Страница:
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- Следующая »
- Последняя >>
---------------------------------------------------------------
I have learned hate. I have been waiting for the
chance to escape, to track you as you once
tracked me, to destroy you.
I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. Now
that we know what you are, amends can be made.
The sun of my world has since gone nova. The
world and all others of my kind are no more.
How can you restore it to me?
I cannot.
Cat slammed against the field and sparks
outlined his entire figure. Billy did not move.
After a time, Cat drew back, shaking himself.
He seemed smaller now, and his body coiled
around and around upon itself, sinking into the
ground.
Finally, I will help you - for a price, Cat said.
And what is that price?
Your life.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
am the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
AVON BOOKS
A division of
Th Hearst Corporation
105 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10016
Copyright (C) 1982 by The Amber Corporation
Cover art by Tim White
Published by arrangement with the author
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-93388
ISBN: 0-380-76002-9
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S.
Copyright Law. For information address Kirby McCauley, Ltd., 432
Park Avenue South, Suite 1509, New York, New York 10016.
First Avon Books Printing: January l991
AVON TRADEMAAK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA
REGISTRADA, HECHO EN U.S.A.
Printed in the U.S.A.
ARC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR JOE LEAPHORN,
JIMMY CHEE
AND TONY HILLERMAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the door to the House of Darkness
lies a pair of red coyotes with heads reversed.
Nayenezgani parts them with his dark stag
and comes in search of me.
With lightning behind him,
with lightning before him,
he comes in search of me,
with a rock crystal and a talking ketahn.
Beyond, at the corners by the door
of the House of Darkness,
lie two red btuejays with heads reversed.
With lightning behind him,
with lightning before him,
he parts them with his dark staff
and comes in search of me.
Farther, at the fire-pit of the Dark House,
tie two red hoot-owls with heads reversed.
He parts these with his stag
and comes in search of me,
with rock crystal and talking ketahn.
At the center of the Darkness House
where two red screech-owls lie with heads reversed,
Nayenezgani casts them aside
coming in search of me,
lightning behind him,
lightning before him.
Bearing a rock crystal and a talking ketahn,
he comes for me.
From the center of the earth he comes.
Farther...
Evil-Chasing Prayer
NIGHT, NEAR THE EASTERN
edge of the walled, sloping grounds of the estate, within
these walls, perhaps a quarter-mile from the house itself, at
the small stand of trees, under a moonless sky, listening, he
stands, absolutely silent.
Beneath his boots, the ground is moist. A cold wind tells
him that winter yields but grudgingly to spring in upstate
New York. He reaches out and touches the dark line of a
slender branch to his right, gently. He feels the buds of the
fresh year's green, dreaming of summer beneath his wide,
dark hand.
He wears a blue velveteen shirt hanging out over his
jeans, a wide concha belt securing it at his waist. A heavy
squash blossom necklace - a very old one - hangs down
upon his breast. High about his neck is a slender strand of
turquoise heiche. He has a silver bracelet on his left wrist,
studded with random chunks of turquoise and coral. The
buttons of his shirt are hammered dimes from the early
twentieth century. His long hair is bound with a strip of red
cloth.
Tall, out of place, out of time, he listens for that which
may or may not become audible: indication of the strange
struggle at the dark house. No matter how the encounter
goes, he, William Blackhorse Singer, will be the loser. But
this is his own thing to bear, from a force he set into motion
long ago, a chindi which has dogged his heels across the
years.
He hears a brief noise from the direction of the house,
followed immediately by a loud crashing. This does not end
it, however. The sounds continue. From somewhere out
over the walls, a coyote howls.
He almost laughs. A dog, certainly. Though it sounds
more like the other, to which he has again become accus-
tomed. None of them around here, of course.
William Blackhorse Singer. He has other names, but the
remembering machines know him by this one. It was by this
one that they summoned him.
The sounds cease abruptly, and after a short while begin
again. He estimates that it must be near midnight in this part
of the world. He looks to the skies, but Christ's blood does
not stream in the firmament. Only Ini, the bird of thunder
among the southwestern stars, ready with his lightning,
clouds and rain, extending his headplume to tickle the nose
of Sas, the bear, telling him it is time to bring new life to the
earth, there by the Milky Way.
Silence. Sudden, and stretching pulsebeat by pulsebeat to
fill his world. Is it over? Is it really over?
Again, short barks followed by the howling. Once he had
known many things to do, still knew some of them. All are
closed to him now, but for the waiting.
No. There is yet a thing with which to fill it.
Softly, but with growing force, he begins the song.
FIRST MAN WAS NOT EXACTLY
jumping with joy over the dark underworld in which he was
created. He shared it with eight other humans, and the ants
and the beetles and later the locusts whom they encountered
as they explored, and Coyote - the First Angry One, He-
who-was-formed-in-the-water, Scrawny Wanderer. Every-
one multiplied; and the dragonflies, the wasps and the bat
people later joined them; and Spider Man and Spider
Woman. The place grew crowded and was full of bugs. Strife
ensued.
"Let's get out of here," a number of them suggested.
First Man, who was wise and powerful, fetched his trea-
sures of White Shell, Turquoise, Abalone, Jet and the Red-
White Stone.
He placed the White Shell in the east and breathed upon it.
Up from it rose a white tower of cloud. He placed the
Turquoise to the south and breathed upon it. From it there
rose a blue cloud tower. To the west he set the Abalone, and
when he had breathed upon it a yellow cloud tower rose up
in that place. To the north he set the Jet, and touched by his
breath it sent up a black tower of cloud. The white and the
yellow grew, met overhead and crossed, as did the blue and
the black. These became the Night and the Day.
Then he placed the Red-White Stone at the center and
breathed upon it. From it there rose a many-colored tower.
The tower to the east was called Folding Dawn; that to the
south was called Folding Blue Sky; to the west, Folding
Twilight; that to the north, Folding Darkness. One by one,
Coyote visited each of them, changing his color to match
their own. For this reason, he is known as Child of the
Dawn, as Child of the Blue Sky, Child of the Twilight and
Child of Darkness, along with all his other names. At each of
these places, his power was increased.
While the towers of the four cardinal points were holy,
giving birth to the prayer rites, the central one bore all pains,
evils and diseases. And it was this tower up which First Man
and Coyote led the People, bringing them into the second
world; and, of course, along with them, the evils.
There they explored and they met with others, and First
Man fought with many, defeating them all and taking their
songs of power.
But this also was a place of suffering, of misery, a thing
Coyote discovered as he went to and fro in the world and up
and down it. And so to First Man he took the pleas that they
depart.
First Man made a white smoke and blew it to the east,
then swallowed it again - and the same in every direction.
This removed all the evils from the world and brought them
back to the People from whence they had come. Then he laid
Lightning, both jagged and straight, to the east, and Rain-
bow and Sunlight, but nothing occurred. He moved them to
the south, the west and the north. The world trembled but
brought forth no power to bear them upward. He made then
a wand of Jet, Turrquoise, Abalone and White Shell. Atop
this, he set the Red-White Stone. It rose and bore them
upward into the next world.
Here they met the many snakes, and Salt Man and Woman
and Fire God. Nor should Spider Ant be forgotten. And light
and darkness came up from the towers of the four colors, as
in the other worlds.
But then First Man set a streak of yellow and another of
red and yellow in the east, and these halted the movement of
the white light.
And the People were afraid. Salt Man counseled them to
explore in the east, but the streaks retreated as they ad-
vanced. Then they heard a voice summoning them to the
south. There they found the old man Dontso, called Messen-
ger Fly, who told them what First Man had done. The yellow
streak, he said, represented the emergence of the People; the
other, vegetation and pollen, with the red part indicating all
diseases.
Then Owl and Kit Fox and Wolf and Wildcat came, and
with them Horned Rattlesnake, who offered First Man the
shell he carried on his head - and promises of offerings of
White Shell, Turquoise, Abalone and Jet in the future. First
Man accepted the shell and its magic and removed the
streaks from the sky.
The People then realized that First Man was evil. Coyote
spied upon their counsels and reported to First Man that
they knew he had stopped the light in the east to gain a
treasure.
When later they confronted him with it, First Man replied,
"Yes. It is true, grandchildren. Very true. I am evil. Yet I
have employed my evil on your behalf. For these offerings
shall benefit all of us. And I do know when to withhold my
evil from those about me."
And he proceeded to prove this thing by building the first
medicine hogan, where he shared with them his knowledge
of things good and evil.
HE REMEMBERED THE PARTY
the night before he had found the coyote.
Garbed in the rented splendor of a shimmering synthetic-
fibered foursquare and blackrib Pleat 4, Ruffle evegarb, he
had tripped through to the mansion in Arlington. Notables
past and present filled the sparkling, high-ceilinged rooms.
He was decidedly Past, but he had gone anyway, to see a
few old friends, to touch that other life again.
A middle-aged woman of professional charm greeted him,
approached him, embraced him and spoke with him for half
a minute in the enthusiastic voice of a newscaster, until a
fresh arrival at his back produced a reflex pressure from her
hand upon his arm, directing him to the side.
