AT THE END OF NINE AND A HALF WEEKS, MANKA Warlock felt as if she’d done as much as she could.
To properly complete the group’s training she needed more than the poor simulations that Star Eagle had managed to conjure up, she needed to be in the field where she would be no more experienced than the rest of them. There was no practical way, however, to take everyone down to the surface for a few days and bring them back; each time someone was inserted into the world or withdrawn from it, they ran the risk of detection no matter what the safeguards and timing. Silent Woman’s very presence had suggested one thing to her, though, which she carried out and imposed during the last two weeks. She worked out a series of codes involving finger snaps and clicks made with the mouth that could convey basic information, and then imposed a rule of absolute silence. Everything was by gesture and sign, with even the audibles used only when necessary. It was difficult at the start for all except Silent Woman, but after two weeks they hardly needed speech to function efficiently.
It was Vulture finally who emerged from isolation. “We are as ready as we can be,” she told Hawks. “I’m still a bit nervous about the Indrus women, who are tough enough but perhaps still too civilized, and the two from Espiritu Luzon, who have done well but who I’m not sure I want to depend on in a crisis and may have to. But we can go no further here.”
Hawks nodded. “All right, then. Are you really sure you need so many of us, though? Even at this stage it looks like we are committing a large number to unknown risk for no purpose except covering you.”
“I need covering,” she assured him. “We all do. In the end, this caper might be as intricate as Janipur’s. The only way to know is to go in and find out. Do we have the duplicate ring?”
Hawks nodded. “It’s the same size, shape, weight, and general composition as the Janipur ring, and we have placed on its face the consistent design taken from your mindprinted memories of the carvings on the truth-bearer’s charms and staff. It’s to scale and in the same style, but there is no way to know for certain if it’s able to fool anyone until the two are physically compared. We’ve made a housing for it inside a bone charm so it looks like a single piece. We’ll show you how to get it apart. Don’t lose it, or you’re going to have to come all the way back for a new one.”
“I’ll take good care of it. Anything else you want to say to them before we go ahead with the mindprinting?”
“We’ll cover the details when it’s done. Good luck.”
“We’ll need it,” Vulture responded.
They stood there in silence, already looking the part of a savage band. All now had colored dye markings in their brands indicating the pecking order; Silent Woman wore the marks of firebearer. The most marked change was an expected one; Warlock had developed some woolly facial and body hair, and while her body was still female in shape there was a definite difference even in how she moved or carried herself. When she said, “We are ready. Let’s get it over with,” her voice was still Warlock’s, Caribe accent and all, but a half octave lower and definitely male.
Only Warlock and Vulture did not plainly show that they were nervous, even a little scared.
Star Eagle would handle the process automatically, but it was decided that China would give the basic briefing. Although Clayben had been the major human participant in creating the programs, it was thought best to leave him out of the actual performance of the printing process for political reasons.
“Basically, we took the information and experience of Uraa’s life and analyzed it,” China told them. “You will all receive the same basic print, minus some of the more personal items that would have no bearing on you down there. We don’t know what might trigger the activation of the defenses, but if it is keyed to alienness, then just hearing a non-Matriyehan tongue would be enough and we want no slips, but we also want you to have full memories and knowledge. As a result, we have instituted a filter of sorts. The Matriyehan tongue is simple and not geared to the creation of new words or concepts, but it is adequate even if you might have to use approximations and fifteen words to describe one thing. The filter will simply not permit you to vocalize anything except the native tongue. It will be your primary language. You will think in it and it will take effort to access another, even internally, and impossible vocally. You will, however, still understand all the languages you know now, so you would still understand me. Language shapes a culture more than anything else. Master System knows this, which is why this was imposed. The more you relax, don’t fight, and use this language exclusively, the more native you will become. The terms are holographically linked. When you hear ‘daka’ for example, you will instantly think of the huge lava snakes.”
The language was in fact compact, but relatively versatile. There were no ambiguities allowed, and every term had just one meaning; most words, like the names, were no more than two syllables. The native name for the world, mystical and important because it contained three syllables, was pronounced “Mah-treh-yeh.”
“You will respond only to the names we give you,” China continued. “That is also for security. People’s names are also legitimate words and might be descriptives of personalities, but there don’t seem to be any hard and fast rules, so we tried to keep it close if we could. Maka means ‘high tree,’ for example, so we can use that for you, Manka. Similarly, Mari means ‘pretty dirt.’ Not a great name but close to Maria. Suni is ‘Gray Rock,’ Midi is a kind of plant, Taeg, which is close, is—sorry—a kind of bug, and we chose Euno for Silent Woman because it means ‘quiet hand.’ Lalla, your name is unpronounceable in Matriyehan, so we selected Aesa, which means ‘strong branch.’ ”
She paused a moment, then continued. “We also must take a number of security precautions considering the close call on Janipur. You won’t have laser pistols and you’ll be practically defenseless against something like a Val. We doubt one is there now, but if anything goes wrong, you can be sure one will show up faster than we could. Now, listen well. Any attempt to probe your mind, hypno you, or in any way gain information about us will trigger an automatic dormant program in your mind. It will block off any knowledge, any memories, not Matriyehan. For all intents and purposes, it will erase anything not in the programming we are about to give you. Only we know the code that will erase the so-called worm program instead of triggering it. Only the machine that creates it can remove it. It’s an idea we took from the SPF, and we’ll be using it from this point on in the field. If you get separated from the group for any reason, try to retrace the route to the fighter. It will be there unless it is discovered and destroyed by the enemy. Just give your name. It will recognize you and then notify us to set up transmission and reception. If you return for any reason and it is not there, use the map references that will be imprinted in your mind to go to the alternate points where pickup might be made in order. That’s all there is, except, good fortune guide you all.”
