CHAPTER I
A New York Welcome
"Aside from wanting to escape from the heat of global warming, why do you two [YAHOOS] want to move north from Virginia to New York?" the state border agent asked Ed and Mary Rumsfeld, as he retrieved their digital Personal Identification (PID) cards from them and placed them into the card reader of his computer terminal.
On their side of the table in the little interview room Ed and his wife Mary exchanged nervous glances and impatient shrugs, and Ed wondered if he heard the border agent actually say the word 'yahoos' or if he had merely sensed him thinking the word. Ed's telepathic ability sometimes resulted in his unintentional detection of the unvoiced thoughts of people, if those people were themselves at least slightly telepathic. This was confusing, annoying, and somewhat rude, but Ed was getting used to it, and it didn't very often happen. Fortunately most people were not strong enough telepaths for Ed to detect any of their thoughts.
Given the destabilizing effects of climate change, crossing state lines nowadays was a big deal, but the Maryland and Pennsylvania borders had been easy to cross compared to entering the Empire State. At the other state borders the guards had been satisfied with automatic scans of the digital information contained on their PIDs and with taking a quick look at the contents of their U-Haul truck. Here at the New York boarder with Pennsylvania, Ed and Mary were being interrogated by a bored looking New York border agent, while outside, the contents of their truck and the Ford sedan that it towed were undergoing a search by a full crew of agents and their contraband-sniffing dogs.
Ed wasn't worried that they would find the Jerry-ants hiding in the car or truck. He was sure that the genetically modified jants that his old neighbor Jerry Green had gene-spliced into existence in his garage laboratory were much too clever to be found by state border agents. After all, evidently the jants had successfully evaded even the feds for more than a year now. They had even successfully evaded Mary. Ed was sure that she had no idea that the creatures even existed, or that he had become telepathic.
"I have a good job waiting for me in the town of Giants' Rest," Ed stated, repeating PID information that the agent should already be reading on his computer screen anyway.
"Oh!" the agent responded, his eyes lighting up as he studied his computer screen with new interest. "You plan to move to the Mohawk Reservation! That's probably why you folks were automatically flagged at the gate!"
"Mohawk Reservation?" Ed responded in surprise. "The town of Giants' Rest is on an Indian reservation?"
"Mister, all of Mohawk County is the Mohawk Reservation! Didn't you [IDIOTS] know that?"
"It's news to me," admitted Ed, as he glanced pointedly at his wife Mary.
"Alright, Uncle Jack told me about it being a reservation years ago, Ed," Mary admitted. "Jack has lived there for five years with the Mohawks."
"He has?" Ed responded, but he wasn't really surprised. Mary's mysterious Uncle Jack led an eccentric life that Mary knew much more about than Ed cared to know. After her folks died in an accident when she was ten, her Uncle Jack raised Mary. They lived in dozens of unusual places, chasing after ancient bones and goof-ball mysteries. How Mary had turned out relatively normal was probably the biggest mystery.
Mary had indeed previously mentioned to Ed that Jack lived in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York, but she hadn't mentioned that he lived on a Native American reservation. It fit though. It explained why in recent years Jack mailed to them moccasins and other items of obvious Native American manufacture as Christmas and birthday gifts. But why the hells would a man of predominantly Irish decent live on an American Indian reservation? And why would Jack stay for five whole years in one place? Usually he stayed for only a couple of months in any one area while he studied local lore and artifacts. He must have found something of enormous interest to entice him to stay in one place for so long. Or maybe he was just slowing down. Aging can do that, Ed was beginning to discover for himself.
"Despite how intrigued I am by your [stupid] family information you will need to talk to one of our specialists, Mr. and Mrs. Rumsfeld," the agent announced, shaking his head and frowning as he rose and exited the interview room.
Fudge, yet another delay, Ed thought. They still had a long arduous drive ahead of them today and this border crossing episode was wasting far too much time. He and Mary had chosen this obscure crossing point precisely to avoid long lines and save time, but it certainly wasn't working out that way. He glanced outside through a nearby window to note that the early morning traffic was moving steadily through the half-dozen gates manned by a dozen or so armed border guards. It was a mini-rush hour. A flood of locals mostly, Ed reasoned, commuting north to day-jobs just across the state line. They crossed the border using special commuter passes. If they didn't cross back at the end of the day they would become wanted fugitives to be hunted down by state and federal agents.