Grateful, he moved off; accepting a drink from a tray,
glancing at faces, nodding to some, pausing to exchange a
few words, working his way to a small room he recalled Gem
previous visits.
He sighed when he entered. He liked the wood and iron,
stone and rough plaster, books and quiet pictures, the single
window with its uninterrupted view of the river, the fireplace
burning softly.
"I knew you'd find me here," she said, from her chair near
the hearth.
He smiled.
"So did I - in the only room built during a lapse in
tastelessness."
He drew up a chair, seating himself near her but facing
slightly past her toward the fire. Her heavy, lined face, the
bright blue eyes beneath white hair, her short stocky figure,
had not changed recently. In some ways she was the older,
in others she was not. Time had played its favorite game -
irony - with them both. He thought of the century-old Fon-
tenelle and Mme. Grimaud, almost as old as he. Yet there
was a gulf here of a different sort.
"Will you go collecting again soon?" she asked him.
"They've all the beasties they need for a while. I'm
retired."
"Do you like it?"
"As well as anything."
Her brows tightened in a small wince.
"I can never tell whether it's native fatalism, world-
weariness or a pose with you."
"I can't either, anymore," he said.
"Perhaps you're suffering from leisure."
"That's about as exclusive as rain these days. I exist in a
private culture."
"Really. It can't be as bad as all that," she said.
"Bad? Good and evil are always mixed up. It provides
order."
"Nothing else?"
"It is easy to love what is present and desire what is
absent."
She reached out and squeezed his hand.
"You crazy Indian. Do you exist when I'm not here?"
"I'm not sure," he said. "I was a privileged traveler.
Maybe I died and no one had the heart to tell me. How've
you been, Margaret?"
After a time, she said, "Still living in an age of timidity, I
suppose. And ideas."
He raised his drink and took a big swallow.
"... Stale, flat and unprofitable," she said.
He raised the glass higher, holding it to the light, staring
through it.
"Not that bad," he stated. "They got the vermouth right
this time."
She chuckled.
"Philosophy doesn't change people, does it?" she asked.
"I don't think so."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Go and talk with some of the others, I guess, have a few
more drinks. Maybe dance a little."
"I don't mean tonight."
"I know. Nothing special, I guess. I don't need to."
"A man like you should be doing something."
"What?"
"That's for you to say. When the gods are silent someone
must choose."
"The gods are silent," he said, finally looking into her
bright ancient eyes, "and my choices are all used up."
"That's not true."
He looked away again.
"Let it be," he said, "as you did before."
"Don't "
"I'm sorry."
She removed her hand from his. He finished his drink.
"Your character is your fate," she said at last, "and you
are a creature of change."
"I live strategically."
"Maybe too much so."
"Let it be, lady. It's not on my worry-list. I've changed
enough and I'm tired."
"Will even that last?"
"Sounds like a trick question to me. You had your chance.
If I've an appointment with folly I'll keep it. Don't try to
heal my wounds until you're sure they're there."
"I'm sure. You have to find something."
"I don't do requests."
"... And I hope it's soon."
"I've got to take a little walk," he said. "I'll be back."
She nodded and he left quickly. She would too, shortly.
Later that evening his eyes suddenly traced a red strand in
the rug and he followed it, to find himself near the trip-box.
"What the hell," he said.
He sought his hostess, thanked her and moved back to the
transport unit. He pushed the coordinates, and as he entered
he stumbled.
Freeze frame on man falling.
There was a time when the day light was night light.
Black-god rode upon my right shoulder.
Time spun moebius about me, as I sailed
up Darkness Mountain in the sky.
And the beasts, the beasts I hunted.
When l called them they would come to me,
out of Darkness Mountain.
IT HAD SNOWED THE PREVIOUS
night, dry and powdery, but the day had been unseasonably
warm and much of it had melted. The sky was still clear as
the sun retreated behind a dark rocky crest, and already the
cold was coming back into the world, riding the wind that
sighed among the pine trees. Silvery strings of sunlight
marked the higher sinews of a mesa far to the right, its foot
already aswirl with gray in the first tides of evening. At least
there would be no snow tonight, he knew, and he could
watch the stars before he closed his eyes.
As he made his camp, the coyote limped after him, its left
foreleg still bound. Tonight was the night to take care of that,
too.
He built his fire and prepared his meal, the pinon smoke
redolent in his nostrils. By the time that it was ready the day
was gone, and the mesa and the ridge were but lumps of
greater darkness against the night.
"Your last free meal," he said, tossing a portion of the
food to the beast at his feet.
As they ate, he remembered other nights and other camps,
a long trail of them stretching back over a century. Only this
time there was nothing to hunt, and in a way this pleased
him.
Drinking his coffee, he thought of the hundred-seventy
years of his existence: how it had begun in this place, of the
fairylands and hells through which he had taken it and how
he had come - back. "Home," under the circumstances,
would be more than an irony. He sipped the scalding brew
from the metal cup, peopling the night with demons, most of
whom now resided in San Diego.
Later, with his hunting knife, he removed the dressing
from the animal's leg. It remained perfectly still as he did
this, watching. As he cut away at the stiff material, he
recalled the day some weeks before when he had come upon
it, leg broken, in a trap. There had been a time when he
would have acted differently. But he had released it, taken it
home with him, treated it. And even this, this long trek into
the Carrizos, was for the purpose of turning it free at a
sufficient distance from his home, with a full night ahead to
tempt it into wandering back to its own world, rather than
prolonging an unnatural association.
He slapped its flank.
"Go on. Run!"
It rose, its movements still stiff, leg still held at an awk-
ward angle. Only gradually did it lower the limb as it moved
about the campsite. After a time, it passed into and out of the
circle of firelight, remaining away for longer and longer
periods.
As he prepared his bedroll, he was startled by a buzzing
noise. Simultaneously, a red light began winking on the
small plastic case which hung from his belt. He switched o
the buzzer, but the light continued to blink. He shrugged and
put it aside, face down. It indicated an incoming call at his
distant home. He had gotten into the habit of wearing the
unit when he was near the place and had forgotten to remove
it. He never wore the more elaborate version, however, and
so was not equipped to answer the call from here. This did
not seem important. It had been several years since he had
received anything which might be considered an important
call.
Still, it troubled him as he lay regarding the stars. It had
been a long while since he had received any calls at all. He
wished now that he had either carried along the unit's other
component or had not brought anything. But he was retired,
his newsworthiness long vanished. It could not really be
important....
... He was traversing an orange plain beneath a yellow
sky in which a massive white sun blazed. He was approach-
ing an orange, pyramidal structure covered with a webwork
of minute fractures. He drew near and halted, hurriedly
setting up the projector. Then he commenced waiting, occa-
sionally moving to tend another machine which produced a
continuous record as the cracks grew. Time meant very little
to him. The sun drifted slowly. Abruptly, one of the jagged
lines widened and the structure opened. A wide-shouldered
form covered with pink stubble rose up suddenly out of it,
swaying, a raw, bristle-edged opening facing him forward of
the bulbous projection at its top, beneath a dazzling red band
of jewel-like knobs. He triggered the projector and a gleam-
ing net was cast upon it. It struggled within it but could not
come free. Its movements came to correspond with a faint
drumming sound which might be his heartbeat. Now the
entire world crashed and fell away and he was running,
running into the east, younger self of his self, beneath a blue
sky, past saltbush and sagebrush, clumps of scrub grass and
chamisa, the sheep barely noting his passage, save for one
which suddenly rose up, assuming all the colors of the dawn,
swaying.... And then everything swam away on dark
currents to the places where dreams dwell when they are not
being used....
Birdnotes and predawn stasis: he was cast up onto the
shoals of sleep, into a world where time hung flexed at the
edge of light. Frozen. His emerging awareness moved slowly
over preverbal landscapes of thought he had quitted long
ago. Or was it yesterday?
He awoke knowing that the call was important. He tended
to his morning and removed all signs of his camp before the
sun was fully risen. The coyote was nowhere in sight. He
began walking. It had been a long time, too long for him to go
further into the portent. His feelings, however, were another
matter. He scrutinized them occasionally, but seldom exam-
ined them closely.
As he hiked across the morning, he considered his world.
It was small again, as in the beginning, though this was a
relative matter - relative to all the worlds he had traveled in.
He moved now in the foothills of the Carrizo Mountains in
Dinetah, the land of the Navajos, over twenty-five thousand
square miles, much of it still grazing land, over a million and
a half acres still wildland, bounded by the four sacred
mountains - Debentsa in the north, Mount Taylor in the
south, San Francisco Peaks in the west and Blanco Peak in
the east, each with its stories and sacred meanings. Unlike
many things he had known, Dinetah had changed only
slowly, was still recognizable in this, the twenty-second
century, as the place it had been in his boyhood. Returning
to this land after so many years had been like traveling
backward in time.
Yet there were differences between this day and that
other. For one, his clan had always been a small one, and
now he found himself its last survivor. While it was true that
one is born a member of one's mother's clan but in a sense is
also born for one's father's clan, his father had been a
Taoseno and there had been very little contact with the
pueblo. His father - a tall, sinewy man, an unusually gifted
tracker, with more than a little Plains blood - had come to
live in Dinetah, as was proper, tending his wife's flocks and
hoeing her corn, until the day a certain restlessness over-
took him.