Only Vulture did not need the mindprobe; she already had an identity and experience below, and had been designed to fool and be impervious to any of the standard devices. This also made her valuable in one other respect: she alone would not be bound by the limitations of the program.
Unlike transmutation, the mindprobe process was neither quick nor without some difficulty, and it took several hours to process them all.
Maria Santiago, like the others, awoke with a headache and slight dizziness that took awhile to go away. She felt—strange. Strange memories and stranger landscapes filled her mind, and she felt oddly cramped, closed in, and threatened by the room. In the back of her mind she knew who she was, who the others were, where they were and why, but it seemed suddenly remote, even alien, and hard to grasp all the complexities of it. She tried not to think of those things; thinking of them confused her and frightened her still more. There was only the tribe, only the People, her wife-sisters and their chief. Security lay only in the tribe, and so long as she was one with them she had nothing to fear.
Maka led them down to the place where they would return to open and the People, and they followed, eager to be away. Uraa went first, to scout the way, then the rest followed with Maka last. They were transferred first to Lightning, with Raven piloting, and made the short jump from no-space to the carefully precalculated angle and orbit that would bring them in at the “dead” spot, where the ship could attain geostationary orbit long enough for them to transmit down to the fighter without being picked up by the monitors.
One by one, they stepped out on the surface of Matriyeh and formed up. They carried the crude stone-tipped spears, and stone axes and blow guns hung from their vine belts.
Although they all had memory-pictures of the Earth-Mother, they all knew that, except for Uraa, they were seeing it for the first time. The heat was great, the humidity almost as bad, and the air had the fault smell of sulfur and sulfuric compounds that took some getting used to.
The landscape was rough, barren of life, and filled with grotesque rocky forms; black lava frozen in place like a great wave locked forever in stone, and beyond, a burnt wasteland of reds and oranges and gray ash like thick sand. The place had great beauty to it, but it was dead and threatening, as well, and no place for people to live. The sky above was thick with clouds swirling in demonic dances, and here and there in the distance thin fingers of lightning lashed out and struck far off, bringing occasional distant explosions to their ears.
Maka, too, was affected for a moment by all this, but she knew she had the responsibility and that the day was more than half gone. She nodded to Uraa, the scout, and she turned and led them down from the burnt and blackened side of the great volcano, its cone invisible in the clouds, and finally on to the gray sands. They set off at a run, the only sounds those of distant thunder and the sharp breathing of the others. They ran for more than an hour without a break, until they were within sight of the edge of the ash field and the first, green growth, which began abruptly. Now they slowed, but still Maka kept them to silent speech.
The jungle floor was quite dark and filled with vegetation; the great fronds far above captured most of the light and rain, but enough trickled down to the floor or was stored as excess in the great trees to support a variety of lower plant life—mostly vines and creepers and spindly bushes with sharp, thorny leaves, and various mosses, algae, and fungi. The jungle also teemed with insects of all types, but there was no sign of birds or animals. They reached a swift-flowing, shallow river, in the center of which rough water rolled about protruding rocks. Uraa took them down one side of the muddy bank for almost a kilometer until they came to a bend in the river where the water flowed more quietly through transitory islands of silt. There they were permitted to kneel in the mud and drink, and then Uraa spoke, breaking the silence.
“Maka tribe spear fish in river,” she said. “Else eat bugs. Uraa show,” She picked up her spear, examined it, then walked very slowly into the water at a quiet point and out near one of the mud spits. As they watched, she stood there, absolutely motionless, spear ready, eyes only on the water. She remained there in hip-deep water, like a statue, for what seemed like forever, but then, suddenly became a blur of motion, bringing the spear down swiftly and forcefully, plunging it all the way down, twisting, then lifting it up with both hands. On the end, neatly speared but still wriggling, was a large fish. She waded back to them, looking very satisfied, as indeed she was. Her biggest concern with this show was that there would either be no fish in the area or that she would miss.
The creature was certainly ugly, with a wide mouth, enormous feelers all around it, smooth purple-and-white skin rather than scales, and two large fins that seemed almost like protoarms. Silent Woman suddenly grinned, nodded, and waded out into the river. It took her even less time than it had taken Vulture, and it was clear that it wasn’t the first time she’d done this sort of thing.
Now it was the others’ turn to try.
They didn’t do nearly so well, although both Uraa and Silent Woman tried to show them how. Absolute stillness was required in this water, and the position in the water was also critical. These fish did not so much swim as walk along the bottom rooting through the mud, but no matter how muddy the water became they gave off small, telltale bubbles as they cleared themselves of river-bottom debris. Ultimately, Suni and Midi each caught one, after several failures, but the rest came up empty. Uraa and Silent Woman made up for it as darkness began to creep onto the surface.
