Nightwing (18 page)

“Not going to read any more.” Harold stood. “Not going to help you. So long.”

Youngman stared at the bits of paper fluttering higher into the sky. Now, he’d never know what Abner did.

“Maybe the Fire Clan priests can help,” he turned to say, but Harold was already slipping into his house.

The last light of the day was fading. The square stone-and-mud houses of the pueblo were turning to smaller squares of light, the off-white of gas lamps. Voices and the sounds of meals echoed through the alleys. Cottonwood leaves drifted over the plaza.

Youngman stirred himself, stretched, and headed for the road to the parking lot. Cecil had invited him for dinner. Near the end of the plaza, though, Youngman found himself standing by the third kiva, where the totem of the Fire Clan hung from the top rung of the ladder that led down to the underground chamber. It was very unusual, practically sacrilegious, for the priests to stay in the kiva during a Snake Dance. It was definitely worse for anyone to disturb them, though.

He stood by the ladder, listening for a word, the shake of a rattle, a murmur of movement below. He blocked from his mind the sounds of the houses, the shuffle of wind. The kiva was totally silent. Juniper branches tied to the ladder below the entrance hole blocked any view of the chamber, but Youngman caught the odor of spoiled food.

He shook the ladder tentatively. There was no response. Stone Man had said eight priests were in the kiva: one of them should have noticed the ladder. Although they could have left last night or the night before without anyone noticing. The kiva could be empty. He watched a black beetle with wings marked scarlet climb from the entrance up the ladder. A carrion beetle.

A laugh reverberated in an alley. The plaza was still empty except for Youngman. A second beetle came after the first.

Youngman started down the ladder. As his boots pushed through the juniper branches he was sure he’d be greeted by angry challenges. There were no challenges, not a sound but the creaking of the ladder rungs. He shook another insect from his hand. The kiva was cold. Not cool. Cold that made his shirt cling to his back. And dark. The pale shaft of light that came through the entrance hole faded before it touched the floor. When Youngman reached bottom, the light died on his face. He could see nothing but the gray dome of the kiva ceiling curving into black space. The air was thick, hard to breathe, and slightly sweet.

He lit a match.

He was surrounded by a circle of men sitting against the walls of the kiva. All the men were stripped to the waist. Some held prayer sticks. One who stared at Youngman had his lap covered by cornmeal and colored sand. There wasn’t a mark on them, except that their skin had turned black as if singed and foam had dried to a crust on their mouths and chests, and they were dead.

The Navajo helicopter sat in the floodlights set up around the plaza. A rack of germ-killing ultraviolet lights was aimed at the kiva, from which climbed, clumsy as a moon-walker, a figure in airtight vinyl coveralls. The cloth of the suit was impregnated with diethyltoluamide rat repellent. The face plate showed eyes and an oxygen mask. A similar figure followed and, together, the two men carried a sagging cocoon of the same shiny material to the helicopter. It was the fourth sealed bag they’d carried to the helicopter from the kiva. They went back for more.

“Ten o’clock.” Walker Chee looked at his watch. He, Youngman and Cecil, and the village elders watched from Stone Man’s roof, a hundred feet away. The entire village, many of them wrapped in blankets against the night chill, were on the roofs and silently watching the floodlit scene. “Lucky this didn’t happen this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” Youngman agreed. “All we’d need is a few hundred whites racing out of here saying there’s an epidemic.”

“Wait a second, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I want to know what you’re both talking about,” Cecil interrupted. “Epidemic of what?”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Chee answered. “They could’ve died of anything. He said they looked burned.”

“I said they
looked
burned. They weren’t burned,” Youngman corrected him.

“Anyway, another copter is on its way. All I meant before was that it’s lucky we don’t have to inoculate that crowd you had this afternoon. That’s,” Chee glared at Youngman, “how wild rumors get started.”

“And just what the hell are you going to inoculate them against?” Youngman demanded.

“We’ll use general antibiotics like streptomycin.” Chee turned to the elder. “I’m just trying to help you people. Sheriff, are you going to get your deputy off my back?”

A sixth silvery cocoon was being carried from the kiva. The same pueblo elders who had been buying the most important sales pitch of Walker Chee’s life just hours before studied the Navajo chairman now with open suspicion.

“A lot of people here don’t take to needles of no kind,” Cecil said. “Matter of fact, seeing’s how this fucks up the Rain Dance, not a good idea for you to be giving orders here.”

“This is a lot more serious than any Rain Dance!” Chee lost his temper.

“Tell us,” Youngman suggested. “Start with how you’re going to want this whole village quarantined.”

“Look,” Chee told Cecil, “you want a jailbird for a deputy, that’s your business. I don’t have to deal—”

“You gonna want this place quarantined?” Cecil asked.

“As a precautionary measure—” Chee found faces watching him from all the near roofs. “It’s a normal measure.”

The seventh cocoon was laid out in the helicopter. One of the two figures in overalls waved to Chee. The second figure returned to the kiva with a flame thrower. A stream of fire spewed into the underground chamber.

Stone Man recoiled. “I saw eight priests go down there.”

Chee took a hand radio from his belt and spoke into it.

“Doctor, you got all the bodies out of there, didn’t you?”

The radio answered in the affirmative, although Youngman hadn’t seen either of the men in airtight coveralls use a radio of their own. Which meant they had collar mikes and earphones.

“Good,” Chee said. “There weren’t any more bodies, just seven,” he told Stone Man.

