Cyber Way

CHAPTER 7

It was slow at the station, whose entrance, Moody noticed immediately, faced the proper direction. A steady but wieldy stream of drunks, addicts, burglars, and assorted ripoff artists flowed through the front office, though most had been safely tucked away for the night. It was slow time, the night shift winding its work down, the morning crew having not yet arrived.

The people Ooljee exchanged greetings with were variously tired, relieved, or uncommunicative, depending on how their night had gone. There had been times when Moo-dy’d considered requesting a late-night shift himself. The pace was slower, the atmosphere less frenetic than during the day, the heat not as oppressive. From three until five a.m. the action inside the station varied from lethargic to moribund, because most nocturnal lawbreakers had concluded their activities, and those who worked during the day usually slept late.

But he liked the sunlight.

The building and what facilities he could identify were far more up-to-date than those he was used to. That was understandable, since Ganado was a young boom town and Tampa an elderly eastern city. With interest he noted that although this was an NDPS office, not all the personnel were Amerind. There were Anglos and Blacks, and a few Hispanics. Still, the feel was far different from any station he’d ever been inside before.

Ooljee led him to one of many cubicles and secured a privaflex screen behind them. The little office was neat and clean. Holos of his wife and boys were everywhere. Moody’s practiced eye automatically scanned his surroundings, storing information. It was good to know everything about a man you were working with, he knew, especially if there was any chance of being shot at while in his company.

In addition to the family pictures, there were some mounted awards, a few small athletic trophies, and some expanded holos of spectacular canyon scenery. On the desk were several piles of papers, a notepad, the usual office paraphernalia, and a slick Fordmatsu office spinner. A pair of tall cacti gave the office some color. Only on closer inspection did he realize they were clever fakes. The small pink pincushion of a plant on the desk was real. A couple of chairs were well padded and of recent manufacture, not like standard office issue back in Tampa. The ubiquitous Zenat monitor hung on the wall behind the desk, a compact three-by-two model.

“Now we’ll see if anything new has come in.” Ooljee sat down behind the desk and activated the spinner board. The zenat sprang to life, displaying a fixed geometric ready pattern. Moody settled into the empty chair.

He watched without comment as Ooljee called out the Kettrick file and began weaving around inside. It was easy to pick out information the Tampa bureau had forwarded.

Ten minutes passed before Ooljee remembered the dispenser located above the single storage cabinet. No words passed between them, but Moody understood what his fellow officer wanted. He did have to inquire if the sergeant wanted his black or with cream and sugar.

“Nucane, one packet.” Ooljee spoke without looking up from his work.

Moody added the artificial sweetener to the cup he’d siphoned for his colleague. “Howcum the faux? You’re not overweight. That’s my department.”

“Some hypertension. Runs in the family. Sometimes just hyper without the tension.”

“I could’ve guessed that from watching your kids.” Moody returned his attention to the monitor as he sipped his own coffee. It was wonderfully aromatic and fresh. In Tampa you had to leave your desk and make do with whatever the central dispenser offered. This business of having one in your own office was something he could bring up at the next Union meeting. Moody enjoyed his perks as much as the next guy.

When the cup was half drained, Ooljee put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Same old shit. Not that I expected otherwise.”

“Hope springs.” Moody eyed his partner. “I would’ve expected a lead or two by now.”

“Oh, we’ve had more than that,” Ooljee responded quickly. “The composite cadcam portrait of the suspect generated many calls. But none of them led to anything. Either nobody recognizes our man, or they do and they are not talking. Or else he is hiding somewhere down in the Strip.”

“Shoot, he could’ve had cosmetic surgery by now. Chemically changed his color to white.”

Ooljee smiled. “Not even a murderer would sink that low. But there is something else I’ve been wanting to try.

“My lieutenant insists I spend my time looking for someone to fit the composite. Well, we have been doing that for weeks without any results and I am sick of it.”

Moody rolled his eyes. “Let me guess: you want to work with the sandpainting.”

“You get credit for perception, but not much, because I

have been talking about it ever since you got here. Since they insist I concentrate on finding an individual while I am on the payroll, I thought I might try to combine that directive with my own interests. Especially since I now have an unprejudiced witness to confirm that I am following my orders.”

“Hey, keep me out of it.”

“Don’t be so paranoid. I would not put you in a difficult position.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“It will be good for you.” Ooljee was persistent. “Much more interesting to go into museums and gift shops and trading posts than talking to unpleasant people on the street.”

“You still have trading posts?”

