Sorcerers!, page 19
He swung his ax again, nodded. Thunk. "Sort of . . . one way or another." Thunk. "He had a, sort of a, pike with him." Thunk. "Trying to get his point—ha-ha—across. Did I dream the snake, too? Must have . . . I guess. . . ." Thunk.
"No. I do not like your late Mr. Leopold Pike."
Sneed declared a break. Took sips of water, slowly, carefully. Wiped his face. Said, "You might have liked Old Pike, though. A hard man in his way. Not without a sense of humor, though. And . . . after all . . . he hasn't hurt our friend John Limekiller . . . has he? Old chap Pike was simply trying to do his best for his dead son's child. May seem an odd way, to us. May be. Fact o'the matter: Is. Why didn't he do it another way? Who's to say. Didn't have too much trust in the law and the law's delays. I'll sum it up. Pike liked to do things in his own way. A lot of them were Indian ways. Old Indian ways. Used to burn copal gum when he went deer hunting. Always got his deer. And as for this little business, well . . . the old Indians had no probate courts. What's the consequence? How does one guarantee that one's bequest reaches one's intended heir?
"Why . . . one dreams it to him! Or, for that matter, her. In this case, however, the her is a small child. So—"
One of the woodsmen put down his tin cup, and, thinking Sneed had done, said to Limekiller, "Mon, you doesn't holds de ox de same way we does. But you holds eet well. Where you learns dis?"
"Oh . . ." said Limekiller, vaguely, "I've helped cut down a very small part of Canada without benefit of chain saw. In my even younger days." Would he, too, he wondered, in his even older days, would he too ramble on about the trees he had felled?—the deeds he had done?
Probably.
Why not?
A wooden chest would have moldered away. An iron one would have rusted. Perhaps for these reasons the "collection of gold and silver coins, not being Coin of the Realm or Legal Tender," had been lodged in more Indian jars. Larger ones, this time. An examination of one of them showed that the contents were as described. Once again the machetes were put to use; branches, vines, ropes, were cut and trimmed. Litters, or slings, rough but serviceable, were made. Was some collective ethnic unconscious at work here? Had not the Incas, Aztecs, Mayas, ridden in palanquins?
Now for the first time the old woman raised her voice. "Ahl dis fah you, Bet-ty," she said, touching the ancient urns. "Bet-tah food. Fah you. Bet-tah house: Fah you, Bet-tah school. Fah you." Her gaze was triumphant. "Ahl dis fah you!"
One of the few lawyers who had not dropped out along the long, hard way, had a caveat. "Would the Law of Treasure Trove apply?" he wondered. "In which case, the Crown would own it. Although, to be sure, where there is no attempt at concealment the Crown would allow a finder's fee . . . Mr. Limekiller. . . ?"
And if anyone attempt to resist or set aside this my Intention, I do herewith and hereafter declare that he, she, or they shall not sleep well of nights. . . .
Limekiller said, "I'll pass."
And Captain Sneed cried, "Piffle! Tush! Was the Deed of Gift registered, or was it not? Was the Stamp Tax paid, or was it not?"
One of the policemen said, "If you have the Queen's head on your paper, you cahn't go wrong."
"Nol. con.," the lawyer said. And said no more.
That had been that. The rest were details. (One of the details was found in one of the large jars: another piece of plastic-wrapped paper, on which was written in a now-familiar hand. He who led you hither, he may now sleep well of nights. And in the resolution of these other details the three North Americans had no part. Nor had Marín and friends: back to Parrot Bend they went. Nor had Captain Sneed. "Holiday is over," he said. "If I don't get back to my farm, the wee-wee ants will carry away my fruit. Come and visit, all of you. Whenever you like. Anyone will tell you where it is," he said. And was gone, the brave old Digger bush-hat bobbing away down the lane: wearing an invisible plume.
And the major (and the minor) currents of life in St. Michael of the Mountains went on—as they had gone on for a century without them.
There was the inevitable letdown.
May said, with a yawn, "I need a nice, long rest. And I know just where I'm going to find it. After we get back to King Town. I'm going to take a room at that hotel near the National Library."
