《The Amtrak Wars I : Cloud_Warrior》24

'Okay, in that case, why don't your people attack them, make 'em
prisoner and set 'em to work?  Why trade valuable goods when you can
make slaves of them?"

Cadillac smiled.  'You're thinking like a Tracker."

'Come on,' riposted Steve.  'You kill other Mutes."

'Only in defence of our own turf."

'Yeah, sure..."  Steve realised that it would be a waste of time to
argue the point further.  He fisted Cadillac's arm.

'Let's get to work.  We need a screwdriver, something to drill holes
with, a saw to cut this tubing, a flat file, a-' Cadillac frowned.

'What's a screwdriver?"

Steve sighed inwardly.  'Just show me what you've got..."

Aided by Cadillac, Three Degrees, another skilled Mute with the apt
name of Air-Supply and a score or more of willing go-fers, Steve
proceeded to construct a serviceable airframe.  Throughout the process
of rebuilding, Cadillac worked alongside Steve, helping him every step
of the way.

Once again, Steve was impressed by the Mute's agile brain and his
mechanical aptitude.  The young wordsmith had an almost instinctive
grasp of aviation technology and the theory of flight.  What Steve
didn't know was that Cadillac's mental powers had enabled him to draw
the knowledge and understanding of these things from his own mind.

The wing fabric proved to be the biggest headache but after
sweet-talking the entire clan into handing back every usable scrap of
fabric that had been ripped off by trophy hunters, two sets of panels
were laboriously pieced together.

The overlapping patchwork seams were bonded with pine resin, then hand
sewn and then the two layers were fitted over the wing spars and
securely fastened together with parallel lines of stitching.  There was
no way Steve could recreate the inflated aerofoil section wing of the
Skyhawk he had flown into captivity but, amazingly, the solar cell
fabric still functioned.  Using short strands of wire from multi-cored
power cable held in place with globs of resin, Steve connected the
patchwork of panels in series.  It was a slow fiddly job but finally
the circuit was completed.

Lacking any proper measuring equipment, Steve was forced to
improvise.

He checked that he had a spark across the end of the wires then asked
some Mute children to bring him a live fish from the nearest stream.

They brought back a plump trout in a skin water-bag and watched
curiously as Steve stuck the ends of the wires into the water.  The
trout bent in the middle as if it was trying to bite its tail off then
roiled over and floated to the surface.  Satisfied that he had a modest
amount of power at his disposal, Steve proceeded with the repair and
installation of one of the electric motors for which Three Degrees had
proudly carved a new propellor from dark yellow wood.

Three weeks after picking up the first piece of tubing, a motorised,
forty foot span hang-glider - which they had named Blue-Bird - stood
poised on head-high sapling trestles.  Steve connected the cable,
bringing the current from the wing panels to the motor, then everyone
held their breath and waited for the sun to clear from behind a
seemingly endless bank of dull grey cloud.  After an interminable wait,
the thin fuzzy shadow cast by BlueBird's wings darkened into a
hard-edged arrow as the sun soared into a patch of deep blue and beamed
down its warmth upon their upturned faces.  Steve threw the switch.

Nothing happened.  He spun the prop.  Nothing.  Like churning mud with
a stick.  A disappointed sigh went up from the ring of spectators.

Steve swore quietly and whacked the motor casing with the flat of his
hand.  The propellor turned obediently, blurring into a smooth disc of
spun gold.

'HEY-YAAH!"  roared the clan.

Steve threw a double-handed kiss at the sky.  'Oh, you sweet Mother I'
he crowed.

'Will you have enough power for take-off?"  asked Cadillac.

Steve shook his head as he tightened one of the starboard rigging
wires.  'If the circuit holds, it will help us stay up once we get
airborne but that's all."  But that's enough, he thought exultantly.

With a zero sink-rate, I can wave goodbye to these lumps anytime I
choose...