Even so, it was not the lack of clan affiliation which had
altered his life. A Navajo has great potential for personal
contacts through the complex network of tribal interrelation-
ships, so that even though all of the people he had known in
his youth were likely dead, he might still find ready accep-
tance elsewhere. But he had returned with an Anglo wife
and had not done this. He felt a momentary pang at the
thought, though more than three years had passed since
Dora's death.
It was more than that. A Navajo alone, on his own, away
from the People, is said to be no longer a Navajo - and he
felt that in a way this was true, though his mother, his
grandmother and his great-grandmother were buried some-
where near the place where he now lived. He knew that he
had changed, changed considerably, during the years away.
Yet so had the People. While the land was little altered, they
had lost many of the small things he remembered, small
things adding up to something large. Paradoxically, then, he
was on the one hand of an earlier era than his contempo-
raries, and on the other... He had walked beneath alien
suns. He had tracked strange beasts, worthy of Monster-
Slayer himself. He had learned the ways of the bellicanos
and was not uncomfortable among them. There were de-
grees after his name, some of them earned. There was a
library in his head, held firmly in the trained memory of one
who had studied the chants of yataalii. More traditional yet
more alien he found himself. He wanted to be alone, what-
ever he was.
He broke into an easy jog, telling himself that its purpose
was to get the cold out of his bones. He ran past walls and
outcrops of granite and sandstone, hillsides of pinon and
juniper. Dead yuccas, their leaves touched with ice, lay like
burned out stars nailed to the ground along his trail. The
snow glinted on distant mountain peaks beneath a perfectly
clear sky. Even after the cold had left him, he maintained his
pace, deriving a kind of joy from the exertion.
The day wore on. He did not break his stride, however,
until midmorning, when he halted for a brief meal upon a
hillside commanding a long view down a narrow canyon
where sheep grazed on dry grasses. In the distance, smoke
rose from a conical, dirt-insulated hogan, its Pendleton-hung
door facing him, there in the east.
An old man with a stick came out from behind a cluster of
rocks, where he might have been resting while watching the
sheep. Limping, he took a circuitous path which eventually
brought him near.
"Ya'at'eeh," the man said, looking past him.
"Ya'at'eeh."
He asked the man to share his food, and they ate in silence
for a time.
After a while, he asked the man's clan - it would have
been impolite to ask his name - and learned that he was of
the Rabbit Redwater People. He always found it easier to
talk with the older people than the younger ones, those who
lived far out rather than near the cities.
Eventually the man asked him his own clan. When he told
him, the other grew silent. It is not good to talk of the dead.
"I am the last," he finally said, wanting the other to
understand. "I've been away a long time."
"I know, I know the story of Star Tracker." He pushed
down upon the crown of his wide-brimmed black hat as a
gust of wind struck them. He looked back along the trail to
the north. "Something follows you."
Still smiling at the way the old man had named him
without naming him, he turned his head and looked in that
direction. A large ball of tumbleweed bounced and rolled
along the foot of the hill.
"Russian thistle," he said.
"No," the other replied. "Something more dangerous."
Despite his years, the fear of the chindi rose for a moment
out of his youth. He shuddered beneath the touch of the
wind.
"I see nothing else," he said.
"You have been gone for many years. Have you had an
Enemyway?"
"No."
"Perhaps you should."
"Perhaps I will. You know a good Enemyway singer?"
"I am a singer."
"Perhaps I will see you again on this before long."
"I have heard that Star Tracker was a singer. Long ago."
"Yes."
"When you come by again we will talk more of these
things."
"Yes."
The man looked back once more, along the trail.
"In the meantime," he said, follow a twisted path.-
"I will do that."
Later, as he passed along the streaky blue shale and
frozen crimson clay of a dry riverbed, naked cottonwoods
flanking it like fracture lines against the cold blue of the sky,
he thought of the old mas's words and the things of which
they reminded him - of the sky creatures and water crea-
tures, of the beings of cloud, mist, rain, pollen and corn
which had figured so prominently in his childhood imagina-
tion - here in the season when the snakes and the thunder
still slept.
It had been a long while since he had considered his
problems in the old terms. A chindi... Real or of the
mind - what difference? Something malicious at his back.
Yes, another way of looking at things...
The day wore on to noon and past it before the butte near
his home came into view, a high-standing wind-sculpture
reminiscent of something he had once seen in a seaweed-
fringed valley beneath the waters of an alien ocean. He
halted again at this point to eat the rest of his rations. Nature
had long moods in the Southwest, he reflected, as he looked
off in that direction. While it was true that the land was little
altered, there had been some change between the then and
the now. He could just make out stands of blue spruce near
the monolith's base, a tree he had not seen in this area a
century and a half ago. But then the climate had also altered
somewhat during the span, the winters becoming a trifle
more clement, coming later, ending a bit sooner than they
once had.
He filled his pipe and lit it. Shadows like multitudes of
fingers stretched slowly out of the west. To run all this way,
then sit and rest when the end was in sight-it seemed the
thing to do. Was he afraid? he wondered. Afraid of that
damned call? Maybe that was it. Or did he want a last slow-
moving view of this piece of his life before something
happened to change it? There had been a song.... He could
not remember it.
When he felt that the time was proper he rose and began
walking through the coolness and shadow toward the large,
distant, six-sided house with the door to the east, his hogan
that was not exactly a hogan.
* * *
The sky was darker by the time he reached the neighbor-
hood of his dwelling, and the trees curtained off even more
of the light, casting an as yet starless evening over the raised
log-and-stucco structure. He wandered about it for several
minutes before approaching from the east and mounting the
rough-cut decking with which he had surrounded the place.
He entered then and turned on the light. He had his own
power supply, rooftop and below-ground.
Moving to the central fogon, he arranged some kindling
and struck it to fire. He disrobed then, tossing his Levi's and
red-and-white flannel shirt into a hamper along with the rest
of his clothing. Crossing to a tall, narrow stall, he entered
and set the timer for a three-minute UHF shower. Water was
not a thing to be expended lightly in this region. When he
emerged, he drew on a buckskin shirt, khaki bush pants and
a pair of soft moccasins.
Activating his news recorder and display screen and ad-
justing it to some of his general interests, he passed to the
small, open kitchen area to the right and prepared a meal,
amid hanging ristras of chilis and onions.
He ate in a low, fur-covered chair and the walls about him
were hung with rugs from Two Gray Hills and Ganado,
interspersed with framed photographs of alien landscapes. A
rack of weapons hung on the far wall; a meter-square metal
platform enclosed by shining vertical bars of varying heights
stood nearby, a large console with a display screen to its
right. Its message light was still blinking.
When he finished eating, he toyed with his belt unit and
put it aside. He went to the kitchen and got a beer.
DISK 1
CHILEAN QUAKES ABORTED
TAXTONIES ARRESTED
and three demonstrators were apprehended after report-
edly setting fire to the car belonging to the official responsi-
ble for the ruling
PETROCEL DENIES PATENT INFRINGEMENT CLAIMS
"GREW OUR OWN," DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH INSISTS
A MILD SPRING FOR MUCH OF THE NATION
EARLY FLOOD WATCHES IN MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
CHIMPANZEE COMPLAINS OF ART THEFT
References to a drugged banana figured prominently in the
bizarre statement taken today by Los Angeles detectives
KILLED THEM BECAUSE THEY WERE THERE,
MOTHER OF THREE EXPLAINS
It's been a long time since you left me.
Don't know what I'm gonna do.
I look up at the sky and wonder -
Earthlight always makes me think of you.
COLUMBIA STUDENTS SKYDIVE FROM ORBIT
TO SET NEW RECORD
"Naturally the university is proud," Dean Schlobin re-
marked, "but
STRAGEAN AMBASSADOR CLOSETED WITH
SECRETARY-GENERAL
Stragean Ambassador Daltmar Stango and Consul Orar
Bogarthy continue a second day of talks with Secretary-
General Walford. Speculation on a breakthrough in trade-
agreement negotiations runs high, but so far the news com-
munity
W. COAST DOLPHINS PRESS CLAIMS
A-1 CANNING BELIEVED READY TO SETTLE
BAKIN M BAWA PREDICTS END OF WORLD AGAIN
I sip the beer and hear the music,
Watch the ships as they arrive.
You packed your bag and went away, love
I feel like H-E-L-L5.
CHURCH OF NATURAL LIFE RADICALS SUSPECTED
IN SPERMOVA BANK BOMBING
MAN SUES TO RECOVER FORMER PERSONALITY
Relying on a district court order, Menninger officials
performed
BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA COMPUTER CHARGED WITH
FELONY IN BONDS MANIPULATION SCANDAL
Oh, I'm sittin' here and hurtin'
In this slowly turnin' dive.
