Find Your Own Truth

by Robert N. Charrette

  “Exactly.”

  Laverty smiled slightly. “You are an unusual man, Twist.”

  “He’s a coward." Estios asserted.

  “And a thief and an incompetent." Urdli said.

  “And a shaman of considerable power." the dwarf added, “Gentlemen, we are in need of power to combat Spider. I do not think we should be blinded by prejudice and personal animosity. Twist demonstrated courage, skill, and unusual competence, if not foresight and caution, in removing the guardian stone from the Citadel. He should not be dismissed as an addition to our forces.”

  “This isn’t personal." Estios objected. “Objectively, he has shown that he’s unsuitable. He let a wendigo go, just because it had been his sister and he couldn’t face up to killing it. That is not the level of conviction demanded at this time.”

  “And he has once refused to help." Urdli said. “He may withdraw the false offer of aid as soon as his fickle mind finds some other phantasm to chase.”

  “Enough." Laverty said. “We have lain with stranger bedfellows in the past in order to do what was necessary.” His attention shifted to Sam. “You have come here without being called; therefore you have something in mind. Do you have new information?”

  “Some. I need more.”

  “Don’t we all." Estios said.

  Laverty ignored him. “Perhaps we can trade, but despite your plea for information, I’d wager you have already taken steps. Would you care to tell us your plan?”

  “I’d rather not get specific.” As if he could. “I’ve only got the bare outline of a plan. As I said, I still need information.”

  “And you expect to get it from us?” Urdli was incredulous.

  “Yes." Sam said, as though there could be no question. “We’re fighting the same enemy, after all.” Urdli huffed. “The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but simply a convenience of war.”

  That was the reaction Sam had expected. “Fine. I’m not asking for friendship. I have a long memory, too. But we can be allies and pool our resources.”

  “What can you offer?” Urdli asked, his tone implying that he didn’t believe Sam could have a thing.

  “You surprise me." Sam said evenly. “Before you wanted my help. Or was that just a ploy to get me alone so you could kill me?”

  Urdli was equally unruffled. “You refused to help then. You said that your sister was more important than the fate of the world.”

  “So I was wrong." Sam said quickly. “But now I’m ready to help. Are you ready to let me, or do you prefer to try to stop Spider all by yourself?”

  “I am not by myself.” The sweep of Urdli’s arm took both the gathered magicians and the defended barrier wall.

  Sam followed the gesture and sensed the power of the gathered entities. “I concede you’ve got the astral covered pretty well, even if most of your strength is defensive. But the bombs are mundane, and you haven’t got an army.” He paused for effect. “Or do you? You wouldn’t be after the bombs to add them to Tir Taimgire’s arsenal, would you?”

  Urdli bristled. “I am not a citizen of the Tir." he said, as though that explained all.

  “And I assure you, Twist." Laverty put in, “that the ruling council would far rather see the weapons destroyed than recover them.”

  The professor glanced significantly at two of the other magicians, who met his gaze briefly, then nodded. He turned back to Sam. “This has to be kept quiet. Should certain corporations or governments learn of the weapons, there would be a struggle for their possession, a shadow war that no one wants.”

  Sam had already figured that angle. “It might turn into something more than a shadow war.”

  “It might, indeed." Laverty agreed. “Are you prepared to join our effort?”

  “Maybe." Sam said slowly, “just maybe, I’ll let you join my effort.”

  That took them back, but he didn’t give them more than a moment to sputter.

  “You’re stymied. You know what Spider wants, and you have some rough idea where she’s planning to get it. But you Can’t act without more specific information.”

  “And you can?” Estios asked suspiciously.

  “I have more specific information.”

  “From what source?”

  Sam shrugged. “Several, actually. I agree wholeheartedly about the need to keep this situation quiet. But it’s got to be taken care of quickly, and my friends and I can’t do it alone. So what I’m prepared to do is cooperate. There are several locations with which we don’t have the resources to deal.”

  “Which you shall leave to us." Urdli said. “I do not think I like your approach, mongrel. How can we be sure you aren’t just distracting us while you arrange matters to your own advantage?”

