Gabriel's Stand (23 page)

In Idaho, Snowfeather awakened briefly, in total blackness. As her eyes accommodated, the night sky presented a miracle bowl shot through with stars.
Where am I?
she wondered, then fell fast asleep. She had a comforting dream of a little girl who rode on an angel's back on a long, long walk through the forest. She was both the little girl and the angel.

At early dawn, Snowfeather could smell the smoke from her father's fire. She sat up slowly; her muscles stiff, her body cold, and she smiled inwardly at the blanket that had been placed over her. Startled, Snowfeather saw her father standing at the bottom of her perch, looking up at her with a twinkle in his eye. “Are you going to eat breakfast while it's hot or perch on that rock until it gets cold?”

As she came down, Gabriel reached out for his daughter's hand. “I'm sorry if I seemed cross last night,” he said. “I slept on it. Of course you will take the path best for you. And I will cheer for you, okay? Alice will, too…when she gets used to the idea.”

Snowfeather groaned. “I relived my Spirit Journey all night. Did our noble ancestors sleep on rocks?”

“Only the stupid ones,” he said.

Over a breakfast of fried eggs and hot coffee, Snowfeather looked up. “Dad, I have been thinking about the great warrior tradition of our people. We've volunteered to serve our country in disproportionate numbers in every war from the Civil War forward. Thousands and thousands of braves put aside family life until their service was over. How could I do otherwise?”

“So you are not willing to give up family life?”

“Of course not. I am young, I'm not giving it up at all. But we need a world good enough to bring children into. I'm still in my early twenties, Dad. Fred Loud Owl might explain it better than I can. I will have the option of being ordained into a special Deaconate.”

“Even Roman Catholic Deacons can marry.”

“Of course. I told Fred I wouldn't do this any longer than it takes to get us out of this nightmare.”

“Sounds like The Human Conspiracy.”

Snowfeather brightened. “Wow. You've heard of it?”

“Fred Loud Owl used the term. I thought it had to do with something John Owen was getting into.”

“Loud Owl didn't mention Dr. Owen.”

“Fred is pretty closed-mouthed. So this isn't to be forever, then?”

“Think of joining the Navaho Code Talkers in World War II. ” Snowfeather's eyes were shining. “I'm excited about this. I will come in on my terms. If I make this work, I will be able to keep alive our own spiritual traditions. And I will get back at the Sisters.”

“For that gig, at your age I'd sign up myself,” Gabriel said. “And Alice would approve. By the way, where did Fred get those new ID papers for you?”

“I guess this Human Conspiracy outfit has its own resources.”

Gabriel looked at his daughter intensely. “Did you remember Fred? You were so young.”

“I did. But it was a strange thing, a lucky accident. When I was on the ferry after I'd seen Senator McKernon's body, I met this law professor from New Mexico named Roberto Kahn.”

“Gabriel smiled. “I know about that. I worked with him on the Habitat. He was a young man right out of law school.”

“The same one, only older and with a school-age son. He sheltered me for a while until Loud Owl took me in. How long have you and Mom known Loud Owl?”

“Oh, we've known him since I was called Little Bear. He's mostly Navajo. Fred Loud Owl was a teenager when I was a toddler. He was very close to my father and to your mother's side of the family. We all knew him.” Gabriel paused, considering something. “Actually, he baptized you when you were a few months old.”

“He's a priest? Boy, he's the strangest one I've ever run into. No wonder you flipped when I talked about taking up the cloth.”

“Fred never was an ordinary Catholic priest… Or was he even? This church business is outside my experience, Princess. Come to think of it, Fred always acted as if he belonged to a kind of renegade, offshoot branch of the church.” Gabriel paused, thinking. “So…he'll be at this secret seminary/trouble-maker training camp?” Snowfeather nodded, smiling. “Not sure how he ever reconciled everything he said he believed. You knew he was the shaman who guided me through my sweat lodge ritual, right?”

“Of course. He is quite striking, like the old Indian pictures. I got a good look at him in the distance when you came back, and I sort of recognized him from family gatherings, I think.”

“So how long will this process take?” Gabriel asked. “And are you in the Indian branch of a church or what? I don't know what to call it.”

“I don't know, either. You don't even have to be Christian to attend, but some of the Christian graduates are in a special order that the Vatican secretly recognizes.”

“Why haven't I heard about this?” Gabriel asked. “Stupid question. This is a secret deal, right?”

