Take Us to Your Chief (20 page)

The doctor bit his lower lip. He had nothing to hide. This wasn't a massive government conspiracy. Still, like every doctor worth his salt, Sparco was not fond of delivering bad news. He'd become a doctor specifically with the hopes of delivering as much good news as possible. Today was not going to be such a day. “It's complicated.” He wasn't sure where to go fro
m there.

Kyle held up the quartz and looked through it at the squat, malformed figure of the doctor on the other side. “The world is complicated. Why should this be any different? I just want to hear you sa
y it.”

Reluctantly, Sparco leaned across his desk and grabbed the Muncy file. His chair creaked loudly in protest. He remembered when Kyle was a little boy and had broken his wrist falling from a tree. Another time, Kyle's head had required four stitches due to playing baseball. A third time, his thumb had gotten infected by an errant piece of glass. Knowing Kyle's parents had passed on not long ago and that he was alienated from most of his community, Sparco felt for the simple man with godlike powers. And now his patient was holding firmly in his hand the piece of quartz Sparco's grandson had given him. Despite everything, it seemed the Aboriginal man still possessed some of his childlike fascination with the world. Sparco hated to rui
n that.

“Well, ahem, as far as we know, it is possible that your environment was largely responsible for your… metamorphosis.”

Kyle knocked the quartz three times on the table, creating an echoing effect. “That's what I don't get. Most of what all these doctors and scientists theorize I don't really understand. I live in a small house on a reserve with a thousand other people. Why me? Why not them? Why not anybody else?” His voice rose and his fist clamped down on th
e crystal.

Although he wasn't afraid of the young man, Sparco was… he would say… concerned about his emotional outburst. “As I said, it's complicated. It's been theorized that the water yo
u drink—”

“The substandard water most of my community is forced to drink? Tha
t water?!”

This was a contentious issue. Like many other First Nations communities across the country, Muncy's reserve was under a contaminated water alert. Had been for the past seven years, at least. That's when the toxins had first been discovered in the groundwater. Who knows how long they'd been there? Local Native people were pissed off about this, and the doctor was well aware of the ill effects of unclean water. But as his patient had been asking ever since his metamorphosis had begun, wh
y him?

“Yes, that water. With all the chemicals and impurities that have been digested by you
r body…”

Kyle remembered the farms he'd passed driving into the city with Karl. “The stuff from all that agriculture, right?”

The doctor nodded. “The fertilizers, antibiotics, growth hormones and steroids they give to the animals eventually make it into the water table. And then int
o you.”

Kyle was silent for a moment. “Wha
t else?”

Flipping over a sheet of paper, Dr. Sparco's eyes scanned the test results. “Well, and this is just conjecture, you realize, there's all the radon gas that was found saturating your house. As you know, that stuff is a natural by-product of the decay of radium and i
s radioactive.”

“Yeah, I've heard all this before, but nobody will tell me how my house could have become saturated with this radon gas. This doesn't sound… normal.”

“It is normal, Kyle. It's… it's naturally occurring. I've told you this. Seeps up through the ground. I know it sounds weird, but it's true. Because of that, a lot of places have radon ga
s detectors.”

Kyle took a deep breath. “But not on m
y reserve?”

“So it seems. And somehow, someway, the gas and the steroids and the fertilizers interacted with your biology, bonding and transforming your body on a cellular level, creating all sorts of unique… side effects. We're not quite sure how… exactly.”

It's a good thing Kyle wasn't a gambling man, thought Sparco, or he'd be broke and in jail by now. The Gods of Chance didn't seem to be too fond of his patient. Actually, on second thought, broke and in jail might be a little better than Kyle's curren
t situation.

“Anythin
g else?”

When Kyle had first come into his office eighteen months ago, when he first began manifesting these unique abilities, the doctor had been amazed, possibly even a little envious. Over the decades, he'd seen a lot of damaged bodies and persistent illnesses, and now here in front of him was a man it seemed God and the universe had made indestructible, even superior. The good doctor was now quite sure he'd been overly generous in his assessment of Kyle Muncy and his condition. If you have all the money in the world but no place to spend it, is there
a point?

“Yes, one other thing. It seems all that black mould in your house also contributed to your… condition.”

By now, Kyle was getting weary. He wanted to know the details, but each statement of fact made him feel like a tree with a persistent lumberjack, each scientific declaration a swing from a sharp and heav
y axe.

“The blac
k mould?”

Sparco put the chart down on his desk and removed his glasses. He slid his chair a little closer to his patient. “Seems like the spores of the black mould acted as some sort of organic catalyst within your system. Somehow they helped metabolize all the other elements into… into… into what yo
u are.”

