Cyber Way Page 9

  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.

  CHAPTER 8

  Five minutes later they rounded a bend in the canyon and Moody saw that which he had been anticipating.

  The multisided domed structure was much smaller than the average motor home. It was built of mud or adobe, with a roof that came to a slight point. To the detective it most nearly resembled a Mongolian yurt, which he was familiar with only because he’d seen one on an International Geographic special on the Divit channel one night when the game he’d planned to watch had been pre-empted.

  A dog of indeterminate breed lay in a path of sunshine in front of the building.

  “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home.”

  “Maybe because that is not the home.” Ooljee leaned forward, resting both hands on the wheel. “That’s an old hogan. You would be surprised how warm it is in winter and how cool in the summer. There is something about sleeping on packed earth that puts you in touch with a whole range of feelings you miss while sleeping on water or foam or air-suspension. You should try it sometime.”

  “Not in Florida,” Moody countered. “Too many creepy-crawlies.”

  Ooljee drove past the hogan and the indifferent dog,

  crossed the lazy stream that looked far too feeble to have cut the mighty canyon. It flowed quiet and unhurried, in no rush to find the next inch nearer sea level.

  The second hogan looked much like the first except that it was considerably larger, two stories tall, and constructed of prefab plastic walls filled and insulated with blownfoam. Copper-tinted polarized windows regarded their surroundings, while from the central peak of the roof a large satellite dish pointed southward. Even though the canyon ran north-south, Moody knew that reception had to be limited.

  Much of the roof was lined with tracking, hi-dope solar panels. A large rectangular building with few windows dominated the yard behind the hogan. A twinge of recognition went through Moody when he noted that the entrances to both buildings faced east. He was beginning to feel a little less like an intruder.

  Next to the creek stood a large abstract sculpture that on closer inspection turned out to have a practical function. Brightly hued metal poles supported a roof of artificial tree limbs. They varied in color from deep raw purple to intense blue to a light rose, shifting subtly within the metal itself. The poles looked too thin to support their sculpted burden.

  “That’s a summer shelter,” Ooljee explained, “or rather a modem interpretation of a traditional one whose boughs would have to be replaced every year. This one is more practical, but I miss the wood.”

  He didn’t know what the remarkable metal was, though. They were to find out later that it was anodized titanium.

  As Ooljee parked in front of the building two more mutts materialized to greet them. One might have had some honest shepherd in him, but Moody wasn’t sure. Both were curious and friendly.

  He hung back and let Ooljee ring the bell, hunting in vain for some visible security device like a scanner or heat sensor. It was either expensively concealed or nonexistent. Probably not needed here. This wasn’t Metropolitan Tampa. Besides, anyone trying to steal from a home in this canyon would find himself with but one avenue of escape, easily closed off.

  Not that the man who opened the door looked like he’d need any help subduing an intruder. He was taller than Moody and just as heavy, though his weight was far more aesthetically distributed on his bones. He looked like one of the Bucs’ better linebackers. In point of fact he had played football, though only on the college level.

  He chatted with Ooljee for a bit, then stepped out and favored Moody with the kind of big, down-home country smile the detective hadn’t encountered much since leaving Mississippi. He felt immediately at home.

  “Yinishye Bill Laughter.” He looked to be in his early or mid-thirties. His handshake was as solid as the rest of him, though Moody was quick to note that unusual pressure of the index finger along the back of the hand.

  “Vernon Moody. I’m—”

  “Paul has told me.” He beckoned for them to follow. “Come on around back. I’d take you through the house, but Marilee’s shopping and my dad’s watching the game.”

  They walked around the building, with its views of creek and towering canyon walls. All three dogs accompanied them, one sniffing at the detective’s heels, the other two scouting ahead.

  The big, bamlike structure behind the house turned out to be an industrial workshop. Moody had expected cars or trucks, perhaps even a gyrocopter, maybe farm equipment; not an artistic assembly-line. Acrylic bins overflowing with colored sand lined one wall. Long benches and tables occupied the middle of the floor, flanked by stacks of flat boards cut from high-quality hardwood, sheets of metal, rolls of flexifan.

  There was a section set aside for welding, with its own scrapmetal yard and anodizing equipment, as well as a potter’s comer with clay, electronically controlled wheel, and flash kiln. A big commercial-grade laser cutter dominated a back table like a lost piece of army ordnance.

  Finished sandpaintings were stacked neatly in sorting racks, next to framing equipment. Laughter even had his own seal-wrapping machine and shipping materials. The paintings themselves varied considerably in size, from miniatures a few inches square to a pair of eight-by-ten foot monsters leaning against the near wall. Ooljee asked about them before Moody could.

