Their acceptance of the bonds bothered him almost as much as their refusal to go. Is this what we have come to? he asked himself, knowing he was no professional at this and worrying that the bonds were too tight-or not tight enough to hold. Or is this what we have always been? It disappointed him. He could not imagine slaves, freed of their chains and told that there was a slim but real chance of freedom if they ran, who would run and put the chains back on. No wonder the lords of the dark had come to the top!

Roaring Bull was still sleepy, but he was alert enough. "Will you allow me at least to put my pants on?" he asked almost genially.

"I would give you what you gave us if I had it available. Wait." He still had a length of rope left. "Here. Tie this around your fat belly and fasten these blankets to it. It's the least I can do for modesty's sake."

The chief refused. "Hardly matters, considering what it sounds like outside and the fact that you two look like you have been rolling in fresh horse dung. May I ask what you intend to do now?"

"We go to the south landing, and all of us get into a canoe or some other floating thing we can use."

"You're going on the river, in the dark, in fog and rain? It's treacherous not far south of here. The Ohio and Mississippi flow side by side for a while, but finally they merge, and when they do, it is messy."

"Then we will survive, or drown and die. You left us no choice, and no promise of yours now could be believed." He switched to his native tongue. "Cloud Dancer, see that all is clear out there, and then we will move."

He held the spear at the ready as she went to look. Roaring Bull sighed and moved a bit closer to the nearest table. Suddenly the old man made a move for something suspended under the table. Hawks reacted instinctively, not spearing but whacking the old man hard with the stick. The chief gave a little cry as an object dropped to the floor, then dived for it, but now the spear came down on the old man's right hand. He gave a sharp cry, but Hawks had already pulled the knife, and the old boy saw it and gritted his teeth.

Hawks kicked the object away, pulled out the spear, then leaned down and picked up the thing without ever taking his eyes off Roaring Bull, who now sat nursing a bloody hand.

The thing was a pistol. One-shot, ball type, very basic, of either Caje or Caribe origin. The damned thing was too inaccurate a weapon to have been a threat to his person, but it would have raised a tremendous noise.

"You've mangled my hand!" Roaring Bull said in wonder. The pain and injury seemed to affect him less than the fact that someone had actually harmed him.

"Yes. Too bad. Now you cannot paddle. Now, get up and move in front of me or you will find this knife mangling the only thing about you your pet women in there really care about. Move!"

Roaring Bull moved, nursing his hand. He seemed utterly unable to comprehend the fact that someone had actually speared him. "But it's bleeding! It must be bandaged and tied off!"

"I care as much about that as I care whether or not I kill you, which is not much. You will move ahead of me and do just what I say. If you try anything else, you will not see me die."

Much of the confidence seemed to have drained out of the old chief. "But I will not be able to swim when you are swamped!" he objected.

"Then you had better give us expert advice on how to avoid that, hadn't you?"

They went out into the cold and wet to join Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman.

Roaring Bull, upon seeing the mute woman, gave her a withering glance. She spit at him.

The south landing was on the Ohio and down a bit from the junction of the two rivers. Cloud Dancer went on ahead to scout the landing, then returned. "Two men with spears, bows, and probably knives," she told him, gesturing as she spoke.

Silent Woman nodded and seemed to understand.

"We must get both at once," he told her. "Or the survivor will raise the alarm.

Give me the bow and arrows. I am a pretty fair shot with them."

"It can't be done," Roaring Bull offered. "Those are among my best. See that they guard even in this weather. Forget this. We can make a deal."

Silent Woman pulled out the throwing knife, then pointed to her skin case of supplies. Hawks wondered if he had the idea and tried to make sure with gestures. "You-Go-Down-There. Kill-one-with knife?"

She nodded. It might work, he decided, if he was ready and accurate when she made her move. She was, after all, a slave, a familiar figure, and one thought dim-witted, and she might be up at this hour. It wasn't a regular thing, but it might make sense to the guards to see a familiar figure currying favor by bringing down something to eat and perhaps drink. It was still well before dawn, but he could see the guards in the half-light perhaps five meters from a thick line of bushes, and he could see some of the boats pulled up on the shore, but the river itself was a mass of gray merging into the sky.

Cloud Dancer had the spear aimed at Roaring Bull, although he didn't seem to be much of a threat right now. His hand, though a bit better, was still bleeding and obviously useless.

When Hawks nodded, Silent Woman stepped out and walked down the path toward the guards.

