Do you need to go back to the Introduction? Just click here.

 

Note: Sordid adult content.

 

Vijaya Naipul -- I figured those who haven't been on the Telegraph, may not have any idea what I'm talking about with my bad dreams or where I think these dreams may be taking me.

 

The Telegraph was on a rotten email provider called Topica and the archive of the time I spent on Two by Two and the tragic tale of that world is lost to all.

 

Let's get it started then: When I was fourteen, I wanted to learn magic. Well you can call it magic. Naama and Alise both practice necromancy. They have memories of past lives. Alise has more memories than Naama and the gift of tongues. We were all schoolmates in those days at Hunter College High School in New York City. We had also had our first encounters with Independent Rainbow and Alise had gotten us all to move back in with them again so she could come back to Hunter from Louisianna where she had run away from her parents who were not treating her right. I am probably the only one of the original posse with understanding parents. So it goes. I'm also the only one who is an only child. Maybe that is why my parents are so good to me.

 

Well, Alise and Naama tought me to meditate and instead of finding my dead ancestors or helpful spirit friends, I started dreaming of my doppleganger and seeing her and her name was and is Lisa Vijaya Napier and she lived in Biloxi, Mississippi but aside from that everything was different. She got initiated and she met a mermaid. Mermaids have feet on her world and can breathe air for short periods. This was a surgically altered mermaid who could not speak. Her name was Shan-En.

 

Finally, I ended up in Biloxi with Lisa Vijaya (Also called Vijaya 2 since she goes by her middle name). It was not the Biloxi that exists in real life. I don't know if they even had a Katryn storm (or K storm there.) Vijaya 2 doesn't know either.

 

Now, let's get to the story. Vijaya 2 was living with her uncle because she was the oldest of her nine siblings and didn't get along with her parents. The uncle was a war hero who had gone under oath and dedication and lived. You see, Vijaya 2's world which I called Two by Two (Oh the worlds go marching two by two!) had been invaded by people Vijaya 2 calls Polos. That is slang. Their real name in English is Outriders. They were invaded in the year 1200 over in China. Marco Polo traveling from Europe found the Outriders which is why Vijaya 2 calls them Polos.

 

There was also a second group of time travelers these led by Pavel D'Einhorn from Binghamton New York who invaded in the year 1408 and who traveled to West Africa. From there, they equipped the tribes to fight off the Europeans and thus prevented the slave trade. They also sailed west to the New World and were careful NOT to infect the Native Americans with Western diseases. The genocide of Indians that you read about in American history books DID NOT HAPPEN ON TWO BY TWO.

 

This sounds like paradise huh... Even Santeria is the official religion...It's not paradise. The Polos entered Africa, Europe, and the New World and the population who had been "infiltrated" by Pavel D'Einhorn rose up and fought. Now the Polos come from 15,000 years ahead in the future and they have a weapon of the most fiendish torture imaginable. That weapon is called a migna. If they capture prisoners, they torture them. Brainwashed is too kind a word. They turn them in to traitors. If you fight the Polos and survive, your comrades will kill you upon your return. If you fight them you must be prepared to give your own life. That is what is called oath and dedication.

 

It is through the practice of oath and dedication that Vijaya 2's people have stayed free. Uncle Charles was the weird exception. He had fought Polos in the midwest (I think near the Great Lakes) and lived. He came back a hero and he sought out a wife. Now he Uncle Charles also liked to gamble. He had racked up debts he could not pay so the local gangsters in Biloxi wanted to make an example of him. They put his feet in cement blocks and threw him over the side of a boat.

 

That was how Shan-En, the mermaid found him. She dragged him to shore managed to get his feet free and saved his life. When he came to on the beach he knew none of this except there was this fourteen year old merkid watching him, sitting there with seaweed wrapped around her neck. Shan-En was in love with Uncle Charles and she believed she could get a human soul if he would marry her. She went to a butcher of an amateur surgeon and had her gil-slits sewn closed. She also has lungs. Mer need to be born near land since they are born using their lungs and only after a few weeks can use their gils in addition. They started out in fresh water. Shan-En can tell you more.

 

Anyway, Vijaya 2 ended up living with both Shan-En and Uncle Charles and Shan-En had a mission to make Uncle Charles fall in love with her. Too bad the butcher who sewed up her gil slits also severed her vocal chords. If this sounds like the Hans Christian Anderson story, well life was imitating art for a while, but only for a while. Unlike the cute little Ariel in Hans Christian Anderson's story, Shan-En seduced and slept with Uncle Charles.

