IT WAS A TRUE HOMECOMING IN MANY WAYS FOR Hawks. The old great winter lodge was still there, and even his own hogan was up, although it had obviously been used by many others in the years since he’d been there.
It was almost ironic that Star Eagle had set down the fighter with the transmitter in the very same grove of trees that had been the scene of the start of this whole thing, where he’d first discovered the dead body of the courier with her secret case containing copies of the documents relating to the rings. And here, in front of this very cabin, he had agonized over what to do with that case until curiosity had driven him mad enough to open it and read the papers and forever set this thing in motion.
Full circle, he thought, reflecting on it all.
He had chosen to dress in the native fashion of his people, and if the buckskin was synthetic, only a chemical analyst could tell it. It was still quite warm, as it could be on an early October night in this part of the country, but he knew that it could just as easily snow tomorrow, and that no matter what, they would be going into the high country. Chow Dai and Butar Killomen wore only the leather costumes and packs of their adopted people; their systems were different and they were well insulated against the severities of heat and cold—to a point, anyway. China he had dressed much like Cloud Dancer, in traditional leather with fur trim and high boots, and the fact was, dressed like that, she looked almost native. The Oriental heritage of the North American people was never so clear as the impression she made this way.
Maria had refused clothing except for the belt and strap used to carry her small weapons and miscellaneous possessions. It was difficult to remember that while she looked Earth-human she was actually as alien internally as the Janipurian and Chanchukian, her dark skin so tough it would shame Hawks’s leather and her internal insulation so good that she had withstood freezing mountain weather and the volcanic heat of Matriyehan geology.
To return here, though, was to go back in time, both his past and his people’s past. There were a number of his tribe about, but they mostly ignored him as was polite custom. Ignored him publicly, anyway. Their furtive glances told him that they knew who he was, all right, and that he was not unexpected.
Hawks made for the large, permanent log building that served as the wintering base for those who remained while the rest migrated south with the buffalo, a symbolic permanence that retained tribal title to the lands.
He entered the Four Families ’lodge. Although it had been a warm day the dampness and autumn chill were creeping into the night and there was a fire there. The remaining tribal elders, most of whom he did not immediately recognize, were mostly there, and he spotted Cloud Dancer over near the fire by herself. She saw him, but did not acknowledge him. The forms and customs must first be observed, and he had to introduce himself to the elders and beg ritual permission to remain. Only when the old customs were observed and the old ways reaffirmed could he then be free to sit by his wife and talk to her.
His old nemesis and mentor, Walks Stooped Over, was not there. Perhaps the old man had died by now. He had been ancient when Hawks was a boy, and he was ancient again thirty years later.
He bowed his head low, said the right things, and then joined her, talking in a very low tone.
“You look very much in your rightful place here,” he told her. “It is good to be back among the people once again.”
She nodded, but stared at the fire rather than at him. “For many long years I hated this place and would have done anything to leave it, yet now I find that I am part of it and it is part of me. This is my blood, and yours as well.”
He sighed. “Somewhere fate or the gods separated me from what was most important and blinded me to it, yet all that is truly good in my life comes from here, including you.”
“Do not say that we will come back here permanently after, though, or you will be lying to me or to yourself. I want it, I want to forget all the past and remain here with you and have the children brought down so that they can comprehend their people, but the past years have changed me as they have changed you. I am no longer—innocent—enough. There is a darkness, called knowledge, that separates us from them, and would contaminate, even destroy them if we remained forever, for I know what the outside can do. It is no longer possible to feel truly at peace, to take anything for granted. I feel it now. You must have felt it long ago.”
“Yes,” he said softly, distantly, to the fire. “Any news of immediate importance?”
“Nothing obvious, but they have been here. The people know it, can sense it. They are keeping well back, though, I suspect because of the Old One around. No, he is not here now or I would not speak of him. Shakes the Buffalo Grass. He left with the main tribe ten days ago but suddenly showed up here again earlier this evening claiming that he had left some important things here. There have been many sightings of the flying lights in the last half day. Although he has been around a long time, even back when I was here, I believe now that his name might be Snake in the Buffalo Grass.”
Hawks shrugged. “To be expected. The question is, how many of our people would follow him against their own? Even such wanderers as we?”
“Some. It is difficult to say. I am not without friends here, and there are now at least six widows of the sort I once was who expect to winter here. We can keep a knife out of your back, my husband.”
He chuckled. “That is why I love you. But do not get me married off to six widows as the price. I am an old man now, and my hair is graying.”
She snorted. “You are not the only one with gray in your hair. Try bearing five children and see what it does to you. Don’t think though that I am too old to keep up with the likes of you. Come. We will walk around the lodge area and see if we might spot some snakes as well as friends.”
He wasn’t surprised that they had managed to place at least one agent and perhaps more in the village, even on such short notice, but it definitely told him to be on his guard.
Shakes the Buffalo Grass proved to be a tough-looking old man with long gray-black hair and an expression that looked more like a carving on one of those Alititian tikis. Although on in years, he looked in exceptional physical condition, his body perhaps twenty or twenty-five years younger than his age. A dangerous man.
But not necessarily an enemy. His story could be true, his appearance here coincidence. This is what they have done to us worst of all, Hawks thought sourly. We even see enemies among our own people.
