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spinning. This he could understand, after a fashion.
Among his kind the mating battles were always preceded
by a psychic assault from the challenger. This was somehow
similar, and he possessed the equipment to join it.
He could not tell exactly what it was doing inside his head,
but he struck at it with all of his hate, with the desire to rend.
And then it was gone.
He fell across the carcass of the dog, teeth still bared,
slipping back into an earlier mode of existence. Where was
the other? When would he strike? He ranged with all of his
senses about the area, waiting. But there was nothing there.
After a long while, the tension flowed away. Nothing was
coming. Whatever it had been, it was not one of his own
kind, and it had not been a battle challenge that he had felt. It
troubled him that there was something in the area which he
did not understand. He turned toward the north and began
walking.
Mercy Spender and Charles Fisher, who sat at either side
of him, reached to catch hold of Walter Sands's shoulders as
he slumped forward.
"Get him up onto the table - quick!" Elizabeth said.
"He just fainted," Fisher said. "I think we ought to lower .
his head."
"Listen to his chest! I was still with him. I felt his heart
stop."
"Oh, my! Somebody give us a hand!"
They moved him onto the table and listened for a heart-
beat, but there was none. Mercy began hammering on his
chest.
"You know what you're doing?" Ironbear asked her.
"Yes. I started nursing training once," she grunted. "I
remember this part. Somebody send for help."
Elizabeth crossed to the intercom.
"I didn't know he had a bad heart," Fisher said.
"I don't think he did either," Mancin replied, "or we'd
probably have learned that when we gave each other a look.
The shock when the thing struck back must have gotten to
him. We shouldn't have let Ironbear talk us into going in."
"Not his fault," Mercy said, still working.
"And we all agreed," Fisher said. "The time seemed
perfect, while it was remembering. And we did learn some-
thing..."
Elizabeth reached Tedders. They grew silent as they lis-
tened to her relay the information.
"Just a moment ago. Just a moment ago," Fisher said,
"and he was with us."
"It seems as if he still is," Mancin said.
"We're going to have to try to reach Singer," Elizabeth
said, crossing the room and taking her seat again.
"That's going to be hard - and what do we really have to
tell him?" Fisher asked.
"Everything we know," Ironbear said,
"And who knows what form it would take, that strange
state of mind he's in?" Mercy asked. "We might be better
off simply calling for that force Mancin suggested."
"Maybe we should do both," Elizabeth said. "But if we
don't try helping him ourselves, then Walter's attack was for
nothing."
"I'll be with you," Mercy said, "when we do. Some-
body's going to have to take over here pretty soon, though,
till the medics trip through. I'm getting tired."
"I'll try," Fisher said. "Let me watch how you do it."
"I'd better learn, too," Mancin said, moving nearer. "I do
still seem to feel his presence, weakly. Maybe that's a good
sign."
Sounds of hammering continued downstairs, from where a
shattered wall was being replaced.
He crossed the water above a small cascade, knowing
things would be relatively solid at its top. Then he moved
along the southern talus slope, leaving a clear trail. He
entered Black Rock Canyon and continued into it for per-
haps half a mile. The rain came down steadily upon him and
the wind made a singing sound high overhead. He saw a
cluster of rocks come loose from the northern wall far
ahead, sliding and bumping to the floor of the canyon,
splashing into the stream.
Keeping watch on driftwood heaps, he located a stick
sufficient for his purpose. He walked near the water's edge
for a time, then headed up onto a long rocky shelf where his
footprints soon vanished. He immediately began to back-
track, walking in his own prints until he stood beside the
water again. He entered it then, probing with the stick for
quicksand pockets, and made his way back to the canyon's
mouth.
Emerging, he crossed the main stream to its north bank,
turned to his right and continued on along Canyon del
Muerto toward Standing Cow Ruin, concealing his trail as he
went, for the next half-mile. He found that he liked the
feeling of being alone again in this gigantic gorge. The stream
was wider here, deeper. His mind went back to the story he
had heard as a boy, of the time of the fear of the flooding of
the world. Who was that old singer? Up around Kayenta,
back in the 1920s... The old man had been struck by
lightning and left for dead. But he had recovered several
days later, bearing a purported message from the gods, a
message that the world was about to be flooded. In that
normal laws and taboos no longer apply to a person who has
lived through a lightning-stroke, he was paid special heed.
People. believed him and fled with their flocks to Black
Mountain. But the water did not come, and the cornfields of
those who fled dried and died under the summer sun. A
shaman with a vision that did not pay off.
Billy chuckled. What was it the Yellowclouds had called
him?" Azaethlin" - "medicine man." We aren't always that
reliable, he thought, given to the same passions and misap-
prehensions as others. Medicine man, heal thyself.
He started past a "wish pile" of rocks and juniper twigs,
halted, went back and added a stone to it. Why not? It was
there.
In time, he came to Standing Cow Ruin, one of the largest
ruins in the canyons. It stood against the north wall beneath
a huge overhang. The remains of its walls covered an area
more than four hundred feet long, built partly around 'im-
mense boulders. It, too, went back to the Great Pueblo days,
containing three kivas and many rooms. But there were also
Navajo log-and-earth storage bins and Navajo paintings
along with those of the Anasazi. He went nearer, to view
again the white, yellow and black renderings of people with
arms upraised, the humpbacked archer, circles, circles and
more circles, the animals.... And there, high up above a
ledge to his left, was one of purely Navajo creation, and
most interesting to him. Mounted, cloaked, wearing flat-
brimmed hats, carrying rifles, was a procession of Span-
iards, two of them firing at an Indian. It was believed to
represent the soldiers of Lieutenant Anthony Narbona who
fought the Navajos at Massacre Cave in 1805. And below
that, at the base of the cliff, were other horsemen and a
mounted U.S. cavalryman of the 1860s. As he watched, they
seemed to move.
He rubbed his eyes. They really were moving. And it
seemed as if he had just heard gunshots. The figures were
three-dimensional, solid now, riding across a sandy waste....
"Always down on us, aren't you?" he said to them and to
the world at large.
He heard curses in Spanish. When he lowered his eyes to
the other figure, he heard a trumpet sounding a cavalry
charge. The great rock walls seemed to melt away about him
and the waters grew silent. He was staring now at a totally
different landscape - bleak, barren and terribly bright. He
raised his eyes to a sun which blazed almost whitely from
overhead. A part of him stood aside, wondering how this
thing could be. But the rest of him was engaged in the vision.
He seemed to hear the sound of a drum as he watched
them ride across that alien desert. It was increasing steadily
in tempo. Then, when it had reached an almost frantic
throbbing, the sands erupted before the leading horseman
and a large, translucent, triangular shape reared suddenly
before him, leaning forward to enfold both horse and rider
with slick membranous wings. More of them exploded into
view along the column, shrugging sands which yellowed the
air,' falling upon the other riders and their mounts, envelop-
ing them, dragging them downward to settle as quivering,
gleaming, rocklike lumps on the barren landscape. Even the
cavalryman, now brandishing his saber, met a similar fate, to
the notes of the trumpet and the drum.
Of course.
What other fate might be expected when one encountered
a krel., let alone a whole crowd of them? He had given up
quickly on any notion of bringing one back to the Institute.
Two close calls, and he had decided that they were too
damned dangerous. That world of Cat's had bred some very
vicious creatures....
Cat. Speak of the Devil... There was Cat crossing the
plain, lithe power personified....
Again, amid a shower of sand, the krel rose. Cat drew
back, rearing, forelimbs lengthening, slashing. They came
together and Cat struggled to draw away....
With the sound of a single drumbeat, the scene faded. He
was staring at anthropomorphic figures, horses and the large
Standing Cow. He heard the sounds of the water at his back.
Peculiar, but he had known stranger things over the years,
and he had always felt that a kind of power dwelled in the old
places. Something about this manifestation of it seemed
heartening, and so he took it as a good omen. He chanted a
brief song of thanks for the vision and turned to continue
along his way. The shadows had darkened perceptibly and
the rock walls were even higher now, and for a time he
seemed to regard them through a mist of rainbows.
Going back. A part of him still stood apart, but it seemed
even smaller and farther away now. Parts of his life between
childhood and now had become dreamlike, shimmering, and
he had not noticed it happening. He began recalling seldom
used names for things around him which he had thought long
forgotten. The rain increased in intensity off to his right,
though his way was still sheltered by the canyon wall. A
trick of lightning seemed to show momentarily a reddish
path stretching on before him.
"A krel, a krel," he chanted as he walked, not knowing
why. Free a cat to kill a Stragean, find a krel to kill a cat...
What then? He chuckled. No answer to the odd vision. His
mind played games with the rock shapes around him. The
Plains Indians had made mare of a cult out of the Rock
people than his people had. But now it seemed he could
almost catch glimpses of the presence within the forms. Who
was that bellicano philosopher he had liked? Spinoza. Yes.
Everything alive, all of it connected, inside and out, all over.
Very Indian.
"Hah la tse kis!" he called out, and the echo came back to
him.
The zigzag lightning danced above the high cliff's edge and
when its afterglow had faded he realized that night 'was
coming on. He increased his pace. He felt it would be good
to be past Many Cherry Canyon by the time full darkness
fell.
The ground dropped away abruptly, and he made his way
across a bog, probing before him with his stick. He cleaned
his boots then before continuing. He ran a hand across the
surface of a rock, feeling its moist smoothnesses and rough-
nesses. Then he licked his thumb and stared again into the
shadowy places.