  “They are for the new terminal going in at Casa Grande International Airport.” Laughter was obviously proud of his work. “They’ll be viewed from a distance, hence the outlandish proportions. As you can see, all the designs and yeis are rendered oversized.”

  “What’s a yei?” Moody inquired.

  “A spirit. A god. A person. It depends. Yei-bei-chei. Yei for short.”

  The two young men working near the back of the shop paid little attention to the newly arrived visitors.

  “Apprentices. My assistants,” Laughter explained.

  Moody watched as one of them prepared to apply an adhesive base to a foot-square piece of thin metal. His companion finished adjusting a protective mask, then turned to his left and picked up a hose-and-nozzle arrangement. It hissed like a snake giving warning as he sprayed transparent fixative over a quartet of finished sandpaintings.

  “They do a lot of the dru
dge work.” Laughter studied the pieces with a critical eye. “It frees me to concentrate on painting and design.”

  Moody was still a bit taken aback by the sheer scale and mass production aspects of the operation. To him it didn’t look much like art. But then what did he know?

  “You don’t paint. You use sand.”

  “Paint is just a medium. Sand is another.” Laughter indicated a custom industrial easel that held a half-finished sandpainting.

  “In the old days you had to lay sand fast because your adhesive would set up. That made for some sloppy work. This is much better. I use a debondable elastomeric transparent adhesive. You can cover a whole board with it and work on any section you want without worrying about the rest drying out in the meantime. The next day you just spray the area you want to work on with the debonder and it becomes malleable again. None of it sets up hard until you apply the fixative. As for a paintbrush—” He reached behind a nearby workbench.

  Moody flinched instinctively when Laughter emerged holding what looked like a gun. In an industrial sense, it was. Instead of emitting a high-powered stream of fine grit to scour away old paint and varnish, Laughter’s sandblaster had been modified to apply sand. The width and impact of the stream could both be manipulated electronically. A built-in switch allowed the attached vacuum hose to select from any of the nearby bins of colored sand. The whole contraption was no bigger than an automatic pistol. One hose connected it to its air supply, a second to the sand distributor. The custom device was a compact cross between a sandblaster and an airbrush.

  Laughter slipped on protective goggles and demonstrated how it all worked by adding to the sandpainting in progress. Three eagle feathers, white tipped with black, appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the board as he played the nozzle back and forth over the treated surface.

  “You can go pretty fast with the setup we have here,” he said as he shut off the unit and picked up another self-contained device. While they looked on, he carefully applied fixative to the feathers he’d just drawn, securing them to the board.

  Moody found the technique more intriguing than the technology. “There’s nothing on there; no tracings, no outlines. Don’t you sketch in your designs before you start?

  Laughter slid the goggles up onto his head. “Don’t need to. I started learning from my father when I was eight. The designs we use are sketched in permanently up here.” He tapped his forehead. “That’s where a good hatathli keeps his. But I’m not a hatathli, of course. I’m just a painter. Though I know what not to paint.”

  Moody kept pace with him as they exited the workshop. “Paul’s told me about that.”

  Laughter smiled softly. “Then you know that no commercial, fixed, permanent sandpainting, no matter how accurate it looks, is a precise reproduction of a medicine painting. If it was an exact replication it might adversely affect the painter, or the purchaser, or universal harmony. If I made such a reproduction and harm befell the purchaser, I could be sued. Maybe not in a Florida court, but things can be different here on the Rez.

  “No commercial sandpainter would do such a thing anyway, because the misfortune might befall him instead of a customer. ”

  Moody found himself wondering about the Kettrick painting. Could it be the unfortunate exception, the exact reproduction Laughter seemed so confident no sandpainter would create? Did that have something to do with the obsession of their killer? Misfortune had certainly befallen Elroy Kettrick.

  Been out in the sun too long, he told himself. Need to spend more time inside.

  That was exactly where Laughter was taking them. They turned right and entered the main house, emerging into a high-ceilinged kitchen. Wide, tinted windows looked out over the indifferent creek. The appliances were modern, though designed to run straight off DC. That made sense to Moody. Solar electric production was always more efficient when it could be used directly, instead of having to be run through a converter first.

  The painter waved some coffee for them. When it was ready, he and Ooljee resumed talking.

  Left to himself, Moody studied his surroundings. There were fewer of the homey, traditional touches that distinguished his partner’s condo, perhaps because the awesome setting in which this house stood would detract from the finest art.

  Ooljee brought out the fax for Laughter’s inspection. He frowned at it in disbelief. “Somebody killed somebody, over this?”

