Another airship passed over them as they reached the car, almost invisible against the blue sky. This one’s skyshield was taut and seamless. A cargo ship, perhaps heading for California. Wallace remembered his jest about becoming an airman. You could be on that ship now, heading for California, he thought.
But this was his path. He created it. He would have to walk it to the end.
They drove past the little town of Paguate, where shepherds watched over dirty brown sheep that cropped the new grass. It wasn’t yet birthing time, so there were no new fluffy white babies among them. The shepherds watched, but they didn’t wave, as the car chugged past the little adobe village.
Another stop. This one at the base of Mount Taylor. Herbert and Frans paused at an outcropping of loose rock that bore a darker stain running through it. They chipped away at the rock with their hammers. Wallace noticed that Herbert’s suit was torn at the shoulder, and a huge orange-brown ring of dust and sweat had worked its way into his open collar. Frans had removed his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, exposing arms lightly frosted with pale hair. The backs of his hands bore strange ridged scars, as if his flesh had melted and been made whole again.
They struck more yellow rock and wanded it with the Geiger counter. The counter buzzed loudly, and the two men exclaimed, juggling the yellow rock in their hands. They dug deeper with their rock hammers, beads of sweat flying in excitement.
“This is bad,” Niyol whispered.
“We could run. Now.” While they’re distracted.
“Boys, stop talking!” Herbert said. He pulled his gun out of his belt and held it at the ready as Frans continued digging.
“Looks like a whole vein, running right into the mountain,” Frans said.
“Is that good?” Herbert said.
“It is amazing!”
They collected some of the yellowish stone and brought it back to the car.
“I thought you said we could decide what you took back,” Niyol said.
Herbert smirked but said nothing.
They followed a thin trail up to the north, now to the west of Mount Taylor. At the next stop, the Geiger counter buzzed excitedly again, and the men collected more stones. These were dark and looked like nothing more than ordinary rock.
They want the magic of the sacred land, Wallace thought, remembering tales of Mount Taylor. “Pulling out the heart of the Diyin Diné.”
“What was that?” Herbert said.
Wallace shook his head. He wasn’t aware that he had spoken his thoughts. He felt numb from lack of sleep and constant fear.
“You said something. What was it?”
“You’re pulling out the heart of the Diyin Diné,” Wallace said. “The gods.”
Herbert chuckled. “Stupid superstitions!”
“Do not insult them,” Frans said. “Navajo mythology is very specific about where their gods reside.”
Herbert shook his head and muttered.
Their last stop was far into the foothills. Barren land that grew no scrub and little grass. Not even suitable for grazing. And yet Wallace saw that someone had set up a tiny shack at the base of the hills. It had fallen in on itself, its contours gone swaybacked.
The first rocks they uncovered made the Geiger counter click with only moderate speed. They followed a streambed up toward the mountain, toward the shack, pulling more rocks. The buzzing got steadily faster. Wallace thought of a wasps’ nest, buzzing anger into the summer heat.
“This is a rich land,” Frans said when the counter finally buzzed frantically. “There’s ore virtually everyplace we look.”
Herbert just smiled. It was a terrible expression, like that of a naked skull.
They were close to the shack. Close enough that Wallace could see how strange it was. It appeared to have been covered with metal scales at one time. Rust coated the lumpy remains heavily, bleeding down into the pale earth. From within, smooth pale timbers poked through the sides.
No. Not timbers.
Wallace walked toward the shack, his heart beating frantically. He heard his breath coming in short gasps. He heard a shout behind him. He ignored it and walked faster.
Another shout.
He could see it now. Bone.
He ran. Expecting the shot. Not caring.
He stopped just short of the remains. His feet scuffed through the blood-red rust into pale soil. He saw the tusks thrusting out of one side of the rusted armor. Bright white ribs showed where metal links had broken and the armor’s plates had separated. A large leg bone was half buried in rust-red dirt.
Wallace shivered. They were real. The Elephant Ironclads. They were real.
Herbert skidded to a stop and took Wallace’s arm. Wallace shook him off and stepped forward to touch the rusted metal plates. Oxidized iron flaked off on his fingers. He rubbed them together in front of his face.
