Authors: William Hjortsberg
Buick waited until the six were within a hundred paces, but still safely out of musket-range, before he stepped into view. The riders came to a halt at the unexpected sight of an unarmed opponent. One of them pointed to the shining silver box in his hands and laughed when the boy called out his warrior’s greeting:
“Ya Buick; m’papa Jeep, fum Cin’natti. Plus-plus breed mi altime conga so!”
“Waya, chico!”
the one who pointed shouted back derisively. It was an insult not to declare your name and lineage.
Buick made a few final adjustments. He learned the fearsome capabilities of the light-that-never-dies the first morning after leaving the palace of the Lord Citizen. The sounds of six wheel locks being wound and the impatient hoof-clatter of the horses carried up the long hillside.
“Okay, chico,”
the men laughed, starting to advance.
Buick focused his instrument and pushed a button. A beam, bright and lightning-quick, oscillated through the still noontime and incinerated the first rider in an instant. Thorn bushes and cactus ignited. A wall of fire swept across the hillside. The horses reared back, plunging and kicking. One lost its footing and went over on top of the rider, a full-bearded ruffian who was impaled on the broken shaft of the lance slung across his shoulder. The others stampeded back down the hill, manes and tails aflame, the men slapping at their burning clothes as they fought for balance.
“Buick di Cin’natti,”
the boy screamed after them.
“Farchiff! Chi’uillas car un’men ah ya fa?chi??.”
In the air-conditioned studio, Par Sondak watched the horsemen retreating like run-away comets. The hot sun made him squint as he climbed off the boulder. In almost every way, he was Buick of Cincinatti: the boy’s perceptions were his reality; he felt the exhilarated heartbeat calming; the exultant, victorious cries came from his own throat. And yet, at the same time, he knew that the magic instrument in his hand was an ordinary solar-torch, and while the boy walked down the scorched and smoking hillside and collected the name-brands from the charred remains of his enemies, Par Sondak lay comfortably on his left side, sucking his thumb.
Next morning, in the first silver light of the false dawn, Buick rode to the top of the ridge and surveyed the coming miles from behind a pile of rimrock. On the plain below, colorful circular tents stretched by the hundreds into a haze of ground fog and wood smoke. He counted the banners of a dozen different clans. Never before had he seen so many horses. Buick decided to wait for nightfall, but no skulking through the bushes like a beaten dog. He would ride straight into the heart of the encampment with the light-that-never-dies bright as the newly risen sun in his arms. He envisioned the entire awestruck tribe kneeling before him; even the elders would touch their foreheads to the ground in homage. No other warrior was protected by magic as potent as his.
The hillside was striated with late afternoon shadows as Buick watched a solitary rider following his track through the shrub. The man appeared to be unarmed but Buick was taking no chances and the light-that-never-dies was ready in his hand when he stepped from out of his hiding-place. Before he could utter a word, the stranger made a gesture of peace and greeted him by name:
“Salud, Buick. Mi capo, el Kodak, say’m soopeihowdi yo. Ya Esso de Cleeflan. “
A Clevelander! Buick calmed an urge to burn him from the saddle, but the instinctive hatred showed clearly on his face.
“Mira.”
The man called Esso reached beneath the folds of his cloak. Buick’s finger poised over the button on the side of the silver box but the stranger was holding only an innocuous brown-leather case.
“Fum mi capo, el Kodak,”
he said, handing it down to the boy.
“Gib’mvos yo, farchiff. Summa nostra plusplus volcan. Kodak altime
amich.ee
w’Buick.”
Buick ran his hand over the smooth texture of the snap-fastened case. It wasn’t made of leather. It was much better than that. It was plastic; stitched by machine. He opened the cover and slid the perfectly preserved mechanism into view. (Par Sondak recognized the instrument as an ancient pair of binoculars.)
“Speks,”
the boy whispered reverently. Several in his clan owned burning-glasses, and once an Elder explained how in olden days men wore these things in their eyes and could see for miles. Buick looked the wrong way through the lenses and very nearly dropped the priceless object in astonishment.
“Ma’nifico,”
he managed to stammer at last.
While the Clevelander unsaddled his horse, Buick went to bring the waterbag. It was his duty to extend hospitality to this stranger, but he vowed not to make the mistake of falling asleep. He would remain on his guard until morning. He wasn’t fooled by the fancy gift. The bigger the trap, the better the bait.