The fish were gutted and expertly skewered by Uraa and Silent Woman. It might have been possible to gather enough dead wood from the nearby forest floor to make fire, but it was forbidden. This was not uninhabited territory. No place that could provide food with little physical danger, even for amateurs and novices like them, would be unclaimed.
It was very difficult for some of them to face eating the bloody meat raw, and Maria and both of the Indrus women looked distinctly nauseated, but they choked it down all the same. Manka Warlock didn’t like it but ate her share, and Midi and Taeg had less problems. Uraa and Silent Woman ate with unreserved relish.
“Camp here to Great God’s light,” Maka told them. “Uraa know this place?”
Vulture nodded. “If other not here, will not come in dark. This place of big tribe. Many more than Maka tribe. Must go far next light. No bad things near. Safe camp to light.” Demon-things prowled the darkness looking for lives and souls; Matriyehans moved in darkness only when forced to do so.
Tonight there would be little need for a guard; later on there would be, and it was understood that those who didn’t pull their weight in food gathering by day would not sleep much by night. For now, until they were fully blooded and well experienced in living here and had learned the practical means of survival, allowances would be made.
They cleared a dry but protected area near the river and lay down close together to sleep. There would be better, less austere camps later, when they had made what was necessary, but for now a spartan camp was all they could manage. Highly uncomfortable, and with the tension creating somewhat sour stomachs, sleep was not easy to come by. So far, though, it hadn’t been as bad as they had feared it might be, but there were memories from the mindprinter of harsher things and harder places on this world and they had a long distance to travel, much of it in areas that even Vulture had never seen or heard about.
Isaac Clayben frowned. He’d called Hawks and Cloud Dancer to his lab, and China was already there. The blind woman looked slightly shaken.
“I’ve been analyzing these mindprinter recordings of the group we sent down,” he told them, “using Star Eagle’s capabilities and some proprietary programs I developed from analyzing what Master System did with the records it took from all of us periodically. No major surprises, although I don’t think anyone would ever like to sample Warlock’s sadomasochistic fantasies, which are a bit hard to take even in data form. Although she’s probably the one best able to keep them alive and maintain success, I feel sorry for the other poor women down there whenever she gets in the mood for sex, which I think will be often. No surprises, that is, until I get to Silent Woman. We took her print routinely on Melchior, and I vaguely remember being given a report that the results were highly unusual, but there were so many other things to occupy me that she didn’t rate a very high priority. The data was simply overridden by shock and psychosis, looped back over and over, so it was just meaningless garbage. China tried to read it with the printer and almost went mad herself.”
“An endless loop, over and over,” she said weakly. “Incredible horror and sadness, the same terrible images again and again, and through it all a chilling scream of her soul. I know they’re your people, but to me, those medicine men set a new standard of human cruelty. I never imagined that such as they existed. It wasn’t just a necessity—they enjoyed it. They forced her to watch . . . ” She trembled and choked up for a moment. “To watch . . . the ritual disemboweling of her baby while it was still alive. To be held close, your face pushed into your baby’s wounds . . . I was kept intellectually distant, a watcher in her mind, and still I will have nightmares forever.”
Cloud Dancer shivered, as well, and even Hawks felt the horror. “They are not our people,” he said defensively. “The same race, yes, but they are not our people. They are of a different nation, and religion, although this does not sound like Illinois work, either. It smacks of demon worship in the way it was carried out, although it was still policy.”
China’s head snapped up. “Policy? Whose?”
“The child was deformed—”
“The child was not deformed! It was a perfect baby girl!”
There was shocked silence at that, and Cloud Dancer gripped Hawks’ hand and squeezed it hard. Hawks thought of the fat pig of an Illinois pirate chief telling him that story, knowing it made perfect sense and had the full ring of truth to it and thus saved his miserable life.
“There is more to this, then, than cultural beliefs and practices. Can you get beyond it? Can you filter it out?”
“What do you think we’ve been trying to do? It isn’t easy with a trauma of this magnitude,” Clayben responded, “and I’m no psychiatrist. Thunder’s computers are good, but they aren’t specialized for this sort of thing. You know how many cross-referenced memory bytes there are in the average forty-year-old brain? Quadrillions. The human brain is an incredible natural indexing system we can only approximate in Star Eagles and Vals and the rest. The combinations create both data flows and holographic images. What we have here is basically a self-imposed worm program. I know she didn’t know it or think of it that way, but that’s what it is. The trauma was so great that she shut off access to everything preceding a period of perhaps a couple of weeks after they cut out her tongue. Any attempt to access anything prior to that runs into the trauma loop and there is instant recoil. After a while it’s like electric shock conditioning. You just don’t go there any more.”
“The language that she has is her own,” China explained. “It was created in her mind after the trauma. The very concept of language is in the blocked-off regions. She thinks in ideographs, much like a deaf-mute would. She simply doesn’t have a self-image; it must be supplied by those around her. Even her dreams are mundane things about what she did the day before. She does, however, retain many basic skills that indicate that she once led something of a wilderness life. It is incredible that she survives at all, given the strength of the trauma. Suicide or catatonia would be more likely. What it really comes down to is that she is a very strong person—perhaps the strongest among us.”
