Jerry bowed low before the chief, spreading his arms apart, palms down.
“I come from New York, from our chief,” he mumbled. In spite of himself, he was more than a little frightened. He wished he knew their names so that he could relate them to specific events. Although he knew what their names would be like—approximately. The Sioux, the Seminole, all the Indian tribes renascent in power and numbers, all bore names garlanded with anachronism. That queer mixture of several levels of the past, overlaid always with the cocky, expanding present. Like the rifle and the spears, one for the reality of fighting, the other for the symbol that was more important than reality. Like the use of wigwams on campaign, when, according to the rumors that drifted smokily across country, their slave artisans could now build the meanest Indian noble a damp-free, draftproof dwelling such as the President of the United States, lying on his special straw pallet, did not dream about. Like paint-splattered faces peering through newly reinvented, crude microscopes. What had microscopes been like? Jerry tried to remember the Engineering Survey Course he’d taken in his freshman year—and drew a blank. All the same, the Indians were so queer, and so awesome. Sometimes you thought that destiny had meant them to be conquerors, with a conqueror’s careless inconsistency. Sometimes…
He noticed that they were waiting for him to continue. “From our chief,” he repeated hurriedly. “I come with a message of importance and many gifts.”
“Eat with us,” the old man said. “Then you will give us your gifts and your message.”
Gratefully, Jerry squatted on the ground a short distance from them. He was hungry, and among the fruit in the bowls he had seen something that must be an orange. He had heard so many arguments about what oranges tasted like!
After a while, the old man said, “I am Chief Three Hydrogen Bombs. This”—pointing to the young man—“is my son, Makes Much Radiation. And this”—pointing to the middle-aged Negro—“is a sort of compatriot of yours.”
At Jerry’s questioning look, and the chief’s raised finger of permission, the Negro explained. “Sylvester Thomas, Ambassador to the Sioux from the Confederate States of America.”
“The Confederacy? She’s still alive? We heard ten years ago—”
“The Confederacy is very much alive, sir. The Western Confederacy, that is, with its capital at Jackson, Mississippi. The Eastern Confederacy, the one centered at Richmond, Virginia, did go down under the Seminole. We have been more fortunate. The Arapaho, the Cheyenne, and”—with a nod to the chief—“especially the Sioux, if I may say so, sir, have been very kind to us. They allow us to live in peace, so long as we till the soil quietly and pay our tithes.”
“Then would you know, Mr. Thomas—” Jerry began eagerly. “That is…the Lone Star Republic—Texas—Is it possible that Texas, too…?”
Mr. Thomas looked at the door of the wigwam unhappily. “Alas, my good sir, the Republic of the Lone Star Flag fell before the Kiowa and the Comanche long years ago when I was still a small boy. I don’t remember the exact date, but I do know it was before even the last of California was annexed by the Apache and the Navajo, and well before the nation of the Mormons under the august leadership of—”
Makes Much Radiation shifted his shoulders back and forth and flexed his arm muscles. “All this talk,” he growled. “Paleface talk. Makes me tired.”
“Mr. Thomas is not a paleface,” his father told him sharply. “Show respect! He’s our guest and an accredited ambassador—you’re not to use a word like paleface in his presence!”
One of the other, older warriors near the youth spoke up. “In ancient days, in the days of the heroes, a boy of Makes Much Radiation’s age would not dare raise his voice in council before his father. Certainly not to say the things he just has. I cite as reference, for those interested, Robert Lowie’s definitive volume, The Crow Indians, and Lessor’s fine piece of anthropological insight, Three Types of Siouan Kinship. Now, whereas we have not yet been able to reconstruct a Siouan kinship pattern on the classic model described by Lesser, we have developed a working arrangement that—”
“The trouble with you, Bright Book Jacket,” the warrior on his left broke in, “is that you’re too much of a classicist. You’re always trying to live in the Golden Age instead of the present, and a Golden Age that really has little to do with the Sioux. Oh, I’ll admit that we’re as much Dakotan as the Crow, from the linguist’s point of view at any rate, and that, superficially, what applies to the Crow should apply to us. But what happens when we quote Lowie in so many words and try to bring his precepts into daily life?”
“Enough,” the chief announced. “Enough, Hangs A Tale. And you, too, Bright Book Jacket—enough, enough! These are private tribal matters. Though they do serve to remind us that the paleface was once great before he became sick and corrupt and frightened. These men whose holy books teach us the lost art of being real Sioux, men like Lesser, men like Robert H. Lowie, were not these men palefaces? And in memory of them should we not show tolerance?”
“A-ah!” said Makes Much Radiation impatiently. “As far as I’m concerned, the only good paleface is a dead paleface. And that’s that.” He thought a bit. “Except their women. Paleface women are fun when you’re a long way from home and feel like raising a little hell.”
Chief Three Hydrogen Bombs glared his son into silence. Then he turned to Jerry Franklin. “Your message and your gifts. First your message.”
“No, Chief,” Bright Book Jacket told him respectfully but definitely. “First the gifts. Then the message. That’s the way it was done.”
“I’ll have to get them. Be right back.” Jerry walked out of the tent backwards and ran to where Sam Rutherford had tethered the horses. “The presents,” he said urgently. “The presents for the chief.”
The two of them tore at the pack straps. With his arms loaded, Jerry returned through the warriors who had assembled to watch their activity with quiet arrogance. He entered the tent, set the gifts on the ground and bowed low again.
“Bright beads for the chief,” he said, handing over two star sapphires and a large white diamond, the best that the engineers had evacuated from the ruins of New York in the past ten years.
“Cloth for the chief,” he said, handing over a bolt of linen and a bolt of wool, spun and loomed in New Hampshire especially for this occasion and painfully, expensively carted to New York.
“Pretty toys for the chief,” he said, handing over a large, only slightly rusty alarm clock and a precious typewriter, both of them put in operating order by batteries of engineers and artisans working in tandem (the engineers interpreting the brittle old documents to the artisans) for two and a half months.
“Weapons for the chief,” he said, handing over a beautifully decorated cavalry saber, the prized hereditary possession of the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, who had protested its requisitioning most bitterly (“Damn it all, Mr. President, do you expect me to fight these Indians with my bare hands?” “No, I don’t, Johnny, but I’m sure you can pick up one just as good from one of your eager junior officers”).
Three Hydrogen Bombs examined the gifts, particularly the typewriter, with some interest. Then he solemnly distributed them among the members of his council, keeping only the typewriter and one of the sapphires for himself. The sword he gave to his son.
Makes Much Radiation tapped the steel with his fingernail. “Not so much,” he stated. “Not-so-much. Mr. Thomas came up with better stuff than this from the Confederate States of America for my sister’s puberty ceremony.” He tossed the saber negligently to the ground. “But what can you expect from a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing whiteskin stinkards?”