All over the world, state powers were renormalizing towards greater control. The climate change 'national emergency' was the typical excuse, but how could an essentially permanent and worsening condition be an emergency? At least here in the United States, so far there wasn't war or widespread starvation, only tolerable inconveniences such as state border crossing delays and invasive and sometimes mutant diseases and critters.
As Ed watched, the guards quickly waved most of the cars and pick-up trucks through the crossing after scanning the PIDs of the drivers and all passengers, stopping only the larger trucks to search their cargo for dangerous invasive creatures and other unwanted items.
Few trucks were larger than a pick-up, van, or SUV, Ed noticed. At this particular crossing their big U-Haul truck and their identity as people from distant Virginia probably made them stand out like sore thumbs, Ed belatedly realized. They should have chosen a busier crossing that had more big trucks and fewer local commuters. If they had done that they would be driving but one of a whole herd of similar vehicles that border guards wouldn't have time to single out. Safety in numbers: that's how zebras and wildebeests protected themselves from hungry packs of lions, and that strategy would have also probably worked for him and Mary, Ed reasoned.
A different border agent entered the room and moved to sit behind the interview table. The new man was perhaps thirty years old and of above average height with solid, athletic build, dark reddish skin, and a short black ponytail. He moved with the grace of a great cat and the self-assurance of a government official that wielded great arbitrary bureaucratic power.
Ed detected no distinct telepathic thoughts from the man, which was fine with him.
The agent scanned the computer screen for several seconds with darting beady eyes before finally looking up to study Ed and Mary critically. "I'm John Running Bear, Mr. and Mrs. Rumsfeld." He stood to reach across the table and firmly shake the right hand of each of them; a very unusual thing to do nowadays, given the contagious pathogens that rampaged throughout the world. He didn't smile though, Ed noticed, and he and Mary were obviously being scrutinized very critically by this man. "Let me see your State IDs and supporting paperwork first, please," Running Bear asked.
Ed shrugged and fished out his Virginia driver's license from his wallet; meanwhile Mary opened the big fat manila envelope she carried with her and emptied its entire contents onto the table. All the data contained by her and her husband's PIDs originated from these official paper documents, which included original birth certificates, tax returns for three years, the letter from the Reservation offering Ed the teaching job, and a letter from the State of New York approving their entry. She nudged everything across the table towards John Running Bear, who began methodically sifting through them as if they had all the time in the world.
Mary had been right to carry all that stuff with them, Ed now realized, but then Mary was usually right. Ed hadn't seen any reason to do so, since all of this data was already entered on their Federal Government PIDs in digital form. He and Mary had recently spent an entire boring afternoon in a Virginia departmen
t of motor vehicles office with a bored looking State of Virginia employee, validating that they had all relevant information entered correctly on their official PIDs. Of course like everything else digital, Ed supposed that even PIDs could be hacked or forged. Evidently Mr. John Running Bear of the State of New York thought so too.
Ed resisted the temptation to drum his fingers on the table as Running Bear carefully examined each document and compared their contents to the PID information that was displayed on his computer screen. After perhaps five minutes that seemed more like twenty the agent was satisfied at last. He pushed the paperwork towards the center of the table as he looked up at Mary and Ed and shook his head. "Why the hell do you folks want to live on the Mohawk County Reservation?"
"We need the pay," Ed responded. "I'm in favor of early retirement, but I've just turned only thirty-seven. I figure that I have a few more years of adequate work effort left in me, if I don't over-do it."
"And I can do on-line sales from anywhere," Mary added.
"You might find that internet commerce is difficult to do from Giants' Rest, Mrs. Rumsfeld. I doubt that they have any internet. Besides, you already both had better jobs in Virginia," Running Bear pointed out.
"We also had bigger snakes in Virginia," Mary noted. "I found a hungry looking forty-foot mutant python in my kitchen one morning and that was the last straw."
"Unfortunate, but that's not New York's problem," said Running Bear. "We have enough freeloaders already without letting more in through our borders."