“Sure. We passed one on the way in. The fifty-story tower just outside the park downtown. I pointed it out to you, remember?” He glanced toward a window. The spring sun was beginning to wake up the city. “I have some lists we can work with. If a match is made with the composite, we will be notified. Besides, there is no reason to sit here and monitor the department web when we could be outside enjoying this fine weather.”

“You call this dry icebox fine weather? Anytime the temperature drops below seventy-five, I get twitchy and my skin starts to crawl. And it’s too dry.”

“Despite what you may think, it does rain here. I will see to arranging a Blessing Way ceremony to call up some precipitation for you.”

“Do that. And while you’re at it, how about arranging a ceremony to catch our killer?”

“Perhaps later.” Ooljee said it with a straight face as they left his office, but this time Moody wasn’t buying.

The streets were filling up fast as morning rush hour began to flood downtown Ganado. Pedestrians appeared magically on sidewalks and overhead walkways, their already harried expressions lit by first light. The police truck slid efficiently past the creeping commuters, making good use of the lane reserved for municipal vehicles. With ease bom of long experience, Ooljee ignored the envious glares of travelers trapped in unmoving traffic.

“You think this guy might kill again?”

Ooljee considered the question. “It is anybody’s guess, because we know nothing about him. I have run an extensive cross-country check and there are no records of a murder utilizing a similar modus, so we may be in luck. The Kettrick sandpainting may be all he was after.

“As to researching that, many of my colleagues think I am a little mad myself. Others say I have concocted a clever excuse for avoiding real work, like following leads on potential suspects.”

“But your lieutenant gave you permission to follow this up.”

“Lieutenant Yazzie is a good man for hunches. He has patience. But he also has his limits. He will not let me pursue this line of inquiry forever unless I start showing him some results.”

They spent all that day and all the next talking to owners and managers of gift shops and retail stores and art galleries, from fancy ones in the lobbies of towering hotels—where a working stiff like Moody couldn’t have afforded the frames, much less the paintings—to the tiny pawnshops and secondhand stores that pitted the fronts of ancient commercial buildings on the industrial end of town.

Moody saw more silver and turquoise than he formerly believed existed. Some of the men wore as much jewelry as their women, a sight that took some getting used to. In Tampa the only males likely to strut about so bedecked were pimps.

Nor was all the metal in the familiar form of bracelets and rings and necklaces. There were decorated belts and hatbands, headbands and boot tips and collar tabs, pins and insignia. Yet the more he saw of it, the more natural it seemed.

Ooljee tried to talk him into buying a silver watchband set with coral, turquoise, and synthetic bear claws, to replace the mundane ABSK he currently wore. Though tempted, Moody declined. The band was beautifully made and reasonably priced, but the detective could too readily envision the reaction it would produce back at Tampa HQ.

Not everything was fashioned of skystone and silver. Gold and platinum were also used, as were more exotic metals and stones. Even the smallest shop seemed to be overflowing with inventory.

“Who buys all this stuff?” Moody finally asked his colleague.

“Tourists, business travelers looking for something truly American to take back home. We also buy and sell among ourselves. The really expensive goods are called Old Pawn. Some of it was actually banged out of old coins; dimes and nickels preferred. Good, genuine Old Pawn is always hard to find. People do not have to hock their family treasures to pay the bills the way they used to. Although there is nothing wrong in doing that. It was a perfectly respectable way to raise cash or pay for goods.

“Have you been studying the sandpaintings?”

Moody replied dourly. “I’m trying, but they all look the same to me.”

“I can’t believe that.” Ooljee did not try to hide his disappointment. “You have too good an eye not to have noticed differences.”

Moody hesitated. “Well, maybe some of the overall patterns—gimme a break, Paul. It’s like learning another language.”

One more storefront, one more stop. Like innumerable others, the face it presented to the street was nondescript. There was the standard fluorescent buy-sell trade sign out front. The skystone and silver clutter in the windows that flanked the narrow entrance was more neatly arrayed than in most. Whoever had arranged the display had made some attempt to highlight quality instead of trying to cram as many cheap rings and bracelets into the available space as possible.

Inside the store the lighting was as subdued as the atmosphere. There were drums and pottery for sale, along with sculptures and rugs. The latter might be genuine, since unlike hundreds Moody had seen these past two days, these did not display attached cards declaring in superfine print that while they were Indian-made, they were only Navaho inspired. Which meant, according to Ooljee, that they were not woven on the Rez but down in Mexico, on mechanical looms operated by industrious Zapotecs.

The store owner was short, white, and active. He advanced smoothly toward them as if on maglide skates.