In the park nearby, Kyle could hear children laughing. He could smell chili, today's special, at the restaurant across the road. In the building next door, somebody was playing their stereo, and Dr. Sparco's unusual patient could feel the
thump thump
of the bass. Sounded like something by Th
e Doors.

“I suppose that make
s sense.”

Suddenly his own office seemed very small to the doctor. “Actually, it doesn't. That's why we need to do more test
s and—”

“Thanks, Doctor, I'll think about it.” It had been a long day for the reluctant superhero. And it would be a long hitchhike back in the growing darkness. Kyle made his departur
e quick.

“I know this al
l sounds…”

There was no ending to the sentence, as the patient had exited the office, leaving behind a conflicted man of medicine. Stepping out of the building onto the street out front was the most amazing person humanity and nature had managed to create together. Everybody should have been doing cartwheels. Instead, there were no cartwheels in Kyle's life. Sparco closed the file on his most interesting patient and replaced it in his desk drawer. Nothing frustrates a doctor more than a sense of medical impotency. Actually, Sparco could cure most types of impotency… but not thi
s kind.

Late that night, Kyle Muncy crawled into bed. The day was over. The only thing he had looked forward to all day was closing his eyes again, finding blissful nothingness until they opened once more. There was always the hope that tomorrow might be better. Otherwise, this was just another day in the life of
a superhero.

Kyle Muncy, the first Aboriginal superhero, closed his eyes and slept, peaceful for the first time tha
t day.

Meanwhile, across the Earth, terrible people were doing terrible things, to themselves and to the planet. These terrible events were happening non-stop, with nobody to help prevent them. And in another part of the damaged world, someone else struggling to survive was discovering they had new, unexpected yet formidable powers, created from an unholy alliance of man-made environmental corruption and toxic natura
l elements.

And Kyle slep
t on.

Take Us to Your Chief

The men sitting on the couches in the middle of Old Man's Point didn't need the screeching of the cicadas to tell them how hot it was. The sweat on their foreheads and on the beer bottles gave them ample evidence. The sweat was cyclical: the more sweat on their foreheads, the more need for cold beer, which in turn became sweat in the humidity of the summe
r woods.

Old Man's Point was located near the eastern shore of Otter Lake, named for an old man who used to stand on the bank and point at all the boats going by. A deserted stretch of shoreline running parallel to a rarely used dirt road, it housed a group of cedar trees that grew skyward in a sort of amphitheatre configuration. Over the years, several worn and tattered couches had found their way to the cedars, which circled an ancient firepit. Weathered by many years of rain, snow, sun and sweaty Aboriginal behinds, the sofas looked as beaten down, as lived in and as much a part of the landscape as the men. The constant breeze from the lake kept the more persistent mosquitos and other bugs of July away, and all in all, it was a comfortable and picturesque place to pass the summe
r months.

Today, like most lazy days, there sat three Ojibway men. Tarzan, Cheemo and Teddy had been there since ten that morning, enjoying a cooler stocked with beer that was chilling in the shallow waters near the shore. They had no place to go and nothing much to do, a happy coincidence for all. Most of their relations agreed the trio were men of few words and fewer ambitions. And the three saw little need to argue. They did what they did, and they were very good a
t it.

Although they spent long hours in each other's company—they had been best buddies since their early school days—they said remarkably little. Several seasons back, a cousin had joined them for the day and had come away utterl
y bewildered.

“They didn't say anything. Not one word!” the cousin had exclaimed. “I tried to talk with them about something, anything, but I got nothing back. They would just sit there, look around occasionally, smile and drink beer. That's all.” He never wen
t back.

The men had spent so much time together over the years, they practically knew each other's thoughts; thus, nothing needed to be said. Besides, nothing much happened to them that needed to be discusse
d anyway.

Until the spaceshi
p landed.

It was a Tuesday. Tarzan, so called because as a kid he loved running around the village and climbing trees in his underwear, was pulling three more beers out of the cooler when he heard it. Years sitting at Old Man's Point with his cousins had made him far more aural than oral. The buzzing of insects, the calls of birds, the lapping of water on the shore, the distant drone of motorboats constituted pretty much the only auditory landscape in the area. So when the insects and birds suddenly went quiet and the relative silence was filled by a growing humming sound—no, humming wasn't quite the right word, but it would have to do—Tarzan's curiosity was piqued. He looked to his right and then left. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, he finally looked up, over the lake, and almost dropped his beer. Almost.