Medicine men knew something of the truth of the world beyond the tribe and nation. They had to; they were the first line of Center control, spotting the young ones who might be potential Center personnel, like the young Hawks, and passing them on to field agents and as overseers of the system at its most basic level. They generally did not speak anything beyond Hyiakutt, though, and their world view was only slightly broader than that of their people. They alone knew that they were a part of something infinitely larger and more powerful than they could imagine, but they did not have any real idea of what that something might be.
This fellow, though—he might be different. He’d been born and raised here, it was true, but you just got the feeling he knew a lot more than he should. If they had the time, Hawks would have liked to have checked and seen whether this guy had vanished for a period many years ago, then reappeared just as mysteriously. A fair bit of education followed by a conditional mindprinter program erasing the knowledge until he needed it was a simple thing to arrange.
“We’re going up to make a rough camp at the meeting place,” Hawks told Cloud Dancer. “Take care of me and watch my back, but do not follow unless this fellow and an important number of extras do so. Understand? Remain here.”
She looked at him seriously. “Come back to me, Runs With the Night Hawks. I would not have it end here.”
He kissed her. “I promise you that I will get neither killed nor crippled nor will I desert you if I have any say in the matter. Now—go. In this your place is here.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I know.”
“Testing, testing. Star Eagle, come in.”
“Coming in just fine, Hawks. In fact, I can monitor everyone’s speech and even your physical conditions. Very nice. I hope we won’t have any frequency jamming.”
“Hope not but you never know. All right—what have we got?”
“You have a long way to travel. Overflight of the region is prohibited, and I mean prohibited. Beams got two of my probes, damn it. But I can do an angular readout. It’s a mountain in the first western range, as you suspected, and it’s got more radiation coming and going than I have ever monitored from a single source. Beyond where it is, though, I can tell you little. Photo reconnaisance is meaningless. From the readings I suspect that the cloud cover there is artificial and mechanically sustained. Odd picture, though, almost as if there were a perfect miniature storm there. The clouds are charged somehow—no infrared, UV, or other means will get through it, and radar is impossible. Anything fixed on it for more than a mere fraction of a second gets its beams hooked and then instantly fired on. But that’s it. I’m sure that’s it.”
“It sounds exactly like what we’re looking for. How far?”
“I’ll give you the headings and the exact fix. From your own information it would be squarely in the territory of the Cheyenne nation. Be warned, though. I don’t think it’s going to allow skimmers in the area, either, and there was no sign of any existing ground-level entrance. You might well have to climb that thing if you can. I estimate it at close to thirty-three hundred meters, although I could be off. As I say, I have to approach it obliquely.”
“We’ll do what we can. All right, going to quiet mode now. I think our guests are coming in.” He turned. “Doc, you have your gear on and ready?”
“Ready, not on. It might jam us as well. But I’m reasonably confident.” The scientist looked up as a dark shape passed far overhead and circled. “They are looking over the area pretty well, I see. I’m measuring every sort of scanning known.”
“Hawks,” Star Eagle broke in for the last time. “They might not be your only worry. Those fourteen Val ships—they all came in and landed within the last day, all in the region of the mountain. Watch it.”
“Thanks a lot,” Hawks mumbled sourly. At least the scanning by the craft was normal enough. One worry at a time.
Now, satisfied, the craft shot to just beyond them and halted in midair. Hawks and the others tensed; one good stun shot right now and they were dead meat. Now, though, it descended, its circular shape, featureless on the underside, showing a bank of windows on top and a rather sophisticated airfoil.
The skimmer set down on the bank of the river not thirty meters from them. Hawks checked his watch. Right on time, almost to the second. It was a fairly large craft, and looked fast, but if they all were to go, it would be pretty crowded in there. At least that meant no hidden legions inside, although what technological tricks they might pull or have built into it could not be guessed until attempted.
“The fact that they didn’t just stun us all indicates that they don’t know some important things, or they can’t be sure that we have all the rings with us,” Hawks noted. “That’s a good sign.”
There was a hissing sound from the skimmer, and a rectangular area from the front popped up a bit, then slid out, eventually forming a ramp to a now-revealed door. They watched, weapons ready but not drawn, their party spread out to avoid being caught in one shot. Maria had hung back in the bushes to cover, just in case.
And now, out of the hatch, they came. Lazlo Chen looked like hell; the years had not been kind to him and he had been an old man when this began. Portly, wearing a green Tartar vest with wool trim and baggy pants, he looked less the chief administrator and ruler of central Asia than some comic opera sidekick. Next came Song, a bit taller and more muscular than Hawks had envisioned him, but looking remarkably young, fit, and trim for a man who had to be in his sixties. He wore utilitarian dress, the pale-blue fatiguelike shirt and pants and black boots that would make him, in a Center, undistinguishable from a mere technician. Behind him, clad in a similar outfit, but of olive drab, was Ixtapa XIV, Emperor of Greater Mexico, Administrator of North America, and Hawks’s old boss.
Behind those three emerged three others with whom Hawks and the rest were less familiar, although Clayben knew at least one of them. “There have been a few changes since we were away,” the scientist whispered to Hawks. “I recognize Edward, Duke of Norfolk, there—he wasn’t the administrator when I knew him last but he was the North Europe Center security chief—but the other two are new.”
“To be expected, I suppose,” Hawks muttered back.
