Black Hills: A Novel

by Dan Simmons

  But not even the giant Krupp’s gun most interested Paha Sapa after that first long, long day he and the others from the Wild West Show had spent at the Fair.

  That first day he had ended up, alone, at the southern end inside the huge Machinery Hall. And there he stopped and gaped at forty-three steam engines, each producing 18,000 to 20,000 horsepower, that drove 127 dynamos that powered all of the buildings at the exposition. A sign told Paha Sapa that it required twelve of these engines just to power the Machinery Hall.

  Paha Sapa had staggered to the closest chair and collapsed into it. There he sat for the next three hours, and to that chair he would return for almost all of his next eleven visits to the Fair.

  It was not just the noise and motion and whiff of alien ozone in the air that so mesmerized Paha Sapa (and, evidently, so many other males, white and foreign and one Indian, of all ages who gathered in the Machinery Building to watch the pistons drive up and down and the rotary belts whirl and the great wheels turn). Most women couldn’t seem to stand most of the Machinery Hall, but especially not this southern end, where the coal-fed furnaces and steam engines and larger dynamos clustered—the so-called Boiler-house Extension area—and it was true that the noise in much of the hall was truly deafening. On his later visits, Paha Sapa solved the noise problem with two wads of wax that he kneaded until they were the proper softness and shape and then pressed into his ear canals. It was not the noise that drew him here.

  This, Paha Sapa realized and knew in his heart, was the center and core of the wasichus’ power and secret soul.

  Oh, not just the steam and electricity, which Paha Sapa knew were both relatively new to the wasichus’ culture and list of commandable technologies (although he’d seen the fifteen-foot-high statue of Benjamin Franklin holding his key and kite cord and umbrella at the entrance to the Electricity Building), but it was this demonstrated ability to harness the universe’s hidden energies and secret powers—like children playing with the forbidden toys of God—that made the Wasicun so successful and so dangerous, even to themselves.

  Since his three years of education at the hands of Father Francisco Serra and the other Jesuit monks at their failed monastery-school near Deadwood, Paha Sapa had understood both how important religion could be to most wasichus and how the majority of them could set aside their religion for everyday life. But these furnaces, these howling engines, this Holy Ghost of steam, this ultimate Trinity of motor and magnet and armature of miles upon miles of coiled copper wire, this was where the real gods of the Wasicun race dwelt.

  Signs around the giant iron Westinghouse engine and its smaller acolytes informed Paha Sapa that “power from these dynamos and generators runs the elevators in the tall Administration Building and elsewhere, furnishes thousands of Exposition exhibitors with motive force, sets in motion countless other machines here in the Machinery Hall, and, not of the least importance, drives the sewage of the Fair toward Lake Michigan.”

  Paha Sapa had laughed at that last part… laughed until he wept. How perfect that the wasichus used the power of their secret gods, the secret powers of the Wasicun universe itself, to drive their sewage “toward” the lake a few hundred yards away. He wondered if and how the sewage made it the rest of the way, beyond the push of all these tens and hundreds of thousands of combined horsepower and volts and amperes of electromagnetism. And then Paha Sapa laughed again and found that he was weeping in earnest.

  It was about this time that a blue-clad Fair guide of some sort, wearing a brimless little red cap, approached him and shouted at him.

  —And these ain’t even the largest dynamos at the Exposition!

  Paha Sapa found this hard to believe.

  —No? Where would the largest be found?

  —Not too far from here, in the Intramural Railroad Company Building. You readum signums, chief?

  —Yessum, sir, I cannum.

  The man squinted, not sure if he was being made fun of, but continued shouting.

  —Well, just look for the sign that says IRC or Power Plant. It’s behind the Machinery Hall, back near the south fence of the whole Fair. Not many people find it or want to go there.

  —Thank you.

  Paha Sapa was most sincere.

