Cyber Way Read online

  “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 stran
ge. 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.

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nbsp; “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.”