Ixtapa stopped, frowned, and seemed to look Hawks over from head to toe. “Hawks! It is you under that outlandish face makeup and that long gray hair! Well, well . . . ”
“We were never exactly on familiar terms,” Hawks replied sourly, “and certainly never on equal ones. I never had any complaints working at your Center, though.” He looked at the portly man. “Chen—I have less pleasant memories of you.”
“We do what we have to do,” Lazlo Chen responded. He looked around. “What? No Raven or Warlock? And Clayben—I am shocked and delighted to see you here, old man. Why, I attended your funeral in Wales! Might have known you had a back-door exit, but I hardly expected to see you teamed up with my people.”
“Raven is dead,” Hawks old him. “Warlock is—well, better off where she is, I think, for her sake and ours.”
“Nagy’s dead, too, Lazlo,” Clayben put in.
“Hmph! Pity. Enough of this. These are Song Hua, Administrator of China, Edward of Norfolk, Administrator of North Europe Center, Ixtapa you know, Mago Zwa, Administrator of Songhai, and Sergio Robles, our host until yesterday and chief of Brasilia Center. Of all the administrators, these are the best—and the only ones who know about the rings, so it wouldn’t do to ace them out, as it were. We’ve all had English imprinting if we didn’t already, so we will use that if we can while we work—together.”
Hawks nodded. “We’ve been using it as well. Clayben you know, this is Chow Dai, who became a Janipurian to get one ring, and Butar Killomen, a freebooter who became a Chanchukian to get another. Maria Santiago, a freebooter captain who became a Matriyehan, is nearby and will join us shortly. And this is China Nightingale.”
Song Hua’s eyebrows went up. “So, daughter, you fulfill your destiny,” he said coldly, noting her condition.
“Permanently, thanks to you and to Clayben, here, who nearly completed your work, Father,” she responded with ill-concealed contempt. “Does Mother still live?”
Hua hesitated a moment. “No,” he responded at last. “She died about five years ago, I regret to say.”
The news was obviously a blow to China, but she recovered quickly. “You probably poisoned her when you found she wasn’t of any more use,” she retorted coldly. “She is better off now than with you.”
“Hate me if you must, but do not believe that I did not honor your mother, my wife, no matter how it seemed. If I was cruel and callous, it was in this very cause that brings us here, although I knew nothing of the rings at the time. My life cause has been the liberation of humanity. My own life and the lives of those closest to me were all sacrificed to that end.” He paused. “Your carriage is odd. You are blind?”
“Yes, blind, thanks to Melchior, but not blind enough. You did not ask us about your grand design, or allow us the choice of the sacrifice.”
Song Hua shrugged. “How could I ever sacrifice the lives and minds of others to the cause if I was not willing to sacrifice my own? It is a moral judgment, strange as that will sound to you. You and your mother never understood.”
“Touching,” Lazlo Chen said sarcastically, “but to hell with family feuds. You have the rings with you?”
Hawks stared at him. “Here’s one on my finger. Yours?”
“Nice nonanswer.” Chen reached into a shirt pocket, removed something from a small cloth bag, and put it on his finger and held it up. “Satisfied?”
“Then the five are united,” Hawks told him. “There seems nothing to do, if we maintain this honor among us, but to get a bit to eat and drink to sustain us and go see if indeed we can do it.”
“You know where? I assume it is on Earth.”
Hawks pointed west across the river. “Out there, perhaps fifteen hundred kilometers yet. It has to be the place. It’s shot down every attempt to so much as take a picture of it.”
Chen looked nervous. “There are a lot of Vals in that region, you know. We picked them up on our own monitors last night.”
Hawks nodded. “They are waiting for us, Chen. Shall we go and greet them?”
All of the administrators stared at him. Even the toughest knew what a Val was and feared it.
“So long as there are five humans and five rings, we’re safe,” the Hyiakutt assured them. “More is okay, less is not. But all of you had better get used to the idea that this is a one-way trip. Anyone from either of our parties who goes in there better realize that if we get all the way and can’t do it—they’re not going to forgive us.”
They stood there, looking up at the mountain, a bit awestruck. It was chilly where they stood, at about the thousand-meter level, but the great mountains all around them towered over them still, many already snowcapped or perhaps still snowcapped from winters past.
There was no mistaking the mountain they sought, though. It rose like the others, but while there were clouds all around, the clouds around this one looked particularly bizarre, almost separated from the main pattern. It was as Star Eagle had told them: a miniature, perfectly circular storm that seemed disconnected from the normal weather around them.
“Is there any way in, I wonder?” Chen mused. “Surely there must be a fairly low-level entrance.”
“If there was, it was blocked centuries ago and sealed away from all view and access,” Hawks replied.
“It is the Devil Mountain, as I feared it was,” Ixtapa commented. “This place is long known to us. One of the few regions off the chart, forbidden territory. The Cheyenne have many great legends about it and there is a cult among them that worships it. The fact that the skimmer cut out on override, landed here, and then went dead shows it. Nobody allowed here. Death mountain. The Cheyenne legends say that if you climb it you shall behold the faces of the gods of the elements, just below that of the unknowable Great Spirit, and once seeing them you will die, for no mortal may gaze upon their faces and live.”
“In legends are buried truths,” Zwa noted. “This one implies great power, a security grid, and much force, and that we will accept. It also implies, however, that some have climbed it to look upon those faces, and that means that somewhere there is a trail. Yes! You can almost make it out completely, until it merges with the clouds. Over there, through the glasses, on the northeast face. A series of even cuts, like switchbacks.”