Moments came and went like dark tides among the stones
as he strode along, half-glimpsed images giving rise to free
association, racial and personal.
It seemed to sail toward him out of the encroaching
darkness, its prow cutting a V across his line of sight. It was
Shiprock in miniature, that outcrop ahead. As he swung
along it grew larger and it filled his mind....
Irresistibly, he was thrown back. Again the sky was blue
glass above him. The wind was sharp and cold, the rocks
rough, the going progressively steeper. Soon it would be
time to rope up. They were approaching the near-vertical
heights....
He looked back at her, climbing steadily, her face flushed.
She was a good climber, had done it in many places. But this
was something special, a forbidden test....
He gnashed his teeth and muttered, "Fool!"
They were climbing tse bi dahi, the rock with wings. The
white men called it Shiprock. It stood 7,178 feet in height
and had only been climbed once, some two hundred years
earlier, and many had died attempting the ascent. It was a
sacred place, and it was now forbidden to climb upon it.
And Dora had liked climbing. True, she had never sug-
gested this, but she had gone along with him. Yes, it had
been his idea, not hers.
In his mind's eye, he saw their diminutive figures upon its
face, reaching, hauling themselves higher, reaching. His
idea. Tell him why. Tell Hastehogan, god of night, why - so
that he may laugh and send a black wind out of the north to
blow upon you.
Why?
He had wanted to show her that he did not fear the
People's taboo, that he was better, wiser, more sophisticated
than the People. He had wanted to show her that he was not
really one of them in spirit, that he was free like her, that he
was above such things, that he laughed at them. It did not
occur to him until much later that such a thing did not matter
to her, that he had been dancing a dance of fears for himself
only, that she had never thought him inferior, that his action
had been unnecessary, unwarranted, pathetic. But he had
needed her. She was a new life in a new, frightening time,
and -
When he heard her cry out he turned as rapidly as he
could and reached out for her. Eight inches, perhaps, sepa-
rated their fingertips. And then she was gone, falling. He
saw her hit, several times.
Half blinded with tears, he had cursed the mountains and
cursed the gods and cursed himself. It was over. He had
nothing now. He was nothing....
He cursed again, his eyes darting over the terrain to
where, with a flick of its tail, he would have sworn a coyote
had stood a moment ago, laughing, before it vanished into
the shadows beyond the rise. Fragments of the chants from
the old Coyoteway fire ritual came to him:
I will walk in the places where the black clouds come at
me.
I will walk in the places where the rain falls upon me.
I will walk in the places where the lightning flashes at
me.
I will walk in the places where the dark fogs move about
me.
I will walk where the rainbows drift and the thunders roll.
Amid dew and pollen will I walk.
They are upon my feet. They are upon my legs....
When he reached the spot where he thought he had seen
the creature, he searched quickly in the dim light and
thought that he detected a pawprint. Not important, though.
It meant something. What, he could not say.
He is walking in the water....
On the trail beyond the mountains.
The medicine is ready.
... It is his water,
a white coyote's water.
The medicine is ready.
As he passed Many Cherry Canyon he was certain that
Cat was on his way. Let it be. This thing seemed destined, if
not with Cat at his back then in some other fashion. Let it be.
Things were looking different now. The world had been
twisted slightly out of focus.
Dark, dark. But his eyes adjusted with unusual clarity. He
would pass the cave of the Blue Bull. He would go on. He
would take his rations as he walked. He would not rest. He
would create another false way at Twin Trail Canyon. After
that, he would obscure his passage even further. He would
go on. He would walk in the water.
Come after me, Cat. The easy part is almost over.
Weak flash. The wind and the water swallow the thunder.
He is laughing and his face is wet.
The black medicine lifts me in his hand....
The Third Day
WHEN THE CALL CAME
through that Walter Sands was dead, having failed to re-
spond to treatment, Mercy Spender said a prayer, Fisher
looked depressed and Mancin looked out of the window.
Ironbear poured a cup of coffee, and for a long while no one
said anything.
Finally, "I just want to go home," Fisher said.
"But we reached Singer," Elizabeth replied.
"If you want to call it that," he replied. "He's gone
around the bend. He's... somewhere else. His mind is
running everything through a filter of primitive symbolism. I
can't understand him, and I'm sure he can't understand me.
He thinks he's deep under the earth, traveling along some
ancient path."
"He is," Ironbear said. "He is walking the way of the
shaman."
Fisher snorted.
"What do you know about it?"
"Enough to understand some," he answered. "I got inter-
ested in Indian things again when my father died. I even
remembered some stuff I'd forgotten for a long time. For all
of his education and travels, Singer doesn't think in com-
pletely modern terms. In fact, he doesn't even think like a
modern Indian. He grew up in almost the last possible period
and place where someone could live in something close to a
neolithic environment. So he's been to the stars. A part of
him's always been back in those crazy canyons. And he was
a shaman - a real one - once. He set out several days ago to
go back to that part of himself, intentionally, because he
thought it might help him. Now it's got hold of him, after all
those years of repression, and it's coming back with a
vengeance. That's what I think. I've been reading tapes on
the Navajos ever since I learned about him, in all of my
spare moments here. They're a lot different from other
Indians, even from their neighbors. But they do have certain
things in common with the rest of us - and the shaman's
journey often goes underground when things are really
tough."
" 'Us'?" Mancin said, smiling.
"Slip of the tongue," he answered.
"So you're saying this vicious alien beast is chasing a
crazy Indian," Mercy stated. "And we just learned that the
authorities won't go into those canyons after them because
the place is too treacherous in the weather they're having.
Sounds as if there's nothing we can do. Even if we coordi-
nate as a group mind, the beast seems able to strike back at
us pretty hard - and Singer can't understand us. Maybe we
should go home and let them work it out between them-
selves."
"It would be different if there were something we could
do," Fisher said, moving to stand beside Ironbear. "I'm
beginning to see how you feel about the guy, but what the
hell. If you're dead, lie down."
"We could attack the beast," Ironbear said softly.
"Too damned alien," Mancin said. "We don't have the
key to his mind. He'd just slap us away like he did last time.
Besides, this mass-mind business seems very risky. Not too
much has really been done with it, and who knows how we
might mess ourselves up? In any kind of cost-benefit analy-
sis of it there's little to gain against unknown risks."
Ironbear rose to his feet and turned toward the door.
"Fuck your cost-benefit analysis," he said as he left the
room.
Fisher started after him, but Elizabeth caught his eye.
"Let him go," she said. "He's too angry. You don't want
a fight with a friend. There's nothing you can say to him
now."
Fisher halted near the door.
"I couldn't reach him then, can't reach him now," he said.
"I know he's mad, but... I don't know. I've got a feeling
he could do something foolish."
"Like what?" Mancin asked.
"I don't know. That's just it. Maybe I'd better..."
"He'll brood for a while," Mancin said, and then come
back and try to talk us into something. Maybe we ought to
agree to try to reach Singer and get him to head for some
safe spot where he can be picked up. That might work."
"I've got a feeling it won't, but it's the best suggestion so
far. How'll we know where a good spot is?"
Mancin thought for a time, then, "That friend of Singer's,
the ranger," he said, "Yellowcloud. He'd know. Where's the
printout with his number on it?"
"Ironbear had it," Elizabeth said.
"It's not on his chair. Not on the table either."
"You don't think... ?"
Ironbear, wait! Elizabeth broadcast. We're going to help!
Come back!
But there was no response.
They headed for the stair.
He was nowhere on the premises, and they guessed that
he had tripped out from one of the downstairs boxes. They
obtained the number from Information, but no one answered
at Yellowcloud's phce. It was not until half an hour later,
while they were eating, that someone noticed that a burst-
gun was missing from the guard room.
PETROGAFFITI
COYOTE STEALS VOICES FROM ALL LIVING THINGS
Nothing was capable of movement following Coyote's
theft of sound from the world. Not until he was persuaded to
call the Sun and Moon to life by giving a great shout and
restoring noise to the land
NAYENEZGANI CONTINUES CIVIC IMPROVEMENT PLAN
At Tse'a haildehe', where a piece of rock brought up from
the underworld was in the habit of drawing itself apart to
form a pair of cliffs and closing again whenever travelers
passed between. Nayenezgani today solved the problem by
the ingenious use of a piece of elk's horn
2-RABBIT, 7-WIND. HOME TEAM SUCCESSFUL.
Quetzalcoatl, arriving this morning in Tula, was heard to
remark, "Every man has his own rabbit." This was taken as
a good sign by the local population, who responded with
tortillas, flowers, incense, butterflies and snakes
Commercial traveler,
passing through
KIT CARSON GO HOME
I KILLED THREE DEER ACROSS THE WAY
BET THEY WERE LAME
SINGERS DO IT IN COLORED SANDS
FOUR APACHES KILLED A NAVAJO NEAR HERE
THAT'S HOW MANY
IT TAKES
SPIDER WOMAN DEMONSTRATES NEW ART
"I believe I'll call it textiles," she said, when questioned
concerning
SOMEDAY VON DANIKEN WILL SAY
THIS IS AN ASTRONAUT
(place here eye1.tif)
PORT SUMNER SUCKS
CHANGING WOMAN PUZZLED BY SONS' BEHAVIOR
"I suppose they get it from their father," she was heard to
say, when told of the latest
BILLY BLACKHORSE SINGER AND
HIS CHINDI PASSED THIS WAY
O-SINGER, O-CHINDI, AT END OF FIRST HALF
BLACK-GOD IS WATCHING
THE YELLOW MEDICINE LIFTS ME IN HIS HAND
WHEN IRONBEAR OCCURRED
within the trip-box in Yellowcloud's home, the first thing to
catch and hold his attention was a shotgun in the other man's
hands, pointed at his midsection from a distance of approxi-
mately six feet.
