Chapter 15 ~ Back From Making Waves
A Tale of Two Times: Volume 4
~ 1 ~ “We’re a marvel together, Ricardo my love!”
Rhoda and her betrothed were taking a few minutes to speak privately together after the Greased Lightning had resumed normal flight. The aircraft was gliding slowly now, fifty feet above the runway.
Her face was flushed; her light-brown eyes sparkled with exhilaration. “Inverting through your wave Persona absolutely thrilled me!”
Ricardo smiled at her. “Rhoda, honey, I think your wind Persona may have given me even more of a thrill.”
“Ricardo, I think our Makers' work today has proved that all of the Powers recognize our Headship. What do you think?”
“I hadn’t thought of it until this moment, sweetheart. I was thinking that we’ve satisfied the Design requirement for the nuclear Device I’m fabricating, because now the principal nations have skin in our game. But I do see what you mean about the Powers recognizing our Headship. …You do realize that we couldn’t have done it without using the primordial Nahuatl art of commanding the weather by influencing the sun’s power over it?”
“Of course, and I’m grateful that you’ve made a study of it. It coordinated perfectly with the enlarged Persona art that I’ve received from Ottilie, so that our waves and wind expressed gloriously the storm Thing Living that we were! Oh, what wild love! Praise be to God!”
The Greased Lightning rolled smoothly into its Ontario hangar. The hangar doors closed silently, leaving the dark night undisturbed. The almost perfectly silent landing had been unobserved by the air traffic controller, and the lights in the hangar had come on only after the aircraft was secure behind its closed doors. Rhoda and Ricardo exited the aircraft quickly, leaving it to Wilson and his crew, and went straight to the restrooms and showers.
After showering, Ricardo climbed into one of the bunks in the men's locker room and slept for eight hours. He awoke around noon, feeling very hungry.
Rhoda had not slept until after conferring with Wilson about the Lightning’s condition and giving him instructions for some modifications to it. She woke an hour after Ricardo had risen, and soon found him working with Wilson and his crew.
Ricardo was still wearing the clothes that he had worn while assisting General LeMay in delivering Praskovya and her five atomic bombs to Basil's ship. Fortunately, he had carried with him a change of underwear. Rhoda had been better prepared, and she was now smartly dressed in the style of a successful young California realtor.
Ricardo brushed the dust from his clothes and kissed Rhoda, using restraint before the eyes of the flight crew. Although they had heard about the betrothal of Rhoda and Ricardo, they were startled by Miss Knox’s willing and tender response to Ricardo’s public kiss—even more startled than they had been by the news that she and Ricardo were now Heads of the Clan and of the War Thing. That kiss revealed Ricardo to the flight crew’s Guild eyes as a person just as formidable as Rhoda. Wilson, however, had seen for years that Ricardo was far more than simply another promising young man of the Guild.
To Wilson, Rhoda said, "I have to steal Ricardo away from you now. I'm glad to see that he's useful here, but he has to apply for a position at New City University in order to earn his living. I'll be back this evening for the Lightning."
On their way out of the hangar, Rhoda and Ricardo stopped briefly in Rhoda's office to pick up a suitcase packed for Ricardo by his mother, Xochitl, at Rhoda’s request. Rhoda had told him,“She went to your apartment to get your things, and she added a few other items that she knew you'd need. Ricardo, honey, I love my future mother-in-law so much, I wish you and I were married already. I know you’ll love Victoria, too. Xochitl also brought along this briefcase that I’ve made for you, containing some Nahuatl work to impress Dr. Steuben with. And, I’ve made you a new and much better leather jacket. Try it on, so I can see you in it."
Amused and pleased, Ricardo removed his old jacket and pulled on the new one. In the past few years, he had become comfortably accustomed to the life of a bachelor, but now, as he donned the new jacket, he saw his former life vanish. He became willingly, deeply allied with the three women believed by him to be the most remarkable in the world. What will our daughter be like?!
