The Iron Breed (11 page)

Then, as if struck dumb in an instant, paralyzed by a stroke out of nowhere, the clansmen were quiet. There was no more thumping, no cries. Jony's hands went to his ears. He could still hear—something, a pulsing like the beat of a giant staff unable to rest. Now he swayed, his body seeming to bend in time to that beat, and he heard a mighty cry out of Voak's thick throat. The sound scaled up and up, until Jony's ears could no longer distinguish it, only he could still feel the vibration of that ululation through him.

What happened was as startling as the moving wall in the city. Dark and shadows split apart. Light shone from beyond: a ruddy light, not gray like that which Jony had faced in the storage places. This radiance pulsed also, as if it were a part of the power which now enveloped him, made his flesh tingle, his mind spin.

Their way being open, Voak continued, still silent. In the red glow of the light the clansmen's fur took on odd new tints. An aura surrounded them, made up of many colors which spun, faded, mingled in a glow until one could not be clearly defined from another, while the tingling of Jony's exposed skin neared real pain.

They had entered a place not unlike those underground ways which he had followed with the twins. But this was not so large. And in the center was—

Jony shrank back. He could not help that momentary reaction. All he had escaped when he and Rutee won free of the ship came flaring back into his mind. For the center of the rounded inner space or cave in which they stood was occupied by a cage!

They were not going to shut him up! Jony's second reaction was as quick and even more fierce than the first. Never would he be in a cage again! The clan could kill him first!

“No!” he shouted his protest, not caring if the People understood or not. But Otik's and Kapoor's combined strength were greater than his. They held him by the arms again, forced him forward, though Jony fought frenziedly for his freedom. He could see no sign of any open door in that barred enclosure ahead. Voak did no more than move a little to one side, watching the boy's ineffectual struggles.

The clanchief dropped his staff to the floor, his hands engaged in an imperative talk sign.

“Look!”

Jony followed the pointing of that dark hand-paw. Now that he was closer he could see that the cage was already occupied—by bones! And below those empty-eyed skulls rested wide collars.

Only the skulls—the bodies—they were not of the People. They were too slender, too small. Who had been imprisoned to their deaths in this place where the dancing light carried the tinge of blood? Also, that light itself—what was it, flashing from a hole in the floor beyond the cage?

Voak squatted heavily and worked one thick arm between the bars of the sealed cage. His fingers closed on the nearest of the wide collars. Bones tumbled as he drew it toward him. He rose, the collar looped over his arm like a massive, ill-fitting bracelet.

The clanchief began to sign slowly, with exaggerated movements of his hands. As if what he must communicate was of the utmost importance and he wished Jony to clearly understand what he would say.

“People,” his thumb indicated his own barrel body, “this—” He twirled the collar around, his gesture one of loathing and hatred as he raised it to his neck as if about to fit the band around his own throat. “We do—collar—says—or die. They—” now his pointing was to the bones within the cage, “make collars, use People. They—” he hesitated as if at a loss, feeling the need to improvise for Jony's better understanding, “find bad things—bad for them. They die fast—only few left. People not die, People break out. Put collars on those, then
they
do what People say. But they already bad sick—die. People no wear collars again—never!” His final gesture of negation resembled a forceful threat.

“Look!” Now Voak held the collar only inches away from Jony's face, as if to make very sure the boy would understand perfectly. With the band so gripped between the clansman's fingers, there sprang out of its edge a row of stiff points. Eyeing those Jony believed they were set so that, once about a throat, those points would cut into the flesh were the head moved out of a single, stiffly upright position.

Voak flipped the end of a finger against the nearest point. “Fang—” he signed. “Hurt from collar—hurt People if
they
wanted . . . Bad. You—” Now he gave Jony an intent, searching stare which traveled from the other's head to his feet and back again. “You cub—People take, help—give food—give nest. But you are like
them
. . . you go to find collar—make People do what you say . . .”

“No!” Jony protested aloud, trying to move his hands in the strongest of the negative signals, but the two who held him did not release him enough for him to complete that denial.

Voak did not seem to hear him. Instead the clansman turned the collar around in his fingers, examining it carefully. Now he pressed again and the band opened. While Otik and Kapoor held Jony immobile, Voak stepped forward and fitted the collar about the boy's throat, snapped the band shut. The circlet was loose, lying down on his shoulders as Jony bent his head to stare at it in horror.

“You wear—you remember,” Voak signed. “You go to
them
again—you shall feel fangs also. The People do not forget. You shall not forget!”

The others had loosed him. Jony reached up to jerk the band around his neck. Loose as it was, its very weight made him sick and somehow ashamed. Voak, the others, turned away as if Jony was no longer any concern of theirs. He followed them, suddenly struck by a second and worse fear: that he would be left here forever in a place where that cage of bones stood as a dire warning against enslavement of the People.

He ran his fingertips around and around that ring, seeking whatever catch Voak had found to open it. But the secret eluded him. Now Jony realized that the clansman meant exactly what he had signed: the boy was to wear this symbol of servitude as a warning. If he tried to return to the place of stones, even worse would follow.

Having set their shaming bondage on him, all three of the People appeared to lose interest in Jony. They did not look back as once more they crossed to the top of the steps and started down. Jony had a feeling that to Voak and the others he was no longer of the clan; he had ceased to exist as an equal.

His numb surprise gave way to a beginning flash of anger. The judgment of Voak and the rest had been given without a chance for Jony to defend himself. What had he done? Entered the stone place, come out again with the twins—that was all!

If, perhaps, he had brought with him the red rod Geogee had found . . . Then—

Jony stopped. His dream! In his dream this had been the way he had felt. With the rod in his hand he could have given orders and had them obeyed—or else. He felt his fingers curl now and glanced down to the hand held out before him. In his mind there for a moment he did not imagine himself holding a staff, but the rod.
Had
that been so, in his hot anger for the burden Voak had laid upon him, he might have raised the alien weapon and used it.