"Drop that gun you're carrying," Yellowcloud said.
"Sure. Don't be nervous," Ironbear answered, letting the
weapon fall. "Why are you pointing that thing at me?"
"Are you Indian?"
"Yes "
"Ha'at'i'i'sh biniinaa yi'ni'ya?"
Ironbear shook his head.
"I don't understand you."
"You're not Navajo."
"Never said I was. Matter of fact, I'm Sioux. Can't talk
that either, though. Except maybe a few words."
"I'll say it in English: Why'd you come here?"
"I told you on the phone. I've got to find Singer - or the
thing that's after him."
"I think maybe you're what's after him. It's easy to get rid
of bodies around here, especially this time of year."
Ironbear felt his brow grow moist as he read the other
man's thoughts.
"Hold on," he said. "I want to help the guy. But it's a long
story and I don't know how much time we've got."
Yellowcloud motioned toward a chair with the barrel of
his weapon.
"Have a seat. Roll up the rug first, though, and kick it out
of the way. I'd hate to mess up a Two Gray Hills."
As he complied, Ironbear probed hard, trying to penetrate
beyond the stream of consciousness. When he found what
he was seeking, he was not certain he could wrap his tongue
around the syllables, but he tried.
"What did you say?" Yellowcloud 'asked, the weapon's
barrel wavering slightly.
He repeated it, Yellowcloud's secret name.
"How'd you know that?" the other asked him.
"I read it in your mind. I'm a paranormal. That's how I
got involved in this thing in the first place."
"Like a medicine man?"
"I suppose in the old days I would have been one.
Anyway, there was a group of us and we were tracking the
thing that's tracking Singer. Now the others want to quit, but
I won't. That's why I want your help."
The rain continued as he talked. When the callbox buzzed,
Yellowcloud switched it off. Later he got them coffee.
Running now, into the bowels of the earth, it seemed.
Darker and darker. Soon he must slow his pace. The world
had almost completely faded about him, save for the
sounds - of wind, water, his drumming feet. Slow now. Yes.
Now.
Ahead. Something in that stand of trees. Not moving. A
light.
He advanced cautiously.
It appeared to be - But no. That was impossible. Yet.
There it was. A trip-box. He was positive that it was against
regulations to install one in the canyon.
He moved nearer. It certainly looked like a trip-box, there
among the trees. He advanced and looked inside.
A strange one, though. No slot for the credit strip. No way
to punch coordinates. He entered and studied it more
closely. Just an odd red-and-white-flecked button. Without
thinking, he moved his thumb forward and pushed it.
A mantle of rainbows swirled before his eyes and was
gone. He looked inside. Nothing had changed. He had not
been transported anywhere. Yet -
A pale light suffused the canyon now, as if a full moon
hung overhead. But there was no moon.
He looked again at the box, and for the first time saw the
sight on its side. SPIRIT WORLD, it said. He shrugged and
walked away from it. Save for the light, nothing seemed
altered.
After some twenty paces, he turned and looked back. The
box was gone. The stand of trees stood silvery to his rear,
empty of any unnatural presence. To his right, the water
gleamed in its rippling progress. The rain which fell into it
seemed to be descending in slow motion, more a full-bodied
mist than a downpour. And the next flash of lightning
seemed a stylized inscription on the heavens.
Plainly marked before him now was the trail he must
follow. He set his foot upon it and the wind chanted a
staccato song of guidance as he went.
He moved quickly, approaching a bend in the canyon;
more slowly then, as his slope steepened and narrowed. He
dropped to a wider shelf as his way curved, hurried again as
he followed it.
As he made the turn, he saw outlined to his right, ahead, a
human figure standing on the opposite bank of the stream, at
the very tip of a raised spit of land which projected out into
the water. It was a man, and he seemed somehow familiar,
and he had a kind of light about him which Billy found
disturbing.
He slowed as he drew nearer, for the man was staring
directly at him. For a moment, he was not certain how to
address him, for he could not recall the circumstances of
their acquaintance, and a meeting here struck him as pecu-
liar. Then suddenly he remembered, but by then the other
had already greeted him.
He halted and acknowledged the call.
"You are far from home," he said then, "from where I met
you just the other day, in the mountains, herding sheep."
"Yes, I am," the other replied, "for I died that same
evening."
A chill came across the back of Billy's neck.
"I did nothing to you," he said. "Why do you return to
trouble me?"
"I have not returned to trouble you. In fact, I have not
returned at all. It is you who have found your way to this
place. That makes it different. I will do you no harm."
"I do not understand."
"I told you to follow a twisted way," the old singer said,
"and I see that you have. Very twisted. That is good."
"Not entirely," Billy told him. "My chindi is still at my
back."
"Your chindi turned right instead of left, following the
false trail into Black Rock Canyon. You are still safe for a
time."
"That's something, anyway," Billy said. "Maybe I can do
it again."
"Perhaps. But what is it exactly that you are doing?"
"I am following a trail."
"And it brought you here. Do you think that we have met
by accident?"
"I guess not. Do you know why we met?"
"I know only that I would like to teach you an old song of
power."
"That's fine. I'll take all the help I can get," said Billy,
glancing back along the way. "I hope it's not a real long one,
though."
"It is not," the old singer told him. "Listen carefully now,
for I can only sing it three times for you. To sing it four times
is to make it work."
"Yes."
"Very well. Here is the song...."
The old man began chanting a song of the calling of
Ikne'etso, which Billy followed, understood and had learned
by the third time he heard it. When the singer was finished he
thanked him, and then asked, "When should I use this
song?"
"You will know," the other answered. "Follow your
twisted way now."
Billy bade him good-bye and continued along the northern
slope. He considered looking back, but this time he did not
do it. He trekked through the sparkling canyon and images
of other worlds and of his life in cities rose and mingled with
those about him until it seemed as if his entire life was being
melted down and stirred together here. But all of the asso-
ciated feelings were also swirled together so that it was an
emotional white noise which surrounded him.
He passed a crowd of standing stones and they all seemed
to have faces, their mouths open, singing windsongs. They
were all stationary, but at the far end of the group something
came forward out of darkness.
It was a man, a very familiar man, who stood leaning
against the last windsinger, smiling. He was garbed accord-
ing to the latest fashion, his hair was styled, his hands well
manicured.
"Hello, Billy," he said in English, and the voice was his
own.
He saw then that the man was himself, as he could have
been had he never come back to this place.
"That's right. I am your shadow," the other said. "I am
the part of yourself you chose to neglect, to thrust aside
when you elected to return to the blanket because you were
afraid of being me."
"Would I have liked being you?"
The other shrugged.
"I think so. Time and chance, that's all. You and Dora
would eventually have moved to a city after you'd proved to
your own satisfaction how free you'd become. You took a
chance and failed. If you'd succeeded you would have come
this route. Time and chance. Eight inches of space. Such is
the stuff lives are bent by."
"You are saying that if I'd proved how free I had become I
still wouldn't really have been free?"
"What's free?" said the other, a faint green light beginning
to play about his head. "To travel all good paths, I suppose.
And you restricted yourself. I am a way that you did not go,
an important way. I might have been a part of you, a saving
part, but you slighted me in your pride that you knew best."
He smiled again, and Billy saw that he had grown fangs.
"I know you," Billy said then. "You are my chindi, my
real chindi, aren't you?"
"And if I am," the other said, "and if you think me evil,
you see me so for all of the wrong reasons. I am your
negative self. Not better, not worse, only unrealized. You
summoned me a long time ago by running from a part of
yourself. You cannot destroy a negation."
"Let's find out," Billy said, and he raised the laser snub-
gun and triggered it.
The flash of light passed through his double with no visible
effect.
"That is not the way to deal with me," said the other.
"Then the hell with you! Why should I deal with you at
all?"
"Because I can destroy you."
"Then what are you waiting for?"
"I am not quite strong enough yet. So keep running, keep
regressing into the primitive and I will grow in strength as
you do. Then, when we meet again..." The other dropped
suddenly to all fours and took on the semblance of Cat,
single eye glistening, "... I will be your adversary by any
name."
Billy drew the tazer and fired it. It vanished within the
other's body, and the other became his double again and
rose, lunging at him, the dart and cable falling to the ground
and rewinding automatically.
Billy swung his left fist and it seemed to connect with
something. His double fell back upon the ground. Billy
turned and began running.
"Yes, flee. Give me strength," it called out after him.
When he looked back, Billy saw only a faint greenish glow
near the place of the windsingers. He continued to hurry,
until it vanished with another turning of the way. The voices
of the windsingers faded. He slowed again.
The canyon widened once more; the stream was broader
and flowed more slowly. He seemed to see distorted faces,
both human and animal, within the water.
He had felt himself the object of scrutiny for some time
now. But the feeling was growing stronger, and he cast
about, seeking its source among fugitive forms amid shadow
and water.
Cat?
No reply, which could mean anything. But no broadcast
apprehensions either - unless they came on only to be lost
amid the emotional turbulence.
Cat? If it is you, let's have it out. Any time now. I'm ready
whenever you are.
