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ter several punishing miles which found the animals

in better shape than their masters, it became clear to Jodi - to whom

all this was a new experience - that the oxen had already made a major

concession in allowing themselves to be put into harness and were

temperamentally opposed to being run off their feet. The convoy-master

evidently reached the same conclusion and, after a brief confab with

the despairing drivers, they permitted the yoked pairs to proceed at

their own measured pace without further molestation.

Looking back towards the town and the land beyond it that stretched

away westwards to the horizon, and to an infinity of horizons beyond

that, Jodi wondered what fate had befallen the other captured renegades

from Malone's group. In particular, she wondered about Medicine-Hat,

who had nursed her broken body back to health after three breakers from

Malone's group had found her half buried in mud deposited by the

flash-flood in the Now and Then River.

Kelso had been one of the guys who had helped to dig her out. A lot

had happened since then. She had become a renegade through

circumstance, not choice, but her experience of overground life had

awakened new feelings which had left her troubled and confused.

Meeting up with Steve Brickman again hadn't helped.

She had done everything she could to save her former crew-mate's life

and then - jack me - he had painted his body, plaited his hair and

decked himself out in a Mute pebble-suit! The argument they'd had over

that, and over some of the things she had learned about how the First

Family kept control over the Amtrak Federation, still bothered her.

Jodi had heard a lot that seemed to make sense - but how much of it was

true? Brickman had dismissed her accusations and had pleaded with her

to trust him. But how could you trust a Tracker who chose to bed down

with the enemy rather than stick with his own kind?

But then - who could you trust?

According to the First Family, it was the Mutes who were poisoning the

air with their presence. That was why they all had to be killed - to

make the air safe to breathe again. But what about the Iron Masters?

Theirs might not be a hi-tech world, but they were a highly organised,

industrious and inventive bunch and quite clearly in a different league

from the Mutes. And a lot more dangerous. Where had they come from?

Did the fact that they were surface-dwellers mean they were poisoning

the atmosphere with their presence too? If they were, it meant they

were next in line for extermination in the battle for the Blue-Sky

World. So how come there was no mention of them in the public

archives? The First Family must know about them. The Family knew all

there was to know about everything.

Before being swept overboard from the Lady in a ball of flame and then

half drowned in the flash-flood, everything had been so simple. The

world had been neatly divided into us and them; Tracker and Mute. A

guy knew who the enemy was, and why he had to do what the Family asked

of him. But the presence of the Iron Masters confused the issue;

spoiled the brutal symmetry. Okay, they might be flat-faced,

squatty-assed runts but they could hardly be categorised as subhuman.

They were kind of halfway-in-between. And that made it a whole new

ball game. Because if there was a third race, then there could be a

fourth and a fifth out there somewhere who had staked a claim to a

piece of the overground.

How would the Federation react if some of these other human-type beings

turned out to be even further up the evolutionary and technological

tree than the Iron Masters?

The Mutes were easy to classify - they were made-to-measure

fall-guysbut what did the word 'subhuman' really mean? Who laid down

the criteria - and how did they know where to draw the line?

Once you began picking away at it, the whole concept started to look

distinctly flaky. And that was dangerous, because it called into