Cheemo, whose name tragically translates from Ojibway into English roughly as “Big Shit,” heard the unfamiliar sound next. At first, Cheemo thought the noise was coming from a passing boat, but then it occurred to him boats don't usually pas
s overhead.

Puzzled, he looked over to his brother, Teddy, who since childhood had given off the vague aroma of puppy breath. As a result, children loved him. But Teddy's eyes were closed, as the wind had increased and he was enjoying the caresses of the midsummer breeze, for alas, those were the only caresses in his life. It took his baseball cap flying across the firepit and into the goldenrods near the edge of the clearing to make him open his eyes. What was fast approaching filled his eyes, but the rest of him refused to comprehend the large flashing, multicoloured object making a clear path to their couches. He closed his eyes for a second, thinking maybe it would disappear. No such luck, for he could see the flashing lights through his eyelids. Additionally, it was still there when he reopened them. Teddy shrugged and took a sip o
f beer.

By now the hum was constant and unmistakable. Cheemo could tell it was close, and judging from Tarzan's pose, head pointed ninety degrees straight up, it was directly overhead. Finally, putting two and two together, Cheemo looked up through the branches of the cedars to see what had caught his brother's and cousin'
s attention.

Although its shape seemed somewhat amorphous because it was glowing, the object was definitely round, and quite sizable. Perhaps as wide as four or five eighteen-wheelers lined up side by side, thought Cheemo, trying to render an unfamiliar and unexpected occurrence familiar and concrete. The other two expressed their earnest opinion by dropping their jaws, though oddly enough, neither was surprised enough to drop the beer bottle clutched in hi
s hands.

Whatever it was grew closer, eventually descending onto the sandy beach adjacent to the nearby road. It landed not with a thud but with a soft whoosh as the air was pushed aside. A small cloud of road dust briefly surrounded the thing. The men's faces and bodies were bathed in the broad spectrum of colours emitted by the craft, a dozen different hues reflecting the spectrum of visible light, and possibly a few as yet undiscovered by the human race. Birds, insects, frogs and other animals local to Old Man's Point suddenly remembered they had plans elsewhere and evacuated. In a remarkably short period of time, it was just the strange object, the cedar trees and the three men left in the immediate area. It should be pointed out that in the forty or so seconds since they had spotted the approach of the mysterious craft, the men had not moved
a centimetre.

A few more seconds passed as the humming seemed to lessen and the flashing of the lights diminished. Tarzan, somehow realizing this wasn't exactly a normal occurrence, glanced at Teddy, who in turn glanced at Cheemo. Finally, Cheemo managed to force his eyes off the craft and looked to Tarzan for any suggestion of what to do. Unfortunately, expert recommendations for handling such a unique situation were a rare commodity that morning in Otter Lake, and even scarcer in that little nook of the reserve. The only comment on the situation was a loud, nervous gulp by Teddy. The other two quickly followe
d suit.

Suddenly, the humming shifted, and the whirring lights froze. A new sound emerged from somewhere beneath the pulsating luminosity—a higher-pitched buzzing reminiscent of a thousand mosquitos filtered through a blown guitar amp. Then a rectangular patch of obsidian light erupted along one side of the craft, near the bottom. It flared briefly, then dissipated, revealing what appeared to the three men to be an opaque stairway of sorts. And more distressing, something seemed to be… the only word Tarzan could come up with was… flowing… down the mysteriou
s ramp.

By now it had occurred to the Old Man's Point trio that perhaps this would be a good time to relocate to a less historic location and ponder their next course of action. However, before they could move, they heard a new sound. It was a watery, thick voice, one that seemed to be trying to find the correct boundaries of vocal expression. The sound was fuzzy for a few seconds before it solidified into somethin
g understandable.

“Greetings, people o
f Earth.”

It had spoken to them. Cheemo looked to Teddy, unsure whether the voice was referring to them, for he was fairly sure they were people from Earth, but he didn't want to jump to conclusions. White people were always changing the names of things: countries, people and a bunch of other things. He wouldn't put it past them to change the name of the planet. He had seen on the news some time ago that Pluto was no longer considered a planet. It had been downgraded to the celestial equivalent of a non-statu
s planet.

For obvious reasons, Teddy's attention was not on his brother. He was too busy wondering why it felt as if all his hair was standing on end, like when he forgot to put fabric softener sheets in th
e dryer.

Tarzan realized his beer was empty, and this was definitely a time for extr
a beer.

For a brief period, the only sound other than the peculiar humming was the casual lapping of water on the shore. Then more words came from the very strang
e stranger.

