Andy, he thought, half-grinning to himself. If Andy could only talk, he would be the best bet of them all.
Heavy peals of thunder were rippling in the west, and above the crest of Thunder Butte the lightning ran like a nest of nervous snakes. Heat and mugginess clamped down hard against the land. The huge cloud of purple blackness kept on boiling higher into the sky.
People were coming out of the lodges now—women and children and a few men. The hooting boys threw more clods and stones at him, but their aims were poor. One small pebble, however, hit him on the jaw and left a paralyzing numbness. Down the street he could see, still far out on the prairie, the guards driving a herd of horses toward the camp.
Watching the horses, he saw them break into a run, thundering toward the camp, with the guards frantically hurrying their mounts in an endeavor to head them off or slow them down. Something had spooked the herd—that was quite evident. A sizzling lightning bolt, perhaps, or a nearby crack of thunder.
At the far edge of the camp someone shouted in alarm and the shout was picked up by others, the frightened shouts ringing through the camp between the pealing of the thunder. People were piling in panic out of the lodges, filling the street, running and screaming, instinctively reacting to the terror of the shouting.
Then he saw it, far off—the flicker of the lights, the zany sparkle of many Shivering Snakes against the blackness of the sky, riding before the approaching storm, sweeping toward the camp. He caught his breath and strained against the thongs. The Snakes, he asked himself, what were those crazy Snakes about?
But it was not, he saw, as the Snakes swept closer, the Snakes alone. Andy ran at the head of them, mane and tail flowing in the wind, his feet blurred with the speed of his running, while beside him raced the pale glimmer that was Rollo, and behind them and to each side of them, the dark blobs of a great horde of Followers, seen in the darkness only by virtue of the Snakes that spun in dizzy circles about each of them, illuminating them, picking out the wolf like shape of them. And behind the pack, the bouncing, bobbing spheres that were the Team, straining to keep up.
At the edge of the camp the frightened horse herd came plunging down the street, rearing madly, screaming in their terror, careening into lodges that came tumbling down. People were running madly and without seeming purpose, screaming mouths open like wide 0's in the center of their faces. Not only women and children but men as well, running as if the hounds of hell were snapping at their heels.
As the horses came at him, Cushing hunkered low against the post. A lashing hoof grazed a shoulder as a screaming horse reared and swerved to go around him. Another crashed into a lodge and fell, bringing the lodge down with him, collapsed, tangled amid the leather and the poles, kicking and striking with its forefeet in an effort to get free. Out from under the fallen lodge crawled a man, clawing to pull himself along until he was able to get on his legs and run. A lightning flash, for a moment, lined his face, lighting it so it could be recognized. It was Mad Wolf.
Then Rollo was beside Cushing, knife in hand, slashing at the thongs. The camp was deserted now except for a few people still trapped beneath the fallen lodges, howling like gut-shot dogs as they fought their way to freedom. All about, the Shivering Snakes swirled in loops of fire and the Followers
were dancing, with Andy capering in their midst.
Rollo put his head down close to Cushing's ear and shouted so he could hear above the steady roll of thunder. "This should take care of it," he shouted. He swept an arm at the camp. "We don't need to worry about them anymore. They won't stop running until they are over the Missouri.~~
Beside RoIlo bounced one of the Team, uttering in excitement. It bellowed at Cushing, "Fun you say we do not have and we know not what you speak of. ‘it now we know. Rollo say to come and see the fun."
Cushing tried to answer Rollo, but his words were swept away and drowned as the forefront of the storm crashed down upon them in a howl of rushing wind and a sudden sheet of water that heat like a hammer on the ground.
The dry cactus plains of the Missouri were behind them and ahead lay the rolling home prairies of the one-time state of Minnesota. This time, Cushing reminded himself, with some satisfaction, they need not follow the winding, time-consuming course of the gentle Minnesota River, but could strike straight across the prairie for the ruined Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and their final destination, the university. No nomad band, no city tribe, would even think of interfering with their march.
The first frosts of autumn had touched the trees with brushes of gold and red; hardy prairie flowers bloomed on every side. When spring came around, they would head back again for Thunder Butte, this time with a string of packhorses carrying supplies and with at least a few university residents added to the expedition. Perhaps, he thought, with more than that—some sensitives, perhaps, and a few brain cases, for during the winter, they would contact some of the city tribes and more eastern bands, who might be more open to reason than the nomad encampment had proved to be.
Far ahead of them Rollo ranged, scouting out the land, and, at a shorter distance, Andy, with his pack of Followers gamboling all about him like a bunch of pups at play. The Team rolled along sedately to one side, and, sparkling in the pleasant autumn sunshine, the swarms of Shivering Snakes were everywhere. They accompanied Rollo on his scouting runs; they danced with the Followers and with Andy; they swung in shimmering circles about everyone.
"You'll clean me out," the A and B had said in mock sorrow when they left. "You'll leave me not a single Follower or Snake. It's that silly horse of yours and that equally silly robot. They, the two of them, blot up all the crazy things they meet. Although, I'm glad they're going, for any roving band that might intend to do you dirt will reconsider swiftly when they see the escort that goes along with you.
"We'll head back," promised Cushing, "as soon as winter lifts enough to travel. We'll waste no time. And I hope we'll have others with us."
"I've been alone so long," the A and f had said, "that such a little interval does not really matter. I can wait quite easily, for now I have some hope."
Cushing cautioned him, "You must realize that it all may come to nothing. Try as hard and earnestly as we may, we may not be able to untangle the mysteries of the data. Even if we do, we may find nothing we can use.
"All that man has done throughout his history," said the A and B, "has been a calculated gamble without assurance of success. The odds, I know, are long, but in all honesty, we can ask for nothing better."
"If Mad Wolf had only gone along with us. If he had only listened."
"There are certain segments of society that will never lend an ear to a new idea. They squat in a certain place and will not budge from it. They will find many reasons to maintain a way of life that is comfortable to them. They'll cling to old religions; they'll fasten with the grip of death on ethics that were dead, without their knowing it, centuries before; they will embrace a logic that can be blown over with a breath, still claiming it is sacrosanct.
"But I'm not like this. I am a foolish sentimentalist and my optimism is incurable. To prove that, I shall start, as soon as you are gone, sending out the probes again. When they begin returning, a hundred years from now, a millennium from now, we shall be here and waiting, eager to find out what they have brought back, hoping it will be something we can use.
At times there had been small bands of scouts who sat their horses on a distant skyline and looked them over, then had disappeared, carrying back their word to the waiting tribes. Making sure, perhaps, that the march of this defiant group still traveled under the protection of the grotesques from Thunder Butte.