  “For a copy of it, we assume. Or maybe just for the chance to look at it. We do not know for a fact that a copy was made. We do know that the original was destroyed.” Laughter was studying it closely but without especial interest, like a lepidopterist examining a brilliantly colored but not unique specimen.

  “We were told in Ganado that this painting or one similar to it might have been painted here.” Ooljee was watching the artist closely.

  “Not by me.” Laughter shook his head. “I sure as hell have never seen anything like it.”

  Mentally Moody was already back in the truck. It was the same answer they’d received from a hundred different people back in town.

  Laughter, however, wasn’t through. “Let’s ask my dad. He won’t yell too loud if we break in on him.”

  “You said you learned from him. Does he still paint?” Moody asked.

  Laughter led them through the house. “Sometimes when he’s in the mood, or just when he gets bored. He leaves most of it to me. He prefers to handle the financial end of the business.”

  The den was a cool, sunken oval dominated by a huge fireplace. A six-foot square top-of-the-line zenat color monitor occupied a recess in the curving wall. The oversized couches and peeled-wood furniture were covered with the familiar earthtone upholstery. San Idelefonso black pottery shone side-by-side with intricate titanium sculptures.

  Clearly there was money in sandpainting as well as in art and tradition.

  The man who rose from the couch in front of the screen was as tall as Bill Laughter but much slimmer. He looked as if time had worn the bulk off him much as the wind had sculpted the wild sandstone monuments of the canyon.

  Moody glanced at the zenat, which the elder Laughter had thoughtfully muted at their entrance. Tucson was playing Dallas in the Columbia Dome, ahead 49 to 6. Good. He had nothing on the game and the boring spread would allow him to concentrate wholly on the discussion at hand.

  Once more Ooljee repeated the reason for the visit, waiting while both Laughters studied the fax and conferenced. The younger asked questions while the older man nodded and ventured comments in Navaho. His first words in English drove all thoughts of football from the detective’s mind.

  “Yes, I think I have seen this before. Or something very much like it.”

  “Where?” Ooljee asked quickly, as though the response might slip away if he didn’t inquire rapidly enough.

  “I think it might be one of my father’s pieces. Of course, I could be wrong.”

  In the excitement of the moment Moody spoke without thinking, a fault he was not usually prone to. “Where is he? Can we ask him about it?”

  “My father’s been dead for many years.” Courteously, the elder Laughter did not allow Moody time in which to apologize. “He taught me, just as I have taught Bill.”

  “Then that’s it.”

  “Not necessarily.” The elder Laughter smiled softly. “I had to prepare for the day when he would no longer be here to help me. So I put everything he could teach me on file. Come into the office and we’ll see what we can find. That is, if I’m not completely mistaken and there is actually something to be found.”

  The room located just off the den was long and narrow, the zenat on the far wall a strictly utilitarian model from Zenith T&T’s industrial division. Red Laughter palmed a well-used tactile 3.4 Black Widow spinner from a desktop and aimed it at the mollybox squatting beneath the window.

  Images washed across the zenat, the outside windows automatically dimming as the mollybox was activated. The elder Laughter’s fingers played with the Widow.
A succession of sandpaintings appeared on the monitor. Some were badly positioned for recording purposes, others were frozen in primitive, uncorrectable out-of-focus.

  “A lot of these were taken when I was just a kid, with an old hand-held two-D camera, and transferred to my file much later. When I was learning and helping my father we couldn’t afford fancy stuff like mollystorage, and I didn’t know anything about holomaging. This was the best I could do.”

  “You deserve credit for thinking so far ahead,” Ooljee told him.

  “1 can’t take credit. It was my grandmother’s idea. Preserving these designs and techniques didn’t strike me as important until 1 was a lot older. Only then did I realize the debt I owed to her. She was very proud of my father’s work and didn’t want it to be lost. I can still remember the two of them arguing about it. My father didn’t want to spend the money for film and developing. He said I should learn everything by rote, the way he had learned from my grandfather. He wanted me to be a hatathli, like him.” Red Laughter’s gaze shifted to Moody, who stood listening respectfully.

  “My father was a real hatathli; one of the very best. He believed the paintings should only be used to make medicine. That was how he supported himself; by doing traditional medicine. Not by making paintings to sell in the stores.” Laughter froze the screen on a particularly complex piece of work.

  “Look at this; at the detail, the fine edges and the straight lines. All done from memory, right on the ground on the floor of an old hogan. Depending on the Way, something like this could take many days to complete. When it was finished and the ceremony completed, Father and his assistants would destroy the entire work, end to beginning. For another client he would have to start all over again with the same painting, or a completely different one. From scratch. A terrible waste, but that is the way it was done. Done still, by the few men with the skill or gall to call themselves true hatathlis.” He resumed searching.