Feeling himself embraced in luxurious comfort by the jacket, he thanked Rhoda by embracing her far more passionately than he had before the eyes of her flight crew. Rhoda broke it off with a playful little shove. "Honey, we have places to go and things to do before this day is done, and you must be as hungry as I am. I’ll drive us to Antonia's Hacienda for lunch, because we’ve got business to talk over with Antonia and Leo. Then Leo will take you to the campus. You’ll like him. At the end of the day, Leo will take you to the special new home I’ve discovered for you, where a new car is waiting for you; it’s a gift from Daddy.”
"The sooner we eat the better, Rhoda.” Ricardo’s endearing smile was the one reserved for her alone as he exclaimed, “Being a storm is demanding work!” He picked up the two new cases and they left the hangar.
On their way to Antonia’s, Ricardo said, "You know, Rhoda, your Ghia feels a little like the Lightning or the Bush Hopper. Does it fly, too?"
"No, of course not. But it can’t be shoved off the road.”
"May I read its Design as the brainchild of your fertile mind?"
"Please do." Rhoda flashed him a quick, appreciative smile.
Ricardo curved one hand around the back of Rhoda's neck under her hair, and set his other hand on the car's dashboard. Then he cast a Thing Living around both of them and the vehicle.
They were silent for several minutes in the quiet, smoothly running automobile. Softly, then, Ricardo began to chant in Nahuatl, his voice deep and thrilling:
"Within the wings of the eagle
Her warriors lie hidden,
Refreshed by the birds' song and the scent of golden flowers;
They have waited unwearied for these long ages,
For the moment the Giver Of Life offers.
For the moment when the strong, wearied hearts,
If they prove true,
May rejoice in victory."
Rhoda closed her eyes, continuing to drive with open-eyed skill while she chanted:
"Above the tall grass,
Darting dragonflies snap
The gnat’s dark spirits,
Clearing the Airs of their dark cloud.
How quick! How hungry!
The swallows join their ranks,
In the Strife of Lights,
Chirping merrily in the deadly song."
Then together they chanted:
”How will we cross so vast a plain of battle?
To behold again our faces and hearts
In the sparkling glade,
When down the foe is cast?"
After that they said nothing for a long time. Then Ricardo said, "Rhoda, I really must master, in reality and in struggle, the poetry of our song. Our War Thing is like a mountain that we’re climbing, and you’re always ahead of me on the climb. Whenever I reach the point where I’ve most recently seen you, you’re already far ahead of me. At each of those points, I see a lot more around me than I’d seen before, but we’re never together at the summit, sharing the same view."
Rhoda took his hand, continuing to steer one-handed. “Ricardo, I was born into the War Thing, so it’s been necessary that I be the one to lead us on the way that we’ve come so far. I’ve called you into it, and for my sake you’ve come. I know for certain that without you I’d have failed already, and that you’re quickly catching up to me. Today, I’m confident that you’ll obtain a foothold in the Keep of the Foe, which is something I’m not able to do, and then you’ll have nearly caught up.”
In the parking lot at Antonia’s they walked slowly away from Rhoda’s Karmann Ghia, holding hands. "I want to thank you again, sweetheart,” said Ricardo, “for my fine new jacket. I can feel the virtue of Goth armor in it, and a touch of your Persona. That's why it feels so comfortable, isn’t it?”
"It’s made to help me keep you better, my love. If you take up seriously with another woman, it just might burst into flames!” Rhoda’s playful grin quickly faded. “But it will enable you to cast your charms as effectively as possible, and I sense that you’ll have to do that this afternoon."
Ricardo slipped his hand again beneath her luxuriant hair, caressing the back of her neck, and kissed her sweetly and deeply.
Leo had been watching for their arrival. Antonia had told him that there was time for only a brief lunch, at which he would meet Ricardo before taking him to New City University and showing him the way to Steuben's office. Leo was to keep an eye on things until Ricardo's adventure there was over. Then, if they were both still alive, they were to drive to Ricardo’s new residence, where his new car—a New Sarxx roadster—awaited him. Antonia and Yohanna would meet them there, where the four of them would have much to discuss. Rhoda would have left by then, having met with Antonia and Yohanna after lunch for the three of them to catch up on each other’s recent activities.