 

Now at this point we, Shan-En, Vijaya 2, Uncle Charles, and I all went north to what would be Kentucky and lived in a nice bunk house while Charles and his intended lived in the main building but the intended who was a beautiful lady often disappeared on business for days at a time in which case Shan-En was there "at the back door" and on the side or so they say.

 

Well, the intended caught on to Shan-En and Uncle Charles and she got disgusted with the whole lot of us. By now Naama and Alise were in on this as well. We all found ourselves exiled to Cais Monestary in Death Valley, California.

 

That would have been fine. Shan-En realized she was not going to die or turn to foam from a broken heart and she was an excellent student. We commuted between Hunter and Cais and then Independent Rainbow had to step in things. They made a deal to house three dragons and their keepers and the Abbot signed on.

 

The Polos wanted the dragons. Everyone at CAIS killed themselves rather than let themselves be captured. Since I did not want to die, I went to explore the Polos' trailer and found four proti eggs that I stuck in my mouth. Yes, the eggs were just sitting in a bowl on a table like candy but I knew they were something else. Meanwhile, Dr. FitzRoy and the rest of the Independent Rainbow Zia middle strand rescued us, Naama, Alise, the three dragon mistreses who are now in the Shared Conceptual Space, dragons and all, Vijaya 2, and Shan-En and the four protis who came along because I still had them in my mouth. The four protis became our first littles. Since Vijaya 2 and Shan-En have had contact with Polos they can not return to Two by Two for fear of their very lives. And I have the blood of about fifty-some individuals on my hands. You can see why I was loathe to mess with teleportation again.

 

I think what I have been seeing in my dreams is Two-by-Two. The City of Onxy is probably an Outrider city. The Indians are just different from the ones I know from driving a van on my own world Point Two-Five. Maybe the plains Indians sided with the Outriders. If they did, then there was no Westward expansion and no need for any of them to know English. There would also be ten times as many of them since white neither starved them to death nor killed them with Western diseases.

 

The problem is my involvement with Two by Two probably means more lives lost or it could mean that. I don't want to go back there. I just don't want to, but teleportation means a risk of my ending up there and yes...I wonder if Kokqi comes from Two by Two. Luchi-Xara if you can help me with this one, I'd appreciate it a lot.

 

Vijaya Lisa Naipul (Vijaya 1)

Driver Rank 11C

Rosebud Indian Reservation

Rosebud, South Dakota

Point Two-Five

 

Dear Dr. Kalish,

 

As we stipulated in our 2002 agreement, I am applying to use the appratus to help a young woman from the parallel world of Two by Two who has accidentally ended up on our world. She is what you most likely call American Indian or Native American, but the history of her people on Two by Two is far more benign than it is here on Point Two-Five. Suffice it to say her people are numerous, have acquired some technology, and have had no need to learn English because they have never competed wtih large number of white settlers. Likewise the genocide pereptrated against plains Indians in the 19th Century on Point Two-Five never happened. The Indian girl's one nonnative tongue is Attawa, I language that I and my associates speak fairly fluently. Since Kokqi as the girl calls herself is currently incarcerated on a psychiatric ward, having a psychistrist with me as part of the team would be more than useful. If you can think of any way to prove her sane enough to be released I would really appreciate it. My current plans are to restore Kokqi to her people.

 

Please do not ask me if Vijaya Naipul had a hand in any of this. She has a nonlinear soul and wretched control of tbhe teleportation ability she gained by spending time in the Shared Conceptual Space. It would be good to have her spend some time receiving some mentoring. My own priesthood would not touch a primitive with a ten foot pole and the priesthood here which is centered mainly in Missouri would probably be a poor fit for a Moslem woman from New York City.

 

Restoring Kokqi will restore Kokqi, it will not end Vijaya Naipul's involvement with the parallel world that has entered her dreams as long as she continues to teleport. If you can twist the government's arm and somehow reassign her to Missoula, Vijaya would be assured a far quieter life. I'm not sure what power Independent Rainbow has in these situations.