The wall behind him was full of paintings. Well, prints, anyway. Scenes of Ganado modem and ancient, of Canyon de Chelley and Monument Valley, of the Grand Canyon and San Francisco Peaks, of various cliff dwellings and Indian ceremonials. There were also more rugs, most of them small, some of them tattered. All colored with handmade vegetable dye, according to Ooljee. This was a store for the serious trader and collector, not for the casual tourist looking for bright trinkets to take home. The farther back into its depths one walked, the higher the quality of the goods became.

Ooljee methodically flashed his ID, embedded in its slice of softly glowing Lexan. The owner blinked at it, glanced somewhat apprehensively in Moody’s direction, eyed Ooljee the way he might a box of jewelry of uncertain parentage someone was trying to sell him.

“I don’t do scav, sergeant.”

“Everyone in this town parks stolen goods sooner or later,” Ooljee replied pleasantly, “but that is not what we are here about.”

The owner relaxed visibly, though his tone still betrayed some unease. “Shopping? Birthday present, perhaps, or something for a lady?”

“It would be a real present if you could help us.” Digging into a jacket pocket, Ooljee extracted the by now well-wrinkled eight-by-ten fax of the Kettrick sandpainting and shoved it toward the shopkeeper, who peered at it curiously. “Any idea what Way this is from?”

“Oh, you want advice? Why ask me? Why not try a museum?”

“We have traveled that road.” Ooljee tapped the fax. “The people I have talked with say they have never seen anything like this.”

“Really?” The man brightened, thoroughly at ease now. He squinted at the fax, the implant in his right eye giving him some trouble. After a moment he excused himself. His visitors waited impatiently while he removed the offending implant and replaced it with a jeweler’s lens.

“That’s better,” he murmured, as much to himself as to his guests. He examined the fax closely.

“Do you know anything about it at all?” Ooljee prompted him. “If not the Way it is from, then the style, or how old it might be? What it signifies? Any suggestions will be welcomed.”

The proprietor looked up from the picture. “I was kind of hoping you might tell me. I’ve never seen anything like it either. ” He bent again over the image, his left eye closed, working with the jeweler’s loupe installed in his right. “This is not a very good reproduction.”

“Sorry,” said Moody. “The original was pretty big. A full-size repro would be kind of hard to lug around.”

“These designs here,” the shopkeeper muttered as he traced part of the image with a finger, “and this up here; I don’t recognize any of it.”

“Do not feel bad,” Ooljee said. “You are in good company. Nobody else does either.” He reached for the fax.

The old man waved him back. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Don’t be in such a rush. You cops are always in such a rush.”

He’s having fun now, Moody mused. We’ve set him a challenge.

While the shopkeeper examined and compared and mumbled to himself under his breath, the detective passed the time studying the prints and paintings that filled the walls, trying hard to relate to the colossal landscapes, the abyssal canyons and immense skies. Everything in this part of the world seemed constructed on a grander, rougher scale, as if nature had set aside her fine-pointed tools and little brushes and had gone to work with the heavy machinery. This was country with spaces vast enough to give easy birth to mysteries and legends. There was little verdure in any of the pictures. Green was not an important color in this comer of the universe.

The old man finally paused in his inspection. “Where did you find this?”

“You do not need to know that, unless you can convince me it would make a difference in what you can tell us.”

The shopkeeper hesitated, chewing his lower lip as he examined the fax from a greater height. “It’s very strange. There is so much in here that is familiar but peculiarly arranged, and so much more that I’ve never seen before.” Again he tapped the picture.

“This sequence here is Red Ant Way, but all changed around. And this up here, this is definitely Nightway. But everything is all mixed up. It makes no sense. Not only are there pieces from Ways that shouldn’t appear together in the same painting, there are designs and figures and symbols that don’t mean anything at all. At least, they don’t to me, and I’ve been forty years in this business.” He ran a finger around the edge of the fax.

“Take something simple, like the enclosing guardian design. I don’t understand this interpretation of crooked lightning, and the specific guardians at the east opening I don’t recognize at all. It’s too aberrant to be traditional, yet too well rendered to be nonsensical. But this part here”—his finger moved to the upper lefthand portion of the fax—-“I think I may have seen something like it before. It’s not part of any ceremony currently in use, but you can see how distinctive it is. That’s why I remember it. Because the pattern is so distinctive.”

Ooljee straightened slightly. Moody ambled back from the other side of the store.

“You don’t see much stuff like this up here,” the proprietor was saying. “Most of the experimentation with traditional forms is done down in Scottsdale and Tucson, where the radical artists like to live. Ganado’s too stolid, too old-fashioned a place for them. I don’t usually deal in modem work, but you can’t avoid seeing some of it. Occasionally you’ll come across something that will stick in your mind.”

