Iron master, p.22
Iron Master, page 22
Toshiro did not know this but, in any case, his interest had waned by the time Steve reached the point where he had handed over his weapons. The Herald had discovered all he needed to know: the location of the ronin camp and how it could be entered. These details would be sent in a letter addressed to Hideyoshi Se-Iko, the military commander of the southern district, and signed ‘A Well-Wisher’. Since his samurai had failed to catch all the raiders of the road convoy, Hideyoshi could be counted upon to take the appropriate measures.
With the last survivors eliminated, Brickman would be the only person who knew of his mistake over the true identity of the ‘love object’ and the fake ‘cloud warrior’. The secret was safe with him. He was unlikely to reveal details of his mission to anyone else. If it was successful he would vanish; if it was not, he would be dead.
The Mute roadrunners attached to the depot at Ari-bani and their transient colleagues were accommodated in a sturdy log cabin in the courtyard behind the post-house. Food, lodgings and laundry services, all paid for by the bakufu, were provided by the inn-keeper, who usually kept a Mute family, or a group of Mute women, for this task. The idea of higher social orders cooking for the lowest was out of the question. That was why Clearwater’s two housewomen had been taken away to prepare their own food. The reason Steve had been subsequently fed by the ronin was that they considered him to be a special case.
Steve was roused at 0500 along with his fourteen overnight companions. Reveille was sounded by one of the cabin staff, a stocky, strong-armed female Mute equipped with a stout pole that came up to her shoulder. The woman walked up and down the length of the hut between the two lines of mattresses, pounding the three-inch-thick pole on the planked floor. Since everyone was required to sleep with their head towards the middle of the room, the shock waves generated by the quivering timbers battered the ear drums and were almost strong enough to shake your teeth loose. To a brain dulled by sleep it also sounded like earth thunder – a noise guaranteed to get a Mute up and running in nought seconds flat.
Steve jumped to his feet and headed across the cobbled yard to the bathing shed set aside for Mutes. This was one of the perks of being a roadrunner: as an employee of the bakufu, in daily contact with Iron Masters, you were required to maintain the same standards of cleanliness.
Finishing off with a bracing bucket of cold water emptied over his head by a cheerful boy-child, Steve dried himself vigorously and donned a clean cotton loincloth as the boy refilled his bucket and got ready to douse the next Mute out of the steaming tub.
The boy was an ‘iron-foot’, the term used to describe Mutes born in Ne-Issan. It came from the metal leg-restraints that Mute journeymen and Tracker renegades were often made to wear. Steve – who had not yet had an opportunity to converse at length with any adult ‘iron-foot’ – wondered if these second – and third-generation journeymen still identified with the Plainfolk. Since becoming a roadrunner he had discovered that, in Ne-Issan, the unbridgable gulf between the various clans had been forcibly broken down. The D’Troit, mortal enemies of the She-Kargo, the San’Paul, San’Louis, C’Natti and M’Waukee had been thrown together without any regard for the enmity they felt towards one another.
In talking with other roadrunners he had met up with en route for Ari-bani, he had learned that the Iron Masters dealt harshly with inter-clan disputes – especially where makeshift weapons were involved. Steve had encountered some latent hostility from D’Troit and M’Waukee roadrunners during his overnight stops, but it was all low-key. There had been none of the provocative posturing and bragging insults that had triggered the outbreaks of violence he had witnessed during the week when the clans had gathered at the trading post.
Mute journeymen still preferred the company of their clan brothers and sisters, but the decades of slavery had weakened the age-old traditions. Living under the heel of the Iron Masters had taught the Plainfolk something they had failed to learn throughout the centuries of fratricidal violence – the positive benefits of peaceful coexistence. It would be ironic, thought Steve, if the sense of nationhood spoken of in the Talisman Prophecy was to be born here, among those to whom Mr Snow had referred as ‘The Lost Ones’.
