Snorting tugs nudged the Heiwa Maru into place. Lines snaked out from the ship. Longshoremen secured them to bollards. Down came the gangplank. Bill, Barbara, and the reporters and cameramen strode down the pier to meet the ship and its important passenger.
“Permission to come aboard?” the governor called to the Japanese skipper at the far end of the gangplank.
“Permission granted,” the man said in good English. He added, “Have no fear, sir. It will bear your weight.”
“I expected it would.” Onto the Heiwa Maru Bill went. The skipper bowed. Bill bowed back. As he straightened, a Japanese sailor snapped a photo of him.
Bill walked toward the pavilion. The saffron cloth on one side folded back and the Yeti Lama came out to greet him. “Hello, Governor Williamson,” the holy man said, his English more hesitant than the skipper’s. He wore a loincloth and cape of scarlet silk to show his rank. Two other yetis, both in saffron loincloths and capes, followed him. So did two saffron-robed human monks. The big folk never could have used ordinary cabins.
The Yeti Lama was someone Bill could look up to — literally. He overtopped the Governor by six inches. Anyone seeing them side by side could tell they were of the same kind but different races. In little-people terms, they might have been Mongol and Swede. The yeti’s pelt was browner than the sasquatch’s; he had broader cheekbones and lower brow ridges.
“Welcome, your Holiness,” Bill said. “Welcome to America. Welcome to Jefferson.”
“I thank you so much.” The Yeti Lama bowed and held his hands in front of himself with palms pressed together. Bill imitated the gesture. The newcomer looked to be in his mid-forties, near the Governor’s age. Along with many pious members of his folk, he’d fled into exile when the Chinese invaded his mountainous Tibetan homeland twenty years before.
One reason more reporters weren’t here was that Washington and Beijing had been thick as thieves since Nixon went to China. To the State Department, the Yeti Lama was just another tourist. Bill had all sorts of reasons for feeling otherwise.
A newshound who worked for a paper in Redding called, “Your Holiness, can you tell us why you came to Jefferson in particular?”
“Oh, yes. It is my pleasure.” The Yeti Lama’s English wasn’t perfect, but he used what he had. “Jefferson in all the world is where I most feel a sense of, ah, communing—”
“Of community, you mean, sir?” Bill said helpfully.
The Yeti Lama smiled. His teeth were large and broad. One bore a gold crown. “I thank you. Yes, that is the word. A sense of community. You have in Jefferson mountains, and I of course grew up in mountains. Yours are small, but that is a trifle.”
“We think they’re pretty good-sized.” Bill waved east, toward the Klamath Mountains serrating the horizon.
“I hear many have trees all the way up to top.” The Yeti Lama smiled again, mischievously now. “Next to the Himalayas, that makes them foothills. Is right word, foothills?”
“Foothills is the word, yeah. You’ve got me there,” Bill allowed.
“But this is not important,” the Yeti Lama said. “It is only land. People on land, they are what matters. You here in America, you here in Jefferson especially, you set example for the world. Here you have small folk and large, living together in happiness and harmony. Here you have one of a large race, chosen peacefully, freely, by large and small to lead all. Not like this in land I come from. Chinese call us xueren — snowmen.” His heavy features twisted in sorrow, or perhaps anger. “They treat us abominable — ah, abominably.”
“I’m not even Jefferson’s first sasquatch Governor, either,” Bill said. State pride counted. The less said about earlier times, when this land was squabbled over by Russia and Spain, then split between California and Oregon, the better. But little people with guns hadn’t hunted sasquatches for the fun of it in more than a hundred years. That was progress, any way you looked at it. Sasquatches had guns of their own now, too.
And, when you thought about what China was doing to yetis and Tibetans alike, Jefferson had to look like heaven on earth by comparison. No wonder the Yeti Lama wanted to call here.
Barbara said, “Can we all get together for pictures to show this harmony?” She turned to the Heiwa Maru’s skipper. “Captain, please join us with some of your men. Everyone gets along in Jefferson.”
“That’s right,” Bill said. “Next month I’m going up to Port Orford to visit a businessman there. He moved to Jefferson from Japan more than fifteen years ago.”
The captain spoke in Japanese. He and three sailors joined the Yeti Lama, his retinue, the sasquatch Governor, and the blond publicist. Barbara was taller than any of the crewmen from the Heiwa Maru or the human Buddhist monks, but even she barely came up to Bill’s chest.
Well, that was the point of this exercise, wasn’t it? Sure it was. Big people and little people could all get along together. Different kinds of big people could, too. And so could different kinds of little people, even if their countries had fought a ferocious war only half a lifetime earlier.
The skipper’s wrinkles and bald spot said he was old enough to have fought for Japan against the USA. But, again, even if he had, so what? He was here in Jefferson in charge of the Peace Ship. He’d brought the Yeti Lama, one of the greatest peace symbols in the whole world (except perhaps China). That was what counted.
“Smile, everybody!” a cameraman called. Everybody did.