Chapter 30

Back in Burnside North, later that week, Chas settled down to his project work. I noticed the appearance of a xenon-chlorine laser on his work desk, still partially taken from it’s storage case. The bunch of stuff he was accumulating was getting to be a bit overwhelming. “We using a different laser now?” I asked Chas.

“Yeah. S2D2 suggested that the new one was going to be needed for the reaction. I’m not going to try and set up an experiment for a while. Between the lasers, from many different directions; the setup for the electro-magnetic field; and the stuff to keep the bottle safe; and then to get to a safe distance before it fires, there’s a lot of junk ... Good thing this cave is big enough. I was going to try and balance it on top of the bottle, but then S2 pointed out that I could put the new samples anywhere near the bottle. It was symmetrical after all ... But I gotta get the bottle manufacture stable first.”

So I made plans to leave him alone. In a meeting with Sam Washburn, I made the point that we’d just started the process of getting Chas a Nobel Prize. Not that the Prize was important, per se, but we’d need more security since the press and other interested parties might be coming around. And maybe we’d have to put up a fence around Chas’s residence.

He listened, then shook his head ‘no.’ “Lexi, he needs to go all over the place. Either we move him and his family to a compound like yours, and assign him some permanent security, or we just put a fence around the whole town.”

We agreed that the whole town approach would be better. It would mean a more substantial security setup, but I felt it would be more sensible, in the long run. He didn’t know about the threat that would be coming along in a decade or so. It was still in the future papers. At least the tribal newpapers. For some reason it didn’t make a splash elsewhere. In fact, why not start slowly building the defenses that would be needed in about ten years, so that the build-up wouldn’t be so obvious later? Something to discuss with people, sooner rather than later.

For me, I was torn in two directions. Mentally, I needed to keep track of Tommy Sussex. He was on his own now, without a keeper. No need to convince him that doing violence would be a part of his lifestyle. Maybe with some careful meddling with his mind, I could direct it to where and when I wanted him to do things. Build some walls, like Washburn would be building around the town.

And again mentally, I needed to get in touch with Sensei Maritsuki. Not for his martial arts training, but he’d maybe understand what I’d need to do with Bear’s suggestion for building a mental defense.

I called Linc. “I need to cut Tommy Sussex loose. Going to have enough to do here in Burnside North, to be following that guy around.” I hated lying to Linc, especially because he could tell when I was doing it. “Speaking of which, can you meet with Sam? I think we need to seriously upgrade our security around here. We whetted the newsies appetite with our press conference, and some of the scientific types are tied in with the US Government. So, eventually they are going to show up on our doorstep.”

“Don’t forget about the foreign government types too,” Linc pointed out. “With a development that’s as potentially revolutionary as we might have here, they won’t want to be left out. Hell, don’t I don’t even want to think about the environmentalists or crazies when the word ‘fusion’ hits the papers.”

Terrific! Just what I wanted. Sitting in the bullseye of a bunch of government agencies.

Red, you sure this is the way to go?

[Lexi, getting fusion power is only part of the project, remember?]

I keep getting unfocused. I have to get more combobulated ... Sorry. I remember now. This is the easy part, right?

[Just so.]

...

I made arrangements with Cap to fly up to Piaqogwaiq – the Big Wind River reservation of the Shoshone-Arapaho. Well, MY part of the Shoshone, anyway. It was hard to keep in mind that there were other branches of the Shoshone. It was getting to be time to spread the benefits of what we were doing to other tribes. The Plains Indians seemed to be the easiest to start with.

We flew into the Whirlwind International Airport North Branch and slid into our other hacienda. I was pleased to see that Jed Somerville had kept things up. I guess I didn’t really doubt that he’d see to the maintenance of my – excuse me, OUR – place in McKesson’s Creek. But when I was here (in the Piaqogwaiq) I didn’t think about there (in the Naabeehó Bináhásdzo) so much, and vice versa.

Anyway, the dogs were glad to see me – US. Geez, I got to get used to the plural version of our little entourage. Tecumseh, Coeehajo, Joseph, and Elkhair were jumping around. I know that dogs will be jumping around glad to see you if you just went to the end of the driveway to get mail, but I felt they were a little extra glad to see us this time. I checked in with Little Tex, who had been charged with keeping track of the northern pack of Wokita.

I wanted to meet with Jed to bring him up-to-date on the new security situation. Newsies, scientists with government ties, possible foreign government tie-ins ... and who knew who else. The whole mess. He said that he and Big Tex would beef things up. I met with Marylou Deer Horn and told her too. We needed to get the source documents, about which crystals came from which mountains, into a safer location.

“Do you mean a safe deposit vault ... or something safer?” she asked.

“What do you mean ‘safer’?”

“I mean we could put the records in a fireproof box and hide them in my family’s underground meat locker. Also, why don’t we put a false set of papers in an easier to find place. That would probably work even better.”

I laughed. “Let’s do both. I’m not so sure the US Government would honor any bank’s safe deposit vault,” I said. “But they’ll happily gobble up some fake papers from some under-educated Shoshone office. How simple-minded can some poor Indians be, right?”

I made an appointment with Sensei Maritsuki for us to meet with him tomorrow, before lunch. And through lunch, of course.

After a breakfast of Belgian Waffles at Dark Wolf’s home the next morning, we toddled over to Sensei’s place. There was a round of hugs and some good-humored ‘What? No grandchildren, yet?’ type conversations, we settled down to a serious conversation.