Sky Coyote (32 page)

Lopez sighed and drummed his fingers on the polished synthetic substance of the tabletop. “Joseph’s not asking that we kill the man, madam. You simply want him removed from the village, am I right?” He turned his head to me. Beside him, Bugleg watched us uneasily.

“That’s all. Put him in a holding cell here. Conduct your interviews with him as long as you want, but in a place where my people won’t have to listen,” I implored. “The guy can project like a stage actor! And my poor chief would like his house back.”

“I’m sorry about that,” said Imarte, looking away. “We can try to make arrangements for Sepawit. But we can’t move the man here, not to this alien environment! Don’t you understand the importance of obtaining such material in context? Right now, his beliefs are intact. Even meeting you and me, disguised as we are, has reinforced his world picture and his belief system. The minute he’s exposed to
this
—” she indicated the base with a sweeping gesture that took in the four long walls of the gray conference room—”the material will be compromised. His belief system will change.”

“So dress up your quarters to look like the inside of a tule house,” I snarled. “Don’t let him see any plastic while he’s here. Whatever. But I want him out of Humashup!”

“And we’ll get him out,” Lopez agreed. “I’m certain there’s a
way to accommodate everyone, Imarte. Our first priority must be the Chumash rescue, however.”

“But they’re as good as rescued. We’ve learned nearly everything we can from them. What can happen now?” Imarte said. “And this man is such a valuable source of information, it would be criminal not to learn as much as we can while we have access to him. Besides, not only would he speak differently here in this strange place, I’d listen differently. There’s a mind-set that goes with hearing such stories seated on the earth, under a wooden roof, where I can smell the cooking fire and see the artifacts of ancient life around us. All that would be lost here.”

“Look, you may be grooving on the primal ancientness of it all,” I said, “but in the meantime this man presents a real danger to everything we’ve accomplished. And the Company has a low, low tolerance for people who endanger our work.”

“And if the Company knew what’s at stake here?” She leaned forward. “You know how some of our stockholders feel about monotheism. They’d want him saved at all costs, you know they would! What if they put it to a vote?”

“What, indeed?” said Lopez calmly as he poured himself a glass of water. “They might just do that, if they knew about this man. They don’t, however. Someone here did try to tell them; I intercepted an unauthorized transmission only last night, in fact.”

Imarte gulped. My ears went up. “Of all the underhanded—” I began, but Imarte cut me off:

“We don’t need to contact the future for a directive, anyway. There are enough representatives of the future here for a vote right now, if you call a meeting. Call that meeting, Lopez!”

“Unfortunately, madam, that authority does not lie with me,” said Lopez, and took a sip of his distilled water. A silence fell. We looked at Bugleg, marooned as usual on his island of incomprehension.

“Sir.” Imarte got up and went to him. “Surely you understand. This mortal has information on a lost culture, on a faith that would have transformed the world if it had been given the time! The loss to human civilization is, consequently, incalculable; but we can change that. This is comparable to finding Saint Paul or Mohammed and being able to record his actual doctrines in their purest state, not just the edited and half-obliterated translations that have been preserved. More so, because the ideologies of those religions employed scriptural text and have thus survived as cultural influences. Not so with the Native American faiths. We came here to ameliorate that tremendous injustice, sir, and what we’ve done so far on restoration for the Chumash has made a good start. But we’d be betraying our purpose if we didn’t utilize all our resources to record everything we can about this visitor from an equally significant civilization, given the remarkable opportunity we have to do so.”

She leaned way over to emphasize her point with her cleavage.

Bugleg fiddled with his stylus. “Um—” he said.

“Sir, I implore you. This situation must be brought to the attention of the stockholders here,” she told him. “Call the meeting. Let’s have a consensus.”

He looked horrified. I sat down and leaned back in my chair.

“You need to know some stuff, sir,” I told him. “This man is a religious fanatic. He belongs to a cult. They do sacrifices and rituals.”

“They do?” His eyes darted to my face.

