第69节

Clearwater closed her eyes and appeared to compose herself. Cadillac

surveyed the ground nearby and picked up a rock about the size of a

basketball. The sinews in his neck and chest drew taut under its

weight. 'Ready?"

Clearwater nodded, her eyes still closed.

Steve suddenly became aware that the crowd around Blue-Bird had fallen

silent and had turned to watch what was happening. Cadillac tensed his

arm and stomach muscles and, with a visible effort, heaved the rock

into the air above their heads. As it went up, Clearwater's eyes

snapped wide open and her right arm shot out, the first two fingers

aimed at the rock. From her throat, came a strange ululating cry that

curdled Steve's blood. To his amazement, the rock did not fall. It

hung there for a moment then shot upwards into the sky as Clearwater

raised her arm higher.

When it was some two hundred feet above them, the wavering, unearthly

sound coming from Clearwater's throat stopped abruptly. The rock

hovered, held in place by her pointing forefinger. As Steve and the

others below watched raptly, Clearwater drew a circle in the air above

her head.

The rock began to move slowly round in a wide circle - as if it was on

the end of an invisible length of string. Clearwater dropped her arm

and turned with Cadillac to face Steve.

Once again, incredibly, the rock didn't fall. Steve watched

open-mouthed as it continued to circle around in the air behind them.

'Now make it fall,' said Cadillac quietly.

Clearwater made a fist with her right hand and brought it down sharply

on the open palm of her left. The rock plummeted out of the sky and

smashed to pieces on the rocky slope below the bluff.

'Heyy-YAAHH!!" roared the watching M'Calls. 'Heyyyahh I Heyy-yahh I

Heyy-yahh I' 'Now do you understand why the Federation can never

conquer us?" asked Cadillac.

Steve looked at Clearwater, then at Cadillac, and back again, his mouth

opening and closing soundlessly.

Clearwater gazed at Steve with a hint of sadness. 'He sees but he does

not believe."

Cadillac nodded. 'His mind is still chained by the darkness below. He

cannot understand because what he has seen does not follow the rules of

his world." He smiled. 'It does not compute."

Steve eyed them silently then sat down on a nearby rock.

Cadillac gripped his shoulder sympathetically then walked away with

Clearwater towards the settlement escorted by their clan brothers and

sisters. They began to chant a Plainfolk melody using a style of

singing known as mouth music, full of complex counter-harmonies in

which the voices were the instruments. There were no proper words but

Steve knew as he sat there alone with the abandoned Blue-Bird, that it

was a song of triumph.

SEVENTEEN

Clearwater's unnerving mastery over the rock - the second manifestation

of Mute magic that Steve had witnessed blew away the last vestiges of

disbelief, leaving him totally mystified and more than a little

shaken.

Anxious to know more, but not wanting to play into the hands of the

wordsmiths by appearing overawed, Steve pushed the incident to the back

of his mind and proceeded to give Cadillac his first flying lesson.

'Barely a week later, he found himself watching the young wordsmith

handle the glider with all the ease and confidence of a wingman

graduating after three years at the Flight Academy. Steve should have

been pleased but he was not disposed to kid himself. He knew that, as

an instructor, he wasn't a patch on Carrol, yet Cadillac had acquired

his flying skill with chilling speed. It was uncanny. But then, no

more uncanny than the power that Clearwater had revealed.

Steve began to understand why Jodi Kazan had been so evasive on the

subject of Mute magic. Somewhere along the trail during the ten years

she had been flying the overground she must have stumbled across the

truth as he had just done.

And if she knew, then so did Grand Central - even though, officially,

it had been decreed that Mute magic did not exist.

Had he, by pure chance, uncovered another corner of a widespread

conspiracy? The big brother of the plot that had prevented him from

winning the top honours at the Academy?