WE HAD ABOUT GIVEN YOU ALL UP AS DEAD!”
Hawks practically screamed when Vulture’s call came in.
“My god, what’s been happening? It’s been so long
we’re starting work on Chanchuk without you!”
“You might still be in the dark, but I lucked into
something I never imagined on this world. I got here from the
Center in under two hours. Would you believe that? After all
this . . . two lousy hours.”
“What? How?”
“Um . . . Would you believe I took
the train?”
That got them almost as much as Vulture’s unexpected
contact. “Uh—you took the what?”
“The train. It’s fascinating. Works on some kind of
high-speed magnetic principle, I think. Little cars, really, but
there are couplers that indicate more could be added. I have much
to tell you, but the first thing is I think we made a basic mistake
with this world. I don’t think this is a century-old
experiment at all, and I don’t think it’s the harbinger
of things to come so much as the origin of the idea.
Hawks—you’re a historian. If this were a relatively new
project, wouldn’t there be artifacts someplace? Ruins,
perhaps, or an overgrown road or statue or something? Even
after almost a thousand years they’re still all over
Earth.”
“And there are none there? None that you saw
anywhere?”
“Uh uh, and if you think it out it’s unlikely. The
volcanoes around here are very active. The train tunnels are
reinforced with the same synthetic linings used in jump propulsor
motors on spaceships and rely as much on physics to keep them
aligned as the rock they’re in. You don’t import lava
snakes or the hundreds of other nasty creatures here, either, all
well adapted to this place, but you also sure wouldn’t have
them if there had been long-term civilized settlement here. The
church is a Center and its chief is the C.A. This
was the system imposed by Master System from the start for these
people. I think it’s been going like this for centuries,
maybe eight or nine. The kicker was the biology. I could see Master
System transmuting a population but not an indigenous one. The very
biology of the chiefs and the limits on the tribes makes it very
unlikely there ever was a civilization here.”
“And those . . . trains?”
“That’s how it works. Until I was shown
them—and only those who have seen the goddess firsthand and
received her personal blessing know of them or can use them—I
still couldn’t figure it all out. How did they maintain
control over so vast a region? How did they stamp out innovation?
How did they supply and support those countless truth-bearers in
the wild? When I went to my first holy place there was power
support for a computer and a limited sort of a mindprinter system,
sophisticated security programs, and fresh supplies. There’s
not, however, any indication of a direct communications grid. The
train supplies them and also picks up the recordings and drops off
new programs. Its power grid is fed by thermal stations deep below
the surface and powers the holy places as well. They can cover an
enormous area with the network and even shift supervisors
around.”
Star Eagle broke in. “Then these holy places—they
are train stations?”
“Exactly. But let me tell you all the details in order and
all the complications and problems. I need help badly but time is
of the essence. We are in serious danger of losing what remains of
our people and causing a lot more suffering.”
As quickly but as thoroughly as possible, Vulture recounted the
entire proceedings from their landing to the present situation.
“You actually kissed the ring.” Hawks
sighed. “Too bad one of your lives wasn’t as a
pickpocket. All right—after all this inactivity we have a
radically changed situation and time pressure. Star
Eagle?”
“I will need more information,” the pilot responded.
“I’m going to need a thorough mindprint. Vulture, you
will have to be picked up and taken aboard.”
Almost everyone aboard had been poring over the data bit by bit,
trying to come up with a plan, or at least make sense of it
all.
“I don’t like the sound of that amnesia drug one
bit,” Raven commented. “I heard of stuff like that from
my training days, though. Ten to one it’s the same stuff they
give to Center personnel when they flunk a mindprinter exam or get
caught with their nose where it shouldn’t be and are sent
back to their people to live. Burn ’em out, give ’em a
simple mindprinter program on living the old ways, and send them
home to live and rot more ignorant than they were before they
arrived. It’s that kind of crap I think Master System has
been tempted to use on whole populations.”
“I’m more concerned right now about this
Earth-daughter. Any idea what she might be? Or how?” Hawks
asked any of them.
“The vision is quite graphic,” Star Eagle responded.
“She is not hologram or other illusion. Tiny details picked
from the scene in Vulture’s mind show consistent shadow,
light breathing, moist lips, all indicating a living being. The
radiation might be easy to fake, but I think she actually does
glow. The subliminals indicate the use of a low-power hypnocaster
but directionality emanates from her. It is almost as if she bad
the hypnocaster inside her.”
“Is that possible?” Hawks asked.
“Not if you’re human, even Matriyehan. The required
power sources alone would be injurious to tissue. If we rely on the
assumption that she does indeed glow and she has this sort of
device inside her, she is not at all human. Yet all external
evidence that I can extract indicate she is.”
Raven sighed. “I been thinkin’ about
Nagy.”
Hawks was startled. “Yes? What about him?”
“There was just something about him, something not right
somehow. He was afraid only once that I saw, and that was when he
thought his dead body might be ejected with a Val ship present. Now
why would he be afraid of that if he’s dead? No earthly use
to nobody—I mean, you’ve seen what a vacuum does to a
body anyway. And then there was that small power surge, almost
exactly like the surge we recorded when that Val we blew up sent
out its little module and that ran and jumped.
Suppose . . . suppose Nagy wasn’t human,
either. Suppose he was something else, something transmuted to fool
the best of man and machine but something a Val would discover
anyway if it picked up the body—or maybe if it just scanned
the body.”
“I have his medical records and his mindprints,”
Star Eagle pointed out. “They show nothing
unusual.”
“Yeah, and neither does Vulture’s. If we
didn’t have Vulture, if I hadn’t seen the whole thing
with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe such a creature could
exist—no offense.”
“That’s all right. I am a creature,”
Vulture responded off-handedly.
Isaac Clayben was fascinated by the line of thought that Raven
had kept to himself all this time. “You mean you think my
Arnold Nagy was a creature, as well? Like Vulture?”
“Uh uh. Not like Vulture, but with the same purpose. To
fool everybody, human and computer. To hide. Look, I know this
sounds crazy, off the wall, but Vulture was there and heard and saw
it all, too. The way Nagy talked in his last moments about the
heavy price to be paid using the transmuter. Almost a sense of
loss, or longing.”
Vulture nodded. “Yes, that’s it exactly. I
hadn’t thought of it much, though, but you’re
right.”
“Doc, let me ask you—could you turn me into a horse?
I mean a real, authentic horse, but with my memories?”
Clayben thought a moment. “There would be problems with
memory storage and reinforced muscle controls, but it could be done
using a modification of the memory storage system used on Vulture.
Yes. Why?”
“What about a Val, Doc? Assuming you had the template for
one, could you turn me into a living machine?”
“If I had the template, yes. The difficulties
involved in control and reflexes and the like would be almost the
opposite of the horse, but memory storage would be no problem,
although you would literally no longer be human. Biochemistry would
be replaced by programs, which are never as complex or complete as
the natural thing. But, yes. What are you driving at?”
“Suppose you took a Val, for example, and tried to
transmute it into a human being? Not human—but a perfect
fake? One that would bleed and wheeze and drink booze and smoke
cigars and tell dirty jokes and would be able to manipulate scanners
to show the human insides you expect and would be able to make a
mindprinter jump through the kind of hoops Vulture can?”
“It is—possible. Not with what we have here. It
would take an incredibly complex computer with massive memory to do
it, and possibly long periods of research and experimentation, but,
yes, it could be done, I suppose. The price, however, would be
quite high. As I said, you can only simulate so much. The creature
would have to be half human, with biochemical responses, emotions,
feelings of pleasure and pain, yet half machine, with a synthetic
inner structure, power source, programmability—it would be an
incredibly complex task, and it would create something that had the
weaknesses of humans without the powers of the machines. Why would
you create such a thing?”
Raven sat back and chewed on his cigar. “To replace a real
human, to put your machine in a key place where it would never be
suspected. As a spy, Doc. The perfect spy. I saw Nagy in action,
Doc. He took on a Val head-to-head and he won. He thought as fast
as the Val, and he out-thought it in planning and maneuvering. And
those languages. He knew every language, every damned dialect there
was, while all the time he kept playin’ the
beer-drinkin’, cigar-smokin’, good old security
boy.”
“But—he even had women. He enjoyed
sex,” China pointed out. “He excelled at that,
too,” she added, “although I never had his
child.”
“You said it, Doc. Given a big enough machine to write a
program that complicated and you can give your creature anything
you want. Almost anything, anyway. He took his turn with China, and
it didn’t take. Why? He wasn’t human. Now we have this
goddess. Same thing. She’s human but she can’t be. More
important, she gives the orders but she don’t wear the ring.
Only a real human can wear or possess that ring. She could have the
power source and all the gadgets you could want built
in.”
“Hold on,” Hawks said. “This is all
fascinating, but if some sort of humanoid Val was the top authority
down there, it would violate the core program, the very reason for
the existence of Centers in the first place. Humans must rule the
day-to-day affairs of a planetary civilization.”
But Clayben was taken by the idea. “This is not
necessarily a violation. It would be if she did rule, but
she does not. She is rarely seen and then only by a few. Clearly
she was not even a participant in the argument over how to handle
the tribes. When authority must weigh alternatives and cannot
decide on policy, it goes to its machines, its computers, and asks
for advice. They were heavily, probably evenly, divided, and the
chief administrator didn’t want to alienate either side by
making a firm decision. So they put it to the Great
God—their decision to do so—and the
Earth-daughter intervened and decided as requested. It is like
making a compact with the devil. If one does not consider all the
angles and close all the loopholes, the devil will take advantage.
Humans can choose freely to abrogate their decisions to machines.
We do it all the time right here on Thunder. Whenever a
complex issue is beyond us we defer to Star Eagle’s superior
data, speed, and analytical skills. I can’t believe it of
Nagy even now, but Raven may be quite correct here.”
