Analog SFF, July-August 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  From the bottom of his pack he picked up the small olive-colored locater and adjusted down the readout screen's light intensity level. It still worked. It was based on the same technology as the timespanner and shockcomb. The assortment of readouts, it had been explained to him by Dr. Taleghani, would let them know when the window is about to open, where it is exactly, and would let Mehmet know where they were when he came back to find them and good old Squanto. All automatic.

  "Except that the fellow who can read the instrument is dead, the pilot who is to come looking for us is dead, the ship that is to pick us up is so much powder, and Squanto apparently has other plans.” There was one part he could read, however: 191 days until impact. He glanced at the shadows. Yellow Eyes was back, looking at him, whispers of paws in snow, the Coyote People maintaining their watch. Gordon poked through Taleghani's pack until he found the doctor's locater. Its case had been eaten through by the red goo, and the screen was dead.

  If a rescue ever were attempted, Gordon could still be found. Once found and returned to Site Safar, however, the authorities would be looking for someone to blame for the deaths, for the unauthorized intrusion into the past, and for the destroyed vehicle. “I wonder who that will be,” Gordon muttered facetiously to Coyote. He replaced the working locator in his bag and opened one of the energy bars. As soon as he tore the wrapper a foul odor assaulted his nostrils. He opened another. All of the food was either spoiled or contaminated. Something in the food or in the wrappers had reacted badly when the vehicle's metals altered properties. He'd have to rely upon local fare.

  One leather bag, one shockcomb, a set of lenses for a low-power telescope, a time locater, a change of clothes, the Widow Pela, and one hell of a disaster coming in a matter of just a few months. There was a moment of dizziness, the images of his two fellow travelers flashed before him, then all pain left him as he watched the snow-covered ground rush up to smack his face.

  * * * *

  "God'n? God'n all good?” came Pela's voice through the fog. As the pain filled his head he opened his eyes. It was dark again and he was in the lean-to, Pela's seated form silhouetted by the fire behind her. She must have dragged him there. He guessed he must outweigh her by twenty or twenty-five kilos.

  "A little good,” he said. He thought on it, the pain beginning to diminish, becoming a dull presence rather than a stabbing insistent maniac. “Better good,” he said gingerly sitting up. “Food?” he asked her.

  Pela grinned widely. “Food good.” She turned toward the fire, reached, and brought back some kind of toasted bits of meat stuck on a cedar stick. The pieces of meat were bigger than if they'd been from a mouse. Rabbit, maybe. He pulled a piece from the end of the sharpened stick, and it was rabbit spiced with something resembling chili and honey. With it came a wooden cup filled with a hot tea brewed in a fired ceramic pot. Before he knew it Gordon had cleaned the stick, which was all the compliment Pela needed. She presented him with another. While he ate, she gave him his numbers and showed him how to write them. The system resembled Roman numerals without the subtraction. A four was four vertical slashes. A five was a big dot resembling a fist. A ten was two fists crossed at the wrists—an X. Fifty was a hollow box and a hundred, a solid box. “Old man, like God'n father,” she said, and marked ninety-six in the snow:

  * * * *

  [] XXXX*I

  After praising her cooking and thanking her for the food, he closed his eyes, images of ghosts merging with Pela's songs to Tana and fading memories of school numbers. Before he drifted off, he opened his eyes barely to slits, his gaze drifting to the fire. Shimmering beyond the reflective stone plate were two transparent figures standing there, watching him. Then they seemed to dissolve into the night. Gordon closed his eyes.

  The old ones in the Diné believed in ghosts. Even the Christians in the pueblo carried the fear. Gordon remembered telling Phil Andreakos that snipers cannot afford to believe in ghosts. With the body count his unit was racking up, they'd have to issue spectral hotels to house all the ghosts generated. Simpler not to believe in them. "But," Gordon's spotter had observed, "not believing in ghosts won't get rid of the ones that are real."

