第22节

lower profile. Dammit! Never mind - too late to backtrack now . .

'Ohhokaay,' she sang as she consulted the angled screen set into the

table in front of her. 'You and Gus White took off on June 12th to

fire-bomb a Mute cropfield north-east of Cheyenne. Wingmen Fazetti and

Naylor were to make a similar attack on a nearby forest believed to be

the location of a Plainfolk settlement.

Why don't you take it from there?"

Steve had had a long time to prepare for this moment.

He took a deep breath and began his carefully edited version of what

had happened to him after he'd been knocked out of the sky by a Mute

crossbow bolt. The daily sessions were divided into four

two-and-a-half hour periods with a thirty-minute break in the morning

and afternoon and an hour for lunch. After just two periods during

which he did most of the talking, Steve's jaw ached intolerably and his

tongue fel't stiff and swollen.

The prospect of another forty-five hours under the same pressure left

him distinctly uneasy. It was not just physical stamina he needed, the

mental effort required was considerable too. Apart from the highly

sensitive information he wished and, indeed, had sworn to conceal,

Steve knew that, in his own interests, he had to avoid making any value

judgements. In this kind of examination, the choice of words and

phrases was crucial; a careless remark, or an ill-thought out reply

could suddenly lead to an explosive confrontation. And so he

concentrated on the facts, expressing neither approval or disapproval

of the Mute way of life, and their strange beliefs about the world.

On the first day, after describing how he had been dragged from the

tangled wreckage of his Skyhawk, Steve related how Mr Snow had used

plant leaves to dress his wounds, and had forced him to eat dried

shreds of Dream-Cap, a pain-killing mushroom, when setting the bones in

his broken leg and how, with a self-imposed programme of exercises, he

had brought himself back 'to peak combat-fitness in preparation for his

eventual escape.

Asked about the wounds in his cheek, Steve described how, to avoid

being killed by a hostile faction of the M'Call clan, he had been

forced to take part in a Mute test of warriorhood known as Biting the

Arrow in which - under the threat of instant execution - he had to

ubmit to having an arrow driven through his face without flinching

before breaking it between his teeth. A memorable moment - not for the

pain - but because that was the night he had caught his first glimpse

of Clearwater.

He went on to describe the organisation of the clan M'Call; the way

their settlement was set up, and the ease with which the huts and their

contents could be packed up and carried over long distances; the clan's

daily round of activity, the food-gathering and distribution process,

the patrolling by posses of Bears and She-Wolves, and the aggressive

defence of their 'home turf.

On the second day, when the questioning turned to Mute tactics and

weaponry, Steve scored a hit with the Board when he revealed the

existence of the Iron Masters, the mystery men from the Fire-Pits of

Beth-Lem who furnished the Plainfolk with their powerful crossbows and

other edged weapons - what the Mutes called 'sharp iron'. Pressed for

more details he could only repeat the few scraps of information he had

been able to glean: the Iron Masters' trading expeditions were made

aboard 'wheel-boats' that came up the great rivers called the

'Miz-Hurry' and the 'Miz-Hippy'. Steve was unable to tell the

Assessors where Beth-Lem was located. When asked the same question

Cadillac had been noticeably evasive saying only that 'it lay in the

lands beyond the eastern door'.

On the third day, the main subject was wordsmiths.

The Assessors were particularly interested in Steve's account of his

relationship with Mr Snow and Cadillac and, in particular, his

explanation of the old Mute's key role as the clan's historian and

walking encyclopedia and his position as chief tactician and adviser to

the governing clan elders, and how Cadillac was being trained as his

replacement.

'Are you telling us these wordsmiths are educators tha