Cloud Warrior Read online

  ‘I shall choose the words myself,’ said Cadillac, swelling with pride at the prospect and his new-found ability to ignore the pain that pulsed through his chest.

  ‘– but only,’ continued Clearwater firmly, ‘if you hold fast to your oath to Mr Snow. Never to act rashly again. Never put the gift of words in danger.’

  Cadillac shrugged arrogantly. ‘If it is my destiny to be a great warrior –’

  ‘Then the fire song I sing shall tell how these Lion-Hearts truly died. Not under the hand of a brave Bear they called coyote, but by a single cry from the lips of a tame fox!’

  ‘She-ehh!’ hissed Cadillac. ‘For a tame fox you have sharp teeth.’

  Clearwater slipped her arms around his neck. ‘They bite softly enough in the darkness of the moon.’ She rubbed her nose against his cheeks then kissed him on the mouth. ‘Come – let us prepare the fast-foot.’

  They gutted the carcass of the capo and strung it to the eight-foot claim-stick. The weight of the dead beast made it sag dangerously and they could only shoulder it with great difficulty. To take it back unaided would mean abandoning the dead Mutes and their weapons.

  Cadillac shed his end of the load. ‘You will have to get help. I will stay here and guard what we have won. Take the Lion-Hearts’ crossbow.’ He hauled back the lever with a gasp of pain, placed a bolt in the barrel and offered it to her.

  Clearwater did not take it. She was looking past him across the plain to the north; Home of the White Death. ‘Running clouds,’ she said.

  Cadillac turned, following the direction of her pointing finger. He saw a low dust haze hanging in the air above a distant rise; a sign that often meant a group of warriors on the move; running with the characteristic, loping gait that enabled Mutes to cover long distances, sometimes running for twenty-four hours without a break, sleeping on their feet as birds do on the wing; guided by some mysterious internal navigation system.

  The running cloud drifted against the grey-blue shadowed land beyond, burning with orange fire as it caught the slanting rays of the sun. Cadillac hurriedly loaded his own crossbow. ‘Could those two crows have flown to more of their brothers?’ he asked anxiously. From his experience of Mr Snow’s powers he knew that if it left the summoner exhausted, it did not come quickly again. If those who now ran towards them were marauding Lion-Hearts…

  ‘Make me tall and I shall tell you,’ said Clearwater.

  Cadillac cupped his hands together so that Clearwater could climb up and stand upon his shoulders. He sucked his breath in sharply as her added weight compressed his slashed ribs.

  Clearwater who, like most Mutes, was blessed with remarkably sharp, almost hawk-like vision, quickly focussed on the tufts of golden feathers on the side of the runner’s head-masks. ‘They are Bears –’ She waved vigorously then leapt nimbly to the ground and faced Cadillac with a smile. ‘– come to escort their warrior-wordsmith home in triumph.’

  The posse of M’Call Bears reached them some fifteen minutes later. They were led by Motor-Head, the most fearless of Cadillac’s clan-brothers. A powerful young warrior, heavily built like the dead Shakatak, but who had filled not one, but two head-poles. With him were Hawkwind, Chainsaw, Black-Top, Brass-Rail, Steel-Eye, Ten-Four and Convoy, all of them bearing – as was the custom – Names of Power that had once belonged to the Heroes of the Old Time. Each was dressed in the eccentric fashion of Mute warriors, their leather body plates, adorned with trophies and emblems attesting to their prowess and courage, and they arrived carrying the limp bodies of Cannonball and Freeway slung like dead fast-foot from newly cut saplings.

  Motor-Head circled the bodies of Torpedo and Shakatak, gave an approving nod, then walked over to Cadillac and threw an arm round his shoulders. ‘Good work, little sand-worm.’

  Motor-Head waved towards the bodies of Cannonball and Freeway. ‘You must have frightened them mightily. Their running cloud was like a tower in the sky!’

  Cadillac exchanged a sideways glance with Clearwater. She bit back a smile, then said, ‘He also brought down the capo.’

  This news brought grunts of approval from Cadillac’s clan-brothers. Convoy counted the branched horns. ‘Ten points! No one has done better!’

  Motor-Head added his grudging approval. ‘So, sand-worm – is wrestling with words not enough to fill your day? Would you also fight and hunt and run with the Bears?’