 

Sincerely

Luchi-Xara

Head Outrider for Point Two-Five

9 Water St.

Belle Shermane

Ithaca, New York 14850

 

Dear all,

 

Do you want the good news, the bad news, or the really bad and weird news first? Let's start with the good news: I drew the massive mega six day over nighter run to Spokane, Washington. This is far as runs go except maybe some in to Wyoming, Colorado, or Utah. None of the slacker males wanted it. Eleanor was afraid of it and Karen lacks the senority to bid on big runs. I leave at 0500 Monday wish me luck. I'm looking forward to stocking up on provisions and readying myself for the great trip tomorrow.

 

The bad news is Kelli. She's miserable and hanging on by a thread. She has been doing the practice problems, but she is bored, nothing to do, stuck with too many chores, and the white kids in the local public high school want nothing to do with an academically talented Indian girl and the Indians have no use for academics or even decent behavior and by decent I mean not horrificly self destructive. I will not describe the level to which the Indian kids at Kelli's high school have sunk. I shudder just to think of it and then I want to barf. My question is: how long can Kelli keep up the fight to live a decent life with so little support? To her grandmother she is another mouth to feed, another pair of hands, and someone who is there because she has no where else to go and Grandma is a dutiful soul.

 

My tutoring and the Amsco practice books are it for Kelli. We talk a lot, mostly about schoolwork because it is easy and not painful. Kelli wants to keep her family a dark dirty secret. Kelli does nto want to go back to the Rez. It's hard to know Kelli has no good choices.

 

Yesabeau, DON'T YOU DARE CALL KELLI (OR KOKQI FOR THAT MATTER) A RED SAVAGE. I don't need to read epithets like that and you can do without writing them. I wish I could do more for Kelli.

 

Now for the bizarre and really bad news. This time in my dreams I drew close to the Onyx City and entered it. It is climate controlled like one giant mall, an endless hive of apartments overlooking endless atria. Don't ask how I found my way to the offices where I saw the two women fight. One was clad in a long white embroidered tunic, teal colored pants, and very thick boots trimmed with immitation shearling. About her neck was a thin blackish sliver wire with a few silver and teal beads on it. The other woman had long brownish braids and wore a leather vest over a light green chamois shirt and dark green woolen pants, mocassins and regular socks. She wore no delicate jewlry.

 

The argument went like this and I'm not sure how I understood it. I heard one language but understood the whole business half in English half in Urdu....

 

"I realize you miss one of your students, but the search is over budget and we're calling it off..." began the woman in teal pants and a migna.

 

"Do you think Kokqi is dead?"

 

"Who knows...She wandered off and it is below freezing out there. I'm sorry. I know she was one of your best students at your school, but these primitives...They are among the most decent we've got, but even with three or four tongues they are still primitives, Shanoop. I know you imitiate them, but in your heart, you are rational. They....she could be out there on the prairie chasing some vision. You knwo there are some anmong the Taehae-kawa who opposed the capture of the white buffalo calf for our menagerie. Their priests have some power as we know especially since they've encountered our pirests."

 

"You suspect they are holding Kokqi hostage...."

 

"It is possible, but we try to keep native support. As I said, the search is over."

 

"No!"

 

"That is not much of a response."

 

"Kokqi was on good terms with the priests. Besides she was only a spectator at the capture. She shouldn't have been a target. Besides...our priests would not have sent the dreams she had."

 

"What dreams..."

 

"About a city...not like ours, but a primitive city, something Afriks in the East might build, but sturdy and out of bricks. All around it the prairie had been altered...stripped...no more buffalo and her own people...Kokqi said they had some kind of sickness. That was all she could figure out. It was very bad. She said her people had disappeared in this city not like here on the plains."

 

"Shanoop!" said the woman with the migna. "Why didn't you tell me this earlier. Now it is nearly too late, but not too late to write this up."

 

"You did not inquire and Kokqi knows no magic and is on good terms back in her home village."

 

"I'm still going to write you up Shanoop!"

 

"Just so you have an excuse to leave a girl for dead."

 

"No, I'm going to get an email out to the Outrider comm list. Spontaneous cross overs between worlds are rare without a priest interfering. Most of the priests among the primitives have no interest in infiltrating other worlds and we surely don't teach it. Still, I'll ask. Outriders from other worlds may have seen your Kokqi. Do you feel better Shanoop?"

 

"A little."

 

"Good cause I'm going to write you up anyway! And next time, make sure you communicate with the higher ups."

