Building Security became their base of operations. One entire wall of the room was lined with monitors, one for each vid installed in the facility. Moody alternated his attention between the multiple screens and the nearby snack vending room, while Ooljee hovered nearGrayhills and tried to pick up a few orber’s tricks as she wove with her elaborate Noronco spinner.
Nightfall found them tired and irritable. Of Gaggii there was no sign. Moody wondered if he had fooled them utterly by instructing the web to respond with false information to any inquiries concerning his whereabouts. In which case he might be halfway to Salt Lake City or Denver by now, while they squatted here relying for information on a mendacious alien vocomposite. It was possible. Gaggii was far more familiar with the web than they and had demonstrated that he could make use of it. What kind of relationship had he established by now with that mysterious melange of mutating Mandlebrot patterns and rainbow threads and incorporeal coronas?
And who was Vernon Moody, late of Pushkatawny, Mississippi, that it should fall to him to have to try and figure it all out? How did a good cop stake out the impossible?
They waited and watched and grumbled until the clock came round to the cold black dawn of early tomorrow, and still there was no sign of their suspect.
He should’ve shown by now, Moody knew. Unless he’s stalled somewhere out in the mesas, or had a breakdown, or changed his mind, or been laughing at us all along, while he went east, or north, or south instead of this way.
Initial anticipation had been dissipated by the uneventful night. Day staff had made way for the night-watchers, who had already passed enough time in front of their multitudinous monitors to grow bored.
The visitors from Ganado did not allow themselves that luxury. They hung around Building Security, making themselves obnoxious by their continuing presence while sustaining a wary consciousness with coffee by the liter.
“We blew it.” Moody gazed bleary-eyed at his friend and colleague. Nearby chairs displayed the debris of late-night snacks. Security personnel sat at their stations, ignoring the suspect visitors in their midst. Grayhills napped on one of several cots which had been set up against the back wall.
“Not necessarily.” Ooljee rubbed his face. “It might be a matter of timing.”
“What kind of timing?”
The sergeant scrutinized the flotsam on the chair next to his, extracted something yellowish from the center of the pile, and began to munch on it.
“A chant is usually performed in two parts over a period of two, five, or nine nights. The first part involves purification and the exorcism of evil. In the second, supernatural powers are attracted and hozho is restored.”
“Or disrupted,” said Moody.
His friend nodded. “The final night’s vigil lasts from ten o’clock until the dawn of the concluding day.”
“What happens then?”
“The one who is being treated supposedly breathes in the dawn, at which point he or she becomes one with the gods and shares their power.”
“I get it. What happens if the god doesn’t feel like showing up?”
“They have no choice. If the chant and sandpainting are done right, the deity is compelled to attend.”
A sleepy feminine voice chimed in. “You don’t really believe that timing has anything to do with accessing the alien web?”
“I do not know what to really believe anymore.” Ooljee stuffed the rest of the yellow mass into his mouth, chewed reflectively. “Until this, I thought I knew what police work consisted of. I thought I knew what a computer web did and how a database was structured. I thought I had a pretty good idea of the world and my place in it.
“Now I am no longer sure of much of anything. Nor do I understand how either of you can be otherwise. These past several days we have seen things to give a man pause. So who is to say whether timing is or is not important in these matters?”
His partner was not only tired, Moody decided; he was clearly on edge. Sandpaintings and hatathlis and chants were part of his heritage, his environment. He’d grown up with them. Now the world of his childhood was being turned inside-out in front of his eyes.
It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief.
Nevertheless he couldn’t keep himself from asking, “Paul, you don’t think this guy’s trying to call up some kind of alien deity or something?”
Ooljee was silent for a long time. When he replied it was slowly and carefully. “Be they purposeful, careless, or indifferent, it seems to me possible if not likely that there are others besides humans involved in this business. Whoever created the web and left it here, whether for reasons unknown or for no reason at all. Whether we choose to call them deities or aliens or yeis or Martians or whatever, they existed. We know they existed because the sandpainting exists, because the web exists. They were here a thousand years ago. We know that they were. We do not know if they are.
“What Gaggii works with the web I do not know.”
“A long time to wait between calls.” Grayhills sipped hot tea. She did not drink coffee, Moody had noted. No basis for a relationship there. He was startled to discover that he had been contemplating one.
“Truly,” the sergeant agreed. “Yet the web has endured all that time, waiting for someone to rediscover the secrets of the sandpainting, waiting for someone to again use the right Way. It is still active and functioning. Why should we assume those who created it are not also active and functioning somewhere?”
“If it’s garbage it won’t be much good for making long distance calls,” Moody pointed out tiredly. “You know, if Gaggii hadn’t killed two people I wouldn’t give a frog fart what he does with the web. Maybe he’s just after some peer-group recognition. Wants to win the Nobel.”
“I do not know what he wants, my friend. Like anyone else, I can only guess. All I know is that the more I contemplate my own mythology, the more frightened I become.”
Dawn brought light but no sign of Yistin Gaggii. The rest of the long day was equally unrevealing. Evening found Ooljee and Moody swapping catnaps while Samantha Grayhills stuck to her routine of alternating sleep with periods of observation and study.
Their suspect had effectively vanished.
Moody suggested to Ooljee that they query the web again as to their quarry’s whereabouts. Ooljee declined, pleading exhaustion. Tomorrow. He would try again tomorrow. Maybe Gaggii would show before then, or perhaps an NDPS patrol would stumble into him and save them the trouble.
As the second night spent in the accelerator facility ticked away uneventfully, both men retired early in hopes of soaking up some extended sleep. The cot Moody had been allotted was barely wide enough to accommodate his bulk. He tossed and turned fitfully, conscious of the fact that his partner was resting soundly nearby. Conscious of that, and something the sergeant had mentioned earlier.
Consider sandpainting drawings as intrapsychic symbols.
Lighting up inside a person’s mind. if that were true a trained patient could just as easily visualize the necessary symbology as a trained hatathli. Do away with the painting altogether. Do away with the chant. Do away even with a spinner.
Think it. Visualize it. Activate the web by though! alone Was that how its makers did it? If the web offered a possible explanation for sightings of ghosts and poltergeists, then why not for other fractures of the mind as well? What about certain kinds of mental illness? Had those sufferers unknowingly and accidentally accessed the web? Wouldn’t finding oneself confronted by, or perhaps even immersed in, an endless void inhabited by only twisting, writhing shapes and forms be enough to drive anyone mad?