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