Felix asked, "Why?"
"Why? I'll be like a kid in a candy warehouse. Do you realize that on the second floor of the National Library is the largest collection of 19th century English novels which I have ever seen in any one place? EVerything EVer written by EVerybody. Mrs. Edgeworth, Mrs. Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, Mrs. Oliphant, Mrs. This and Mrs. That."
"Mrs. That. I remember her. Say, she wasn't bad at all—"
"No, she wasn't. Although, personally, I prefer Mrs. This."
Felix and Limekiller found that they were looking at each other. Speak now, he told himself. Aren't you tired of holding your own piece? "And what are you going to be doing, then?" he asked.
She considered. Said she wasn't sure.
There was a silence.
"Did I tell you about my boat?"
"No. You didn't." Her look at him was a steady one. She didn't seem impatient. She seemed to have all the time in the world. "Tell me about your boat," she said.
Armaja Das
by
Joe Haldeman
One of the most acclaimed writers of the seventies, Joe Haldeman was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1943. Haldeman's plans for a career in science—he took a B.S. degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Maryland—were cut short by the U.S. Army, which sent him to Vietnam in 1968 as a combat engineer. Seriously wounded in action, Haldeman returned home in 1969 and began to write. He sold his first story to Galaxy in 1969, and by 1976 had already garnered Nebula and Hugo awards for his famous novel The Forever War, one of the landmark books of the seventies. He took another Hugo Award in 1977 for his story "Tricentennial." His other books include a mainstream novel, War Year, the SF novels Mindbridge, Worlds, All My Sins Remembered, and (in collaboration with his brother, SF writer Jack C. Haldeman II) There Is No Darkness; a short-story collection, Infinite Dreams; and, as editor, the anthologies Study War No More, Cosmic Laughter, and Nebula Award Stories Seventeen. His most recent books were the novel Worlds Apart, the sequel to Worlds, and the collection Dealing In Futures. Upcoming are the third volume in the Worlds trilogy. Worlds Enough and Time, as well as several other novels "in various stages of incompletion."
Here he adroitly blends ancient gypsy magic and ultramodern computer technology, a mixture that produces some strange—and chilling—results.
The highrise, built in 1980, still had the smell and look of newness. And of money.
The doorman bowed a few degrees and kept a straight face, opening the door for a bent old lady. She had a card of Veterans' poppies clutched in one old claw. He didn't care much for the security guard, and she would give him interesting trouble.
The skin on her face hung in deep creases, scored with a network of tiny wrinkles; her chin and nose protruded and dropped. A cataract made one eye opaque; the other eye was yellow and red surrounding deep black, unblinking. She had left her teeth in various things. She shuffled. She wore an old black dress faded slightly gray by repeated washing. If she had any hair, it was concealed by a pale blue bandanna. She was so stooped that her neck was almost parallel to the ground.
"What can I do for you?" The security guard had a tired voice to match his tired shoulders and back. The job had seemed a little romantic the first couple of days, guarding all these rich people, sitting at an ultramodern console surrounded by video monitors, submachine gun at his knees. But the monitors were blank except for an hourly check, power shortage; and if he ever removed the gun from its cradle, he would have to fill out five forms and call the police station. And the doorman never turned anybody away.
"Buy a flower for boys less fortunate than ye," she said in a faint raspy baritone. From her age and accent, her own boys had fought in the Russian Revolution.
"I'm sorry. I'm not allowed to . . . respond to charity while on duty."
She stared at him for a long time, nodding microscopically. "Then send me to someone with more heart."
He was trying to frame a reply when the front door slammed open. "Car on fire!" the doorman shouted.
The security guard leaped out of his seat, grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprinted for the door. The old woman shuffled along behind him until both he and the doorman disappeared around the corner. Then she made for the elevator with surprising agility.
She got out on the 17th floor, after pushing the button that would send the elevator back down to the lobby. She checked the name plate on 1738; Mr. Zold. She was illiterate but could recognize names.