  Cadillac faced up to Motor-Head’s mocking gaze. ‘Does not the branch-worm become a leaf-wing? Why should a sand-worm not become a warrior worthy to bear his Name of Power?’

  Motor-Head chuckled and planted himself before Cadillac with folded arms. ‘Your tongue strikes sparks, wordsmith. And now your hands have held sharp iron. You have cut down meat, and you have chewed bone.’ He turned towards the other warriors. ‘How say you, brothers – is he worthy to be one of us?’

  One by one, Hawkwind, Chainsaw, Black-Top, Brass-Rail, Steel-Eye, Ten-Four and Convoy solemnly thrust out their right arms towards Cadillac, the fingers clenched, the thumb raised.

  Motor-Head took off his feathered head-mask and placed it on Cadillac’s head. ‘Welcome, blood-brother Bear! May your arm strike hard and true, may your heart be strong, and your name be honoured in the fire songs of our people!’

  ‘Hey-YUH! Hey-YUH! Hey-YUH!!’ chorussed the others. Clearwater’s eyes glistened with tears of joy as she joined with the others, raising her arms as they shouted the traditional accolade.

  It was a sweet moment of triumph – which Cadillac spoilt by fainting from loss of blood.

  FOUR

  The joint centenary celebration and graduation ceremony was held in the Academy’s giant Free-Flight Dome. The bare rock from which it had been hewn was hung with flags and bunting, and criss-crossed with computerised coloured laser beams that had been programmed to create dazzling, ever-changing, patterns of light.

  When the five thousand spectators had filed into their allotted seats, the nine squadrons of cadets and the Academy staff paraded to the stirring synthesised sounds of brass, fife and drum, then lined up with geometrical precision for inspection by the visiting dignitaries from Grand Central. This was followed by squadron displays of marching and countermarching, weapon handling, assault training demonstrations, gymnastics and quarterstave combat drills.

  The ground events, interwoven with highlights from the video-record of the Flight Academy’s history and achievements projected on a giant screen, were climaxed by a flying display in which Steve Brickman took a leading part.

  After the ceremonial presentation of wings, prizes, a video-address by George Washington Jefferson the 31st, the President-General of the Federation, and seemingly interminable speeches by members of the Amtrak Executive who had shuttled from Houston, the amplifiers boomed out the opening chords of ‘The Wild Blue Yonder’, the Academy’s historic battle-hymn. Five thousand spectators rose to their feet and, with one voice, joined the two hundred-strong choir in the verses and chorus that accompanied the final march past. Tears flowed unashamedly down the cheeks of veteran Trail-Blazers in the stands as the voices and music soared to fill the huge circular arena; the sound merging, as if by magic, with the rhythmic pulsing of the lasers, to create a heart, mind and gut-gripping audio-visual experience; the crowning moment of a triumphantly successful anniversary parade.

  As the last words of the last ringing chorus faded, and the tears were wiped away, the hymn was reprised in voiceless diminuendo. The First and Second Year cadets marched out of the arena to the sound of retreating drumbeats, and the three Senior squadrons, now proudly bearing their newly-won wings on their tunics, were halted and dismissed in front of the packed reviewing stand. After nearly four hours on the parade ground, the Third Year cadets broke ranks with broad smiles of relief as their guardians and kinfolk – some of whom had travelled from the farthest reaches of the Federation – left their seats and streamed down the steps to greet their wards with hugs and handshakes, and shoot off more videotape for the unit album.

&nb
sp; ‘How ya doing, Wonder-Boy?’

  Steve ducked out from under the enthusiastic embrace of his kin-sister and smoothed his uniform. ‘Hey, Roz, come on – grow up will you?’

  ‘I am grown up. I was fifteen last February, remember?’

  ‘Sure, I remember.’

  ‘Could have looked in on me. Or at least sent a vee-gee.’

  ‘I forgot, Worm. Happy Birthday whenever. Okay?’

  ‘And not a bleep from you when I passed my Inter-Med.’

  ‘Steve hardly ever looks in. You should know that,’ said Annie Brickman. Her voice was entirely devoid of malice or reproach. It was just a plain statement of fact. Annie, Steve’s guard-mother, stepped aside as her kin-brother Bart Bradlee eased Jack Brickman’s wheelchair through the crowd.