“The thing is, we’ve suddenly given her cause for developing a totally new self-image. She cannot totally escape the old one—she is still the prisoner of her past in that—but we gave her one hell of a body and good looks. In fact, at Vulture’s urging we strongly emphasized the female sexual attributes and added some additional nerve links to increase the intensity of feeling there. He was afraid of her psychosis coming out very strongly and violently in a setting more like she was used to and, with her wilderness skills, taking command from Warlock. Not knowing what we were dealing with, we went along. I think we struck the right balance, anyway. Warlock, of course, had intercourse with her in order to establish Matriyehan chemical bonding, and I suspect that will be sufficient to control her. But she is still a strong and violent personality, which of course, we need down there. If she is redeveloping a whole new internal personal image, that’s probably fine, but we must know more about her past. If the violence and cruelty down below begin to trigger the old traumas—we don’t know what she might become.”
“It seems to me you’re a little late thinking of this,” Cloud Dancer noted acidly.
“Huh? What?”
“Suppose you discover that she might become a raging homicidal maniac who can be stopped only by death? How could we warn them? What could we do about it?”
They had been on Matriyeh for seven weeks, and if their harsh existence wasn’t getting any easier, at least it was becoming more routine. They were always busy, hunting for food and tools, and all the while moving slowly and cautiously toward their goal. They avoided the many dangers by being ever alert, surviving by thinking only of the moment at hand. There were snakes large enough to swallow people, and leathery-winged beasts with sharp teeth that could dive at any moment on unsuspecting prey; there were vines that could trip the unwary, and twists and turns in the ground that might break an ankle.
And even when at rest they were always tense, listening for potential dangers. The only real pleasure came late at night or just before dawn, for the lucky one favored by Maka’s attentions. The coupling was animalistic—raw lust and gratification—but the tensions built up to the point where they all craved relief.
And because only Maka could give this pleasure, all behavior was aimed toward pleasing Maka, serving Maka, obeying Maka. If they’d had the opportunity and the motivation to think about it, they all would have been shocked at how quickly the veneer of civilization and their own diverse cultural standards had been stripped away. They all were killers, bound to each other and their leader—literally no one or nothing else counted.
At dawn, they preened one another, washed themselves if some water was available, finished off anything left to eat from the night before, and the cycle started all over again.
Manka Warlock was comfortable with her role, although the overall responsibility for them all was a heavy burden.
At the start, when she’d first studied the system, she had been upset that a male figure dominated packs of women, but she’d come to realize the logic in it. It was, after all, democratic; any Matriyehan had the potential to be chief, if they had the will and the personality to do so and a vacancy came their way, and only one male figure was biologically necessary in the system. She often wondered, though, how many women a chief could serve in a day. Some of the tribes here were a hundred or more strong.
Warlock was also pleased if somewhat surprised that as yet they had not suffered any serious casualties: some sprains, a number of bruises, and a number of near-serious incidents, but nothing really severe. She knew, though, that the luck wouldn’t last forever even though they were skilled at primitive living. They were getting so proficient at hunting the tuka, an animal resembling a green-haired wild boar but with a long snout, razor-sharp teeth, long tusks, and the temper of a shrew, that when they found one, it seldom escaped. Both Suni and Mari had been slightly gored by one when they first tried to catch one, and Silent Woman still had teeth marks on her right arm, but they hadn’t been crippling injuries. Unless it received a mortal blow or a major compound fracture, the Matriyehan body had a tremendous capacity for self-repair equaled only by its enormous toleration for pain. They did, of course, have the knowledge to set simple fractures if necessary and use certain jungle herbs and leaves as medicines. That had been included in the program.
But for the landmark-based maps in their heads, they would have had no idea how far they had traveled, and even that was an approximate measure. The Matriyehan language had only the concepts of short and far, and the definition of far translated out as “horizon.” Nor was there any long-term sense of time; the day was measured by light and shadow because it was necessary to know where you stood compared to what was left to do; no other time was relevant. Even now it was impossible for them to tell how long they had been living this life, and every day it seemed more and more their only reality, that existence before some kind of wild dream or vague religious view of heaven.
Vulture, however, could tell that they were averaging less than six kilometers a day, counting the amount of time they would spend having to find bearings when lost and the necessary diversions for hunting and gathering, which almost always took them in the wrong direction. This meant that they had covered, at most, a quarter of the distance. The life and the absolute requirements that her form imitate a Matriyehan exactly were also taking their toll, more, in fact, than they had the first time. She was as chemically bound and devoted to Maka as the rest, and if Maka suddenly proclaimed that they would build the tribe, remain, and forget the mission, it would have been instantly accepted. That devotion, and the collective mind-set of the tribe, had almost trapped Vulture here the last time.
Already Maka had fallen prey to one of the potential traps in the Uraa-based program and the language. She had begun first to refer to, then to pray to the various spirits and demons of the world. These had been left in the programming because to edit them out would have marked them as somehow different and could have betrayed them; now the theology was taking on a shadowy reality of its own.