From a window, Leo watched the young lovers for a minute. Then he went to find Antonia, who was helping with the restaurant’s noontime crowd. "Rhoda and Ricardo are here. Now I know what Ricardo looks like, and: Wow! The way he treated Rhoda could have cost any other man his life! Yohanna told me that Rhoda carries a dagger, like Ottilie and Thersa, and that she’s even more skillful with it than they were. No wonder I’m always apprehensive when I’m near her."
Antonia asked teasingly, ”So, love, you believe everything you’ve heard in those Clan history readings?"
Leo looked at her seriously. “Sweetheart, on the morning after I talked with Dominick Mazzatelli at my place, I experienced a True Vision of Thersa. It was like Isabel’s, but in my Vision Thersa wasn’t just hunting game. I saw her kill five men. I knew somehow that they were barbarian chiefs who had joined forces to sack her camp. I’ve seen live action, honey, but I've never before seen such calculated and effective savagery—and she did it all with her dagger. She went out alone to meet them, and the chieftains converged on her. She pulled out her dagger so fast I couldn’t see it happen, and their heads were on the ground before their bodies were spurting blood. Suddenly, she was hurtling the heads at the chieftains’ men! And she shouted a curse at them that worked immediately: Each man that was hit by a chieftain’s head screamed in horrible agony and died. And every man that was touched by one of those men staggered and fell, too. Then all the rest of the band turned and ran, with Thersa’s camp guards chasing them.”
“Well then, Leo, you’d better be on your best behavior with Ricardo; just show him around the campus and get him to Steuben’s office.” Antonia kissed him quickly and led him by the hand to greet Rhoda and Ricardo as they entered her Hacienda restaurant.
~ 2 ~ When Ricardo entered Steuben’s outer office, Wanda was working at the file cabinets against the office’s back wall, with her back to the door. She pretended not to notice him, having seen only a student from the corner of her eye. Ricardo said nothing, so she continued with the job for a few more minutes.
She was nearly finished when she began to wonder why the dogs had neither snarled nor barked. They had been trained to bark sharply whenever anyone entered—anyone except for Steuben and the one whom she thought of as “that horrible man, Cherokee”. Wanda was unable to prevent herself from imagining Cherokee as a serial killer; but the man had been there at New City University, or in that Keep, longer than she had been there. The dogs were a 'gift' from Cherokee to Steuben, and she was obliged to cope with them every day.
Dr. Kane was the one other person at whom the dogs never barked. Dr. Kane was Director of the Keep, into which Dr. Steuben's Institute was being re-located—to quarters which were larger and much finer than its old ones. Could it be that Dr. Kane was the one so quietly waiting for her? If he had come from the gym, his appearance might have caused her quick glance to identify him as a student. Kane was a very important person. He was the local representative of the Arch Company, from which came the land and the major endowment for New City University. Oh, dear!
After quickly closing the last file drawer, Wanda turned slowly, pretending to be reading a letter, while preparing to feign surprise. To the scene before her, she reacted with true surprise! A young man was squatting easily before the guard dogs, his hands on their heads, engaging in silent conversation with them. The dogs were staring at him while his eyes moved back and forth between them. He was taming the vicious creatures!
His taming of the dogs amazed Wanda, but the young man himself simply stunned her: He was the most gorgeous man ever seen by her eyes! He was wearing work boots, jeans, and a soft yellow teeshirt under a light leather jacket. The condition of his clothes suggested that he had come directly from performing some physical labor. His muscular body had the natural beauty developed by useful work; it was fresh from the hand of God. Watching him rise easily to his feet to greet her, Wanda knew that she had never seen a man of greater, more supple strength. In his beautiful masculine face she saw radiant, unselfconscious mirth and a friendly personal interest in her.