The nearer of the two shouted something, then spoke in a lighter tone to the other, who chuckled. Clearly she was going to be allowed to get close, having been recognized and determined to be no threat.

The larger of the two, nearer the boats, started walking slowly toward her as the other one just watched. Hawks remained totally still, knowing that he had to act when she did, yet not quite able to keep both her and his target in view at the same time. He knew, too, that this was no deer. He had never killed a man before.

Silent Woman was no more than three meters from the man when she suddenly drew and threw the knife. The missile struck the man in the chest, and he made a loud exclamation as he fell backward in surprise. At the cry, the other man turned and hefted his spear with one motion.

Hawks's arrow went straight through the man's neck. He dropped the spear, and two hands went to his throat, and he tottered for just a moment, then fell over into the water with a splash.

They all moved quickly. Silent Woman's target had not been killed by her knife throw, and she had been upon him in an instant. By the time they reached her, she was covered in blood. She had cut his throat.

Cloud Dancer pointed to a canoe. "That one." It would hold the four of them, but it wasn't exactly roomy. There were other, larger canoes there, with wooden oars attached with ropes to their sides.

"Not one of those?" he asked her.

"No. It would take all of us to launch it, and it would stand out on the river."

She was right, as usual. He pushed the canoe halfway into the water, then the chief, Silent Woman, and Cloud Dancer got in. Somehow he managed to push it out, run into the water, and get aboard without overturning it.

They drifted out into the river, and he suddenly looked around. "Anybody check to see that we had paddles this time?"

Cloud Dancer laughed. "Here. Let us see if the two of us can get us out into midstream with this ancient lump of buffalo fat aboard."

They managed to get well away from shore and then let the current take them down. It occurred to Hawks that they would be passing below the bluff atop which the village sat, but he wasn't worried. If they could keep afloat and away from nasty water, he was pretty certain they would survive until the next threat.

"I don't know why you bothered to bring me," Roaring Bull commented. "You could have gotten this far without me."

"It isn't this far I was worried about," Hawks responded. "I know you have people and possibly whole tribes obligated to you down here. I want clear of that. You'll be my insurance and my translator as well if any show themselves."

The chief denied this for a long time but finally more or less admitted it. "But what if you are found by one of them? How will you know what I speak is true and not some plan for rescue?" he asked, knowing that his best chance was to sow doubt and plant a little fear and knowing, too, that they needed him too much to kill him if they could avoid it.

"Simple," Hawks replied. "You and I both know how tenuous this whole thing is.

One major slip and we are done. We accept that. The only thing I can absolutely ensure is that if we die, you will die as well."

The chief shrugged. "What does it matter? If you get well away of my arms, you will kill me anyway."

"Unlike you, I am a man of honor," Hawks told him. "You must believe that, and I think you do. Just as surely as I say that you will pay for any treachery with your life or with something that will make you wish you were dead, so I also say that you will be freed and not further harmed the moment we can safely land after passing the Missouri."

Roaring Bull looked at his hand, which had finally stopped bleeding but was a painful mess. He knew he would never be able to use it much again, and he hated Hawks for that. He also knew, though, that he was old and slow and out of condition, no match for at least two of these three, and the action of the mute woman had scared him. It was every master's nightmare that his slaves would turn on him, and now he was sure of the loyalty of only two.

Still, his pride, his ego, and his security had been wounded as much as or more than his hand. He had ordered many killed or tortured or mutilated, but he had not suffered a personal injury at the hands of another in more than twenty years. If it had been he versus Hawks, he would have taken the chance and had at the man, no matter what the odds or outcome. He was not a coward, but he was also not a fool. He could have broken Cloud Dancer, that he knew-there was no one alive who could not be broken-but as she was, she was as deadly as Hawks and not encumbered with his civilized background and scruples. Most threatening of all was Silent Woman; she had the least to lose and the most reason for hurting him horribly. She would never kill him if she could avoid it, but she would-amputate things. The odds were too great. A trio like this was doomed anyway, somewhere down the line. He had reason to return to his village. There were at least two warriors he would like to attend to-personally-and perhaps four.

They had not liked the rain, and that was why he was here. Perhaps he would give them a choice when he was through playing games with them. They could be drowned in the water they didn't like, or if they were so delicate, perhaps they might prefer being burned alive.

So he would bide his time and be good and even try to help these people survive the dangers of this stretch of river. He might put a price on Hawks's head, but he wanted to get back to his people before one of his scheming relatives usurped his position.

They paddled down the river with no more than the usual navigational problems.

