第57节

Cadillac shook his head. 'Not necessarily. Now that you have both

bitten the arrow it means that he can challenge you in single

combat."

'He could not do that before,' explained Mr Snow. 'In his eyes, you

had no standing. But now you are a warrior..." He spread his palms.

'Terrific,' said Steve. 'What are the chances of him pulling permanent

guard duty at your furthest lookout point?"

'Slim,' replied Mr Snow.

'But - can't you tell him to lay off?" said Steve anxiously.

'I thought you ran things round here."

'Ahh, Rolling-Stone is the chief clan elder. There are certain areas

where the clan seeks my advice but..." Mr Snow shrugged.

'So what do I do now?" asked Steve.

The old wordsmith savoured his reply. 'Well... you can -either start

practising your knife-work - or start praying to Talisman. Preferably

both." He uncrossed his legs, patted Steve on the shoulder and got

up.

'I'll see if I can get you a blade,' said Cadillac. 'Meanwhile it

might be better to stay indoors." He followed Mr Snow OUt.

'Make it a long one,' Steve shouted, as they went through the door

curtain. 'Or give me my rifle back - if you've still got it." Some

chance. Still, it was worth a try. Steve cursed inwardly. What a

situation. After all he'd been through. All that mumbo jumbo - only

to learn that the biggest ape on the campus was out there waiting for a

pretext to jump on his bones. Christopher Columbus!

When they were safely out of sight of the hut, Cadillac and Mr Snow

slapped hands, pushed each other and fell about laughing until tears of

joy and pain ran down their wounded, swollen jaws.

'Did you see his face? I' choked Mr Snow. He collapsed in a new

burst of laughter, clutching his cheeks. 'Oh, dear, this is doing me

no good at all!" 'Do you think we ought to tell Motor-Head to lay

off?"

'No leave it. Let Talisman look after his own. Oh, dear...

our Mr Brickman takes things so seriously. And he's so blind! Do you

think they're all like that?" Mr Snow wiped the tears from his eyes

with the back of his hand. 'Yes... I'm going to be really sorry to

lose him."

FIFTEEN

With the aid of a daily application of Mr Snow's antiseptic red leaf

mash, the wounds in Steve's face healed rapidly, leaving pale,

cross-shaped scars. In the days that followed the 'ceremony, Steve

found that many of the M'Calls who had cold-shouldered him had adopted

a more relaxed attitude. From being a despised, disarmed intruder he

became an object of good-natured curiosity and for the first time began

to attract a small crowd of followers who, when challenged, revealed

with an engaging shyness that they wanted to ask him questions. Not

that, as it turned out, they were particularly interested in the

answers, for they would soon be forgotten. They just wanted to hear

him speak.

Along with this newly-acquired social acceptability, Steve was accorded

the additional privilege of an invitation to Mr Snow's hut where, in

the company of Cadillac, he was introduced to rainbow grass. Because

Buck McDonnell ran what was called a 'tight train', the whispers about

its availability and covert use by some trail-hands had not reached

Steve's ears while aboard The Lady.

Steve accepted the proffered pipe and sniffed it cautiously before

taking an experimental puff. Despite the use of grass by Trackers on

overground expeditions, smoking was not a permitted social activity

within the Federation; indeed, to most people, the idea would have

seemed absurd. Since cigarettes did not exist, the need for them

simply did not arise.

The first intake of smoke made Steve cough and retch.

The second, taken down into the lungs, nearly choked him but induced an

agreeable lightheadedness; the third turned his ears into wings. The

fourth prompted Mr Snow to take the pipe away from him.

'Hey, hey, hey, slow down. What are you trying to do start a fire?"

Steve giggled lopsidedly. 'Sorry."

'So you should be,' said Mr Snow severely. 'You and that other

sonofabitch burned a good two acres of this stuff.

We're all still very sore about that."

Having a hole punched through his face produced another, less

desirable, side-effect. Night-Fever, one of the dozen or so female

Mutes who took it in turn to bring Steve his food, began to favour him

with hot-eyed glances. She had woven his broken pieces of arrow into a

necklace made of thin plaited strips of buffalo hide and, after

presenting it to him, had taken