by Sandy Nathan
“We’re spirit warriors, not killers. We’ve never done anything like this. And we don’t have permission from Grandfather to use our Powers, so they may not even work.”
“Oh.”
“I’d like to go home, ma’am. If you don’t mind. How about we take you to wherever you’re going and say good-bye?”
“I don’t know if that will work, Bud. Jeremy told me that he found a bunch of bugs—surveillance devices, not insects—in our things. We planned on doing an exclusive video and sending it to the golden planet in return for their bringing you here, but it looks like they circumvented that plan. I rather expect that they’re watching us on Ellie’s planet. And I expect they’ll want a good show before they’ll let any of us go anywhere. I don’t think your wife’s pot roast dinner will satisfy them as a reason you have to go home.”
“Oh.”
Bud rode up front to where Wes and Sam were talking.
“Hey, Bud, you gotta get to know Gunnar. He’s amazing.”
“Yeah, Grace and I have been talking about him a lot. I expect being shoved out that hole with a surveillance eye in your gut was quite an experience,” Bud said sardonically.
“You didn’t tell me about that one, Gunnar,” Wes was enthralled. “He’s been telling me about a sci-fi movie that they’re in where there was a nuclear war and Ellie, that big wasp flying around, took them up to her planet …”
“Hold it, Wes. I want to tell you something. You know your idea that we’re on a reality show?”
“Yeah.”
“We are on a reality show, a real reality show, like your friend told you. We don’t get to go home until we liberate his village,” he pointed at Sam. “And that isn’t …”
“Wesley, I told you a bad thing,” Sam broke in. “My name is not Gunnar. It is,” he said it with the full village brogue, “Sam, o’ th’ line o’ Sam Baahuhd, ou’ a’ Em’ly. I’m the last of the Em’lies. I as’ for yer aid and arms to fight for my fam’ly and kin.”
Wesley looked at him. “Wow. That’s a really cool name, especially with the accent. Much better than Gunnar. Don’t worry about the name switch. I got it. A lot of guys don’t get their professional identity down until they’re mid-career.
“But, what did you say?”
Sam started over. “I am Sam o’ …”
“No. I got that part.” Wes turned to Bud. “This is real?”
“It’s worse than real. Remember how Grandfather never let things get out of control? Safeties on and all that?”
“Yeah.”
“This isn’t like that. This is fucking shoot to kill. This is war, Wes. We can’t go home until we win.”
Wes slid his horse to a stop. “It’s real? We get to kill people?” Bud nodded. Wes let out a series of war cries that had the horses spooking all the way to the end of the line. “This is just what I need. Fuck therapy. I want to kill.”
“I think we should get Grandfather’s permission. We can’t just go into some other time and kill people. That’s not the warrior’s way.”
“Bud, Grandfather left us. He’s either dead, like half the people say, or he’s traveling the world and doesn’t give a shit about us. I say, kill the fuckers.”
“I can’t believe how you’ve changed, Wes.”
37
Sam put up their tent. They had reached the approximate location of the buried equipment barn very late at night. Dawn wasn’t breaking, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour or two away.
The lady had entered the tent first. When he walked through the opening, something tripped him. He ended up on his back with her on top of him, kissing him furiously.
“Lady? Now?”
“Oh, yes, Sam, now. I’m going to jump your bones.”
“What does that mean, lady?”
He figured it out when she straddled him and began pulling at his belt.
“I think we’re going to win, Sam. Last night, I thought we were doomed, but with Wes and Bud, I think we’re going to do it. Let’s celebrate.” She leaned down and kissed him. “Have I told you I love you recently?”
“No.”
“I love you, Sam.”
They were getting into the bone-jumping process when Jeremy whispered at the tent flap, “Mom? Can I come in?”
“Wait. Just a minute …” They frantically pulled themselves together. “Come in, dear. What’s the matter?”
“Mom, Ellie stung me.”
“What!” Grace crawled to the tent flap to open it. “What happened?”