"Tell me about the mute woman," Hawks said to Roaring Bull. "Where is she from and why has she no tongue?"

"I don't know where she's from," the chief responded. "Somewhere in the south and east, from the high mountain area. She was-trade goods. Years ago. Trader came north with a bunch of girls, all foreign, none speaking any recognized tongue. Most were real young-fourteen, fifteen-but they had already been through the mill lots of times. She was real young but a pro all the way. Never did speak much. Stuttered real bad. I don't know what she'd been through before me, but wait until you see her tattoos."

"Tattoos?"

"Got 'em from the neck to the crotch, front and back, except her arms and legs.

Looks like a ceremonial blanket. You'll see 'em."

"How did she lose her tongue if she stuttered so?"

"She got pregnant. They do, you know. Had a kid. Ugly, deformed thing. The medicine men came and declared it a demon child. Drove her crazy."

A demon child. The term for babies born with severe birth defects. There was usually only one thing they did when such a child was born. They killed it ritually and burned its body in ceremonial fires.

"Wouldn't do anything but wail and scream," the chief continued. "No stutter, just screaming blasphemies in too many tongues to count, including one or two I could make out. She had to be locked away for weeks, but she never stopped except from exhaustion. The medicine men said the stutter was the mark of a witch who would bear a demon child and that she'd bring down curses if she wasn't stopped from doing it. I figured she'd just get over it, but it kept going, and a bunch of things went wrong all at once in the village. Accidents killed two healthy men, one lodge burned down, that kind of thing. A mob finally got together, and I had to think fast to keep them from killing her, so they settled for cutting out her tongue and burning it. That stopped her, and finally she just snapped. She could do little things like start up the morning kitchen or clean up, but nothing else. The rest of the time she just sat in a corner, staring into space."

"I see," Hawks responded. "Well, something snapped her out of it now."

"Snapped is right. You don't trust her too far while I'm along, Hawks. She might just decide to butcher all of us."

7. CHEMISTRY LESSON.

THE PROCESS OF CHANGING THE PRETTY AND BRILLIANT Song Ching into the rougher and masculine Chu Li, while unlikely to succeed, was nonetheless solidly based on predictable principles. One was that authoritarian societies, particularly those which received their orders from machines, ran on orders and tended to carry out those orders to the letter and without question, even at the cost of common sense. The other was that most people would believe that it took someone with the artistry, skills, and experience of an expert like Doctor Wang to accomplish such a transformation at all, when in a computer age all it took was someone who could talk to a computer and order it to do the work.

Chu Li was barely fifteen; his youth made the illusion easier to pull off, and some rather basic changes helped it along. Song Ching's hair was cut extremely short, almost but not quite gone along the sides and short with a straight-back clipper cut on top, while the nails had been closely trimmed to the fingers.

-The heavy cotton prisoner tunic and baggy trousers made any wearer shapeless.

Song Ching's middle soprano had been lowered in pitch one half octave; any more would have been inconsistent with a boy of fifteen. Chu Li's dialect was Mandarin, not Song Ching's native dialect but the one used at Center and therefore no problem.

The boys had been back in the cell, sedated, barely twenty minutes when the guards came for them. Their sleeves were rolled up, and each was given a shot that counteracted any sedative drugs still in their bodies. Both sat up, groaning and holding their heads.

"Get yourselves in order!" a guard barked to them. "In five minutes each of you will be fed. I strongly recommend you eat everything; it may be a long time before you get another decent meal, if ever." That was said with something of a smirk. "You will be permitted ten minutes for this and another five to use the toilet. Then you will be prepared to leave." With that, the guard turned and stalked out. The cell door closed behind him.

"Oooh! My head is only now trying to make peace with me," Deng Ho moaned.

"It is the same with me," Chu Li responded. In Han and many other Oriental cultures, cousins of the same generation regarded one another as brothers and sisters and acted accordingly. The two boys were close. "My head is crowded and confused, almost as if..."

"As if what?"

As if there is another also inside my head, he thought, but he couldn't say that. "I just wonder if they messed with our minds, and if they did, would we know?"

"How's your-thing?"

Memories of brutish guards beating and torturing for the slightest infractions.

Memories of one of them.

"There is no pain," Chu Li told his cousin. "It is not right, though. I shall have to pee sitting down for a while, I think. I do not know what awaits us, but it cannot be any worse than here. Even death is better than here."

