Blasphemy (27 page)

ON FRIDAY, AT THE BREAK OF dawn, Nelson Begay leaned against the doorframe of the chapter house and watched the first horse trailers arrive. The horses were stirring the dust up into golden fire-clouds, the riders unloading their horses and saddling up amid the jingling of spurs and slapping of leather. Begay’s own horse, Winter, was already saddled and ready to ride, tied in the shade of the only live piñon in sight, eating from a morral. Begay wished he could blame the
Bilagaana
for all the dead piñons, but as far as he could tell, the television news was right: bark beetles and drought hadn’t needed any help.

Maria Atcitty, the chapter president, came up. “Nice turnout,” she said.

“Better than I thought. You coming?”

Atcitty laughed. “Anything to get me out of the office.”

“Where’s your horse?”

“Are you nuts? I’m driving.”

Begay went back to watching the motley collection of horseflesh gathering for the protest ride. Aside from a couple of fine quarterhorses and an Arab, they were mostly reservation canners, unshod, skinny, white-eyed. The scene reminded him of his uncle Silvers’s place over at Toh Ateen. Silvers had taught him the Blessing Way, but he’d also been a bronc rider, working the Santa Fe–Amarillo rodeo circuit until he busted his back. Afterward he kept a ragged bunch of horses for the kids to ride; that’s where Begay had learned all he knew about horses.

He shook his head. It seemed like such a long time ago. Uncle Silvers was gone, the old ways were dying, and the kids nowadays couldn’t ride or speak the language. Begay was the only one old Uncle Silvers had been able to talk into learning the Blessing Way.

The ride was more than a protest about the Isabella project; it was about recapturing a way of life that was rapidly disappearing. It was about their traditions, their language, and their land, about taking responsibility for their destiny.

A decrepit Isuzu pickup pulled up, pulling a stock trailer too big for it. With a whoop, a rangy man hopped out, wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off. He pumped one skinny arm into the air, hollered again, and went around to unload the horse.

“Willy Becenti’s here,” said Atcitty.

“Hard to miss Willy.”

The horse, already saddled, stepped down onto the dirt. Becenti brought him around and tied him to the tongue of the trailer.

“He’s packing.”

“I see it.”

“You going to let him bring that?”

Begay considered that for a moment. Willy was excitable, but he had a good heart and was solid as a rock when he wasn’t drinking. There’d be no liquor on this ride—that was one rule Begay was going to enforce.

“Willy’ll be all right.”

“What if things get nasty?” asked Maria.

“Things aren’t going to get nasty. I met a couple of the scientists yesterday. Nothing’s going to happen.”

Atcitty said, “Which ones did you meet?”

“That one who calls himself an anthropologist, Ford, and the assistant director, a woman named Mercer.”

Atcitty nodded. “Same ones I met.” A moment passed and she said, “You sure this is a good idea, this protest ride?”

“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

KEN DOLBY LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. Six o’clock P.M. He turned back to the screen and checked the temperature on the bad magnet. It was holding steady, well within the tolerance range. He moused through several pages of software controls for Isabella. All systems were go, everything running perfectly. Power was at 80 percent.

It was a perfect night for a run. with Isabella diverting a large percentage of the megawattage of the RM-West Grid for its own use, even the smallest disruption—a lightning strike, blown transformer, downed lines—could cause a cascade. But it was a cool evening over much of the Southwest, the ACs were turned off, there were no storms and little wind.

Dolby had a feeling in his gut—that tonight, they’d solve the problem. Tonight was the night Isabella would shine to perfection.

“Ken, bring it up to eighty-five,” said Hazelius from his leather seat at the center of the Bridge.

Dolby glanced over at St. Vincent, monitoring the power flows. The leprechaun-like man gave him a thumbs-up and winked.

“Gotcha.”

At the very edge of perceptibility he could feel the faint vibration that marked the immense flow of power. The two beams of protons and antiprotons, circulating in opposite directions at unimaginable speed, still had not been brought into contact. That would happen at 90 percent power. Once they were brought into contact, it took a lot more power, a lot more time, and an exquisite level of fine-tuning to bring the system up to 100 percent.

The power gauges rose smoothly to 85 percent.

“Lovely night for a run,” said St. Vincent.