“We are the Kaaw Wiyaa. We come i
n peace.”

That's good, thought Tarzan. Peace is alway
s good.

More cognizant of the history-making implications of the event developing around them, Cheemo tried hard to focus and memorize all that was happening. He knew that, should they survive this encounter, there could be good money and a future of free beer on the horizon. But at the moment, it was difficult to make out who or what was actually talking. Much like the craft, the defining boundaries around the individual seemed to be disobeying the rule that light travels in a straight line. Occasionally, he glimpsed what he thought wer
e tentacles.

Calamari, thought Cheemo, I haven't had calamari in a lon
g time.

There was a constant shimmering, and intermittently what appeared to be dark or smoky blobs emerged in the general vicinity of the strang
e being.

Must be a bitch taking a family photo, though
t Teddy.

Tarzan couldn't help thinking what a cool effect this was. Must freak the girl
s out.

“You are citizens of thi
s planet?”

All three took a reasonable guess and nodded. Remembering his mother's frequent comments about hospitality and politeness, Cheemo wondered if he should offer… it… a beer… then thought better of the idea. They only had three left. And he wasn't sure that thing had a mouth. Or a liver. Or
a bladder.

“Excellent. We wish to open diplomatic negotiations with your planet. That is why we wish to see you
r leader.”

Mentally, Cheemo was kicking himself. He should have watched more
Star Trek
as a kid.
Star Wars
doesn't really prepare you for a situation like this. This was definitely a
Star Tre
k
moment.

Meanwhile, Tarzan was wondering if they'd let him drive their… spaceship. There was this ex-girlfriend's house he'd like to hover over, maybe dump some interstellar garbag
e on.

“Will you take us to your leader, then?”

Grabbing the initiative, Cheemo nodded. This was not their problem. This is what people get elected for and why they enjoy those luxurious band office salaries. In those few short seconds, Cheemo had decided a life of fortune and fame just wasn't for him. He preferred the under-the-radar, low-stress approach. And he was fairly confident the other two would agree. Almost as if reading his mind, Teddy was nodding his head, agreeing with Cheemo via a lifelong cultural practice of not contradicting family when you have nothing better t
o say.

In reality, Teddy was wondering if that thing with calamari arms had farted. He was fairly sure he could smell a fart, but not one he had ever smelled before. And the nature of the breeze indicated it was coming from the direction of the newcomer. Unfortunately, Teddy's Grade 10 chemistry class twenty years ago had neglected to teach him about the prevalence of methane in the universe, and that many planets, including several in his own solar system, contained large quantities of methane. Some scientists have even theorized that alien life would breathe it the same way the ecosystem on Earth uses oxygen. Methane has the same approximate chemical makeup of certain gastrointestinal by-products in Earth animals. Through its unique physiology and the atmosphere it breathed, the Kaaw Wiyaa smelled constantly of
a fart.

As for the “take me to your leader” part, Cheemo glanced at Tarzan who glanced at Teddy who glanced back at Cheemo. They all knew where to tak
e him.

It was 3:36 on a hot, gorgeous Tuesday and, luckily, the chief of the Otter Lake First Nation was in his office, not whacking huge divots in the piece of Mother Earth his community had sold to a golf course two decades ago. It took some manoeuvring to get the sizable and abundantly limbed Kaaw Wiyaa through the band office door. It had recently been remodelled to be wheelchair accessible, but not quite alien accessible. And as they'd passed him in the hall, the janitor had looked worriedly at the trail of slime it was leaving on his newly cleaned carpets. For this he got a degree in Indigenou
s Studies?

Chief Angus Benojee, a man expanding at the belly but thinning on top, sat in his leather chair staring at the creature his nephews had brought into his office. His skinny little moustache quivered in a combination of confusion and irritation. There was barely enough room in the small office for the three men and… it. Tarzan, the smallest of the three, had to climb up on a table and sit cross-legged—Indian-style, some would say—so that the others could comfortably fit. To make things worse, the chief was certain somebody ha
d farted.

“I am honoured to meet the leader of this grea
t planet.”

The chief's brow furrowed. This was his third term in office and this took the cake for most unusual meeting of the year, beating out by far his lunch with the acting regional director for Governmental Interdepartmental Subsidies and Regional Financial Accessibility (
ARD
-
GISRFA
). The poor government official had actually thought he had scored a trip to India to meet the Indians. Chief Angus looked at one nephew who looked at his other nephew who looked at the remaining cousin who shrugged. The only comment the chief could make was a wear
y sigh.