“Miss Wanda Stuart, Dr. Steuben’s secretary?” Although her name was engraved on a nameplate on her desk, this was the first time that anyone had ever bothered to address her by it.
“Yes, I’m Miss Stuart.” By speaking her name, he had made her feel again like the Miss Wanda Stuart that she had been—before becoming Reginald Steuben’s mistress and receiving her reward of a secretarial position at the top of the pay scale. The young man had caused her to feel good again about herself after…how long?
Had this young man asked her to go away with him on his motorcycle, she would have replied in a breath, ’Yes; now!’ and never returned to Steuben and his intrigues. She would have jumped onto the back of his motorcycle and wrapped her arms around his waist, and they would have gone speeding over mountains and deserts for ever and ever… His god-like face, his beard and his slightly disheveled black hair had suggested to her the motorcycle. Now it seemed that his face was becoming the face of her brother in the happy family that she had never known, but which belonged to her forever…
Wanda shook her head. Had she just now come to her senses? Or had she lost them?
“Miss Stuart, I’ve dropped by here hoping to find Dr. Steuben in, and available to talk with me.”
“Dr. Steuben is occupied at the moment; he has special hours available for students…” Wanda was struggling in the effort to maintain her sophisticated secretary’s manner.
“Oh, I’m not a student here. I look like one because I've been helping a friend in moving his stuff. The moving project has brought me near New City University, and I've heard that Dr. Steuben is not overly formal so I’ve taken the opportunity to drop by his office. I understand that there is a position open in Dr. Steuben’s new Institute, for a curator of ancient American manuscripts. I wish to offer him my services in that position.”
Wanda blinked. The young man hardly appeared to be one of Dr. Steuben's scholarly cronies. Her heart was still beating rapidly.
Since the Institute had opened, it had dealt with a swarm of walk-ins attempting to sell phony ancient Nahuatl codices. The young man just couldn't be one of those—could he? With secretarial coolness she asked, “Do you have Nahuatl codices?”
“Oh, yes. My family has a vast collection, of course.”
Wanda’s heart sank. “Of course. How much are you asking for them?”
The gorgeous man smiled, appearing to take her question as a jest. “They are priceless. They are the records of our ancestors’ culture, which we have maintained—minus the human sacrifices—as a living tradition for centuries. I’m hoping that the Institute is sufficiently secure and is modern enough in its handling of documents, that we can make some of the codices available to the larger community of competent scholarship. That is an aspect of my services that I wish to discuss with Dr. Steuben.”
The sinking of Wanda’s heart lurched to a halt. She wanted to believe him.
“Surely there are expenses involved in transporting a number of these codices; some of them are quite delicate,” she said, looking again into his face. Wanda had raised the issue of costs in an attempt to test the man’s true motives. Then she spotted an object which her visitor had set down on a waiting-room chair: The expensive-looking leather briefcase was beautifully handmade, the work of a master craftsman. Its upper half was crafted of finely-woven leather strips.
Leatherwork was a favorite hobby of Wanda’s, and she had recently completed a major project—a saddle. She lived with her mother on a small ranch bordering the local national forest, where they rode their horses on a little-used system of trails which was only miles away from millions of people.
Cutting off any attempt by Ricardo to respond, she exclaimed, “That’s a beautiful briefcase! Who made it?”
Ricardo picked it up and offered it to her to examine. “Miss Stuart, I’m very pleased by your appreciation of this work by my dear friend. Forgive me for not having introduced myself; here is my card. I am Ricardo Hernandez y Chavez.”
Wanda glanced at the card while she was returning the briefcase to him, and she saw two addresses printed on it, one in San Antonio and the other in Mexico City. She remembered typing a certain letter for Dr. Steuben, about which he had been anxious and fussy. “Please excuse me for a moment, Señor Chavez. I will see if Dr. Steuben is free.” Instinctively, she had replied in Spanish.
Wanda picked up her office telephone and turned away from Señor Chavez. Speaking quietly and with deliberate slowness, she said, “Reginald.”