  The Power Plant was indeed tucked back close to the fence, beyond the Convent of LaRabida (which actually had something to do with Christopher Columbus) and beyond the totem poles and south of the Anthropology Building (in which Paha Sapa could have studied an exhibit of phrenology showing why American Indians were a less-developed race in Darwinian terms).

  When he finally entered the IRC Power Plant building, which was all but empty except for a few bored attendants in coveralls and one old man with three children in tow, Paha Sapa had to find a chair quickly or collapse to the floor.

  Here was the world’s largest and most powerful dynamo. A yellowed placard announced—“When it is considered that this railroad is six and a half miles long, has sixteen trains of cars in constant movement and this aggregate of sixty-four cars [is] frequently crowded with passengers, some idea may be formed of the energy sent forth by this revolving giant.”

  And revolving giant it was, its largest wheel half-buried in its cement trough but the top of that wheel almost touching the rafters beneath the ceiling. The whir and roar here were deafening, the smell of ozone constant. The few hairs on Paha Sapa’s arms stood on end and stayed on end. Rather than moving sewage toward the lake, this single dynamo moved every electric-powered train and car on the intramural railway that shuttled visitors around the perimeter of the Fair and from one end to the other. But, Paha Sapa knew, the purpose to which this invisible energy was being put mattered little; it was the ability to harness and direct it that changed the universe.

  So each time Paha Sapa returned to the Fair after this, he would explore new sights for a while, spend a few minutes in the Electricity Building, spend hours standing near the roaring engines and dynamos of the Machinery Hall, and celebrate his last hour or two by sitting here in the remote IRC Power Plant building, watching and feeling this single dynamo. This last was like a forgotten cathedral, and the workers and attendants there soon came to know Paha Sapa and to tip their hats to him.

  There was also another man there whom Paha Sapa saw several times during his visits—an older man in rumpled, expensive clothes and with a neatly trimmed beard and a bald head (which Paha Sapa saw gleaming in the light of the naked overhead bulbs when the gentleman removed his boater to mop at his pink scalp with an embroidered handkerchief). Even the man’s walking stick looked expensive. Most of the time there were only the dynamo’s attendants, as silent as acolytes serving a High Mass, and Paha Sapa standing or sitting in his chair, and the bearded gentleman standing or sitting in his chair some five yards away.

  The third time the two saw each other there that May, the older gentleman came over, leaned on his walking stick, and cleared his throat.

  —I beg your pardon. I do not mean to disturb you and I realize that my question must be presumptuous, if not actively offensive, but are you, by any chance, an American Indian?

  Paha Sapa looked up at the man (who wore a soft, rumpled linen jacket on this exceptionally warm May day, while Paha Sapa sweated in his black suit). He could see the intelligence behind the older man’s eyes.

  —Yes, I am. I belong to the tribe we call Lakota and which others call the Sioux.

  —Marvelous! But I’ve compounded my presumptuousness by forgetting my manners. My name is Henry Adams.

  The man held out his small, finely formed hand. It was as pink as his scalp and cheeks above his beard.

  Paha Sapa got to his feet, returned the handshake, and gave his false name of Billy Slow Horse. The bearded man nodded and said how delightful it was to meet a member of the Sioux Nation here, in a World’s Fair dynamo room of all places. Suddenly Paha Sapa was filled with a great sense of old sorrow—not his own—but thankfully no other memories or impressions came through the contact of hands. With Custer
babbling through his nights and the memories of Crazy Horse confusing him during the days, Paha Sapa did not think his sanity could survive another set of memories.

  Little did he know what awaited him in years to come.

  They both turned to look at the roaring dynamo again. Without steam engines, it was much quieter in the Power Plant than in the Machinery Building, but the noise from this machine, while lower, went deeper. It made Paha Sapa’s bones and teeth vibrate and seemed to create a subtle but very real sexual stirring in him. He wondered if the older man felt it.

  The gentleman’s voice was very smooth, modulated—Paha Sapa guessed—by decades of polite but informed conversation, but also moderated by an almost but not quite audible sense of humor, an unexpressed chuckle that came through despite the sadness that Paha Sapa still felt flowing from the man.