Then he passed a sharp projection of the canyon wall and
he knew that it was not Cat whose presence he had felt. For
now he beheld the strange entity which regarded him, and its
appearance meshed with the sensation.
It looked like a giant totem pole. His people had never
made totem poles. They were a thing of the people of the
Northwest. Yet this one seemed somehow appropriate to the
moment if incongruous to the place. It towered, and it bore
four faces - and possibly a shadowy fifth, at the very top.
There were the countenances of two women, one heavy-
featured, one lean, and two men, one black and one white.
And above them it seemed that a smiling masculine face
hovered, smokelike. All of their eyes were fixed upon him,
and he knew that he beheld no carving but a thing alive.
"Billy Blackhorse Singer," a neuter-gendered voice ad-
dressed him.
"I hear you," he replied.
"You must halt your journey here," it stated.
"Why?" he asked.
"Your mission has been accomplished. You have nothing
to gain by further flight."
"Who are you?" he said.
"We are your guardian spirits. We wish to preserve you
from your pursuer. Climb the wall here. Wait at the top. You
will be met there after a time and borne to safety."
Billy's gaze shifted away from the spirit tower to regard '
the ground at his feet and the prospect before him.
"But I still see my trail out within this canyon," he said
finally. "I should not depart it here."
"It is a false trail."
"No," he said. "This much I know: I must follow it to its
end."
"That way lies death."
He was silent again for a time. Then, ъ Still must I follow
it," he said. "Some things are more important than others.
Even than death."
"What are these things? Why must you follow this trail?"
He took several deep breaths and continued to stare at the
ground, as if considering it for the first time.
"I await myself at its ending," he said at last, "as I should
be. If I do not follow this trail, it will be a different sort of
death."
"Worse, I think," he added.
"We may not be able to help you if you go on."
"Then that is as it must be," he said. "Thank you for
trying."
"We hear you," said the totem as it sank slowly into the
ground, face by face sliding from view beneath stone, until
only the final, shadowy one remained for an instant, smiling,
it seemed, at him. "Gamble, then," it seemed to whisper,
and then it, too, was gone.
He rubbed his eyes, but nothing changed. He went on.
...I walk on an invisible arch,
feet ready to bear me anywhere.
outcoming fra thplatz fwaters flwng awa thheadtopped tre
andriving now to each where five now four apartapart horse
on the mountain ghoti in thrivr selves towar bodystake like a
longflwung water its several bays to go and places of ourown
heads to sort sisters in the sky old men beneath the ground
while coyote trail ahead blackbrid shadow overall and
brotherone within the chalce of minds a partapartatrapatrap
"My God!" Elizabeth said, sinking back into her chair.
Alex Mancin poured a glass of water and drained it.
"Yes," said Fisher, massaging his temples.
Mercy Spender commenced a coughing spell which lasted
for close to half a minute.
"Now what?." Fisher said softly.
Mancin shook his head.
"I don't know."
"Ironbear was right about his thinking he's in another
world," Elizabeth said. "We're not going to move him."
"The hell with that," Fisher said. "We tried, and we got
through, even if he did turn us into a totem. That's not
what's bothering me, and you know it."
"He was there," Mercy said, "in the spirit."
"Somebody call the hospital and make sure Sands is really
dead," Fisher said.
"I don't see how they could be mistaken, Charles,"
Elizabeth said. "But Mercy is right. He was with us, some-
how, and it seems as if he's still somewhere near."
"Yes," Mercy put in. "He is here."
"You don't need the spirit hypothesis for what I think
happened," Mancin finally stated.
"What do you mean?" Elizabeth asked.
"Just the memory of how he died. We were all of us
together, functioning as that single entity of which we under-
stand so little. I think that the trauma of his death served to
produce something like a holograph of his mind within our
greater consciousness. When we are apart like this it is
weakened, but we all bear fainter versions, which is why we
seem to have this sense of his presence. When we recreated
the larger entity just now, the recombination of the traces
was sufficient to reproduce a total functioning replica of his
- mind as it was."
"You see him as a special kind of memory when we are in
that state?" Elizabeth asked. "Will it fade eventually, do
you think?"
"Who can say?"
"So what do we do now?" Fisher asked.
"Check on Singer, I suppose, at regular intervals," Man-
cin said, -and renew the invitation to be picked up if he'll
climb to some recognizable feature."
"He'll just keep refusing. You saw how fixed that mental
set of his was."
"Probably - unless something happens to change it. You
never know. But I've been thinking about some of the things
Ironbear said. He's owed the chance, and we seem the only
ones who can give it to him."
"Okay by me. It seems harmless enough. Just don't ask
me to go after that alien beast again. Once was enough."
"I'm not too anxious to touch it myself." '
"What about Ironbear?"
"What about him?"
"Shouldn't we try to get in touch and let him know what
we're doing?"
"What for? He's mad. He'll just shut us out. Let him call
us when he's ready."
"I'd hate to see him do anything foolish."
"Like what?"
"Like go after that thing and find it."
Mancin nodded.
"Maybe you're right. I still don't think he'd listen, but -"
"He might listen to me," Fisher said, "but I'm not sure I
can reach him myself at this distance."
"Why don't we locate the nearest trip-box to that canyon
and go there?" Elizabeth said. "It will probably make every-
thing easier."
"Aren't Indian reservations dry?" Mercy asked.
"Let's tell Tedders and get our stuff together. We'll meet
back here in fifteen minutes," Fisher said.
"Walter thinks it's a good idea, too," Mercy said.
There is danger where I walk,
in my moccasins, leggings, shirt
of black obsidian.
My belt is a black arrowsnake.
Black snakes coil and rear about my head.
The zigzag lightning flashes from my feet,
my knees, my speaking tongue.
I wear a disk of pollen upon my head.
The snakes eat it.
There is danger where I walk.
I am become something frightful.
I am whirlwind and gray bear.
The lightning plays about me.
There is danger where I walk.
"I dropped him back here," Yellowcloud said, jabbing at
the map, and Ironbear nodded, staring down at the outline of
the long, sprawled canyons.
The rain, growing sleetlike, pelted against the floatcar in
which they sat, parked near the canyon's rim. Reflexively,
Ironbear raised the collar of his borrowed jacket. Pretty
good fit. Lucky we're both the same size, he decided.
"I watched for a time," Yellowcloud continued, "to make
sure he got down okay. He did, and I saw that he headed east
then." His finger moved along the map and halted again.
"Now, at this point," he went on, "he could have turned
right into Black Rock Canyon or he could have kept on along
Canyon del Muerto proper. What do you think?"
"Me? How should I know?"
"You're the witch-man. Can't you hold a stick over the
map, or something like that, and tell?"
Ironbear studied the map more closely.
"Not exactly," he said. "I can feel him out there, down
there. But a rock wall's just a rock wall to me, whether I'm
seeing it through his eyes or my own. However..." He
placed his finger on the map and moved it. "I'd guess he
continued along del Muerto. He wanted lots of room, and
Black Rock seems to dead-end too soon."
"Good, good. I feel he went that way, too. He chose a
spot before it on purpose, I'd say. I'll bet the trail gets
confused at the junction." Yellowcloud folded the map,
turned off the interior light and started the engine. "Since we
both agree," he said, turning the wheel, "I'll bet I can save
us some time. I'll bet that if we head on up the rim, past that
branch, and if we climb down into del Muerto, we'll pick up
his trail along one of the walls."
"It'll be kind of dark."
"I've got goggles and dark-lights. Full spectrum, too."
"Can you figure out where he might be from where you
dropped him and how fast he might be going?"
"Bet I can make a good guess. But we don't want to come
down right on top of him now."
"Why not?"
"If something's after him, he's liable to shoot at anything
he sees coming."
"You've got a point there."
"So we'll go down around Many Turkey cave, Blue Bull
Cave - right before the canyon widens. Should be easier to
pick up the trail where it's narrow. Then we'll ignore any
false signs leading into Twin Trail Canyon and start on after
him."
Winds buffeted the small car as it made its way across a
nearly trailless expanse, turning regularly to avoid boulders
and dips which dropped too abruptly.
"... Then I guess we just provide him with extra fire-
power."
"I'd like to try talking him out of it," Ironbear said.
Yellowcloud laughed.
"Sure. You do that," he said.
Ironbear scanned the other's thoughts, saw his impression
of the man.
"Oh, well," he said. "At least I learned to shoot in the P-
Patrol."
"You were P-Patrol? I almost joined that."
"Why didn't you?"
"Afraid I'd get claustrophobia in one of those beer cans in
the sky. I like to be able to see a long way off."
They were silent for a time as they traveled through the
blackness, dim shapes about them, snowflakes spinning in
the headlight beams, changing back to rain, back to snow-
flakes again.
Then, "That thing that's after him," Yellowcloud said,
"you say it's as smart as a man?"
"In its way, yeah. Maybe smarter."
"Billy may still have an edge, you know. He'll probably
be mad to see us."
"That beast has chased him all over the world. It's built
for killing, and it hates him."
"Even Kit Carson was afraid to go into these canyons
after the Navajo. Had to starve us out in the dead of winter."
"Why was he scared?"
"The place was made for ambushes. Anyone who knows
his way around down there could hold off a superior force,
maybe slaughter it."
"This beast can read thoughts."
"So it reads that there's someone up ahead waiting to kill
it. Doesn't have to be a mind reader to know that. And if it
keeps following that's what could happen."