Blue-Bird was carried with great ceremony to the top ora gentle slope
from where Steve made several test-runs, floating a few feet off the
ground while Mute children raced alongside him laughing and shouting
excitedly.  The fear and pain caused by the arrowheads over the
cropfields appeared to be entirely forgotten.  Steve was pleasantly
surprised to find that Blue-Bird was inherently stable and responded
well to shifts of the control bar and his suspended body.

The first real take-off from the top of a steeply sloping bluff was
perfect.  As he hung in his harness, riding the cool updraft, Steve
experienced anew the exhilaration of flight.

It was like a re-run of his first overground solo; the quickening
heartbeat, the sharpened senses, a new awareness.

He banked round towards the bluff and Went into a series of climbing
figure-eights over the watchers below.

Above him the sky was blue, with scattered white clouds.

Behind him, the motor hummed smoothly.

Because of his stone-age circuitry, the solar cell fabric was
delivering a fluctuating current that - from the level of sound from
the motor - Steve judged to be between thirty and fifty per cent of its
normal potential.  While it did not enable him to climb, it produced
enough power to maintain altitude once he'd got up there by riding into
the wind like a kite, or on the back of a convenient thermal.  As the
watching Mutes below shrank to ant-like proportions Steve realised that
he now had a golden opportunity to escape.  The idea had been lurking
at the back of his mind from the moment his feet had left the ground on
the first test glides.  Before taking off from the bluff he had
concealed the map under his fatigues.  He had not had an opportunity to
recover the buried ration pack and water kit but that did not really
matter.  He could survive for the few days it might take to fly back to
the Federation.  He had been drinking contaminated water and eating raw
fruit for months now; he had also been breathing radio-active air and
been in skin-to-skin contact with Mutes.  Another week either way
wouldn't make much difference.  Since emerging from the days of
semi-drugged sleep way back at the beginning, Steve had gradually
forgotten the invisible death shroud that still enveloped the
overground.  Now and then he remembered the constant danger with a
sense of shock - followed by a moment of perplexity as he realised
that, despite his prolonged exposure, he had not yet suffered any
noticeable signs of radiation sickness.  Steve knew it was bound to
manifest itself sooner or later.  There could be no eape.  He would
suffer the same fate as Poppa-Jack.  But how strange!  he thought.

Maybe it's just being up in the air again but it's a long time since I
felt as good as this.

Steve levelled out at an estimated altitude of three thousand feet well
beyond the range of any Mute crossbows below.  If he was going to make
a break for it, now was the time to do it.  A see-saw battle raged
inside him.

Steve knew that, if he chose this moment to fly away, he would be
betraying the trust of Cadillac and Mr Snow.  And there was
Clearwater.

Despite his promises to Mr Snow and to himself, his resolution was
beginning to crumble.  Steve wanted to get close to her again; to talk
to her without being surrounded by a milling crowd of Mutes.  He would
stay, he decided.  He would delay his flight to freedom until he found
some way to meet up with her.  Just once.  Just the two of them.  But
that was crazy too.  He knew it was his duty to escape: knew that, if
he did not, he would inevitably fall sick and die, yet .  . .

Something was wrong.  Something had happened to him.

And Steve knew what it was: it was the same feeling that had gripped
him when he had faced the open ramp doors after his first overground
solo.  The thought of returning to his life underground, a life which
once seemed the normal - indeed the only possible mode of existence,
now filled him with a strange dread.

Cutting the motor, Steve descended, shaving the mountainous rock-face
behind the bluff in a series of daredevil swoops then, before landing,
he made a couple of low level passes over the heads of the
spectators.

To his surprise, he saw that Clearwater had joined Cadillac on the
clifftop.

Both waved to him as he swept past.  Steve wondered how to handle the
situation.  Since meeting Clearwater and talking to Mr Snow, he had not
mentioned her name to Cadillac.

How much did the young wordsmith know?  Was he to pretend he did not
know who she was?  Play it by ear, Brickman...

Steve brought Blue-Bird up into a stall and made a smooth, stand-up
landing, coming to a stop after five paces.

He quickly unbuckled his harness and, in response to a beckoning
gesture from Cadillac, pushed his way through the excited crowd that
surrounded Blue-Bird.  Steve tried to keep his face in neutral as he
came face to face with Clearwater.  Cadillac made no attempt to
introduce him but, on the other hand, did not act as if Clearwater
wasn't there.