Maria Santiago nodded. “It is true. I can make it out plainly. It reminds me of those on Matriyeh, although it is far more regular than one of our trails. The top appears to end in snow, and it certainly seems that the only way up is to walk. Who among you believes you can physically make it to the top?”
Lazlo Chen sighed. “I am in no condition for such a thing and my lungs already feel leaden at even this altitude. So we take it very slow and very easy; somehow, I will make it.”
“This is madness,” Song Hua said. “None but your black savage there is capable of such an ascent. The rest of us are too far out of condition for such endeavors. Hawks, you and Clayben both walk like ones who have not experienced full gravity or short air in fifteen years. Your otterlike friend is ungainly on level ground, and this cow-woman’s hooves would slip at the first slope. And as for my daughter . . . Ridiculous! Chen, you are old and fat and, like the rest of us, are too used to having everyone else do your exercising for you. Unless anyone has any bright ideas, the simplest of barriers has us stopped cold!”
Hawks turned to Clayben. “Doc? You have any ideas? We thought we might have a climb, although we hoped against it.”
Clayben nodded. “In Chow Dai’s pack. There is no guarantee they will work in these fields, but they work on a magnetic principle and that’s about the only sort of field I’m not registering artificially right now.”
He had brought flying belts, but only six of them.
Lazlo Chen sighed. “Well, that’s one more than we need for rings, if they work,” he said dubiously, “but—which six of us go?”
“A lottery is the only fair way,” Song Hua said.
“Fair my ass!” China snapped. “There are five with the rings. Let the rest have a lottery for the sixth belt!”
For the first time, there was a tenseness and a halted, but very real, urge to go for weapons.
“This gets us nowhere!” Clayben almost shouted. “It appears now that we should have brought the Vulture after all, Hawks. He’s so small he could have ferried us up one at a time on a single belt. Now the smallest and lightest among us is China, and I really wouldn’t trust her in her condition, particularly with just the viewer.”
“The smallest, but not necessarily the lightest,” Butar Killomen said, looking at the peak. “What is the maximum lift capacity of those things? I never had time or occasion to check, even though I brought ’em back.”
“Safely, these belts? A hundred and twenty kilos,” Clayben told her. “Anything more would be pushing it. What do you weigh?”
“I got Clayben’s Earth-weight measure before we left and I weigh forty-two,” she told him. “That leaves eighty. Yeah, I see what you mean. Other than China, and maybe her father, I’d say nobody here is under a hundred, and Fatso over there must weigh a hundred and thirty.”
“I told you all to take Earth-weight measurements before you left,” Clayben growled. “Just in case we needed something like this or some kind of calculation. Now, who did it? And what do you weigh?”
“I weigh eighty-two,” Hawks said.
“Seventy,” Maria Santiago said.
“Eighty-four,” Ixtapa said. “I keep myself in shape.”
“Likewise, eighty-one,” Robles said.
Edward said he weighed ninety; Zwa, who looked a bit heavyset, claimed ninety-two. China didn’t know but was certainly well under the rest, and her father, although large by the standards of his people, claimed only seventy. Clayben was a hundred and five, and Chen claimed a hundred and twenty and might well have been lying about it. Chow Dai had thought it irrelevant and had never weighed herself, but considering she had put on weight during her pregnancy and through a healthy Janipurian appetite, she looked to be at least sixty.
Hawks sighed. “I’m just not willing to give this up this close to the goal. We may not have time for another chance if even one of my hunches is right and the skimmer’s not just forbidden to fly there, it’s dead. Sending out for more belts and waiting until they can be made and ferried down is not a likely alternative. Besides, Master System has shot down anything that came close enough to do us any good. But Song’s right. That might be a two-day climb even for Maria, and the rest of us might make it in a week if we survived our initial heart attacks and didn’t slip much. All right, so without pushing it Bute can get China up there and probably her father, plus Maria. If we push it a bit, I’ll get there. Pushing more, we can take Ixtapa and Robles. What happens if we overload the belt, Doc?”
Clayben shrugged. “Either you don’t get off the ground, which is at least safe, or you overload the power supply the higher you get—which means a rather long fall.”
Hawks shook his head. “Not enough. Not enough, and too risky!”
“Wait, wait!” China said loudly. “You’re going at this all wrong, Hawks. We don’t need to ferry anybody up there, don’t you see? Where are all your brains, the ones that run this world and flew spaceships and battled Vals and stole the rings? Six go up—and one comes back down with the other five belts. Five more go up, and then one comes back down with a spare to bring the odd one up and that’s it.”
Hawks hoped the others felt as stupid as he did. “All right—” he sighed “—then that’s how we do it, only we make a couple of extra trips. First, one of us goes up and sees if it’s possible and if it works and picks a landing spot. Stay below the peak! We don’t know what’s in there but the odds are that Zwa’s right about legends and truths so that’s where the defenses will be concentrated—on the peak. We can walk a little bit. When that’s set, we go up in pairs, two from each of our interested groups. That satisfactory? Okay, who gets to play scout?”
“I do,” Maria Santiago said. “I’ve flown with the things several times, and I have enough mountain experience to pick a decent spot. I’ll oversee the whole ascent. I feel better that way.”
