Alan Foster - Cyber Way

Moody was thinking hard. It seemed too easy but, nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Can you identify by name the individual who accessed you the last two times?” Moody asked.

“Yistin Gaggii.”

A great peace washed through the detective. “At last: we’ve got ourselves a damn name.”

“Navaho,” said Ooljee. “It translates as ‘frozen raven.’”

“Can’t wait to meet him. But hey, why stop now?” He looked back at the monitor. Suddenly it seemed innocuous, even helpful. After all, no matter how bizarre or alien in design, it was no more than a machine, right?

“What can you tell us about the individual Yistin Gaggii?” There, he thought. If we’re gonna trigger any implanted alarms that ought to do it.

Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the voice proceeded to give them a full description of the man portrayed in the police composites, complete to a reproduction of his voice and notable facial mannerisms.

And as if that wasn’t enough, it calmly provided an address.

“Out in the country,” Ooljee commented. “Somewhere up the hill between Ganado and Window Rock. He’s been right here all this time, just outside of town. If he has been keeping to himself, it explains why no one has seen him to call him in.”

Moody leaned back in the kitchen chair, very pleased with himself. “Shoot, that was easy enough. We were just trawlin’ in the wrong molly, that’s all.” He remembered an earlier query. “Eleven sixty-two A.D. That when your stories say these ‘Holy People’ showed up in the neighborhood?”

The sergeant was studying the monitor, unable to take his eyes from the ever-changing scene. “Specific dates are not given. The gods created First Man and First Woman. There were four worlds of which ours is the fifth. Our Creation Myth is not so simple as you might think. There

are many legends, and then there are legends about legends.

“There is so much yet to be learned. Modem archaeology has barely scratched the history of the People. You can walk around Mesa Verde or Betatkin or White House or any of a thousand ruins on the Rez and still find potsherds and pieces of basketry and old com, though I have yet to hear of anyone digging optical disks or mollyspheres out of the floor of a cliff dwelling. And if the Anasazi were into computers, it is news to me.

“The ancient ones must have had friends, if our voice is to be believed. Very skilled friends, very advanced. I do not think they were Aztecs from Mexico. They must have come from elsewhere.” He gestured at the screen.

“This thing is an artifact, just like the bits of pots and the beads and the arrowheads people find every week on different parts of the Reservation.”

“It’s a database,” Moody countered. “I wonder where its storage facility is located, its molly-equivalent? Every database needs storage. . . .

“Or maybe it’s everywhere,” he went on, unsure whether he was being philosophical or predictive. “In the air around us, in the Earth itself. Maybe it encompasses the whole world. I’m just bullshitting, but this is a good time for it, don’t you think? Perhaps we’re all components of a big database somebody set up and forgot about when they finished their own work here. An Earth-mollysphere, a chunk of database backup not worth a second glance.

“Maybe we’re all just little pieces of ROM: you, me, your kids, everybody else. Pieces that this Scavenger character fussed with before shooting up through his skyhole, or whatever. Maybe it or something else decided to make a joke and give the ROM a way to access their own storage. So they provided a method the local ROM could understand.”

“Sandpainting,” Ooljee whispered thoughtfully.

“Yeah, sandpainting, and maybe the chants too. Not necessarily the specific words, but the sequence of tones and sounds. I dunno. What’s the chance of somebody accidentally hitting the right combination of sandpainting and aural accompaniment? You’ve been telling me all along nothing sounds quite like Navaho. Maybe there’s a reason for that, one that has nothing to do with linguistics.”

“Forgotten,” said the sergeant. “One of the dozens of old Ways that have been forgotten. Except in this case one line of hatathlis remembered, without even knowing the importance of what they were remembering. Grandfather Laughter knew the painting but not what it was for. Because in his time it would have made no sense. ” He looked sharply at his partner.

“But it makes sense to Gaggii. The second time it was accessed, in Atlanta, people died. Gaggii may know how to utilize at least a small part of this to serve his purposes.”

“Let’s see him utilize it fast enough to stop a slug from a twenty-eight Sledge.” Moody’s expression was grim. “You remember that address?” The sergeant nodded. “Then what are we sitting here in the dark for? Let’s go get the bastard.” He rose from his chair—and thought again of Atlanta, of crumpled bodies and bloodless holes in cold flesh. Bravado was all very well and good, but the department’s honor rolls were filled with the names of cops who’d died flashily and too young.

“Think we should request backup?”

“As much as I would like that,” the sergeant replied, “we would have to explain too much. No one would believe us. I go in and tell this story to the duty lieutenant, you know what he will say. He will want proof, he will want to know— Let’s just bring Gaggii in. He will not be expecting us. We will surprise him, and there should be no problem. I have my concerns, but I think at this point it would be best to keep things simple.”

Moody nodded. “Okay, then. Simple it is.”

“But not yet,” Ooljee pleaded. “I want to talk to Lisa before we go after him, and I am tired.”

“All right.” Moody was tired, too. “First thing tomorrow. Like you say, he’s not gonna be expecting us.

“And we get some real rest. But first we turn this thing off. Maybe you can go to sleep with it active, but not me.”

“Afraid of something coming out and painting dirty drawings on your belly while you sleep?” Ooljee taunted him.

Moody made a face. “How about it decides to vacuum us out of bed and into wherever it is? Or something we can’t even imagine. I just don’t want to leave it running. You leave it running long enough, maybe it gets clever ideas of its own. We don’t know enough about it to trust it.”

“Very well.” Ooljee rose and walked over to the refrigerator. “Then you turn it off.”

The two men locked stares for a long moment. Then Moody turned in his seat and deliberately reached for the power switch on the police spinner. His finger made it to within half an inch of the tiny sliding control. Moving it slowly over the hard plastic case, he found it would approach no closer.

“Like sliding over oiled rubber,” he informed his partner, “except that there’s nothing there.”

“Oh, there is something present, for sure, my friend.” Ooljee came over to watch. “A field of some kind. I doubt even a good physicist could tell us exactly what is happening here.”

Moody sat back. “That’s the extent of my ideas. Now we have to go with your chanting.”

Ooljee took a deep breath, assumed a position next to the table facing the monitor, and began. Moody listened, trying to make some sense of what was being said, failing utterly.

As the last phrase faded away and the sergeant lowered his trembling hand, the impossible vista which had occupied the zenat vanished, leaving in its wake the image of a flat familiar sandpainting devoid of any depth.

Ooljee cleared his throat, reached past Moody toward the power switch on his spinner. “That’s it, then.”