’s throwing you to the wolves to save his own skin, just like he threw those ships to the wolves to save his. Why should he care about you any more than he did about them? You’re just employees—and you’ve been fired. You’re being thrown out of this cozy little love nest, and the only place you can come is Thunder. I am telling him that he will either present himself tomorrow morning at oh seven hundred to Manka Warlock on the common in Thunder or present you. No other ship will take you. Now, you do have choices. You can report. You can commit mutual suicide—no one will grieve for you, I assure you. Or you can leave, but taking no equipment with you. I’ve just explained to your ex-employer that everything here is common property. You report, or kill yourselves, or you will both be thrown stark naked out the nearest airlock.”
He turned and left the cabin, then got on his spacesuit and exited the ship, walking down to the airlock entry port of Thunder and back inside. He was slightly ashamed of himself for feeling so, but by god he felt good!
Manka Warlock had volunteered to be the test case for the transmuter template Star Eagle had worked out using the genetic information from Vulture. Outwardly, the change was noticeable but far less extreme than in any of the others who had or would undergo the process. Her creamy brown skin was now much darker, and her mane of woolly hair changed from tiny curls to large ones. She had been tall and muscular and was still tall and muscular, if more so than before. Her features had always been fine and delicate, a mixture of French and Ashanti ancestors, and these needed no changes. They did add the brands, mathematically chosen to be consistent with Matriyehan practice yet unique, as well as filling most of them with colored dyes consistent with local culture and chemically identical to those on Vulture. It gave Warlock a fiercer appearance she liked, but she looked and sounded much like the old Manka. Some bone and local twine jewelry and ropelike bracelets and anklets also taken from Vulture’s patterns completed her appearance.
One major difference was her skin, which looked and felt normal to her but was hard and tough, almost like hide, to anyone else. She held a finger over a lighted match and barely noticed it, and when she pinched it out with her fingers, she did not get burned. The most marked difference, however, was in her apparent physical age. Manka Warlock had been good-looking in her forties; she was a stunning sixteen. She did not, however, take the Matriyeh mindprint program they had worked out. That would be last.
Decked out as she was in her Matriyehan fierceness, she met with the others who would be her team. “Those of you who volunteered or got talked into this may reconsider,” she told them. “Otherwise, by tonight, there will be no turning back. I want you in Matriyehan bodies, getting used to them, and feeling their power and potential as soon as possible. We have prepared a very large room in the office section and we will go there and remain there, cut off from the rest, while you train and learn the things that will keep you alive down there. On Matriyeh there will be no margin for error, and the lives of others might depend on the actions or inactions of any one of you. The mindprinter can give you all the information you need, but it cannot give you skills or increase your reaction times or fine-tune your reflexes. Partly it will be a case of unlearning what you take for granted. Pistols and rifles, computers and data banks, armor and shields—and even the little things, like food acquisition and preparation in a primitive environment, medicines and medical kits, and even such basic things as matches. I am going to train you until you think and act as one. I am going to try to make certain you stay alive because that is how I will stay alive.” She paused. “Anyone have second thoughts?”
“Many,” Maria Santiago said, “but as a captain, I have never asked anyone to do anything that I, myself, was unwilling to do nor turned from my responsibility. Besides,” she added, “it is not, thank God, some four-footed beast or whatever else they might be on Chanchuk or the other place. I worked hard climbing up to be a captain. If I can survive down there, I can survive anywhere and be captain again.”
Warlock nodded, liking the captain immediately. She would be a valuable ally. She turned to the Indrus widows. “And you?”
“We have only one goal,” Suni Banderesh said for the both of them. “We wish no more like us from the ruins of Chunhoifan or Bahakatan or even Thunder. Perhaps we exist to help in this. Neither of us look forward to it, but we believe in it.”
“Very good.” Warlock turned to the last two, the ones who had been forced to come. “I asked for you two, because you’re tough, sassy bitches with a killer’s instinct. I know you don’t feel any guilt at what you did, but that is beside the point. In this, you will atone or you will die. If you do not die, it will be because you have shaken your selfishness and become full members of the team, in which case you might even become full human beings someday.”
“I am surprised you want us, considering your opinion,” Midi Ng replied sourly. “You think we failed your company once. What if we fail you again?”
Warlock grinned evilly. “You see, that is the thing. If you fail us, it will also mean your own lives. If you deliberately fail any of us, I promise you that you will truly be in hell. If any of the others of us survives your actions, or lack of them, you will not. If they do not—then you better have the ring, or you will be left down there to live out the remainder of your miserably short lives.”
The transmuting process was a swift one. Since Star Eagle could subtract but not add mass, all five would remain shorter than Warlock, some by a fair amount. Only Santiago, who was chunky and wide thighed, gave the pilot any room to play; her 157 centimeters could become 164 using that excess mass while also slimming her down, making her the second tallest but still almost a head shorter than Warlock. Star Eagle retained the best of their original features, flattering them wherever possible, within the racial limits set by the Matriyehan genetic code. Only Ng and Chun, whose features were strongly Asian, needed any substantial makeover, and they were the only ones who could not be recognized on sight by any who had known them before. Their physical ages ranged from fourteen to sixteen, and the only thing that really disturbed any of them was the branding marks that to them defaced their faces and bodies.
“Now we will go and begin our training,” Warlock said. “None but Vulture and I wear the colors of rank and the ornaments of honor. Those you will have to earn, and we alone will decide them. From this point on we will see only one person from the outside until we are ready to go down—and when that will be is when Vulture and I say it shall be.”