Did one have first to lose freedom in order to gain it? What did the word – which did not appear in the Federation dictionary – really mean? Steve knew it had something to do with an absence of control by a central authority – such as the First Family. But it was precisely this lack of control which, according to the Family, had brought the state of anarchic violence and degeneracy that had led to the Holocaust.
Was freedom without a collective sense of purpose forever destined to self-destruct? Did absolute freedom mean that the monolithic tyranny of the Jeffersons was replaced by the equally tyrannical behaviour of individuals, or small groups, each fighting to protect and propagate their own narrow self-interests at the expense of everyone else? Did this kind of freedom lead, in the end, to chaos and a point where the greatest number of disadvantaged people in such a society came to regard any form of protest as anathema, and demand a return to autocratic rule by a central authority?
Perhaps this was the true wisdom of the First Family. In the closed underground world of the Federation, the unquestioning obedience which was demanded, and almost universally accorded, gave everyone a role, a sense of purpose and satisfaction derived from the knowledge that, through planned, collective action, the efforts of each individual brought their society one step nearer to the realisation of the great dream – the return to the Blue-Sky World. An ordered, peaceful world under the continuing stewardship of the Jeffersons, not the factional chaos that had led to the Holocaust. Ordered not through coercion, but because everyone shared the same goals, the same ideals: peaceful because the enemies of mankind (of which Trackers held themselves to be the sole survivors), who had brought the world to the brink of total destruction, had been wiped from the face of the earth.
The Mutes believed the Talisman Prophecy was a forecast of things to come but perhaps, as Steve had first thought, it was an empty pipe-dream; a yearning for a long-lost sense of purpose.
While the Trackers had carved out their subterranean empire, the Plainfolk and the southern Mutes had run free across the overground for close on 1,000 years. They had enjoyed the freedom that the hardier renegades found so seductive – but what had they done with it? Nothing. And yet, and yet…
Despite the fact that the Plainfolk had not managed to build anything to compare with the magnificence of the John Wayne Plaza, owned few material possessions, and were still fighting hand to hand with ‘sharp iron’, they were in tune with the external world and in touch with the primal forces that had led to its creation. They could not write or read, but their eyesight was flawless and their minds were open to visions of other worlds. They made music on primitive wind, string and percussion instruments, and they sang songs which they made up for themselves.
In the Federation, this area of creativity was the exclusive preserve of the First Family – except, of course, for the illegal trade in blackjack. But the Family might even be producing this, controlling the market for its own devious purposes.
In Ne-Issan, they also made music on hand-operated instruments and since electronic communications remained to be discovered, a huge army of scribes penned the data transmitted through the postal system, recorded transactions and chronicled events for posterity. But there was also another class of scribe who freely composed strings of ‘ideograms’ – the name for the incomprehensible signs used by the Iron Masters to make a permanent record of the spoken word – and, apparently, these people did not record data, they invented it, drawing details from life to create imaginary situations in which imaginary people interacted. They were like recorded dreams, and when they were written down they were called ‘poems’ and ‘stories’, and they were given to other people to read.
Steve had seen these various scribes at work, seated in some of the small open-fronted buildings that lined the main streets of the villages and townships he had passed through on his way from Ari-dina to Ari-bana. Other ‘shops’ had housed a staggering variety of traders and craftspeople: candle-makers and lantern-makers, basket and mat weavers, dyers, carpenters, furniture-makers, saddle-makers, wheelwrights, potters, fine metalworkers, blacksmiths, merchants selling cotton cloth and silk brocades and purveyors of sake and all kinds of food. The list was endless.
And he had also glimpsed Iron Masters creating coloured images with brushes on folding screens made of paper and silk, and on wooden panels. The images depicted scenes from the natural world, animals prowling through forest grasses, birds perched in trees, horsemen in pursuit of mountain cats, serene landscapes with waterfalls and views of distant, snow-capped mountains; images filled with life that surpassed anything created by COLUMBUS. And there were others carving strange beasts and squat figures with fierce expressions out of blocks of wood and stone.