About nine weeks out, they had taken shelter in a lushly overgrown lava tube against one of the incredibly frequent and very violent storms that swept the world. They had caught a tuka early and had drunk its blood for strength, and so were well prepared to sit out the rest of the day. Often they had seen, but managed to avoid being seen by, other tribes, although sometimes that had meant hiding in deep water using the blow guns to breathe or covering themselves in mud and lying very still. In spite of the complications that would result, Maka would have been impossible to stop from taking a smaller group than they, but these were all much larger—which, at least, made them easier to detect.
In the cave, considering the storm, they had risked a small fire to cook the meat, a rare luxury in this life. Fires caused smoke, of course, but in that sort of storm it was a reasonable risk.
But a lone figure did approach through the roar of the storm, and Midi, who was on guard at the mourn of the tube, didn’t see her until the stranger was almost inside. Then she leaped upon the figure and wrestled it to the ground in the rain, while barking a single word of warning to her wife-sisters within. They responded instantly, dropping whatever they were doing and running to Midi’s aid.
Midi had the stranger well in check, arm around her throat and stone ax poised to bash in a head if any resistance was offered. None was, and it was soon clear why when Maka arrived, looked down, and ordered Midi to release the prisoner.
“Hold, sisters!” The newcomer gasped, rubbing her throat. “Truth-bearers serve all tribes.”
She was quickly offered a hand up and taken inside the cave. Maka was undecided just what to do and looked to Vulture for advice, but got none. The leader decided that it was a good, and perhaps inevitable, test, and that the traveling priestess could always be killed later if she proved a problem.
So they offered some tuka and examined the stranger. Truth-bearers were the only Matriyehans who wore any sort of real clothing, although it was more of a great cape than a robe or true garment, made out of what looked like tuka hide dyed a dark red. Her face and her entire body were covered with tattoos of varying colors and designs, although a bird and bee seemed to recur in many themes and variations. She also had a polished bone ring in her nose running through a perforation and with no visible break, and similar earrings, although a carved charm hanging from the left earring was a tree and the one from the right, the bird. She had no hair save eyebrows; the head didn’t look shaved, either. It genuinely appeared that no hair had ever grown there.
When Silent Woman saw the incredible tattoos covering the newcomer’s body she gave something of a gasp, and thereafter couldn’t take her eyes off the truth-bearer. Warlock saw it and was unnerved by it, but could do nothing. “What spirits bring truth-bearer to Maka tribe in storm?” she asked. This was, after all, decidedly not the normal way you got one.
“Maka tribe near spirit ground next hill,” the stranger explained. “We go to spirits to get strength, storm come, know cave, Maka tribe here.” It was as simple as that.
Matriyehan society wasn’t really made for small talk, and there was little to talk about. The truth-bearer asked about the unusually small size of the tribe and Maka gave the official story, that she and two others had been separated in a storm from a larger tribe far to the south—Uraa’s tribe, which was real and where they said it was—and had not been able to contact the tribe. They managed to survive, and Maka began developing the chief’s aspects stimulated by the mental acceptance that they would not again find their chief. She then “took” the other two, and they began to wander, picking up other isolated people from various tribes until they had the current eight. Neither Maka nor Vulture liked the skillful interrogation, although the individual cover stories seemed to stand up. The mute Silent Woman was not considered all that odd; this sort of mental withdrawal was relatively common, particularly among individuals of a tribe separated from it and their children for great lengths of time. It was attributed to being alone against an onslaught of demons; no single person was strong enough to ward them off for long.
Vulture glanced uneasily at Silent Woman, who continued to stare at the visitor and show no other expression. What was going through the strange woman’s mind when she saw someone rather ugly and tattooed in a way that had to bring back memories of her old self? But Vulture also continued to check Maka for a signal. Here was a gift from the gods—a truth-bearer alone and close to one of the holy places, the sort of place Vulture would love to get a look at. She suspected that Maka believed the gift too good to be true; that this might be some sort of trap. Vulture hoped her suspicion was true. The other alternative was that Manka Warlock had gone so native that she could not bring herself to order a mortal sin and ultimate heresy. That could be a real problem, since in this form, Vulture was committed to obedience and service, yet because it was not a mindprint, she also was more aware than the others of their true nature and mission and was thus more critical of their current situation.
“Good spirits guide truth-bearer to Maka tribe,” the truth-bearer was saying. She took out her magic sack, which was wet and muddied but appeared dry inside, and brought out a handful of what looked like volcanic sand and ground leaves. “No danger here,” she said. “Truth-bearer protect Maka tribe. Bring wonder of gods.” Without waiting, the priestess sprinkled the material in her hand slowly in the small fire. Smoke billowed forth, which startled them all at first, but which they could not avoid breathing in the closeness of the cave. It was neither acrid nor unpleasant; indeed, breathing it in brought a sudden rush of great pleasure, and after the first inhalation, they settled down and wanted only to breathe in more. All pain was gone, all cares, all thought—they felt as normal as before, but knew the joy of the gods.
They rose out of their bodies, and their souls stood upon the face of the Earth-Mother and became aware of all the spirits and demons of the Testing Place. The Earth-Mother was below them, holding them with mystical bonds that were beautiful and erotic to the touch, and above them the Great God’s hand could be dimly seen, wearing a great and mystical ring with the symbol of life—the bird in the tree. Through Her light of glory, and only dimly perceived, was Her smaller firebearer Topakana, and the lesser gods of heaven, whom the People called stars, looking down on them. It was so wondrous, so exactly like the teachings, so exactly as it should be.