Real. They were real.
Their remains had been here all along. No reason for passersby to go look at the old collapsed shack. Here was the proof that everyone wished for, but nobody really believed. The elephants had been more than just beasts to scare the settlers. Chee Dodge’s friends had come to Dinétah after the fall of the South. They had made Elephant Ironclads. It wasn’t just a story. It was like all the old men whispered about.
It was true.
“What is it?” Frans said, bringing Niyol. Niyol’s eyes widened, looking past them to the pile of bones and rusted iron plates.
“It’s an Elephant Ironclad,” Wallace said.
“A what?” Herbert said.
Wallace just shook his head.
Frans stared down at the remains of the Elephant Ironclad. Something that could have been understanding flickered in his eyes. Wallace imagined Frans telling Herbert it was okay, they should let the boys go.
“This is an amazing sight,” Frans said. “But we have larger concerns.”
Herbert nodded, glancing down at the remains one more time. They could have been dust and rock.
They exist, Wallace thought. He wondered if, like the shepherd, it was a sign. And if it was a sign, what did it mean? Did it mean their fate was to slowly dissolve into the sand? Or was this supposed to fire his heart and make him into a great warrior?
Wallace realized just how little he knew. If he had taken the time to visit Grandfather’s hogan and really learn the ancient ways, he might understand more of the signs.
Diyin Diné, if I live through this, I will learn.
Herbert Noble flogged the poor Ford north as the sun painted the western sky. He hummed a happy tune. The flat-topped Zuni Mountains tracked their passage, purple-gray in the sunset. Wallace stared straight ahead, wondering if he would die that night.
“This is good,” Frans said when the path had become little more than a trail. Ahead of them was nothing but scrub and dirt. Farther north was Chaco Canyon, where men who had attracted the attention of the Dinétah authorities were said to hide.
They stopped and made camp. The two men made Wallace and Niyol work as they drank whiskey from the bottle and watched. Wallace caught shards of conversation:
“Need to run a full radiographic survey…”
“What kind of skills do we need…”
“We need to let the fearless leader know…”
When the tents were up, Herbert unpacked one of the larger bags. Inside was a gray metal box with a big round knob on the front, a wet-cell battery, and many feet of wire. Wallace recognized it instantly from class: a shortwave radio. Frans strung the antenna as Herbert connected the battery. Vacuum tubes bled orange light from the louvers in the radio’s case. Herbert twisted knobs and mumbled into the mike. The radio blatted unintelligible answers. Frans watched the boys, never looking away for a moment.
Who are they calling? Wallace wondered. The scofflaws in Chaco Canyon? Or Colorado, where the Americans were supposed to have an army base? Which would be worse?
“I’m sorry,” Wallace said.
“You already said that,” Niyol sa
id.
“I needed to say it again.”
Niyol looked down. “I’m sorry, too.”
Wallace frowned. “Why are you sorry?”
Silence.
“Niyol!”
“Remember when you built the airship?” Niyol said.
Wallace smiled, remembering. They were eleven. One chill winter’s end, like this one. Niyol had brought a paper bag and had shown Wallace how it could be made into a little airship by holding it over a hot fire. Something he learned on the Science Track.
Seeing the floating paper bag, Wallace had a vision. He would build his own airship. He would fly over Isleta, and people would look up in wonder. He would float north to Albuquerque, where the airmen would swarm around, their eyes bright with wonder at the boy who had built his own airship. He might even be able to carry goods, like a merchant. He saw himself rich and happy, beaming down at the shepherds and their flocks.
Over the next weeks, he spent his savings on the lightest linen he could find. He borrowed his mother’s sewing machine and frantically worked the treadle, sewing together a patchwork gasbag. Eventually, he had a thing that was twenty feet long and almost as wide. Wallace tied a small harness to the bottom and made padded loops for his arms.
Niyol watched and helped, telling him stories about Thomas Baldwin, the southerner who had brought his balloon act to Dinétah in the 1880s, then worked with them to build airships in the new century. Wallace tried to ignore him, wanting to keep his airship to himself, to the Diné.
