第8节

ield under Wichita, Kansas, that would eventually house a full

division; in Colorado, there was only the way-station at Pueblo manned

by Anderssen's pioneer battalion. The Federation might have laid claim

to the whole of Colorado but, for all practical purposes, Pueblo

situated in the southern quarter of the state marked the frontier; the

northern limit of the Federation's overground fief. Beyond that lay

enemy territory. Mute country or, as they themselves liked to regard

it, the Land of the Plainfolk.

The trouble was, the Mutes didn't recognise frontiers.

For a race that was supposed to be sub-human, they were both cunning

and tenacious. They had this unshakeable idea that the overground

belonged to them.

And so they kept coming back and getting themselves killed. Anderssen

assumed it must be because of the brain-damage that had been passed

down from their ancestors. Too dumb to learn. But not dumb enough,

reflected Anderssen. Their inability to remember was one of a long

list of Mute failings that had been hammered into her since Junior

Leaders school but the bastards still knew their way around. Groups of

lumpheads would infiltrate the so-called 'pacified areas' of the Outer

States and make sneak attacks on overground work-parties, supply trains

and guard posts in the mills and process plants. The network of

way-stations, set up at strategic points was supposed to halt these

incursions.

Over the centuries since the Holocaust, Mutes had shown themselves to

be totally immune to the radiation that blanketed the overground; in

fact, they seemed to thrive on it despite the mounting yearly

body-counts filed by Trail-Blazer expeditions. Mutes lived, on

average, twice as long as Trackers and were said to outnumber them by

over fifty to one. At the last census, in 2985, the Tracker population

was just under 450,000 which meant that, if FINTEL had gotten its facts

right for once, there were over twenty-two million Mutes spread over

the landscape!

Privately, Anderssen found it hard to believe. She was not insensible

to certain attractive aspects of the overground but, in general, it was

a vast, forbidding place. She had been out there, many times over a

period of years, and had never seen more than five or six hundred Mutes

at one time. Someone on her staff had found a good name for it. The

Big Open. The place was empty! That had been, and still was, her

overriding impression. A silent land, where danger lurked, ready to

trap the unwary; a sleeping land, waiting patiently over the centuries

for the return of its rightful owners. If there were twenty-two

million Mutes out there you wouldn't be able to walk ten yards without

tripping over one of them.

Anderssen's doubt was not shared by Grand Central.

Faced with such alarming estimates of the size of the opposition, it

was not surprising that the top priority task of the Federation's

overground forces was to bring the total Mute population under control

by continuing the programme of pacification that had been launched soon

after the Break-Out in 2465. Pioneers from way-stations like Pueblo

and Trail-Blazers from the roving wagon-trains - like the one Brickman

had served on - played their' part by conducting what, in Grand

Centralese, were called 'fire-sweeps'; scorched-earth operations in

which every possible resource that might provide Mutes With food and

shelter was methodically destroyed and every animal within range of the

patrol's guns was killed.

Mutes, themselves, were at the top of the target list.

Whenever the tactical conditions permitted, the young males and females

were rounded up to replenish the labour force in the overground

work-camps; the rest, the old and the very young, were liquidated.

It was a grisly, messy business in which Anderssen herself had

participated while working her way up through the ranks. But it had to

be done. Everyone knew that. That was what they had been raised to

do. In the Federation you obeyed orders. You didn't ask why.

Anderssen was a typical product of the Federation. She was a good

soldier; a tough commander. But sometimes she asked herself questions