Chapter 7

That evening, I asked Wolf about the upcoming trip to meet with the Navajo council, and then the Shoshone leaders. “I want to get out of white-man’s territory while I’m still not a lab rat in some ‘special facility,’ answering questions.”

“Ummf,” he grunted in reply. “Why do you think they are going to question you?”

“I told them I got the answers to a lot of things, in my head, from the Great Spirit. And I do, but it’s not for the use of the government. I do not want to be a super computer for the white man’s power structure.”

“Ummf ... Okay, we leave for New Mexico tomorrow.” He got up and started packing.

I went down to my room and packed my meager stuff. I really didn’t want to leave, ‘cause Wolf had a nice setup. I really didn’t want to put him out either, but I was planning on making a home with the Navajo or the Shoshone.

I closed the drapes, turned off the room lights and dialed up Red.

Did you find anything in the Indian lands that we can use?

[Yes. Lithium. It’s plentiful in the Shoshone lands.]

We going to make pills for schizophrenics?

[Hardly. We’re going to make lithium crystals.]

Oh. So the Star Trek guys are right? We’re going to make a warp drive?

[No.]

Okay. I give up on guessing. I want to buy a vowel.

[Sorry, the current vernacular does not allow for buying vowels.]

That doesn’t come into use for a few years – sometime in the eighties, I think. It’s a TV show where people guess words from a limited number of consonants, and they can ‘buy a vowel’ to fill in the blanks. It comes on sometime in the next few years: Wheel of Fortune. For our purposes, it means I want a clue what we’re going to do with lithium.

[I shall look for the TV show. As for lithium: it’s used for fusion power, late in the 2700s. It’s a complicated process that is nearly circular. Lithium is a raw material. With a great input of heat, lithium crystals can be created. No negative environmental impact. Then the lithium crystals can be placed in a magnetic bottle, a huge electric jolt is applied and fusion starts. I suppose using coherent light to initiate the reaction is possible – they never tried that. After that, electricity can be drained off the reaction. It runs forever, never expires, and needs no fuel. You can put the fusion bottles in parallel, feed them to your power grid and there you go.]

How much power is required initially?

[I did some calculations. I estimate that you’ll need the entire output of the Hoover Dam facility for

a couple of days: approximately 1.3 gigawatts. That is needed only once.]

Then this won’t work. No way we can get access to that much power.

[Then we need to build a very, very small fusion generator. Use that to create another and another, etcetera. Eventually we will have the power we need to make fusion power in serious amounts.]

You sure this will work?

[It worked in 2782.]

What will we need?

[The mining operation is simple. It’s nearly on the surface of the rocky soil in the western mountains of the Shoshone lands. You have to extract the small amount of lithium. It is a high temperature process, but there is no pollution. At the end you get lithium crystals and, after it dries, some rocky soil. It’s moderately improved from the soil you started with. Just heat the soil with concentrated solar power, keeping the heat in it until it reaches the temperature needed. Of course, you could just burn hydrocarbons, but that creates undesirable byproducts. The only danger in the separation process is the hyper-temperatures that the soil will achieve. The human body cannot tolerate such temperatures.]

How does that compare to liquid steel?

[Cooking dirt to release lithium is done at a much lower temperature.]

Okay, we can learn to tolerate that. So, a solar furnace heats the dirt. Eventually you get lithium crystals. Put those into a magnetic bottle. Steal a big electric jolt from somewhere. Or shoot lasers at it. Rinse and repeat. Is that right?

[There is no rinsing, Lexi.]

Sorry, that’s the instruction on a bottle of shampoo. Vernacular again. It just means to repeat all the steps.

[Then there is the process of manufacturing the magnetic bottle.]

That takes more electricity. I remember something about electromagnetics. They are connected?

[Uh ... simplified ... Yes.]

So ... how much is this all going to cost?

[How much do you have?]

When we win Las Vegas, I’ll have something like $750,000. And all the mobsters in Las Vegas will be pissed at us.

[So we can’t keep betting on long shots, or there will be repercussions ... Your first goal is to take some serious money from the U.S. stock market. You’re going to be a financial wiz kid. You’ll need at least ten times that figure, at a guess. Maybe more.]

Wow. You don’t fool around, do ya?

[In 2780, this project was funded at 23 billion Euro-dollars. They accomplished it in two years. You have a longer time span. My estimate is that you have until 2001.]

Uh huh. 2001. I remember what happens in 2001.

[So far, no changes in the news for 2001.]

Uh, Red? Can you update my brain with enough information so I won’t make a disastrous blunder in dealing with the stock market? And something about off-shore banking?

[I’ll search for something that’s good, but not overwhelming at first.]

Then I meditated. All I could see was dollar signs, Scotty from Star Trek melting crystals, and Wolf living in a tipi, leaving Desert Flower behind.

It wasn’t a good, relaxing time. Eventually, I fell asleep.

...

I was finally sleeping soundly, the next morning, when Wolf pounded on the door. “Time to leave, White Snow. We need food first and then we go to see the Navajo ... White Snow. Wake up!”

I grogged my way to full consciousness and slid into my jeans and a T. Padded my way upstairs to find Desert Flower wide awake and too bright and chipper. Far too chipper for the early morning. Wolf was already sitting at the table, with a Wolf-sized portion of eggs and breakfast potatoes in front of him. He may not like the white man’s civilization, but he sure liked the white man’s food.

Outside the window, I could see the first rays of sun angling into the lands spreading out before us. I was surprised to see Snow, the huge white owl, perched on the roof of Wolf’s small hut, nearby.

“What is Snow doing here?” I asked Wolf.