'A better question is: how did he know how to look?'
I pursed my lips. Stared at the pipe for a long time, then slowly shook my head.
'No thanks.'
Clear head.
Know everything.
Cover the angles.
If my refusal constituted some big bloody cultural insult, or whatever, the old man gave no sign; shrugging good-naturedly and continuing to smoke himself.
Eventually, as the silence was killing me and the desire to blunder through to that kitchen and go crazy was starting to hotwire my muscles, he sighed through eddying clouds and said:
'My blood is not like yours.'
'Excuse me?'
'Blood, Englishman. Blood types. I assume you are normal? Type 'O'. Rhesus negative. Yes?'
It was fucking weird, I don't mind telling you; sitting there in that warm lodge with a genuinely creepy tribal mystic, listening to him go off on one about bloody pathology. Like a brontosaurus with an MP3 player.
'Well…' I said, a touch too sarcastic. 'You'll notice I'm technically alive..?'
'Mm.'
'Then obviously I'm O-neg… What the fuck is th-?'
'I, on the other hand, am not.'
He stared at me. His face was still. And in his eyes, oh fuck, I could see, I could just tell:
He wasn't lying.
'You're…? I don't underst…'
'Nor do we. Not fully. I tell you this because it will help you to understand why we have brought you here. We know you have desires of your own. Agendas. It is our hope that ours might briefly… compliment your own.'
I swallowed. My mouth suddenly felt dry.
'Tell me more. About the… about how come you're still alive.'
'I cannot. I do not understand such things. What I know is that of all my people alive before The Cull – my true people, stranger, by blood and birth – less than one half perished. Regardless of blood type.
'This, we hope, is welcome news to you.
'This, we hope, will give you some hope of your own.'
He knows.
The old bastard, he knows what I'm looking for…
But if he's right. If he's telling the truth, then couldn't it mean that – don't even THINK it! Don't even dare to hope – that there's a chance?
That I didn't come here for nothing?
I must have looked thunderstruck. Sitting there, mind back flipping. The Tadodaho was tactful enough to say nothing, watching my face, and when five old ladies magically appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, each bearing a wooden bowl, each bowl smelling like it'd come direct from an all-angels edition of Masterchef, even then my excitement at the feast couldn't quite sever my thoughts.
Some people. Some people lived through it, who shouldn't have.
Look at these folks.
Look at John-fucking-Paul.
Wasn't it possible?
I started eating like a man possessed, nodding thankfully to each woman as they delivered venison, sweet- potatoes, beans, sour-bread… In the confused fug of my thoughts – made sluggish by surprise and smoke – I noticed the last of the entourage wore flowing robes of a particularly vibrant red and had a cute little radio-mic clipped to what passed for her lapel. I squinted, trying to remember why this was significant, but couldn't. I thought the group might shuffle out of the room as they'd come in, but they gathered instead in a huddle of smiling faces and crinkled skin behind the Tadodaho, and stood there staring at me.
'The men of the Church,' the old man said, watching me eat, 'have their own interest in our survival.'
I scowled, wiping sauce off my chin. 'Why?'
'We don't know. All we understand is that their Collectors come to our lodges every day. In greater numbers. With guns and bikes and metal cords. Every day they come, every day they steal away our people.'
'They take your kids?'
'There are no children left to take, Stranger. They have… widened their attentions. Any Iroquois, by birth. Any redskin. Any who survived the Cull, who should not have.
'They are killing us, little by little, Englishman. And we would like your help.'
I stopped eating. I hadn't expected him to wrap-up so soon, and it felt like every eye in the room was boring into me.
Worse, the eyes shifted. Swirled. I shook my head to clear the sensation.
'And… and that's why you brought me here?' I mumbled, trying to stay focused. 'To help you beat-off the bastards?'
The room suddenly seemed far less angular. Tapestries became rocky walls. The steam from the kitchen was an underground river, spilling through sweaty caves.
'Sorry.' I said, shaken. 'My fight's not with the fucking Clergy. They got in my way, I took what I wanted. End… end of story.'
Somewhere, a million miles away, I felt the bowl fall from my hands and spill across my legs. I felt the room move sideways. I felt the skins drooping from the roof writhe and flex.
'We understand.' The Tadodaho said. 'We know. And do not think us so crude that we would attempt to convince you otherwise. You are a stubborn man, Stranger. We have always known it.'
'Then… thuh… then why… brng…me here…?'
Slurring.
Not good.
Something in the food.
Drugged.
Panic.
'I told you,' the old man's voice said, from far, far away. 'You are here to talk with the highest Authority within our Great Confederacy.'
'Buh… But…' Every word was a struggle. Every syllable a living beast that fluttered from my mouth and scuttled across the air, leaving trails of purple and green fire. 'But we bin… bin talking alrrrrrdy…'
Somewhere out in the soup of my senses, the Tadodaho's face coalesced.
'Not me.' He smiled. 'Not me.'
And then five shapes – five woman-faces that rippled like ploughed earth and swarmed with a host of stars and fireflies – bulged together around me, hooked soft fingers beneath the skin of my mind and dragged me down to the past.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They're watching me, but maybe there's not much I can do about that just now.
They're in every detail. Flaws, mainly. Like when you remember something with such crystal-clarity that you know every line, every shape, every resonance…
…and then you look up expecting to see London's grey skies, and there's a face looking down instead.
…and then you shake the blood off a knife, or finish retching with the force of your anger, and the droplets splattered on the floor form eyes, and stare right at you.
These memories, they're full of rage and violence and weirdness. And the thing with weirdness is, there's always room for more.
Things keep changing. Time keeps jumping. There's a roar in my ears like I'm underwater, but I'm not