  —When my friends the Camerons insisted that I come with them on this flying visit to the Fair—all the way from Washington, DC, mind you!—I was quite certain that it would be a waste of time. How could Chicago—I proclaimed in all my insular arrogance—how could Chicago do anything but fling its brash, new-earned millions in our faces and show us something far less than art, far less than business, even, but some demonstration less than either.

  Paha Sapa listened hard over and under the dynamo hum. If most men he knew were to craft sentences like that, Paha Sapa would have laughed or left or both. But somehow Mr. Adams interested him deeply.

  The older man gestured at the dynamo and showed a broad smile.

  —But this! This, Mr. Slow Horse, the ancient Greeks would have delighted to see and the Venetians, at their height, would have envied. Chicago has turned on us with a sort of wonderful, defiant contempt and shown us something far more powerful even than art, infinitely more important than business. This is, alas or hurrah, the future, Mr. Slow Horse! Yours and mine both, I fear… and yet hope at the same time. I can revel and write postcards about the fakes and frauds of the Midway Plaisance, but each evening I return to the Machinery Hall and to this very chamber to stare like an owl at the dynamo of the future.

  Paha Sapa had nodded and glanced at the little gentleman. Embarrassed, Adams removed his straw hat again and mopped at his scalp.

  —I must apologize again, sir. I babble on as if you were an audience rather than an interlocutor. What do you think of this dynamo and of the wonders of the Machinery Hall, where I’ve seen you staring even as I do, Mr. Slow Horse?

  —It’s the real religion of your race, Mr. Adams.

  Henry Adams had blinked at that. Then he put his hat back on and blinked some more, obviously lost in thought. Then he smiled.

  —Sir, you have just answered a question I have been posing to myself for some years. I have long been interested—in my distant, unbeliever’s vague and insolent way—in the role the Virgin Mary played in the long, slow dreams that were the construction of such masterpieces as Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. I believe you have given me my answer. The Virgin Mary was to the men of the thirteenth century what this dynamo and its brothers shall be to…

  At that moment another man entered, and Adams interrupted himself to welcome him. They had obviously arranged to meet there at that time. This other gentleman was very tall, with a sharp beak of a nose, pomaded dark hair slicked back, and with eyes so piercing they reminded Paha Sapa not of an owl but of an eagle. The man was dressed all in black and gray with a brilliantly white shirt, which reinforced Paha Sapa’s impression of being in the presence of a predator, vigilant eagle in human form.

  Mr. Adams seemed flustered.

  —Mr. Slow Horse, may I present my companion at the Fair today, the eminent Sher… that is… the eminent Norwegian explorer Mr. Jan Sigerson.

  The tall man did not offer his hand but bowed and quietly clicked his heels together in an almost Germanic fashion. Paha Sapa smiled and nodded in return. Something about the tall man made Paha Sapa afraid to touch his bare hand and risk learning about his life.

  Sigerson’s voice was soft but sharp edged and sounded more English than Norwegian to Paha Sapa’s untrained ear.

  —It is a true pleasure to meet you, Mr. Slow Horse. We Europeans rarely get the opportunity to meet a practicing wičasa wakan from the Natural Free Human Beings.

  Sigerson turned to Adams.

  —I apologize, Henry, but Lizzie and the senator are waiting at Franklin’s steam launch at the North Pier and inform me that we are all running late for Mayor Harrison’s dinner.

  Sigerson bowed toward Paha Sapa again and he was smiling slightly this time.

  —It has been a sincere pleasure meeting you, Mr. Slow Horse, and I can only hope that some day the wasichu wanagi will no longer be a problem.

  Wasichu wanagi. The white man’s ghost. Paha Sapa could only stare after the two men as they left, Mr. Adams speaking but not being heard by the young Indian.

  He never saw the man named Henry Adams or his Norwegian friend again.