Dolby nodded, glad that St. Vincent was handling the power flows. He was a quiet, agreeable old fellow who seldom said a word, but he handled power the way a conductor handles a symphony orchestra, with exactness and great finesse. All without breaking a sweat.

“Eighty-five percent,” Dolby said.

“Alan?” asked Hazelius. “How are the servers?”

“Everything fine over here.”

Hazelius went around the room for perhaps the fiftieth time, soliciting answers from the team. So far, it was a textbook run.

Dolby reviewed his systems. Everything was working according to specs. The only glitch was the warm magnet, but by “warm” they were talking about only three one-hundredths of a degree warmer than it should be.

Isabella was settling in at 85 percent, while Rae Chen made tiny adjustments to the beams. Glancing idly around the room, Dolby thought about the group Hazelius had brought together. Take Edelstein, for example. Dolby suspected he might be even smarter than Hazelius—but a kind of weird-smart. Edelstein was a little scary, like his brain was half-alien. And what was it with the rattlesnakes? A weird frigging hobby. Then there was Corcoran, who looked like Darryl Hannah. She wasn’t really his type, too tall and abrasive. Way too pretty and too blond to be as smart as she obviously was . . . It was a brilliant group, even the robot Cecchini, who always seemed to be on the verge of going postal. Except for Innes. He was an earnest guy who tried hard but didn’t have the candlepower to illuminate much more than the well-trodden middle of the room. How could Hazelius take the man and his little rap sessions so seriously? Or was Hazelius just going along with DOE regs? Were all psychologists like Innes, spinning their neat little theories without a shred of empirical evidence? He was a man who saw everything and understood nothing. Innes reminded Dolby of that pop-psychology-spouting truck driver his mother had dated after his father’s death, a decent guy who double-chinned you half to death with advice from the latest self-improvement bestseller.

Then there was Rae Chen. She was smart as hell but totally laid-back about it. Someone had said she’d been a champion skateboarder as a kid. She looked like a Berkeley free-love type, fun, easy, uncomplicated. Or was she really uncomplicated? It was hard to tell with Asians. Either way, he’d love to get something going with her. He glanced over at her, bent over her console so intently, her black hair hanging down like a waterfall, and he imagined her without clothes . . . .

Hazelius’s voice broke in.

“We’re ready to go to ninety, Ken.”

“Sure thing.”

“Alan? When we’ve stabilized at ninety, I want you to be ready to switch over the p5 595s all at once, ganged and linked.”

Edelstein nodded.

Dolby moved the sliders, watched Isabella respond. This was it. This was the night. Everything in his life had led up to this point. He felt the deep vibration of the power as it increased. It was like the whole mountain was energized. It purred like a Bentley. God, how he loved this machine.
His
machine.

FROM THE BACK BEDROOM OF HIS bungalow, Ford saw the first of the protest riders appear on the rim behind Nakai Rock, silhouetted against the sunset. He raised his binoculars and identified Nelson Begay astride a paint horse, with a dozen other riders.

He turned his head and felt a throb from his fall the evening before. Since then, he and Kate had hardly been able to exchange a word, she had been so busy getting ready for the run.

The light on his satellite phone blinked, right on schedule. He picked it up.

“News?” Lockwood asked.

“Nothing specific. Everyone’s in the Bunker, starting another run of Isabella. I’m waiting to go meet the protest riders.”

“I wish you could have headed that off.”

“Trust me, it’s better this way. Did you look into this Joe Blitz thing?”

“There are hundreds of Joe Blitzes out there—people, companies, places, what have you. I culled a list of some that struck me as being possibilities. I thought I’d run a few past you.”

“Go ahead.”

“First of all, Joe Blitz is the name of a GI Joe action figure.”

“That could be an allusion to Wardlaw — Volkonsky hated him. What else?”

“Broadway producer of the forties who did
Garbage Can Follies
and
Crater Lake Cut-up
. Two musicals, one about tomcats, the other about a nudist colony. Both flops.”

“Keep going.”

“Joe Blitz, bankrupt Ford dealership in Ohio . . . Joe Blitz State Park, Medford, Oregon . . . Joe Blitz Memorial Hockey Rink, Ontario, Canada . . . Joe Blitz, sci-fi writer in the thirties and forties . . . Joe Blitz, developer who built the Mausleer Building in Chicago . . . Joe Blitz, cartoonist.”

