“I’m aware of it, Professor Larsen, but the facts are so complicated it would take the rest of the day to explain. Just say alive and well and happy.”
After a palaver the goblin said, “The Sachem asks why they are not with you.”
“Tell him I’m on my way to join them.”
“And this is a courtesy call?”
“Yes and no.”
“Ambiguity again, Mr. Curzon.”
“It’s part of the complication. I must borrow some cash.”
“But you are reputed to be a millionaire many times over, Mr. Curzon.”
“And so I am. Again more complications.”
“I must hear them. I have never been so tantalized. Excuse me.” He turned and quonked with papa. Then back to me: “The Sachem says certainly. Of course. How much will you need?”
“One hundred thousand.”
Larsen was startled; not so papa. He nodded calmly and I loved him. I never had a father like that. He left the room and returned with ten neat packets of gold-colored notes, meaning they were thousands. He stacked them on the bedside table, sat down on the bed, and peered into my face. He put a hand on my brow and murmured.
“The Sachem says that despite your fatigue, marriage to his daughter seems to agree with you.”
“Please tell him that she has become more beautiful than ever.”
“I had better not, Mr. Curzon. On the reservation it is regarded as unmanly to admire one’s squaw.”
“Thank you, Professor Larsen. Tell him that Natoma is a hardworking squaw.”
“That should please him, I think.”
The door burst open and the hardworking squaw charged into the room, looking like an agitated goddess… that is, if the gods ever were chic. She threw herself on top of me. “What is it, Glig? What is wrong? Why are you in bed? Am I hurting you? Why are you here? Where should you be? Did you know I was coming? How? Why don’t you say something?”
When she gave me a chance I said something, and managed to ask her what she was doing here.
“I had to come,” Natoma said. “I had to reload with sanity. I’ve seen my brother and I’m furious.”
I was dying for her news but there was no more time for talk; dinner was waiting. Papa, the professor, the kid brothers, and myself at the table while mama and Natoma waited on us. My incomparable wife had the charm to revert to tradition on the reservation. She wore deerskin, kept her head lowered, and actually blushed when the naughty boys made coarse marriage jokes which Larsen refused to translate.
When I signed to her to come out with me for an evening walk she nodded but gave me a wait signal. She had to help mama with the dishes. When at last we left the wickiup she walked three humble paces behind me until we were out of sight. Then she threw herself at me and nearly knocked me down.
“I love you. Oh, how I love you! I would love you if you were hateful. You’ve rescued me from all this.”
“You would have rescued yourself, Nat.”
“How could I? I never knew there was another world. No, you liberated me and now I’m entire.”
“And so am I. It works both ways.”
She took me to her childhood hideout, a giant cedar of Lebanon in which we could climb up, sit close, and hold hands without caustic comment from the Erie conservatives.
“Who goes first, you or me?” she said.
“You.”
“Mr. Hillel was right. My brother came looking for me.”
“Where did he find you?”
“In Boxton.”
“I never knew you were there.”
“The machines were keeping us apart.”
“Yes. And? Did he try to reassure you?”
“No. He frightened me. He’s not just a bad boy; he’s cold, cold, cold. Heartless.”
“Ah.”
“He’s not my brother anymore.”
“Not now, but he will be again.”
“He told me that it was cry havoc for the human race, which had been asking for it for a thousand years. Death and destruction. No mercy.”
“Dio! We know he and the network mean it.”
“He told me to go home where I’d be safe. The network can’t get through to the reservation. There are other places, too. Sahara and Brazil and — and — I forget because I wasn’t listening.”
“Why not?”
“I lost my temper. I told him — Why are you grinning?”
“Because I know that temper.”
“I told him he was a traitor to me, to his family, to his people, to this entire beautiful world you’ve shown me.”
“Hoo boy. You were hot.”
“I was. I told him I wasn’t a squaw anymore; that you had turned me into a thinking, independent person, and that I would do everything I could to stop him and punish him, even if it meant getting the Erie tribes and nations to hunt him down. If they could beat the Mafia International they would have no trouble with him and that damned computer on his back.”
“Pretty strong stuff, Nat. Would the tribes and nations help?”
“They will. We’ve done without electronics for generations, outside of the fence and a few simple basics, so they can’t be cowed by a computer. And most of them are dying for a fight anyway.”
“Even against the son of the Great Sachem?”
“They won’t kill him. They’ll just roast him over a slow fire, Iroquois-style, until he comes to his senses. That’ll sober him down.”
“Did you mention the real enemy, the renegade?”
“No.”
“And what did he say to all this?”
“Nothing. He just turned and left me like you leave a piece of furniture.”
“Going where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Back to the capsule?”
“I don’t know. He left and I came home.”
“Of course. And you’ll stay here.”
“N.”
“Why N?”
“I want to be with you.”
“Natoma!”
“Edward!”
We had it out so hard that I nearly fell out of the tree. I listed all the disasters wrought by the computer network. Nothing. Not even a tear for the Sèvres destruction. She only looked grimmer and more determined. She had taken the ball from flippant old me and was set to run or pass, so I surrendered. My goddamn Cherokee wife had the Indian sign on me.
And she outsmarted the anti-Tchicago network. We took the Buffalo shuttle to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh to Charleston. Then it would be Charleston to Springfield and hovercraft to Tchicago. But someone must have slipped up on Natoma’s passage vouchers. The Charleston travel desk paged her just before takeoff. Her Spang wasn’t nearly as good as her XX, so I left her on the shuttle and went to the main desk myself to find out what the tsimmes was.
I reasoned with the smart-asses and they argued back — computer check (infallible) indicated the tickets were faulty. I planked down a gold-colored thousand and asked for a new voucher. Quick, please. They quick, but the automatics took over and the shuttle lofted while I was waiting. A hundred feet up it burst into an explosion that shattered it, smashed the walls of the port building, and knocked me into oblivion.
11
No one knew what his real name was and nobody asked. It was a lethal offense to ask that kind of question in the Underbelly. He was called Capo Rip. No one knew his origins. There were a dozen stories but he was such a liar that none could be believed: orphanage (there hadn’t been an orphanage in a hundred years), street gangs, adopted by the Mafia International, synthesized in a laboratory, product of the artificial insemination of a gorilla. He was cold-blooded, indifferent to women, men, companionship, friendship. Icy and hard. He was a percentage player with such a keen memory for numbers and probabilities that he was barred from all gambling tables; he was a losing proposition for the house.
But percentage prevented him from killing. Not that he gave a damn about murder, but he didn’t like the odds against. He never took a chance when the odds were against. “Bod once wrote that all life was six-to-five against,” Rip said. “I don’t try anything unless it’s six-to-five for.” Yes, Capo Rip could read, and he didn’t play even-money bets. He always looked for the edge.