 

Suffice it to say I was glad I woke up. Does this dialog make you sick? Poor Shanoop. Poor Kokqi.

 

Vijaya Naipul

Driver Rank 11C

Vermillion Airforce Base

Vermillion, South Dakota

Point Two-Five

 

"What do you have there?" asked Zoie, my favorite little next to Kaya and Pandora which isn't saying all that much. "Are you going to go get to rescue the primitive out in South Dakota. I wouldn't let myself be held hostage by primitives."

 

"Zoie Fishbein," I use the little's full name. "I need that agreement. Remember we have no migna in this house with which to defend ourselves. I have to wait until Independent Rainbow says yes to the trip. Anyway, it may good that they haven't written back yet. I show Zoie who can read the letter from the Outriders Commm list. Usually this is useless stuff like gatherings, seminars, warnings of infiltration, rogue primitives etc... alog with the usual tidbits about promotions and life milestones and continuing education and buying and selling advertisements.

 

There in the middle of all this uselessness is a missing person ad for a Kokqi of Mixed Parentage who has left Two by Two and wandered on to some other world. "Kokqi is unable to speak English though she is fluent in five other languages including Attawa. She was a student at the Oniksi House of Many Tongues, run by Special Forces Outrider Rank 5 Shanoop Katri. If you have any information on Kokqi's wearbouts please let Miriam Kaless Central Outrider Command at Oniksi know as soon as possible."

 

Zoie rolled her eyes. "All that fuss over a stupid primitive."

 

"A multilingual well educated primitve," I corrected my little. "How would you like it if Shanoop Katri came and worked here. We are short handed on our crew and I think Miriam Kaless is an ass." I typed a quick letter in to our comm box which is fitted with a small apparatus and scanned it through to Ms. Kaless and bcc'd it to Ms. Katri. I also sent Ms. Katri an offer of employment. I let Ms. Kaless and Ms. Katri know that I was making arrangements to head to Rapid City, South Dakota and arrange for Kokqi's release. I intended to bring a psychiatrist with me which would aid in that release.

 

Well, there is nothing to do now except wait it out. I hope my permission to make the trip comes through soon...Murray, if you are out there, please let me know when you'll be available to accompany my crew.

 

Luchi-Xara

Head Outrider for Point Two-Five

9 Water Street

Belle Shermane

Ithaca, New York 14850

 

Murray Kalish and I arrived in Rapid City, South Dakota around 4pm Mountain Standard Time and Margot drove us in Pride and Joy, our pink extended cab pickup truck fitted with apparatus, to Rapid City Regional Hospital. There we found our way to the adolescent psychiatric ward which was locked.

 

Murray Kalish got us inside. He had spoken physican to physician to the psychiatrist handling Kokqi's case and we got admitted. The psychistrist, a woman with shoulders like a bulwark and breasts like a rounded brick buttress, said that Kokqi was all ready seeing visitors in one of the therapy rooms. There were four visitors, all utterly clueless; for Kokqi speaks no English.

 

There was a woman with blond hair, a very dark skinned black man with a furrowed brow, a man with a thin pointy face and a scraggly brown beard that would be better shaved off, and another man who was balding but who still had silver side burns that looked like they received an expensive trim. I introduced myself to the fearsome foursome and then suggested that they might need my services as an interpreter. Meanwhile, Dr. Kalish and the dark skinned black man resumed an old acquaintance.

 

"I rather like working for National," commented the black man. "True, I'm only middle strand. Nonetheless, we get interesting cases like this young woman."

 

Meanwhile, I introduced myself to Kokqi. As far as I was concerned, Independent Rainbow had no business taking care of a person to whom they could not speak and who could not understand them.

 

Kokqi got up from the table and threw herself at my feet. The strangers gasped. I smiled and politely in Attawa asked Kokqi to get up. "People in this country on this world don't prostrate themselves before authority figures." Kokqi begged my forgiveness.

 

Then the questions began. I had to hold half of them at bay. First, Kokqi needed a proper English name. Kokqi would work for a first name, but her last name Of Mixed Parentage sounds like bastard. Kokqi is half what on this world would be considered Blackfoot and half Cheyenne, but she is not from any of the extent Cheyenne bands. She is from a band called Full Corn Crib or Brown Rats who Eat Corn. I translated this as Prospera for prosperity. Her father's clan is the Orchard clan which is also a twentieth century clan created by the Blackfoot of Two by Two that has no equivalent on Point Two-Five. Kokqi's official first and last name are Kokqi Orchard-Prospera.