Among his kind the mating battles were always preceded
by a psychic assault from the challenger. This was somehow
similar, and he possessed the equipment to join it.
He could not tell exactly what it was doing inside his head,
but he struck at it with all of his hate, with the desire to rend.
And then it was gone.
He fell across the carcass of the dog, teeth still bared,
slipping back into an earlier mode of existence. Where was
the other? When would he strike? He ranged with all of his
senses about the area, waiting. But there was nothing there.
After a long while, the tension flowed away. Nothing was
coming. Whatever it had been, it was not one of his own
kind, and it had not been a battle challenge that he had felt. It
troubled him that there was something in the area which he
did not understand. He turned toward the north and began
walking.
Mercy Spender and Charles Fisher, who sat at either side
of him, reached to catch hold of Walter Sands's shoulders as
he slumped forward.
"Get him up onto the table - quick!" Elizabeth said.
"He just fainted," Fisher said. "I think we ought to lower .
his head."
"Listen to his chest! I was still with him. I felt his heart
stop."
"Oh, my! Somebody give us a hand!"
They moved him onto the table and listened for a heart-
beat, but there was none. Mercy began hammering on his
chest.
"You know what you're doing?" Ironbear asked her.
"Yes. I started nursing training once," she grunted. "I
remember this part. Somebody send for help."
Elizabeth crossed to the intercom.
"I didn't know he had a bad heart," Fisher said.
"I don't think he did either," Mancin replied, "or we'd
probably have learned that when we gave each other a look.
The shock when the thing struck back must have gotten to
him. We shouldn't have let Ironbear talk us into going in."
"Not his fault," Mercy said, still working.
"And we all agreed," Fisher said. "The time seemed
perfect, while it was remembering. And we did learn some-
thing..."
Elizabeth reached Tedders. They grew silent as they lis-
tened to her relay the information.
"Just a moment ago. Just a moment ago," Fisher said,
"and he was with us."
"It seems as if he still is," Mancin said.
"We're going to have to try to reach Singer," Elizabeth
said, crossing the room and taking her seat again.
"That's going to be hard - and what do we really have to
tell him?" Fisher asked.
"Everything we know," Ironbear said,
"And who knows what form it would take, that strange
state of mind he's in?" Mercy asked. "We might be better
off simply calling for that force Mancin suggested."
"Maybe we should do both," Elizabeth said. "But if we
don't try helping him ourselves, then Walter's attack was for
nothing."
"I'll be with you," Mercy said, "when we do. Some-
body's going to have to take over here pretty soon, though,
till the medics trip through. I'm getting tired."
"I'll try," Fisher said. "Let me watch how you do it."
"I'd better learn, too," Mancin said, moving nearer. "I do
still seem to feel his presence, weakly. Maybe that's a good
sign."
Sounds of hammering continued downstairs, from where a
shattered wall was being replaced.
He crossed the water above a small cascade, knowing
things would be relatively solid at its top. Then he moved
along the southern talus slope, leaving a clear trail. He
entered Black Rock Canyon and continued into it for per-
haps half a mile. The rain came down steadily upon him and
the wind made a singing sound high overhead. He saw a
cluster of rocks come loose from the northern wall far
ahead, sliding and bumping to the floor of the canyon,
splashing into the stream.
Keeping watch on driftwood heaps, he located a stick
sufficient for his purpose. He walked near the water's edge
for a time, then headed up onto a long rocky shelf where his
footprints soon vanished. He immediately began to back-
track, walking in his own prints until he stood beside the
water again. He entered it then, probing with the stick for
quicksand pockets, and made his way back to the canyon's
mouth.
Emerging, he crossed the main stream to its north bank,
turned to his right and continued on along Canyon del
Muerto toward Standing Cow Ruin, concealing his trail as he
went, for the next half-mile. He found that he liked the
feeling of being alone again in this gigantic gorge. The stream
was wider here, deeper. His mind went back to the story he
had heard as a boy, of the time of the fear of the flooding of
the world. Who was that old singer? Up around Kayenta,
back in the 1920s... The old man had been struck by
lightning and left for dead. But he had recovered several
days later, bearing a purported message from the gods, a
message that the world was about to be flooded. In that
normal laws and taboos no longer apply to a person who has
lived through a lightning-stroke, he was paid special heed.
People. believed him and fled with their flocks to Black
Mountain. But the water did not come, and the cornfields of
those who fled dried and died under the summer sun. A
shaman with a vision that did not pay off.
Billy chuckled. What was it the Yellowclouds had called
him?" Azaethlin" - "medicine man." We aren't always that
reliable, he thought, given to the same passions and misap-
prehensions as others. Medicine man, heal thyself.
He started past a "wish pile" of rocks and juniper twigs,
halted, went back and added a stone to it. Why not? It was
there.
In time, he came to Standing Cow Ruin, one of the largest
ruins in the canyons. It stood against the north wall beneath
a huge overhang. The remains of its walls covered an area
more than four hundred feet long, built partly around 'im-
mense boulders. It, too, went back to the Great Pueblo days,
containing three kivas and many rooms. But there were also
Navajo log-and-earth storage bins and Navajo paintings
along with those of the Anasazi. He went nearer, to view
again the white, yellow and black renderings of people with
arms upraised, the humpbacked archer, circles, circles and
more circles, the animals.... And there, high up above a
ledge to his left, was one of purely Navajo creation, and
most interesting to him. Mounted, cloaked, wearing flat-
brimmed hats, carrying rifles, was a procession of Span-
iards, two of them firing at an Indian. It was believed to
represent the soldiers of Lieutenant Anthony Narbona who
fought the Navajos at Massacre Cave in 1805. And below
that, at the base of the cliff, were other horsemen and a
mounted U.S. cavalryman of the 1860s. As he watched, they
seemed to move.
He rubbed his eyes. They really were moving. And it
seemed as if he had just heard gunshots. The figures were
three-dimensional, solid now, riding across a sandy waste....
"Always down on us, aren't you?" he said to them and to
the world at large.
He heard curses in Spanish. When he lowered his eyes to
the other figure, he heard a trumpet sounding a cavalry
charge. The great rock walls seemed to melt away about him
and the waters grew silent. He was staring now at a totally
different landscape - bleak, barren and terribly bright. He
raised his eyes to a sun which blazed almost whitely from
overhead. A part of him stood aside, wondering how this
thing could be. But the rest of him was engaged in the vision.
He seemed to hear the sound of a drum as he watched
them ride across that alien desert. It was increasing steadily
in tempo. Then, when it had reached an almost frantic
throbbing, the sands erupted before the leading horseman
and a large, translucent, triangular shape reared suddenly
before him, leaning forward to enfold both horse and rider
with slick membranous wings. More of them exploded into
view along the column, shrugging sands which yellowed the
air,' falling upon the other riders and their mounts, envelop-
ing them, dragging them downward to settle as quivering,
gleaming, rocklike lumps on the barren landscape. Even the
cavalryman, now brandishing his saber, met a similar fate, to
the notes of the trumpet and the drum.
Of course.
What other fate might be expected when one encountered
a krel., let alone a whole crowd of them? He had given up
quickly on any notion of bringing one back to the Institute.
Two close calls, and he had decided that they were too
damned dangerous. That world of Cat's had bred some very
vicious creatures....
Cat. Speak of the Devil... There was Cat crossing the
plain, lithe power personified....
Again, amid a shower of sand, the krel rose. Cat drew
back, rearing, forelimbs lengthening, slashing. They came
together and Cat struggled to draw away....
With the sound of a single drumbeat, the scene faded. He
was staring at anthropomorphic figures, horses and the large
Standing Cow. He heard the sounds of the water at his back.
Peculiar, but he had known stranger things over the years,
and he had always felt that a kind of power dwelled in the old
places. Something about this manifestation of it seemed
heartening, and so he took it as a good omen. He chanted a
brief song of thanks for the vision and turned to continue
along his way. The shadows had darkened perceptibly and
the rock walls were even higher now, and for a time he
seemed to regard them through a mist of rainbows.
Going back. A part of him still stood apart, but it seemed
even smaller and farther away now. Parts of his life between
childhood and now had become dreamlike, shimmering, and
he had not noticed it happening. He began recalling seldom
used names for things around him which he had thought long
forgotten. The rain increased in intensity off to his right,
though his way was still sheltered by the canyon wall. A
trick of lightning seemed to show momentarily a reddish
path stretching on before him.
"A krel, a krel," he chanted as he walked, not knowing
why. Free a cat to kill a Stragean, find a krel to kill a cat...
What then? He chuckled. No answer to the odd vision. His
mind played games with the rock shapes around him. The
Plains Indians had made mare of a cult out of the Rock
people than his people had. But now it seemed he could
almost catch glimpses of the presence within the forms. Who
was that bellicano philosopher he had liked? Spinoza. Yes.
Everything alive, all of it connected, inside and out, all over.
Very Indian.
"Hah la tse kis!" he called out, and the echo came back to
him.
The zigzag lightning danced above the high cliff's edge and
when its afterglow had faded he realized that night 'was
coming on. He increased his pace. He felt it would be good
to be past Many Cherry Canyon by the time full darkness
fell.
The ground dropped away abruptly, and he made his way
across a bog, probing before him with his stick. He cleaned
his boots then before continuing. He ran a hand across the
surface of a rock, feeling its moist smoothnesses and rough-
nesses. Then he licked his thumb and stared again into the
shadowy places.