And then the Earth-Mother spoke, a gentle whisper that sent chills of ecstasy through them all.
“We show Maka tribe this because tribe fall to doubt demons,” she said. “Maka tribe not believe truth. Maka tribe not worship us.”
No, no. Earth-Mother! Maka tribe believe. Maka tribe good, holy!
“Now you see truth. All but this be false. All else be demon thought. Throw demon thought from soul. Clean soul. Be born as new baby. Grow as new tribe, no demon thought, no doubt, only truth. Only then be all with us.”
Oh, we will, we will!
The vision faded, but not the pleasant feeling and the wonderful glow of the experience. Truth was Matriyeh; there was nothing else. Truth was touching the Earth-Mother and the spirits at all times and taking the tests of life. All else was false, lies from clever demons seeking to make the strong fail. There, in the dark, damp cave, as the storm died down and darkness fell, they believed.
Of them all, only Silent Woman had not seen the visions nor heard the talk. She had heard talk, but it was the chatter of the tattooed stranger and meant nothing to her. The smoke had made her feel good, though, and she did not question what had happened, although she was not aware of what the others believed they saw and experienced.
The truth-bearer could not stay; she had to answer the summons of the spirits and they understood, but they allowed themselves to be blessed at dawn and then watched her depart. They did not follow; that area was holy ground, forbidden. But each received a small amount of the magic sand for their pouches, with instructions to smoke, inhale, or eat it if they ever found themselves beset by doubts or their way invaded by demon thoughts. They were told what to chant as they took it, since such chanting would reinforce the truth and drive away the demons and close their ears to demon speech.
The change in the tribe was immediate. They no longer spoke of strange things and all seemed to have lost their drive to journey someplace. They still had their memories, but they no longer believed them; here, on Matriyeh, which was the only place there was other than heaven, such strange and bizarre concepts could only have come from the minds of demons. They had been failing the life-tests, but now the Earth-Mother had shown mercy upon them and corrected their descent into demonic heresy. But if they were no longer on a journey or quest, then they had to find a territory in which to live, and that meant building their strength, creating a true tribe that could hold its own.
Now, instead of avoiding other tribes, they began to seek them out, but silently and in stealth. Then, when they could, sometimes with great daring, they would take the wife-sister of another tribe and bring her to Maka where the new one would be tied down with vines and taken in the rite of transfer. Within a week they were twelve, and within three they were twenty strong. Some of the newcomers were pregnant, and by now it was clear that of the original tribe all save Uraa were pregnant, too.
It had been so easy to simply let the Matriyehan personality take over, so exhilarating to build the tribe that little of the magic sand had been used, save by Uraa, who felt somehow cursed because she alone was not with child and therefore not fully contributing. There were many more wife-sisters for Maka to take now, and her favors to Uraa had almost ceased, which was another reason for her to use the magic sand.
Silent Woman, on the other hand, was very confused. The slight bulge in her belly filled her with enormous joy and excitement, but she also knew something was wrong. The chiefs of the heaven-ship village had not sent them down here for this, and watching Uraa with the magic sand, she seemed to grasp that the sand was at the heart of what was going wrong. She had no power to make it right, but Uraa did. Among all the others, there was something very different about Uraa, something she sensed but could not define.
She knew, however, that there were poisons, like the old chief’s firewater back in the river village, that could do strange things to people, and there were certainly machines that could do the same. She loved these women, even strange Uraa, and it was almost a duty to her to protect them if they could not protect themselves. Such a thing would not go against Maka’s wishes, for Maka wasn’t using the magic sand anyway.
It was very simple to pick up some sand the next time they were near a volcanic area and put it in her pouch unobserved, then add a pinch here and there of leaves to make it look just right. And then, in the dead of night, it was almost a thrill to remove what was left of the magic sand from Uraa’s pouch and scatter it in the forest and replace it with her mixture. Uraa would be angry the next time she used it, but Silent Woman was experienced enough to know that she would be the last to be suspected, and that Maka would find it funny. They had all contributed some to Uraa out of sisterly sympathy and respect for her as a warrior, but they would part with no more. It was a gift from the gods, after all.
The first time Uraa took some of the ersatz magic sand out of her pouch and popped it into her mouth, she immediately spit it out, gasping and choking, and headed for water. She was very angry, but because of her lowered status within the tribe there was nothing she could do about it.
It took another two weeks for the effects to completely wear off, and even then it was in Uraa’s dreams that the demon-thoughts came and would not be denied, no matter how she tried. Again and again, she could see the face of the demon, leering, grinning at her from in back of some dark shield, laughing as he made her inhuman and horrible and monstrous . . .
And, one night, in the middle of the late watch, Vulture suddenly sat up, wide awake, and said the name of the demon.
“Clayben,” she whispered.
Because Vulture was not mindprinted but had become Uraa through a process even she could not understand, the shock of Clayben’s image had jolted her mostly free of the hold the truth-bearer’s drug had on her mind. It took many nights of thinking and concentrating to bring her submerged memories out and put them all together.