“Did they see a small stone tablet?” Stone Man asked.

Chee shrugged, but passed on the question.

“Every item was accounted for. There was nothing like you describe,” the radio answered.

“Give me the radio,” Youngman said.

“You’re out of the picture.” Chee shook his head. “Your people fired you tonight.”

“Give him what he asks for.” Stone Man stared at the desecrated kiva. Tears stood in his eyes. “Do it.”

Youngman put his hand out.

“Duran,” Chee lowered his voice, “you saw those bodies. There weren’t any wounds on them. No swelling, buboes, nothing. Don’t try to make something out of nothing. Don’t start a panic.”

“Thank you.” Youngman took the radio. “Doctor, which one are you? Raise your hand.”

The figure without the flame thrower raised his right hand.

“Doctor, what killed the men in the kiva?”

The voice that answered was nasal and clipped, a white voice. The doctor who had come to Gilboa for Isa Loloma, Youngman guessed.

“There are no clear indicators. The evidence of froth does lead us to believe there were pulmonary complications.”

“A disease, then.”

“Or toxic agents. Maybe a disease.”

“A highly contagious disease.”

“Not necessarily. The situation of the chamber is highly abnormal. Close quarters, shared food, lack of hygiene, et cetera. A disease that isn’t normally contagious at all could become so.”

“Did you see any fleas or flea bites?”

“Not so far.”

“Swollen places?”

“No swelling at all. I can assure you there was no indication of bubonic plague, if that’s what you’re getting at. These precautions we’re taking are normal prophylactic methods in dealing with a possibly contagious and undetermined disease. Again, I must mention toxic agents. What they ate or breathed. The public hygiene of the pueblo itself leaves a great deal to be desired.”

“Okay, Doctor, let’s cut the shit for a start. We had a nurse up here who spent two years teaching me about your goddamn indicators. The indicators of those priests were, one, froth, which means their lungs were infected. Two, cyanosis, black skin, which means their lungs were so congested there was no oxygen in their blood. Three, seven men died in two days. In other words, they were killed by pneumonic plague, which is a hell of a lot more infectious than bubonic plague.”

“What’s the difference?” Cecil asked.

“You don’t need any fleas. Just one man with plague and a cold in his lungs so he can kill his friends with a cough. It’s about a hundred percent fatal. Right, Doctor?” Youngman added to the radio.

The figure in coveralls took a long time answering.

“As long as the men were dead, had stopped breathing out any bacilli, and they weren’t handled improperly, the chances of further infection are practically nil.”

“Then it was pneumonic plague.”

“That’s premature speculation. We’ll do autopsies, the same as we did on the boy—”

Chee’s signal to the doctor was too late.

“So,” Youngman glared at the Navajo, “you son of a bitch.”

“The main thing is to avoid a panic,” Chee said.

“. . . pathogenic signs on the boy’s body would indicate the possibility of bubonic plague,” the radio went on. “There were flea bites we suspect were vectors, points of entry for the bacilli. I must stress, he was an isolated case.”

“Until tonight.”

“Perhaps,” the voice conceded, “until tonight.”

“Even eight cases don’t make an epidemic,” Chee said.

Youngman looked at the two figures in bright coveralls, the flame thrower, the bank of floodlights and rack of ultraviolet lights, the helicopter stuffed with man-size sacks. An invasion of twentieth-century apparatus such as Shongopovi had never seen before.

“But if it is,” Youngman said, “if it is an epidemic, Chee, you’re ready, aren’t you? That’s what interests me. You’re so goddamn ready.”

“So? You’re lucky I’m here.”

“Maybe.” Youngman gave the radio back. “Cecil, Joe Momoa usually makes it to the Rain Dance, doesn’t he?”

“Never misses it. And Joe Jr. and Ben, they come in on their bikes.”

“See them today?”

“Nope.”

“Neither did I.”

“If you had any phones here—” Chee said.

“You do,” Youngman said, “in your car.”

Youngman, Chee, the white doctor, and the Navajo patrolman called Begay flew out to Dinnebito Wash in the second helicopter. Headlights probed the dark at 150 mph because the last radio report was there was still no answer on the Momoa phone.

“So I’m a son of a bitch, am I?” Chee asked Youngman. “If that’s true why am I helping you?”

“Because you’re in a corner, because you’re hiding something. Because you’re scared.”

In the twin beams, the desert slid by as two pale tracks spotted with brush, undulating as the copter flew over a dune. Youngman tapped the pilot on the shoulder.

“Stone chimneys coming up, better climb a little.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Climb anyway.”

The copter rose fifty feet. A slight tilt to the aircraft swung the beam and picked up a red column of sandstone reaching to the skids. The copter hopped another fifty feet.

Youngman had no good memories of riding in helicopters; he had no good memories of the Army. Like the Army, copters were too complicated and illogical, loud and wasteful. Sitting besides Youngman, the doctor he’d spoken to over the radio on the plaza was distributing vinyl coveralls from a box stencilled, “Center for Disease Control—Sterile Until Opened or Damaged.”

“I don’t mind lying to you,” Chee said, “and I don’t mind being a son of a bitch. That’s what it takes. You hear me?”

“For what?” Youngman stretched his legs as best he could.

“To be like them. Like the whites. You’re not so dumb you haven’t figured it out yet. You don’t like it but don’t try to lie to me. You know.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Yeah? I’m saying we’re on the same side. It’s you and me, Duran, you and me on the same side against the whites.”