 

I translated Kokqi's story for Independent Rainbow. Kokqi was a student in the House of Many Tongues at Oniksi, which is the name for Rapid City on Two-by-Two. Shanoop Katri is the only white person, Kokqi has ever known.. The Indian population is large and prosperous. They were not victims of genocide as they were on Point Two-Five.

 

Kokqi speaks five languages none of which are spoken widely on Point Two-Five. This includes Attawa. Last week, The House of Many Tongues and most schools in Oniksi had a holiday for the capture of the white buffalo calf to be kept in the Oniksi's menagerie so that the scientists there could make twins of its flesh. If that sounds like cloning, you are right. The idea is to produce breeding stock and a whole herd of white buffalo. There were those in several of the tribes who objected to this kind of capture and genetic work, but the majority of peoples in the northern plains saw that it would be useful.

 

On the day of the capture, the hutsman and women wore mignaiee, and crept through the herd of buffalo unsensed; for they gave off soothing vibrations that lulled the large beasts in to complacency. Kokqi and her school mates watched as the hunters snared the calf in a net injected it with tranquliizer and carried it to the bed of a waiting truck.

 

Whiile the hunters carried the white buffalo calf to the truck, Kokqi walked away to use one of the chemical toilets set out for the occasion. Then something went wrong. She could not find the port-a-potties. Instead, she was in a world where "the grass was all wrong." It was shorn and brown and missing important plants. The air smelled wrong. What she did not smell was buffalo or their dung. When she made it to a highway, she was surprised at all the cars. Somehow she found her way to a rest stop and from there to Rapid City where she wandered around a bit dazed looking for Oniksi and unable to return.

 

"I don't understand why I am here," she complained.

 

"It has more to do with magic on this world than priests on your own," I explained.

 

"Who would have it against me?"

 

"No one has it against you. You are the victim of circumstance. Don't trouble yourself with it?"

 

"What will become of me?" asked Kokqi.

 

Well first we needed to liberate Kokqi from the hospital. She was not crazy. The scientists agreed to take charge of her. They said they knew a scholar at University of Montana (at Bozeman) who knew the Blackfoot language. That would give Kokqi a way to survive. Cell phones poppped out and the black man and the silver haired man made phone call after phone call. Dr. Kalish went off to see about getting discharge papers.

 

Meanwhile, I went after the driver because I needed to have a word with her. After all, someone had delivered the four scientists to Rapid City, all the way from Vermillion, and that someone now was awash in self pity unbecoming to one who boasts of her courage and rank.

 

Luchi-Xara

American Inn

Rapid City, South Dakota

Point Two-Five

 

==Luchi Xara==

 

Tomorrow, Margot and I return Kokqi, the Indian girl from Two by Two to Oniksi. She has learned a smattering of English, contributed reams of oral history, and is terribly homesick. The hardest part will not be the trip to Rapid City undertaken via apparatus (time and space travel gear), but the bargaining between Miriam, Shanoop, and I in Oniksi and making sure Kokqi can return without massive interrogation since Point Two-Five is also an infiltrated world. Hopefully, Kokqi can stay in Oniksi until summer when she is again going to travel to Lame Deer to teach Cheyenne to kids who are of Cheyenne descent but cut off from their language.

It has been a very hard winter for Kokqi. It hurts even to think about it. She is more than just a primitive or even a well educated primitive now. Also, if Miriam gives Shanoop any shit and she well might, I am taking Shanoop to Ithaca as one of my assistants. Shanoop has been stringing me along on my employment offers. She knows she will do traditional outriding in Ithaca...well not really. Shanoop is Attawa and she might just find Point Two-Five intriguing.

Do I have to say there is something very charmed about Rose Among Thorns and the way it moves from strength to strength. Someone or something has blessed the movement, despite Tareisia's doubts. Washington, DC may well have been the big breakthrough. The next step is for Rose Among Thorns to leave the northeast for other regions of the United States. I am confident that this will happen.