"I'm a hard working middle-school history teacher, not a freeloader!" Ed sputtered angrily. "Didn't you see that letter from the Giants' Rest School Board offering me the teaching job?"
"In the first place, that letter says that only a one month trial appointment is guaranteed, then a monthly reappointment will be done after that, if your performance satisfies the local school board. Why would you throw away the tenure you had in the Virginia school system for that? In the second place the letter from the Giants' Rest School Board doesn't even say what salary they're going to pay you."
"And in the third place it says that they'll provide free housing and food to us," Mary pointed out. "It won't require much money to live there. I'm sure that whatever they pay Ed will be adequate."
Running Bear laughed and shook his head before replying. "The pay won't be what you expect, and the lodge housing and food won't be what you expect either, you being twenty-first century white folks. I've heard that most of the Mohawk County Tribe lives in traditional bark-covered longhouses. Comfortable enough in the summer maybe, but most of the year you will be south of the arctic jet stream in polar vertex country. You'll have free housing in what isn't even a house, by white man standards. You probably won't even have electricity or running water!"
Ed's jaw dropped open. Bark covered longhouse? No water or electricity? What the hell!
"I'm sure that you exaggerate, Mr. Running Bear," retorted Mary.
"Maybe you have friends already living there on the Reservation that will help you?" the agent asked.
"We do," said Mary. "We'll be living in the same lodge as my uncle Jack O'Brien. He's lived there for five years, and he has great influence with the Tribe that allowed him to find this job for Ed. Uncle Jack has assured us that we'll be treated well."
Running Bear's eyebrows raised a notch, "Jack O'Brien the anthropologist?"
"You know him?" Mary asked. It was her turn to be surprised.
"Not personally but I know of him," Replied Running Bear. He sat back in his chair and shrugged. "He's been poking into Native American business for decades. OK, if he has lived with the local Mohawk there for five years and is in good enough graces with them to get you this job maybe it's legit. Maybe they'll even be able to pay you a little money. They do have government cash coming in now and wages from the iron work that some of them do seasonally in New York City."
"I don't know any of them personally but I've heard of the iron workers," said Ed. "The Mohawk famously help build skyscrapers, don't they? They aren't afraid of heights and do the high girder work."
"Several hundred of them do," Running Bear admitted. "Most sort of commute from locations near Montreal, but lately a few of them also commute from Mohawk County. Only a fool isn't afraid of heights and the Mohawk are not fools, merely a proud brave people. But I must warn you folks that there are some strange and unsettling rumors about the Mohawk County portion of the Mohawk tribe and Giants' Rest Mountain, rumors that have circulated among the other tribes for untold centuries. I'm a Native American myself and I wouldn't go anywhere near that place."
"What sort of rumors?" Ed had to ask.
"Ancient legends, mostly. My own people are the Mohicans. We're an Algonquin tribe, not an Iroquois Confederacy tribe like the Mohawk. We called the Mohawk the Maw Unk Lin: the bear people. The Dutch mangled the term into 'Mohawk' and the name stuck. Even most of the Mohawks tend to use it, though the term means 'man eater' in their own language. Anyway, there are old Mohican and Iroquois stories about some of the Mohawk actually being cannibals. Then there are much older stories about Giants' Rest Mountain: legends about giants sleeping in the Mountain being the actual man-eaters."
"Great!" Ed remarked. Bears? Cannibals? Man-eating giants? "It sounds like a perfectly wonderful place to work and live. You've made my day, John."
"Sounds like pure B-S to me!" Mary remarked.
"You aren't mountain climbers, I hope?" asked Running Bear.
"Not if we can help it," Ed responded. "I'm a flat-lander myself. Why do you ask?"
"There's a white-man club called the Forty-Sevens with members that try to climb all forty seven of the New York mountains over 4000 feet. Giants' Rest Mountain has only recently been verified to be just over 5000 feet. The Mohawks on the Reservation don't like anyone to climb Giants' Rest Mountain, especially outsiders."
"Good," Ed replied. "I'm not a Forty-Seven and for sure I don't want to climb any mountains. I can't even climb a stepladder without getting the heebie-jeebies. My eyeballs are usually no more than five feet or so from ground-level and I'd like to keep it that way."