“Tell me about the writer.”

“A Joe Blitz published science fiction potboilers in several pulp magazines in the early forties.”

“Titles?”

“A whole bunch of them. Let’s see . . . ‘Sea Fangs’ and ’Man-Killers of the Air,‘ among others.”

“Did he publish any novels?”

“As far as we could tell, just a lot of stories.”

“What about Joe Blitz the cartoonist?”

“Did a syndicated strip in the late fifties about a fat slob and a toy poodle. Sort of like
Garfield
. Never a big success. Let’s see . . . I’ve got about two hundred more, everything from the name of a funeral home to a recipe for smoking fish.”

Ford sighed. “This is like looking for a needle in a haystack when we don’t even know what the needle looks like. What about that Aunt Natasha?”

“Volkonsky had no Aunt Natasha. It might have been a kind of joke—you know, every Russian has an Aunt Natasha and an Uncle Boris.”

Ford glanced out the window at the riders entering the valley. “Looks like the note’s a dead end.”

“Seems so.”

“I’ve got to go—the riders are coming down into the valley.”

“Call me as soon as the run’s over,” said Lockwood.

Ford put away the satellite phone, locked up the briefcase, and went outside. He heard a distant engine, and a battered pickup appeared where the road entered the valley. It topped the rise and came down, followed by a white van with KREZ on the side and a satellite dish on top.

Ford walked over and stood in the trees at the edge of the fields, watching Begay and a dozen riders on lathered horses approach. The KREZ van stopped and a couple of television people got out and began setting up a shot of the riders. A large woman stepped out from the pickup—Maria Atcitty.

As the riders reached the fields, the cameraman started rolling tape. One rider broke away and galloped ahead, giving a whoop of triumph and whirling a bandanna in an upraised fist. Ford recognized Willy Becenti, the man who had lent him money. Some of the other riders urged their horses into a run, and Begay followed suit. They tore across the fields, whipping past the camera, and pulled up in the dirt parking lot outside the old trading post, not far from Ford.

When Begay dismounted, the reporter for KREZ came up, high-fived him, and started setting up the equipment for an interview.

Now the others were coming up. More high fives. The video lights went on, and the reporter began to interview Begay. The others stood around watching.

Ford strolled out from the trees and walked across the grass.

All eyes turned in his direction. The reporter approached him, holding out the mike.

“What is your name, sir?”

Ford could see the camera was rolling. “Wyman Ford.”

“Are you a scientist?”

“No, I’m the liaison between the Isabella project and the local communities.”

“You aren’t liaising very well,” said the reporter. “You got a big protest on your hands.”

“I know it.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think Mr. Begay here is right.”

There was a brief silence. “Right about what?”

“A lot of what he’s been saying—that Isabella is frightening local people, that its presence isn’t the economic boon it was supposed to be, that the scientists have been too aloof.”

Another brief, confounded silence. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“To start with, I’m going to listen. That’s why I’m here right now. Then I’m going to do what I can to make things right. We got off to a bad start with the community, but I promise you, things will change.”

“Bullshit!” came a cry—Willy Becenti, striding over from where he had staked out his horse in the field.

“Cut!” The reporter turned to Becenti. “Hey, Willy, I’m trying to do an interview here, do you mind?”

“He’s full of bullshit.”

“I can’t air anything you say if you use words like that.”

Becenti stopped short, staring at Ford. His face bloomed with recognition. “Hey—it’s you!”

“Hello, Willy,” said Ford, extending his hand.

Willy ignored it. “You’re one of them!”

“Yes.”

“You owe me twenty bucks, man.”

Ford reached for his wallet.

Becenti flushed triumphantly. “You keep your money. I don’t want it.”

“Willy, I’m hoping we can solve these problems working together.”

“Bull
shit
. You see up there?” Becenti pointed a skinny arm vaguely up the valley, exposing a tattoo. “There’s ruins up there in those bluffs. Graves. You’re desecrating our ancestors’ graves.”

The camera was rolling again. “Your response, Mr. Ford?” said the reporter, shoving the microphone back in his face.