The answering voice sounded highly annoyed: “What is it? I’m tied up. Send them away!”
“Reginald.”
“Good grief, don't call me that here!”
“Reginald.” Wanda heard Arlo’s voice in the background saying, ‘Listen to the Oracle; she is speaking your name.’
“Reginald.”
“Yes?”
“The meeting has come that you were despairing of—with the Chavez family.”
“They sent a representative?”
“No. I think he’s the scholar they say is the scion of the family.”
“I’ll come to the door.”
“Be prepared. He wants to offer you his services.”
Dr. Steuben quickly ushered Ricardo Hernandez y Chavez—steel-toed boots and all—into his office. Wanda swiveled in her chair to face Steuben’s closed door, her dangling hand scratching the head of a dog who had presented it to her accommodatingly. …What?! She had never before touched either of the vicious dogs, but now they were behaving not at all viciously! The second dog was sitting on his haunches at her other side awaiting his turn for her affection. Both dogs lovingly brushed against her legs as she walked over to the water cooler outside Steuben’s office door. She pressed her ear against the crack between door and frame, hearing a sound that no one had ever before heard from Steuben’s office: genuine laughter.
~ 3 ~ “Dr. Schooner, I must inform you that Dr. Steuben has selected, for his resident assistant director, an unknown, non-university man. He is Dr. Ricardo Chavez, who is said to be an expert on Aztec and other related Native American codices, and their history and literature. I myself,” said Mortimer Kane, “have dabbled in these, as they relate to my interest in Aztec gold and in some old European documents bound up with the gold, which were brought to Europe by some early adventurers. It is known that the Chavez family does possess a collection of Nahuatl codices. To my knowledge, Dr. Chavez has published nothing, and I suspect that Steuben has chosen him because he wants to build rapport with the family in order to obtain their codices. I have no desire to meet Dr. Chavez, who is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Offer him a tour of the Keep and observe him carefully.”
“Dr. Ricardo Chavez, I am pleased to meet you.” Dr. Herbert Schooner, Jr, general manager of the Keep’s Institute, had walked through the open doorway into Ricardo’s new office. “Dr. Steuben has informed us that he regards you as his new right-hand man in his Institute.”
Ricardo rose to his feet and turned away from the box that he had been unpacking. He greeted Herbert Schooner with a hearty handshake. “I’m pleased to meet you, Dr. Schooner; just call me Ricardo.”
“Ricardo, everyone calls me Herbert.”
“So, you’ve fought off the nickname, ‘Herbie’. I’ve succeeded in fending off ‘Ricky’, too.” Ricardo smiled, releasing Schooner’s hand from his firm grip.
Ricardo heard in his head, through the Shade Teller under his shirt, Yohanna’s voice saying, “Yes, Ricardo, this man is a Shade, just as you had thought. It is likely that he is the same Herbert Schooner as the one about whom we have heard in Ottilie’s War Thing.”
Schooner was unable to detect a Mexican accent in Ricardo’s speech. He was struck by the man’s athletic appearance.
“Herbert, it’s very generous of Dr. Steuben to call me his right-hand man. I think he must be referring to our common literary interests, not to my unproven management skills in his organization. If you can take time to show me around your marvelous structure, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
“A tour is exactly what I had intended to offer you. I understand that you have just arrived here in the Keep."
"Yes; I’ve been here for less than an hour. Reginald has given me a tour of the campus, but we only poked our heads into this section here, because there is as yet no staff and the shelves are empty. I saw that he regards his space in your Keep as the farthest reach of his University. He said, ‘Everything else in here is the Keep. It’s a vast hidden place.’ Naturally, I’m very curious about it.”
“We have a similar view of things, Ricardo. For those of us who work here, the campus seems remote from the Turret, and we rarely have occasion to enter the campus. The Keep and the University are like two bordering countries—but I expect that will soon change, when the Keep is open for research on its holdings. Well, Ricardo, where shall we began?”