Hawks sighed. “So we’re dealing with some sort of
powerful and unusual Val, whose loyalty, of course is to the
system, working with a master computer through a religion. Vulture
is now on the inside and in good graces—maybe good enough to
switch rings.”
“If I am successful at stamping out all vestiges of
creativity and progress,” Vulture replied. “Let’s
face it—it may already be too late, but probably not. Still,
sooner or later it’s gonna fall apart. The data will be
inconsistent, the charade our people are playing down there will
come undone, and that will be the end of it. If I don’t do
what the Earth-daughter and the hard-liners on the council demand,
I’ll never get close enough to that ring again to make a
switch. If I do, then I’ll be destroying the minds and
futures of four hundred or more people, not to mention five very
brave members of this company that I personally recruited to go
down there.”
“Then the only logical solution,” China said,
“is to do both.”
They all turned to the blind girl expectantly, and she seemed to
sense it.
“We have been too conservative, I think. We were afraid of
activating a trained and fully equipped SPF unit. Now we know
they’re all natives, and the bulk of our trooper opposition
is technically superior but ignorant and inexperienced even when
their hidden mindprint programs are triggered. We thought if we
kept our raiding party at the level of stones and spears,
we’d only have to deal with the same, but with
this—goddess—and the trains and the rest, it simply
isn’t so. Let’s use our technology. We have very little
to lose at this stage and we’re so close. We have
psychogenetic chambers and mindprinters and biochemical agents. And
now we have access to the trains and the Center. Vulture—you
say the trains serve the holy places? And that each and every one
of the priestesses must go there if near one?”
“That is true.”
“Then the first thing we need, and pretty damned fast, is
some truth-bearers of our own . . . ”
“Wait a minute!” Raven replied. “That
won’t work. Remember the SPF have self-destructs if you try
something like that.”
“Sure, the SPF does—but these aren’t SPF.
Maybe their grandmothers were, or perhaps more to the point their
ancestors, but not them. What kind of mindprinting do you think
they give the third rank, anyway? The temple language, information
on the technical weaponry and assets needed, and the chain of
communications and command, I bet. Nothing more. They’re
Matriyehans, not born commandos! That’s where we went wrong
on this. You could give them the instructions on how to build an
ion propulsor unit but they wouldn’t be able to comprehend
what the hell it was. No, first things first. Let’s snatch a
few and see. If I’m right, we can start turning this thing
around in stages.”
And she was right. The first two Vulture snatched by using the
previously forbidden laser pistol proved relatively easy. Waiting
for them had given Vulture time with modern sensors to find out
just what was in those holy places and how they worked. The answer
was simple—Master System’s standard memory storage
modules and a preprogrammed automatic computer sequence. The
control computers were quite primitive and quite limited in what
they could do. With that climate and level of vulcanism it had
probably been decided that simple and compact was best. For the
same reason, long communications lines within the rail tunnels were
ruled out. The structural fields needed for the train would wreak
havoc with any hardwired system, and ground-to-satellite
communications would require a lot of maintenance. Forced to choose
between communications or transport, Master System had chosen
transport.
“The change to truth-bearer is a transmuter
function,” Star Eagle reported. “They have quite a
modern setup in the temple masked under that primitive mumbojumbo.
They have to—to keep the system working. Reprogramming and
reorienting them while letting them pass the mindprinter tests is
not much of a problem, but other than changing their loyalties,
don’t expect much more than you see now. Their level of
superstition and ignorance is appalling even by Master
System’s standards. They will obey your orders, Vulture, on
coded commands. If you tell them the grass is brack and all women
are turtles, they will believe.”
“Fair enough, but we need more,” Hawks told them.
“We need the people who pick up those modules.”
“No go there, I think,” Vulture replied.
“They’re on really tight schedules and they’ll be
missed. A few hours here or there wouldn’t matter—the
power’s always erratic in the tunnels—but not the two
days it’d take to nab ’em, bring ’em here,
process them, and return them.”
“Then we’ll go with portables. We’re going to
have to do that with the other truth-bearers anyway.”
“You can’t run mid-rank programs on them!”
Vulture protested. “They’re a lot more slick and
sophisticated than that.”
“Then knock one out, take a print, and make it look
convincing so that when she wakes up she’ll think she slipped
and fell or something. You’re creative. Give me one, and I
can work up something that won’t be a hundred percent, but
will be general and generic enough to be useful.”
Inside of seven days they had five truth-bearers and the first
of the programs. Vulture decided they could wait no longer on the
tribes; even now, using the transport system, it would be guesswork
where they’d be and would take some time to track them down.
She needed her truth-bearers in place right now. The rest would
have to wait.
The nearest holy place to the last known position of the tribes
was about forty kilometers south-southwest of where the large camp
had been, which was a good starting point. Vulture and her five
worshipful, obedient retinue spent another two or three days
checking with locals for word of tribal movements. What they heard
was disturbing. The four groups had split geographically much
farther apart than had been the plan and were established in broad
areas with other tribes in between. The land they had was not the
best, and they would have more than the usual struggle to support
themselves in those places.
Vulture headed for the nearest new tribe, wondering what the
hell could have gone so wrong in just a few weeks with everybody on
the alert. Maybe something hadn’t seemed quite right to the
computer at the holy seat right from the start. If so, that would
be very bad luck.
The tribe welcomed them with the usual rituals and no sign of
suspicion or hostility in spite of their numbers, which really
wasn’t good. They looked worn, tired out, and clearly had
been through a rough time. Vulture recognized a few faces as
belonging to Mari tribe, but the priestesses were being welcomed to
Tura tribe, another bad sign. She stopped one of the old-timers and
asked, “This used be Mari tribe. Where Mari now?
Dead?”
The woman shook her head negatively, which was a relief.
“No. Lose honor. Tura say it be for forbidden things Mari
tell us do. Take tribe back to old ways. Mari now chief—of
babies.”
It was actually a relief to hear that Santiago was still alive
and healthy, but Vulture understood the insult. Chiefs who lost
their male attributes were in deepest disgrace; when there was
nothing else, honor was everything. Now she would not even be a
warrior but in effect a slave, not just of the new chief but of the
entire tribe.
It was late in the day, though, after all the amenities with the
chief and firebearer had been settled and the news discussed,
before Vulture could seek her out. She did look pretty miserable
even though she seemed to enjoy playing with the young children, at
least one of which was hers. They had used a slightly mismatched
natural brown dye to cover over all her tattoos and badges of rank;
she carried no spear nor wore pouch, belt, or adornments. When
honor went, everything went.
The old Maria was still in there, though. She viewed the
approach of the holy mother with mixed hope and fear, depending on
who or what this one turned out to be.
The holy mother crouched low as Mari knelt and whispered,
“Vulture has returned.”
She gasped and grabbed Vulture’s hand so strongly she
threatened to wrench it from its socket. Finally Vulture was able
to ask, “Why did this happen? And how?”
“Got word. Runner from Dakuminifar tribe. Truth-bearer
showed up. Bad fates, bad medicine.” That meant rotten luck.
“Suni strange, like demon. Holy Mother know. Worst tribe to
pick. Truth-bearer saw heresy but not stupid. Play along with Suni
so Suni no kill right off. Mix potion. Tell Suni potion make Suni
body like rock, spears bounce off, Suni crazy, drink potion. Later
scream all night. Next day Suni not chief, not crazy. Stupid, like
child. Remember nothing, not even name or tribe. Nothing. Not know
own face in stream. Big fight for new chief. Some of tribe sneak
away, go to Maka, Midi, and Mari tribes. Tell all. Mari not wait.
Remember Holy Mother teach drug for chief—no chief.
Firebearer mix chief drug in Tura food. Tura never like new ways.
Truth-bearer come, look at tribe, seem happy. Do nothing. Go
away.”
Vulture nodded. “It must be rough on you—like this.
But better this way than Suni’s way. Damn!” The only
alternative Maria had in that time period was to flee, and that
would mean loss of honor, reversion, and incorporation into a new
tribe if she survived long enough in the wild. Better to wait here
where Vulture could find her.
“Suni was always the weak link,” she continued, as
much to herself as to Mari. “I just hoped they’d give
me more time before checking up. I smell a palace revolution here,
from somebody on the council who doesn’t like the idea that
the chief administrator couldn’t make the hard choice and had
to defer to the Earth-daughter.” She looked around.
“All the truth-bearers here now are my people. Mindprinted.
They’re still ignorant but they’re mine and you can
trust them. Never mind how I pulled it off—now we have to
reorient everything. What about Maka and Midi?”
“Midi do what Mari do. Same thing, but not as bad. Oona
now chief. Made truth-bearer happy but then sent runners to talk
Tura. Tura cut out tongues and send back. No more
runners.”
Vulture nodded. “All right, then, so Oona’s learning
real fast and that’s good. Maka?” She could hardly
imagine Manka Warlock as this lowly slave and nursemaid.
“Word come Maka flee with Euno, two, three favorites. Rest
fight, Maba be chief. Not good as Oona but not bad as Tura. Like
new ways but know of Suni. Truth-bearer take Suni around to other
tribes, show as warning.” She shivered. “Warning be
real strong!”
“Uh huh. I bet. And what about this tribe? It seems to be
totally back to the old ways.”
Mari nodded. “Strict discipline. Most no like. Much
grumbling. Hard life again. But tribe obey. Tura is chief.
Many still not taken but obey with no other chief. But Tura take
Mari—every day, since . . . ”
And that would settle that, particularly with Tura strictly and
punishingly enforcing a return to the old ways, and publicly and
visibly—and probably violently—raping Mari, the old
chief, every day reinforced the change. No wonder she moved so
tiredly and looked like hell.
“We’ll take care of Tura if and when we have to.
Right now I’ll have to contact Midi and reassure her and
somehow find Warlock and Silent Woman if I can. I’ll see if I
can spring you two from this to work with us. As soon as we can get
organized things are going to start to pop around this
dump.”