He congratulated Steve on his stylish performance then turned away
briefl3/to tell the young Mutes not to tamper with the glider.

Steve took the opportunity to look deep into the Mute's blue eyes.

They blazed briefly as Cleffrwater returned his look, then became
veiled.  'I envy you,' she said.  'How does it feel to fly like a
bird?"

'Fantastic.  You get a wonderful sense of... it's indescribable.  Each
time I go up I never want to come down.

In fact, the truth is, when I circled that peak, I very nearly decided
to go home."

'I'm glad you didn't,' replied Clearwater guardedly.  Again her eyes
flashed briefly.

'Oh, really?"  Steve tried to keep all expression out of his voice and
face as Cadillac turned back to them.

'Yes,' said Cadillac.  'You see - if you had tried to escape, you would
have fallen out of the sky like a stone."

Steve looked at them both and laughed disbelievingly.

Cadillac touched Clearwater's shoulder.  'Show him.

Show our friend the power that, in the hands of Talisman, will drive
the sand-burrowers back into their holes and bury them for ever."

The word 'friend' carried a vague emphasis which made Steve uneasy.

Cadillac had to know something.  Probably knew everything.  Steve tried
to read their faces but neither gave anything away.

Clearwater closed her eyes and appeared to compose herself.  Cadillac
surveyed the ground nearby and picked up a rock about the size of a
basketball.  The sinews in his neck and chest drew taut under its
weight.  'Ready?"

Clearwater nodded, her eyes still closed.

Steve suddenly became aware that the crowd around Blue-Bird had fallen
silent and had turned to watch what was happening.  Cadillac tensed his
arm and stomach muscles and, with a visible effort, heaved the rock
into the air above their heads.  As it went up, Clearwater's eyes
snapped wide open and her right arm shot out, the first two fingers
aimed at the rock.  From her throat, came a strange ululating cry that
curdled Steve's blood.  To his amazement, the rock did not fall.  It
hung there for a moment then shot upwards into the sky as Clearwater
raised her arm higher.

When it was some two hundred feet above them, the wavering, unearthly
sound coming from Clearwater's throat stopped abruptly.  The rock
hovered, held in place by her pointing forefinger.  As Steve and the
others below watched raptly, Clearwater drew a circle in the air above
her head.

The rock began to move slowly round in a wide circle - as if it was on
the end of an invisible length of string.  Clearwater dropped her arm
and turned with Cadillac to face Steve.

Once again, incredibly, the rock didn't fall.  Steve watched
open-mouthed as it continued to circle around in the air behind them.

'Now make it fall,' said Cadillac quietly.

Clearwater made a fist with her right hand and brought it down sharply
on the open palm of her left.  The rock plummeted out of the sky and
smashed to pieces on the rocky slope below the bluff.

'Heyy-YAAHH!!"  roared the watching M'Calls.  'Heyyyahh I Heyy-yahh I
Heyy-yahh I' 'Now do you understand why the Federation can never
conquer us?"  asked Cadillac.

Steve looked at Clearwater, then at Cadillac, and back again, his mouth
opening and closing soundlessly.

Clearwater gazed at Steve with a hint of sadness.  'He sees but he does
not believe."

Cadillac nodded.  'His mind is still chained by the darkness below.  He
cannot understand because what he has seen does not follow the rules of
his world."  He smiled.  'It does not compute."

Steve eyed them silently then sat down on a nearby rock.

Cadillac gripped his shoulder sympathetically then walked away with
Clearwater towards the settlement escorted by their clan brothers and
sisters.  They began to chant a Plainfolk melody using a style of
singing known as mouth music, full of complex counter-harmonies in
which the voices were the instruments.  There were no proper words but
Steve knew as he sat there alone with the abandoned Blue-Bird, that it
was a song of triumph.

SEVENTEEN

Clearwater's unnerving mastery over the rock - the second manifestation
of Mute magic that Steve had witnessed blew away the last vestiges of
disbelief, leaving him totally mystified and more than a little
shaken.

