“Could you find the place if I took you back there?”
“I do not know. I look.”
For several minutes he waited while she ate. What the hell was happening? What kind of a mess was this? Certainly, from Erik’s notes and the burned cafe, he understood that these people, whoever they were, were dangerous. They were not playing games. But who were they? What were they?
“Tell me what you can. I know nothing.”
“Long ago”—Kawasi made a sweeping gesture—”my people live all about here. They cut trees to build house or for burn. They plant corn and squash. No rain comes. Year after year, no enough rain. Fierce people come. They kill our people, steal grain. Soon they camp nearby to steal whatever. We are not many. Some go away.
“Long time before, we come to this place from another. We come from a place turning evil. We come to escape evil. Some wish to return. Two go back, and they say all is green there, plenty of rain, and only a few people there, so we go back.
“It was against old beliefs, but our people feared hunger and the fierce enemies coming down from the North, so some went back.
“But the evil was still there. It had not gone. Our people had closed the top of their heads and could no longer hear the Voices.”
“Where is this place you went back to?” Mike waited, half afraid of what he knew he would hear.
“It is on Other Side. I do not know what to say, what words. It is like this, only … only different.”
“You said they went back. How did they go?”
“There are places, openings sometimes, never always. Places where can go through to Other Side. The old man who tells me your words, he got through but never get back. He was young man then. He was what he say a ‘cow-boy’? They come to look for him. Somehow they know, he is on Other Side. He very … he keeps away from them. Somehow …. they do not find him. I think he kills one man, but he finds ways to hide.”
“He is there yet?”
“Still there. Some of my people know. They help him. But he very how you say? Strong? He know how to hide. Now I do not think they look any more. Maybe. I do not know.”
“What do you call him?”
“He is Johnny. Only Johnny.”
“Your people were the cliff dwellers? The old ones the Navajo call the Anasazi?”
“Yes.”
Mike glanced out the window. The street looked the same as always. A truck was parked across the way, its driver coming toward the cafe. His own Jeep was in plain sight. Two local men stood across the street talking. All seemed to be as usual.
What was he to do? If they had taken Erik back, wherever “back” was, then he was gone, perhaps gone forever.
“What will they do with Erik?”
“Many questions. When no more answers, they kill. They hate much and they fear. They rule all, yet they live in fear. They fear to lose their power, they fear we who do not agree will get strength from Other Side. They fear ideas from your side. Any who get through they kill.”
“Then some do get through?”
She shook her head. “Not often. In my memory only two, I think. Or maybe they did not tell us all. Long ago there was a boy, a young man who got through. I do not know what happened. Long, long before that, there were two men who hunt gold. They were tortured, killed, then left on Other Side.”
“What do they know about us? The people on this side?”
“Much. Sometimes they send men to steal. To kill. You have things to listen, things to speak long distances. This they want.”
And Erik was a specialist in the field. What he did not know, nobody knew. If they discovered this they might keep him alive.
“What about the kiva?”
“It is mystery place. Long ago story say it is secret way to pass through. The kiva is sacred place, but evil men close it up. Now they want open.”
She sipped her coffee. “I think they make house now. I think they want always place, an all time open place to go and come.”
Mike watched the street, trying to bring his thoughts into focus. What was going on here? Was this real? Or some elaborate hoax? He knew nothing about physics but he knew such things were said to be possible, that parallel worlds could exist. At least, some believed they could. He had seen things in Central Asia and Tibet … could there be a connection? He doubted it.
Erik’s cry for help must be heeded. Whatever else might or might not be true, he was in trouble, and he had called on Mike for help.
“Over there? After your people went back from here, what happened?”
She shook her head. “I know little. For a time they lived as always, then change. It was my ancestor who began it.
“He was very young boy when, by himself, he built a larger dam to save water. He grew fine crops. He found new ways to do things. He created devices—what you call machines—to do things. The evil ones decided he was bewitched and killed him.
“They could not kill his thoughts. Those who killed him began to use his magic. They built stronger walls and larger houses and they built other dams. Then they made laws to say who can have water and when. People accepted the laws because they were good and they kept away much trouble. But the ones who said yes or no on water soon made other laws which were not good. So some of us left them and went to a new place to live as we always had.
“They came against us because we did not obey. Some they killed and some they took as slaves, but then we found a place where my ancestor had worked when building things, and we found some other things he had made and some he had begun to make. We used those things to fight them and they left us alone. Johnny helped. He said my ancestor was another Davinch.”
“Da Vinci? Leonardo da Vinci was an artist who invented many things.”
“I think so.”
“You have come over to this side. Have you done this often?”
“It is not permitted. Somehow they know. I do not know how, but instantly they know. If one comes through he is seized. They do not rest until he is taken.”
“What about those who rule? Do they go over?”
“They say no, yet sometimes do. Or once they did and then a great water covered the place and for long time they could not until Erik opened the kiva.”
“But there are other ways? He who drew the line on Erik’s blueprints must have come some other way.”
“There are sometime ways. I do not understand but sometimes there are openings. That is how I am here.”
“The great water was probably what we call Lake Powell. We built a dam to stop the water of the Colorado and drowned most of what was Glen Canyon.”
They were both silent. His eyes sought the street. Suppose they came now? What would he do?
“I must help him,” he said.
“You cannot. They have him.”
“Where will they take him?”
“It is a bad place, a place of fear. It is an old place, a place that was there before we entered into the Fourth World, your world. I have not been there but he who was my mother’s father knew it.”
She looked at him with sudden realization. “Now it is you they must take. They must have you. They wish none to know their world exists and now you do.”
“And you also.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “They know of me. I am hated. I am wanted most of all. I am head of family now, of clan. They look to me. I am descend from He Who Had Magic, the old one who made many things. I must go back.”
“There’s the kiva.”
“No. That is their way. They will watch and they are very near to it.”
“But you came!”
“My way is not sure, very dangerous, but there is a way that is open, most times open. They do not know it. We do not. Only the Saqua know.”
“The Saqua? The hairy ones?”
“You know of them? They are not people, but they know things others do not. They come to hunt or to take sheep to eat.”
“Sheep? From the Indians?”
“They take sheep. I do not know whose sheep.”
He finished his coffee. “We had better get away from here and do some planning.”
Raglan started to rise but a hand dropped on his shoulder. He glanced up.