She looked excited but nervous. “Mari’s
child . . . ”
“Can come along, don’t worry. This thing is getting
too damned complicated as it is. For two rocks I’d just blow
that damned holy seat to hell and fight the whole galaxy’s
fleets!”
It really wasn’t much of a problem to spring Mari,
although taking her child along took a bit more negotiating. Still,
if you’re going to return to the old ways then you always
obey the truth-bearer. Springing Midi and her child was
even easier. Although it was never said and all the actions were to
the contrary, Vulture and Mari had the strongest impression that
Oona not only knew who Vulture was but that the situation had
changed once again. There was some question, though, as to just how
much help the two could be. The trap of Matriyeh was that much of
the culture was imposed physiologically. One who had lost honor
also lost more than the male hormonally triggered attributes; they
lost their aggressiveness, some strength, and actually became more
submissive and dependent. If one was chief one died a chief or
lived forever in dishonor. The fact that the pair were not native
mitigated the change only slightly.
Still, a portable mindprinter made conversation far easier. They
might have lost much, but not their intelligence or mental skills.
Star Eagle had anticipated problems and provided a cartridge to
remove the filter. It hardly seemed worth it any more. It made them
educated and articulate Matriyehans, but still Matriyehans of the
lowest social order. They simply would not fight, even in defense,
but they would carry the supplies no matter how heavy or complex.
They would wear nothing, nor would they even eat until Vulture had
finished. She argued with them on this over and over to no avail.
It was a wrinkle outside Vulture’s vast collective
experience.
“Look, don’t you think we want it?”
Maria asked, almost pleadingly. “We were both captains and
then chiefs. Independent leaders. We want to be again, but we
can’t. You must stop torturing us like this.
It’s like someone who is crippled. She wants to walk, but her
brain, her muscles, her legs just do not respond. It’s not
fear. I’m still not afraid to die, and I’m surprised
I’m still alive. And I don’t want to die. Neither does
Midi. But alone, out here, if we were alone, we would die,
and our children, too. If something dangerous were to attack and
there was no place to hide, even if I had a spear, I could not
defend myself or the others. I just could not bring myself to do
it.”
“It’s humiliating,” Midi agreed.
“It’s like, well, you get muddled or confused and have
no real confidence. You can’t plan, you can’t think
straight. The result is you just can’t make a decision. What
was once clear isn’t any more. That may sound nuts, but it
just is, that’s all. When you lose honor you lose your
ability to lead. You can’t do anything but follow.” She
sighed. “If I’d known, I’d have tried
Warlock’s way or killed myself first, I think. We both had
tribal members who lost honor one way or another but you never
thought of it as something that changed you, just some cultural
thing.”
Maria sighed. “Maybe you just should have left us with the
tribes. At least we would not be a burden.”
“Cut the guilt! We’ve misread this and played into
the hands of Master System from the start,” Vulture told
them. “Maybe we can work with some of the psychochemistry
when we have a chance to study this genetic system in detail, but,
right now, if all you can do is haul stuff and make pleasant
conversation and maybe orient me around here, that’s more
than enough. I’m mostly concerned about Warlock and her
party. Technically, she lost her honor when she ran out on the
tribe. I can’t imagine Warlock reverting to your state
without committing suicide, so maybe mental power can overcome its
effects.”
“I had not thought of that,” Maria replied.
“If she perceives herself, or is perceived by those she took
with her, as having lost honor it will happen, and she will not
kill herself. That would require a firm personal decision to act. I
could not have come with you on my own, but you wished it, and the
chief ordered it.”
Midi nodded, thinking of the Warlock party. “It would be a
small new tribe but it would be only a few smaller than we were at
the start. I wonder which of them would become chief.”
“One thing’s sure,” Vulture responded.
“Any of the others would want to get as far away from here as
fast as possible. We might just have lost them. For the time being,
we’ll be canvassing all the tribes we run into and if we get
any word of them, fine. If not, we’ll just have to move
without them. I need more personnel now, and I need to get a
complete picture of what we’re dealing with here. You two
just follow me and stay mute in the presence of any others,
concentrating only on me.”
She had hoped originally to use the tribes to do things more
quickly and efficiently, but that was now out. Vulture’s
“girls”—the mindprinted truth-bearers—would
be doing the real work without understanding what they were doing
or why, but more was needed. Oona couldn’t be a big help; how
did you explain to a Matriyehan native who spoke and thought no
other language and had no other experience that you were planning
to knock off a goddess and reprogram an entire theocracy?
For several weeks Vulture and her pair of porters were busily
seeking out the native tribes and gathering information. On
occasion, using injectors or even a small stunner, Vulture was able
to knock out and reprogram a truth-bearer or two, and once, at a
train stop, she managed to knock out and record the mindprint of a
second-rank priestess who maintained the places, making it
convincing that she’d slipped on a wet spot and fallen and
knocked herself out. It was a major victory.
“I don’t want this to go to waste, and I think you
two will be better off aboard Thunder, particularly with
the kids,” Vulture told the rebel women one day.
“Besides, we’ll let China and Clayben look at how these
psycho-chemical processes function. Maybe there’s some way
out of this.”
“Yes,” they both agreed. “If you say
so.” Thunder was more than agreeable. “But what will
you be doing?” Hawks asked.
Vulture sighed. “I think it’s time I became one of
those courier priestesses,” she told him. “I ate a
couple of very good computer scientists back in the bad old days on
Melchior. I think it’s time I got an idea of just exactly
what we’re dealing with.”
By the time Vulture reappeared to report again, weeks later,
much progress had been made aboard.
“The changes in Santiago and Ng are permanent as far as
their submissive nature goes,” China reported.
“Essentially, their bodies simply lose the ability to
manufacture certain brain chemicals and hormones, reducing them to
that. The solution, such as it is, is to administer chemical
substitutes for what their bodies can no longer make on a
day-to-day basis. The trouble is that the human being is such an
adaptable animal. We learn to live on ice floes in the Arctic and
in equatorial jungles. The longer they remain in that state, the
more hardened their thinking will be to that type of behavior, and
we can’t do more than a tiny stabilization without risking
their unborn children, since both are pregnant.
Afterward—well, maybe with some mindprinter therapy and daily
injections, they’ll come back to their old selves. I
can’t help thinking that if I weren’t blind Matriyeh
might be a world for me. It seems as if everybody’s pregnant
all the time.”
“Mostly,” Vulture agreed, “but remember that
maybe one in nine children will survive to adulthood. The biggest
problem they’ll have down here, if they can ever break this
cycle and create a civilization, is that medicine, sanitation, and
the lack of constant hunting and gathering will dramatically
decrease infant mortality, but yet they’ll keep having
babies. I don’t see how the southern continent keeps so
primitive without this church-imposed system.”
“We have a theory. It appears really brutal there. The
average age of an adult is in the low teens, and they don’t
even seem to have control of fire. Clayben says they’re in a
prehuman state, more like smart apes, and doubts they even have
what we would think of as a language. It’s possible that
whole southern continent overstepped the proscribed bounds and was
given a good dose of that mind-destroying drug. It could be that
some of the fruits peculiar to the south were bred to produce it
naturally. We’re not sure, but also it’s possible that
the south is the real experiment. Data suggests the geology there
would make the north’s transportation and communications
network impossible to maintain. If anything, it’s rougher
geologically than the north, but has fewer large animals of prey.
But enough of that. What do you have?”
“Plenty. The standard data packs retrieved from the holy
places are brought to a smooth and obviously artificial chamber
below the statue of the Great God. There are no controls, screens,
speakers, or the like, but there is one wall composed entirely of
slots. With proper ceremony you stick the cubes in the slots, wait
until they turn from blue to red, then remove them and replace them
in your pouch. Because there are chambers on all sides and the
train below, I feel pretty certain that the computer console
isn’t very large and is possibly a modified starship core
command module and data center. It looks to be about the same size
as the one we have on Thunder. That’s still one hell
of a computer, though—but I get the very strong impression
that it controls only the direct machines within the temple and the
communications link to the satellite above. It’s more a
transfer station than a command center like the one on Janipur. It
takes the raw data, sorts and correlates it, then beams it out to
someplace far from this system, and gets its orders back from
there. Its output is strictly through the modules, the mindprinter,
and, of course, the Great God, who not only speaks but also moves a
bit on occasion while giving commands. It’s pretty
impressive.”
“Pretty limited,” China agreed. “And it
matches our thinking. The codes it uses to transmit to Master
System are new, but the frequencies and methods are ancient.
Instead of being one of the latest installations, Star Eagle now
thinks this may have been one of the earliest colonies, when Master
System was still experimenting. Maybe even the first and the origin
of the Center concept, which was later refined. So Master System
just left it that way, and stuck a ring there as well because it
figured it would be damned impossible to lift it. Good. Then the
master computer of Matriyeh only knows what is fed into it, not
what it directly observes and measures, and is basically a simple
device used to maintain a simple system. That explains the
Earth-goddess, who was probably added later on, maybe much later,
when the south got out of hand and needed direct action. She
doesn’t run the church—she is the guardian of that
computer!”
“My thinking exactly. If she ran things, she’d make
herself more visible. Nothing like an appearance by her to inspire
the troops and send the new field agents out with fanatical
devotion. But that’s not her job, of course. That’s the
council’s job.”
“Yes. What is most significant in the matter of sending
the truth-bearer independently to deal with your tribes is that it
was against the direct orders of the Earth-goddess to let you give
it a try first.”
“There was something of a power struggle,” Vulture
agreed. “It’s still the talk of the second rank. The
chief held on to her job, but there was a shake-up on the council
and the balance was changed. A couple of second-rank officers got
the call to godhood, and a couple of the ones on the council passed
on into the company of the Great God having attained absolute
perfection. You get the idea.”
“Yes. What else?”