Luchi-Xara

9 Water St.

Belle Shermane

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

==Luchi-Xara==

 

Onikisi is an ugly city. Most Attawa cities are ugly. They are not built like pyramids or concentric rings or wedding cakes. Please choose your own metaphor. Instead they are rambling structures thrown together haphazardly or cookie-cutter structures plopped down to give cheap and easy convenience to the residents. If you travel on proto-Attawa worlds in the twentieth through twenty-second century, you will find covered shopping malls that look something like Attawa cities. Some tastes do not change across millenia. Also Attawa have comparatively little prejdice against primitives. They'll build cities among them. They'll let their native world crawl with them. They'll even let primitives live with them in their cities on worlds that are thorougly outridden.

Need I tell you that Two-by-Two, unlike Point Two-Five (Vijaya Naipul named both those worlds some years ago. I hope the names do not embarass her.) is blatantly and thoroughly outridden. Attawa have no problem with doing this. I'm not Attawa. I'm Kiri-Dos. All people from the worlds of my time are not the same. I was a priest in my last life and am cursed in this life, though I try not to think of it that way.

Well, there was Oniksi. The name is Lakota for "Good place to watch the moon," so it is not literally a City of Onyx. It has solar collectors and heat absorbing paint on the outside so indeed it appears as a many tentacled and crenalated pile of black stone slabs. "City of Onyx" is a poetic title from the place. This must be design #191 from the book of prefabricated Attawa outriding cities.

It took a while to find the right entrance to Oniksi, since I had never been there before. Apparently Kokqi can only use the RIGHT entrance. She also reminded me as we rode from Bozeman, Montana on Point Two-Five to Onikis on Two-by-Two that she had to get back in to her old world's manners. "If I don't drop, my ass is grass," answered Kokqi in her newfound English. "Then I'll remind you if you don't make obeisance," I answered.

Kokqi sat bolt upright beside me in the back seat of the van. She wore a long black skirt and a white Western style blouse with embroidery on it including the logo for the House of Many Tongues, a kind of masked dancing figure with multiple heads and thus many tongues. Kokqi slipped from English to Attawa and after a time told me the story of a Crow student at her school. The student had gone for her initiation. That meant two or three nights in the woods and plains with nothing but herself. Some people call this a vision quest. During this time, the student meets her past and future self. Well, the student did not return.

"You know the Crow won't mourn their kids who don't survive initiation, but I'm not Crow. Crow can be so barbaric at time. Even Commanche are not like that, and I've met a few at Pow-Wows. They don't send their girls on vision quests."

I wondered if I should tell Kokqi about Naama Roth's vision quest in White River, Arizona. "We demanded a service for our commrade and Mistress Shanoop let us have one. We put her picture on the wall and we told stories about her. Everyone got up to say something about Saltie, and that was that. We kept her picture on the wall and people left notes ofr her and put up flowers and bits of corn and things from medicine bags. We could mourn as much as we wanted. I guess they figured mourning had a bottom of a bag and we'd empty it out sooner or later.

"Then after a month, Saltie returned. She had on different clothes. The teachers gave her to administration who kept for two more weeks and when she came back, she was sick. She wouldn't eat. There were marks on her face and more on her stomach and ribs because I saw her when she was taking a shower. She got skin infections and she had to go to the physician twice a week, not a priest or mage but a physician, an Attawa physician to look after her.

"Most Esteemed Outrider," Kokqi continued. "I think Security attacked Saltie with a migna."

"Sounds like it," I answered. "I'm not letting that happen to you and neither is Independent Rainbow."

"That's the people my professor worked for in Bozeman wasn't it?" asked Kokqi.

"No," I answered. "Dr. White knows a lot of Independent Rainbow scholars but he isn't one. Still, Independent Rainbow, has an interest in you. They won't be happy if you are damaged."

"Then you're going to protect me..."

"Shit, yes."

We found the right entrance to Oniksi which was really just an outdoor parking lot with stalls for the residents to keep the snow off their cars. We entered via a porch with stairs which clashed with the cookie cutter architecture. The place was a school. The male students wore black twill Western jeans and white Western shirts with the school logo embroidered on them and the girls wore long black twill skirts and white blouses, the same costume as Kokqi wore. They greeted Kokqi with squeels and greeted me by dropping to the floor at my feet. There is something very weird about being surrounded by a pile of competitively groveling adolescents.