Together, they travelled through the night, Buick following Esso’s lead from a safe and watchful distance. There was no moon, and the starlit sky arched over the dark landscape like the frozen surface of an inverted lake. They avoided the encampment beyond the ridge. These were renegades, Esso explained; Kodak’s enemies. Spies in their camp brought the story of Buick and his magic powers.
Sunrise revealed a sloping valley, rimmed by jagged limestone cliffs. Down the center wandered the broad avenue of a dry river-bed, cobbled with bleached water-strewn boulders. The trail led up along the bank and soon they reached a series of small pools, the water cupped and still under the fierce cloudless sky. While the horses drank, and before filling the waterbags, they shared a bit of hard bread and a few strands of sun-dried goat meat.
Further along, the random pools were fed by a feeble flow that seeped and trickled among the stones. Patches of determined grass grew in the streambed and the banks were shaded by willows and cottonwoods. Around noontime, they came to the first of the irrigation dams. Above the dam, the river was full and deep. Buick was amazed at the interconnected canals and ditches dividing the patchwork of green ploughed fields that patterned the valley almost to the distant hills. Except for the gardens of the Lord Citizen, the boy had seen nothing in his short life to equal this extensive cultivation.
The path they followed widened into a regular highway, furrowed with cart-tracks and scored by the hoof-prints of innumerable horses. Side-roads paralleled the irrigation canals into the fields and at regular intervals tall stone watchtowers stood guard over the workers who paused and waved to the passing riders. Once, they had to wait near the side of the road while a troop of thirty or more armed horsemen went by at a trot. These men wore no numbers on their shirts; instead, the hinged plates of their leather and brass armor were partly concealed by flapping white tabards, all identically marked with the sign of the cross.
It was late afternoon when they passed through the main gate into the village. The headless bodies of three Nomads hung by their heels from the crossbeam. The heads, along with a dozen others, bloated sun-blackened crow-bait, stood impaled on sharpened stakes that bristled like spines on a lizard’s back along the sinuous mud wall surrounding the village.
To Buick, who had spent most of his life in tents, the low angular flat-roofed buildings seemed dark and uninviting. Like the wall, they were built of dried mud and stones. In every doorway, small naked children stood, watching them pass. Occasionally, one of the bolder ones risked a somber smile.
In the center of the village rose the steep stone ramparts of the Grand Dragon’s fortress, where numbers of squat ugly houses pressed together against the great wall like piglets squirming among the protective teats of a sleeping sow. The arched entranceway, built high above the ground, could be reached only by a narrow wooden chute, designed to be winched safely up and into place in time of siege. As they rode single-file up this gangplank, Buick observed the snub muzzles of several bronze cannon protruding from between the saw-toothed crenelations above. And from the highest tower streamed the long, white, fork-tailed banner of the Orthodoxy, the blood-red cross furling and undulant in the wind.
In the open courtyard, grooms hurried to stable their horses. Esso departed with a formal bow, leaving Buick in the hands of three fawning servants, who led the way inside, carrying his saddlebags and musket. They brought him through vaulted corridors and winding stairs to a suite of well-lit, high-ceilinged rooms. The arched windows commanded a view of the entire valley. The floors were tiled and covered with bold carpets, woven in the traditional pattern of red-and-white stripes and five-pointed stars. Sacred relics were set in niches along the walls. (Far away, the Dreamer identified the radiator grill and steering-wheel of an automobile, a coin-operated telephone, and the pearly-pink ovals of four plastic toilet-seats.) In the center of the room stood a large, battered, red-metal box with the word
oca-Col
embossed on the dented facade. (This remained a mystery even to the somnolent Sondak.)
In one room, a sunken bath steamed; in another, a festive meal waited on a low table; a third, with its hanging canopies and cushion-covered mats, held the promise of much-needed sleep. Buick was ushered through each of these chambers by the obsequious trio and finally, bathed, massaged and fed, he was left alone with a slim dark-eyed girl who slipped out of her simple gown and stepped under the tent-like canopy, where she introduced the wild Nomad boy (and the enthusiastic Sondak), to pleasures more refined than those he was accustomed to grapple for on the cold nighttime desert sand.