  It was a put-on. Phil used to kid the other troops in the unit about him and Gordon taking scalps on the battlefield, hanging them on their lodge pole, absorbing their mystical powers. They didn't even have a lodge, much less a lodge pole, but Andreakos loved putting on the replacements. Phil once found a dead horse outside Ahvaz and cut off its black tail and mane. He'd dangle little clumps of hair bound with rawhide from the tree outside their tent, wear them from his battle dress, and give them as little gifts with a deadpan stare saying, “The Great Spirit grant you this warrior's strength.” Then Phil would hold his hands out, embrace the skies with his dark-eyed gaze, and chant gibberish. Ha te, makka me te hey, ya ya and so on. The recipients of these gifts would sometimes ask Gordon about it and he would always give them the same response: an Iron Eyes stare from an expressionless face. He'd nod once and say, “Andreakos really know how to sharpen knife."

  A French reporter got wind of it somehow and the international news media went into multiple orgasms about US troops scalping dead Arab and Iranian soldiers, selling the scalps as souvenirs. Then a lone sensible reporter had a belated DNA done on one of the “scalps” and it turned out to be one hundred percent Arab all right—Arabian horse. The company CO called Gordon and Andreakos in, but as soon as the captain clapped eyes on the pair he burst out laughing. They gifted the captain with a prime scalp for his lodge pole.

  Ha te, makka me te hey, ya ya.

  Gordon felt the smile on his face. The memory of the Long Island Macedonian was alive in Gordon's memory. Ghost enough. He opened his eyes again and glanced at the fire. The shimmering images had seemed to emerge from some other plane of existence. He wondered if they were hallucinations from being whacked in the head. Perhaps they were leftovers from his brush with that other dimension. Maybe they were indeed the wandering spirits of the dead—

  The images emerged from behind a rippling curtain of existence, the light waves passing through them distorted. The two figures seemed to turn toward each other for a moment, then face him again. Gordon closed his eyes. Real or not, he needed to rest. As he allowed the sleep to take him, he smiled and whispered the Chant of Fulla Bull he had once learned from that great warrior and U.S. Army shaman, Scalper of Dead Horse:

  Ha te, makka me te hey, ya ya...

  * * * *

  *III

  The next morning all his hallucinations and mental wanderings had left him, along with his headache. He gingerly poked at his head wound, tried to make the headache come, but it was gone. For the first time, Gordon felt he was mending. He told Pela he wanted to walk, to see, to talk, to eat. She rolled a few food items in a skin, placed it in Gordon's pack, slung the pack over her shoulder, then took his hand and slowly led him through their camp to a trail through a dense growth of cedars. He found walking the trail difficult, his headache returning and spiking in intensity after a few stumbles. After awhile the crisp clean air in his lungs, the stretch of his muscles, and the change of scenery diminished his headache to tolerable levels. As he had been trained to do, he cleared the cobwebs of his past and the speculations concerning the future from his mind and concentrated on his surroundings. Hosteen Ahiga and the instructors at sniper school agreed on at least one thing: Now is when everything happens. Twice he saw Coyote watching him from the shadows. Once he saw a beam of sunlight distorted by something invisible passing before it.

  On the other side of the wood was a clearing that opened onto a bluff overlooking the southern range of hills, most of them more than fifty percent cleared for agriculture, the fields connected by narrow paths—no wheel tracks; no houses or huts. The farmers and their families lived in the village, Gordon presumed. On the horizon, towering majestically above the misty white plateaus, rose the mountain—Black Mountain to Pela's people, none of whom had ever seen the mountain black. “Old-ol
d ones, tell old-old stories,” Pela said to him. “Long before snows, Ekav make mountain from fire. Mountain cool black. Black Mountain. Then snows come.” She grinned widely as she showed Gordon a log upon which he could sit and rest. “Now mountain white,” she said, pointing at the vertical faces. “Cliffs black.” Gordon looked back at the peak and seated himself on the log.

  The morning sun sparkled from several of the glaciers busily carving cirques in the old volcano's flanks. Pela sat next to Gordon and unwrapped their food. Dried fruit, nuts, a bit of jerked venison. She held her hand out toward the sun. “Ekav kiss high flat lands,” said Pela, lowering her hand. “Ekav's kiss bring Yomi Black Mountain Mother up from flat land in fire. Mountain Mother touch sky waters and birth Avina, spirit of river; Ekav touch ground and birth Kaag, spirit of land and growing. Davimo, god of day sky, touch Mountain Mother and birth Walking Man and Walking Woman. Walking Man and Walking Woman come down from mountain and begin Black Mountain Clan. All clans come from Black Mountain. Pela Black Mountain.” She looked up into Gordon's eyes, a question on her face. Credentials time.