“I’ve managed to make a pretty good guess at the
layout of the entire temple. It’s big, but not as big as
you’d think by looking at it. One thing I hadn’t
noticed originally was how stagnant the air was. Torches burn
straight up, and the place smells. The only reason it’s not
unbearable is the transport center beneath. Every time a car leaves
there’s a pull of air in from the entrance all the way
through.”
“It’s that solid?’
“It seems like it. The first rank have large quarters
higher up from the administrative areas. Hard to say how large they
are but they’re said to be straight up, and the curve of the
rock at that point wouldn’t indicate that they were very high
up. It occurs to me that if you could block the train for a period,
the air would just sit there, since the valley itself seems to have
an almost permanent inversion. It rarely clears up there, but
there’re never any bad storms. I think we have a pretty good chance that it’s nearly a
sealed air system there.”
“Hmmm . . . Yes, and we have now some
pretty extensive knowledge of Matriyehan biochemistry. Yes, this is
coming together nicely. If it wasn’t for that damned
Earth-daughter, this would be ready to go. Still, we have some
ideas on her, as well, although it’s going to be very chancy
in the end. You will have to face facts, Vulture. We can deal with
her, but unless we guess right a hundred percent on slight
knowledge, the master computer is eventually going to miss her and
sound the alarm. If so, short of having all five rings and using
them properly, there is no way in the universe that we can help or
protect these people. But we will give it a try. That’s all I
can offer.”
“It will have to do. I’ll remain in this role until
we’re ready to go and continue intelligence-gathering.
I’m supposed to be put on a route next week that might take
me close to Oona. If I get the chance I’ll check on her.
She’s a good kid.”
“All right, but take no unnecessary risks. We were very
lucky on the Janipur job, and we didn’t realize it and got
overconfident. Even without the Earth-daughter to deal with we are
still going to have to make many educated guesses and suppositions
and trust to luck for the fine details, and we haven’t had
much luck on this job so far.”
“Yeah—I think luck owes us one.”
Vulture took a chance going to Oona’s territory. True, she
wasn’t due for a new set of rounds for a few days and was
technically off duty, but she had no real authority to use the
train for a personal mission, and there was great risk if it was
found out she’d done so. She didn’t care by this point.
This time, too, Oona, who had been a witness to the startling
transformation of truth-bearer into holy mother in that encounter
that now seemed ages ago, was not kept in the dark as to who her
high-ranking visitor was.
“Oona—Holy Mother must know. Do Oona believe real
truth-bearers or new truth-bearers?”
The former firebearer, now chief, who’d been the only one
to keep a few comforts in spite of constant observation, shrugged.
“Oona not know. New truth-bearers have much magic, but old
way has honor.”
“If all Oona tribe had way to end old way, make tribes
free to live as wanted, even if way much dangerous, much chance die
or worse, small chance be free—then?”
“Oona no like live hard when tribe can live easier,”
she answered carefully. “But Oona no like there be no rules,
no true belief. Each chief have own faith, own rules. Whole
Earth-Mother break from cracks.”
It was an understandable and quite sophisticated line of
thinking for such a one as this, a native who knew nothing else.
She no longer believed in the old church; if she ever had, the
sight of truth-bearers being killed without some angry god striking
dead the killer dissolved that. She understood that much of it was
drugs and trickery, even if the trickery itself was magic. But this
was the world and the life she knew, and she understood it and her
place in it—and there was comfort in that. She was concerned
that if the old order broke, it would collapse everything she knew
and leave only a chaos worse than the life she now had. Hatred of
unjust rule and oppression was balanced by fear of the
unknown—fear, in fact, of freedom. The church was a hated
evil—but it was all she had.
Vulture sighed and wondered if she wasn’t right. They
wanted an easier life, more freedom to make better tools and
weapons and gain some shelter and protection and security, but
their own racial preconditions and genetic makeup would make any
real sort of civilization as others understood it next to
impossible here. With settlement and agriculture would come that
security, but with an exponentially expanding population that was
nonetheless limited by biological imperatives to a hundred per
chief, things would explode in violence and the losers would be
slaughtered again and again. Perhaps over thousands of years a
workable and unique system would develop, but just as likely they
would descend back into permanent barbarism and remain there. The
only other way would be to impose it through alien technology, and
even then the amount of people involved would be enormous and the
task long and daunting. It had seemed so simple when they had
decided to join the four tribes—a few hundred out of a couple
of million. They just hadn’t understood the complexity of the
problem.
Vulture could only change the subject. “Holy Mother still
looks for Maka. Oona hear?”
The chief nodded. “Maka no chief now. In small tribe two
day walk west. Soba tribe. Be captured long time. Oona scout see,
no talk. Get word from truth-bearer. One of Holy Mother’s.
Not know which.”
“Lose honor?”
“Not know. Should have, but Maka strange like Holy
Mother.”
“Not like Holy Mother but Holy Mother know what Oona mean.
Thank you.”
Finding the right truth-bearer in this whole area was a job for
which she didn’t have the time, but she felt she could find
this Soba tribe and did so, although it took three days. Vulture
was concerned at what she would find, since losing honor was not
confined to chiefs. It was triggered by a mental attitude, a way of
looking at oneself that precipitated permanent changes. If a whole
tribe all thought of themselves as cowards, as running away from
power and responsibility, then they might all be a bunch of
submissive slaves, and that would be too bad. Vulture could
particularly use Manka Warlock in what was to come.
What she found was not nearly as bad as she expected. The tribe
was small, no more than twenty-five with perhaps nine children.
Soba herself was almost tiny; unusually short for a Matriyehan and
quite thin and wiry, she was almost dwarfed by her tribe. That
showed her to be doubly dangerous and clever that she had managed
to defeat or outwit the larger contenders. They had blundered into
the tribe by chance less than three days after fleeing. Warlock had
already lost her male aspects and, in spite of herself, Silent
Woman had been taking them on, although slowly. The strange, mute
woman had been the most independent and self-sufficient in the
wild, and nature had started the process, but she had no will or
desire to be chief. She quite literally led them into Soba’s
entire group and refused to challenge. Because the process had been
involuntary and incomplete, and because Silent Woman simply did not
know the Matriyehan standards for loss of honor, she had not
suffered.
Warlock looked somewhat different—softer, with a tighter
figure, but she still held the spear and wore the accoutrements of
a warrior. She had taken on many of the traits that accompanied a
loss of honor, but she could still fight. She seemed both relieved
and chagrined to see Vulture.
“Maka fight two fights,” she told the creature.
“Fight enemies of Soba tribe, fight Maka.” She was, in
effect, at war with her body’s own built-in instincts. She
had run and thus lost honor, but she simply couldn’t see it
that way herself. Moreover, Warlock was a psychopath, someone who
loved to kill. “Maka not quick as think. Get old. Make
mistakes.”
“Why didn’t you just kill her and run with the
tribe?”
“No chance. Most of tribe not obey Maka. Rebel. Think
truth-bearer one of Holy Mother’s. Big mistake. Used magic,
turned part of tribe with Maka not know. Saw too late. Enemy
cheat!” she spat angrily. “Holy Mother say not
come, only look, see. Holy Mother wrong. Now Maka not be chief
again. Know this. Not lose honor. Betrayed. Now Maka fight
self. Hard.”
“Yeah, I know, I blew it. I didn’t understand the
way things really worked up there, and I admit it. But we’re
ready to move soon, and we need help.” Quickly she sketched
in the situation to Warlock. “Do you think you’re up to
helping?”
“Maka still good warrior. How long do not know. Soba good
chief. Smart. Young. Know much. Ambitious. Holy Mother talk with
Soba if need tribe to help. Soba still listen to Maka. Ask, take
advice.”
“Then we will both talk with her.”
Warlock was right about Soba, a personality tough and hard but
not at all cowed by her culture. When she was still a little girl
she’d overheard two truth-bearers comparing notes, talking
patronizingly about the tribes and discussing the tricks they
pulled on this chief or that. She had never told—who would
believe her?—but she had never again had any faith in the one
true way. Soba very much believed in magic, but she had no such
belief in Great Gods or testing places. Magic might be great, but
behind magic were people who were the same as her. In a sense she
was the ultimate cynic in a world not made for such people; even if
faced with a moving, talking statue of the Great God, she would be
less impressed than wary of its power while looking for the ones
making it move. She had heard of the innovations the four tribes
had briefly introduced: the bolo and bow and arrow, methods of
storing food and perhaps concentrating and aiding its growth. She
didn’t believe in afterlives or heavenly rewards, and she was
impatient for something better—nor was she alone. Many of the
chiefs felt this way secretly, but they could never get along with
each other for any coordinated action and the church’s magic
was far too strong.
Neither she nor the others would rebel because they did not
believe they had a chance, but if they thought they
did . . .
“Thunder tribe not gods but people. Look, act
different than Matriyehans, but people. Thunder tribe has
great magic and wants put end to church. Be many Earth-Mothers,
many ruled by great chief of church.” The ring was something
Soba could understand. A master of power behind it all, with all
the knowledge of magic, but with one weakness. With the five magic
rings they could destroy the all-powerful chief. In the meantime,
they might be able to help—if they had a sufficient number of
local people to make it work.
She thought about it, believing some of it, probably not
believing the rest, but she listened, and she deliberated, and she
consulted her firebearer and others whom she trusted. Finally she
said, “Tribe fights, dies, for honor, for food, for
territory. No can stop. Fight, eat, make babies, sleep. Over and
over, then die. Do this to stay same, do same, be same. If tribes
must fight, if warriors, chiefs must die, why not fight, die, to
get better? Tribe die anyway. If be one
chance . . . ” She looked at them.
“Soba tribe help.”
“If Soba live, Soba be greatest chief of all
Matriyeh,” said Manka Warlock.
“Not be long,” Vulture told them. “Wait for
call of Thunder.”