Finally I managed to ask a boy to fetch Shanoop Katri, the school's headmistress, who showed up and let out a whoop of joy. She had on a red chamois shirt, brown leather vest and brown faux suede skirt and mocasins with red socks.

I explained to Shanoop that we needed to find Miriam Kaless and her supervisor. I wanted guarantees and was prepared to give them as Head Outrider of Point Two-Five that Kokqi posed no danger. I also had a CD and paper copy of Dr. White's lab notes on Kokqi to account for her time gone. That was how we ended up walking down endless corridors and spending most of yesterday in various good offices with various officials who seldom traveled the lonely plains where they had een stationed, comfortable complacent outriders who never remove their mignaiee.

I had a surpise for them. I asked Kokqi to roll up her sleeve. On her left arm was a bump. In my hands was a small box. I had watched Dr. Karch carefully put the electronics together. "Kokqi," I counseled. "Don't be afraid. Slap the bump on your arm very gently."

I watched Djavyd, the Head of Security for Oniksi give a start. "Your primitives jam mignaiee?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered. "Since they get along fine without them, this is their tactic of defense. I wouldn't send Kokqi back to you unprotected. This is a world scarred by war and paranoia."

"I will give you my word, Kokqi will be unharmed," answered Djavid.

And yes, I believe Djavid.

Suffice it to say, I could drop Kokqi at the House of Many Tongues and have a clean conscience, but of course I had more business in Oniksi... To be continued.

Luchi-Xara

Head Outrider Point Two-Five

House of Many Tongues

Far Eastern Sector

Oniksi

Upper Prairie Region

District#2

Two-by-Two

 

My business was with Shanoop Katri. All spring I had been wooing her and she had found one creative method after another for stringing me along. "Well, can I at least take you out to eat somewhere. You've had a rough day?" I began. Like most Attawa, Shanoop would love to eat. "I usually eat here at the school," she replied, but in the end she mentioned a restaurant called Rain Dancer translated in to Attawa of course.

Rain Dancer was done up in fake Indian decor including straw dream catchers and baskets on the wall as well as what I could sort of tell were Navajo and Hopi blankets. We got corn bread and flat tortillas and I glanced at the menu. Buffalo according to Shanoop were the local delicacy. There were half a dozen dishes of them on the menu. "We get buffalo twice a week at school, and I never get tired of it," Shanoop explained.

"You like it here," I said.

"Of course I do. My students are Attawa."

"Of course, this is a proto-Attawa world."

"There's no such thing as proto-Attawa." Shanoop's golden eyes narrowed on mine.

"And we're all Homo Sapiens Sapiens, even the alternate phenotypes," I replied remembering both my biology and anthropology.

"How long has it been since you stopped wearing a migna?" asked Shanoop.

"All of this life. Mignaiee are an aversive. I was cursed and blessed at the same time."

"Then you should understand. I've been four years without a migna. I also spent a long time without one when I was getting my language training. The Naumi Karis method is tough but it works. We are wired for language, just as the students here are."

"You won't get an argument from me on that," I laughed.

"Yes, but my students are Attawa. They tell the stories I grew up with. They must be very old stories."

"All proto-Attawa worlds have a fall legend. Attawa though know that the fall was healed."

"They know nothing of Moshiaka here."

"And they won't. This world is too spoilt for it. The whole history beyond the fifteenth century is different for what appears to be a critical part of Europe."

"Only one world can be, THE WORLD. Whoever finds it....It won't be me because I have enough work right here."

"I may have found it," I let my trump card drop.

"Point Two-Five is also infiltrated."

"Yes, but lightly enough that it doesn't wreack all the characteristics. It had two major European wars in the Twentieth Century, a K-storm that did not destroy Morgan City, Louisiana, and it has a female religious leader who is amassing a large and growing following."

"I take it she lives in Ithaca, New York," Shanoop clearly didn't believe me.

"Syracuse," I replied. "The world is also high penetration low retention on the holy books. One more piece of the puzzle is right."

"Tell me about Moshiaka," grinned Shanoop.

"Well her name is Marguerite Weinstein, though she was born Mushka Weinstein. Her parents were and are Orthodox Jews, Chasidim which you do not have on this world. Their sect is Lubavitch also known as Chabad. Marguerite was born a wild AHP [alternate human phenotype] and her culture had a hard time handling it because her particular AHP can not reproduce. Women are meant to marry and have children in that culture. At eighteen Marguerite ran away from New York City to Syracuse and got the call to preach. She had dreams and visions. She wrote a testament.