  “You could trust me." Sam replied dryly.

  Estios sneered. “I don’t believe you know what you claim.”

  “Suit yourself.” Sam turned, as though to leave, but the professor spoke up. “Gentlemen." he said, “we must discuss this.”

  Sam looked at them over his shoulder. “Don’t spend too much time on idle chitchat. I already have a team on the way to Deggendorf. And once the action starts, things will move quickly. Ever see a spider jump when its web is shaken?”

  As though on cue, the dwarf said, “Deggendorf is near one of the possible sites, professor.”

  Laverty nodded. “You are being precipitous, Twist.”

  Sam shurgged. “Maybe. Maybe I’m just being expeditious. Having been faulted for shirking responsibility, maybe I just want to make up for lost time.”

  “Or maybe you’re getting in over your head." Laverty said.

  Sam was only too aware of that possibility—no, make that probability.

  While Laverty conferred quietly with his colleagues, Sam tried to overhear, but they controlled their projections too well. At last Laverty turned back to him.

  “Perhaps you should tell us what you have in mind.”

  “First, I think you should tell me a few things.”

  “Very well.”

  Urdli and Estios tried to disrupt the discussions every chance they could, but the other elves mostly ignored them. Piece for piece, Sam traded information with the elves. He sketched his plan and they objected, as he had expected. They had a few ideas, but no one could come up with a better idea that could be carried out as fast as the situation demanded Most of the elves, especially Urdli and Estios, weren’t particularly happy that Sam had initiated several runs, but time and distance made it necessary that Sam’s arrangements be left alone. Other possibilities had to be covered; they could not afford to double run any one target. In the end no one was completely happy, but much to his surprise Sam got most of the concessions he’d wanted.

  As he turned to leave, this time for real, Laverty asked, “And what are you planning to do?”

  “Me? Well, planning can be very stressful. Once everything gets started. I’d thought I’d unwind and do a little dancing.”

  32

  “It’s time to bathe.”

  With that announcement, Howling Coyote rose smoothly to his feet When Sam tried to duplicate the maneuver, he struck his head on the low roof of the sweat lodge. More used to such structures, the old shaman had remained somewhat crouched even as he stood, avoiding a collision. Sam decided that a rap on the noggin was a small price to pay to escape the hot, sweaty confines of the lodge.

  By the time Sam emerged from the lodge. Howling Coyote was halfway to the lake. Shivering at the sudden chill, Sam longed suddenly for the sun-baked canyons of the mesa. Because of the higher elevation of this mountainside, the evening air cooled too quickly. Howling Coyote waded right in, but Sam was shivering even before he hit the icy waters of the lake. Seeing Sam hesitate, the old man, dripping wet and exuberant as any child, splashed him with nearfreezing water. To escape the bombardment, Sam dove head-first into the water. He came up sputtering, unsure that the cure was better than the disease. Long before he had finished the ritual washing his teeth were chattering, and he w
as convinced he would never feel his toes again.

  Finally Howling Coyote nodded in satisfaction and led Sam back to the shore, where their clothing for the dance was laid out. Sam wrapped a length of soft leather around his loins, then donned a pair of buckskin leggings painted with vertical red stripes. Then he pulled his head through the neckhole of a muslin shirt sewn with sinew and decorated with strips of cloth fringe along the sleeves and across the breast and back. Red suns dotted the shirt in a pleasing asymmetric pattern. He swirled a striped blanket around his shoulders to hide his shirt until the proper moment.

  “What face do you wear?” the shaman asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Your dream must have shown you the face for the great magic. You must show the earth power the face of your purpose and expectation.”

  Sam looked at the jars of pigments the old man held out to him. Purpose and expectation? Well, he had set out to cure his sister, and that was still his goal. True, they danced to save the world from Spider’s threat, but that had not been his first desire. He thought it best to be honest. When the ritual dance laid him naked before the earth power, it would not do to try to disguise his hope. What better face than his sister’s? He dipped his hand into the black pigment and smeared it over his face. White pigment made an outline along the edges of his face in imitation of her mane. On his forehead he painted one of the red suns, as a symbol of hope and the dawn of the new.