Wallace cut a hole in the tin roof of his father’s old work shed and pulled the fabric bag up on top of it. It hung like a hand-me-down dress. He filled the work shed with kindling and firewood while Niyol told him that he’d kill himself.
Don’t, Niyol said, when he lit the match.
Wallace lit the kindling carefully and went outside to grasp the harness, imagining his ascent into the sky.
The big fabric bag rippled and began to billow upward from the shed. It began to take on the roundness of an airship, but in a crazy patchwork way. He’d used remnants of every color. Pink, blue, orange, sand, ocher. Fabrics with stripes and zigzags and flowers.
The top of his airship rose higher. Soon it would rise over the small hillock that separated their hogan from the town proper, and the people of Isleta would come out to see.
But the groundshield. It had no groundshield.
Wallace gritted his teeth. Hopefully the gods wouldn’t be looking that day. Or maybe they would laugh at the young-man-that-would-fly.
Wallace felt the harness tug his hands. He grinned at Niyol, whose eyes had gone big and unbelieving. He was going to fly!
The bag burst into flame.
Not slowly. Instantly. One moment it was a smoothly swelling patchwork, the next it was a collapsing wall of burning linen. Wallace fell to the ground and saw flames falling toward him. He scrambled away frantically, kicking his legs to escape the burning fabric. He shrugged out of the harness and ran. Flames struck just behind him. Hot wind pushed him.
Wallace turned to see flames engulf the work shed. Niyol ran to the pump to bring buckets of water. Wallace followed. It was futile. The flames grew, and the shed folded inward on itself, as if it were made of paper.
Wallace shook his head, coming back to the present. “I’m an idiot,” he said softly.
“But you dream,” Niyol said.
“You should have stopped me.”
Niyol shook his head. “Sometimes you have to dream.”
After dinner, Niyol tried to get himself killed.
“So you’re going to make a bomb?” Niyol said.
Herbert paused with the second bottle of whiskey halfway to his mouth. Frans turned to look at Niyol, giving him an ironic grin.
“If only it were that easy,” Frans said.
“You’re not Dutch. You’re probably some German scientist. What’s your real name? Viktor?”
“Niyol!” Wallace hissed.
“It seems you know all our secrets,” Frans said. “My name is still Frans, however.”
“You can take our land, but you can’t take our souls,” Niyol said, looking at Wallace.
The two men snorted and went back to drinking.
“We won’t help you,” Niyol said.
“Niyol, stop!” Wallace said.
“You might as well kill us now.”
Herbert Noble returned the grin. “Nope. Radiographic surveys are a hell of a lot of work. You’ll be helping, plenty.”
“We won’t help,” Niyol said.
“Yes, you will.”
“No, we won’t,” Wallace said.
Herbert opened his mouth as if to say something, but the low drone of a plane from the west cut him off. He looked out over the moonlit valley, where red and white lights blinked slowly in the sky, falling steadily lower. Herbert went to the car, got a flare, lit it. The little plane circled once, falling lower.
This is the end of the path, Wallace thought. He imagined a dozen big army men piling out of the plane, ready to finish the job the white men had started, so many years ago.
The plane aligned itself with the rough road and fell out of the sky. It bumped down the road and coasted to a stop in a cloud of dust. A single man got out and walked toward them.
When the light of their fire touched his face, Wallace started. He looked at Niyol, but his friend only nodded, as if he wasn’t surprised.
It was Benjamin Hatathlie, the vice president of Dinétah.
Hatathlie’s expression didn’t change as his eyes paused for an instant on Wallace and Niyol. In the flickering firelight, they were dark and impenetrable, like chips of obsidian.
“Who are the boys, Mr. Noble?” Hatathlie said.
“Guides,” Herbert said, his jaw set stubbornly.
“Should we walk and talk?”
“No. They know what we’re doing.”
“They know?”
“Some other assholes came after us. Had to kill them. They saw it.”
Hatathlie turned to Wallace. “Who did they kill?”