“You’ll catch your death up there,” Edward pointed out, sounding solicitous.
She gave him a grin. “I’m a Matriyehan. Do not worry about me, just keep your furs bundled around you.”
It took Maria awhile to get the hang of using the belt under Earth conditions. Clayben had been able to duplicate the belts and even figure a little out about them, but he had been unsuccessful in modifying them without making them worse, so they were still set for Chanchuk. Still, the belts worked, which was something, and she was eventually able to control them quite well.
She approached the mountain cautiously, half expecting to be shot out of the sky at any moment. She was cold, in spite of her natural insulation, but not dangerously so. She followed the trail carefully in a near-vertical ascent, but came in and landed when the clouds began to swirl about her. It was impossible to really estimate how far it might be from there to the top, but it couldn’t be more than a few hundred meters. Best to have the group below the cloud and at the edge of the real snow pack anyway. Anybody who couldn’t make it the rest of the way didn’t deserve to.
There was no sense in risking it in the remaining daylight. Instead, they used what equipment and supplies they had to make a camp and then practiced using the belts.
The administrators had a real time learning the belt controls, particularly Chen. He had to lean halfway over to balance it and had to give it more juice with the left control than the right to keep it stable, but faced with the choice of surrendering his ring or making it up there, he was determined to push on.
Hawks still didn’t trust the administrators, but he felt they were too scared and too dependent on this alien technology to try anything at this point. His guess was that all would be well all the way to the interface. You didn’t diminish your numbers until you knew what you were facing.
“Remember,” he warned them, “don’t start up any farther until all five rings are present. To do so might well be fatal. Who knows what’s in or above that cloud ring? And I’m going to be the last man up that ledge.” They ate a decent breakfast from the stores in the skimmer, where at least the galley hadn’t conked out as yet, being on battery power, then packed up and did a last check. It was time. The sun was up, it was a bright day, although their mountain still had its cloud ring about it at about the three thousand-meter mark.
The first lift went relatively smoothly. Ixtapa and Song Hua, after a little practice, seemed to get the uneasy hang of the flying belts, and Clayben, although unsteady, was not about to be left behind or make a last-minute mistake. China was raised by using just the lift power and having Maria hold her legs from underneath and guide her up. It was a rough landing, but they arrived safely.
The second group didn’t go nearly as well. “If a blind and pregnant girl can do it, and a bloody savage who officiates over ripping people’s hearts out managed it, then I can do it!” Edward of Norfolk proclaimed.
“That bloody savage’s people were studying astronomy and mathematics and building great cities while your ancestors were picking off fleas in caves,” Sergio Robles retorted. “Let’s see just how you do it!”
Maria was helping Chow Dai, who had a good feel for the mechanism but wasn’t really built for it, while Butar Killomen, experienced with the belt, helped stabilize the Janipurian, and neither watched the two administrators.
Lazlo Chen, however, watched nervously. “Good god!” he exclaimed. “Edward’s going much too fast! He’s not going to be able to stop!”
Hawks, Zwa, and Chen watched with growing apprehension through field glasses as Edward was clearly in trouble. He, too, had realized his error but after a futile attempt to divert and slow he had panicked. Robles, beneath Edward and a little behind, only now seemed to be aware of his comrade’s problem, but could do little. Edward slammed against the side of the mountain, the flying belt breaking apart and flying off into the empty space below. One of the handle grips struck Robles, who could not get out of the way in time, and he began to tumble. None of the other three were even close, and they certainly could have done nothing to help.
Robles plunged like a rock down into the valley between and was quickly gone from even the highest-power view.
Hawks sighed. “Well, Chen, looks like you have to deal with us now regardless. You no longer have enough people to insert the rings on your own.” He tried to sound brave about it, particularly in light of Chen’s shaking, but, the fact was, Hawks wasn’t too thrilled about being next, either.
It was a good half hour before Maria made it back. “Edward was an asshole,” she commented sourly. “He panicked. Robles followed too closely when it was clear Edward had problems. He wasn’t watching everything, especially those above him. You just remember that.”
Chen was terrified. Hawks was, too, but he couldn’t resist needling the man who had dragged him into this and tortured Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman and then sent them to Melchior. “If you don’t have the stomach for it, Chen, then I suggest you hand the ring to Zwa and wait for us.”
Chen swallowed hard. “No. I will do it.”
And he did, taking it slower and easier than the others. Hawks gave the two administrators a wide berth. He found the sensation of flying with the belt less than thrilling, and he was continually overcompensating on the controls. He also hadn’t counted on the wind, which was bitter cold and which rocked him as he floated over and up. It hadn’t been there on the plateau when he’d practiced, and he hadn’t been too thrilled even then.
Even though he disliked Chen, he worried about the fat, old man as much as he worried about himself. If Chen, or he, fell, then someone would have to go and find the broken pieces. They wore rings.
The landing was awkward. The ledge on which they were all stretched out wasn’t all that wide, and it was snow-covered to boot. Chen made a nearly perfect landing, then slipped and almost fell over the side as he slid. Only the rope-anchored team members already there saved him.
Hawks hit hard, taking a tumble and banging himself on the rock wall. He was dizzy, bleeding a little, and angry at himself, but he was so happy to be on something solid again he hardly noticed. Once into a rope harness and on his feet, however, he began to feel the wind and bitter cold and to envy Clayben and Chen their beards.