  "Gordon born to Coyote Pass People,” he said, noticing as he did so a slight mist of confusion cross Pela's eyes. He hadn't their word for coyote. Maybe there weren't any coyotes here and in her time. “Dog with shadow tail."

  Pela took on the English word, Coyote.

  "Born to Coyote Pass People; born for Bear Enemies Clan,” he said.

  "From where?” she asked with a confused frown.

  He raised his right arm and pointed toward the west. “Very far away."

  "How long?” she asked.

  Her people had horses. Land distances were measured in days riding a horse. How many days would it take to get to the New Meeting House steps in Jemez Pueblo a hundred and thirty-nine thousand years in the future riding a horse? “Too long to go back,” he said.

  Too long to go back, he repeated to himself as weakness seemed to fill his body. “Tired,” he said to Pela. She wrapped their remaining food and they returned to camp.

  * * * *

  After a sleep in which dreams brought him back to Bear Rock and his mother angrily dressed down Glittering Man for the sun's repeated failure to scour evil from the world, Gordon awakened to Pela's quiet singing. It was a story song about a young girl who wanted to become a flower and a flower who wanted to become a girl. It was a Trickster tale Iron Eyes had told him back in the pueblo. Instead of a young girl, Iron Eyes's tale was a young boy and instead of a flower it was a jaybird. The Trickster's lesson was the same: Walk in beauty, the path of beauty to be found not in feathers or petals but within. Gordon was wondering what Hosteen Ahiga would make of this land, this woman, and this situation when the light beyond the fire shimmered and distorted. Two figures, he was certain.

  Do you hear me? He said to them in thought. The images faded, seemed to meld for a moment, then separate. “You understand me?” he asked in Pela's tongue. She turned, looked at him, and realized that he was not talking to her. "Hal tafhamunii?" he asked the images in Arabic.

  Pela looked to where Gordon was speaking. “Do you see them?” he asked her.

  "No,” she whispered. “What God'n see?"

  Right then it was nothing. The images had faded away. He shook his head in answer to her question. “My eyes play tricks,” he said as he gently tapped the right side of his head. “Head hurt make me see things."

  "See Pela work, God'n,” she said.

  Pela was working on a white bear skin she had taken from a substantial pack of pelts she kept at one end of the lean-to. With a sharpened bone punch, a bone needle, some kind of vegetable fabric for thread, braided leather cords, a bone hair pick, and her flint knife, she was creating a beautiful white fur coat. “Killing coat,” she said. “White for winter hunter.” She glanced knowingly at him. “Look like bear, look like snow, stay still, bear no see you.” She cocked her head slightly in the direction of the fire's far side.

  He nodded at the woman's wisdom and set his gaze to searching among the shadows beyond the fire. Winter camo training. If you and your weapon are white, and if you lie flat and motionless, you look like snow. If you stand and move, you look like Frosty the snowman. If you are made of light waves and can only be seen when you move, don't move if you don't want to be seen. Gordon removed his covers, stood, and asked Pela to tell him about the coat she was making. While she talked he walked around the fire and searched among the trees and shrubs.

  The coat had been commissioned by a hunter of the eastern Many Horses Clan named Afeht, three days ride, Pela told him. Afeht paid Pela in advance for the coat with a healthy packhorse four winters old. “Too cold for horse sitting toahmecu,” she said, waving a hand at the night. “Horse with Bonsha. Bonsha sister of dead husband. Bonsha feed horse while Pela sit toahmecu."

  Gordon continued searching and asked. “What is toahmecu? Why Pela on hill?"

  She was silent for a long moment, then Pela explained as she worked. She had been married before to Iveleh the pointmaker. Iveleh had been collecting flint nodules three summers before at Tall Bird Cliffs deep in Yellow Claw Country to the south and had been killed in a landslide. Pela had given Iveleh no children and she was now an old woman as her people reckoned such things: twenty and eight summers. She made winter outerwear, had a thriving trade, owned a bit of property, and could cook and keep house. However she wasn't a terrific prospect for marriage, she insisted Gordon understand. No possibility of sons. “Too old, so they say."