“You’re talking artists.” Moody leaned up against the counter. “Are you saying you know who did this sandpainting?”

“I’m just guessing.” He bent and rummaged through a drawer, produced a ten-inch square spinner which he placed atop the counter. It was an old model, beat-up and not molly-compatible. His fingers worked the keys with maddening slowness.

An eternity later hardcopy emerged from the single printer slot. He tore it free. “Here’s an address—of sorts.” Moody started to reach for it. “No, wait.” More paper chugged out of the slot. “Directions, as I jotted them down. I was on a buying trip, quite a while ago. I don’t carry much in the way of sandpainting anymore. A lot of the newer stuff is junk and too much of the good old work is in museums and private collections. It’s not worth my time to keep up. But this I remember. It was so different.” He indicated the fax.

“It’s not all of what you’re looking for, but maybe it will lead you to something.”

“Y adil. We could use some kind of a lead.” Ooljee scanned the printout before pocketing it. “Rez local,” he informed Moody, then turned back to the shopkeeper. “Thanks a lot.”

“Sure, sure.” The proprietor saw them to the door. “Do something for me, will you, if I’ve been of some help?” The sergeant hesitated. “My budget does not allow for…”

“No, not that, I don’t want that.” The old man was still eyeing the fax that dangled from Ooljee’s fingers. “All my life I’ve been in this business, and I’ve never seen anything like that picture of yours. If you find out what it is, what it means, what Way it’s from, would you maybe stop back in and tell me? I thought I knew all the Ways still in use, or at least all those that are still represented in fixed sand-paintings. Those I don’t recognize from memory, I’ve always been able to look up. But that one, it’s not just somebody experimenting, not just an artist playing around with old themes and new ideas. It’s too coherent. It hangs together, if you know what I mean. Whoever did that had an overall scheme in mind, and I’d sure like to know what he was getting at.”

“So would we,” said Moody.

“If we find anything out,” Ooljee assured him, “I’ll make it a point to let you know.”

“Thanks.” The old man smiled, nibbing his chin. “I’d appreciate it.”

He was still staring after them, intrigued, thoughtful, somehow younger-looking, as they climbed into the police truck and headed westward into traffic.

They checked in at the station, where Ooljee and his superior engaged in a brief ritualistic argument over the validity of the sergeant’s assumptions. Moody passed the time watching the more attractive spinner operators at their desks, until Ooljee emerged and solemnly beckoned for his partner to join him. A short drive returned them to the residential cluster, where Ooljee made his excuses to his wife and kids, explaining he would be away on work for a couple of days. Moody politely ignored the ensuing domestic scene and spent the time packing his travel bag.

Back on the road, they skirted the main arterials, which meant Ooljee had to do some real driving until they were clear of city traffic. Only then did he let the truck’s autodrive resume control. Gradually the spires and industrial blocks of Ganado fell behind. Moody noted they were traveling almost due north.

“We’re heading up to Chinle,” Ooljee explained. “It is still pretty much a small town, a tourist town. To check out the name the shopkeeper came up with.” He lapsed into silence, swimming a sea of inner contemplation.

“Tell me something.” Moody spoke to take his mind off the barren immensity of the landscape. “What exactly are these ‘Ways’ you keep talking about?”

“Ways are ceremonies.” Ooljee swiveled his seat to face his companion. “According to the Navaho way of thinking, the universe is in a perpetual, precarious state of balance between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Or if you’d prefer a more scientific description, between the forces of regularity and the forces of chaos. The similarities to General Relativity are quite fascinating. For example…”

Moody interrupted him. “Spare me. I get the idea.” Ooljee pursed his lips. “The Ways are used to help people deal with sickness, with personal problems, with any sort of difficulty or trouble. Even today, many people, particularly the older ones, will go to a doctor or hospital for treatment but will follow up with a visit to a hatathli.”

“No offense, but it sounds like plain old witchcraft to me.”

“We don’t go around sticking pins in dolls. To me, real witchcraft is practiced by people who make a living predicting the rise and fall of the Nasdaq index. Stuff like that. Or trying to figure out why the new guy gets the promotion and you do not.”

Chinle was not that many miles from Ganado on the map, but very far away in time. The town itself was modem enough. Foremost among the buildings of recent construction was the local NDPS office where Ooljee checked in, a free-form one-story structure of polycrete and bronze glass. It hugged the side of a wide, shallow canyon like some prehistoric herbivore, a thick coat of antennae sprouting from its back.