  ‘I was gonna send a vee-gee, but it got kind of busy.’

  ‘We know that, boy.’ In the three years since leaving home his guard-father’s voice had faded to a husky whisper.

  Steve lifted his guard-father’s hands from the arms of his chair and squeezed them gently. Jack Brickman’s fingers responded to the contact like palsied chicken claws. It was hard to believe that these hands, and the wasted body they were attached to, had once been packed with lean hard flesh and enough muscle power to knock many bigger men clear across a room.

  ‘Good to see you, sir. I really appreciate you taking the trouble to make the trip.’

  ‘If we hadn’t brought him, he’d have got someone to tie him to the chair and had himself shipped out as freight,’ said Bart. He patted Jack Brickman’s shoulder. ‘Ain’t that so, old timer?’

  The ‘old timer’ answered with a wry, gasping laugh. Steve’s guard-father was thirty-four years old. Jack knew he would be dead from radiation sickness within a year. They all knew. But no one felt sad about it, or thought of it as tragic. His tenacious survival thus far was little short of miraculous. Very few Trail-Blazers made it past thirty. Indeed, most Trackers assigned to overground operations were dead long before that; killed in action or through pulling a trick or, more regrettably, executed before the tv cameras for a Code One default.

  Undergrounders had a greater life-expectancy but even they didn’t live for ever. Annie, who was also thirty-four, and her kin-brother Bart, a twenty-nine-year-old staff-officer, had never been posted overground or suffered a day’s illness, yet both would die soon after their forty-second birthday. For despite the spectacular advances in the life sciences over the last three centuries, the secret of longevity still remained to be discovered.

  The oldest Tracker on record had died at the ripe old age of forty-five.

  The oldest ordinary Tracker that is.

  The current President-General of the Federation was – to judge from his video appearances – a vigorous sixty-five, and his predecessor had lived into his eighties. No one had ever given Steve a satisfactory explanation of why this should be so. That was the way it was. The Jeffersons were the First Family because they lived longer than everybody else. And they lived longer than everybody else because they had been born to rule the Federation.

  That was what it said in the Manual.

  Steve embraced his guard-mother. ‘I really did work hard, Annie. Can you forgive me?’

  Annie laughed. ‘For what – coming fourth?’

  ‘I should have been first.’

  ‘Fourth sounds pretty good to me,’ said Annie. ‘Jack wasn’t even in the top twenty.’

  ‘The Eagles took three out of the top four places,’ said Bart. ‘Never been a squadron that has done that before.’

  Steve turned to Bart. ‘You don’t understand, sir. I should have been first. I should have been Honour Cadet. I was shafted.’

  Bart’s face muscles hardened a little around his good-natured smile. ‘Now that’s a real bad thought for you to have, Stevie. The system doesn’t make mistakes like that.’

  ‘No harm in the boy wanting to be best,’ said Annie. ‘We trained him to think that way before he could even walk. Roz too.’

  Bart shook his head. ‘Wanting to be, and being, is different sure enough. But that’s not what a girl and boy should set their mind to. Trying to do their best, that’s something else. That’s what’s expected of each and everyone of us. Just like it says in The Book.’

  Steve nodded respectfully. Bart held the powerful post of Provost-Marshal for the territory of New Mexico. Young men planning to make their way up in the world did not argue with Provost-Marshals. Even if they were kinfolk.

  ‘I tried, sir.’

  Bart patted him on the shoulder. ‘That’s all a man can do. It’s all been worked out, boy. The Family’s had their eye on you from the day you were born. Same way as they look after all of us. A Tracker doesn’t need to question the order he’s given, or the place he’s been assigned to. The only thing he has to ask himself is – “Am I trying hard enough? Am I doing the best I can?”’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Annie.

  Jack Brickman waved a frail hand. ‘You passed. That’s the important thing. The marks don’t matter a damn. Combat is the only way a wingman can prove himself.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Roz linked arms with Steve and her guardmother. ‘Now will somebody please shoot a picture before my brother gets too famous to talk to me?’