WE HAD ABOUT GIVEN YOU ALL UP AS DEAD!”
Hawks practically screamed when Vulture’s call came in.
“My god, what’s been happening? It’s been so long
we’re starting work on Chanchuk without you!”
“You might still be in the dark, but I lucked into
something I never imagined on this world. I got here from the
Center in under two hours. Would you believe that? After all
this . . . two lousy hours.”
“What? How?”
“Um . . . Would you believe I took
the train?”
That got them almost as much as Vulture’s unexpected
contact. “Uh—you took the what?”
“The train. It’s fascinating. Works on some kind of
high-speed magnetic principle, I think. Little cars, really, but
there are couplers that indicate more could be added. I have much
to tell you, but the first thing is I think we made a basic mistake
with this world. I don’t think this is a century-old
experiment at all, and I don’t think it’s the harbinger
of things to come so much as the origin of the idea.
Hawks—you’re a historian. If this were a relatively new
project, wouldn’t there be artifacts someplace? Ruins,
perhaps, or an overgrown road or statue or something? Even
after almost a thousand years they’re still all over
Earth.”
“And there are none there? None that you saw
anywhere?”
“Uh uh, and if you think it out it’s unlikely. The
volcanoes around here are very active. The train tunnels are
reinforced with the same synthetic linings used in jump propulsor
motors on spaceships and rely as much on physics to keep them
aligned as the rock they’re in. You don’t import lava
snakes or the hundreds of other nasty creatures here, either, all
well adapted to this place, but you also sure wouldn’t have
them if there had been long-term civilized settlement here. The
church is a Center and its chief is the C.A. This
was the system imposed by Master System from the start for these
people. I think it’s been going like this for centuries,
maybe eight or nine. The kicker was the biology. I could see Master
System transmuting a population but not an indigenous one. The very
biology of the chiefs and the limits on the tribes makes it very
unlikely there ever was a civilization here.”
“And those . . . trains?”
“That’s how it works. Until I was shown
them—and only those who have seen the goddess firsthand and
received her personal blessing know of them or can use them—I
still couldn’t figure it all out. How did they maintain
control over so vast a region? How did they stamp out innovation?
How did they supply and support those countless truth-bearers in
the wild? When I went to my first holy place there was power
support for a computer and a limited sort of a mindprinter system,
sophisticated security programs, and fresh supplies. There’s
not, however, any indication of a direct communications grid. The
train supplies them and also picks up the recordings and drops off
new programs. Its power grid is fed by thermal stations deep below
the surface and powers the holy places as well. They can cover an
enormous area with the network and even shift supervisors
around.”
Star Eagle broke in. “Then these holy places—they
are train stations?”
“Exactly. But let me tell you all the details in order and
all the complications and problems. I need help badly but time is
of the essence. We are in serious danger of losing what remains of
our people and causing a lot more suffering.”
As quickly but as thoroughly as possible, Vulture recounted the
entire proceedings from their landing to the present situation.
“You actually kissed the ring.” Hawks
sighed. “Too bad one of your lives wasn’t as a
pickpocket. All right—after all this inactivity we have a
radically changed situation and time pressure. Star
Eagle?”
“I will need more information,” the pilot responded.
“I’m going to need a thorough mindprint. Vulture, you
will have to be picked up and taken aboard.”
Almost everyone aboard had been poring over the data bit by bit,
trying to come up with a plan, or at least make sense of it
all.
“I don’t like the sound of that amnesia drug one
bit,” Raven commented. “I heard of stuff like that from
my training days, though. Ten to one it’s the same stuff they
give to Center personnel when they flunk a mindprinter exam or get
caught with their nose where it shouldn’t be and are sent
back to their people to live. Burn ’em out, give ’em a
simple mindprinter program on living the old ways, and send them
home to live and rot more ignorant than they were before they
arrived. It’s that kind of crap I think Master System has
been tempted to use on whole populations.”
“I’m more concerned right now about this
Earth-daughter. Any idea what she might be? Or how?” Hawks
asked any of them.
“The vision is quite graphic,” Star Eagle responded.
“She is not hologram or other illusion. Tiny details picked
from the scene in Vulture’s mind show consistent shadow,
light breathing, moist lips, all indicating a living being. The
radiation might be easy to fake, but I think she actually does
glow. The subliminals indicate the use of a low-power hypnocaster
but directionality emanates from her. It is almost as if she bad
the hypnocaster inside her.”
“Is that possible?” Hawks asked.
“Not if you’re human, even Matriyehan. The required
power sources alone would be injurious to tissue. If we rely on the
assumption that she does indeed glow and she has this sort of
device inside her, she is not at all human. Yet all external
evidence that I can extract indicate she is.”
Raven sighed. “I been thinkin’ about
Nagy.”
Hawks was startled. “Yes? What about him?”
“There was just something about him, something not right
somehow. He was afraid only once that I saw, and that was when he
thought his dead body might be ejected with a Val ship present. Now
why would he be afraid of that if he’s dead? No earthly use
to nobody—I mean, you’ve seen what a vacuum does to a
body anyway. And then there was that small power surge, almost
exactly like the surge we recorded when that Val we blew up sent
out its little module and that ran and jumped.
Suppose . . . suppose Nagy wasn’t human,
either. Suppose he was something else, something transmuted to fool
the best of man and machine but something a Val would discover
anyway if it picked up the body—or maybe if it just scanned
the body.”
“I have his medical records and his mindprints,”
Star Eagle pointed out. “They show nothing
unusual.”
“Yeah, and neither does Vulture’s. If we
didn’t have Vulture, if I hadn’t seen the whole thing
with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe such a creature could
exist—no offense.”
“That’s all right. I am a creature,”
Vulture responded off-handedly.
Isaac Clayben was fascinated by the line of thought that Raven
had kept to himself all this time. “You mean you think my
Arnold Nagy was a creature, as well? Like Vulture?”
“Uh uh. Not like Vulture, but with the same purpose. To
fool everybody, human and computer. To hide. Look, I know this
sounds crazy, off the wall, but Vulture was there and heard and saw
it all, too. The way Nagy talked in his last moments about the
heavy price to be paid using the transmuter. Almost a sense of
loss, or longing.”
Vulture nodded. “Yes, that’s it exactly. I
hadn’t thought of it much, though, but you’re
right.”
“Doc, let me ask you—could you turn me into a horse?
I mean a real, authentic horse, but with my memories?”
Clayben thought a moment. “There would be problems with
memory storage and reinforced muscle controls, but it could be done
using a modification of the memory storage system used on Vulture.
Yes. Why?”
“What about a Val, Doc? Assuming you had the template for
one, could you turn me into a living machine?”
“If I had the template, yes. The difficulties
involved in control and reflexes and the like would be almost the
opposite of the horse, but memory storage would be no problem,
although you would literally no longer be human. Biochemistry would
be replaced by programs, which are never as complex or complete as
the natural thing. But, yes. What are you driving at?”
“Suppose you took a Val, for example, and tried to
transmute it into a human being? Not human—but a perfect
fake? One that would bleed and wheeze and drink booze and smoke
cigars and tell dirty jokes and would be able to manipulate scanners
to show the human insides you expect and would be able to make a
mindprinter jump through the kind of hoops Vulture can?”
“It is—possible. Not with what we have here. It
would take an incredibly complex computer with massive memory to do
it, and possibly long periods of research and experimentation, but,
yes, it could be done, I suppose. The price, however, would be
quite high. As I said, you can only simulate so much. The creature
would have to be half human, with biochemical responses, emotions,
feelings of pleasure and pain, yet half machine, with a synthetic
inner structure, power source, programmability—it would be an
incredibly complex task, and it would create something that had the
weaknesses of humans without the powers of the machines. Why would
you create such a thing?”
Raven sat back and chewed on his cigar. “To replace a real
human, to put your machine in a key place where it would never be
suspected. As a spy, Doc. The perfect spy. I saw Nagy in action,
Doc. He took on a Val head-to-head and he won. He thought as fast
as the Val, and he out-thought it in planning and maneuvering. And
those languages. He knew every language, every damned dialect there
was, while all the time he kept playin’ the
beer-drinkin’, cigar-smokin’, good old security
boy.”
“But—he even had women. He enjoyed
sex,” China pointed out. “He excelled at that,
too,” she added, “although I never had his
child.”
“You said it, Doc. Given a big enough machine to write a
program that complicated and you can give your creature anything
you want. Almost anything, anyway. He took his turn with China, and
it didn’t take. Why? He wasn’t human. Now we have this
goddess. Same thing. She’s human but she can’t be. More
important, she gives the orders but she don’t wear the ring.
Only a real human can wear or possess that ring. She could have the
power source and all the gadgets you could want built
in.”
“Hold on,” Hawks said. “This is all
fascinating, but if some sort of humanoid Val was the top authority
down there, it would violate the core program, the very reason for
the existence of Centers in the first place. Humans must rule the
day-to-day affairs of a planetary civilization.”
But Clayben was taken by the idea. “This is not
necessarily a violation. It would be if she did rule, but
she does not. She is rarely seen and then only by a few. Clearly
she was not even a participant in the argument over how to handle
the tribes. When authority must weigh alternatives and cannot
decide on policy, it goes to its machines, its computers, and asks
for advice. They were heavily, probably evenly, divided, and the
chief administrator didn’t want to alienate either side by
making a firm decision. So they put it to the Great
God—their decision to do so—and the
Earth-daughter intervened and decided as requested. It is like
making a compact with the devil. If one does not consider all the
angles and close all the loopholes, the devil will take advantage.
Humans can choose freely to abrogate their decisions to machines.
We do it all the time right here on Thunder. Whenever a
complex issue is beyond us we defer to Star Eagle’s superior
data, speed, and analytical skills. I can’t believe it of
Nagy even now, but Raven may be quite correct here.”
