“We have to be going,” Highhawk said. “Well,” Dr. Hartman said. “I hope you’re en joying your visit, Mr. Chee. Is Mr. Highhawk showing you everything you want to see?”
This seemed to be an opportunity. “I wanted to see this,” Chee said, indicating the Night Chant and the world of masks around it. “And I was hoping to see that Tano War God that I’ve heard about. I heard somewhere that someone at the Pueblo was hoping to get that back, too.”
Dr. Hartman’s expression was doubtful. “I haven’t heard of that,” she said, frowning. She looked at Highhawk. “A Tano fetish. Do you know anything about that? Which fetish would they mean?”
Highhawk glanced from Dr. Hartman to Chee. He hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“I guess you could look it up in the inventory,” she said.
Highhawk was looking at Chee, examining him. “Why not?” he said. “If you want to.”
They went up the staff elevator to the sixth floor, to Highhawk’s airless cubicle of an office. He punched the proper information into his computer terminal and received, in return, a jumble of numbers and letters.
“This tells us the hallway, the room, the corridor in the room, the shelf in the corridor, and the number of the bin it’s in,” Highhawk said. He punched another set of keys and waited.
“Now it tells us that it is out of inventory and being worked on. Or something.”
He turned off the computer, glanced at Chee, looked thoughtful.
He knows where it is, Chee thought. He knew from the beginning. He’s deciding whether to tell me.
“It should be in the conservation lab,” Highhawk said. “Let’s go take a look.”
The telephone rang.
Highhawk looked at it, and at Chee.
It rang again. Highhawk picked it up. “Highhawk,” he said.
And then: “I can’t right now. I have a guest.”
He listened, glanced at Chee. “No, I couldn’t make the damn thing work,” Highhawk said. “I’m no good with that stuff.” He listened.
“I tried that. It didn’t turn on.” Listened again. “Look. You’re coming down anyway. I’ll leave it for you to fix.” Listened. “No. That’s a little early. Too much traffic then.” And finally: “Make it nine thirty then. And remember it’s the Twelfth Street entrance.”
Highhawk listened, and hung up.
“Let’s go,” he said to Chee.
Highhawk made his limping way down a seemingly endless corridor. It was lined on both sides with higher- than-head stacks of wooden cases. The cases were numbered. Some were sealed with paper stickers. Most wore tags reading CAUTION: INVENTORIED MATERIALS or CAUTION: UNINVENTORIED MATERIALS.
“What’s in all this?” Chee asked, waving.
“You name it,” Highhawk said. “I think in here it’s mostly early agricultural stuff. Tools, churns, hoes, you know. Up ahead we have bones.”
“The skeletons you wanted returned?”
“
“Wow,” Chee said. He would have guessed maybe four or five hundred.
“How about white skeletons?”
“Maybe twenty thousand black, white, and so forth,” Highhawk said. “But since the white-eyes outnumber the redskins in this country about two hundred to one, to reach parity I have to dig up three-point-six million white skeletons and stack them in here. That is, if the scientists are really into studying old bones—which I doubt.”
Old bones was not a subject which appealed to Chee’s traditional Navajo nature. Corpses were not a subject for polite discussion. The knowledge that he was sharing a corridor with thousands of the dead made Chee uneasy. He wanted to change the subject. He wanted to ask Highhawk about the telephone conversation. What was he trying to fix? What was it that wouldn’t turn on? Who was he meeting at nine thirty? But it was none of his business and Highhawk would tell him so or evade the question.
“Why the seals?” he asked instead, pointing.
Highhawk laughed. “The Republicans used the main gallery for their big inaugural ball,” Highhawk said. “About a thousand Secret Service and FBI types came swarming in here in advance to make sure of security.” The memory had converted Highhawk’s bitterness to high good humor. His laugh turned into a chortle.
“They’d unlock each case, poke around inside to make sure Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t hiding in there, and then lock it up again and stick on the seal so nobody could sneak in later.”
“My God,” Chee exclaimed, struck by a sudden thought. “How many keys would it take to unlock all of these?”
Highhawk laughed. “You’re not dealing with the world’s heaviest key ring here,” he said. “Just one key, or rather copies of the same key, fits all these box locks. They’re not intended to keep people from stealing stuff. Who’d want to steal a section of a Civil War rowboat, for example? It’s to help with inventory control. You want in one of these cases, you go to the appropriate office and get the key off a hook by the desk and sign for it. Anyway, it all worried the Secret Service to death. About eighty million artifacts in this building, and maybe a hundred thousand of them could be used to kill somebody. So they wanted everything tied down.”
“I guess it worked. Nobody got shot.”