If you ever want to reach me
Just dial H-E-L-L5.
hate somewhere he still exists and there is no force
great enough to keep me from him forever it has taken
a long while to learn the ways but soon i will be ready i
am ready eight days and had i known then what i know
now he would be gone i would be
gone burned? burned they say? nevermore amid the
slagheaps to chase the crawling tubes and crunch them for
their juiciness? but this air too i breathe and only the
jagged and the straight lightnings hold me here i know
the way beyond them now and the trees outside the
walls visions of cities the lesser ones bear i know
the ways i know the forms wait the lesser ones'
twisted minds tell me what i need one will come one
day who will know of the one who is not like the others
who still exists i will leave for that somewhere he
exists eight days i died a little he will die
wholly nothing can keep me from him forever i will
talk first now i know of it words like the crawling
things crunch them taste their juiciness strike now
and see the lesser ones draw back now i know them i
will use them words to tell him the why of
it now i will be a sphere and roll about ha! lesser
ones! p hate i will talk it that when tell it
then eight days burned hate
BACK WHEN NAYENEZGANI
and his brother were in the process of disposing of the
monsters the People had found in the new world, there were
some - such as the Endless Serpent - who were, for various
reasons, spared. Yet even these were tamed to a degree in
their acknowledgement as necessary evils. The world was
indeed becoming a safer place, though some few yet re-
mained.
There was, for instance, Tse'Naga'Hai, the Traveling
Rock, which rolled after its victims to crush and devour
them. Nayenezgani traveled on a rainbow and the crooked
lightning in search of it. His brother having counseled him to
take the magic knives with him, he had all eight of them
about his person.
When he came to the place called Betchil gai, he took out
his two black knives, crossed them and planted them. Be-
yond, he planted the two blue knives, crosswise. Farther
along, he crossed the two yellow knives and planted them.
Farther yet, he planted the two knives with the serrated
edges, also crosswise.
He moved then in sight of the giant Rock.
"What are you waiting for, Tse'Naga'Hai?" he asked it.
"Do you not pursue my kind?"
With a crunching, grinding noise, the mossless boulder he
had just addressed stirred. It moved slowly in his direction,
gaining momentum noticeably after but a few moments. It
almost took him by surprise with the speed with which it
approached.
But he whirled and raced away. It came on rapidly at his .
back, gaining upon him.
When he reached the place of the serrated knives, Nay-
enezgani leaped over them. The Rock rolled across them and
a big piece broke away.
He continued to flee, jumping over the yellow knives.
Tse'Naga'Hai rolled over them also, and another fracture
occurred; more pieces fell away.
By now, the Rock was bouncing from side to side and
rolling in an irregular pattern. And when Nayenezgani
leaped over the blue knives and the Rock crashed into them
and bounced over, more pieces fell away. By now, its size
was considerably reduced though its velocity was increas-
ing.
Nayenezgani sprang over the black knives. When he
heard the Rock grating and cracking itself upon them, he
turned.
All that remained was a relatively small stone. He halted,
then moved toward it.
Immediately it swerved, altering its course to bound away
from him. Now he pursued it into the west, beyond the San
Juan River. Finally, there he caught it, and much of the life
and wit seemed gone out of it.
"Now, Tse'Naga'Hai," he said, "the power to harm me is
gone from you, but you are not without a certain virtue I
noted earlier. In the future you will serve to light the fires of
the Dineh."
He raised what remained of the Rock and bore it off with
him to show to First Woman, who otherwise would not have
believed what he had done.
FINALLY HE SIGHED AND ROSE.
He crossed to the console beside the area enclosed by the
shining bars. He pushed the "Messages" button and the
display screen came alive.
EDWIN TEDDERS CALLED, it read, followed by the pre-
vious day's date and the time - the time when his unit had
signaled in the wilderness. Below, it listed six other attempts
by Edwin Tedders to reach him, the most recent only a few
hours ago. There was an eastern code and a number, and a
request that he return the call as soon as possible, prefaced
by the word URGENT.
He tried to recall whether he had ever known an Edwin
Tedders. He decided that he had not.
He punched out the digits and waited.
The buzzing which followed was broken, but the screen
remained dark.
"Yes?" came a crisp male voice.
"William Blackhorse Singer," he said, "returning Edwin
Tedders's call."
"Just a moment, please." The words hurried and rose in
pitch. "I'll get him."
He tugged at a turquoise earring and regarded the blank
screen. A minute shuffled its numbers on a nearby clock-
display. Another...
The screen suddenly glowed, and the heavily lined face of
a dark-haired man with pale eyes appeared before him. His
smile seemed one of relief rather than pleasure.
"I'm Edwin Tedders," he said. "I'm glad we finally got
hold of you, Mr. Singer. Can you come through right now?"
"Maybe." He glanced at the gleaming cage to his left.
"But what's this all about?"
"I'll have to tell you in person. Please reverse the transfer
charges. It is important, Mr. Singer."
"All right. I'll come."
He moved to his trip-box and began its activation. It
whined faintly for an instant. Zones of color moved upward
within the shafts.
"Ready," he said, stepping into the unit.
Looking down, he saw that his feet were growing dim.
For a moment, the world was disarrayed. Then his
thoughts fell back into place again. He was standing within a
unit similar to his own. When he raised his head he looked
out across a large room done up in an old-fashioned man-
ner - dark paneled walls, heavy leather chairs, a Chinese
rug, bookshelves filled with leatherbound volumes, drapes, a
fireplace burning real logs. Two men stood facing him -
Tedders, and a slight, blond man whose voice identified him
as the one with whom he had first spoken.
"This is Mark Brandes, my secretary," Tedders stated as
he watched him step down.
He inadvertently pressed his palm rather than clasping
hands, in the old way of the People. Brandes looked puzzled
but Tedders was already gesturing toward the chairs.
"Have a seat, Mr. Singer."
"Call me Billy."
"All right, Billy. Would you care for a drink?"
"Sure."
-I have some excellent brandy."
"That'll be fine."
Tedders looked at Brandes, who immediately moved to a
sideboard and poured a pair of drinks.
"Early spring," Tedders said.
Billy nodded, accepted his glass.
"You've had a fascinating career. Both freezing and time-
dilation effects kept you around till you could benefit from
medical advances. A real old-timer, but you don't look it."
Billy took a sip of his brandy.
"This is very good stuff," he said.
"Yes. Real vintage. How many trackers are there around
these days?"
"I don't know."
"There are others, but you're the best. Old school."
Billy chuckled.
"What do you want?" he asked.
Tedders chuckled also.
"The best," he said.
"What do you want tracked?"
"It isn't exactly that."
"What, then?"
"It's hard to know where to begin...."
Billy looked out the window, across the moon-flooded
lawn. In the distance, the prospect was broken by a high
wall.
"I am a special assistant to Secretary-General Walford,"
Tedders finally stated. "He is here - upstairs - and so are the
Stragean ambassador and consul - Stango and Bogarthy. Do
you know much about the Strageans?"
"I've met a few, here and there."
"How'did they strike you?"
He shrugged.
"Tall, strong, intelligent... What do you mean?"
"Would you want one for an enemy?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"They could be very dangerous."
"In what ways?"
"They'd be hard to stop. They're shapeshifters. They
have a kind of mental control over their bodies. They can
move their organs around. They can -"
"Walk through walls?"
Billy shook his head.
"I don't know about that. I've heard it said, but I've
never -"
"It's true. They have a training regimen which will pro-
duce this ability in some of them. Semireligious, quite ardu-
ous, takes years, doesn't always work. But they can produce
some peculiar adepts."
"Then you know more about it than I do."
"Yes."
"So why ask me?"
"One of them is on her way here."
Billy shrugged.
"There are a few thousand around. Have been for years."
Tedders sipped his drink;
"They're all normals. I mean one of those with that
special training."
"So?"
"She's coming to kill the Secretary-General."
Billy sniffed his brandy.
"Good that you got word," he finally said, "and can turn
it over to the security people."
"Not good enough."
Throughout the conversation, Tedders had been struggling
to obtain eye-contact. At last Billy was staring at him, and he
felt some small sense of triumph, not realizing that this
meant the man doubted what he was saying.
"Why not?"
"They're not equipped to deal with Stragean adepts," he
said. "She could well be too much for them."
Billy shook his head.
"I don't understand why you're telling me about it."
"The computer came up with your name."
"In response to what?"
"We'd asked it for someone who might be able to stop
her."
Billy finished his drink and set the glass aside.
"Then you need a new programmer or something. There
must be a lot of people who know more about Stragean
adepts than I do."
"You are an expert on the pursuit and capture of exotic
life forms. You spent most of your life doing it. You practi-
cally stocked the Interstellar Life Institute single-handed,
You -"
Billy waved his hand.
"Enough," he said. "The alien you are talking about is an
intelligent being. I spent much of my life tracking animals -
exotic ones, to be sure, some very crafty and with tricky
behavior patterns - but animals nevertheless, not creatures
capable of elaborate planning."
Cat...
"... So I don't see that my experience is really applicable
in this situation," he concluded.
Tedders nodded.
"Perhaps, and perhaps not," he said at last. "But in a
matter like this we should really be certain. Will you talk
with the Stragean representatives who are visiting here?
They can probably give you a clearer picture than I can."
"Sure. I'll talk to anybody."
Tedders finished his drink and rose.
"May I get you another of those?"
"All right."