Not even bothering to try the lock, she walked on down the hall until she found a maid's closet. She closed the door behind her and hid behind a rack of starchy white uniforms, leaning against the wall with her bag between her feet. The slight smell of gasoline didn't bother her at all.
John Zold pressed the intercom button. "Martha?" She answered. "Before you close up shop I'd like a redundancy check on stack 408. Against tape 408." He switched the selector on his visual output screen so it would duplicate the output at Martha's station. He stuffed tobacco in a pipe and lit it, watching.
Green numbers filled the screen, a complicated matrix of ones and zeros. They faded for a second and were replaced with a field of pure zeros. The lines of zeros started to roll, like titles preceding a movie.
The 746th line came up all ones. John thumbed the intercom again. "Had to be something like that. You have time to fix it up?" She did. "Thanks, Martha. See you tomorrow."
He slid back the part of his desk top that concealed a keypunch and typed rapidly: "523 784 00926/ / Good night, machine. Please lock this station."
GOOD NIGHT, JOHN. DON'T FORGET YOUR LUNCH DATE WITH MR. BROWN WOOD TOMORROW. DENTIST APPOINTMENT WEDNESDAY 0945. GENERAL SYSTEMS CHECK WEDNESDAY 1300. DEL O DEL BAXT. LOCKED.
Del O del baxt means "God give you luck" in the ancient tongue of the Romani. John Zold, born a Gypsy but hardly a Gypsy by any standard other than the strong one of blood, turned off his console and unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. He took out a flat automatic pistol in a holster with a belt clip and slipped it under his jacket, inside the waistband of his trousers. He had only been wearing the gun for two weeks, and it still made him uncomfortable. But there had been those letters.
John was born in Chicago, some years after his parents had fled from Europe and Hitler. His father had been a fiercely proud man, and got involved in a bitter argument over the honor of his 12-year-old daughter; from which argument he had come home with knuckles raw and bleeding, and had given to his wife for disposal a large clasp knife crusty with dried blood.
John was small for his five years, and his chin barely cleared the kitchen table, where the whole family sat and discussed their uncertain future while Mrs. Zold bound up her husband's hands. John's shortness saved his life when the kitchen window exploded and a low ceiling of shotgun pellets fanned out and chopped into the heads and chests of the only people in the world whom he could love and trust. The police found him huddled between the bodies of his father and mother, and at first thought he was also dead; covered with blood, completely still, eyes wide open and not crying.
It took six months for the kindly orphanage people to get a single word out of him: ratválo, which he said over and over; which they were never able to translate. Bloody, bleeding.
But he had been raised mostly in English, with a few words of Romani and Hungarian thrown in for spice and accuracy. In another year their problem was not one of communicating with John; only of trying to shut him up.
No one adopted the stunted Gypsy boy, which suited John. He'd had a family, and look what happened.
In orphanage school he flunked penmanship and deportment, but did reasonably well in everything else. In arithmetic and, later, mathematics, he was nothing short of brilliant. When he left the orphanage at eighteen, he enrolled at the University of Illinois, supporting himself as a bookkeeper's assistant and part-time male model. He had come out of an ugly adolescence with a striking resemblance to the young Clark Gable.
Drafted out of college, he spent two years playing with computers at Fort Lewis; got out and went all the way to a Master's degree under the G. I. Bill. His thesis "Simulation of Continuous Physical Systems by Way of Universalization of the Trakhtenbrot Algorithms" was very well received, and the mathematics department gave him a research assistantship, to extend the thesis into a doctoral dissertation. But other people read the paper too, and after a few months Bellcom International hired him away from academia. He rose rapidly through the ranks. Not yet forty, he was now Senior Analyst at Bellcom's Research and Development Group. He had his own private office, with a picture window overlooking Central Park, and a plush six-figure condominium only twenty minutes away by commuter train.
As was his custom, John bought a tall can of beer on his way to the train, and opened it as soon as he sat down. It kept him from fidgeting during the fifteen or twenty-minute wait while the train filled up.