“She was sitting in a tree. I touched her, and she stung me. Her stinger’s in her hoof.”
“Is it bad? Sam, do we have a flashlight?”
Jeremy crawled in and exposed his hand. It was reddened, but not grossly swollen.
“I can’t believe she did that to you.”
“Neither can I, Mom. You saw her, didn’t you? She’s an insect. My beautiful Ellie. She’s not human at all. I don’t know what happened.”
“I don’t know either, Jeremy. But I bet the elders of the golden planet do. I bet they could have told us about this. And that we shouldn’t have allowed her to eat meat, ever.”
Jeremy crouched on the sleeping bags, wiping his cheeks with his hand. “I can’t believe it, Mom. It was the children that Sam hid. When she heard about them, she went nuts. She wanted a baby so bad. That doctor told her she couldn’t have any more kids, so she did what she did.”
“Sam, could you get Jeremy’s sleeping bag? You can sleep with us, dear. Like we did those first nights. Tell me, have you found any more surveillance devices?”
“They’re all over everything. It would take me a week to debug our stuff. I think we’re their reality show. I told you we couldn’t make a deal with them. ‘Exclusive coverage in return for sending Bud and Wesley.’ They have exclusive coverage with their bugs. Forget controlling them …
“The whole planet is probably getting off on us. They probably saw Ellie sting me and laughed.” He whispered fiercely toward the sky, “Assholes!”
“I think we need to pray to the Great One before we go any further,” Bud said. He and Wes had staked a camp a little way from the others. Everyone else was snoring away, but he and Wesley couldn’t go to sleep without getting straight with their ancestors and their own heads.
“You know what, Wes? I’m not sure if we shouldn’t get back on our horses and ride out of here.”
“Fuck them and their reality show?”
“Yeah. Let’s see what happens when we pray. If we don’t get a clear signal, let’s head back to the cliff and try to call Will.”
Bud didn’t have a ceremonial pipe, which he always used for serious prayer. However, the remains of a cigar were jammed in his back pocket. Tobacco was the sacred herb of his People—the cigar was good enough.
“There’s some issues here,” Bud spoke to the night sky around them. “You can’t just go in and start shooting people because someone says they’re monsters. I’d say that flying thing is a monster, but she’s a good guy because she’s married to Jeremy.”
They lit the cigar. Not having matches, Wes snapped his fingers until he got a light. “This place is like the Mogollon Bowl,” he said. “The Power is strong here.”
“The whole story sounds fishy to me. I mean, what if we’re being waylaid for a bad purpose?”
“Saving children?”
“That’s a good purpose. But what if it isn’t their real purpose?
“They seem nice.”
“Yeah, but do you just meet strangers that seem nice and go kill for them?”
“You’re nervous because you’ve never killed anyone before.”
“Neither have you.”
“You’re right.” Wes began singing the song to welcome the Great One. His voice wavered as he tried to remember the words. It had been a long time.
Bud stood and raised the cigar to the four directions, chanting with Wes. He sat down.
“You talk, Bud,” Wes whispered.
“Dear Great One, and Grandfather, if you’re listening, we got ourselves in this deal an’ we sure could use some guidance. These people want us to help them dig up some kids and kill monsters. The kids part is OK, but the monsters is a relativistic situation, morally speaking. What if these are just people who were underground for two thousand years and got a little gnarly? Being able to tell the difference between a demon and someone with bad manners is important.
“We need a sign. Should we go back to the cliff? Or if we stay, is it OK to shoot with the safeties off? Can we use our Powers? Grandfather didn’t let us use them unless we had permission from him. But he’s not here, so we need permission.”
“And also, make our Powers big enough to do the job,” Wesley added. “This may take some Power, real POWER, not just what I used blowing up rocks. If that wasp-girl is a good guy, I’m worried about the bad guys.”
They had a moment of silent contemplation.
Bud prayed, “I hope that we save the kids tomorrow. An’ that things come out right. A lot of people saw us as bad because we looked different and wore feathers and so on. I don’t want this to be like that.