He replenished the snifter. Then, "I'll be back in a few
I have learned hate. I have been waiting for the
chance to escape, to track you as you once
tracked me, to destroy you.
I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. Now
that we know what you are, amends can be made.
The sun of my world has since gone nova. The
world and all others of my kind are no more.
How can you restore it to me?
I cannot.
Cat slammed against the field and sparks
outlined his entire figure. Billy did not move.
After a time, Cat drew back, shaking himself.
He seemed smaller now, and his body coiled
around and around upon itself, sinking into the
ground.
Finally, I will help you - for a price, Cat said.
And what is that price?
Your life.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
am the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
AVON BOOKS
A division of
Th Hearst Corporation
105 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10016
Copyright (C) 1982 by The Amber Corporation
Cover art by Tim White
Published by arrangement with the author
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-93388
ISBN: 0-380-76002-9
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S.
Copyright Law. For information address Kirby McCauley, Ltd., 432
Park Avenue South, Suite 1509, New York, New York 10016.
First Avon Books Printing: January l991
AVON TRADEMAAK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA
REGISTRADA, HECHO EN U.S.A.
Printed in the U.S.A.
ARC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR JOE LEAPHORN,
JIMMY CHEE
AND TONY HILLERMAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the door to the House of Darkness
lies a pair of red coyotes with heads reversed.
Nayenezgani parts them with his dark stag
and comes in search of me.
With lightning behind him,
with lightning before him,
he comes in search of me,
with a rock crystal and a talking ketahn.
Beyond, at the corners by the door
of the House of Darkness,
lie two red btuejays with heads reversed.
With lightning behind him,
with lightning before him,
he parts them with his dark staff
and comes in search of me.
Farther, at the fire-pit of the Dark House,
tie two red hoot-owls with heads reversed.
He parts these with his stag
and comes in search of me,
with rock crystal and talking ketahn.
At the center of the Darkness House
where two red screech-owls lie with heads reversed,
Nayenezgani casts them aside
coming in search of me,
lightning behind him,
lightning before him.
Bearing a rock crystal and a talking ketahn,
he comes for me.
From the center of the earth he comes.
Farther...
Evil-Chasing Prayer
NIGHT, NEAR THE EASTERN
edge of the walled, sloping grounds of the estate, within
these walls, perhaps a quarter-mile from the house itself, at
the small stand of trees, under a moonless sky, listening, he
stands, absolutely silent.
Beneath his boots, the ground is moist. A cold wind tells
him that winter yields but grudgingly to spring in upstate
New York. He reaches out and touches the dark line of a
slender branch to his right, gently. He feels the buds of the
fresh year's green, dreaming of summer beneath his wide,
dark hand.
He wears a blue velveteen shirt hanging out over his
jeans, a wide concha belt securing it at his waist. A heavy
squash blossom necklace - a very old one - hangs down
upon his breast. High about his neck is a slender strand of
turquoise heiche. He has a silver bracelet on his left wrist,
studded with random chunks of turquoise and coral. The
buttons of his shirt are hammered dimes from the early
twentieth century. His long hair is bound with a strip of red
cloth.
Tall, out of place, out of time, he listens for that which
may or may not become audible: indication of the strange
struggle at the dark house. No matter how the encounter
goes, he, William Blackhorse Singer, will be the loser. But
this is his own thing to bear, from a force he set into motion
long ago, a chindi which has dogged his heels across the
years.
He hears a brief noise from the direction of the house,
followed immediately by a loud crashing. This does not end
it, however. The sounds continue. From somewhere out
over the walls, a coyote howls.
He almost laughs. A dog, certainly. Though it sounds
more like the other, to which he has again become accus-
tomed. None of them around here, of course.
William Blackhorse Singer. He has other names, but the
remembering machines know him by this one. It was by this
one that they summoned him.
The sounds cease abruptly, and after a short while begin
again. He estimates that it must be near midnight in this part
of the world. He looks to the skies, but Christ's blood does
not stream in the firmament. Only Ini, the bird of thunder
among the southwestern stars, ready with his lightning,
clouds and rain, extending his headplume to tickle the nose
of Sas, the bear, telling him it is time to bring new life to the
earth, there by the Milky Way.
Silence. Sudden, and stretching pulsebeat by pulsebeat to
fill his world. Is it over? Is it really over?
Again, short barks followed by the howling. Once he had
known many things to do, still knew some of them. All are
closed to him now, but for the waiting.
No. There is yet a thing with which to fill it.
Softly, but with growing force, he begins the song.
FIRST MAN WAS NOT EXACTLY
jumping with joy over the dark underworld in which he was
created. He shared it with eight other humans, and the ants
and the beetles and later the locusts whom they encountered
as they explored, and Coyote - the First Angry One, He-
who-was-formed-in-the-water, Scrawny Wanderer. Every-
one multiplied; and the dragonflies, the wasps and the bat
people later joined them; and Spider Man and Spider
Woman. The place grew crowded and was full of bugs. Strife
ensued.
"Let's get out of here," a number of them suggested.
First Man, who was wise and powerful, fetched his trea-
sures of White Shell, Turquoise, Abalone, Jet and the Red-
White Stone.
He placed the White Shell in the east and breathed upon it.
Up from it rose a white tower of cloud. He placed the
Turquoise to the south and breathed upon it. From it there
rose a blue cloud tower. To the west he set the Abalone, and
when he had breathed upon it a yellow cloud tower rose up
in that place. To the north he set the Jet, and touched by his
breath it sent up a black tower of cloud. The white and the
yellow grew, met overhead and crossed, as did the blue and
the black. These became the Night and the Day.
Then he placed the Red-White Stone at the center and
breathed upon it. From it there rose a many-colored tower.
The tower to the east was called Folding Dawn; that to the
south was called Folding Blue Sky; to the west, Folding
Twilight; that to the north, Folding Darkness. One by one,
Coyote visited each of them, changing his color to match
their own. For this reason, he is known as Child of the
Dawn, as Child of the Blue Sky, Child of the Twilight and
Child of Darkness, along with all his other names. At each of
these places, his power was increased.
While the towers of the four cardinal points were holy,
giving birth to the prayer rites, the central one bore all pains,
evils and diseases. And it was this tower up which First Man
and Coyote led the People, bringing them into the second
world; and, of course, along with them, the evils.
There they explored and they met with others, and First
Man fought with many, defeating them all and taking their
songs of power.
But this also was a place of suffering, of misery, a thing
Coyote discovered as he went to and fro in the world and up
and down it. And so to First Man he took the pleas that they
depart.
First Man made a white smoke and blew it to the east,
then swallowed it again - and the same in every direction.
This removed all the evils from the world and brought them
back to the People from whence they had come. Then he laid
Lightning, both jagged and straight, to the east, and Rain-
bow and Sunlight, but nothing occurred. He moved them to
the south, the west and the north. The world trembled but
brought forth no power to bear them upward. He made then
a wand of Jet, Turrquoise, Abalone and White Shell. Atop
this, he set the Red-White Stone. It rose and bore them
upward into the next world.
Here they met the many snakes, and Salt Man and Woman
and Fire God. Nor should Spider Ant be forgotten. And light
and darkness came up from the towers of the four colors, as
in the other worlds.
But then First Man set a streak of yellow and another of
red and yellow in the east, and these halted the movement of
the white light.
And the People were afraid. Salt Man counseled them to
explore in the east, but the streaks retreated as they ad-
vanced. Then they heard a voice summoning them to the
south. There they found the old man Dontso, called Messen-
ger Fly, who told them what First Man had done. The yellow
streak, he said, represented the emergence of the People; the
other, vegetation and pollen, with the red part indicating all
diseases.
Then Owl and Kit Fox and Wolf and Wildcat came, and
with them Horned Rattlesnake, who offered First Man the
shell he carried on his head - and promises of offerings of
White Shell, Turquoise, Abalone and Jet in the future. First
Man accepted the shell and its magic and removed the
streaks from the sky.
The People then realized that First Man was evil. Coyote
spied upon their counsels and reported to First Man that
they knew he had stopped the light in the east to gain a
treasure.
When later they confronted him with it, First Man replied,
"Yes. It is true, grandchildren. Very true. I am evil. Yet I
have employed my evil on your behalf. For these offerings
shall benefit all of us. And I do know when to withhold my
evil from those about me."
And he proceeded to prove this thing by building the first
medicine hogan, where he shared with them his knowledge
of things good and evil.
HE REMEMBERED THE PARTY
the night before he had found the coyote.
Garbed in the rented splendor of a shimmering synthetic-
fibered foursquare and blackrib Pleat 4, Ruffle evegarb, he
had tripped through to the mansion in Arlington. Notables
past and present filled the sparkling, high-ceilinged rooms.
He was decidedly Past, but he had gone anyway, to see a
few old friends, to touch that other life again.
A middle-aged woman of professional charm greeted him,
approached him, embraced him and spoke with him for half
a minute in the enthusiastic voice of a newscaster, until a
fresh arrival at his back produced a reflex pressure from her
hand upon his arm, directing him to the side.
Grateful, he moved off; accepting a drink from a tray,
glancing at faces, nodding to some, pausing to exchange a
few words, working his way to a small room he recalled Gem
previous visits.