No! Jony shook his head vigorously, as if by strong denial he could drive out that momentary wish.

What would he have done to the Big Ones in the past had he had the power to be stronger and greater than they? In his fear for the return of the bondage of his people was Voak any different?

Yes, but Jony in the ship had faced those very ones who had caged Voak and his people, and had set upon most of them the terrible fate of the mind-controlled. While now Jony had not threatened Voak and the rest . . .

Their feeling for him must have begun because he physically resembled those others: the ones painted on the walls and the stone woman. Yet how did Voak
know
that? Unless for all their aversion, the People
had
explored the stone place, had seen those pictures, the waiting woman. Still Jony was almost convinced that the clansmen had not. This whole country was new to the clan. Then—how did Voak and the rest know that Jony resembled those ancient enemies? Memory, relayed through folktales and myths, could be passed down through generations. But if Voak and the others remembered their former masters with hatred, then why had Yaa ever come to Rutee's aid? If there were an ancient hatred of Jony's own species dictated by form alone, Yaa would have ignored the fugitives, even as Voak, Otik, and Kapoor now did him, leaving woman and child alone to die on a strange and hostile world.

Yet, until he and the twins had ventured into the place of stones, the People had accepted them placidly, without question—or seemingly so—as living creatures not unlike themselves. Did Voak believe that going into the stone place awakened in Jony a desire for that power which the ancients had commanded?

As Jony thought of one possibility after another, trying to explain actions he could not understand, his flare of anger died. Voak was wrong to fear him, but he, Jony, could not tell what long-dreaded terror ruled the People. To Voak and the rest he might now seem to be the enemy, or at least one who must be watched.

If Jony trailed back with them to the clan camp, what would follow? He did not believe they would launch any attack against him. But, with a growing desolation of spirit, Jony began to guess what might happen. As they had last night, the clansmen would treat him as one who was not. He had never known such a punishment before. Usually their justice was swift, then forgotten. But to be with the clan and yet not
of
it . . . And what of Maba and Geogee? If they showed sympathy toward him, might not the same blighting non-existence be laid on them?

Jony dropped on the top ledge. Already the clansmen had reached the bottom of that descent. Not once had they turned to look back or showed any interest in him. He felt more alone even than he had on the night he crouched beside Rutee, unable to ease her pain. His hand rose to that shameful ring about his neck. He
was
in a cage again. As long as he wore that he was caged within himself, even if he had the whole country free before him.

Voak and the others vanished, treading purposefully back the way they had come. Jony made no move to descend and follow. Putting his elbows on his knees, he rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He had to think!

There was no purpose to be gained by his being angry. Voak, the others, they must have acted as they thought best for the clan. Jony could not judge their actions, not when he knew so little of what lay behind all this. He tried now to recall, in what detail he could, that picture on the wall, the one in which the People had been shown tied and led about, or caged.

But he had hurried past it so fast he had now only a jumbled impression. The one fact being that the People, as pictured there, were slightly different in form from the clan. None of them had been depicted as walking erect, rather all had been using both hand-paws and feet against the ground. That was the main difference he could now recall.

Had the People changed after they won their freedom? Or had they been forced by their captors to remain animal-like? Jony shuddered. The Big Ones had done such things with the mind-controlled at times. Rutee had told him that the Big Ones had not considered humans as more than animals; animals to be broken, controlled, used for their own purposes. The horror which this had meant for her had been passed on to him, young as he was. Even if he could not know how life had been before the Big Ones had taken over the colony, he realized he was an intelligent being.

Had the People been mind-controlled also? Or did they remember, with all of Rutee's horror, being “animals” to contemptuous aliens? Were the people of the stone place from off this world?

They must have lived here a long time to build that place. And where did the river of stone run? From this stone place to another such, standing at a more distant site? They had had sky ships—those had appeared in the pictures.

Jony's head ached; he was both hungry and thirsty. But he could not shift off the feeling of burdensome weight on his shoulders. In these moments of confusion and despair, he knew that he was not going back to the campsite, at least not now. Voak had set on him the badge of the owned. Somehow he must be free before he returned; free of the collar in such a manner that Voak and the rest could not place it upon him again.

He sat up straight. The world spread out below him seemed very wide, wide and empty! Since the night Yaa had found them, he had never been aloof from the People. Before that, even though their cages had been separated, there was always Rutee. To think of himself as utterly alone was a realization which brought fear—not of anything he could sense or touch, but, in a strange way, of the land, the sky, the whole world about him.

To sit here was no answer to his problem. And to return to the place of cage—if he could return now—was none either. He must find food, water, a—a staff. His hands seemed so empty and useless without a staff.

Unbidden, unwished, once more the thought of the red rod flashed across his mind. Power greater than any staff . . .
NO!
Jony's lips moved to shape that word. He must prove to Voak that he was not one with the stone people—he had to prove that!

Food, water, a weapon-tool, they came first and foremost. With those he was himself again. Once given those he could think—plan—find some way to free himself of the metal band so cold and heavy about his throat. In time he might be able to discover the secret of its lock and so get rid of it. But he needed, most of all, to return the collar to the clan with their clear understanding that this was not his to wear.

He descended the steps carefully to the way by the ridge. The campsite lay to his left. Jony turned sharply right.

EIGHT

Perhaps this stream he had chanced on was the same one that farther back fed the falls where Maba and Geogee had splashed and played. Only now matters were different. As he went slowly, Jony hunted under upturned, water-washed stones for enough of the small, shelled things to satisfy his hunger. He drank his fill from his cupped hands. At length, with hunger and thirst in abeyance, he looked about him for his third need: a staff.