  The rest of the afternoon was spent sight-seeing. As with every annual passing-out parade, the Flight Academy complex was thrown open for inspection by the kinfolk of the senior classmen. Food and drink were freely available in the mess halls, where the first year Squabs were on duty as waiters. Second year cadets provided conducted tours of the classrooms and other training areas, giving practical demonstrations on the flight rigs, simulators and weapon ranges. Steve took over control of his guard-father’s wheelchair but, an hour into the tour, Jack Brickman’s face clouded over as the sharp-toothed serpent within him crept out of its secret lair and began to gnaw away at another part of his body. Annie gave Jack a couple of Cloud-Nines and cradled his head until the drawn sinews on his scrawny neck slackened and he fell into a drugged sleep.

  Seeing what had happened, Chuck Waters, a buddie from B-flight invited Steve’s kinfolk to join his own ten-strong bunch of Okies. Steve took Jack Brickman up in the elevator to the quarterdeck and wheeled him into his shack. Putting a pillow on the chair back, he gently eased the gaunt open-mouthed skull onto it, crossed the limp wizened hands, then sat down on the stripped bunk and gazed impassively at the man who had raised him. The only sign of life was a thin gasping sigh as air passed in and out of his guard-father’s throat. Sometime next year, the sighing would stop. The bag-men would call, his body would go down the gaspipe and his name would go up on the Flight Academy’s wall.

  Another good man gone.

  Steve sat there a while longer then got up and began packing his clothing and personal equipment into a big blue trail-bag.

  ‘Okay if I come in?’

  Steve looked over his shoulder. Donna Monroe Lundkwist, a slim, fair-haired wingman who had, in Steve’s calculations, been his only serious rival for first place stood at the door. The blue and white tasselled Honour Cadet lanyard was looped over her right shoulder; the big metallic-thread Minuteman badge was sewn on her left breast pocket under the silver wings.

  Steve folded the last of his shirts into the trail-bag. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Nothing special.’ Lundkwist sat down casually on the bunk next to Steve’s trail bag. ‘Just dropped in to say “goodbye”.’ She nodded towards Jack Brickman. ‘Your guard-father?’

  ‘Yeah…’

  Lundkwist registered the two gold, double triangles on Jack Brickman’s sleeve and gave a low whistle. ‘A double-six! Twelve tours and two White House lunches with the President-General. How come you never told anybody your guardian was an ace wingman?’

  Steve shrugged. ‘That kind of information is dispensed on a strictly “need-to-know” basis.’ He zipped up the side pockets of his trail-bag and wedged some more of his gear into the middle section. ‘How was
your lunch?’

  ‘Oh – you mean with the Academy-General? Interesting. He gave me the inside track on my first assignment. I’m being posted to Big Red One.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Brickman, flatly.

  Big Red One was the popular name for the Red River wagon train. It was known throughout the Federation for the spectacular success of its many expeditions against the Mutes; its Trail-Blazer crew had an unrivalled combat record and as a result of their renown, the Red River wagon master was able to cream off the top layer of graduates from the combat academies and specialist schools. For the last twenty years, the top three cadets from the Academy had joined the Trail-Blazer team aboard Red River. Steve had planned to be one of them this year.

  ‘I asked about you.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘You’ve been assigned to The Lady from Louisiana – she’s based at Fort Worth.’ Lundkwist paused. ‘Gus White too.’

  ‘That should make his day,’ grunted Steve. Service aboard Big Red One was traditionally regarded as the all-important first rung on the promotion ladder. He turned to face her, ‘Does he know yet?’

  Lundkwist shook her head. ‘I thought you’d enjoy telling him.’

  ‘I will.’ Steve closed the long zip on the middle section of his trail bag. As he moved the zip tag towards Lundkwist she laid a finger on the back of his hand and drew a slow, exploratory circle. Their eyes met.

  ‘How about putting the bomb in the barrel?’

  Steve ran the zip tag the rest of the way while he thought about it. ‘You mean here? Now?’

  Don Lundkwist’s eyes flickered towards the sleeping figure of Jack Brickman. ‘You worried about him waking up?’

  ‘Not really. He’s on Cloud-Nine.’

  ‘So…?’ Lundkwist looked at him expectantly.

  ‘So – maybe some other time.’

  Lundkwist pointed to the sleeping Jack Brickman.

  ‘Listen. You are not going to be upsetting this guy. In twelve years on the wagons he must have walked past some heavy traffic. Right?’

  Steve mulled the situation over.