The first problem Vulture had to consider was whether the truth-bearer had really suspected them or had simply happened on them by accident as she’d claimed. It had to be the latter; they would have known if anyone had been spying on them all this time.
All this time . . . How much time? Midi and Suni were farthest along in their pregnancies, so they had probably gotten pregnant while still aboard ship. They looked to be in their seventh month now; Taeg, Mari, and Aesa looked to be a month behind, give or take, while Silent Woman was just beginning to show, reflecting her later start.
And suddenly it was clear what had triggered the truth-bearer’s suspicions. None of them had stretch marks save Uraa who had no children with her. That’s twice now pregnancy has complicated a mission, she thought sourly, although this time it was unavoidable. If they were to be down for a very long period of time then it was necessary. Any wife-sister would wonder at a tribe that had no children and no sign that it had ever had any. Well, since they hadn’t had a program to work from, they’d had to write one from Uraa’s genetic code. Even the greatest of computers made mistakes. Because Vulture was by nature sterile, fertility had been interpolated—and wrongly.
She wondered, though, about the magic sand. Truth-bearers had appeared in the tribe she’d joined on her reconnaissance and no such drug had been used that she was aware of. Insurance? A new tool for keeping the People on the straight and narrow? Was the static system not quite as static as it was supposed to be? Or was Master System playing the long odds? It knew they had transmitters; such a campaign would help the faithful and reinforce the system even if none of the rebels came here as Matriyehans; however, it might just catch anybody who did—and it had.
The problem was rescuing the rest of them from the drug’s influence. They already had a larger group than was manageable—twenty-six now—and Maka was insatiable about gaining more. The upward limit was around a hundred, but the average tribe was usually fifty or sixty. Maka was in fact building her strength while searching for another smaller tribe, one that could be conquered and absorbed to give her real power while also gaining that smaller tribe’s territory. That meant a war and a war was not in their best interest. They had already lost three members—fortunately, none of the pirates—as Maka’s greater strength made her seek bigger and more dangerous game, and the chief seemed willing to take more risks and even risk herself needlessly to demonstrate her bravery and right to leadership. A war might well cause the deaths of Maka and the other eight, and, just as bad, they might lose and the survivors be absorbed into the other tribe.
When Vulture had become part of Uraa’s tribe, it had been incredibly hard to exert free will, to break away when the time was right, to get back to the fighter and to Thunder. How to wrench the others back to their senses again? And Maka—could she be brought around, or would she have to die? Vulture wondered if she could force herself against all the instincts of a Matriyehan to take and become Maka. She didn’t want to do it, not only for those reasons but also because it would reduce their number by one and a key one at that. Still, it would be only months until Vulture had to feed once more—or begin to die. It was a two-year cycle that could not be changed, much as she hated the idea. It was the onset, the slight beginnings, of that need which helped Vulture to regain almost complete mastery over the Uraa personality.
And with that came the realization that Maka tribe wasn’t going to roam from this territory, and was still within a week’s walk of that lava cave area where the problem had started. She knew this tribe well; she most certainly could find it again if she was not taken by another tribe. The question was, could she find that forbidden holy place where truth-bearers might come for whatever it was they got in such places? Could she stand being alone and eating at what might be starvation levels until one of them showed up?
Curiously, of all the tribe, it was Silent Woman who seemed to sense the change in Uraa, the return of Vulture, and her torment. Vulture was shocked to realize this, and even more shocked when she realized that only Silent Woman could have brought her out. She had checked all the others and there was no glimmer of their old selves there. Now at last she understood. By the very nature of her trauma Silent Woman had been immune. That was easy to understand from the beginning. The fact that she had realized that something was wrong and picked the only one capable of overcoming it was astonishing. Just how much did go on in that mind?
Vulture only hoped Silent Woman would understand that if Uraa vanished it was not desertion, but hope.
During the next several days Vulture prepared, weaving a net out of the strong vines that were the staple of this culture’s primitive technology then waiting until they camped near a bis grove. The bis fruit grew very high in its trees and had a hard, smooth shell, but inside were seeds and a pulpy yellow mass that was extremely filling. So long as the shell was not cracked they traveled well and were one of the few food staples that could be harvested and carried for several days by tribes. That harvesting wasn’t easy, though; bis on the ground were already overripe and spoiled. The only way to get them was to climb a smooth-barked ten-meter-tall tree and select only the ones that were ripe. This was not only very dangerous in its own right but the harvesters were effectively alone and defenseless and were sometimes targeted by the leathery-winged misum, which were all teeth and tentacles.
Harvesting bis, however, allowed Vulture to get her bearings and also to survey the land. She intended to take no more bis fruit than she had harvested herself, but she knew she had to move quickly. This small valley between two volcanic ranges was the home of Sosa tribe, with about thirty-five adults and fifteen children. Sosa knew that Maka tribe was in its territory but was large enough that so far there hadn’t been a confrontation. Now Maka was being faced with a possible showdown as Sosa tribe searched for them. Maka would have preferred at least equal numbers, and Vulture felt that she would avoid the fight as long as she could but she saw no advantage to moving on. Vulture very much wanted to act before such a battle took place. The idea of Maka losing her male attributes and the tribe becoming absorbed into Sosa tribe was only slightly more daunting than the idea of having to deal with the mission and a tribe of seventy.