“Yes, they do. And you know how we’ve been saving the Indians, and it’s all been going really good? You know how we’re going to take them off to a base where they can stop doing savage old-time stuff and live just like you? Well, this man wants that not to happen. He wants to make them belong to his cult. See, he’s one of those guys who thinks it’s okay to kill people who
don’t do rituals like he does. He’s a priest. I used to be a priest, and I know what they do. I was part of that Inquisition thing. You know about that, don’t you? That was where those bad old guys would torture people to make them join their religion. This guy is doing the same thing. We Old People learned from you that bigotry and intolerance are bad, but
he
doesn’t think so. In fact, he wants to start a war over it that will kill lots of people. I bet lots of animals get killed, too. You don’t want that, do you?”

“No!” cried Bugleg. He turned accusing eyes on Imarte. “You were all, ‘He came on a peaceful mission’!”

“He
is
a man of peace, sir. You don’t understand—it’s not as simple as Joseph is making it sound.” She looked at me furiously. “Yes, he comes from a religious group, but you were the ones who decided that all mortal cultures have equal value. You were the ones who thought everything was worth preserving. I’m simply following our Greater Mission Statement!”

“You know what he believes about his god, this guy?” I said with a yawn and stretch. “That He sends animals to attack anybody who laughs at Him. Hey, and you know how she was all, Saint Paul and Mohammed? You know who those guys were? They started religions that got billions and billions of people killed fighting one another in wars. They said they were men of peace, too, but look what happened. This is the same kind of guy. Now, she wants to listen to his talking, and she wants to do it in the Indian village, and she doesn’t think it matters if my Indians hear his cult ideas. I say it’s dangerous. What if they listen to him and turn into cultists? He’s like a microbe, this guy, he’s like germs. Okay? And if you let her have her meeting thing, and her consensus thing, the germs are going to spread. Do you want that?”

“How can you
do
this?” Imarte had tears in her eyes. “Joseph, you of all people should know what’s at stake here!”

I knew better than she did. Bugleg was shaking his head obstinately. “No, no, no. You can’t have a meeting. This man sounds really sick. No sacrifices and no wars.”

“Let’s compromise, shall we?” said Lopez, who had been watching us, chin on fist. “We’ll have a replica native dwelling built nearby. This man can be brought in—perhaps at night or while he’s unconscious—and you can continue your interviews there, madam. Minimal loss of context, and he won’t be exposed to anything alien enough to affect his personal mythology. Will that do? He won’t disturb the Chumash any further, and I’m sure you can invent a plausible reason for his disappearance, can’t you, Joseph?”

“Sure! Sounds great.” I got up and collected my hat. Imarte stared down at the table with big soulful betrayed eyes. Bugleg looked at us, from one to the other, still outraged.

“No meetings!” he said sternly.

“Nope. You did good, sir,” I told him. “That was smart, giving that order. It’ll save the mission from those nasty cult guys. You should be proud of yourself.” But he shook his head again.

“Being proud is wrong,” he told us.

The long walk back to Humashup wasn’t all that comfortable, with Imarte sniffling and refusing to talk to me. I was sorry I’d had to play hardball, but this wasn’t the first time somebody’s enthusiasm for his own little line of work had made trouble on a mission. Sometimes you have to take people’s toys away.

The sound of very loud prayer drifted to us from Sepawit’s house as we approached. Was it my imagination, or were the people standing around eyeing me with a certain amount of fear and suspicion? The security tech guys stood stolid and silent outside the door. A lady named Anucwa, one of the bossy wise women, approached us cautiously.

“Uncle Sky Coyote, I think you’d better kill that prisoner. He’s saying some terrible things about you. I don’t believe any of it, of course, but people are starting to talk.”

“Yes, I thought this would happen.” I looked sidelong at Imarte. “What is he saying, sweetheart?”

“Oh, all sorts of nonsense … that you’re the king of the nunasis, for one thing. Which is ridiculous, of course; but he knows a lot of other things that are true. He was sitting in there all night yelling about you, and about all of us here. Calling for people he’s never met, but he knows their names and all about their families. We’re all wondering how he knows so much about us. I told everybody he must be a sorcerer.” She looked at me expectantly.

“Good for you!” I patted her on the behind. “You guessed right. Will you be a love and go tell the rest of them that? And not to worry about the things he says. He’s just trying to scare everybody. I’m taking him away from here today.”