“Grandfather, if you’re around, I’d sure like to hear from you. Can you send a sign as to what we should do? Make it real clear.”
Bud was distracted by the thunder booming a mile or so way. The storm had not let up one bit since they left the cliff. It occurred to him that digging the kids out of the bomb shelter was going to be really hard if the clay was soaked all forty feet down. So he added, “It sure would be nice if where the kids are was dry and easy to dig, but the rain kept fallin’ on the other side.”
They settled in to sit quietly, as Grandfather taught was appropriate after prayer.
“Ahhh!” Wes and Bud screamed when they opened their eyes. A lion-like monster filled the horizon. Its face—flowing hair, wild eyes and vicious fangs—seemed to smile at them. It snapped its teeth before their faces.
“The hant!” They leapt up and ran back to the campground. Their tent seemed pitifully small. They turned around and headed for the biggest tent. “To Sam’s!”
38
“I was taking a dump when I saw it,” Jeremy instructed the group. “You can only see it when you’re squatting.”
Wesley waddled around the area, approximating the point of view needed to reveal the tube. They were searching for the flue sticking out of the earth that indicated the buried barn.
“Here it is,” shouted Mel. The pipe protruded only a few inches from the soil. The hole Jeremy made to enter the machine barn was visible when they got close.
“You got down through that hole?” Mel said. It looked too small to admit an adult.
“Wolves were after me. Motivated me a lot. I left some skin on the roof,” Jeremy explained. “And all I had to dig with was a branch.”
Wes stared into the hole. “If you could step back and give me a little privacy,” he said to the others.
Bud pulled them away. “Wes likes to work alone. We’ll go over here.”
Once he was sure no one was looking, Wesley pointed the palm of his hand at the hole. A beam of blue light emerged from his palm and cut through the dirt. Whatever he and Bud did in their ceremony last night had worked! His Powers were active. A pile of dirt appeared beside the original hole. And then the hole was five feet across and a circle of rusted tin roof was exposed.
The others stood gawking. Wes glared at them. “Don’t you have something else to do? Like getting ready to rescue those kids?” His peevishness hadn’t disappeared. “I need some shovels and tools.”
Soon he was tapping the roof to determine its soundness. Then he jumped down and pulled up the corner that Jeremy had pried up earlier. Moments later, he’d disappeared inside the building.
“Need a flashlight, Wes?” Bud asked.
“No. This is fine.” Wes held up his palm. Blue light illuminated the barn. The barn was a good-sized workspace: about twenty feet by sixty feet with a peaked roof maybe fifteen feet high at the center. The pipe was by the northeast corner, the barn’s low side, so he didn’t have to drop too far when he eased himself through the opening. The barn held everything a decent-sized farm would need. He gazed at it in wonder.
Beautiful equipment filled the building. It wasn’t brand new, but it was a hundred times better than anything he’d had at his family’s ranch. He couldn’t imagine anyone calling the machines old junk. Though a little dented and dirty, these were way better than anything he’d ever seen, even at Will Duane’s.
The machinery drove home a point their hosts’ words couldn’t. These were better machines than any that existed in his time. This was more advanced technology. Which meant that whenever this barn got covered up was already in the future from his time. That’s what they had said. Wesley shuddered.
Maybe their story was true. If that were so, those were real kids over there, buried under forty feet of dirt, and dying.
He moved around the space rapidly. Steel drums were stacked in one corner. Some of the drums were empty, but most were full. Probably full of liquid plastic fuel; that’s what Jeremy said vehicles used back before everything blew up. That wouldn’t go up in the blasts. The belts and hoses on the tractors and backhoe loader, on all the machines, were rotten. As were the replacements in the boxes around the carefully organized barn. Whoever set this up knew what he was doing.