He sighed when he entered. He liked the wood and iron,
stone and rough plaster, books and quiet pictures, the single
window with its uninterrupted view of the river, the fireplace
burning softly.
"I knew you'd find me here," she said, from her chair near
the hearth.
He smiled.
"So did I - in the only room built during a lapse in
tastelessness."
He drew up a chair, seating himself near her but facing
slightly past her toward the fire. Her heavy, lined face, the
bright blue eyes beneath white hair, her short stocky figure,
had not changed recently. In some ways she was the older,
in others she was not. Time had played its favorite game -
irony - with them both. He thought of the century-old Fon-
tenelle and Mme. Grimaud, almost as old as he. Yet there
was a gulf here of a different sort.
"Will you go collecting again soon?" she asked him.
"They've all the beasties they need for a while. I'm
retired."
"Do you like it?"
"As well as anything."
Her brows tightened in a small wince.
"I can never tell whether it's native fatalism, world-
weariness or a pose with you."
"I can't either, anymore," he said.
"Perhaps you're suffering from leisure."
"That's about as exclusive as rain these days. I exist in a
private culture."
"Really. It can't be as bad as all that," she said.
"Bad? Good and evil are always mixed up. It provides
order."
"Nothing else?"
"It is easy to love what is present and desire what is
absent."
She reached out and squeezed his hand.
"You crazy Indian. Do you exist when I'm not here?"
"I'm not sure," he said. "I was a privileged traveler.
Maybe I died and no one had the heart to tell me. How've
you been, Margaret?"
After a time, she said, "Still living in an age of timidity, I
suppose. And ideas."
He raised his drink and took a big swallow.
"... Stale, flat and unprofitable," she said.
He raised the glass higher, holding it to the light, staring
through it.
"Not that bad," he stated. "They got the vermouth right
this time."
She chuckled.
"Philosophy doesn't change people, does it?" she asked.
"I don't think so."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Go and talk with some of the others, I guess, have a few
more drinks. Maybe dance a little."
"I don't mean tonight."
"I know. Nothing special, I guess. I don't need to."
"A man like you should be doing something."
"What?"
"That's for you to say. When the gods are silent someone
must choose."
"The gods are silent," he said, finally looking into her
bright ancient eyes, "and my choices are all used up."
"That's not true."
He looked away again.
"Let it be," he said, "as you did before."
"Don't "
"I'm sorry."
She removed her hand from his. He finished his drink.
"Your character is your fate," she said at last, "and you
are a creature of change."
"I live strategically."
"Maybe too much so."
"Let it be, lady. It's not on my worry-list. I've changed
enough and I'm tired."
"Will even that last?"
"Sounds like a trick question to me. You had your chance.
If I've an appointment with folly I'll keep it. Don't try to
heal my wounds until you're sure they're there."
"I'm sure. You have to find something."
"I don't do requests."
"... And I hope it's soon."
"I've got to take a little walk," he said. "I'll be back."
She nodded and he left quickly. She would too, shortly.
Later that evening his eyes suddenly traced a red strand in
the rug and he followed it, to find himself near the trip-box.
"What the hell," he said.
He sought his hostess, thanked her and moved back to the
transport unit. He pushed the coordinates, and as he entered
he stumbled.
Freeze frame on man falling.
There was a time when the day light was night light.
Black-god rode upon my right shoulder.
Time spun moebius about me, as I sailed
up Darkness Mountain in the sky.
And the beasts, the beasts I hunted.
When l called them they would come to me,
out of Darkness Mountain.
IT HAD SNOWED THE PREVIOUS
night, dry and powdery, but the day had been unseasonably
warm and much of it had melted. The sky was still clear as
the sun retreated behind a dark rocky crest, and already the
cold was coming back into the world, riding the wind that
sighed among the pine trees. Silvery strings of sunlight
marked the higher sinews of a mesa far to the right, its foot
already aswirl with gray in the first tides of evening. At least
there would be no snow tonight, he knew, and he could
watch the stars before he closed his eyes.
As he made his camp, the coyote limped after him, its left
foreleg still bound. Tonight was the night to take care of that,
too.
He built his fire and prepared his meal, the pinon smoke
redolent in his nostrils. By the time that it was ready the day
was gone, and the mesa and the ridge were but lumps of
greater darkness against the night.
"Your last free meal," he said, tossing a portion of the
food to the beast at his feet.
As they ate, he remembered other nights and other camps,
a long trail of them stretching back over a century. Only this
time there was nothing to hunt, and in a way this pleased
him.
Drinking his coffee, he thought of the hundred-seventy
years of his existence: how it had begun in this place, of the
fairylands and hells through which he had taken it and how
he had come - back. "Home," under the circumstances,
would be more than an irony. He sipped the scalding brew
from the metal cup, peopling the night with demons, most of
whom now resided in San Diego.
Later, with his hunting knife, he removed the dressing
from the animal's leg. It remained perfectly still as he did
this, watching. As he cut away at the stiff material, he
recalled the day some weeks before when he had come upon
it, leg broken, in a trap. There had been a time when he
would have acted differently. But he had released it, taken it
home with him, treated it. And even this, this long trek into
the Carrizos, was for the purpose of turning it free at a
sufficient distance from his home, with a full night ahead to
tempt it into wandering back to its own world, rather than
prolonging an unnatural association.
He slapped its flank.
"Go on. Run!"
It rose, its movements still stiff, leg still held at an awk-
ward angle. Only gradually did it lower the limb as it moved
about the campsite. After a time, it passed into and out of the
circle of firelight, remaining away for longer and longer
periods.
As he prepared his bedroll, he was startled by a buzzing
noise. Simultaneously, a red light began winking on the
small plastic case which hung from his belt. He switched o
the buzzer, but the light continued to blink. He shrugged and
put it aside, face down. It indicated an incoming call at his
distant home. He had gotten into the habit of wearing the
unit when he was near the place and had forgotten to remove
it. He never wore the more elaborate version, however, and
so was not equipped to answer the call from here. This did
not seem important. It had been several years since he had
received anything which might be considered an important
call.
Still, it troubled him as he lay regarding the stars. It had
been a long while since he had received any calls at all. He
wished now that he had either carried along the unit's other
component or had not brought anything. But he was retired,
his newsworthiness long vanished. It could not really be
important....
... He was traversing an orange plain beneath a yellow
sky in which a massive white sun blazed. He was approach-
ing an orange, pyramidal structure covered with a webwork
of minute fractures. He drew near and halted, hurriedly
setting up the projector. Then he commenced waiting, occa-
sionally moving to tend another machine which produced a
continuous record as the cracks grew. Time meant very little
to him. The sun drifted slowly. Abruptly, one of the jagged
lines widened and the structure opened. A wide-shouldered
form covered with pink stubble rose up suddenly out of it,
swaying, a raw, bristle-edged opening facing him forward of
the bulbous projection at its top, beneath a dazzling red band
of jewel-like knobs. He triggered the projector and a gleam-
ing net was cast upon it. It struggled within it but could not
come free. Its movements came to correspond with a faint
drumming sound which might be his heartbeat. Now the
entire world crashed and fell away and he was running,
running into the east, younger self of his self, beneath a blue
sky, past saltbush and sagebrush, clumps of scrub grass and
chamisa, the sheep barely noting his passage, save for one
which suddenly rose up, assuming all the colors of the dawn,
swaying.... And then everything swam away on dark
currents to the places where dreams dwell when they are not
being used....
Birdnotes and predawn stasis: he was cast up onto the
shoals of sleep, into a world where time hung flexed at the
edge of light. Frozen. His emerging awareness moved slowly
over preverbal landscapes of thought he had quitted long
ago. Or was it yesterday?
He awoke knowing that the call was important. He tended
to his morning and removed all signs of his camp before the
sun was fully risen. The coyote was nowhere in sight. He
began walking. It had been a long time, too long for him to go
further into the portent. His feelings, however, were another
matter. He scrutinized them occasionally, but seldom exam-
ined them closely.
As he hiked across the morning, he considered his world.
It was small again, as in the beginning, though this was a
relative matter - relative to all the worlds he had traveled in.
He moved now in the foothills of the Carrizo Mountains in
Dinetah, the land of the Navajos, over twenty-five thousand
square miles, much of it still grazing land, over a million and
a half acres still wildland, bounded by the four sacred
mountains - Debentsa in the north, Mount Taylor in the
south, San Francisco Peaks in the west and Blanco Peak in
the east, each with its stories and sacred meanings. Unlike
many things he had known, Dinetah had changed only
slowly, was still recognizable in this, the twenty-second
century, as the place it had been in his boyhood. Returning
to this land after so many years had been like traveling
backward in time.
Yet there were differences between this day and that
other. For one, his clan had always been a small one, and
now he found himself its last survivor. While it was true that
one is born a member of one's mother's clan but in a sense is
also born for one's father's clan, his father had been a
Taoseno and there had been very little contact with the
pueblo. His father - a tall, sinewy man, an unusually gifted
tracker, with more than a little Plains blood - had come to
live in Dinetah, as was proper, tending his wife's flocks and
hoeing her corn, until the day a certain restlessness over-
took him.