Moments came and went like dark tides among the stones
as he strode along, half-glimpsed images giving rise to free
association, racial and personal.
It seemed to sail toward him out of the encroaching
darkness, its prow cutting a V across his line of sight. It was
Shiprock in miniature, that outcrop ahead. As he swung
along it grew larger and it filled his mind....
Irresistibly, he was thrown back. Again the sky was blue
glass above him. The wind was sharp and cold, the rocks
rough, the going progressively steeper. Soon it would be
time to rope up. They were approaching the near-vertical
heights....
He looked back at her, climbing steadily, her face flushed.
She was a good climber, had done it in many places. But this
was something special, a forbidden test....
He gnashed his teeth and muttered, "Fool!"
They were climbing tse bi dahi, the rock with wings. The
white men called it Shiprock. It stood 7,178 feet in height
and had only been climbed once, some two hundred years
earlier, and many had died attempting the ascent. It was a
sacred place, and it was now forbidden to climb upon it.
And Dora had liked climbing. True, she had never sug-
gested this, but she had gone along with him. Yes, it had
been his idea, not hers.
In his mind's eye, he saw their diminutive figures upon its
face, reaching, hauling themselves higher, reaching. His
idea. Tell him why. Tell Hastehogan, god of night, why - so
that he may laugh and send a black wind out of the north to
blow upon you.
Why?
He had wanted to show her that he did not fear the
People's taboo, that he was better, wiser, more sophisticated
than the People. He had wanted to show her that he was not
really one of them in spirit, that he was free like her, that he
was above such things, that he laughed at them. It did not
occur to him until much later that such a thing did not matter
to her, that he had been dancing a dance of fears for himself
only, that she had never thought him inferior, that his action
had been unnecessary, unwarranted, pathetic. But he had
needed her. She was a new life in a new, frightening time,
and -
When he heard her cry out he turned as rapidly as he
could and reached out for her. Eight inches, perhaps, sepa-
rated their fingertips. And then she was gone, falling. He
saw her hit, several times.
Half blinded with tears, he had cursed the mountains and
cursed the gods and cursed himself. It was over. He had
nothing now. He was nothing....
He cursed again, his eyes darting over the terrain to
where, with a flick of its tail, he would have sworn a coyote
had stood a moment ago, laughing, before it vanished into
the shadows beyond the rise. Fragments of the chants from
the old Coyoteway fire ritual came to him:
I will walk in the places where the black clouds come at
me.
I will walk in the places where the rain falls upon me.
I will walk in the places where the lightning flashes at
me.
I will walk in the places where the dark fogs move about
me.
I will walk where the rainbows drift and the thunders roll.
Amid dew and pollen will I walk.
They are upon my feet. They are upon my legs....
When he reached the spot where he thought he had seen
the creature, he searched quickly in the dim light and
thought that he detected a pawprint. Not important, though.
It meant something. What, he could not say.
He is walking in the water....
On the trail beyond the mountains.
The medicine is ready.
... It is his water,
a white coyote's water.
The medicine is ready.
As he passed Many Cherry Canyon he was certain that
Cat was on his way. Let it be. This thing seemed destined, if
not with Cat at his back then in some other fashion. Let it be.
Things were looking different now. The world had been
twisted slightly out of focus.
Dark, dark. But his eyes adjusted with unusual clarity. He
would pass the cave of the Blue Bull. He would go on. He
would take his rations as he walked. He would not rest. He
would create another false way at Twin Trail Canyon. After
that, he would obscure his passage even further. He would
go on. He would walk in the water.
Come after me, Cat. The easy part is almost over.
Weak flash. The wind and the water swallow the thunder.
He is laughing and his face is wet.
The black medicine lifts me in his hand....
The Third Day
WHEN THE CALL CAME
through that Walter Sands was dead, having failed to re-
spond to treatment, Mercy Spender said a prayer, Fisher
looked depressed and Mancin looked out of the window.
Ironbear poured a cup of coffee, and for a long while no one
said anything.
Finally, "I just want to go home," Fisher said.
"But we reached Singer," Elizabeth replied.
"If you want to call it that," he replied. "He's gone
around the bend. He's... somewhere else. His mind is
running everything through a filter of primitive symbolism. I
can't understand him, and I'm sure he can't understand me.
He thinks he's deep under the earth, traveling along some
ancient path."
"He is," Ironbear said. "He is walking the way of the
shaman."
Fisher snorted.
"What do you know about it?"
"Enough to understand some," he answered. "I got inter-
ested in Indian things again when my father died. I even
remembered some stuff I'd forgotten for a long time. For all
of his education and travels, Singer doesn't think in com-
pletely modern terms. In fact, he doesn't even think like a
modern Indian. He grew up in almost the last possible period
and place where someone could live in something close to a
neolithic environment. So he's been to the stars. A part of
him's always been back in those crazy canyons. And he was
a shaman - a real one - once. He set out several days ago to
go back to that part of himself, intentionally, because he
thought it might help him. Now it's got hold of him, after all
those years of repression, and it's coming back with a
vengeance. That's what I think. I've been reading tapes on
the Navajos ever since I learned about him, in all of my
spare moments here. They're a lot different from other
Indians, even from their neighbors. But they do have certain
things in common with the rest of us - and the shaman's
journey often goes underground when things are really
tough."
" 'Us'?" Mancin said, smiling.
"Slip of the tongue," he answered.
"So you're saying this vicious alien beast is chasing a
crazy Indian," Mercy stated. "And we just learned that the
authorities won't go into those canyons after them because
the place is too treacherous in the weather they're having.
Sounds as if there's nothing we can do. Even if we coordi-
nate as a group mind, the beast seems able to strike back at
us pretty hard - and Singer can't understand us. Maybe we
should go home and let them work it out between them-
selves."
"It would be different if there were something we could
do," Fisher said, moving to stand beside Ironbear. "I'm
beginning to see how you feel about the guy, but what the
hell. If you're dead, lie down."
"We could attack the beast," Ironbear said softly.
"Too damned alien," Mancin said. "We don't have the
key to his mind. He'd just slap us away like he did last time.
Besides, this mass-mind business seems very risky. Not too
much has really been done with it, and who knows how we
might mess ourselves up? In any kind of cost-benefit analy-
sis of it there's little to gain against unknown risks."
Ironbear rose to his feet and turned toward the door.
"Fuck your cost-benefit analysis," he said as he left the
room.
Fisher started after him, but Elizabeth caught his eye.
"Let him go," she said. "He's too angry. You don't want
a fight with a friend. There's nothing you can say to him
now."
Fisher halted near the door.
"I couldn't reach him then, can't reach him now," he said.
"I know he's mad, but... I don't know. I've got a feeling
he could do something foolish."
"Like what?" Mancin asked.
"I don't know. That's just it. Maybe I'd better..."
"He'll brood for a while," Mancin said, and then come
back and try to talk us into something. Maybe we ought to
agree to try to reach Singer and get him to head for some
safe spot where he can be picked up. That might work."
"I've got a feeling it won't, but it's the best suggestion so
far. How'll we know where a good spot is?"
Mancin thought for a time, then, "That friend of Singer's,
the ranger," he said, "Yellowcloud. He'd know. Where's the
printout with his number on it?"
"Ironbear had it," Elizabeth said.
"It's not on his chair. Not on the table either."
"You don't think... ?"
Ironbear, wait! Elizabeth broadcast. We're going to help!
Come back!
But there was no response.
They headed for the stair.
He was nowhere on the premises, and they guessed that
he had tripped out from one of the downstairs boxes. They
obtained the number from Information, but no one answered
at Yellowcloud's phce. It was not until half an hour later,
while they were eating, that someone noticed that a burst-
gun was missing from the guard room.
PETROGAFFITI
COYOTE STEALS VOICES FROM ALL LIVING THINGS
Nothing was capable of movement following Coyote's
theft of sound from the world. Not until he was persuaded to
call the Sun and Moon to life by giving a great shout and
restoring noise to the land
NAYENEZGANI CONTINUES CIVIC IMPROVEMENT PLAN
At Tse'a haildehe', where a piece of rock brought up from
the underworld was in the habit of drawing itself apart to
form a pair of cliffs and closing again whenever travelers
passed between. Nayenezgani today solved the problem by
the ingenious use of a piece of elk's horn
2-RABBIT, 7-WIND. HOME TEAM SUCCESSFUL.
Quetzalcoatl, arriving this morning in Tula, was heard to
remark, "Every man has his own rabbit." This was taken as
a good sign by the local population, who responded with
tortillas, flowers, incense, butterflies and snakes
Commercial traveler,
passing through
KIT CARSON GO HOME
I KILLED THREE DEER ACROSS THE WAY
BET THEY WERE LAME
SINGERS DO IT IN COLORED SANDS
FOUR APACHES KILLED A NAVAJO NEAR HERE
THAT'S HOW MANY
IT TAKES
SPIDER WOMAN DEMONSTRATES NEW ART
"I believe I'll call it textiles," she said, when questioned
concerning
SOMEDAY VON DANIKEN WILL SAY
THIS IS AN ASTRONAUT
(place here eye1.tif)
PORT SUMNER SUCKS
CHANGING WOMAN PUZZLED BY SONS' BEHAVIOR
"I suppose they get it from their father," she was heard to
say, when told of the latest
BILLY BLACKHORSE SINGER AND
HIS CHINDI PASSED THIS WAY
O-SINGER, O-CHINDI, AT END OF FIRST HALF
BLACK-GOD IS WATCHING
THE YELLOW MEDICINE LIFTS ME IN HIS HAND
WHEN IRONBEAR OCCURRED
within the trip-box in Yellowcloud's home, the first thing to
catch and hold his attention was a shotgun in the other man's
hands, pointed at his midsection from a distance of approxi-
mately six feet.