"Let’s start at the top of the Turret, with its view of the campus. I understand that the subterranean structure runs underneath much of the campus.”
"Yes, it does, and the Keep’s total floor space is about the same as that of the college buildings."
"Reginald told me that the Keep is very large and labyrinthine, and that he has seen only some of it, briefly. I, however, am very much interested in touring it; I enjoy caves. My ancestors improved a number of natural caves, which we still use for the storage of valuable things. Underground structures are interesting engineering challenges."
"That's certainly the case, Ricardo. I’ve been involved in some of the construction work, which has been ongoing for well over a decade. We have lighting and environmental control of such excellence that you’ll hardly be aware of being below ground. And the Keep is not labyrinthine; it’s a well-organized structure in which it’s easy to find one’s way.”
“Is your doctorate in engineering, then?” Ricardo asked him.
"Yes. In aeronautical engineering, actually. It runs in the family. I’ve been involved in the environmental control system of the Keep, not in the tunneling.”
"I suppose, Herbert, that the subterranean airflow is similar in principle to the airflow around an aircraft, except that the air moves and the 'airplane' is stationary.”
“That’s it exactly, and the water and other fluid flows are linked to the airflow through various pressure transformations, in a way that’s something like voltage regulation on a grid.”
“That’s very interesting, Herbert. Well, I myself can be of service to Dr. Steuben for a while, in the establishment of a study center for Aztec culture on this side of the border. I’m familiar with the scholars and the university politics south of the border, because my family is a major donor to those institutions. And we hold the lion’s share of Nahuatl codices, which are an important part of our Aztec heritage. An Aztec cultural center in America will surely attract greater world scientific interest to the study of the codices.”
Herbert nodded. What is your game, Dr. Chavez?
“Herbert, I must confess to you that I’m a dilettante in the field for which I hold my position here. I, too, am an engineer.”
“What is your field?” Schooner was mildly interested.
“Nuclear engineering and physics.”
“Have you worked on weapons?”
“Of course, but the Government isn’t sure it can trust me.”
“Why not?”
“Because of my having reversed-engineered one of their devices from a part of it, in order to explain to them why they were experiencing difficulties when testing it. I discovered that it was their basic design, not the part, that was the problem. The Federal people suspected that there’d been a security breech, because they thought I must have had access to things I couldn’t have known otherwise, in order to discover the cause of their problem. But the truth is that the parts of a good design fit into a whole system, so when I found that the part itself was working, I knew there was a flaw in the overall design. I reasoned my way back to the flaw, and then I pointed it out to them, bruising Federal egos. Well, I have dual citizenship, and I don’t really need to consult to earn a living.”
“I understand that kind of issue, Ricardo. What was the part?”
“The fuse.”
“Oh! The electronic schemata to all of the components! Yes. If you know the physics, the rest follows. What needed to be fixed?”
“That’s Top Secret, like the locations of our caves containing the codices and other relics.” Ricardo smiled at Herbert. “We professionals have to manage our resources and our professional secrets. Otherwise, who would have an interest in our services?”
Because Dr. Kane was out of his office while they were touring the Turret, Herbert Schooner decided to take Ricardo into it and show him the collection of engravings that he thought of as Dr. Kane’s “ink blot test”. He knew that Kane did not wish to meet Ricardo, but he, himself, was curious about Ricardo Chavez, for his own reasons.
“This is Dr. Kane’s office. He’s out for the day, so I’ll give you a quick look; he has, of course, the best view.” Herbert gestured to Kane’s collection of original Ernst Haeckel engravings of various biological subjects, which were elegantly framed and displayed on his office walls. “These were all created by a German scientist of the last century, whom Dr. Kane admires.”
Ricardo recoiled inwardly from the something sinister that he felt in the engravings. “Dr. Kane purchased these?”
“Of course. He’s a bit of a collector, but his collection is very esoteric, I think.”
“I would put them back on the market,” Ricardo remarked as they left the office.
Well, Ricardo Chavez has failed that test. He will not soon become one of us.