The one and only outsider allowed, at Warlock’s request, was Silent Woman. It seemed an odd choice at the start, and both Hawks and Cloud Dancer had initially objected, “We do not even know if she really understands any of this,” Cloud Dancer said. “Nor do we know how she will take to you all, like that, in there.”
“She understands what is necessary,” Warlock replied. “At the moment, she is the most valuable one on this ship to us. She survived a culture and an environment gentler only by degrees than the one we must go to, and she has shown skills in those areas where modern folk are weakest. It was you who told us of the unerring knife throws back on Earth, and the silent, animal-like way she managed to approach and then kill two men. I need someone to teach those skills. I do not propose she join us, just teach us.”
Hawks thought of the small, fat, middle-aged woman of unknown tribe who was colorfully tattooed from the neck down and who had spent her life in slavery, her tongue cut out to stop her screaming as they killed her malformed only child in front of her. She had been mostly bewildered by all this, but seemed to have found her place in the nursery caring for the young children of others. But she had been deadly and cunning in an almost animal-like way when she had chosen to make her escape with Hawks and Cloud Dancer. It was easy to forget that.
She did seem bewildered and perhaps a bit frightened at first by the seven strange women, but she knew and recognized Warlock and seemed to understand what she was to do, not so much by words as by patient illustration. Even Hawks had to admit the brilliance of using her in the end. She knew far more than knives; she knew how to exist with what was on hand, to weave vines into useful things, to patiently select and shape stone and bone into anything from weapons to ornaments. Within a week she was acting very apologetic to Cloud Dancer about neglecting the kids and spending almost all her time in Manka Warlock’s training room.
According to China, who could interface with Star Eagle and tap into the great ship’s communications and monitors, Silent Woman was doing very well in there while most of the others were suffering badly. Tae-Jin Chun, for example, was very proud of her black belts in some of the more esoteric martial arts, but eventually Warlock had badly beaten the former bouncer while barely getting bruised herself. There was clearly more than one mistress of those arts, as later lessons were to show, and Warlock’s only problem was that she needed Vulture and Silent Woman to keep her from killing rather than forcefully demonstrating to her pupils.
There was no getting around the fact that Manka Warlock liked hurting people and if she gave a damn about being hurt, it never showed. If she ever got tired or weak or frustrated, that never showed, either. She did everything they did, and took everything they took, and she did it better. It was a mark of her strength that after seven weeks, they hated her so much that not one of them broke.
It was about this time that Silent Woman approached Hawks. She still could only communicate in a basic sign language; there was no way to know what language was hers. Even mindprinters with language programs seemed to have only slight effect, since they cross-referenced ideas from the language you knew, and it was by no means certain that in her mental state Silent Woman really had a language as the rest thought of one. Even now, Hawks had some problems understanding her, but finally he figured it out. By his own code of honor, she was as much his wife as Cloud Dancer was, and it was clear suddenly what she had in mind.
In very basic terms, she wanted a divorce.
Once he go that idea, he could guess the rest. “You want to go, don’t you?” he said aloud, then signed it as best he could.
She nodded. She made cradling motions, then pointed in the general direction of Warlock’s lair. For a moment he thought she wanted to care for any babies they might have, or perhaps she understood the change in the others, and that perhaps, she, too, could be restored to function and youth, but finally he realized that it was a more basic, uncomplicated idea.
They need me, she was saying. She seemed to understand that they were being prepared to go into very primitive areas, and while they had learned well, she was unsure that they would all have a good chance unless she were there to help and reinforce the lessons.
In fact, ever since the true potential of the transmutters was known to him, Hawks had been tempted to use them on her, to give her a new tongue and perhaps beauty and fertility, but he had no real way of conveying that to her or finding out what she really wanted and Clayben and the others had been very nervous about doing anything to or with someone who was, in Clayben’s words, “clearly a functioning psychotic.” Now she was asking for it and Hawks didn’t know what to do. He did, of course, what he always did when he was in such a dilemma: he called in Cloud Dancer.
“I believe we should let her,” Cloud Dancer said without much hesitation. “Although I love her and am frightened for her, it is what she wants and perhaps what she was born to do. Perhaps she could save some lives down there—and perhaps, live or die, she might have her only chance of regaining her soul.”
Hawks sighed. “And the hellish thing is, we might never really know if we’re doing the right thing. But, all right. If Warlock and Vulture agree and Clayben is willing, we’ll give it a try.”
Since being taken prisoner with Hawks and Cloud Dancer, Silent Woman had lived in a world totally of magic and incomprehensible mystery and she hated it as much as she loved the people around her. Now she expected that magic to reward her for loyal service and suffering and give her purpose once again.
Clayben was nervous about it. Not the physical part—that was easy. It would be the mindprinting at the end that would be the problem. “Still,” he said, “whatever language she uses, primitive and basic thought it may be, should provide reasonable matches for this Matriyehan tongue. It’s my guess that she will function better down there than here.”
Warlock was delighted, and Vulture relieved. Oddly, the changeling’s one concern was that, once down, it would be Silent Woman in charge. He only hoped they could make her understand that the object of it all wasn’t just to survive down there, but to steal something.
She was quite fat, which gave Star Eagle a great deal of mass to work with. He understood how she had suffered and how hard this all was, and he made her almost a primal sixteen-year-old Matriyehan goddess. When she first stepped down from the transmuter, looking in a mirror, and saw herself, she traced the whole outline of her body on the mirror, felt her whole body, and then she cried.
Silently.
There was no longer a single thing physically wrong with her, and she almost choked on the tongue a few times, but Silent Woman remained as mute and almost as enigmatic as ever.