When I told Chirag and Annie about my dream, Chirag was quiet for a bit. Then he said:
“Do you think it was Bhimu?”
I was surprised. Bhimu, calling me in a dream! Chirag looked embarrassed, then admitted he has had recurring dreams that Bhimu is calling him. In the dreams he is wandering through mountains and deserts, following her voice, convinced she will lead him to you. When he is awake he thinks of her lying in pieces deep inside some forest, her bioware torn apart.
“Just as likely,” Annie says, “that she is growing up somewhere in the hills, or in a desert among nomads, perfectly safe.” We have been waiting, listening for Bhimu, all these years.
Some weeks ago, Annie and I had made up a story about Dusty Woman writing in dust on the canyon walls—Shikastan graffiti. Recently we have been seeing dust patterns, both dynamic and stationary, that seem to be telling us something. I know humans can deceive themselves—hubris is powerful. So I learn humility; as the indigenous peoples have always known, humility before Nature tempers our delusions. We junglees don’t have a word for Nature—that is a foreign word, a separation word. But you know what I mean.
What is Shiprock Canyon telling us? Its shapes and passageways, its corridors and caves are all mapped now, and we are getting a sense of how strongly the winds blow over it, and the thin vortices that form in certain areas. There are dust ripples like writing on sloping walls, what Chirag calls “the calligraphy of the wind.” This inorganic material cannot by itself be alive.
Avi has also been doing flybys. He will rise suddenly over the canyon, turning slowly, scanning and sensing the magnetic fields, wind speed, visibility. I have realized that he has been increasing the range with each flyby, mapping the larger terrain within which Shiprock Canyon is embedded. And the data he’s collecting—if we are right—could mean something spectacular.
Saguaro lived deep beneath the canyon, in the darkest places. He was slow, sleepy with the years. Time flowed for him like cooling lava. He could not see, but he had visions. He sensed rivers and pools of fire, and the deadly cold beyond. The heat below and the cold above fed his body, which was shot through with long cables of exobacteria, sipping electrons and passing them along. The passageways in which he lay had been shaped by magnetism and geological forces, so the biocables that were artery and vein, nerve and sinew for him, were likewise arranged in response to the ambient magnetism. He lay and dreamed.
Annie:
What we are beginning to notice is that superimposed on top of the ambient magnetism are smaller-scale variations, like signals riding a radio wave. Where are those variations coming from? Here, up high on the great terminator ridge, the subsurface temperature is too low for rocks to melt, and it is too far for the dense, ionized heavy metals to extend from the planet’s core. We expect spatial variations due to the way magnetic ore is distributed, but we don’t expect the magnetic field to vary in time so delicately. It’s as though there are magnetic beasts in the subterranean caverns and passageways of Shiprock Canyon that, through their movements, create these fine magnetic signatures, ever-changing with time. The response of the magnetic dust is consistent with this hypothesis. So Dusty Woman twirls, the wind dies down suddenly and the dust, for a fraction of a second, changes pattern in a way inconsistent with the fluid dynamics. Now that we are thinking along these lines, we can see in Avi’s data the gap between the observed motion of the dust and what we’d expect with only the wind and the ambient magnetic fields as factors.
Maybe Saguaro, or something like it, really does exist in the depths of the canyon. I can’t avoid thinking that Dusty Woman is not merely a dust devil. We’re going a little nuts, I think.
Amid all the excitement we are trying something new. Outside the mission room is a small patch of arid scrubland dotted with acacia trees. It slopes up to the observation post on top, where there’s a sentry. But on the way up there is a side path into a bunch of trees. It leads to a small clearing, ringed by large boulders. Rainwater forms a small pool here, and the trees are hung with the woven nests of baya weaver birds. This is a nice little place to sit. You can barely see the city spread out below us, due to the haze. The air is warm and thick, and the little birds sing and dart about. An ecologically impoverished place, but one where we can practice the idea of radical immersion.
Chirag has the greatest difficulty with this. He is not used to sitting still; he says it makes him nervous. Chirag is letting his determination get in the way—have you ever seen anyone pushing themselves to relax? But he’ll get there, once he stops trying so hard. As for me, all I have to do is to hold my corn pollen bag in my hand, and take myself back home in my memory. I hear the singing, I smell the corn. I see the dancers, feel their rhythms in my bones. Uncle Joe’s voice in the background, deep and slow. As I breathe myself into receptivity, I become aware of the world around me—there’s a flash of bright yellow, a little male weaver bird darts from the top of a rock to the hanging nest, an insect in his beak. There’s the water gleaming, a muddy brown in the afternoon light. A ripple breaks the surface; a tiny frog, whose pale throat goes