He pulled a thick technical report out of his briefcase and stared at the summary on the cover sheet, not really seeing it but hoping that looking occupied would spare him the company of some anonymous fellow traveller.
The train was an express, and whisked them out to Dobb's Ferry in twelve minutes. John didn't look up from his report until they were well out of New York City; the heavy mesh tunnel that protected the track from vandals induced spurious colors in your retina as it blurred by. Some people liked it, tripped on it, but to John the effect was at best annoying, at worst nauseating, depending on how tired he was. Tonight he was dead tired.
He got off the train two stops up from Dobb's Ferry. The highrise limousine was waiting for him and two other residents. It was a fine spring evening and John would normally have walked the half-mile, tired or not. But those unsigned letters.
John Zold, you stop this preachment or you die soon. Armaja das, John Zold.
All three letters said that: Armaja das, we put a curse on you. For preaching.
He was less afraid of curses than of bullets. He undid the bottom button of his jacket as he stepped off the train, ready to quickdraw, roll for cover behind that trash can, just like in the movies; but there was no one suspicious-looking around. Just an assortment of suburban wives and the old cop who was on permanent station duty.
Assassination in broad daylight wasn't Romani style. Styles change, though. He got in the car and watched the side roads all the way home.
There was another one of the shabby envelopes in his mailbox. He wouldn't open it until he got upstairs. He stepped in the elevator with the others, and punched 17.
They were angry because John Zold was stealing their children.
Last March John's tax accountant had suggested that he could contribute $4,000 to any legitimate charity, and actually make a few hundred bucks in the process, by dropping into a lower tax bracket. Not one to do things the easy or obvious way, John made various inquiries and, after a certain amount of bureaucratic tedium, founded the Young Gypsy Assimilation Council—with matching funds from federal, state and city governments, and a continuing Ford Foundation scholarship grant.
The YGAC was actually just a one-room office in a West Village brownstone, manned by volunteer help. It was filled with various pamphlets and broadsides, mostly written by John, explaining how young Gypsies could legitimately take advantage of American society. By becoming part of it, which was the part that old-line Gypsies didn't care for. Jobs, scholarships, work-study programs, these things are for the gadjos. Poison to a Gypsy's spirit.
In November a volunteer had opened the office in the morning to find a crude fire bomb, using a candle as a delayed-action fuse for five gallons of gasoline. The candle was guttering a fraction of an inch away from the line of powder that would have ignited the gas. In January it had been buckets of chicken entrails, poured into filing cabinets and filing over the walls. So John found a tough young man who would sleep on the cot in the office at night; sleep like a cat with a shotgun beside him. There was no more trouble of that sort Only old men and women who would file in silently staring, to take handfuls of pamphlets which they would drop in the hall and scuff into uselessness, or defile in a more basic way. But paper was cheap.
John threw the bolt on his door and hung his coat in the closet. He put the gun in a drawer in his writing desk and sat down to open the mail.
The shortest one yet: "Tonight, John Zold. Armaja das." Lots of luck, he thought. Won't even be home tonight; heavy date. Stay at her place, Gramercy Park. Lay a curse on me there? At the show or Sardi's?
lie opened two more letters, bills, and there was a knock at the door.
Not announced from downstairs. Maybe a neighbor. Guy next door was always borrowing something. Still. Feeling a little foolish, he put the gun back in his waistband. Put his coat back on in case it was just a neighbor.
The peephole didn't show anything, bad. He drew the pistol and held it just out of sight, by the doorjamb, threw the bolt and eased open the door. He bumped into the Gypsy woman, too short to have been visible through the peephole. She backed away and said "John Zold."
He stared at her. "What do you want, pūridaia?" He could only remember a hundred or so words of Romani, but "grandmother" was one of them. What was the word for witch?
"I have a gift for you." From her bag she took a dark green booklet, bent and with frayed edges, and gave it to him. It was a much-used Canadian passport, belonging to a William Belini. But the picture inside the front cover was one of John Zold.
Inside, there was an airline ticket in a Qantas envelope. John didn't open it. He snapped the passport shut and handed it back. The old lady wouldn't accept it.