"She became a renegade social preacher, teaching that others return to learning and faith and charity regardless of creed and that young people live together and look after each other rather than trying to go it alone and spend their money on status symbols. She gave a great sermon on a leather jacket being like a slave's chain. She also would protest Santa Claus in the mall and burned him in effigy one Christmas. She has done eight months in jail for trying to keep young people for registering for the military. Point Two-Five has a national service, not a military, draft by the way."

"Sounds like a typical social priest," sighed Shanoop. "Our type of world produces them."

"There's more," I said. "They are learning to call souls."

"Fuckity-fuck, fuck, fuck, how do you know?" asked Shanoop.

"Naama Roth, the Head Steward of Rose Among Thorns #2, that's the branch in Ithaca, has the capability. It's too wild to use right now and her health is fragile, but she's a Level 1A priest. I had the Iyomios start training her."

"You may really have something," answered Shanoop.

"Unfortunately, I've got something here too," Shanoop answered. "We've got peace with the Afriks to the South in Platta and Koemi. I was part of the negotiation team. They won't accept any one who wears a migna. Given their history I don't blame them. It's the Afrik who taught our kids to grovel by the way. Attawa don't do that."

Shanoop continued: "I leave this world and our negotiation team weakens. We get another war with the Afrik and there will be tons of Afrik dead and a ten percent interrogation failure rate. Oath and dedication, drops the rate of success for what a migna can do. By the way, if you know someone who can speak Chinese, we need an outrider in Platta to work with the huge Mer population. Mer can be very cold adapted and they interbreed so some of them can spend winter on land."

"Put a note on the comm list," I said.

"I've done that ten times. No one wants to touch this world with a ten foot pole due to the stinking Afrik. They're not stinking by the way, just strong and tough. Tell me, is it true Point Two-Five is Pavel D'Einhorn's home world?"

"Yes," I replied.

"If that world spawned Moshiaka, it would not be fair you know that?" claimed Shanoop.

"Who says the universe is fair," I answered.

Suffice it to say, I came back to Ithaca with just Margot. I may get Shanoop for a few weeks in Lame Deer but she is not going to work for me. I don't think Two-by-Two can ever be healed but let Shanoop try and let her train Indian kids in the gift of tongues. I go back to being short handed in Ithaca and waiting to see where Marguerite Weinstein's continuing story takes us all.

Luchi-Xara

Head Outrider for Point Two-Five

9 Water Street

Belle Shermaine

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

"She's not schizophrenic," Dr. Murray Kalish said as he sat in my living room. Saltie sat on the floor rocking and moaning.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Not enough history and from what you've told me, the migna is responsible for her symptoms. Since she was 'interrogated' more than a month ago, the DSMV IV says Saltie has a psychotic break. That means, this is temporary and will resolve if the medication works which it probably should. How much it will resolve is any one's guess, but with lucky she'll be able to start school here in the fall and start putting all this behind her with some counseling," Dr. Kalish glanced at me.

He was too smart NOT to figure out that you don't torture juniors and then put them in deep exile without good reason or unless you are crazed for vegnance.

"You want my take on why huh?" I asked.

"It might be helpful. I don't like to see children wantonly attacked and this one was."

"Well, they're beyond the reach of this world's law."

"You did them a favor."

"It had to be done right and humanely. If not me, someone worse would come along."

"That's called rationalizing, Ms. Zarrante."

"It's called being a pragmatist."

"So what about the child?"

"Saltie has had exposure to English and so too have her parents or adults who helped raise her before she got to the School of Many Tongues in Oniksi."

"You figured that out?"

"Quite easily. Salti is an Attawa name, but Saltie spells it with an 'e' at the end. That's the kind of corruption English speakers would use. I suspect there are some fairly powerful rogue priests among Saltie's clan and that they had something to do with Saltie's prolonged vision quest this spring."

"What could they do? Is this just a Two by Two matter?" asked Dr. Kalish who was now asking for Independent Rainbow which had once had relations with Two by Two.

"Who knows...When Saltie is ready to talk, she may talk. I'll try to make it worth her while to talk. I think that may be enough."

Luchi-Xara

Head Outrider for Point Two-Five

9 Water Street

Belle Shermaine

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five