Hawks sighed. “So we’re dealing with some sort of
powerful and unusual Val, whose loyalty, of course is to the
system, working with a master computer through a religion. Vulture
is now on the inside and in good graces—maybe good enough to
switch rings.”
“If I am successful at stamping out all vestiges of
creativity and progress,” Vulture replied. “Let’s
face it—it may already be too late, but probably not. Still,
sooner or later it’s gonna fall apart. The data will be
inconsistent, the charade our people are playing down there will
come undone, and that will be the end of it. If I don’t do
what the Earth-daughter and the hard-liners on the council demand,
I’ll never get close enough to that ring again to make a
switch. If I do, then I’ll be destroying the minds and
futures of four hundred or more people, not to mention five very
brave members of this company that I personally recruited to go
down there.”
“Then the only logical solution,” China said,
“is to do both.”
They all turned to the blind girl expectantly, and she seemed to
sense it.
“We have been too conservative, I think. We were afraid of
activating a trained and fully equipped SPF unit. Now we know
they’re all natives, and the bulk of our trooper opposition
is technically superior but ignorant and inexperienced even when
their hidden mindprint programs are triggered. We thought if we
kept our raiding party at the level of stones and spears,
we’d only have to deal with the same, but with
this—goddess—and the trains and the rest, it simply
isn’t so. Let’s use our technology. We have very little
to lose at this stage and we’re so close. We have
psychogenetic chambers and mindprinters and biochemical agents. And
now we have access to the trains and the Center. Vulture—you
say the trains serve the holy places? And that each and every one
of the priestesses must go there if near one?”
“That is true.”
“Then the first thing we need, and pretty damned fast, is
some truth-bearers of our own . . . ”
“Wait a minute!” Raven replied. “That
won’t work. Remember the SPF have self-destructs if you try
something like that.”
“Sure, the SPF does—but these aren’t SPF.
Maybe their grandmothers were, or perhaps more to the point their
ancestors, but not them. What kind of mindprinting do you think
they give the third rank, anyway? The temple language, information
on the technical weaponry and assets needed, and the chain of
communications and command, I bet. Nothing more. They’re
Matriyehans, not born commandos! That’s where we went wrong
on this. You could give them the instructions on how to build an
ion propulsor unit but they wouldn’t be able to comprehend
what the hell it was. No, first things first. Let’s snatch a
few and see. If I’m right, we can start turning this thing
around in stages.”
And she was right. The first two Vulture snatched by using the
previously forbidden laser pistol proved relatively easy. Waiting
for them had given Vulture time with modern sensors to find out
just what was in those holy places and how they worked. The answer
was simple—Master System’s standard memory storage
modules and a preprogrammed automatic computer sequence. The
control computers were quite primitive and quite limited in what
they could do. With that climate and level of vulcanism it had
probably been decided that simple and compact was best. For the
same reason, long communications lines within the rail tunnels were
ruled out. The structural fields needed for the train would wreak
havoc with any hardwired system, and ground-to-satellite
communications would require a lot of maintenance. Forced to choose
between communications or transport, Master System had chosen
transport.
“The change to truth-bearer is a transmuter
function,” Star Eagle reported. “They have quite a
modern setup in the temple masked under that primitive mumbojumbo.
They have to—to keep the system working. Reprogramming and
reorienting them while letting them pass the mindprinter tests is
not much of a problem, but other than changing their loyalties,
don’t expect much more than you see now. Their level of
superstition and ignorance is appalling even by Master
System’s standards. They will obey your orders, Vulture, on
coded commands. If you tell them the grass is brack and all women
are turtles, they will believe.”
“Fair enough, but we need more,” Hawks told them.
“We need the people who pick up those modules.”
“No go there, I think,” Vulture replied.
“They’re on really tight schedules and they’ll be
missed. A few hours here or there wouldn’t matter—the
power’s always erratic in the tunnels—but not the two
days it’d take to nab ’em, bring ’em here,
process them, and return them.”
“Then we’ll go with portables. We’re going to
have to do that with the other truth-bearers anyway.”
“You can’t run mid-rank programs on them!”
Vulture protested. “They’re a lot more slick and
sophisticated than that.”
“Then knock one out, take a print, and make it look
convincing so that when she wakes up she’ll think she slipped
and fell or something. You’re creative. Give me one, and I
can work up something that won’t be a hundred percent, but
will be general and generic enough to be useful.”
Inside of seven days they had five truth-bearers and the first
of the programs. Vulture decided they could wait no longer on the
tribes; even now, using the transport system, it would be guesswork
where they’d be and would take some time to track them down.
She needed her truth-bearers in place right now. The rest would
have to wait.
The nearest holy place to the last known position of the tribes
was about forty kilometers south-southwest of where the large camp
had been, which was a good starting point. Vulture and her five
worshipful, obedient retinue spent another two or three days
checking with locals for word of tribal movements. What they heard
was disturbing. The four groups had split geographically much
farther apart than had been the plan and were established in broad
areas with other tribes in between. The land they had was not the
best, and they would have more than the usual struggle to support
themselves in those places.
Vulture headed for the nearest new tribe, wondering what the
hell could have gone so wrong in just a few weeks with everybody on
the alert. Maybe something hadn’t seemed quite right to the
computer at the holy seat right from the start. If so, that would
be very bad luck.
The tribe welcomed them with the usual rituals and no sign of
suspicion or hostility in spite of their numbers, which really
wasn’t good. They looked worn, tired out, and clearly had
been through a rough time. Vulture recognized a few faces as
belonging to Mari tribe, but the priestesses were being welcomed to
Tura tribe, another bad sign. She stopped one of the old-timers and
asked, “This used be Mari tribe. Where Mari now?
Dead?”
The woman shook her head negatively, which was a relief.
“No. Lose honor. Tura say it be for forbidden things Mari
tell us do. Take tribe back to old ways. Mari now chief—of
babies.”
It was actually a relief to hear that Santiago was still alive
and healthy, but Vulture understood the insult. Chiefs who lost
their male attributes were in deepest disgrace; when there was
nothing else, honor was everything. Now she would not even be a
warrior but in effect a slave, not just of the new chief but of the
entire tribe.
It was late in the day, though, after all the amenities with the
chief and firebearer had been settled and the news discussed,
before Vulture could seek her out. She did look pretty miserable
even though she seemed to enjoy playing with the young children, at
least one of which was hers. They had used a slightly mismatched
natural brown dye to cover over all her tattoos and badges of rank;
she carried no spear nor wore pouch, belt, or adornments. When
honor went, everything went.
The old Maria was still in there, though. She viewed the
approach of the holy mother with mixed hope and fear, depending on
who or what this one turned out to be.
The holy mother crouched low as Mari knelt and whispered,
“Vulture has returned.”
She gasped and grabbed Vulture’s hand so strongly she
threatened to wrench it from its socket. Finally Vulture was able
to ask, “Why did this happen? And how?”
“Got word. Runner from Dakuminifar tribe. Truth-bearer
showed up. Bad fates, bad medicine.” That meant rotten luck.
“Suni strange, like demon. Holy Mother know. Worst tribe to
pick. Truth-bearer saw heresy but not stupid. Play along with Suni
so Suni no kill right off. Mix potion. Tell Suni potion make Suni
body like rock, spears bounce off, Suni crazy, drink potion. Later
scream all night. Next day Suni not chief, not crazy. Stupid, like
child. Remember nothing, not even name or tribe. Nothing. Not know
own face in stream. Big fight for new chief. Some of tribe sneak
away, go to Maka, Midi, and Mari tribes. Tell all. Mari not wait.
Remember Holy Mother teach drug for chief—no chief.
Firebearer mix chief drug in Tura food. Tura never like new ways.
Truth-bearer come, look at tribe, seem happy. Do nothing. Go
away.”
Vulture nodded. “It must be rough on you—like this.
But better this way than Suni’s way. Damn!” The only
alternative Maria had in that time period was to flee, and that
would mean loss of honor, reversion, and incorporation into a new
tribe if she survived long enough in the wild. Better to wait here
where Vulture could find her.
“Suni was always the weak link,” she continued, as
much to herself as to Mari. “I just hoped they’d give
me more time before checking up. I smell a palace revolution here,
from somebody on the council who doesn’t like the idea that
the chief administrator couldn’t make the hard choice and had
to defer to the Earth-daughter.” She looked around.
“All the truth-bearers here now are my people. Mindprinted.
They’re still ignorant but they’re mine and you can
trust them. Never mind how I pulled it off—now we have to
reorient everything. What about Maka and Midi?”
“Midi do what Mari do. Same thing, but not as bad. Oona
now chief. Made truth-bearer happy but then sent runners to talk
Tura. Tura cut out tongues and send back. No more
runners.”
Vulture nodded. “All right, then, so Oona’s learning
real fast and that’s good. Maka?” She could hardly
imagine Manka Warlock as this lowly slave and nursemaid.
“Word come Maka flee with Euno, two, three favorites. Rest
fight, Maba be chief. Not good as Oona but not bad as Tura. Like
new ways but know of Suni. Truth-bearer take Suni around to other
tribes, show as warning.” She shivered. “Warning be
real strong!”
“Uh huh. I bet. And what about this tribe? It seems to be
totally back to the old ways.”
Mari nodded. “Strict discipline. Most no like. Much
grumbling. Hard life again. But tribe obey. Tura is chief.
Many still not taken but obey with no other chief. But Tura take
Mari—every day, since . . . ”
And that would settle that, particularly with Tura strictly and
punishingly enforcing a return to the old ways, and publicly and
visibly—and probably violently—raping Mari, the old
chief, every day reinforced the change. No wonder she moved so
tiredly and looked like hell.
“We’ll take care of Tura if and when we have to.
Right now I’ll have to contact Midi and reassure her and
somehow find Warlock and Silent Woman if I can. I’ll see if I
can spring you two from this to work with us. As soon as we can get
organized things are going to start to pop around this
dump.”