  She nodded her head toward the shadows and Gordon shook his head and returned to the lean-to.

  "Pela,” she continued, “trap animals, stretch and cure pelts, make caps and coats and snowsuits, and die alone. Pela not like alone and go to village naticha, Tonton Annajaka."

  A naticha appeared to be something like a shaman or witch doctor. Very wise woman. The naticha prescribed god-waiting, or toahmecu. Pela did just like Tonton said. She needed to pray to Tana to bring her a man and go to a place where her prayers could be fulfilled, if the god so chose. Such prayers and waiting required a tall hill. Her cousin, Shayvi Woodman, owned this hill, and it was the tallest hill south of the Avina. It also faced the red cliff on the opposite side of the river. On the other side of the south cedars the hill had a view of Black Mountain. Powerful spiritual place. “Crops on Shayvi's Hill almost as good as water bank crops,” she claimed.

  "What is power of the red cliff?” Gordon asked, putting aside the light distortion entities for the moment.

  "Up high on red cliff ledge, God'n, where men go, meet, perform rites, talk with Wuja, white bear god of men, fatherhood, and hunting. Higher on cliff, next ledge, girls welcomed as women, perform rites, talk with Tana.” Pela pointed toward the north. “High, high on top of cliff Tonton Annajaka speak with Itahnika—” She pointed at her own eyes, “—seeing spirit. Naticha see from Itahnika there what Pela must do."

  So, on Shayvi's Hill Pela set her fire, built a lean-to, spread her spices, and prayed for Tana to pull down from the night skies what Pela could not seem to obtain for herself from the land. Pela then god-waited. She had been camped there for thirty-one days and nights filling in the idle times between praying and caring for herself by filling a few garment orders.

  Then from a blinding blue flash of lightning entered Gordon Redcliff and his mortally wounded brothers in their crumbling turquoise flying boat. Pela was distressed that Tana's gift had come at such a terrible price, the deaths of Mehmet and Taleghani. In her singing that first night with Gordon she had asked Tana for Gordon to forgive her the deaths of Gordon's brothers. Mimmit was all dead when she pulled him from the falling-apart boat. Tallygan was still some left alive a little.

  "Taleghani, Pela, before dying, he see you?” Gordon asked her, pointing at his own eyes.

  She nodded. “Tallygan see Pela.” She thought for a while. “Tallygan say Pela,” and she continued in heavily accented Arabic, "very—very beautiful."

  Gordon told her then what the words meant. He
assured her that Ibrahim Taleghani had died a happy man just to have seen and heard her, to have felt her touch. He also told her that the death of his two companions had not been of her doing.

  She frowned and after a long silence she looked at Gordon. “You man thinking for Pela, God'n? Gift from Tana? You no say."

  Hard to argue with a goddess, thought Gordon, particularly one who delivers the goods with such spectacular production values. He wasn't sure though what she meant by “man thinking for Pela."

  "Pela, was Iveleh man thinking for you?"

  She nodded and held up her left hand with all fingers spread. “Five moons Iveleh wander between choices, then he think for Pela."

  "Gordon no understand thinking for Pela."

  Pela screwed her face up in an expression of attempting to solve a difficult problem. At last she smiled and nodded. “God'n hunt?” she asked.

  He nodded, his gaze fixed on the fire. “I hunt."

  "Before God'n throw spear, he need to close with prey. Get close, no?"

  He nodded. She could have instructed snipers at Benning.

  "Before stalk, God'n look at all animals, then choose one for kill. After God'n choose, he think for prey before throwing spear."

  Stalking. Thinking for was getting inside the prey's head, knowing enough about the quarry to tell what it was thinking. Was this one worth the hunt? Was Pela talking about engagement? Or was it a stage in which a prospective mate thinks about it, considers it, gets inside the quarry's head. An engagement to be engaged? “Pela thinking for Gordon?” he asked.

  "Yes.” She placed a hand on her breast. “God'n thinking for Pela?"

  He glanced down at the fire and said, “I know not."

  "Ask Wuja,” she urged. “Ask shadow-tail dog."

  "Coyote,” he reminded her.

  She leveled her gaze at him. “Ask Coyote. Pela must know. When God'n know he thinking for Pela, Pela must know.” She went back to her sewing, her look of concentration designed to conceal her feelings.