“I’d better go in and talk to him,” murmured Imarte, which was as close to an apology as I was going to get from her.

“You do that, babe.” I watched as she and Jensen slunk away into Sepawit’s house. Sepawit, right. Must talk to him.

I found him sitting outside Kaxiwalic’s, where he’d been staying with his wife and the baby. The kid was crawling around on his lap, eating most of his breakfast for him. He didn’t seem to mind. But when he looked up to wish me good morning, even he had a different look in his eyes.

“Has he told You about Sumewo yet?” he asked.

“I expect to find out today,” I temporized. Damn, I’d forgotten to ask Imarte about that. Well, I’d go ask the guy myself. “You’re getting your house back tonight, too.”

“Oh, good,” he said listlessly. “The baby’s already broken a
couple of Kaxiwalic’s belongings. He’s a bachelor, You know, so he leaves things lying around …”

“I’m sorry.” I sat down beside him. “I’ll pay for any damage.” The baby offered me a grubby fistful of acorn mush, then changed his mind and ate it himself.

“Oh, that’s all right,” Sepawit said. He was a million miles away. “You don’t suppose … What if he is still alive, Sky Coyote?”

“Does that seem real likely to you?” I asked him.

“No, but … that man has been going on and on about what a loving god Chinigchinix is, as long as you don’t cross Him. He explained that Chinigchinix doesn’t want everybody killed, just made to worship Him. He says his people haven’t been making war on the other tribes. They’ve just been making them see the truth—His truth—and as soon as the other tribes accept that, then they all live like brothers. Not that I believe a story like that for a minute, but there might be some truth in it. It wouldn’t make any sense to kill off all the other tribes you meet—I mean, who would you trade with?—and you can only take so many slaves. I just don’t see what the point is of this insisting that everybody believe in the same god.”

“He’s a jealous god, that’s all, and He doesn’t want any attention paid to anybody else,” I explained. “Children are like that, sometimes. New baby gets born, big sister wants mother to pay attention just to her and not to the new one. You can’t give in to gods when they demand crazy things of you, or there’ll be no end to the things they expect you to do. You know that tribe
down
south I told you about, the really rich one? They hooked up with a god who told them they had to give Him human hearts to eat, every day, and blood between meals.”

Sepawit shuddered. “What an awful god! What did they do?”

“Well, they sure as hell didn’t want to tear out their own hearts
to feed their god, so they had to make war on their neighbors all the time so they’d have captives’ hearts to feed Him. Pretty soon all their neighbors hated them. Also, they had dead bodies piling up—which they took to eating, because, well, there the bodies were, and how are you going to go hunting deer when you have to make war all the time? And the laugh was, their god dumped them in the end. He just let the white men come marching in and didn’t lift a finger to save his people. Talk about ungrateful!”

“Well, if you behave like that, you deserve what you get,” remarked Sepawit. “No, what I don’t understand is why this Chinigchinix should want to bother
us?
We’re good people. We know it’s wrong to steal, lie, and murder. What did we do to get this god on our case?”

“Well, you’re my children. He doesn’t like me, as you may have noticed,” I said with a rueful grin.

“It
is
true that You lie sometimes. And steal,” Sepawit ventured, looking uneasily at me from the corner of his eye. “At least, the stories say so.”

I shrugged. “I did stupid things when I was young. Didn’t you? As it is with you men, so it is with us Sky People. I think Chinigchinix must be a very young god, or crazy, to be so selfish.”

“Maybe.” He nodded. He was still watching me. “But, You know, that man seems so friendly. So calm. If they’re all like him, maybe they’re not so bad. Maybe they didn’t harm Sumewo after all.”

Okay: if you had your choice between believing that your son had suffered a horrible death by torture or believing that he was perfectly all right with good, humane people, which would you rather believe? And if the enemy is good and humane, maybe they’re telling you the truth when they say that your kindly old Uncle is actually the Lord of the Flies Himself. And if that’s the case, what’s your next move?

I didn’t know how far he’d gone along this path of reasoning, but he wasn’t going to travel any farther.

“This isn’t fair. You shouldn’t have to suffer the suspense.” I jumped to my feet. “I’ll get an answer for you, Sepawit. You need to know, one way or the other.”