Snowfeather nodded. “More so now since they've become all-out revolutionaries. Loud Owl actually lectures there sometimes. He's some kind of test case, I think.”

“And you?”

“I don't do tests.”

“How long is the program?”

“It depends on when you are field-ready, I think. I can go faster, I was told, like officer training during a war.”

“How much does it cost?”

“That part is taken care of, Dad.”

“Not such a bad deal, then. A safe time-out would be good for you right now, I think. Where is it?”

“Deep in upstate New York. I'll have to send you the location.”

“I think this just might be okay.” Gabriel was almost talking to himself. “You will be out of sight. Things will cool down.”

“I'll be using an assumed name until further notice.”

“Good.”

“When I come out, I'm going to be a rabble rouser, Dad. An avenging angel.”

Gabriel Standing Bear broke into laughter. Through tears he said, “
Going
to be a rabble rouser?” Snowfeather laughed, too. “I can hear Alice laughing with us,” he said.

“It's okay then?”

“She'll still flip over three times and hit the ceiling. Then she'll hug you and then tell you Godspeed.”

Snowfeather leaned over and hugged her father. “So what's your other news?” she finally said.

“Oh, that. My story. Guess who came to see me?”

“Who?”

“The three kings. Our new Majority Leader, the new Whip, and Knight Fowler.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“Oh yeah. They were concerned about the Gaia movement and my vote against the Treaty. That Fowler is such a snake. ‘Gabriel,' he said, ‘I've always admired you. So it saddens me to tell you that we need someone else, someone who better reflects our philosophy in the new climate.'”

“‘It was a crappy treaty,' I said, ‘and I voted my conscience,' but these guys wouldn't hear of it. Hell, Princess, I had already opened up both barrels on the floor. I read the secret Treaty protocols into the record, the part that gives the Gaia Directorate all the real power. I mailed the draft Smith report on the Gaia Network all over the country. All of it. Before the Committee could kill it.”

“I am so proud of you.”

“Well they sprung the Senate Standing Rules. There can be expulsion of a member who discloses the secret of confidential business or proceedings of the Senate.”

“To kick you out over honest dissent?”

“Yup. I snarled and bit. But…” Gabriel paused, his eyes trained on the horizon. “…I'm not running away, but while you were away, I resigned from the Senate. By now it's old news. Alice talked me into it. So, you see, it's transition time for both of us.” He squeezed his daughter's hand.

“What will you do, Dad?”

“I have already started my campaign. I am a rabble rouser looking to build audience,” he said, sipping his coffee. Gabriel stood and stomped his boots. “I'm already a webcast guerrilla. Lots of webcasts already.”

“You're a what?”

“Once or twice a week. I am really on the way to a big audience. I have the equipment, the contacts. Now my voice can be heard in or out of the Senate.”

“Will they let you do that?”

“No. Not for much longer. This is already getting dangerous.”

“What about Mom?”

A long silence followed. Gabriel sat back down and stirred the fire. “When we met at Inter-tribal Center, your mom was already working under a false name—not everyone even knew who she was. We both had agreed that, having gone to ground, Alice had to stay there. We still think the best place to be safe is with her people in the panhandle where she is. Unless something changes, she needs to continue working at the Inter-tribal Center near Sandpoint under a cover identity. These Gaia types can't seem to tell one Indian from another.”

Snowfeather looked concerned. “Are you and Mom okay?”

“Oh yeah,” Gabriel said. “We are solid. But this will be like war time for a while. I'll get to see her often enough, I guess. But I can't place her in danger either. That is why I knew she would be so upset about you leaving.”

“Oh. She wants me to be with her.”

“She'll come around, Princess. She always does, where you're concerned.”

“But I'd better see her right away.”

“I think so, too.” Gabriel stirred the fire some more.

“It's not going to get any easier, will it, Dad?”

“Nope. Not that I can see.”

Dr. John Owen opened his eyes just as Colonel Bill Dornan entered the doorway. John pressed a button beside his bed with his left hand, and the bed rose to a seating position, swiveling away from the open window. Behind him, a single sparrow circled in the updraft between buildings. They were in Vector Pharmaceutical's industrial accident clinic, sixty miles from Adelaide.