  While Sam was painting himself, Howling Coyote was working up his own scheme. Like Sam’s, his face was blackened. A single thin stripe of yellow ochre ran over one eye and across his cheek. When he’d finished the shaman drew on a coyote hide, the head pulled over his own like a hat and its forepaws draping down over his shoulders and onto his chest.

  Sam wondered what Howling Coyote’s colors and stripe meant. “What is your face?”

  “Death." he said flatly.

  While Sam was assimilating that response, Howling Coyote handed him a dog skin. Sam almost recoiled when he saw its brindled surface, thinking for a moment that the old shaman had somehow found and skinned Sam’s dog Inu. But the patterning of the splotches was different. Sam accepted the hide and draped it on himself as Howling Coyote wore his.

  The shaman circled Sam, inspecting. He grunted his approval and started off, leaving Sam to fall in behind him. They walked upslope from the lake, past the sweat lodge, and onto a path that led into the trees. Just after the ground began to slope downward again they emerged from the trees, and entered a natural amphitheater ringed by fir and pine trees that reached more than thirty meters toward the darkening sky. Dusk had already settled in the clearing, and the people assembled there were little more than dark, lumpy shapes in the twilight. Their low talk stopped when Sam and Howling Coyote appeared. The old shaman stopped and raised his arms. At his gesture, fire kindled in stacks of wood set at the cardinal points; the flickering light grew to fill the clearing Sam was surprised and amazed by the number of people present. Howling Coyote had told him that he was sending a call, saying that the Dance was not something for only a few. But Sam had not expected so many. He was no expert, but from the variety of ritual costumes he was sure there were shamans from each of the nations of North America. The assembled shamans and their attendants wore a wide variety of garb, some fancy, some plain. All wore ghost shirts decorated with sun and moon symbols as well as circles, crosses, and stars. Though most: of the shirts were buckskin, a few were muslin like Sam’s. The cloth shirts seemed to belong exclusively to the Anglos, Asians, and Blacks present.

  When Sam and Howling Coyote reached the edge of the outer ring, a single figure rose to meet them. At first Sam didn’t recognize her, for she was swathed in an oversized dancer’s shirt covered with a constellation of crudely painted stars, and the leggings that showed beneath were not her habitual gray.

  “Gray Otter, what are you doing here?”

  “I heard about the dance." she said softly, reverently.

  “But you’re not a shaman." Sam said, perplexedly.

  She gave him a small, shy smile. “Don’t have to be to dance.”

  “She’s right, Dog man." Howling Coyote confirmed. “Only got to believe and be ready to die.”

  “But . .

  Howling Coyote cut him off. “Moon’s rising. Time’s wasting.”

  The shaman took Sam by the arm and pulled him toward the center of the clearing. A pine tree, stripped of its branches and looking like a pole, lay on the ground there, its length pointing away from them. At its side Sam could see dark lumps that he knew would soon be attached to the stubby remnants of its branches. Those lumps were medicine bundles, cloth streamers, stuffed totemic images, and bundles of feathers. The pine would be raised to stand in a dark hole dug to receive it. It was to be the sprouting tree, a central component of this open-air medicine lodge.

  The sprouting tree was the axis around which the dancers would revolve. It would link their souls with the earth.

  Before they reached the tree’s base, a delegation of Indian shamans rose and stepped into their path. Sam didn’t recognize their tribal affiliations, but the elaborate ceremonial garb they wore marked them as highly placed persons. A young man in a thickly fringed shirt called out a challenge, At least Sam assumed it was a challenge from the tone and the stem expression on the man’s face. The words meant nothing to him.

  Howling Coyote gave a short response that drew heated comments from the others in the group. It was clear that there was dissension in the ranks. Maybe the shamans had come to stop the Dance rather than to participate. Sam wished Howling Coyote had let him wear a language chip in his datajack. Then he might have understood the words and known whether it was concern or hatred that he saw on the faces of some of the gathered shamans. Howling Coyote began a speech that went on for some time. Sam watched the effect of the old shaman’s words. Doubt was displaced by determination in some, but the group faltered short of coming to complete agreement. Howling Coyote turned to him.