"Drop that gun you're carrying," Yellowcloud said.
"Sure. Don't be nervous," Ironbear answered, letting the
weapon fall. "Why are you pointing that thing at me?"
"Are you Indian?"
"Yes "
"Ha'at'i'i'sh biniinaa yi'ni'ya?"
Ironbear shook his head.
"I don't understand you."
"You're not Navajo."
"Never said I was. Matter of fact, I'm Sioux. Can't talk
that either, though. Except maybe a few words."
"I'll say it in English: Why'd you come here?"
"I told you on the phone. I've got to find Singer - or the
thing that's after him."
"I think maybe you're what's after him. It's easy to get rid
of bodies around here, especially this time of year."
Ironbear felt his brow grow moist as he read the other
man's thoughts.
"Hold on," he said. "I want to help the guy. But it's a long
story and I don't know how much time we've got."
Yellowcloud motioned toward a chair with the barrel of
his weapon.
"Have a seat. Roll up the rug first, though, and kick it out
of the way. I'd hate to mess up a Two Gray Hills."
As he complied, Ironbear probed hard, trying to penetrate
beyond the stream of consciousness. When he found what
he was seeking, he was not certain he could wrap his tongue
around the syllables, but he tried.
"What did you say?" Yellowcloud 'asked, the weapon's
barrel wavering slightly.
He repeated it, Yellowcloud's secret name.
"How'd you know that?" the other asked him.
"I read it in your mind. I'm a paranormal. That's how I
got involved in this thing in the first place."
"Like a medicine man?"
"I suppose in the old days I would have been one.
Anyway, there was a group of us and we were tracking the
thing that's tracking Singer. Now the others want to quit, but
I won't. That's why I want your help."
The rain continued as he talked. When the callbox buzzed,
Yellowcloud switched it off. Later he got them coffee.
Running now, into the bowels of the earth, it seemed.
Darker and darker. Soon he must slow his pace. The world
had almost completely faded about him, save for the
sounds - of wind, water, his drumming feet. Slow now. Yes.
Now.
Ahead. Something in that stand of trees. Not moving. A
light.
He advanced cautiously.
It appeared to be - But no. That was impossible. Yet.
There it was. A trip-box. He was positive that it was against
regulations to install one in the canyon.
He moved nearer. It certainly looked like a trip-box, there
among the trees. He advanced and looked inside.
A strange one, though. No slot for the credit strip. No way
to punch coordinates. He entered and studied it more
closely. Just an odd red-and-white-flecked button. Without
thinking, he moved his thumb forward and pushed it.
A mantle of rainbows swirled before his eyes and was
gone. He looked inside. Nothing had changed. He had not
been transported anywhere. Yet -
A pale light suffused the canyon now, as if a full moon
hung overhead. But there was no moon.
He looked again at the box, and for the first time saw the
sight on its side. SPIRIT WORLD, it said. He shrugged and
walked away from it. Save for the light, nothing seemed
altered.
After some twenty paces, he turned and looked back. The
box was gone. The stand of trees stood silvery to his rear,
empty of any unnatural presence. To his right, the water
gleamed in its rippling progress. The rain which fell into it
seemed to be descending in slow motion, more a full-bodied
mist than a downpour. And the next flash of lightning
seemed a stylized inscription on the heavens.
Plainly marked before him now was the trail he must
follow. He set his foot upon it and the wind chanted a
staccato song of guidance as he went.
He moved quickly, approaching a bend in the canyon;
more slowly then, as his slope steepened and narrowed. He
dropped to a wider shelf as his way curved, hurried again as
he followed it.
As he made the turn, he saw outlined to his right, ahead, a
human figure standing on the opposite bank of the stream, at
the very tip of a raised spit of land which projected out into
the water. It was a man, and he seemed somehow familiar,
and he had a kind of light about him which Billy found
disturbing.
He slowed as he drew nearer, for the man was staring
directly at him. For a moment, he was not certain how to
address him, for he could not recall the circumstances of
their acquaintance, and a meeting here struck him as pecu-
liar. Then suddenly he remembered, but by then the other
had already greeted him.
He halted and acknowledged the call.
"You are far from home," he said then, "from where I met
you just the other day, in the mountains, herding sheep."
"Yes, I am," the other replied, "for I died that same
evening."
A chill came across the back of Billy's neck.
"I did nothing to you," he said. "Why do you return to
trouble me?"
"I have not returned to trouble you. In fact, I have not
returned at all. It is you who have found your way to this
place. That makes it different. I will do you no harm."
"I do not understand."
"I told you to follow a twisted way," the old singer said,
"and I see that you have. Very twisted. That is good."
"Not entirely," Billy told him. "My chindi is still at my
back."
"Your chindi turned right instead of left, following the
false trail into Black Rock Canyon. You are still safe for a
time."
"That's something, anyway," Billy said. "Maybe I can do
it again."
"Perhaps. But what is it exactly that you are doing?"
"I am following a trail."
"And it brought you here. Do you think that we have met
by accident?"
"I guess not. Do you know why we met?"
"I know only that I would like to teach you an old song of
power."
"That's fine. I'll take all the help I can get," said Billy,
glancing back along the way. "I hope it's not a real long one,
though."
"It is not," the old singer told him. "Listen carefully now,
for I can only sing it three times for you. To sing it four times
is to make it work."
"Yes."
"Very well. Here is the song...."
The old man began chanting a song of the calling of
Ikne'etso, which Billy followed, understood and had learned
by the third time he heard it. When the singer was finished he
thanked him, and then asked, "When should I use this
song?"
"You will know," the other answered. "Follow your
twisted way now."
Billy bade him good-bye and continued along the northern
slope. He considered looking back, but this time he did not
do it. He trekked through the sparkling canyon and images
of other worlds and of his life in cities rose and mingled with
those about him until it seemed as if his entire life was being
melted down and stirred together here. But all of the asso-
ciated feelings were also swirled together so that it was an
emotional white noise which surrounded him.
He passed a crowd of standing stones and they all seemed
to have faces, their mouths open, singing windsongs. They
were all stationary, but at the far end of the group something
came forward out of darkness.
It was a man, a very familiar man, who stood leaning
against the last windsinger, smiling. He was garbed accord-
ing to the latest fashion, his hair was styled, his hands well
manicured.
"Hello, Billy," he said in English, and the voice was his
own.
He saw then that the man was himself, as he could have
been had he never come back to this place.
"That's right. I am your shadow," the other said. "I am
the part of yourself you chose to neglect, to thrust aside
when you elected to return to the blanket because you were
afraid of being me."
"Would I have liked being you?"
The other shrugged.
"I think so. Time and chance, that's all. You and Dora
would eventually have moved to a city after you'd proved to
your own satisfaction how free you'd become. You took a
chance and failed. If you'd succeeded you would have come
this route. Time and chance. Eight inches of space. Such is
the stuff lives are bent by."
"You are saying that if I'd proved how free I had become I
still wouldn't really have been free?"
"What's free?" said the other, a faint green light beginning
to play about his head. "To travel all good paths, I suppose.
And you restricted yourself. I am a way that you did not go,
an important way. I might have been a part of you, a saving
part, but you slighted me in your pride that you knew best."
He smiled again, and Billy saw that he had grown fangs.
"I know you," Billy said then. "You are my chindi, my
real chindi, aren't you?"
"And if I am," the other said, "and if you think me evil,
you see me so for all of the wrong reasons. I am your
negative self. Not better, not worse, only unrealized. You
summoned me a long time ago by running from a part of
yourself. You cannot destroy a negation."
"Let's find out," Billy said, and he raised the laser snub-
gun and triggered it.
The flash of light passed through his double with no visible
effect.
"That is not the way to deal with me," said the other.
"Then the hell with you! Why should I deal with you at
all?"
"Because I can destroy you."
"Then what are you waiting for?"
"I am not quite strong enough yet. So keep running, keep
regressing into the primitive and I will grow in strength as
you do. Then, when we meet again..." The other dropped
suddenly to all fours and took on the semblance of Cat,
single eye glistening, "... I will be your adversary by any
name."
Billy drew the tazer and fired it. It vanished within the
other's body, and the other became his double again and
rose, lunging at him, the dart and cable falling to the ground
and rewinding automatically.
Billy swung his left fist and it seemed to connect with
something. His double fell back upon the ground. Billy
turned and began running.
"Yes, flee. Give me strength," it called out after him.
When he looked back, Billy saw only a faint greenish glow
near the place of the windsingers. He continued to hurry,
until it vanished with another turning of the way. The voices
of the windsingers faded. He slowed again.
The canyon widened once more; the stream was broader
and flowed more slowly. He seemed to see distorted faces,
both human and animal, within the water.
He had felt himself the object of scrutiny for some time
now. But the feeling was growing stronger, and he cast
about, seeking its source among fugitive forms amid shadow
and water.
Cat?
No reply, which could mean anything. But no broadcast
apprehensions either - unless they came on only to be lost
amid the emotional turbulence.
Cat? If it is you, let's have it out. Any time now. I'm ready
whenever you are.