“Don't just stand there,” John said, grinning. The glow of renewed vitality had begun to take hold. His injured arm was covered by a translucent cylinder, full of pink fluid and attached by tubes and wires to a console next to his bed. A male nurse stood next to Dornan in the doorway.

“Two coffees,” Dr. Owen said. “No more pain pills. Just coffee.”

“Sir?”

“Please.”

The nurse grinned. “Please? You must really be sick.”

“Do it, Ralph. Now!”

“That's better,” the nurse said, turning to Dornan. “I hate it when he's polite.”

“Come in and sit, damn it,” John said, pointing to a large leather chair next to the bed. “Growing a new one,” he added.

Dornan sat down. “How is that infection?”

“They were worried about me, but I finally beat it,” John said. “I admit it was touch and go for a while.”

“We spent too much time hiding out,” Dornan said.

“We had no choice, Bill. You saved my life.”

At that moment, Ralph returned with two steaming coffees, which he put on a table next to Dornan.

“Now out!” John snarled.

“Thank God,” Ralph said, “the man's back!” He closed the door when he left the room.

“I've given them all a hard time. But they all love me,” Dr. Owen said. “You don't suppose it's my money?”

“Do you still have any?”

John chuckled. “Hell, Bill, I don't even dare pay taxes these days. But I did manage to send my daughter a wedding present.” Dr. Owen's face was suddenly sad. “I wish to God I could have been there…”

“Is that going to work?”

“Ken is a good man. Elisabeth is a good judge of people. Little Josh needs a dad. She wouldn't marry a man she didn't love.”

“I meant
that
.” Dornan was pointing to the apparatus that surrounded John's stump.

“Ask me in three more months.”

“I will.” Dornan looked out the window, then back at Dr. Owen. “So you are closing down the Canadian operations too?”

“It was only a matter of time. The Canadian government can't hold out forever against the Commission, certainly not the G-A-N. And my days here in Australia are numbered, too. Dangerous to be in the open these days.” Dornan frowned and John shrugged. “So things change,” John said, cheerfully.

“How
is
Dr. Elisabeth and your grandson?”

“Thanks to whoever is running thus crazy universe, my daughter and little Josh, are doing very well. Ken Wang will make a good husband and a fine father.”

“He loves her?”

“Who wouldn't?”

“They sure didn't waste any time.”

“No one has time to spare, these days. We can't be sure how many days any of us has.” Dornan nodded solemnly. “Anyway, they are using new identities and living at a former rehab ranch in Montana. It was very slick, the whole cloak and dagger thing.” John shook his head with a satisfied smile, then sipped his coffee.

“These Gaia people are going to get more, not less, dangerous.”

“Agreed.”

“I was taught that whenever terrorist-backed movements win power, two outcomes follow.”

“Bad and worse?”

Dornan smiled. “You got that exactly right, Boss. In the best cases, terrorists become statesmen.”

“And in the worst cases,” John said, “they become the new security apparatus.”

“I guess we took the same course. So, who are they now?” Dornan asked.

“They are the invisible third rail of government.”

“The one that you don't touch. Does Knight Fowler know what he's playing with?”

John shook his head. “Did Faust? Fowler is an even bigger fool. He probably thinks he's safe because they still need his money. That will change. As soon as this Gaia crowd doesn't need Fowler, his body will turn up in a recycling center.”

Dornan looked at Dr. Owen intently. “You seem too damn cheerful, John. What do you have up your sleeve?”

“Sorry, I have no sleeve. But we do have my contingency plans.”

Dornan nodded. “How is that project coming along?”

“You warned me the logistics would be a bitch.”

“I did.”

“You were right. But necessity makes you solve the unsolvable.” John smiled.

“I know that look. What's happening?”

“Bill, I've found the perfect place.”

“Where?”

“The Commission can't control every spot on the planet. I have firmed up my old contacts out on the fringes of the Pac-Rim. Way out.”

“Not New Kona?”

“Yes, New Kona. I've actually pulled it off, Bill. That's where our operation is going.”

“Everything?”

“Every damn thing.”

“You'll be selling life-saving drugs from a tiny island in the Pacific?”

“Yup. I'm going to be an illegal drug dealer.” Owen grinned. “My new plants can be producing production runs in as little as a hundred days. I have all the agreements in place. I have the options. I have access to the infrastructure. I have the technical staff. I even have the money.”

“What's missing?”

“You. I need a permanent security operation. Paramilitary level.”

“Out of the frying pan…”