  “You must show them.”

  “What? How?”

  “Begin the dance." Howling Coyote said, and sat.

  Sam looked at the shaman, but the old Indian ignored him. Sam turned his gaze to the challenging shamans. There was no sympathy there. No clue, either. But this was a minor riddle. Beyond them lay the pole. Lying on the earth, it made the ritual circle incomplete. The Dance could not begin until it was raised. The stony silence made it clear that Sam could expect no help, which meant that there was only one way to raise it.

  Dog!

  “Who calls?”

  I call, totem. I need your power.

  “Have I power?”

  You are Dog.

  “Am I power?”

  You are power.

  “You wear my skin. Are you I?”

  I wear your skin. I am what I must be.

  “I am what I am. What are you?”

  I am what I am. I am Dog.

  He/Dog howled joyfully at the moon.

  Sam opened his eyes. It was fully night. His striped blanket was wrapped around the base of the raised sprouting tree, and his dog skin fluttered from its top. He didn’t remember removing either. He felt the breeze cooling his skin through the light muslin shirt. Sweat evaporated from his face.

  Sam felt energized. His senses seemed pretematurally sharp. He saw his image reflected in the eyes of the elder shamans around him. Though his dog skin hung on the pole his shoulders were swathed in fur, a snout projected over his forehead, and pointed ears topped his head. The shaman’s mask was upon him, and he was cloaked in a faint glamor of power.

  He turned to Howling Coyote. “Where’s the drum?”

  “No drum. This is the Great Ghost Dance.”

  “Okay. No drum.” Sam sighed. “Where does the rhythm come from?”

  “Look within yourself.”

  Sam smiled. “And if it’s not there, no magic.” Howling Coyote smiled back. “Hey hey, Dog man, you’re not such a dumb Anglo after all.”

>   The old shaman began the chant, and Sam took it up. He felt anticipation and a growing excitement. The chant pulsed with the faint stirring of great power. Sam’s voice strengthened as he sang the words that Howling Coyote had made him memorize. The words were Indian and Sam didn’t know what they meant, but he felt the power that awakened at his call.

  Awake it might be, but it held itself aloof.

  Sam repeated the chant, this time alone. The power rose ever so slightly. Around him the elder shamans took up the song, calling and greeting. Each sang different words, but all sang the same song. Holding hands with fingers intertwined, they began to dance.

  * * *

  Morgan had been coy in Sam’s presence, but not so when they were alone. Her presence suffused him, filling him with the joy of freedom and the heady rush of oneness with the Matrix. The euphoria was nearly enough to make him forget what he had promised. Nearly, but not quite, for loyalty was as strong as love.

  There was no need to tell her what he had promised to do, for she had been there. Together they reviewed the data Sam had dumped. Finding the system addresses they needed was simplicity.

  They went after it. She was a silver girl with an ebony cloak. He an ebony boy in a cloak of stars. Together they crept along the byways of the Matrix, slipping through the shadows in search of the swag. Bit by data bit, they assembled pertinent information and sent it winging through the electronic byways to runners awaiting their cues. Together, they were an unbeatable team.

  They turned their attention to a more challenging task.

  Ebony boy and chrome girl gazed eagerly at the glittering, pulsing web of data. Grandmother’s system might be an entangling web to most, but to these intruders each strand was a rooftop along which to scamper, a dangling rope by which to clamber, a quiet corridor through which to sneak. In sparkling displays of clandestine acrobatic skills, they penetrated ever deeper.

  Within the lattice datastores were cocooned packages awaiting the web’s mistress, but Morgan’s ever-so-sharp knife slit them open, baring the contents. From among the exposed treasures Dodger selected the most promising, and Morgan opened them for him. A wealth of data, a hoard of secrets, and nothing could keep the team of Dodger and Morgan from them.