Then he passed a sharp projection of the canyon wall and
he knew that it was not Cat whose presence he had felt. For
now he beheld the strange entity which regarded him, and its
appearance meshed with the sensation.
It looked like a giant totem pole. His people had never
made totem poles. They were a thing of the people of the
Northwest. Yet this one seemed somehow appropriate to the
moment if incongruous to the place. It towered, and it bore
four faces - and possibly a shadowy fifth, at the very top.
There were the countenances of two women, one heavy-
featured, one lean, and two men, one black and one white.
And above them it seemed that a smiling masculine face
hovered, smokelike. All of their eyes were fixed upon him,
and he knew that he beheld no carving but a thing alive.
"Billy Blackhorse Singer," a neuter-gendered voice ad-
dressed him.
"I hear you," he replied.
"You must halt your journey here," it stated.
"Why?" he asked.
"Your mission has been accomplished. You have nothing
to gain by further flight."
"Who are you?" he said.
"We are your guardian spirits. We wish to preserve you
from your pursuer. Climb the wall here. Wait at the top. You
will be met there after a time and borne to safety."
Billy's gaze shifted away from the spirit tower to regard '
the ground at his feet and the prospect before him.
"But I still see my trail out within this canyon," he said
finally. "I should not depart it here."
"It is a false trail."
"No," he said. "This much I know: I must follow it to its
end."
"That way lies death."
He was silent again for a time. Then, ъ Still must I follow
it," he said. "Some things are more important than others.
Even than death."
"What are these things? Why must you follow this trail?"
He took several deep breaths and continued to stare at the
ground, as if considering it for the first time.
"I await myself at its ending," he said at last, "as I should
be. If I do not follow this trail, it will be a different sort of
death."
"Worse, I think," he added.
"We may not be able to help you if you go on."
"Then that is as it must be," he said. "Thank you for
trying."
"We hear you," said the totem as it sank slowly into the
ground, face by face sliding from view beneath stone, until
only the final, shadowy one remained for an instant, smiling,
it seemed, at him. "Gamble, then," it seemed to whisper,
and then it, too, was gone.
He rubbed his eyes, but nothing changed. He went on.
...I walk on an invisible arch,
feet ready to bear me anywhere.
outcoming fra thplatz fwaters flwng awa thheadtopped tre
andriving now to each where five now four apartapart horse
on the mountain ghoti in thrivr selves towar bodystake like a
longflwung water its several bays to go and places of ourown
heads to sort sisters in the sky old men beneath the ground
while coyote trail ahead blackbrid shadow overall and
brotherone within the chalce of minds a partapartatrapatrap
"My God!" Elizabeth said, sinking back into her chair.
Alex Mancin poured a glass of water and drained it.
"Yes," said Fisher, massaging his temples.
Mercy Spender commenced a coughing spell which lasted
for close to half a minute.
"Now what?." Fisher said softly.
Mancin shook his head.
"I don't know."
"Ironbear was right about his thinking he's in another
world," Elizabeth said. "We're not going to move him."
"The hell with that," Fisher said. "We tried, and we got
through, even if he did turn us into a totem. That's not
what's bothering me, and you know it."
"He was there," Mercy said, "in the spirit."
"Somebody call the hospital and make sure Sands is really
dead," Fisher said.
"I don't see how they could be mistaken, Charles,"
Elizabeth said. "But Mercy is right. He was with us, some-
how, and it seems as if he's still somewhere near."
"Yes," Mercy put in. "He is here."
"You don't need the spirit hypothesis for what I think
happened," Mancin finally stated.
"What do you mean?" Elizabeth asked.
"Just the memory of how he died. We were all of us
together, functioning as that single entity of which we under-
stand so little. I think that the trauma of his death served to
produce something like a holograph of his mind within our
greater consciousness. When we are apart like this it is
weakened, but we all bear fainter versions, which is why we
seem to have this sense of his presence. When we recreated
the larger entity just now, the recombination of the traces
was sufficient to reproduce a total functioning replica of his
- mind as it was."
"You see him as a special kind of memory when we are in
that state?" Elizabeth asked. "Will it fade eventually, do
you think?"
"Who can say?"
"So what do we do now?" Fisher asked.
"Check on Singer, I suppose, at regular intervals," Man-
cin said, -and renew the invitation to be picked up if he'll
climb to some recognizable feature."
"He'll just keep refusing. You saw how fixed that mental
set of his was."
"Probably - unless something happens to change it. You
never know. But I've been thinking about some of the things
Ironbear said. He's owed the chance, and we seem the only
ones who can give it to him."
"Okay by me. It seems harmless enough. Just don't ask
me to go after that alien beast again. Once was enough."
"I'm not too anxious to touch it myself." '
"What about Ironbear?"
"What about him?"
"Shouldn't we try to get in touch and let him know what
we're doing?"
"What for? He's mad. He'll just shut us out. Let him call
us when he's ready."
"I'd hate to see him do anything foolish."
"Like what?"
"Like go after that thing and find it."
Mancin nodded.
"Maybe you're right. I still don't think he'd listen, but -"
"He might listen to me," Fisher said, "but I'm not sure I
can reach him myself at this distance."
"Why don't we locate the nearest trip-box to that canyon
and go there?" Elizabeth said. "It will probably make every-
thing easier."
"Aren't Indian reservations dry?" Mercy asked.
"Let's tell Tedders and get our stuff together. We'll meet
back here in fifteen minutes," Fisher said.
"Walter thinks it's a good idea, too," Mercy said.
There is danger where I walk,
in my moccasins, leggings, shirt
of black obsidian.
My belt is a black arrowsnake.
Black snakes coil and rear about my head.
The zigzag lightning flashes from my feet,
my knees, my speaking tongue.
I wear a disk of pollen upon my head.
The snakes eat it.
There is danger where I walk.
I am become something frightful.
I am whirlwind and gray bear.
The lightning plays about me.
There is danger where I walk.
"I dropped him back here," Yellowcloud said, jabbing at
the map, and Ironbear nodded, staring down at the outline of
the long, sprawled canyons.
The rain, growing sleetlike, pelted against the floatcar in
which they sat, parked near the canyon's rim. Reflexively,
Ironbear raised the collar of his borrowed jacket. Pretty
good fit. Lucky we're both the same size, he decided.
"I watched for a time," Yellowcloud continued, "to make
sure he got down okay. He did, and I saw that he headed east
then." His finger moved along the map and halted again.
"Now, at this point," he went on, "he could have turned
right into Black Rock Canyon or he could have kept on along
Canyon del Muerto proper. What do you think?"
"Me? How should I know?"
"You're the witch-man. Can't you hold a stick over the
map, or something like that, and tell?"
Ironbear studied the map more closely.
"Not exactly," he said. "I can feel him out there, down
there. But a rock wall's just a rock wall to me, whether I'm
seeing it through his eyes or my own. However..." He
placed his finger on the map and moved it. "I'd guess he
continued along del Muerto. He wanted lots of room, and
Black Rock seems to dead-end too soon."
"Good, good. I feel he went that way, too. He chose a
spot before it on purpose, I'd say. I'll bet the trail gets
confused at the junction." Yellowcloud folded the map,
turned off the interior light and started the engine. "Since we
both agree," he said, turning the wheel, "I'll bet I can save
us some time. I'll bet that if we head on up the rim, past that
branch, and if we climb down into del Muerto, we'll pick up
his trail along one of the walls."
"It'll be kind of dark."
"I've got goggles and dark-lights. Full spectrum, too."
"Can you figure out where he might be from where you
dropped him and how fast he might be going?"
"Bet I can make a good guess. But we don't want to come
down right on top of him now."
"Why not?"
"If something's after him, he's liable to shoot at anything
he sees coming."
"You've got a point there."
"So we'll go down around Many Turkey cave, Blue Bull
Cave - right before the canyon widens. Should be easier to
pick up the trail where it's narrow. Then we'll ignore any
false signs leading into Twin Trail Canyon and start on after
him."
Winds buffeted the small car as it made its way across a
nearly trailless expanse, turning regularly to avoid boulders
and dips which dropped too abruptly.
"... Then I guess we just provide him with extra fire-
power."
"I'd like to try talking him out of it," Ironbear said.
Yellowcloud laughed.
"Sure. You do that," he said.
Ironbear scanned the other's thoughts, saw his impression
of the man.
"Oh, well," he said. "At least I learned to shoot in the P-
Patrol."
"You were P-Patrol? I almost joined that."
"Why didn't you?"
"Afraid I'd get claustrophobia in one of those beer cans in
the sky. I like to be able to see a long way off."
They were silent for a time as they traveled through the
blackness, dim shapes about them, snowflakes spinning in
the headlight beams, changing back to rain, back to snow-
flakes again.
Then, "That thing that's after him," Yellowcloud said,
"you say it's as smart as a man?"
"In its way, yeah. Maybe smarter."
"Billy may still have an edge, you know. He'll probably
be mad to see us."
"That beast has chased him all over the world. It's built
for killing, and it hates him."
"Even Kit Carson was afraid to go into these canyons
after the Navajo. Had to starve us out in the dead of winter."
"Why was he scared?"
"The place was made for ambushes. Anyone who knows
his way around down there could hold off a superior force,
maybe slaughter it."
"This beast can read thoughts."
"So it reads that there's someone up ahead waiting to kill
it. Doesn't have to be a mind reader to know that. And if it
keeps following that's what could happen."