“Gerald Manycows, of Many Hogans Clan. And three of his friends. We didn’t know them.”
Hatathlie blinked, once, slowly.
“It was them or us!” Herbert said.
“What did you do with them?”
“We buried them,” Wallace said.
Hatathlie nodded.
“This is the smart one,” Frans said, nodding at Niyol. “He saw the Geiger counter and knew what we were doing.”
“Is that true?” Hatathlie asked. “How does a boy know this?”
“Movies,” Niyol said.
Hatathlie grinned. “Of course. Education from the screen. I should have known the American fables would have effects.”
“And now you’ve sold us out to them!” Wallace said.
Hatathlie chuckled. “To the Americans? No. They have their weapons. It’s now time that we develop our own.”
Oh my Diyin Diné, living in the earth, Wallace thought. This couldn’t be happening. A Diné who rode willingly in a plane. A Diné willing to tear out the heart of the earth. It wasn’t possible!
“Should we be telling them this?” Herbert said.
Hatathlie nodded. “Of course. This is our new path. There’s no turning away from it.”
“I don’t know,” Herbert said. “They seem pretty stubborn.”
Hatathlie knelt down in front of the fire and turned to face Wallace and Niyol. He let a big grin spread across his face. It transformed him from a scary, powerful man to someone who would look at home telling stories in front of a fireplace.
“Would you like to hear how Dinétah can become great again?” Hatathlie spoke softly.
Herbert shifted uncomfortably. “And Texas.”
Hatathlie ignored him.
“Tell us,” Niyol said.
Wallace almost protested. He almost said, No, not for any reason. If you are to rip out the heart of the earth and kill the gods, I don’t want to know ho
w great it will make us. But he looked at his friend and saw the intense and desperate look in his eye, and said nothing. Maybe it would be better to know. Maybe, for once, it would be good to follow Niyol’s wisdom.
“Once, the Diné were great,” Hatathlie said. “We owned this land and the land beyond. Where we walked, others fell by the wayside. The Apache and Hopi respected us. We were the most powerful tribe on the continent.”
And we still are, Wallace thought.
“But we were fooled. I no longer believe the elephants were a gift of the First Ones. I think they were a gift of Coyote, to fool us into following a path and losing our soul.”
“We won Dinétah!” Wallace said.
“Yes!” Hatathlie nodded. “And now we’re surrounded by America. Rich, strong America. Infecting our brightest with their own ideas.” He looked at Niyol, and Niyol looked away.
“To the south, Mexico. Still richer than us. At all points of the compass we’re surrounded by more powerful countries. We’re trapped in a cage of our own making. We could be so much richer if we embraced the present and changed with the world.
“And the world is changing. You’ve seen it. The atomic weapon ended World War Two with a single stroke. It is the greatest power the world has seen. And in a few short years, many nations will have their own. Including ours.”
“And Texas,” Herbert said.
“Yes,” Hatathlie said. “Dinétah, joined with a newly independent Texas, will be a great force in the world. Where we lead the change, rather than turn away from it.”
“Who are you, then?” Niyol asked Herbert. “The Texas governor?”
Herbert laughed. “No! He’s just a lapdog of the Americans. I’m an independent businessman. With connections.”
“A mobster, in other words.”
Herbert frowned. “Kid, your movies make you too smart for your own good—”
“Shh,” Hatathlie said. “We’re having a friendly conversation. Let’s keep it that way.”
Herbert grumbled and fell silent.
“If Dinétah is rich in uranium,” Hatathlie said, throwing a glance at Frans, who nodded enthusiastically, “we have three choices. One, we can wait for the Americans to discover it, and decide that letting us keep Dinétah was a bad idea. Two, we can try to sell it to them, which will make some of us very, very rich. But in the end, they will have the uranium and the bombs, and they will decide what we do. If they decide they want Arizona and the New Mexico territories back, if they want to make Colorado and Nevada slightly larger, they’ll do it. And there’s nothing we can do to stop them. Three, we can mine it ourselves, develop our own weapons, and establish ourselves as a nation with the foresight to be a true world power. Which would you choose?”
The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Page 4