She looked excited but nervous. “Mari’s
child . . . ”
“Can come along, don’t worry. This thing is getting
too damned complicated as it is. For two rocks I’d just blow
that damned holy seat to hell and fight the whole galaxy’s
fleets!”
It really wasn’t much of a problem to spring Mari,
although taking her child along took a bit more negotiating. Still,
if you’re going to return to the old ways then you always
obey the truth-bearer. Springing Midi and her child was
even easier. Although it was never said and all the actions were to
the contrary, Vulture and Mari had the strongest impression that
Oona not only knew who Vulture was but that the situation had
changed once again. There was some question, though, as to just how
much help the two could be. The trap of Matriyeh was that much of
the culture was imposed physiologically. One who had lost honor
also lost more than the male hormonally triggered attributes; they
lost their aggressiveness, some strength, and actually became more
submissive and dependent. If one was chief one died a chief or
lived forever in dishonor. The fact that the pair were not native
mitigated the change only slightly.
Still, a portable mindprinter made conversation far easier. They
might have lost much, but not their intelligence or mental skills.
Star Eagle had anticipated problems and provided a cartridge to
remove the filter. It hardly seemed worth it any more. It made them
educated and articulate Matriyehans, but still Matriyehans of the
lowest social order. They simply would not fight, even in defense,
but they would carry the supplies no matter how heavy or complex.
They would wear nothing, nor would they even eat until Vulture had
finished. She argued with them on this over and over to no avail.
It was a wrinkle outside Vulture’s vast collective
experience.
“Look, don’t you think we want it?”
Maria asked, almost pleadingly. “We were both captains and
then chiefs. Independent leaders. We want to be again, but we
can’t. You must stop torturing us like this.
It’s like someone who is crippled. She wants to walk, but her
brain, her muscles, her legs just do not respond. It’s not
fear. I’m still not afraid to die, and I’m surprised
I’m still alive. And I don’t want to die. Neither does
Midi. But alone, out here, if we were alone, we would die,
and our children, too. If something dangerous were to attack and
there was no place to hide, even if I had a spear, I could not
defend myself or the others. I just could not bring myself to do
it.”
“It’s humiliating,” Midi agreed.
“It’s like, well, you get muddled or confused and have
no real confidence. You can’t plan, you can’t think
straight. The result is you just can’t make a decision. What
was once clear isn’t any more. That may sound nuts, but it
just is, that’s all. When you lose honor you lose your
ability to lead. You can’t do anything but follow.” She
sighed. “If I’d known, I’d have tried
Warlock’s way or killed myself first, I think. We both had
tribal members who lost honor one way or another but you never
thought of it as something that changed you, just some cultural
thing.”
Maria sighed. “Maybe you just should have left us with the
tribes. At least we would not be a burden.”
“Cut the guilt! We’ve misread this and played into
the hands of Master System from the start,” Vulture told
them. “Maybe we can work with some of the psychochemistry
when we have a chance to study this genetic system in detail, but,
right now, if all you can do is haul stuff and make pleasant
conversation and maybe orient me around here, that’s more
than enough. I’m mostly concerned about Warlock and her
party. Technically, she lost her honor when she ran out on the
tribe. I can’t imagine Warlock reverting to your state
without committing suicide, so maybe mental power can overcome its
effects.”
“I had not thought of that,” Maria replied.
“If she perceives herself, or is perceived by those she took
with her, as having lost honor it will happen, and she will not
kill herself. That would require a firm personal decision to act. I
could not have come with you on my own, but you wished it, and the
chief ordered it.”
Midi nodded, thinking of the Warlock party. “It would be a
small new tribe but it would be only a few smaller than we were at
the start. I wonder which of them would become chief.”
“One thing’s sure,” Vulture responded.
“Any of the others would want to get as far away from here as
fast as possible. We might just have lost them. For the time being,
we’ll be canvassing all the tribes we run into and if we get
any word of them, fine. If not, we’ll just have to move
without them. I need more personnel now, and I need to get a
complete picture of what we’re dealing with here. You two
just follow me and stay mute in the presence of any others,
concentrating only on me.”
She had hoped originally to use the tribes to do things more
quickly and efficiently, but that was now out. Vulture’s
“girls”—the mindprinted truth-bearers—would
be doing the real work without understanding what they were doing
or why, but more was needed. Oona couldn’t be a big help; how
did you explain to a Matriyehan native who spoke and thought no
other language and had no other experience that you were planning
to knock off a goddess and reprogram an entire theocracy?
For several weeks Vulture and her pair of porters were busily
seeking out the native tribes and gathering information. On
occasion, using injectors or even a small stunner, Vulture was able
to knock out and reprogram a truth-bearer or two, and once, at a
train stop, she managed to knock out and record the mindprint of a
second-rank priestess who maintained the places, making it
convincing that she’d slipped on a wet spot and fallen and
knocked herself out. It was a major victory.
“I don’t want this to go to waste, and I think you
two will be better off aboard Thunder, particularly with
the kids,” Vulture told the rebel women one day.
“Besides, we’ll let China and Clayben look at how these
psycho-chemical processes function. Maybe there’s some way
out of this.”
“Yes,” they both agreed. “If you say
so.” Thunder was more than agreeable. “But what will
you be doing?” Hawks asked.
Vulture sighed. “I think it’s time I became one of
those courier priestesses,” she told him. “I ate a
couple of very good computer scientists back in the bad old days on
Melchior. I think it’s time I got an idea of just exactly
what we’re dealing with.”
By the time Vulture reappeared to report again, weeks later,
much progress had been made aboard.
“The changes in Santiago and Ng are permanent as far as
their submissive nature goes,” China reported.
“Essentially, their bodies simply lose the ability to
manufacture certain brain chemicals and hormones, reducing them to
that. The solution, such as it is, is to administer chemical
substitutes for what their bodies can no longer make on a
day-to-day basis. The trouble is that the human being is such an
adaptable animal. We learn to live on ice floes in the Arctic and
in equatorial jungles. The longer they remain in that state, the
more hardened their thinking will be to that type of behavior, and
we can’t do more than a tiny stabilization without risking
their unborn children, since both are pregnant.
Afterward—well, maybe with some mindprinter therapy and daily
injections, they’ll come back to their old selves. I
can’t help thinking that if I weren’t blind Matriyeh
might be a world for me. It seems as if everybody’s pregnant
all the time.”
“Mostly,” Vulture agreed, “but remember that
maybe one in nine children will survive to adulthood. The biggest
problem they’ll have down here, if they can ever break this
cycle and create a civilization, is that medicine, sanitation, and
the lack of constant hunting and gathering will dramatically
decrease infant mortality, but yet they’ll keep having
babies. I don’t see how the southern continent keeps so
primitive without this church-imposed system.”
“We have a theory. It appears really brutal there. The
average age of an adult is in the low teens, and they don’t
even seem to have control of fire. Clayben says they’re in a
prehuman state, more like smart apes, and doubts they even have
what we would think of as a language. It’s possible that
whole southern continent overstepped the proscribed bounds and was
given a good dose of that mind-destroying drug. It could be that
some of the fruits peculiar to the south were bred to produce it
naturally. We’re not sure, but also it’s possible that
the south is the real experiment. Data suggests the geology there
would make the north’s transportation and communications
network impossible to maintain. If anything, it’s rougher
geologically than the north, but has fewer large animals of prey.
But enough of that. What do you have?”
“Plenty. The standard data packs retrieved from the holy
places are brought to a smooth and obviously artificial chamber
below the statue of the Great God. There are no controls, screens,
speakers, or the like, but there is one wall composed entirely of
slots. With proper ceremony you stick the cubes in the slots, wait
until they turn from blue to red, then remove them and replace them
in your pouch. Because there are chambers on all sides and the
train below, I feel pretty certain that the computer console
isn’t very large and is possibly a modified starship core
command module and data center. It looks to be about the same size
as the one we have on Thunder. That’s still one hell
of a computer, though—but I get the very strong impression
that it controls only the direct machines within the temple and the
communications link to the satellite above. It’s more a
transfer station than a command center like the one on Janipur. It
takes the raw data, sorts and correlates it, then beams it out to
someplace far from this system, and gets its orders back from
there. Its output is strictly through the modules, the mindprinter,
and, of course, the Great God, who not only speaks but also moves a
bit on occasion while giving commands. It’s pretty
impressive.”
“Pretty limited,” China agreed. “And it
matches our thinking. The codes it uses to transmit to Master
System are new, but the frequencies and methods are ancient.
Instead of being one of the latest installations, Star Eagle now
thinks this may have been one of the earliest colonies, when Master
System was still experimenting. Maybe even the first and the origin
of the Center concept, which was later refined. So Master System
just left it that way, and stuck a ring there as well because it
figured it would be damned impossible to lift it. Good. Then the
master computer of Matriyeh only knows what is fed into it, not
what it directly observes and measures, and is basically a simple
device used to maintain a simple system. That explains the
Earth-goddess, who was probably added later on, maybe much later,
when the south got out of hand and needed direct action. She
doesn’t run the church—she is the guardian of that
computer!”
“My thinking exactly. If she ran things, she’d make
herself more visible. Nothing like an appearance by her to inspire
the troops and send the new field agents out with fanatical
devotion. But that’s not her job, of course. That’s the
council’s job.”
“Yes. What is most significant in the matter of sending
the truth-bearer independently to deal with your tribes is that it
was against the direct orders of the Earth-goddess to let you give
it a try first.”
“There was something of a power struggle,” Vulture
agreed. “It’s still the talk of the second rank. The
chief held on to her job, but there was a shake-up on the council
and the balance was changed. A couple of second-rank officers got
the call to godhood, and a couple of the ones on the council passed
on into the company of the Great God having attained absolute
perfection. You get the idea.”
“Yes. What else?”