Anxious to know more, but not wanting to play into the hands of the
wordsmiths by appearing overawed, Steve pushed the incident to the back
of his mind and proceeded to give Cadillac his first flying lesson.

'Barely a week later, he found himself watching the young wordsmith
handle the glider with all the ease and confidence of a wingman
graduating after three years at the Flight Academy.  Steve should have
been pleased but he was not disposed to kid himself.  He knew that, as
an instructor, he wasn't a patch on Carrol, yet Cadillac had acquired
his flying skill with chilling speed.  It was uncanny.  But then, no
more uncanny than the power that Clearwater had revealed.

Steve began to understand why Jodi Kazan had been so evasive on the
subject of Mute magic.  Somewhere along the trail during the ten years
she had been flying the overground she must have stumbled across the
truth as he had just done.

And if she knew, then so did Grand Central - even though, officially,
it had been decreed that Mute magic did not exist.

Had he, by pure chance, uncovered another corner of a widespread
conspiracy?  The big brother of the plot that had prevented him from
winning the top honours at the Academy?  How many other things had the
First Family, in its unchallenged wisdom, legislated out of
existence?

What were the untapped secrets gt/arded by Columbus, the Federation's
computer?  How high did he have to go to get the inside story?  How
many levels of access were there?

After Cadillac gained his 'wings', he took Steve over to Mr Snow's hut
for a celebratory pipe of rainbow grass.  It seemed like a good moment
to seek an explanation for what had happened on the bluff.  Had
Clearwater really made a rock fly - or had he imagined it all?  Both
wordsmiths were remarkably forthcoming.  They confirmed that what he
had seen had actually taken place but, when pressed to explain how or
why, neither was able to furnish a response that met the rational
requirements of a mind shaped by the Federation.

Steve concealed his frustration and sought Mr Snow's opinion on the
questions that had begun to plague him regarding his search for the
ultimate reality.  Was it possible ever to know the true state of
things?  How high did he have to climb before he found this elusive
Truth, with a capital T, that Mr Snow had referred to?

'Climbing the mountain is not really the problem,' observed Mr Snow.

'It's being able to appreciate the view when you get to the top.  There
are times during a man's life when he looks upon the Truth but more
often than not he fails to recognise it.  The moment of understanding
passes him by.  It may take many years before he stands once again on
the mountain top; others less fortunate are not offered that second
chance."  Mr Snow indicated Cadillac with a wave of his hand.  'As I
said to my able but headstrong successor shortly before you came to us,
you must learn to ask the right questions.  But your mind must also be
open to understanding - like the deep waters of a lake in the still of
evening.  Only then will the great white birds of wisdom alight upon
its surface.  Until that moment arrives, I suggest, for your own peace
of mind, that you simply accept that certain Mutes are capable of
performing magical acts.  By "magic" I mean the power to manipulate the
forces in the earth and sky - and they are given this power by
Talisman."

Steve listened patiently.  'It's amazing.  you really do believe this
guy exists?"

Mr Snow waved the palm of his right hand.  'Who else do you think split
Motor-Head's hammer?  It was his power that saved you - the same power
that flowed through Clearwater and gave her mastery over that rock."

Steve eyed both of them silently.

'Why do you find that so difficult to accept?"  asked Cadillac.

Steve answered with a shrug.  'Maybe because it's hard for us Trackers
to believe that there are.  invisible people."

'The world will see The Thrice-Gifted One soon enough,' said Mr Snow
quietly.

'Thrice-Gifted - ?"

'It is the other name by which Talisman is known.

Perhaps you may live to see that day."

'And die regretting it."  Cadillac smiled.  'Let him hear the Prophecy,
Old One.  Let him know why we do not fear the iron snakes, or the wrath
of the Federation."

'Prophecy - ?  Oh, yeah, I forgot,' said Steve lightly.  'You guys have
got everything worked out."

Cadillac's eyes flashed angrily then died as he stifled all emotion.

