What was Gaggii after? Surely not something as inconsequential as a means for protecting or enriching himself? No, Gaggii would want to know how to run the subfile labeled “mankind.” Or perhaps his vision was grander. Perhaps he hoped to discover how to access an entire file. Press enter here and shift the planet a little nearer the sun (maybe Gaggii was easily chilled). Or move it next to another sun, for a change of pace. Gravity, the speed of light: suddenly these little constants no longer meant anything. Not when you could access the web and braid yourself a custom Julia pattern here, a Mandlebrot there, and shift yourself into the subdirectory coded Alpha Centauri.
Moody shivered. How could you go on, with the foundations of your reality become as insubstantial as gossamer? Time, space, speed: meaningless. Qualitatively irrelevant. Who punched in the entries up there? God? The aliens? Navaho Holy People with unpronounceable names?
Pain flicked across his face. He blinked at a worried-looking Samantha Grayhills. It took him a moment to realize he’d been slapped. Ooljee stood nearby, equally concerned.
“You were laughing,” she said seriously, “and we couldn’t get you to stop. I’m sorry I had to hit you.”
“I wouldn’t do it,” said Ooljee. “Thought you might react instinctively and flatten me. What were you thinking about that made you do that?”
Moody hesitated, finally announced brusquely, “Nothing. Nothing important.
“What we have to do now is concentrate on what we can understand. Because if you look at this thing too hard, you lose your focus real quick. Let’s just work on Yistin Gaggii. He’s a murderer and we’re going to take him into custody. That’s all we need to worry about.”
“I’ve been thinking.” Both men turned on Grayhills. She didn’t back down under their stares. “If he’s at the center of everything that’s been happening, then he also might be at the center of this impossible storm. Pinpoint the nexus of the low-pressure system and we might find him there. If it’s over Vegas or Bullhead City then we can try something else, but if it’s as close to here as the National Weather Service suggested…”
“Give ’em a call,” snapped Moody.
She nodded, resumed her seat at the console. “I’m on it.”
Ooljee whispered to his partner while they waited. “I know what your problem is, my friend. You think too much. Especially for a cop.”
“What if the people who built this web left their own safeguards behind? What if Gaggii accidentally stumbles into one of them? You think it’s gonna deal with him selectively?” He smiled crookedly. “Try ‘not’ thinking about thinking about that for a while.”
“Nothing is intrinsically good or evil,” the sergeant told him. “It is all in how you use it.”
“That really reassures me,” Moody replied sarcastically. “I’ll remember that when Arizona is sinking.in the middle of the Indian Ocean.”
“If such a safeguard exists, it may be clearly labeled.”
“You think that’d stop our boy Gaggii? He’s come too far to quit now. He’d try getting around it. No, we’ve got to get our hands on him before he can make any serious mistakes.”
“I do not think,” Ooljee said quietly, “that Yistin Gaggii wants to move the state of Arizona to the middle of the Indian Ocean.”
“Naw. He just wants to make himself President. Or Emperor of the planet.” The detective glanced down at his partner. “We’re gonna have to kill him to stop him. You know that, don’t you? Because of that damn unreal boat outside. If some hatathli codetalkers made that happen over a hundred years ago, it means you don’t need a monitor or spinner to access the web. All you need is the right words, the right phrasing. It means you can’t stop Gaggii by locking him up. You couldn’t put him in a hole deep enough to keep him from making mischief. So we have to kill him.” Ooljee waited a moment before replying, but not for the reason Moody thought. “I think you are right, but that does not solve the problem.”
“How so?”
“What about me? I know the chant. I know the sandpainting.”
Moody eyed him sharply. “What about you, Paul? You tell me.”
“I have a fine woman who loves me. I have two wonderful children. I have a job that I like in a place that I like. I have fulfillment. I do not want to be emperor of anything. More importantly, I want as little to do with this business as possible. That which grants power can also take it away. Let specialists who can watch over one another delve into its depths. Let them stumble across any safeguards that may have been left floating in its innards.
“I am no hatathli. If we destroy the remaining images of the sandpainting it will be a long time before anyone stumbles across its secret again. Perhaps never.”
“Never.” Moody nodded, pleased. “That sounds like a decent length of time. Never, yeah.” The terrifying, indifferent emptiness of the universe receded a little, bearing some of the fear he felt with it.
“Don’t you wonder?” Ooljee asked him. “If the codetalkers are responsible for what happened to that ship, don’t you wonder what else might be floating around in the web?”
“Make you a deal,” the detective said curtly. “I won’t think so much if you won’t wonder so much.”
Grayhills had information. “The center of the low is only forty-five miles north of here. South of the gap at Cedar Ridge, somewhere between the highway and Marble Canyon.” She looked back up at them. “It’s still fixed, not moving.”
“Real close.” Ooljee checked his gun. “He did not have to come into town to get what he wanted. Let’s go. We have a killer to apprehend and a storm to stop. Among other things.”
The two men exchanged grim grins.
CHAPTER 21
The skycutter pilot was reluctant to take them up, did so only because Ooljee pulled rank. Like a cork in a whirlpool they bobbed through the clouds, the flight smoothing out only a little when the pilot dropped the rotor and headed north.
Wind rocked them wildly, while the lightning was frequent and heavy enough to extract prayer from confirmed atheists. Though the wipers battled the driving sleet to a draw, the pilot chose to concentrate on his instruments in lieu of the view ahead. There would be no welcoming landing beacon where they planned to set down.
Grayhills assured the pilot that a visual sighting would not be necessary. All he had to do was follow his falling barometer.
Moody’s stomach rose and fell in concert with the Flex. He hung on and tried to think about something besides his heaving guts.
Their pilot was a short, wiry, somber-faced youth in his early twenties. Too small for the street, too tough to be stuck behind a desk. As he studied his console he raised his voice to make himself heard above the brutal wind.
“Been flying four years. I’ve tracked people according to standard police reports and civilian call-ins. I’ve trailed vidwits and run spiral searches. Once I blew a suspect armed with a surface-to-air into a ditch where ground cops could pick him up easy. But this is the first time I ever tracked anyone by barometric pressure.” He tapped the lens protecting a readout. “Look at this damn thing! Twenty-eight point nine-five and still dropping. I’ve never seen it so low. ”
A blast of wind and rain drove the skycutter sideways. The pilot fought for control, cursing the storm and Ooljee in equal measure. He didn’t ask questions, because he couldn’t spare the time.
Moody clung to whatever part of the cabin was fastened down. Despite her harness, Samantha Grayhills kept bouncing into him, a sensation he would have enjoyed at any other time. From his seat alongside the pilot, Ooljee leaned forward and tried to see through the horizontal weather.