“I’ve managed to make a pretty good guess at the
layout of the entire temple. It’s big, but not as big as
you’d think by looking at it. One thing I hadn’t
noticed originally was how stagnant the air was. Torches burn
straight up, and the place smells. The only reason it’s not
unbearable is the transport center beneath. Every time a car leaves
there’s a pull of air in from the entrance all the way
through.”
“It’s that solid?’
“It seems like it. The first rank have large quarters
higher up from the administrative areas. Hard to say how large they
are but they’re said to be straight up, and the curve of the
rock at that point wouldn’t indicate that they were very high
up. It occurs to me that if you could block the train for a period,
the air would just sit there, since the valley itself seems to have
an almost permanent inversion. It rarely clears up there, but
there’re never any bad storms. I think we have a pretty good chance that it’s nearly a
sealed air system there.”
“Hmmm . . . Yes, and we have now some
pretty extensive knowledge of Matriyehan biochemistry. Yes, this is
coming together nicely. If it wasn’t for that damned
Earth-daughter, this would be ready to go. Still, we have some
ideas on her, as well, although it’s going to be very chancy
in the end. You will have to face facts, Vulture. We can deal with
her, but unless we guess right a hundred percent on slight
knowledge, the master computer is eventually going to miss her and
sound the alarm. If so, short of having all five rings and using
them properly, there is no way in the universe that we can help or
protect these people. But we will give it a try. That’s all I
can offer.”
“It will have to do. I’ll remain in this role until
we’re ready to go and continue intelligence-gathering.
I’m supposed to be put on a route next week that might take
me close to Oona. If I get the chance I’ll check on her.
She’s a good kid.”
“All right, but take no unnecessary risks. We were very
lucky on the Janipur job, and we didn’t realize it and got
overconfident. Even without the Earth-daughter to deal with we are
still going to have to make many educated guesses and suppositions
and trust to luck for the fine details, and we haven’t had
much luck on this job so far.”
“Yeah—I think luck owes us one.”
Vulture took a chance going to Oona’s territory. True, she
wasn’t due for a new set of rounds for a few days and was
technically off duty, but she had no real authority to use the
train for a personal mission, and there was great risk if it was
found out she’d done so. She didn’t care by this point.
This time, too, Oona, who had been a witness to the startling
transformation of truth-bearer into holy mother in that encounter
that now seemed ages ago, was not kept in the dark as to who her
high-ranking visitor was.
“Oona—Holy Mother must know. Do Oona believe real
truth-bearers or new truth-bearers?”
The former firebearer, now chief, who’d been the only one
to keep a few comforts in spite of constant observation, shrugged.
“Oona not know. New truth-bearers have much magic, but old
way has honor.”
“If all Oona tribe had way to end old way, make tribes
free to live as wanted, even if way much dangerous, much chance die
or worse, small chance be free—then?”
“Oona no like live hard when tribe can live easier,”
she answered carefully. “But Oona no like there be no rules,
no true belief. Each chief have own faith, own rules. Whole
Earth-Mother break from cracks.”
It was an understandable and quite sophisticated line of
thinking for such a one as this, a native who knew nothing else.
She no longer believed in the old church; if she ever had, the
sight of truth-bearers being killed without some angry god striking
dead the killer dissolved that. She understood that much of it was
drugs and trickery, even if the trickery itself was magic. But this
was the world and the life she knew, and she understood it and her
place in it—and there was comfort in that. She was concerned
that if the old order broke, it would collapse everything she knew
and leave only a chaos worse than the life she now had. Hatred of
unjust rule and oppression was balanced by fear of the
unknown—fear, in fact, of freedom. The church was a hated
evil—but it was all she had.
Vulture sighed and wondered if she wasn’t right. They
wanted an easier life, more freedom to make better tools and
weapons and gain some shelter and protection and security, but
their own racial preconditions and genetic makeup would make any
real sort of civilization as others understood it next to
impossible here. With settlement and agriculture would come that
security, but with an exponentially expanding population that was
nonetheless limited by biological imperatives to a hundred per
chief, things would explode in violence and the losers would be
slaughtered again and again. Perhaps over thousands of years a
workable and unique system would develop, but just as likely they
would descend back into permanent barbarism and remain there. The
only other way would be to impose it through alien technology, and
even then the amount of people involved would be enormous and the
task long and daunting. It had seemed so simple when they had
decided to join the four tribes—a few hundred out of a couple
of million. They just hadn’t understood the complexity of the
problem.
Vulture could only change the subject. “Holy Mother still
looks for Maka. Oona hear?”
The chief nodded. “Maka no chief now. In small tribe two
day walk west. Soba tribe. Be captured long time. Oona scout see,
no talk. Get word from truth-bearer. One of Holy Mother’s.
Not know which.”
“Lose honor?”
“Not know. Should have, but Maka strange like Holy
Mother.”
“Not like Holy Mother but Holy Mother know what Oona mean.
Thank you.”
Finding the right truth-bearer in this whole area was a job for
which she didn’t have the time, but she felt she could find
this Soba tribe and did so, although it took three days. Vulture
was concerned at what she would find, since losing honor was not
confined to chiefs. It was triggered by a mental attitude, a way of
looking at oneself that precipitated permanent changes. If a whole
tribe all thought of themselves as cowards, as running away from
power and responsibility, then they might all be a bunch of
submissive slaves, and that would be too bad. Vulture could
particularly use Manka Warlock in what was to come.
What she found was not nearly as bad as she expected. The tribe
was small, no more than twenty-five with perhaps nine children.
Soba herself was almost tiny; unusually short for a Matriyehan and
quite thin and wiry, she was almost dwarfed by her tribe. That
showed her to be doubly dangerous and clever that she had managed
to defeat or outwit the larger contenders. They had blundered into
the tribe by chance less than three days after fleeing. Warlock had
already lost her male aspects and, in spite of herself, Silent
Woman had been taking them on, although slowly. The strange, mute
woman had been the most independent and self-sufficient in the
wild, and nature had started the process, but she had no will or
desire to be chief. She quite literally led them into Soba’s
entire group and refused to challenge. Because the process had been
involuntary and incomplete, and because Silent Woman simply did not
know the Matriyehan standards for loss of honor, she had not
suffered.
Warlock looked somewhat different—softer, with a tighter
figure, but she still held the spear and wore the accoutrements of
a warrior. She had taken on many of the traits that accompanied a
loss of honor, but she could still fight. She seemed both relieved
and chagrined to see Vulture.
“Maka fight two fights,” she told the creature.
“Fight enemies of Soba tribe, fight Maka.” She was, in
effect, at war with her body’s own built-in instincts. She
had run and thus lost honor, but she simply couldn’t see it
that way herself. Moreover, Warlock was a psychopath, someone who
loved to kill. “Maka not quick as think. Get old. Make
mistakes.”
“Why didn’t you just kill her and run with the
tribe?”
“No chance. Most of tribe not obey Maka. Rebel. Think
truth-bearer one of Holy Mother’s. Big mistake. Used magic,
turned part of tribe with Maka not know. Saw too late. Enemy
cheat!” she spat angrily. “Holy Mother say not
come, only look, see. Holy Mother wrong. Now Maka not be chief
again. Know this. Not lose honor. Betrayed. Now Maka fight
self. Hard.”
“Yeah, I know, I blew it. I didn’t understand the
way things really worked up there, and I admit it. But we’re
ready to move soon, and we need help.” Quickly she sketched
in the situation to Warlock. “Do you think you’re up to
helping?”
“Maka still good warrior. How long do not know. Soba good
chief. Smart. Young. Know much. Ambitious. Holy Mother talk with
Soba if need tribe to help. Soba still listen to Maka. Ask, take
advice.”
“Then we will both talk with her.”
Warlock was right about Soba, a personality tough and hard but
not at all cowed by her culture. When she was still a little girl
she’d overheard two truth-bearers comparing notes, talking
patronizingly about the tribes and discussing the tricks they
pulled on this chief or that. She had never told—who would
believe her?—but she had never again had any faith in the one
true way. Soba very much believed in magic, but she had no such
belief in Great Gods or testing places. Magic might be great, but
behind magic were people who were the same as her. In a sense she
was the ultimate cynic in a world not made for such people; even if
faced with a moving, talking statue of the Great God, she would be
less impressed than wary of its power while looking for the ones
making it move. She had heard of the innovations the four tribes
had briefly introduced: the bolo and bow and arrow, methods of
storing food and perhaps concentrating and aiding its growth. She
didn’t believe in afterlives or heavenly rewards, and she was
impatient for something better—nor was she alone. Many of the
chiefs felt this way secretly, but they could never get along with
each other for any coordinated action and the church’s magic
was far too strong.
Neither she nor the others would rebel because they did not
believe they had a chance, but if they thought they
did . . .
“Thunder tribe not gods but people. Look, act
different than Matriyehans, but people. Thunder tribe has
great magic and wants put end to church. Be many Earth-Mothers,
many ruled by great chief of church.” The ring was something
Soba could understand. A master of power behind it all, with all
the knowledge of magic, but with one weakness. With the five magic
rings they could destroy the all-powerful chief. In the meantime,
they might be able to help—if they had a sufficient number of
local people to make it work.
She thought about it, believing some of it, probably not
believing the rest, but she listened, and she deliberated, and she
consulted her firebearer and others whom she trusted. Finally she
said, “Tribe fights, dies, for honor, for food, for
territory. No can stop. Fight, eat, make babies, sleep. Over and
over, then die. Do this to stay same, do same, be same. If tribes
must fight, if warriors, chiefs must die, why not fight, die, to
get better? Tribe die anyway. If be one
chance . . . ” She looked at them.
“Soba tribe help.”
“If Soba live, Soba be greatest chief of all
Matriyeh,” said Manka Warlock.
“Not be long,” Vulture told them. “Wait for
call of Thunder.”