Moody waited while his companion engaged in small talk with his colleagues. Away from the commercial/industrial center of Ganado there were far fewer non-Navahos around, and he felt more conspicuous than ever.

Just outside Chinle the modern world seemed to vanish.

“The people we’re looking for have a place inside the Park, down in the canyon. Now you will see why the four-wheel drive, four-wheel steer truck is and always has been the preferred mode of transportation on the Rez.”

They were traveling east out of town, when Ooljee turned off the main road, following a sandy path that paralleled a broad, lazy creek. Very soon the ridges on either side of the road began reaching for the clouds. The walls of the canyon they’d entered rose so rapidly that after only a few miles of driving, the crests of the smooth, rust-red ramparts were scraping the belly of Heaven itself.

Moody craned his neck to see. They were traveling between sheer rock escarpments a thousand feet high, the truck bouncing along a road that clearly owed its continued existence to Nature’s whim. One swift, wild flash-flood down the deceptively somnolent stream would carry away anyone unlucky enough to be present at the time.

He felt as if he were threading the labyrinthine corridors of some immense antediluvian fortress, impregnable and unapproachable save for those who knew its secret passages and passwords.

“Canyon de Chelley.” Ooljee was concentrating on his driving. No laser control strip buried in the sand and gravel here. “You pronounce it deh shay. That is a story in itself. It’s a National Monument, but people still live back in here. Old land claims, old ways. Their impact on the environment is minimal, just as it’s always been. No sizzle here, no slash music.” He grinned. “These people get high on mutton.”

Moody continued to gape at the unreal parapets towering overhead, glad he was down by the river and not up on the rim. He did not like high places. At least there was vegetation here; green life. The trees were pale and conservative compared to those back home, but they were real trees, not clever mimics like ocotillo and paloverde.

They crossed the river, the truck splashing and grinding its way through as Ooljee headed up a side canyon, narrower but no less impressive than the central chasm. Proof of his earlier words brought them to a halt as an avalanche of sheep tumbled across the sandy track in front of them.

It was directed by a medium-sized, impressively confident canine who barely took his eyes off his charges long enough to acknowledge the presence of the idling truck nearby. Moody observed the dog admiringly. It did better work than some of those who’d graduated from the Academy’s course in crowd control.

“Each of the sheep has a small transmitter embedded in its flank,” Ooljee informed him. “It tells the herder or owner how much that particular sheep currently weighs, what its body temperature is, how its internal systems are functioning, whether or not it is pregnant, and many other things. It also functions as a receiver.

“Notice the dog.” Moody tried to keep track of the tireless black and white streak among the forest of legs. “He will be wearing a transmitter collar that tells his master where he is at all times. The herder can direct his animal via the built-in receiver, which also broadcasts a steady frequency at very low power. The frequency is irritating to sheep. This makes it very easy for the dog to tum and guide the herd. He doesn’t have to bark or rely on his original predatory reputation. All he has to do is move close to a sheep and it will react by turning away. It is very efficient. Since the herder can communicate with his dog via the collar, he no longer has to shout to it.”

When the woolly mob was almost past, a boy on a silenced motorbike appeared. As he waved to them, Moody noted the two-inch antenna that protruded from his headband. A control unit was strapped to his right wrist. He followed the boy’s progress until he and his herd had vanished into the brush on the far side of the canyon. The truck resumed its advance.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to use some kind of remote tracking vehicle?”

“Perhaps, but nothing works as well in a confined space as does a good dog,” Ooljee told him. “It is also much better company. And there is something else. Not everyone on the Rez is into computers, or assembly, or debugging and repair. Some families prefer to hew to the old ways. Women still weave rugs on hand looms, though many will use cadcam terminals to experiment with design. Others choose to herd sheep. There are still people who grow com and beans, squash and tobacco. The com that is grown on the Rez does not taste like the com that is put into cans in Nebraska and Indiana.

“I can see that we will have to expose you to some more local cooking. You have already had fry bread. Do you like tortillas?”

“I’m from South Florida,” Moody reminded him.

Ooljee was nodding to himself. “Blue com tortillas with tomatillo salsa. I’ll bet you do not have that in South Florida.”

Talk of food was making Moody hungry but he forbore mentioning it, suspecting that the canyon bottom was not home to a profusion of restaurants. Fastfoodies did not generally locate on dirt roads. Anyway it could not be much farther to their destination, because the side canyon they were traversing was beginning to narrow. It was like driving through a crack in the planet. The air was cool and still. Sunshine was but an occasional, fitful visitor to this place. Moody was very glad he was not claustrophobic.