“Why, pray tell?” prodded Phil.
“Alexander!” retorted the captain, as though Phil was the most ignorant of peasants, then he spat in the dirt.
Andreakos sat back on his ammo box. “Alexander?” he repeated. “Like, in The Great?”
It was the funniest thing Phil had ever heard. This guy was still pissed off about a war that had happened twenty-four hundred years before either of them or their governments had been born. The captain apparently blamed Phil and all the other Long Island Macedonians for at least part of it: The murder of Darius, the destruction of the Persian Empire’s golden age, the sanctity of Persian purity defiled, defiled, oh merciful Heaven, defiled by the Greeks! The horror! The horror!
Phil couldn’t get over it. He prodded the captain into reciting lists of atrocities committed by Greeks against Persians. The Iranian captain couldn’t see through his hatred and shame long enough to notice that Phil was putting him on and having the time of his life.
Oh, that’s so horrible, Captain. I’m mortified. So ashamed. Please. Tell me more.
It was better than television. The antics of the pair finally crumbled Gordon’s unremitting poker face driving him to laughter. It was either laugh or explode. Before he could allow himself to laugh, though, Gordon had to choose that different path the way Hosteen Ahiga had said. He had to release his mother’s hatred, as well as his own, and let it fall from its own weight. He had to let go of Wounded Knee, The Long Walk, Mrs. Potts’s evil eye, the infected blankets, the murder of Narbona, the governor of New Mexico’s Hawaiian shirts, Fort Defiance, Jay Silverheels, the disappearance of the buffalo, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Squanto, the twenty-four dollars in junk jewelry, the buffalo soldiers, Injun Orange Funny Face Drinks, the sheep killers, the Washington Redskins—crimes and evils real and imagined committed against people he never knew by people who had never existed or were long dead and gone. Then he laughed. He’d never laughed so hard in his life. He laughed so hard he was crying, which angered the IRI captain even more, which made him seem even more ridiculous. The Iranian didn’t know, however, that Gordon was mostly laughing at himself—himself and at the human race. After that Gordon allowed himself to become friends with the Long Island Greek. Brothers.
Wars end only when memory ends. Missions, though, are mercurial, assigned, and ultimately chosen. So what was the mission? What was Gordon Redcliff’s purpose on the planet? Was it even necessary to have a mission beyond getting through the day without compromising oneself or falling for one of the Trickster’s jokes? That seemed to be Hosteen Ahiga’s purpose. Gordon was moving from one desert to the next, one conflict to the next, and for what purpose?
When Dr. Taleghani was ready to leave, Gordon stayed behind and looked down at Harith. “I apologize for my earlier answer to your question about why I am here. I answered as I did because I didn’t have the words. A stupid thing to do. Now I know the answer: to find a mission. That is my mission on this planet, Mr. Fayadh: to find a mission.”
The young man studied Gordon’s face a long time and then nodded at what he read there. “A noble and lonely quest, Mr. Redcliff. May Allah in his wisdom help you find it. I am Harith. May I call you Gordon?”
“Yes.”
“This is an English name, correct? Gordon?”
“Yes,” he answered. “It is English.”
“I’m curious about something. If your mother thought the Arabs evil, whatever must she have thought of the English?”
“Please do not be offended, Harith, but you are still too young to hear what my mother thought of the English,” he answered. Harith laughed.
“Then how came you by the name?”
“My father. That was before he left us and went to live in Los Angeles to become a Hollywood Indian. It was the night I was born. Never met the man until I was eighteen. Before I reported for the Army I went to Los Angeles, looked him up, and asked him why he named me Gordon. He said he got it from an old movie, Flash Gordon.”
“What?” Harith said disbelievingly.
“He said my mother told him that when I was born she would charge me with defeating all evil that exists. Flash Gordon, he said, defeated evil and saved the universe. Then my father laughed at me and went to work. He was playing the role of an Oglala Lakota chief named Red Cloud. That was the only time I ever saw him, except in the movies.” Gordon smiled. “My father was from Bear Enemies People in Santa Clara. Chief Red Cloud spoke his Lakota with a Tewa accent.”
Harith smiled. “Take care of my boss, Gordon Redcliff. He is a very good man of great vision.”
“I will do my best. Take care of your back. In case we don’t make it back according to plan, we are going to need some big help.”
Harith winced as he held out his right hand. Gordon took it. “Good luck, Gordon Redcliff. Allah willing, may you find what you seek.”
Inside the capsule, Dr. Taleghani introduced Gordon to the T-span operator. Mehmet Abdel Hashim had a jutting chin, brilliant white teeth, a flowing black pompadour, and the immature beginnings of a beard and mustache. The young pilot eagerly adjusted instruments mounted into the metal hull and checked calculations while Gordon and Dr. Taleghani, unobserved by others at the camp, loaded and stowed the supplies they’d need for their stay. Once the supplies were loaded, there was little to do but wait. Gordon decided to try qualifying the archeologist on a few weapons. He took his leather knapsack containing the .38, shockcomb, and ammo, slung the Detz, and brought the archeologist out into the dunes to practice on a makeshift target made from pasteboard.
At a range of three hundred meters, Gordon put the eye out of a mouse in a pest control advert he fixed onto the cardboard with a bit of tape. He put two more shots through the same hole and proclaimed Harith’s zeroing of the weapon adequate. Dr. Taleghani wouldn’t even consider touching the rifle. They moved up to ten meters and Gordon reached into the bag for the .38 and a box of ammunition.
They only used up four rounds before Gordon called a halt to the exercise for health reasons. Dr. Taleghani was becoming a nervous wreck as Gordon tried to get him not to shake, not to close his eyes, to look at the target through the iron sights, and slowly squeeze the trigger all at the same time. On the last two shots Taleghani was still shaking but now more violently and also had his face turned away from the target besides having his eyes tightly closed. In addition, the safest place on the desert that day appeared to be right in front of that piece of cardboard. Other than the original zeroing shots, it had suffered not a single perforation. Looking down at the cardboard, Dr. Taleghani said ashamedly, “I will hear no comments about electric shavers!”
“I wasn’t going to say a thing,” said Gordon. “But I think I understand why Harith included a particular weapon in our inventory. It’s called a shockcomb.”
“It sounds a terror.”
“No sound to it, Doctor. Nothing jumps, nothing explodes, no recoil.”
“It sounds promising,” acknowledged the archeologist.
Gordon went to his knapsack, replaced the .38 and the box of shells, and removed what looked like a silver comb with a greenish pistol grip. He held it up toward the archeologist. “This is a shockcomb. A hearing-sensitive, brain-damaged, spastic neurotic with advanced glaucoma and a migraine could fire expertly using this thing.”
“Despite the unfortunate characterization, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the doctor, taking it from Gordon’s hand. “It’s incredibly light.”