The Puppet Master

Generated Reality is gaining supporters in mainstream physics. In a decade or so there'll be a new model of reality to orient on, compelling enough and simple enough that it'll change how people look at things. And sooner or later it'll give rise to a psychology that'll compare to present-day psychology the way chemistry does to alchemy.'

He stopped then and picked up his last cookie.

I knew this wasn't just a pause. He'd finished. I ate my last cookie too, and finished my coffee. As far as I could see, I was done there.

13

MERLIN THE MAGICIAN

Before I could say anything about going home though, Tory invited us to stay for supper, and she seemed to mean it. Vic said they were having friends down from 'up on the Rim'—that's the Mogollon Rim, the rim of the Coconino Plateau—who looked forward to meeting us. It would have been rude to insist on leaving sooner, and besides, I could see that Tuuli wanted to stay. Really wanted to.

Then Vic asked if I'd care to take a hike around, and that seemed like a good way to use some of the time.

'You want to come?' I asked Tuuli.

Tory spoke before Tuuli could. 'I'd planned to show her some things around here.'

So Vic and I went alone, hiking a path that slanted up the canyon side to the top, stopping to rest when we needed to. A couple of times we passed what seemed to be pieces of airplane, and when we got to the top, sure as hell, there was a whole damned propellor stuck upright in the ground. When I asked about it, he said the plane had belonged to 'the Four,' and had blown up. I got a strange chill when he said it, and didn't ask for an explanation.

We sort of moseyed along up there in late-afternoon sunshine and a mild breeze. The temperature must have been about 75 degrees. We talked about everyday kinds of things. He asked about my family, and I got carried away. Told him about my dad having been Ojibwa County Sheriff for twenty-five years, and a deputy for ten years before that. That he'd married my mother when he was sixty-one, and they'd had Elvi and me. I also told him a couple of stories I'd heard of things dad had done as sheriff. I was still a preschooler when he'd retired.

Dad was a pretty remarkable man, born on a homestead in a Finlander colony in Upper Michigan, and went to work in the logging woods when he was fourteen, instead of going to high school. I didn't mention how he died though, how they both died. I'd learned years before that I couldn't trust myself not to break down. The last person I'd told was Tuuli, and I didn't tell her everything. My sister Elvi and my half brother Sulo did it for me.

Vic was from Texas; he could even talk Tex Mex. His dad had been an oil field worker, a roustabout, and Vic had too, after high school. Till he had enough money to start college, where he got his bachelor's in chemistry. He'd started on his master's in biochem, but washed out by getting a C in physical chemistry. He'd switched to science education then, to finish his degree, but taught only briefly before getting a job with Viggers.

While we walked, a Dodge Skytote came in from the northeast; its driver saw us and put down on the ridge. It had Diacono's Spirit Lodge painted on the side, in script resembling the Devanagari of India. A big, powerfully built guy got out, and a woman as good looking as it's possible to be at sixty. With them was what I took for a Hindu, small, hardly bigger than Tuuli, looking totally incongruous in Levi's, a chamois shirt, and a very large hat. I stood back and watched while all three of them, laughing, hugged and kissed Vic as if he were a favorite uncle they hadn't seen for years. My family had had a lot of affection among themselves, but its men didn't kiss each other, or their wives in front of anyone. I'd always felt uncomfortable, seeing men kiss each other, but for these people it seemed natural.

When the hugs had been distributed, Vic turned to me. 'Frank, Mikki, Bhiksu, I'd like you to meet Martti Seppanen, the visitor I told you about from L.A. Martti, this is Frank Diacono, and this pretty lady is his wife Mikki.' He chuckled. 'And this rawhide buckaroo is Bhiksu. Frank and Mikki and I are old friends from way back; Frank helped me debug the surprise generator, and Mikki saved his life on the lake ice. He'd been shot, and like to have froze unless he bled to death first. Bhiksu's an old friend too, who came to Arizona three years ago. Bhiksu's all the name he uses. I think he's on the run from somewhere.'

Something about Vic's monolog had made my head spin, but pressing the flesh cleared it. Frank Diacono's grip was as strong as mine, and his strength seemed to flow through it into me.

'Glad to know you, Frank,' I said. 'And Mikki. And Bhiksu.' It seemed to me I knew Diacono's face, and his wiry hair, half gray now. Knew it from when he was younger and I was a kid. The name rang a bell, too. It would come to me.

Then we all got in the Skytote and floated down to the house. As soon as I got out, I could hear two women laughing in the kitchen, and for a minute thought someone else had arrived while we were gone. It turned out to be just Tory and Tuuli; I'd never heard Tuuli laugh like that before, or look so beautiful.

Supper was a ranch-style meal: steak, chili, and coffee, plus a salad with boiled eggs and home-sliced cheese on top of lettuce and slices of cucumber and tomato. There wasn't any dessert, but when we went to the living room afterward, there was a tray of brownies, and two battery-powered thermal coffee pitchers to supplement the pot.

I really can't tell you what was talked about. I started feeling groggy early on, a grogginess I decided later was protection against mental or psychic overload. Tuuli, though, was taking it all in. I have a sort of vision of her there, laughing and lovely, her tan cheeks with a pink underglow. Before I conked out entirely, I was in a sort of weird falling-asleep state, with Bhiksu seeming to float in the air, glowing a violet blue. That was the last I remember until I woke up in darkness, having to use the hyysikaa, the bathroom. It was half past one, and the house was quiet. The only light came from the bathroom door, standing slightly ajar down the hall. When I was done and came back out, there was Vic, sitting in the wicker rocker, almost invisible in the dimness. I wondered if he'd been there all along.

He stood up, and without saying anything, beckoned. I didn't know what else to do, so I followed him down the hall to a corner room. He opened the heavy wooden door and closed it behind us.

It was an ordinary, if undersized, bedroom with no bed, only two kneeling chairs, well upholstered. He gestured at one, and I knelt-sat down on it. He sat down facing me about six feet away, and spoke. 'Remember I said we had something to give you?'

'Yeah.'

'Tory gave Tuuli hers while you and I were up the hill.'

I nodded. Something had happened, that I knew.