“Take a deep breath of nitric. Belt down a stiff shot. Do anything you like to celebrate, because nothing, but nothing you eat, drink, or breathe can kill you. Welcome to the Group.”
5
And he disappeared. How it happened: We had to get out of the acid bath before everything was eaten off us — rings, watches, bridgework, fillings, the portable lab Hiawatha carried inside his tutta. There was a crowd of dumbfounded stockholders milling outside the laboratory sounding like victims of a coryza plague, and we got separated. When we finally got together again, clustered around Fee-5, the Chief was gone and there was no locating him in the crowd. We hollered for him in XX. N. Fee began to panic.
I gave her a look. Again no time for cosseting. “Where can we talk in private? Sacred private?”
She feathered her vanes and landed again. “The high vacuum chamber.”
“R. Go.”
She led us on a twisted course to a giant sphere, opened a sequence of submarine hatches, and we were inside the sphere keeping company with half a space capsule.
“High vacuum circuitry check,” she said.
“Lovely scene for criminal assault.”
She gave me a look, the equal of mine, and it began to dawn on me that I’d better mind my manners with this new-risen phoenix.
I said to the Syndicate, “That was a lovely performance. Thanks.”
“Ah, yes. To make someone want something you must show them that someone else wants it more. Elementary.”
“By any chance was anything you said true?”
“But it was all truth.”
“You represent the independent sovereign state of I.G. Farben?”
“I own fifty-one percent of it.”
“How much of the whole world do you own, Greek?”
“Fourteen point nine one seven percent, but who counts?”
“My God, you’re rich. Am I rich?”
“You have eleven million six hundred thousand one hundred and three. By my standards you are poor.”
Fee-5 let out a little moan and I relented. “R,” I said. “It’s a simple problem. The poor bastard has had too many shocks in one day and he’s run off in all directions. All we have to do is find him and cool him. Now he may be somewhere in the JPL complex or at the university. Your job, Fee. Find him.”
“I can if he’s anywhere.”
“R. Let’s hope he’s somewhere. Now, he may have scuttled for the tepee, but there’s the problem of the wolves. We’d better let M’bantu handle that. On the other hand he may have levanted to a Particle Bio research center for technical advice. Ed?”
“I’ll handle that.”
“He may have cut for a patent office to file for an exclusive on his discovery.”
“Mine,” the Syndicate said.
“He may have started on a bash to relieve the pain. I’ll put Scented Song on that.”
Edison barked his laugh. “I can just see her charging into the fangojoints on Sabu.”
“Y. I’d like to be with her. Now there’s an outside chance that he may have gone into cataleptics again. That’s for Borgia.”
“What about you, Guig?”
“I’m going back to my place. Nemo and I will hold the fort. Keep the progress reports coming. Gung?”
“R.”
Fee had been breathing heavily — controlling panic, I thought — but now she began to gasp in heaves and her face was turning blue.
“Now what?” I shot at her.
“Not her fault,” Ed said calmly. “Somebody’s started pumping out the chamber. She’s strangling on vacuum.”
“Never a dull moment at JPL,” I said. “Out.” We out, me carrying Fee-Cyanosis Chinese, and a dozen techs outside wanted to know how dast we be in there contaminating the circuits. You can’t please everybody.
So we started our various searches for Sequoya and I did like hell go home. I had a damned good hunch where the Chief had taken refuge (I hadn’t spent five days in a bamboo caul for nothing) and I took the next linear for the Erie reservation. But I did have the courtesy to call and brief Nemo on the assignments.
Now, here had been this mudhole, the size of a moon crater, 240 miles long, 60 miles wide, 200 feet deep, black, repellent, all ooze, crisscrossed with gutters containing the poisonous effluents extruded by a better industry for a better tomorrow. This was the generous gift to the Amerind nations to possess and inhabit forever or until a progressive Congress ousted the dispossessed again. Nine thousand square miles of hell.
Now it was nine thousand square miles of paradise. It suggested a fantastic image to me; a shattered rainbow of odd-shaped fields of poppies glowing red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. The channels had been roofed over with tile. The lake bed was scattered with wickiups, the traditional Indian hut, once made of mud and branches, but these were built of marble, granite, limestone, terracotta, travertine. Flagged roads wandered everywhere in no particular pattern, and all around the lake bed was a gentle cushion fence that pushed you back if you came too close. If you persisted in coming closer it stiff-armed you with a piston jolt.
The gate was guarded by Apaches, all no-nonsense courtesy and speaking nothing but Apache. I couldn’t palaver with them; I just kept repeating “Sequoya” in a determined voice. They hocked a tchynik for a few minutes and then the boss of the gate issued me a guide in a hovercraft. He drove me through a tangle of roads and paths to a gleaming marmol wickiup and pointed. There was the Chief in a breechclout with his back to a marble wall, enjoying the morning sun.
I sat down alongside him without a word. Every instinct told me to adapt myself to his tempo. He was silent, deadpan, immobile. Me too. It was a little buggy. He didn’t slap; neither did I. He did one thing that told me how deeply he had withdrawn into his people’s past — he turned over lazily and pissed to one side and then turned onto his back again. I didn’t imitate that. There’s a limit. There’s also toilet training.
After a few hours of silence he lazed to his feet. I didn’t move until he reached down a hand to help me up. I followed him into the wickiup. It was as beautifully decorated as his tepee and enormous; room after room in tile and leather, Hopi scatter rugs, spectacular silver and porcelain. Sequoya hadn’t been guffing me; these redskins were rich.
He called something in what I figured was Cherokee and the family appeared from all directions; Papa, most majestic and cordial and even more of the Lincoln type. (I suspect that Honest Abe may have had a touch of the redbrush in him.) Mama, so billowy that you wanted to bury yourself in her when you were in trouble. A sister around seventeen or eighteen, so shy I couldn’t get a look at her. She kept her head lowered. A couple of kid brothers who immediately charged on me to touch and feel my skin with giggles. Evidently they’d never seen a paleface before.
I minded my manners; deep bow to papa, kiss mama’s hand, kiss sister’s hand (whereupon she ran out of the room), knocked the boys’ heads together and gave them all the trinkets and curios I had in my pockets. All this, you understand, without a spoken word, but I could see the Chief was pleased and he sounded pleasant when apparently he explained me to the family.
They gave us lunch. The Cherokees were originally a Carolina crowd so it was sort of coastal; mussel soup, shrimp and okra, baked hominy, berry corn cobbler, and yalipan tea. And not served on plastic; bone china, if you please, and silver flatware. When I offered to help with the dishes, mama laughed and hustled me out of the kitchen while sister blushed into her boozalum. Sequoya chased the kid brothers, who were climbing all over me, and led me out of the wickiup. I thought it was going to be another liedown in the sun, but he began to saunter down the paths and roads, walking as though he owned the reservation. There was a light breeze and the entire spectrum of poppies genuflected.