Even so, it was not the lack of clan affiliation which had
altered his life. A Navajo has great potential for personal
contacts through the complex network of tribal interrelation-
ships, so that even though all of the people he had known in
his youth were likely dead, he might still find ready accep-
tance elsewhere. But he had returned with an Anglo wife
and had not done this. He felt a momentary pang at the
thought, though more than three years had passed since
Dora's death.
It was more than that. A Navajo alone, on his own, away
from the People, is said to be no longer a Navajo - and he
felt that in a way this was true, though his mother, his
grandmother and his great-grandmother were buried some-
where near the place where he now lived. He knew that he
had changed, changed considerably, during the years away.
Yet so had the People. While the land was little altered, they
had lost many of the small things he remembered, small
things adding up to something large. Paradoxically, then, he
was on the one hand of an earlier era than his contempo-
raries, and on the other... He had walked beneath alien
suns. He had tracked strange beasts, worthy of Monster-
Slayer himself. He had learned the ways of the bellicanos
and was not uncomfortable among them. There were de-
grees after his name, some of them earned. There was a
library in his head, held firmly in the trained memory of one
who had studied the chants of yataalii. More traditional yet
more alien he found himself. He wanted to be alone, what-
ever he was.
He broke into an easy jog, telling himself that its purpose
was to get the cold out of his bones. He ran past walls and
outcrops of granite and sandstone, hillsides of pinon and
juniper. Dead yuccas, their leaves touched with ice, lay like
burned out stars nailed to the ground along his trail. The
snow glinted on distant mountain peaks beneath a perfectly
clear sky. Even after the cold had left him, he maintained his
pace, deriving a kind of joy from the exertion.
The day wore on. He did not break his stride, however,
until midmorning, when he halted for a brief meal upon a
hillside commanding a long view down a narrow canyon
where sheep grazed on dry grasses. In the distance, smoke
rose from a conical, dirt-insulated hogan, its Pendleton-hung
door facing him, there in the east.
An old man with a stick came out from behind a cluster of
rocks, where he might have been resting while watching the
sheep. Limping, he took a circuitous path which eventually
brought him near.
"Ya'at'eeh," the man said, looking past him.
"Ya'at'eeh."
He asked the man to share his food, and they ate in silence
for a time.
After a while, he asked the man's clan - it would have
been impolite to ask his name - and learned that he was of
the Rabbit Redwater People. He always found it easier to
talk with the older people than the younger ones, those who
lived far out rather than near the cities.
Eventually the man asked him his own clan. When he told
him, the other grew silent. It is not good to talk of the dead.
"I am the last," he finally said, wanting the other to
understand. "I've been away a long time."
"I know, I know the story of Star Tracker." He pushed
down upon the crown of his wide-brimmed black hat as a
gust of wind struck them. He looked back along the trail to
the north. "Something follows you."
Still smiling at the way the old man had named him
without naming him, he turned his head and looked in that
direction. A large ball of tumbleweed bounced and rolled
along the foot of the hill.
"Russian thistle," he said.
"No," the other replied. "Something more dangerous."
Despite his years, the fear of the chindi rose for a moment
out of his youth. He shuddered beneath the touch of the
wind.
"I see nothing else," he said.
"You have been gone for many years. Have you had an
Enemyway?"
"No."
"Perhaps you should."
"Perhaps I will. You know a good Enemyway singer?"
"I am a singer."
"Perhaps I will see you again on this before long."
"I have heard that Star Tracker was a singer. Long ago."
"Yes."
"When you come by again we will talk more of these
things."
"Yes."
The man looked back once more, along the trail.
"In the meantime," he said, follow a twisted path.-
"I will do that."
Later, as he passed along the streaky blue shale and
frozen crimson clay of a dry riverbed, naked cottonwoods
flanking it like fracture lines against the cold blue of the sky,
he thought of the old mas's words and the things of which
they reminded him - of the sky creatures and water crea-
tures, of the beings of cloud, mist, rain, pollen and corn
which had figured so prominently in his childhood imagina-
tion - here in the season when the snakes and the thunder
still slept.
It had been a long while since he had considered his
problems in the old terms. A chindi... Real or of the
mind - what difference? Something malicious at his back.
Yes, another way of looking at things...
The day wore on to noon and past it before the butte near
his home came into view, a high-standing wind-sculpture
reminiscent of something he had once seen in a seaweed-
fringed valley beneath the waters of an alien ocean. He
halted again at this point to eat the rest of his rations. Nature
had long moods in the Southwest, he reflected, as he looked
off in that direction. While it was true that the land was little
altered, there had been some change between the then and
the now. He could just make out stands of blue spruce near
the monolith's base, a tree he had not seen in this area a
century and a half ago. But then the climate had also altered
somewhat during the span, the winters becoming a trifle
more clement, coming later, ending a bit sooner than they
once had.
He filled his pipe and lit it. Shadows like multitudes of
fingers stretched slowly out of the west. To run all this way,
then sit and rest when the end was in sight-it seemed the
thing to do. Was he afraid? he wondered. Afraid of that
damned call? Maybe that was it. Or did he want a last slow-
moving view of this piece of his life before something
happened to change it? There had been a song.... He could
not remember it.
When he felt that the time was proper he rose and began
walking through the coolness and shadow toward the large,
distant, six-sided house with the door to the east, his hogan
that was not exactly a hogan.
* * *
The sky was darker by the time he reached the neighbor-
hood of his dwelling, and the trees curtained off even more
of the light, casting an as yet starless evening over the raised
log-and-stucco structure. He wandered about it for several
minutes before approaching from the east and mounting the
rough-cut decking with which he had surrounded the place.
He entered then and turned on the light. He had his own
power supply, rooftop and below-ground.
Moving to the central fogon, he arranged some kindling
and struck it to fire. He disrobed then, tossing his Levi's and
red-and-white flannel shirt into a hamper along with the rest
of his clothing. Crossing to a tall, narrow stall, he entered
and set the timer for a three-minute UHF shower. Water was
not a thing to be expended lightly in this region. When he
emerged, he drew on a buckskin shirt, khaki bush pants and
a pair of soft moccasins.
Activating his news recorder and display screen and ad-
justing it to some of his general interests, he passed to the
small, open kitchen area to the right and prepared a meal,
amid hanging ristras of chilis and onions.
He ate in a low, fur-covered chair and the walls about him
were hung with rugs from Two Gray Hills and Ganado,
interspersed with framed photographs of alien landscapes. A
rack of weapons hung on the far wall; a meter-square metal
platform enclosed by shining vertical bars of varying heights
stood nearby, a large console with a display screen to its
right. Its message light was still blinking.
When he finished eating, he toyed with his belt unit and
put it aside. He went to the kitchen and got a beer.
DISK 1
CHILEAN QUAKES ABORTED
TAXTONIES ARRESTED
and three demonstrators were apprehended after report-
edly setting fire to the car belonging to the official responsi-
ble for the ruling
PETROCEL DENIES PATENT INFRINGEMENT CLAIMS
"GREW OUR OWN," DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH INSISTS
A MILD SPRING FOR MUCH OF THE NATION
EARLY FLOOD WATCHES IN MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
CHIMPANZEE COMPLAINS OF ART THEFT
References to a drugged banana figured prominently in the
bizarre statement taken today by Los Angeles detectives
KILLED THEM BECAUSE THEY WERE THERE,
MOTHER OF THREE EXPLAINS
It's been a long time since you left me.
Don't know what I'm gonna do.
I look up at the sky and wonder -
Earthlight always makes me think of you.
COLUMBIA STUDENTS SKYDIVE FROM ORBIT
TO SET NEW RECORD
"Naturally the university is proud," Dean Schlobin re-
marked, "but
STRAGEAN AMBASSADOR CLOSETED WITH
SECRETARY-GENERAL
Stragean Ambassador Daltmar Stango and Consul Orar
Bogarthy continue a second day of talks with Secretary-
General Walford. Speculation on a breakthrough in trade-
agreement negotiations runs high, but so far the news com-
munity
W. COAST DOLPHINS PRESS CLAIMS
A-1 CANNING BELIEVED READY TO SETTLE
BAKIN M BAWA PREDICTS END OF WORLD AGAIN
I sip the beer and hear the music,
Watch the ships as they arrive.
You packed your bag and went away, love
I feel like H-E-L-L5.
CHURCH OF NATURAL LIFE RADICALS SUSPECTED
IN SPERMOVA BANK BOMBING
MAN SUES TO RECOVER FORMER PERSONALITY
Relying on a district court order, Menninger officials
performed
BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA COMPUTER CHARGED WITH
FELONY IN BONDS MANIPULATION SCANDAL
Oh, I'm sittin' here and hurtin'
In this slowly turnin' dive.
