“The Better Hotel, you would say in English,” Shikalimo said, flashing that dazzling smile again. “We leave it partly in our language to make it seem exotic for sightseers. We get a good many here, some curious about us, others about Niagara Falls. If you like, gentlemen, I should be delighted to drive you to the hotel.”
“If it’s no trouble - “ Bushell began.
Shikalimo waved that aside. “It would be an honor, not an inconvenience. We of the Hodenosaunee the Iroquois, as you call us - take the theft of The Two Georges most seriously, I assure you; it is a blow at us no less than at the white citizens of the North American Union. Any assistance we can render in its safe return will be a privilege, not a duty.” His face went grim. “I was outraged to learn the Sons of Liberty may be secreting the painting here. That our land was used to abet this crime in an insult that cries out to be avenged.”
Bushell would not have wanted Shikalimo interested in taking vengeance on him. He had a florid way of speaking, but seemed a fine figure of a man all the same. Bushell decided to take him up on his invitation:
“If you’re sure it’s no bother, I thank you very much.”
“No trouble at all.” Shikalimo pointed toward one of the exit doors. “If you bring your baggage there, I’ll go reclaim my steamer from the carpark and meet you in a moment.” Without waiting for a reply, he hurried away.
“He’s bloody sure of himself, isn’t he?” Samuel Stanley remarked when Shikalimo had got out of earshot. “By his manner, you’d think he was the Grand Sachem’s son, not just his nephew.”
Sylvanus Greeley and Charles Lucas exchanged glances. “My dear sir - “ they began together, and both laughed. “Go ahead, Charlie,” Greeley said.
“Thanks, Captain,” the younger man replied. He turned to Stanley and Bushell. “The Iroquois, they do things differently. Captain Greeley and I, we’ve been here a while, and we’re used to it. Sometimes we forget outsiders aren’t. The Iroquois, they reckon descent through the mother. The Tododaho’s sons, they aren’t of his clan: they belong to the one his wife is in. But the Sachem’s sister’s son, now, he’s - “
“He’s the heir, you’re saying,” Bushell put in, fitting the puzzle pieces together. “Well. No wonder he acts as if he’s someone, then. He is”
“Yeah, and we’d better not keep him waiting, either.” Samuel Stanley picked up a suitcase. “Come on.”
No sooner had they stepped outside than Shikalimo pulled up in a Supermarine saloon so low and rakish, it looked ready to spit fire. The Iroquois nobleman - or so Bushell classified him - didn’t seem unduly impressed with his own importance: he helped the RAMs load their luggage into the boot and held the passenger-side doors open so they could get in.
The Supermarine glided away from the kerb. Shikalimo was an expert driver, going through the gears so smoothly, Bushell had trouble noticing the shifts. He wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to such things in any case. He’d never been in the Six Nations before, and wondered how Doshoweh differed from the town it might have been had Englishmen built it.
He couldn’t see much difference. The people on the street - not many, at an hour marching toward midnight - wore clothes that wouldn’t have been out of place on a warm summer night in New Liverpool, although he wouldn’t have spotted men wearing earrings there. The buildings looked like buildings, not wigwams. Only the bilingual signs really told him he was in an unusual part of the NAU. Shikalimo said, “I want you to know, Colonel, Captain, it’s an honor for me to be working so closely with you. I expect to learn a great deal from this. Your techniques are a model of what investigation should be. If we here had access to facilities like yours in Victoria -“ He let out a long, envious sigh. Bushell realized that, while he was trying to isolate what made the Six Nations unique, Shikalimo was looking out from his limited perspective toward the wider, more cosmopolitan world of the NAU as a whole, which Bushell took as much for granted as Shikalimo did the narrow view from Doshoweh. What you wanted to see depended on where you were standing.
He said, “We’ll cooperate with you in any way we can, Major. Having someone so prominent in the community here working alongside us will help make witnesses more willing to talk.”
To his surprise, Shikalimo lifted one hand off the steering wheel, then angrily slammed it down again.
“Greeley and Lucas are good enough fellows in their way, but they talk too bloody much,” he said. “I hope you will not be offended when I say I have noted this flaw regrettably often in white men.”
“Doesn’t offend me one bit,” Samuel Stanley said with a chuckle.
“A distinct point, Captain Stanley.” Shikalimo laughed, too. But he quickly grew serious again: “I wish your fellow RAMs had not gone into detail about my social rank here, as opposed to that in our constabulary, because I want you to think of me as a colleague to be judged like any other colleague. Social rank and ability do not necessarily go hand in hand.”
“Seems to me your people are doing things the same way the royal family does,” Bushell said. “Give the heir something worthwhile to do before he gets stuck with the top job and he’ll generally handle that one pretty well, too.”
Shikalimo glanced over to him. “That is precisely the paradigm my uncle cited, Colonel,” he said, respect in his voice.
Otetiani sounded like a sensible chap. Bushell couldn’t figure out how to say so without seeming to make too much of himself. He covered his brief confusion with brusqueness: “To business. You’ve had a couple of days now to search for the Sons of Liberty here. Any luck?”
“None to speak of, unfortunately,” Shikalimo answered. “Somewhere between a fourth and a third of the populace of Doshoweh is white. With such a large haystack to sift through, we’ve yet to come across our poisoned needle.”
“Have a care as you sift,” Samuel Stanley warned. “If you want to learn from us, for God’s sake learn that. The Sons will hurt you badly if you run up against them unprepared.”
“For this word of caution I thank you, and I shall convey it to my comrades and superiors,” Shikalimo said. He pulled to a stop in front of the Hotel Ahgusweyo, which, unlike the other buildings Bushell had seen, did have the look of a longhouse writ large, in stone and concrete rather than wood and bark. Shikalimo remarked, “Sightseers expect certain things of us. We make an effort to satisfy them, even if their expectations do not always match modern reality.”
A servant came with a cart to take the baggage from the boot of Shikalimo’s Supermarine. Recognizing the driver, he nodded deferentially and murmured something in his own language, to which Shikalimo responded. Bushell concluded not all the old ways of the Iroquois had fallen into desuetude. As had that of the Skidegate Lodge, the lobby of the Hotel Ahgusweyo tried to show the traveler he had came to someplace out of the ordinary. Colorful dried ears of maize were displayed on the walls, along with war clubs, tobacco pipes, and baskets and medicine masks of dried ash splints. A dugout canoe hung from the ceiling on stout chains.
When he got up to his room and flipped on the light, the first thing he noticed was a large print of The Two Georges hanging over the bed. It surprised a snort of laughter out of him. “What is funny, sir?” the bellhop asked, setting his suitcases down on the floor.
He pointed to the print. “That. Anywhere else in the NAU, I would have expected it. But here - “
“George Washington is very important to the Hodenosaunee, too, sir,” the bellhop said, sounding indignant Bushell had doubted it. “Those of us who follow Hawenneyu, the Great Spirit, and not your Christian God” - with a slight motion of his hand, he included himself among that number - “we say Washington is the only white man who has joined Hawenneyu in his heaven.”