'Stone attacked a messenger of the gods. Bad move.'
'So what's our move?'
'Begin a Summoning. When a chameleon appears, give gifts. That'll put you in square with the gods.'
Bishop lingered back as the Adventurers gathered to begin the ceremony. Almost accidentally, he wound up next to Griffin again.
Strangely, Bishop seemed smaller than before. Was he slumping a little? A little tired and maybe worried? Suddenly Griffin saw Bishop as a Gamer-King of the Gamers, perhaps. Capable of projecting enormous self- assurance, but under pressure, that veneer could crack. Had it?
The sky rumbled, and the chameleon appeared. The Adventurers backed away to give it room to land.
Bishop straightened up, jaunty and invincible as ever. 'What are you looking at, Bobo? Hadn't you better help your masters?'
Griffin tensed with anger, and then relaxed. Suddenly Bishop seemed entirely human-sized. A nervous Gamer, losing his Game in front of ten million viewers. The mingled sensations of relief and contempt washed over him
And then receded.
For just an instant, half a heartbeat, Bishop had been watching him, appraisingly. Wondering which mask Griffin would accept?
One by one, gifts were placed on the bulbous tip of the chameleon's sticky tongue.
'They're doing fine by themselves,' Griffin said. The hairs at the back of his neck crawled with alarm. What was he sensing? A shell of bravado, around a shell of insecurity, around what?
I should yank your ass out of this Game, Griffin swore silently. But I don 't have justification. Maybe I just don't like you. God knows if I yanked you, you could claim I did it out of sexual jealousy, and cause a stink.
So I'll watch. And wait.
The remaining Trogs crouched in a thicket of potted banana trees. Tammi and Mouser crowded close, blocking the view of any observer. 'Bishop's off talking to Bobo the Second,' Tammi said.
Twan nodded. She produced a palm-sized mirror. She made a mystic gesture.
Appelion lay in a double-shelled resurrection coffin. Tendrils of superchilled nitrogen fog writhed around him. His eyes were closed. His face was pale, the cheeks pink with rouge and dusted in frost.
'Ah, he looks so natural,' said Mouser.
Twan said, 'To wake the dead requires great power.'
With eyes still closed, Appelion said, in a wintry, whispering voice like the wind from a great, dark cave, 'Greater power yet, to put the dead to sleep. Be sure of your power.'
'Wake, Appelion.'
The eyes opened. 'Even the patience of the dead has limits.'
'It's been an active Game.'
'I have seen.'
'Have the Masters of the Great Game aught to tell us?'
'Seek the waters above and below.'
'We thank-'
'That's from them. This is from me, so listen up.' He still lay dead, his lips barely moving beneath his bushy black beard. 'There's a book, The Sirius Mystery, by… somebody Church. No, Temple, dammit. Robert Temple. The basic idea is Chariots of the Gods with better logic and better evidence. Have you time to hear?'
'We'll make time.'
'There's a tribe in Mali, the Dogon, who know far too much about Sirius. They know it's a double star. They know Sirius B is tiny and very dense-'
'What?'
'They put Sirius B, the white dwarf, in a fifty-year elliptical orbit with Sirius A at one focus. How does an African tribe come to know about a completely invisible white dwarf star? And Kepler orbits?'
'Is this for real?'
'Temple believed so, and did his research well. He tracked these legends back to ancient Egypt, and Sumer, and all over the Mediterranean basin. Does any of this sound familiar?'
Mouser and Tammi looked blank. Twan said, ' 'California Voodoo', in the notes. They mentioned a recurrence of the number fifty in Egyptian legends.'
'Egyptians?' Mouser was puzzled. 'What does that have to do with voodoo?'
'Remember to be literal, Voodoo is fragments of African religion, filtered through other beliefs. Fragments, dammit. What was the reality? If a people without a written language played 'Telephone' with a bizarre occurrence ten thousand years old, and the result was the hundred different threads of voodoo, santeria, Palo Mayombe, whatever, what was the original event?'
Twan nodded, one jerk of her head. 'Go on, Brother. '
The dead man said, 'According to Dogon legends, knowledge was given to men by aliens from outer space. The Dogon called them Nommo. The knowledge givers apparently never claimed to be gods. They're given as benevolent and butt-ugly. And aquatic. They sound alien, don't they?'
'Nommo,' Twan murmured.
'Did you notice the headdresses in the Mami Wata ceremony, just before Clavell chopped me open? Ridiculous little fish tails sticking out the back. The Nommo have dominion over water and the ocean, like Poseidon, like the Sumerian god called Wannis, spelled O-A-double-N-E-S. That fifty-year orbit wound up in a lot of legends, not just the Dogon calendar. Fifty Argonauts, fifty dragon's teeth and fifty of Mamissa Kokoe's natives involved in the Mami Wata ceremony on the roof. I counted.'
Tammi glowed. 'Damned good, Appelion. Cipher couldn't have topped that. What does it do for us?'
'I'm not sure… The involvement with Egypt is very old. Remember the pyramid on the roof?'
'Yeah.' Mouser had caught Twan's excitement, was vibrating like a little top. 'I thought it was part of the air-conditioning system or something. I want a look.'
'Corrinda disappeared during Mami Wata. You know, Thief, bad knee, with Panthesilea? Maybe she got a closer look. Watch her. Watch for pyramids and pyramid power. Watch for the number fifty. Temple published a Dogon sketch of a spacecraft with a rotating rim, 'wheel within a wheel,' but it looked to me like some savage tried to draw a helicopter. There was a lander, maybe: cross-sections of needle-nosed spacecraft with interior detail, but they're obelisk-shaped, so look for obelisks, too.'
Twan said, 'That's a lot.'
'Yeah, and no guarantees. But it's the only place I've ever seen a word like 'Nommo' and I'm out of ideas,' Appelion said.
'Then go to your well-earned rest, Warrior.'
The chameleon's mouth opened, and its tongue flashed out. Stuck to its tip was a staff, a miniature of the nail-studded column in the town square. He presented it to Acacia.
Captain Cipher inspected it without touching it. 'This must be the Staff of Oranyan. This,' he said, voice filled with awe, 'this is serious power.'
Twan was watching. Behind her impassive expression, she was exploding with excitement. You're wrong, Cipher, she thought. The Staff of Orarryan is just another bauble. Knowledge is power.
21
Dr. Norman Vail was a man of singular talent and many responsibilities. Other employees sometimes found him intimidating, but no one had seriously suggested that he be replaced in his psychiatric capacity.
The bottom line was that Vail could get things done.
He was wondering why Thaddeus Harmony had ordered him to drop his other projects, to sift through the life of Sharon Crayne, the late love interest of his friend, Alex Griffin. He believed Harmony intended no more than a placebo effort for Alex's benefit.