“All right, Maria, take the point!” he shouted over the whipping winds. Santiago eased forward along the rock wall to the front, virtually inside the cloud, and tied the rope around her waist. The order otherwise was random and without regard to alliances or rings. They just wanted up and out of there.
And yet the suffering was also his due, Hawks thought. For all those years he’d changed people into other forms and sent them down to planets of peril to risk their lives for the rings, and dispatched others in spaceships to reconnoiter new areas and fight battles with the enemy while he’d remained safe and secure inside Thunder. This might not be equivalent, but the more miserable he was the better his conscience felt.
They all felt like ice cubes when they emerged from the cloud, and there was actually ice encrusted on all of them, their body moisture partly frozen. Still, all seemed alive and that was something. The trail essentially ended altogether—what there was of it once the snow began, anyway. Mostly they had just kept to the rock wall and let Maria find the route. Now, though, there was an open, snow-covered area, and beyond it clear rock—and something else.
“Holy shit!” Maria swore. “What is this thing? A volcano?”
Clayben gasped to get his breath, then managed, “No. I don’t think so. It’s too even, too regular. And notice how it’s getting warmer. Exhaust venting from whatever is inside the mountain. It’s impressive as hell, though.”
It was that. What looked like a great, circular crater lay ahead, and above it, perhaps another three hundred meters, was the damnedest cloud they had ever seen, swirling around and around faster than any cloud should go, yet thick and dense and dark, almost as if it were a living thing anchored there by some invisible leash.
They went through a short stretch of slush and then stepped onto the bare rock, which seemed relatively smooth, almost polished. There was a slight rise to the “crater,” but there no longer seemed to be any need to be tied together.
Still, the stories of the Cheyenne that Ixtapa told flooded back to them. The faces of the gods of the elements, he’d said. To look upon them is to die.
Maria unclasped her harness, pulled her needler, and cautiously approached the broad craterlike depression. “Hawks! Everyone! Come here! Carefully!” She was excited, even sounding a bit awed, but her voice was low, nearly a whisper, as if she feared someone might hear. And, one by one, they approached the opening and saw what she was seeing and what the Cheyenne had warned about.
“Oh, my God!” Hawks exclaimed. “I guessed it—most of it—but this kind of confirmation I never dreamed of.”
Clayben stared down. “It is insane. All those faces, repeated, again and again, all around. Look below, though! A broad grating down there, perforated so that the steam can rise. And the designs on the walls! This is it!”
Chen looked down and shook his head wonderingly. “What’s that all over the grating? Looks like . . . bones.”
“That’s what they are,” Maria replied. “Bones. Rotting corpses. The Cheyenne who tried to face down the gods, most likely, along with, perhaps, a few who over the years found the place by accident. You’re right about one thing, Hawks. If you don’t reset it from there, it’s a one-way trip and it looks real sudden.”
Song Hua seemed oblivious to the bizarre scene below. “Below us,” he said softly, mostly to himself. “Below us is Master System. The entire mountain must be Master System, and perhaps more beyond. Here—right here. We stand upon the tyrant’s head!”
Ixtapa looked down into the pit. “Those faces—must be many meters high. We will have to climb over someone’s nose to get down there. But whose faces are carved there, and why?”
“The same five faces,” Hawks told him. “The same five, repeated five times to complete the circle. I never had pictures of them, but I think I can guess from the features. The thin-faced man with the hawk nose and lantern jaw—I think that is Aaron Menzelbaum. To his right, the kindly, grandmotherly European face—it must be Golda Pinsky. To her right, the one with the broad, African features—that’s Maurice Ntunanga. Next to him, the delicate, Oriental girl—Mary Lynn Yomashita. And finally, between her and Menzelbaum again, the thin, handsome Chinese man, that’s almost certainly Joseph Sung Yi. It’s more than an interface, you see.”
“It’s a shrine,” China Nightingale said, putting on and adjusting her viewing goggles so that she could see it all.
Hawks shook his head sadly. “No, it’s more than that. It is far sadder than a mere memorial or shrine. It’s a nightmare, and not just our nightmare. It’s the key to everything.”
Clayben checked his equipment. “We’ll need the rope to get down there,” he told them. “I’d like to use the belts, but there’s some kind of strong energy pulse here. The murylium’s still good but the electronics have been fried.”
Chen sighed. “I am not concerned with climbing down a rope, even at my age and in my condition. Climbing back up, though, might prove impossible.”
“You won’t have to climb back up,” Hawks told him. “Either we get inside this thing or we join those corpses down there. There’s no third choice.”
Suddenly he heard Chow Dai scream. “Hawks! Look out!”
He looked up, but at that moment he felt something strike him like a two-by-four to the head, and he immediately felt shock, an instant of searing pain, and then unconsciousness.
He was not out for more than a few minutes, but he awoke with a terrible, splitting headache. He opened his eyes and for a moment saw only a blur, then everything was double, even triple. Finally the moving shapes resolved themselves and he saw, blearily, Chen, Song Hua, Mago Zwa, and Ixtapa standing there at the edge of the pit. He struggled to get up, and only then was aware that both his hands and feet were securely tied.
“I was afraid the damned thing wouldn’t work,” Chen commented dryly. “When they said the belts were fried—”
Song Hua looked at the pistol. “It didn’t work right, that’s for sure. I had it on wide stun, an it came out like a fireball. Sorry, Mago and Ixtapa—caught you in it, too.” He shook the pistol. “It’s dead now, that’s for sure.”