Steve could not understand why anyone would choose to produce objects which appeared to serve no useful purpose, but something within him responded to the skill and dedication they brought to their work. The forms they produced were pleasing to the eye, but what impressed him most was the fact that the ruling powers in Ne-Issan allowed their subjects to create words, images and objects and pass them on to others.
In the Federation, such a thing would not be allowed – indeed, it was not possible. Trackers were involved in construction and production processes, but everything was created and designed by the First Family – including life itself.
‘Art’ and ‘literature’ were two more word-concepts that could not be found in the Federation dictionary. The only pictures Trackers had to look at were those that could be accessed through the Public Archive Channel – plus the obligatory wall-mounted holograms of the Founding Father and the current President-General. No one played instruments; the music, produced electronically, came through the loudspeakers. Trackers did not ‘write’, they typed on keyboards. Besides, even if the idea had occurred to them, there was nothing to write on – or with. Paper did not exist. The nearest thing to it was the plasfilm used to produce the maps issued to the commanders of wagon-trains.
Apart from the spoken word, the only method of communication was through the network of video screens controlled by COLUMBUS. The Jeffersons did not produce fiction. They only dealt in facts, and every object created by them and produced under their supervision was designed to perform a specific function.
In the past year, Steve’s overground experiences had caused him to doubt the truthfulness of much of the information fed to ordinary Trackers by the First Family. But he did not question their right to secrecy. The need to conceal information seemed to be an ingrained part of human nature. His personal crusade to discover the truth was not inspired by a desire to blow the lid off for the good of people in general: he just wanted to be one of the select band of people who knew what was really going on.
At least, the darker side of him did. But there was another side of his nature that responded to the overground and filled him with rebellious thoughts. This other Brickman had begun to view the benevolent guiding hand of the First Family as an iron fist clamped around the collective throat of Trackerdom, stifling all independent thoughts and feelings. And it was this half of his psyche that wanted to break their grip, to blow their underground world apart and start all over again from the beginning.
*
Returning to the cabin, Steve folded up the straw mattress and quilt and placed them in a neat pile against the wall. When the other occupants had done the same, four low tables were pulled into the centre of the room, and the cabin staff proceeded to serve breakfast. It was the established custom for the roadrunners to eat all meals wearing only loose cotton vests and their loincloths in order to keep their uniforms as clean as possible. As part of the deal between the innkeeper and the postmaster, the Mute cabin staff held a small stock of uniforms as well as providing a laundry service, so that incoming roadrunners could exchange travel-stained garments for clean ones before setting out again. The one thing the runners did not part with was their gorget, a plaque of copper shaped like a fat banana that hung round their neck on a chain. Stamped into the metal were Iron Master word-signs and numbers. This was their ID card, meal-ticket, and passport to the good life – as good, that is, as a Mute could hope for in Ne-Issan.
The roadrunners sat cross-legged, four to a table; Steve shared the table furthest from the door with a brooding member of the San’Louis – friends of the D’Troit – and another She-Kargo Mute, the first he had come across leaving the trading post. Deer-Hunter, from the clan M’Kewan, had been a roadrunner for the last two of his four years as a journeyman. He told Steve he had three more years on the road before his term came to an end.
‘What happens after that?’ asked Steve.
Deer Hunter frowned. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you?’
‘Nobody told me anything. I just got off the boat.’
Deer-Hunter raised his eyebrows.‘You move fast…’
Steve tried to sound modest. ‘Just lucky, I guess.’
‘Ain’t nothin’ to do with luck,’ grunted the San’Louis. ‘The friggin’ She-Kargo get the biggest share of the best jobs ’cause they got their noses stuck right up the jappo’s ass!’
Steve and Deer-Hunter eyed the Mute but didn’t rise to the bait.
‘You were saying…’
‘You get the chop,’ said Deer-Hunter.
‘You mean you end up back on the chain-gang?’
‘No. You end up dead.’ The prospect did not seem to spoil Deer-Hunter’s appetite.
Steve stared at him. ‘Sweet Sky Mother! Why?’
