Back on the road, they skirted the main arterials, which meant Ooljee had to do some real driving until they were clear of city traffic. Only then did he let the truck’s autodrive resume control. Gradually the spires and industrial blocks of Ganado fell behind. Moody noted they were traveling almost due north.
“We’re heading up to Chinle,” Ooljee explained. “It is still pretty much a small town, a tourist town. To check out the name the shopkeeper came up with.” He lapsed into silence, swimming a sea of inner contemplation.
“Tell me something.” Moody spoke to take his mind off the barren immensity of the landscape. “What exactly are these ‘Ways’ you keep talking about?”
“Ways are ceremonies.” Ooljee swiveled his seat to face his companion. “According to the Navaho way of thinking, the universe is in a perpetual, precarious state of balance between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Or if you’d prefer a more scientific description, between the forces of regularity and the forces of chaos. The similarities to General Relativity are quite fascinating. For example…”
Moody interrupted him. “Spare me. I get the idea.” Ooljee pursed his lips. “The Ways are used to help people deal with sickness, with personal problems, with any sort of difficulty or trouble. Even today, many people, particularly the older ones, will go to a doctor or hospital for treatment but will follow up with a visit to a hatathli.”
“No offense, but it sounds like plain old witchcraft to me.”
“We don’t go around sticking pins in dolls. To me, real witchcraft is practiced by people who make a living predicting the rise and fall of the Nasdaq index. Stuff like that. Or trying to figure out why the new guy gets the promotion and you do not.”
Chinle was not that many miles from Ganado on the map, but very far away in time. The town itself was modem enough. Foremost among the buildings of recent construction was the local NDPS office where Ooljee checked in, a free-form one-story structure of polycrete and bronze glass. It hugged the side of a wide, shallow canyon like some prehistoric herbivore, a thick coat of antennae sprouting from its back.
Moody waited while his companion engaged in small talk with his colleagues. Away from the commercial/industrial center of Ganado there were far fewer non-Navahos around, and he felt more conspicuous than ever.
Just outside Chinle the modern world seemed to vanish.
“The people we’re looking for have a place inside the Park, down in the canyon. Now you will see why the four-wheel drive, four-wheel steer truck is and always has been the preferred mode of transportation on the Rez.”
They were traveling east out of town, when Ooljee turned off the main road, following a sandy path that paralleled a broad, lazy creek. Very soon the ridges on either side of the road began reaching for the clouds. The walls of the canyon they’d entered rose so rapidly that after only a few miles of driving, the crests of the smooth, rust-red ramparts were scraping the belly of Heaven itself.
Moody craned his neck to see. They were traveling between sheer rock escarpments a thousand feet high, the truck bouncing along a road that clearly owed its continued existence to Nature’s whim. One swift, wild flash-flood down the deceptively somnolent stream would carry away anyone unlucky enough to be present at the time.
He felt as if he were threading the labyrinthine corridors of some immense antediluvian fortress, impregnable and unapproachable save for those who knew its secret passages and passwords.
“Canyon de Chelley.” Ooljee was concentrating on his driving. No laser control strip buried in the sand and gravel here. “You pronounce it deh shay. That is a story in itself. It’s a National Monument, but people still live back in here. Old land claims, old ways. Their impact on the environment is minimal, just as it’s always been. No sizzle here, no slash music.” He grinned. “These people get high on mutton.”
Moody continued to gape at the unreal parapets towering overhead, glad he was down by the river and not up on the rim. He did not like high places. At least there was vegetation here; green life. The trees were pale and conservative compared to those back home, but they were real trees, not clever mimics like ocotillo and paloverde.
They crossed the river, the truck splashing and grinding its way through as Ooljee headed up a side canyon, narrower but no less impressive than the central chasm. Proof of his earlier words brought them to a halt as an avalanche of sheep tumbled across the sandy track in front of them.
It was directed by a medium-sized, impressively confident canine who barely took his eyes off his charges long enough to acknowledge the presence of the idling truck nearby. Moody observed the dog admiringly. It did better work than some of those who’d graduated from the Academy’s course in crowd control.
“Each of the sheep has a small transmitter embedded in its flank,” Ooljee informed him. “It tells the herder or owner how much that particular sheep currently weighs, what its body temperature is, how its internal systems are functioning, whether or not it is pregnant, and many other things. It also functions as a receiver.
“Notice the dog.” Moody tried to keep track of the tireless black and white streak among the forest of legs. “He will be wearing a transmitter collar that tells his master where he is at all times. The herder can direct his animal via the built-in receiver, which also broadcasts a steady frequency at very low power. The frequency is irritating to sheep. This makes it very easy for the dog to tum and guide the herd. He doesn’t have to bark or rely on his original predatory reputation. All he has to do is move close to a sheep and it will react by turning away. It is very efficient. Since the herder can communicate with his dog via the collar, he no longer has to shout to it.”
When the woolly mob was almost past, a boy on a silenced motorbike appeared. As he waved to them, Moody noted the two-inch antenna that protruded from his headband. A control unit was strapped to his right wrist. He followed the boy’s progress until he and his herd had vanished into the brush on the far side of the canyon. The truck resumed its advance.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to use some kind of remote tracking vehicle?”
“Perhaps, but nothing works as well in a confined space as does a good dog,” Ooljee told him. “It is also much better company. And there is something else. Not everyone on the Rez is into computers, or assembly, or debugging and repair. Some families prefer to hew to the old ways. Women still weave rugs on hand looms, though many will use cadcam terminals to experiment with design. Others choose to herd sheep. There are still people who grow com and beans, squash and tobacco. The com that is grown on the Rez does not taste like the com that is put into cans in Nebraska and Indiana.
“I can see that we will have to expose you to some more local cooking. You have already had fry bread. Do you like tortillas?”
“I’m from South Florida,” Moody reminded him.
Ooljee was nodding to himself. “Blue com tortillas with tomatillo salsa. I’ll bet you do not have that in South Florida.”
Talk of food was making Moody hungry but he forbore mentioning it, suspecting that the canyon bottom was not home to a profusion of restaurants. Fastfoodies did not generally locate on dirt roads. Anyway it could not be much farther to their destination, because the side canyon they were traversing was beginning to narrow. It was like driving through a crack in the planet. The air was cool and still. Sunshine was but an occasional, fitful visitor to this place. Moody was very glad he was not claustrophobic.