Hawks looked around. Maria was not only bound, she was hog-tied, hands roped not only together along with the feet but hands and feet also tied up behind her. She was struggling like mad and the expression on her face was murderous, but the administrators knew what they were doing. Chow Dai had also been trussed up the same way, although it looked a bit more natural with her. She had a nasty-looking set of burn marks, though, on her right arm-foreleg. The fur was still smoldering, and she appeared in some pain. Butar was bound with arms and legs pinned by wrapped rope; apparently they hadn’t figured out how she bent. He and Clayben were simply bound hand and foot, hands tied behind them. China’s hands only were fastened, although that didn’t do her much good. Someone had taken her viewer and smashed it. She wasn’t much of a threat without it, and apparently they’d tied her hands only so she couldn’t release the others.
“Stupid move, Chen,” Hawks called out. “I guess we were sloppy, overcome by this sight, but you lost two of your boys. There are only four of you. I’m sure you walked around the thing by now. The interfaces are there, all right—at least I think I see them—but the spacing and angle are quite deliberate. You need five people. Even if you could rig up some kind of device with what we have I doubt if it would work. Master System wants five people, not less.”
Lazlo Chen gave a wry smile. “You’re too trusting, Hawks. Oh, I admit, if the opportunity hadn’t presented itself or we couldn’t be certain of getting you all I would have had no choice but to go along with you. Now I’ve got the rings. Now all I need is a volunteer—and the combination.”
“Go to hell,” Hawks told him. “I told you before that I’m the only one who knows it and I’m mindprinted against extraction—if you happened to have a mindprinter at all.”
Song Hua looked down at China. “Daughter, you can still participate. We need someone like you, you know. I cannot believe that only Hawks would figure this out; he is neither a computer expert nor mathematician.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Father, but I do not know it, and if I did, I would hurl myself down there before I would surrender it to you. You, more than anyone.”
“Do you think so little of your father? Consider that I knew of that tech cult with its interface plans for over two years before I ordered it raided—and I made certain you were along then and got access to those plans. We had meetings, computer studies. We worked it out according to needed information and probabilities. Each member of your team was carefully selected well in advance in our Presidium meetings on Melchior. You were the perfect choice to supply the interface to the rest. I merely put so much pressure on you with the wedding threat and the reprogramming that you desperately fled me. The means were essentially yours, but whatever you tried we . . . helped. Not changing the security codes so you could override the computers at China Center. Replacing that boy with yourself was your own idea, but we made certain that it would not be detected. After all, we wanted you on that ship to Melchior. How smart, how clever, do you feel now?”
“You bastard!”
“I admit stealing the ship was unexpected, but it drew our attention to the Chows, whose talent for locks added a full percentage point to the probability of success,” he continued.
“And I picked you specifically, Hawks, although I admit to complete and utter shock when your name came up as one of the two or three best for the role,” Ixtapa added. “Robles’s people had initially busted that tech cult in the Amazon quite a while before this started. In fact, it was the discovery of the ring documents that got us started in this strange and unlikely plot. I fully admit the odds were low even then—I am startled and shocked to find us here, with all five rings—but it was the only chance we had.”
“You son of a bitch,” Hawks growled. “You dropped that dead courier with those documents right in my lap. You knew I’d open and read them.”
“Indeed. And in spite of my reservations, you performed admirably. Warlock, of course, was in overall charge of your end, and Raven was enlisted when you inevitably fled. They brought you to Chen, who put enough pressure on you to show your vulnerability. Then, of course, you, too, were shipped off to Melchior so that the team could be assembled with others already there. Our man coordinating that end was able to add the one you called the Vulture, without which you would not have had a prayer of doing what you did in our lifetimes. He also was able to make certain that everyone got the information they needed, and ensure that the ship you stole and whose core you would have to use would be the one we modified just for that purpose. Even so, it wasn’t all that easy.”
“Your man on Melchior,” Hawks said dryly. “Nagy.”
“Yes. He was then able to get away with the Melchior escape ship and eventually join your band, the better to steer you to those in the freebooter camp who could supply what else you needed. Savaphoong in particular, since he had been instrumental in supplying illicit murylium to Melchior and thus to us for some years and we knew you’d need all you could get. Naturally he was good enough to bring Doctor Clayben along, since only Clayben could access the enormous backup data banks in the ship to give you the technology, history, and whatever other information you would need.”
“That’s why all that information was in Star Eagle’s data banks, too. About the founders and the rest. You put it there.”
“Yes. And much more.”
Hawks gave a slight laugh. “And now the joke’s on you. We brought the rings to you, but you’re the one caught short; you don’t know what I was recruited to find out. You’ll die if you try to get off here without using the rings, and you’ll die if you attempt to use them.”
“Perhaps,” responded Lazlo Chen. “We have no intention of getting off or not using them, though. You never have appreciated just what is down there, Hawks. You are not the right personality type to understand or appreciate it. We gave you only part of the rings’ documentation, not all of it. There’s godhood down there, Hawks, and we are the kind of people best capable of appreciating and using and understanding it. Immortality and near-infinite power!”
“Good people died for those rings, Chen! Others gave up their form, their ties to their native lands!”