If you ever want to reach me
Just dial H-E-L-L5.
hate somewhere he still exists and there is no force
great enough to keep me from him forever it has taken
a long while to learn the ways but soon i will be ready i
am ready eight days and had i known then what i know
now he would be gone i would be
gone burned? burned they say? nevermore amid the
slagheaps to chase the crawling tubes and crunch them for
their juiciness? but this air too i breathe and only the
jagged and the straight lightnings hold me here i know
the way beyond them now and the trees outside the
walls visions of cities the lesser ones bear i know
the ways i know the forms wait the lesser ones'
twisted minds tell me what i need one will come one
day who will know of the one who is not like the others
who still exists i will leave for that somewhere he
exists eight days i died a little he will die
wholly nothing can keep me from him forever i will
talk first now i know of it words like the crawling
things crunch them taste their juiciness strike now
and see the lesser ones draw back now i know them i
will use them words to tell him the why of
it now i will be a sphere and roll about ha! lesser
ones! p hate i will talk it that when tell it
then eight days burned hate
BACK WHEN NAYENEZGANI
and his brother were in the process of disposing of the
monsters the People had found in the new world, there were
some - such as the Endless Serpent - who were, for various
reasons, spared. Yet even these were tamed to a degree in
their acknowledgement as necessary evils. The world was
indeed becoming a safer place, though some few yet re-
mained.
There was, for instance, Tse'Naga'Hai, the Traveling
Rock, which rolled after its victims to crush and devour
them. Nayenezgani traveled on a rainbow and the crooked
lightning in search of it. His brother having counseled him to
take the magic knives with him, he had all eight of them
about his person.
When he came to the place called Betchil gai, he took out
his two black knives, crossed them and planted them. Be-
yond, he planted the two blue knives, crosswise. Farther
along, he crossed the two yellow knives and planted them.
Farther yet, he planted the two knives with the serrated
edges, also crosswise.
He moved then in sight of the giant Rock.
"What are you waiting for, Tse'Naga'Hai?" he asked it.
"Do you not pursue my kind?"
With a crunching, grinding noise, the mossless boulder he
had just addressed stirred. It moved slowly in his direction,
gaining momentum noticeably after but a few moments. It
almost took him by surprise with the speed with which it
approached.
But he whirled and raced away. It came on rapidly at his .
back, gaining upon him.
When he reached the place of the serrated knives, Nay-
enezgani leaped over them. The Rock rolled across them and
a big piece broke away.
He continued to flee, jumping over the yellow knives.
Tse'Naga'Hai rolled over them also, and another fracture
occurred; more pieces fell away.
By now, the Rock was bouncing from side to side and
rolling in an irregular pattern. And when Nayenezgani
leaped over the blue knives and the Rock crashed into them
and bounced over, more pieces fell away. By now, its size
was considerably reduced though its velocity was increas-
ing.
Nayenezgani sprang over the black knives. When he
heard the Rock grating and cracking itself upon them, he
turned.
All that remained was a relatively small stone. He halted,
then moved toward it.
Immediately it swerved, altering its course to bound away
from him. Now he pursued it into the west, beyond the San
Juan River. Finally, there he caught it, and much of the life
and wit seemed gone out of it.
"Now, Tse'Naga'Hai," he said, "the power to harm me is
gone from you, but you are not without a certain virtue I
noted earlier. In the future you will serve to light the fires of
the Dineh."
He raised what remained of the Rock and bore it off with
him to show to First Woman, who otherwise would not have
believed what he had done.
FINALLY HE SIGHED AND ROSE.
He crossed to the console beside the area enclosed by the
shining bars. He pushed the "Messages" button and the
display screen came alive.
EDWIN TEDDERS CALLED, it read, followed by the pre-
vious day's date and the time - the time when his unit had
signaled in the wilderness. Below, it listed six other attempts
by Edwin Tedders to reach him, the most recent only a few
hours ago. There was an eastern code and a number, and a
request that he return the call as soon as possible, prefaced
by the word URGENT.
He tried to recall whether he had ever known an Edwin
Tedders. He decided that he had not.
He punched out the digits and waited.
The buzzing which followed was broken, but the screen
remained dark.
"Yes?" came a crisp male voice.
"William Blackhorse Singer," he said, "returning Edwin
Tedders's call."
"Just a moment, please." The words hurried and rose in
pitch. "I'll get him."
He tugged at a turquoise earring and regarded the blank
screen. A minute shuffled its numbers on a nearby clock-
display. Another...
The screen suddenly glowed, and the heavily lined face of
a dark-haired man with pale eyes appeared before him. His
smile seemed one of relief rather than pleasure.
"I'm Edwin Tedders," he said. "I'm glad we finally got
hold of you, Mr. Singer. Can you come through right now?"
"Maybe." He glanced at the gleaming cage to his left.
"But what's this all about?"
"I'll have to tell you in person. Please reverse the transfer
charges. It is important, Mr. Singer."
"All right. I'll come."
He moved to his trip-box and began its activation. It
whined faintly for an instant. Zones of color moved upward
within the shafts.
"Ready," he said, stepping into the unit.
Looking down, he saw that his feet were growing dim.
For a moment, the world was disarrayed. Then his
thoughts fell back into place again. He was standing within a
unit similar to his own. When he raised his head he looked
out across a large room done up in an old-fashioned man-
ner - dark paneled walls, heavy leather chairs, a Chinese
rug, bookshelves filled with leatherbound volumes, drapes, a
fireplace burning real logs. Two men stood facing him -
Tedders, and a slight, blond man whose voice identified him
as the one with whom he had first spoken.
"This is Mark Brandes, my secretary," Tedders stated as
he watched him step down.
He inadvertently pressed his palm rather than clasping
hands, in the old way of the People. Brandes looked puzzled
but Tedders was already gesturing toward the chairs.
"Have a seat, Mr. Singer."
"Call me Billy."
"All right, Billy. Would you care for a drink?"
"Sure."
-I have some excellent brandy."
"That'll be fine."
Tedders looked at Brandes, who immediately moved to a
sideboard and poured a pair of drinks.
"Early spring," Tedders said.
Billy nodded, accepted his glass.
"You've had a fascinating career. Both freezing and time-
dilation effects kept you around till you could benefit from
medical advances. A real old-timer, but you don't look it."
Billy took a sip of his brandy.
"This is very good stuff," he said.
"Yes. Real vintage. How many trackers are there around
these days?"
"I don't know."
"There are others, but you're the best. Old school."
Billy chuckled.
"What do you want?" he asked.
Tedders chuckled also.
"The best," he said.
"What do you want tracked?"
"It isn't exactly that."
"What, then?"
"It's hard to know where to begin...."
Billy looked out the window, across the moon-flooded
lawn. In the distance, the prospect was broken by a high
wall.
"I am a special assistant to Secretary-General Walford,"
Tedders finally stated. "He is here - upstairs - and so are the
Stragean ambassador and consul - Stango and Bogarthy. Do
you know much about the Strageans?"
"I've met a few, here and there."
"How'did they strike you?"
He shrugged.
"Tall, strong, intelligent... What do you mean?"
"Would you want one for an enemy?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"They could be very dangerous."
"In what ways?"
"They'd be hard to stop. They're shapeshifters. They
have a kind of mental control over their bodies. They can
move their organs around. They can -"
"Walk through walls?"
Billy shook his head.
"I don't know about that. I've heard it said, but I've
never -"
"It's true. They have a training regimen which will pro-
duce this ability in some of them. Semireligious, quite ardu-
ous, takes years, doesn't always work. But they can produce
some peculiar adepts."
"Then you know more about it than I do."
"Yes."
"So why ask me?"
"One of them is on her way here."
Billy shrugged.
"There are a few thousand around. Have been for years."
Tedders sipped his drink;
"They're all normals. I mean one of those with that
special training."
"So?"
"She's coming to kill the Secretary-General."
Billy sniffed his brandy.
"Good that you got word," he finally said, "and can turn
it over to the security people."
"Not good enough."
Throughout the conversation, Tedders had been struggling
to obtain eye-contact. At last Billy was staring at him, and he
felt some small sense of triumph, not realizing that this
meant the man doubted what he was saying.
"Why not?"
"They're not equipped to deal with Stragean adepts," he
said. "She could well be too much for them."
Billy shook his head.
"I don't understand why you're telling me about it."
"The computer came up with your name."
"In response to what?"
"We'd asked it for someone who might be able to stop
her."
Billy finished his drink and set the glass aside.
"Then you need a new programmer or something. There
must be a lot of people who know more about Stragean
adepts than I do."
"You are an expert on the pursuit and capture of exotic
life forms. You spent most of your life doing it. You practi-
cally stocked the Interstellar Life Institute single-handed,
You -"
Billy waved his hand.
"Enough," he said. "The alien you are talking about is an
intelligent being. I spent much of my life tracking animals -
exotic ones, to be sure, some very crafty and with tricky
behavior patterns - but animals nevertheless, not creatures
capable of elaborate planning."
Cat...
"... So I don't see that my experience is really applicable
in this situation," he concluded.
Tedders nodded.
"Perhaps, and perhaps not," he said at last. "But in a
matter like this we should really be certain. Will you talk
with the Stragean representatives who are visiting here?
They can probably give you a clearer picture than I can."
"Sure. I'll talk to anybody."
Tedders finished his drink and rose.
"May I get you another of those?"
"All right."
He replenished the snifter. Then, "I'll be back in a few