Chu Li tried to clear his mind. So long as he concentrated on the here and now, it was fine, but when he let himself relax, his thoughts became somewhat crowded and confused. The guards who had beaten him had threatened "to make a girl of him," but even that would not have given him memories and information that seemed to belong to a girl, one from a far different background and one he had never known. Some of those memories and impressions were far sharper than those from his own life-but there was a difference. He could remember that other life, but he could not place himself in the position of that girl. He felt as if he were looking at things from the viewpoint of an outside observer.

He had little time to dwell on this right away, for the guards were sticking solidly to their schedule. Chu Li and Deng Ho were placed in handcuffs and short leg irons and marched rudely through corridors, checkpoints, and safeguards to the main entrance, where a squad of black-clad regular security police awaited them.

"They're all yours, Lieutenant," the chief guard said, sounding not the least bit sorry. "We've put them through the mill and taught them some manners.

Good riddance."

The lieutenant just nodded, and both men pressed their thumbs on the receiving board to signify the transfer.

"All right, you two," the new captor said to the boys. "No trouble, now. I don't know what they did to you in there, and I don't care. Legally, you are no longer citizens of the Community or even human beings. You are cattle, the property of the System Administrative Council, and they can and will do with you as they wish, as can I as their deputy. Not a word out of you, now; follow me."

They were led out to a landing bay where a skimmer awaited them. They got in and were surprised to find two girls already seated there, both in the same prison garb they themselves wore. Neither girl turned to look at them but just sat quiet and sullen. Chu Li thought he saw some sort of scar or welt on the face of the one closest to him, but then he was chained in his seat and could look only forward.

The large passenger skimmer lifted quickly into the air, took its assigned exit trajectory, and smoothly cleared the dome, then rose to cruising altitude. As the skimmer gained speed, the boys were pushed back into their seats.

They wanted to talk to the girls, who were seated in front of them, but a few nasty whacks from a guard's leather stick produced silence. Chu Li had nothing to do but settle back and think.

Why did he have this strange girl's memories? What had they done to him in there and why? He tried to relax and sort out what he could of this alien information.

The Lord Buddha protect him! She'd been the daughter of the chief administrator!

The very bastard who had ordered the massacre of his people! And she had been there!

He compared his own memories to hers. Darkness, sudden cold, people screaming and running, shots all over, illuminating the dark. One shot catches his sister and burns her upper half to melted goo. All the time she had been up there, in the officer's skimmer, enjoying every moment and wanting to get down and get into the battle herself, to shoot some of his people. It had been nothing but a game to her, an amusing entertainment.

The more he examined her memories and attitudes, the more he hated her.

People were mere objects to her, toys for her amusement or fools to play off each other for her gain. Rich, pampered, spoiled, and arrogant, she was a. most unpleasant person, the very kind he had always been taught ruled the world. Such beauty and such genius. Such evil.

How he would like to get hold of her, rip off her fine clothes, dress her in rags, exchange her jasmine perfume for sweat and dung, make her the lowest peasant slave, show her what it felt like to be brutalized. She and her whole cursed family. It was they who should have been on this ship going to some deep hell, not the ones who were here.

But what were her memories doing in his mind? Some kind of mistake? She had been at Center herself, it seemed, and not as a visitor or voyeur but to be remade into a good noble's wife and breeder. It was too kind a fate for her, but it was at least a step toward justice. She had been an expert at computers; she had examined his people's discoveries. Had her old memories and knowledge gotten mixed in with his in that computer by some mistake? It was possible. It was also possible that she had managed this herself, to save her knowledge even as they were stripping clean her soul. If so, it was justice that the daughter of his people's murderer should inadvertently pass on that knowledge to one of her victims.

He now had that knowledge, including the actual way to steal a spaceship, and he hoped he could use it. It would be the ultimate revenge on her if she was mentally . made over into a prim little wife while he, whose people had made these discoveries and had been destroyed while she watched and thrilled at the spectacle, was somehow able to use that to escape.

It was all too evil to him and too disturbing. His grandfather long ago had taught him an ancient mental discipline, one which gave control of thoughts and memories and could even fool the big computers for periods of time. His people had survived with it and escaped detection for a generation, and he now applied it to another aim. It was a form of self-hypnosis, but it was more than that; it was a mystical thing that worked by will and concentration and the Ten Exercises. He wanted her out. He wanted all traces of her banished from his conscious mind, save only the computer knowledge and skill and the secrets she knew. She would give up her knowledge, skills, and discoveries, but then he would have the pleasure at least of killing her in his mind.

But for the first time in his memory, the mental discipline did not really work.