Chen shrugged. “Good people always fight the battles and carry the banner of ideals to fuel their courage,” he said. “You are the historian. You must know that. But, somehow, it is always people like me who wind up with the fruits. It is the way of humanity.”
“You haven’t won yet. There are things even your massive ego hasn’t figured out. Nagy wasn’t just a double agent, he was at least a triple. There is another player in this game.”
Chen grinned. “Perhaps. But, Hawks—I have the rings and I am here. What difference does it make who else was playing?” He turned to Clayben. “What about it, Doctor? Loyalty was never your strong suit when it wasn’t to your advantage.”
Isaac Clayben looked at him. “Hawks is right. There is something bigger than our petty games going on here. Still, this will not wait forever. Untie me, Chen. For twenty percent of whatever’s down there, I will open this thing up.”
Hawks was more disappointed than surprised, even after all this time. It was at the crux of the differences between him and his people and the others, Ixtapa not withstanding. When honor and loyalty became burdens, you deserved to be ruled by a machine.
Song Hua came over and untied Clayben. “No tricks,” he warned.
Clayben allowed himself to be helped up, then rubbed his arms to restore circulation. “No, no tricks. You have the weapons, anyway. No matter what cost, that machine must be reset. Sorry, Hawks.”
“You have the combination?” Ixtapa asked the scientist.
Clayben nodded. “It is true that you couldn’t ever get it from Hawks, but I implanted the mindprinting block. It is based upon an ancient Christmas song and is sung as a set of descenders based on the number of birds on the face of each ring. It starts with the five circles and follows the simplest progression—five, four, three, two, one.”
Mago Zwa finished pounding in a piton and making a rope secure. “Good thing we don’t need much more,” he noted. “We’re damned near out of rope. I didn’t want to use these old, rusted pitons, though. You can’t be sure they’d hold.”
Hawks watched with mixed horror and fascination as they worked, trying to think of what to do. The ropes that tied him were solid, fixed. These men knew what they were doing. He thought about calling in that strike from above as he had threatened. The trouble was, it would also certainly kill them all—if Master System did not respond in kind. The price of that was to keep the repulsive system intact, after all their work. It was a perversion for these men to get it, but did he have the right to stop them if there was no alternative?
Song Hua was already going down the rope. Lazlo Chen turned and looked at Hawks and the others. “Don’t try contacting anyone with your inevitable hidden communications,” he warned. “It will not work in any event: our own men followed us and are even now certainly on the plateau and I can’t even reach them with mine. Besides, it would do you no good. Song Hua personally oversaw the reprogramming of your ship’s pilot. It can do nothing inimical to the interests of the Presidium. It’s in its core.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry. We could have just killed you all, but we will be generous to those who got us here. We are not totally without humanity. In fact, we are what humanity is all about.”
Perhaps, Hawks thought morosely. Perhaps he is right. The dictators always seized the power and the rhetoric from the idealists in history, and these types of men were precisely why Master System was constructed in the first place. It was supposed to save us from them, the men who would destroy all humanity and even themselves rather than relinquish control.
They were all down there now, out of sight. Butar Killomen was wriggling, snakelike in her rope cocoon, trying to move or get free. “I am very flexible,” she told Hawks in a low tone. “I may be able to get out of this.”
“Try,” he urged, “but I think it’s too late. I just wish I could see what was going on down there.”
Voices came up from far below, faint, distant, but distinct.
“Look at this!” someone, probably Ixtapa, said.
“To business! We’ve wasted enough time!” came the unmistakable and out-of-breath tones of Lazlo Chen. “Check your rings and go to your stations!”
“Are you sure about this sequence, Clayben?” Song Hua asked, perhaps a bit nervously.
“Hawks thinks so and it makes sense to me. Look at these brittle corpses! It’s my neck, too, you know. Do you think I could do this if I had doubts?”
“Look at the faces!” Mago Zwa exclaimed. “They—they’re alive!”
“Robots! Constructs!” Clayben snapped. “Forget them! Here! Everyone set? I’ve got the fifth ring. Insert them just like the picture tells you. Now, see—in! Look! The damned panel lit up! I’m right! Nobody make any mistakes now, though, or we’re fried!”
“Inserting number four!” called Zwa. “Those faces! Allah give me strength! There!”
“Inserting three!” said Chen. “Yes! Impressive!”
“Inserting two,” called Ixtapa. “Ah!”
There was a pause. “Here goes,” said Song Hua. “Inserting number one!”
For an instant time seemed to be suspended, not only for those below but for those above as well.
Suddenly there was a horrible electronic sound, and a crackling like frying bacon in a pan. There were screams, horrible screams, cut suddenly short, and then, slowly, an odor seemed to rise from the bowl reaching those tied above.
“What—what happened?” China asked.
Hawks was in a state of shock himself over that. “I—I must have been wrong. I must have gotten the code wrong! But it was so logical . . . ”
“Well, damn it, the rings are still down there,” Butar Killomen noted pragmatically. “If it isn’t the one progression it’s the other, if that song and those symbols have any meaning. I should be free in a few seconds! Maybe we can still win this!”
“Do not struggle too hard on that account,” said a new, strange voice from the direction of the trail.
“Who’s that?” China asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Hawks told her. He stared at the figure coming toward them. “A Chanchukian!” He sighed.
“Brigadier Chi, I presume,” he said at last. “The SPF to the rescue.”