Mr Snow's calm remained undisturbed.  'You're wrong, Brickman.  What we
believe is that it has all been worked out for us.  Some of us are
blessed with an inner ear that can pick up the Sky Voices; a gift
withheld from most of my clan-brothers.

But they believe, as we do, that the pattern of future events is
already drawn.  The Cosmic Wheel turns, taking us along its eternal
path - whether we want to go or not.  You, too, despite your blindness,
have a part to play.  So thank your lucky stars we believe in prophecy,
even if you don't - because it's the only thing that's saved your
ass."

Steve adopted a chastened expression as the old wordsmith readjusted
his cross-legged position.

'I was going to ask you to try and open up your soul to what I'm about
to say but,' Mr Snow eyed him, '... you don't understand."

'I don't even know what the word "soul" means."

'Never mind.  Listen well, and mark this.  It was first t;ansmitted
through a wordsmith called Cincinatti-Red about six hundred and fifty
years ago, and is known as the Talisman Prophecy."  Mr Snow began to
speak in a rich resonant tone he had not used before.

'When the great mountain in the West speaks with a tongue of fire that
burns the sky

and the earth drowns in its own tears,

then shall a child born of the Plainfolk become the Thrice-Gifted One
who shall be Wordsmith, Summoner and Seer.

Man-child or Woman-child the One may be.

Whosoever is chosen shall grow straight and strong as the Heroes of the
Old Time.

The morning dew shall be his eyes, the blades of grass shall be his
ears, and the name of the One shall be Talisman.

The eagles shall be his golden arrows, the stones of the earth his
hammer, and a nation shall be forged from the fires of War.

The Plainfolk shall be as a bright sword in the hands of Talisman,
their Saviour.

Then shall the cloud-warriors fall like rain.

The iron snake shall devour its masters.

The desert shall rise up and crush the dark cities of the
sand-burrowers for heaven and earth have yielded their secret powers to
Talisman.

Thus shall perish the enemies of the Plainfolk, for the Thrice-Gifted
One is master of all.

Death shall be driven from the.air and the blood shall be drained from
the earth.

Soul-sister shall join hands with soul-brother and the land shall sing
of Talisman.

In some inexpressible way, the Prophecy touched an inner chord buried
deep within Steve's psyche.  Hearing it spoken for the first time, in
the flickering light of a firestone, was an indelible experience whose
impact equalled the discovery of Clearwater's remote-control mastery
over the rock.  Although Steve could not have described it thus, the
poetic imagery contained in the lines opened up another world; gave him
a whole new perspective on the people he had been trained to regard as
sub-human.  The wily, poisonous Mute.

But what was truly astounding was the date the Prophecy was alleged to
have been composed.  It meant that the appearance of wagon-trains and
wingmen had been predicted by the Plainfolk some four hundred years
before the Federation had envisaged their use!  It seemed impossible
but, if true - and if the other events that were predicted took place
the Federation's future looked distinctly unpromising.

'So tell me... is Clearwater a - summoner?"

'Yes,' replied Mr Snow.  'As it says in the Prophecy, there are'three
gifts that are given to certain of the Plainfolk through the power of
Talisman.  The first is that of wordsmith, the second is that of
summoner, the third is the gift of seership - the ability to read the
past and future in the stones."

Cadillac squared his shoulders.  'I have this gift."

Steve eyed him with evident disbelief.  'Are you telling me that you
can see pictures in stones?"

'Only certain stones,' explained Mr Snow.  'Seeing stones."  He saw
Steve's expression.  'Don't laugh.  It was Cadillac who read the iron
snake through a stone it had passed over.  That was how we knew you
were in its belly."

Steve looked at each of them in turn.  'Is this why you both went to so
much trouble to keep me alive?"

'Yes.  The Sky Voices had spoken to me of the coming of a cloud-warrior
whose destiny was linked to that of Talisman.

Your face was made known to Cadillac through his gift of seership.

Fate drew your separate strands of existence together and the knot was
sealed by the bolt from his crossbow.  And when he looked upon you in
the blazing cornfield he recognized you as the one revealed by the
stone."