"I don't know if I can give you an explanation that would make sense to a white man."
"Try me."
"The old man believes in omens. Think of it as the past and the future meeting at a point in time and space with a silent witness."
Tillman snorted.
Kier looked at the ceiling before he continued. "Yeah, well, if you're small-minded like the rest of us, consider that you left an elephant-size trail in his mountains. I saw your tire tracks going up by the old Murdock place. Don't think he would miss them, or the details of your camp, or your number, or the maps you studied, or the guns you carried, or your whispering in the night, or the food you ate, or the spoor you left. If you camped near Murdock's, then you were within three miles of the crash site. It would only take a tiny bit of intuition, or a single crow's head for clever luck, for him to be at the crash site if he was already on the mountain, watching you. And he surely was. You were like a circus in his living room."
"He must have a place where he goes."
"He goes where the wind blows him. His living room is Iron Mountain on this side; his bedroom in the summer its north shoulder; his kitchen in the summer the north face; his playroom the backside; his backyard the Wintoon wilderness; and his exercise area the Marble Mountains. His church is the sky, where they say he walks if he becomes tired of the earth. So you tell me-where would he go with your horror?"
"Could you track him?"
''You haven't been listening.'' Kier allowed a look of amusement to cross his face. "And why would I want to?"
"Because of the little extras I will do to your woman if you don't. Because I'll kill your tribe."
Kier imagined Tillman's words floating over a road map of unspeakable things, all of them etched in the sickness of his mind. "If he doesn't want to be found, I can't track him. But I'm the best hope you've got."
"Maybe he won't resist being found by you."
"How will he know I'm the one who'll come? I expect he'll assume there's a whole army of rednecks after him."
Tillman unholstered his gun and pointed it at Kier. He had one of his men put handcuffs on him. "Leave us alone," he said to his men, who then began filing out. "You too, Doyle," he added when Doyle hung back.
After they left, Tillman spoke in a whisper. "I'll kill your damned tribe with the RA-4TVM virus. I've already infected dozens."
"How could you have done that?"
Tillman looked like he was thinking, perhaps reconsidering his disclosure.
"Remember the free cholesterol test at the fair?"
Willow had taken the test, Kier recalled distantly.
"Kissing, spitting on the food enough, living in real close proximity, it'll spread. Not well, but it spreads. Then we dosed the water here with a catalyst."
"Were you going to cure it?"
"Oh, sure. I mean, we aim to please. In the beginning you can stop it with the antivirus and a vaccine. Later it takes the addition of a special little protein molecule that clogs up the host cells so the virus can't dock. We also planned to neutralize the catalyst we put in the water. If we wait until the little bastards have taken root, so to speak, we've got to kill most of them with the usual, then the rest of them with a very powerful drug that kills the bone marrow. If we wait long, to save your friends we'd have to do a bone marrow transplant or else increase the natural immunity in each individual. So you don't want to dally. We can fix it, but if we don't, your tribe will die slowly. If we continue the test, and you do as we say, we'll call it the flu at the clinic and treat everybody before it gets serious. But if I don't get the sixth volume, I won't bother stopping the disease. I swear to you, Kier, if you don't find it, a third of your people will die in the near term. And among that third will be your mother and your sisters. It will go down as a fluke of nature."
"The CDC is gonna ask a lot of questions about where the virus came from."
"We've got that covered. It's in the mink at the mink farm owned by the Grove family. It mutated slightly and crossed over to people."
"Look, I can't find the old man if he doesn't want to be found. Especially in a day or two."
"I don't care about your theories or Spirit Walkers or any of that stuff. Your girlfriend stays. You go. If you aren't back in twenty-four hours with Volumes Five and Six- No. Better yet, you radio every hour and give me a report. If I like the report, well, nothing happens. If I don't like it, we start cutting little pieces off little Miss Muffet. First toes, then fingers, then"-he reached and cupped his own ear-"imagine what she'd look like without ears. Then maybe we'll de-lip her." Tillman smiled again. "We'll leave kind of a mewling hole for a mouth-like a newborn. Then we'll take some more interesting things. Maybe we won't do you a favor and kill her. Maybe we'll let you keep what's left."
"I get the books, you'll kill us anyway."
"I'm sure you'll come up with something. Smart Indian like you… some way to trade." Tillman paused, placed his hands behind his back, and stared out the kitchen window. "I'm tired of this. Either leave and get me the book or kiss the Tiloks good-bye and I'll start the surgery on your girlfriend."
Kier turned toward the door after one last glance at Jessie. The pain of walking away without her was a great, aching wave inside him. He held up the cuffs to Doyle, who had the key.
"I'd hurry, mate," Doyle said with a smile.
Kier knew at that moment that he would kill him. As he opened the door, he looked Doyle square in the eye. Doyle winked almost imperceptibly.
Only the chill of the air and the gray of dawn tickling the eastern sky were good. Never had he felt so lost. Jessie was in an armed camp with a man who wanted to dismember her. His family and tribe were in the process of dying. Kier growled his desperation. No time to wonder about the cold-steel edges of Tillman's heart or the brutish thing that passed for his mind. He needed his grandfather. Where to begin? Where on the mountain would Grandfather hide? What other mountain might he choose?
Then a little light in his mind became a dancing torch on the face of the water. Grandfather would be at the caverns. He could survive undetected there endlessly. Kier walked quickly now, mulling things over. Grandfather had once told him that he'd squeezed into a coffin-size cave and stayed for three days to experience the rock. No one could find Grandfather in the caverns unless he wanted to be found. So Kier would leave signs leading to the pond in the cavern and wait for Grandfather. It was all he could think of to do. And it was logical.
But Kier was desperate. If Grandfather had my problem, what would he do? Kier asked himself as he jogged on the trail back toward the cave high on the mountain. Stalking Bear was a Spirit Walker, a mystic. He would use his instincts, not his logic. For Grandfather that was fine, but Kier needed the comfort of reason.
He ran past the alders on the flat, across the creek, hopping stones up the hill, and, with dawn breaking over him, climbed for the true fir forest as fast as he could.
Something was wrong.
Of course, something was wrong, he told himself. Tillman will likely filet alive the woman I love.
He stopped. It wasn't that. It was different.
He threw back his head and looked at the stars and the fading moon. What? A dawn wind rushed through the trees.
In his mind, he could see Grandfather by the lake in the early morning. It had been not three months ago. The way he slowly turned his face to the rising sun, as if it were magic, as if it were full of the wonders of life. The joy in the old man's face had been unmistakable. Kier focused on that joy, seizing it to make it his own, even in the midst of his despair. But where did this get him? He was not going toward the cave. He was not going anywhere. For the first time in years, he wanted to weep at the hopelessness of it all. But he did not know how to cry.