"Then there's a ton of old Indian traditions that they observe that could drive you folks crazy," Running Bear added. "They still eat traditional food and so-forth such as wild critters and critter food. You still want to move to Giants' Rest?"
"I admit that I'm less than thrilled about it right now but it can't be avoided," replied Ed. "We've already pulled up our stakes in Virginia. Honest Indian, John, we really need to get to Giants' Rest. We'll eat critter food and pee outside in the cold polar vortex if we have too. I really do need that job."
The big boarder guard shrugged and slid their paper work the rest of the way across the table towards them. "OK, it's your funeral. I'm not going to stop you. The State of New York has already approved your migration here; we just needed to provide a final interview at the border."
Ed grinned. They had passed muster and would soon again be on their way!
"Speaking of funerals, I thought that all the Mohicans were dead," Mary remarked, as she loaded their paperwork back into her big manila envelope. "That was in a movie, wasn't it?"
Hardly," Running Bear replied, smiling broadly. "That just shows that you can't rely on novelists and Hollywood screen-writers for accurate Native American history. The Mohawks booted the Mohicans out of New York to Connecticut, and then the white man essentially bamboozled and kicked us clean out of New England all together. But we thrive now in Wisconsin, where we have a very nice casino. A few of us recently returned here to our ancestral homelands in New York. Long term we're hoping to get some of our old land back near Albany where we can set up another casino that will cater to the New York City crowd. Gambling is a great evil. I look at casinos as payback for what the whites did to us Native Americans."
"Sounds like a plan," Ed noted, as Running Bear typed information of the interview into his computer to update state and federal data-banks and PID informatio
n.
"The Oneida and other New York tribes already have casinos to get back cash from the white man; why shouldn't we?" Running Bear added, before returning to his one-fingered typing. Through the window Ed noticed that his U-Haul and the car it towed had also evidently passed muster, as it was no longer being searched by the pack of human and dog agents. "Here you go, folks," Running Bear at last said, as he handed their updated PIDs to them and again shook their hands vigorously. "For what it's worth, welcome to New York: the Empire State! Hope you brought your long johns."
"Thanks!" Mary responded cheerily, as she and Ed exited. "And good luck with your casino."
After they were gone John Running Bear took a break outside and watched the Rumsfelds drive away in their truck as he phoned his secret employer, the National Security Administration. He was quickly patched through to Dr. Mark Sheffield, section lead and chief scientist of the NSA East Coast Bio-Terrorist Crisis Response Team.
"Ed and Mary Rumsfeld just passed through my border checkpoint, Dr. Sheffield, as surmised from the PID information that they created days ago. No sign yet of Green or his jants. I've verified that the Rumsfelds are likely heading for Mohawk County, just as their PID entries say. Mary apparently has an uncle that lives there now."
"Indeed!" remarked Sheffield. He had to pull some strings to get the State of New York to approve the Rumsfeld migration. Fortunately New York owed Pennsylvania a few migration slots and Pennsylvania had a reciprocal arrangement with Virginia. Federal law limited the number of migrations between states but the states were free to sell and trade their allotment of migration slots with other states. If only society were to put as much effort into curbing climate change as they did into making money from it, the problem might be solved, Sheffield mused. "Rumsfeld is one of our only leads to find Green, and you're our only Native American agent in the region," he responded. Actually he was the only Native American in small circle of agents that Sheffield trusted. "I want you to follow Rumsfeld to that reservation and determine if Green is hiding there."
"But I'm of the Mohican tribe!" Running Bear protested. "We're ancient enemies of the Mohawk! They aren't likely to welcome me with open arms!"
"You'll figure something out, Running Bear. You always do."
"OK, I do have an idea, Boss," Running Bear responded after a few moments of thought. "But it will require that you pull a few more strings there in Washington."
Following considerable persuasion by Running Bear, Sheffield at last agreed to his plan. After talking to Sheffield, Running Bear phoned his other secret employer and alerted them that Sheffield would soon be in touch with them, before returning to work in the border crossing station. His brief undercover assignment as a New York border agent was complete, and as far as the NSA was concerned he should simply leave them high and dry now, but his personal integrity demanded that he finish out the day working for them. There were things more important than loyalty to one's government.
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