Wesley was getting frustrated because nothing was usable. When he laid a hand on one of the rotted hoses, it softened and became pliable. He was able to mold it into something that was, if not new, at least serviceable. The various kinds of motor fluids were thickened and grotty at the bottom of their tanks, but he laid his hand on them, hoping the same thing would work. He thought it did. If so, the bulldozer could run. He laid his hands on all the equipment, not knowing exactly what he’d need to dig out the kids. He was glad no one could see him, because he was working so fast his limbs were a blur. He could barely see himself.
He had to get fuel into the machines. He assumed that was what was in the metal barrels. How? That’s when reality caught up with him. The uppermost part of the barn was buried under three feet of dirt. What about the sides? Who knew how much dirt blocked the building’s front end? Would he have to dig a trench ten feet wide and eighteen feet deep to get the machinery out? He’d have to excavate a driveway, the whole nine yards.
So far, his Power had held up, but how long would it last? When he did a martial arts exhibit for Grandfather, he was totally exhausted afterward. He usually had to sleep for twenty-four hours. And that was just blowing up some rocks. This was much harder.
“You idiot,” he said to himself. “Why not just dig the kids out of the shelter with the blue light?” They didn’t need the equipment at all. He’d been wasting his time.
Wes clambered out the hole in the ceiling and said, “This isn’t the way to do it. Come on, Bud, let’s go get those kids.”
They grabbed Sam and marched toward the underground shelter. “OK, show us where the kids are buried.”
Sam was able to pinpoint the location precisely. He showed them how the underground growing fields had glassed-in solar panels covered with heavy metal shutters over them. Sam explained that metal shutters had allowed them to weather the nuclear blast. They retracted, allowing the glass panels to collect sunlight, which powered the underground’s electrical systems. The sunlight also was redirected to the farm.
“I grow mostly soybeans, but the Bigs grow weed that will leave you seein’ hants for days and mushrooms that will make your eyeballs shake in your head. They’re against the Commands, but there’s naught I can say about ‘em.
“This is the edge of the solar field,” Sam said. The panels were depressed a few feet from the surface, but were not blocked by dirt or refuse. “A wind comes up from inside and blows it clean, like it does for the canary hole.” He paced off a few feet from one corner.
“The room I built is right here, next to the fields. It is outside t
he shelter, on the other side of its concrete wall. The fields are far below, but the room is not too deep. Its walls are dirt. I had only a little wood to reinforce them, or the ceiling.” His wary expression said what Wes feared.
“So if we don’t dig it just right, the ceiling will collapse?” he said.
“Yes.”
Wes gave the orders. “I want everyone to keep away. What I do is private.” He turned to Bud. “I need you to help me, Bud. I know you don’t think you can do this, but I need help.”
Bud and Wes approached the job surgically, paring away a layer of dirt at a time. Bud quickly picked up the technique for moving earth. A pyramid grew off to the side. They scooped deeper and closer to where they thought the children were.
Wes stepped back and wiped his face, feeling heartened. It was working. He was in one of those half-in-one-world, half-in-another states that went with spiritual experience. He always had felt that way when Grandfather was present, but he hadn’t felt so blessed since leaving the old shaman’s side. Now he could feel the power of grace, along with gratitude. He felt like the man he had been. He liked that man.
Wes couldn’t help notice that the thundershowers had continued at the front of the shelter, and that the earth they were moving was easy to cut and moist. Not soaked. He shivered.
And then they were there.
“Don’t step on the ceiling,” Sam said. They’d made a trench down to the room, leaving a wide passage to the surface behind them. They could lift the children out and carry them to the field hospital that way. When they saw how flimsy the ceiling was, it stopped them cold. Who was light enough to pull the children out?
A buzzing from the sky behind them caused them to turn around. Ellie droned insistently. They understood her. She could weigh nothing by hovering. She could fit through the hole, and her eyes let her see in the dark. She could find the children and bring them out one at a time. She wasn’t tired at all.
“Let the wee girl try. I think she can do it. We need to hurry, lass,” Sam said to Ellie. “The Bigs know we’re here. They may burst through the wall. Do ye hear them?”