Deer-Hunter shrugged. ‘Search me. Maybe it’s because they didn’t want too many Plainfolk who know their way around Ne-Issan. A man who keeps his eyes open gets to see a lot of what goes on. These dead-faces are holding down a big piece of turf, but they’re awful thin on the ground.’
‘Even so, they seem to have things well under control. In fact it’s so tight you almost need permission to breathe round here.’
‘True, but if things keep going the way they are, pretty soon there are going to be more of us than there are of them.’
‘interesting thought,’ said Steve. ‘And thanks for putting me straight. If I’d known my neck was on the line I probably wouldn’t have taken the job.’
‘You’d have been crazy not to. It’s the best there is.’
‘Yeah, but… doesn’t it get to you? I mean, knowing you’ve only got three years left?’
Another shrug. ‘Nobody lives for ever.’
‘Mo-Town thirsts, Mo-Town drinks…’
‘Exactly.’ Deer-Hunter scooped the last fingerful of rice out of his bowl and licked the rim. ‘And in case it still hasn’t sunk in, let me spell it out for you, one last time. You don’t have to do anything wrong to get into trouble around here. If one of these dead-faces feels like killing you, he doesn’t need to ask for permission. He’ll just do it. And you look like a prime candidate.’
‘Why?’
‘The eyes.’ Deer-Hunter snapped his fingers at the young iron-foot who had doused Steve in the bathing shed.
The boy hurried over with a bowl of water and held it out obligingly.
‘It’s the way you look at people.’ Deer-Hunter rinsed his hands and mouth, then wiped them dry using the cloth draped over the boy’s forearm. ‘The dead-faces don’t like sassy Mutes.’
‘I know.’ Steve dipped and dried his hands. ‘Several people have already warned me about that.’
The San’Louis Mute, a lumphead called Purple-Rain from the V’Chenzo clan, took his turn with the bowl, then got to his feet. The boy moved on to the next table.
Deer-Hunter weighed up Purple-Rain as the Mute moved away, then turned his attention back to Steve. ‘Maybe you like to live dangerously. If not, do something about it.’
‘I will. Thanks.’ Steve rose from the table and began putting on his uniform – a loose saffron yellow jacket and trousers, and a matching bandanna which, when folded to the required width, was wrapped round the forehead and knotted at the base of the skull.
Deer-Hunter got dressed alongside him. ‘Do the M’Calls have many smoothies like you?’
‘A few.’ Steve tied the black sash round his waist and pulled on his shoes. They had extra-thick rope soles sewn to heavy-grade cotton uppers, and laces that fastened round the ankle.
‘I’m surprised they let someone like you come here. They’d have got a much better deal from the sand-burrowers. If they’d traded you in as a yearling–’
Steve cut him off. ‘The M’Calls don’t do deals with the sand-burrowers.’
‘Maybe it’s time they started. Were you in that battle last year? Against the iron-snake?’
‘Yes.’ Steve picked up the waist-bag containing the precious bundle of pink leaves. ‘How come you know about that?’
Deer-Hunter smiled. ‘Word travels fast. They say the M’Calls had a Storm-Bringer whose magic cut the snake in half. Many sand-burrowers died, but their beast escaped by breathing white fire. It is also said that Mo-Town drank deep that day.’
Steve nodded. ‘We’ll do better next time.’ He left the cabin and headed across to the post-house. He did not want to get into a rerun of the battle between the clan M’Call and wagon-train known as the ‘Lady from Louisiana’ – especially when he had been fighting on the other side.
Within a few minutes, Deer-Hunter and the other roadrunners joined Steve outside the post-house and stood in a respectful line with downcast eyes: displaying what Mr Snow, in his parting lecture, had called ‘a little humility’. As a fellow Mute from the blood-line of the She-Kargo, Deer-Hunter had felt obliged to urge Steve to tone down the challenging and often contemptuous way he looked at people. After three years at the Flight Academy, where student wingmen were constantly urged to think of themselves as the brightest and the best, and where Steve was convinced he had been top of the heap, it was not something that came easily.