It was still difficult to leave. The darkness itself was threatening on this world, and safety lay only in numbers, but the sudden, overpowering feeling of loneliness, of being somehow incomplete and empty, was just as bad. She had picked her route for maximum safety and did not intend to go far. The fact was, Vulture wasn’t sure what would happen if she were snared by a strangler vine or attacked by some of the animals that might prowl at night. Could she eat the animal and, if so, would she then no longer have human reasoning, or could she be digested by the strangler plants and die? Falling into some pit or mud hole would be just as bad. It was not until Matriyeh that she had ever had a sense of her own possible mortality.
Early the next day she began the climb over the mountains. It was treacherous going, the landscape hostile enough that it had kept the valley pretty well isolated from other marauding tribes. Hot fumeroles hissed at her, spewing foul gases, and there was the strong stench of sulfur and occasional hot spots in the rocks. A steady rain made much of the lava field slippery and dangerous. She was relieved to finally make it to older rock, and she could see a small pass ahead, perhaps another two or three hundred meters up the mountainside. She stopped for a moment and sat, trying to muster enough strength to make it to the top.
The lava snake was not in the ideal position but when prey stopped, it moved fast. Most of the time it lived in its lava tube, head pointed so that only the eyes, set in the skull then but capable of protruding on stalks when needed, looked out.
Lava snakes could live on rock, particularly high-sulfur rock, but they preferred supplementing their diet with living meat. At more than ten meters long, and all mouth at one end, they could anchor themselves in their dens and shoot out straight ahead with enough speed to snare an unwary misum and sometimes an unwary person as well. There had been a few the tribe had faced when crossing into the valley. They had been lucky because they’d come down between two dens; the lava snakes had attacked at about the same time and it had been quick reflexes that saved them, causing the two snakes to go after each other instead.
Vulture heard it and rolled away just in time. The great jaws snapped shut less than a meter from her. There was no time to prepare weapons, and none of the weapons she had would be much use singly against such a beast. She rolled, came up on her feet, spear ready, all supplies tossed away, and quickly eyed an area about ten meters away that was out of range of the snake if it kept itself anchored but which ended in a sheer drop. The snakes were single-minded eating machines and she depended on that. She’d probably kill the monster if it ate her, but that wouldn’t do her much good.
The field became suddenly alive with great, angry hisses and roars, and several more snakes revealed themselves but did not emerge from their lairs. Anchored, the snakes could lunge at an incredible speed, but if forced to move freely and crawl they were slow and ponderous. She could outrun one, but it would do little good if she just ran into the jaws of another. The easiest way to the top was past the first creature’s lair, and now it was her task to empty it or die.
She stood almost on the edge of the precipice and held her spear high in defiance. “Ho! Snake! Come! Uraa be snake dinner! Easy meat! Come!”
The snake roared in anger and began to emerge from its hole. Its back end was quite small, almost tentaclelike, good for gripping, but useless now that it was free of the lair and slowly coming toward her. The rock actually hissed as the beast traveled, thanks to a secretion it left as it moved.
She was suddenly afraid she had miscalculated, and fear of death was not something she was used to. The great Vulture, the creature that could become anyone and could fool even Master System, was, here, no different from the most ordinary of Matriyehan women.
The snake approached but stopped five meters short, one eye stalk on the spear. Clearly this one was an experienced hunter. Vulture saw the small, tentaclelike rear gyrating back and forth, trying to find something to grip. If it did, she was dead meat, so she had to force the issue.
With a fierce, steady scream she ran straight for the head of the snake, spear ready. The action confused the snake, which did nothing for a moment, and she let the spear go with full force. It struck the head area and sank in a bit; a superficial wound, but painful. The snake roared in fury and lunged at full speed at Vulture, who jumped to her left and rolled flat. The snake in its fury had forgotten it didn’t yet have an anchor, and it went straight on past her and over the edge of the cliff. Its hind end, however, managed to catch a jagged edge of a lava outcrop, and it hung there for a moment, then slowly tried pulling itself back up.
Vulture wasn’t going to give it a chance. She ran straight past the now-empty lair and made the top before she dared stop and look back.
The great snake was indeed pulling itself back up, but its relative helplessness had not gone unnoticed by its kin, who were converging on the spot where the great head was oozing back onto solid ground. She decided to let them fight it out.
The exhilaration of surviving the encounter quickly gave way to concern. What am I celebrating? she asked herself. That I’m smarter than a damned snake? Of more concern now was that she had no reserve food supply, no spear, and not much else except a sharp knife-stone, the blow gun, and a supply of dart thorns. It was a long and dangerous trek down the other side, and there were more snakes and other dangers. She would be easy prey should a misum pass by and get curious. Worse, she would have to cross dozens of tribal territories, perhaps more, to reach the point where she wanted to be, and she would be in no condition to resist warriors if one of those tribes found and then adopted her.
It was her worst nightmare. The mission was in shambles before it even had a chance to begin, and she was alone and relatively defenseless on the surface of the cruel planet Matriyeh.