The white robe hung several sizes too large, but the length corrected by adjusting the sash and the ample sleeves nicely concealed the silver shape of the light-that-never-dies, dangling from Buick’s wrist by a leather thong. His companion, Xerox, wore the hoodless, blue-and-gold robe of a Knight in the Order. They walked side-by-side without talking, down passageways bright with morning sunshine. At the far end of a courtyard enclosed by overhanging galleries, a gate was opened by two sentries. Above their heads, the mysterious wrought iron characters, B&O R.R., bloomed among the filigree.
Inside a vast windowless chamber rows of torches hung aslant from the walls and the coffered ceiling was blackened with smoke. On tiers of benches along either side, the Holy Brotherhood sat in their robes like a ghostly choir, the shadows of the tall, peaked hoods shifting and dancing in the uneven light. At the far end of the room, carved stone cruciforme flanked the upraised throne of the Grand Dragon. Kodak’s robe was scarlet. In his right hand he held a golden statuette of the Sun-hurler poised on one foot, head thrust forward, the precious life-giving orb lifted behind his back by an outstretched arm. (The Dreamer remembered the crash of ninepins, the laughing bowlers in ancient beer commercials.)
After the ritual formality and uniform chanting of the presentation ceremony, the Exalted One raised the masking flap of his hood and revealed a surprisingly warm and friendly face. His eyes, sinister and snake-like when isolated behind the slitted openings in the anonymous cloth, seemed benign and understanding. The Grand Dragon beckoned for Buick to come forward, and the boy knelt on the step before the shaft-mounted throne.
While the Holy Brotherhood looked on in silence, the Grand Dragon whispered confidentially to Buick, embroidering his narrative of renegade harassment with an amount of skillful flattery and pausing occasionally for an avuncular smile to look straight into Buick’s praise-brightened eyes. In the end, the boy proclaimed his allegiance to Kodak, his ardent voice audible throughout the hall.
“Amen,”
the Brotherhood chanted.
The Grand Dragon clapped his hands and called for the sacred vessels; a gong took up the summons; robed attendants passed through the room, filling the shallow metal bowls with wine; a hundred voices joined in common pledge. The Grand Dragon drank first. Buick reverently raised the holy dish to his lips.
(Hubcaps,
mused the Dreamer as he tasted the sour sacramental wine.)”
“Par … ? Are you there, Par?” Omar Tarquille, the Syndicate Executive, crossed the patio of the Dreamer’s house, a scowl of consternation scrawled across his features like the unskilled signature of an apprentice forger.
“No sign of him down below,” puffed the Security Agent, out-of-breath from the unaccustomed effort of walking in the open air. “Any luck here?”
“No, not a trace.” Tarquille stared at the flagstone terrace where their rocketsled sat, tilted like an oversized silver top beside the ornamental pond. “If he’s not inside, we’ll have to search the woods.”
The Security Agent grunted with displeasure. “What a place to live; insects and snakes and what-all.” The prospect of tramping through the woods was enough to dampen any man’s enthusiasm. “Let’s have a look in the house.”
The two men approached the sealed entrance. The Security Agent tapped out a code-number on his portocall and waited a few seconds while the machines back at headquarters ran through the classified files and located the combination to the Dreamer’s house. He dialed the secret numbers on the doorplate and the wide, circular entrance slid silently open, expanding from the center like an iris. Only members of the Security Agency were authorized to enter a citizen’s home without consent, and Tarquille waited outside while the Agent stepped into the hall and asked the computer where he could find Mr. Sondak.
“Mr. Sondak is not to be disturbed,” the laconic voice answered.
“Is he alive?”
“His health is excellent.”
“And where is he now?”
“In the studio … dreaming.”
“Well, Mr. Tarquille,” the Agent said, “looks like everything is in order here.”
“Nonsense. No one stays hooked-up for a month, not even a Dreamer. I have a Committee order stating that I am to
see
Mr. Sondak, and I mean to see him and not be put off by some computer.”
The arrangements were simple. The Agent took the computer’s serial number and checked it with his portocall, receiving in return the code-coordinates for countermanding programmed instructions. A new program was written and the computer directed the two men down the metal corridor to the studio. They found Sondak sitting naked on the edge of the ovoid chamber, rubbing his eyes and scratching under his arm. “Why, Omar,” he yawned, “what are you doing here?”