  MISS DE PLACHETTE LEADS THE WAY onto the Midway Plaisance—a mile-long strip of attractions, private shows, and rides that extends away from the lake from Jackson Park to the edge of Washington Park, as straight as a broad arrow fired into the back of the Columbian Exposition from the west.

  Ahead are scatterings of exotic structures on either side of the low, broad, dusty Midway boulevard: Old Vienna medieval homes and a Biergarten; Algerian mosques and Tunisian minarets from which alien music blares and voices screech; a Cairo street where Paha Sapa and his friends have seen the overrated belly dancer; glimpses of Laplanders and Samoans and two-humped camels and a small herd of reindoor being hurried across the boulevard by men in shaggy fur despite the heat; the long water-propelled sliding railway; the Bernese Alps theater; a glimpse of the captive balloon far, far down the strip and to the right.

  And in the middle of the boulevard and seemingly growing taller every minute, the 264-foot-tall Ferris Wheel, which, according to Miss de Plachette, boasts thirty-six contained cars or cabins (each larger than many log cabins Paha Sapa has known), with each car or cabin capable of carrying up to sixty people.

  Paha Sapa feels a growing, if unfocused, anxiety. He is not afraid of the Wheel or of heights, but something suddenly seems perilous to him, as if he and this young lady he barely knows are approaching some point of no return.

  —Are you sure you want to do this, Miss de Plachette?

  —Call me Rain, please.

  —Are you sure you want to do this, Rain?

  —We must do this, Paha Sapa. It is our destiny.

  14

  In the Paha Sapa

  August–September 1876

  HE KEEPS TRYING TO RISE INTO THE AIR BUT FAILS EACH TIME.

  What once came so easily to Paha Sapa, like effortless play, now seems impossible, as if his soul has grown inescapably heavy. It is the ninth day of his hanblečeya, the ninth day of his total fast, and his weakness is matched only by his weariness and sense of defeat. He has come to believe that this quest for a vision was premature, presumptuous, and doomed to failure. Many braves much older and wiser than he have failed before this—no male of the Natural Free Human Beings is ever assured a Vision and those few who receive them often do so only after years of frustration and many repeated hanblečeyas.

  Except first for the hunger, which has departed, and then the weakness of his long fast, this oymni—his wandering time—has been mostly pleasant. When Paha Sapa awakened in Robert Sweet Medicine’s cave at Bear Butte, there was no sign of the old man—not his drinking or eating bowls, not even a trace of the rabbits they’d eaten—and Paha Sapa could almost have believed that the old Cheyenne wičasa wakan had been a dream. But Worm and White Crane were rested and well fed when he found them still hobbled in the entrance to the cave that morning, and though the sun had not come out, the days of downpour outside had changed to an increasingly heavy drizzle.

  It was then, for a scrotum-tightening panicked moment, that Paha Sapa untied the bundle on Three Buffalo Woman’s white mare, seeking
wildly for the Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa, the sacred and irreplaceable Buffalo Calf Bone Pipe that he, Paha Sapa, had foolishly told the old Cheyenne he was carrying to his inipi first real sweat lodge ceremony.

  It was there, separated into its different segments, each segment wrapped in a red cloth, the red feathers intact.

  Paha Sapa’s knees went weak then, as he realized how easy it would have been for the old Cheyenne—if he had been more than a dream—to steal Paha Sapa’s tribe’s most sacred object. And then his knees stayed weak as the full weight of Limps-a-Lot’s trust sank in. Paha Sapa was heading to the Black Hills, reportedly rotten with wasichus, soldiers and miners both, who would kill him and rob him on a whim, even while enemy tribes swarmed—as they always did—around those Hills, always on the lookout for a lone Lakota boy to kill and rob or enslave.

  Paha Sapa wished to the depths of his heart that morning that Limps-a-Lot had sent with him only an ordinary stone pipe for his inipi and hanblečeya ceremonies, even if the chances for a true Vision were lessened by not having the more wakan and powerful Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa with its special tobacco.

  But the day’s ride through occasional heavy rain into the Paha Sapa themselves was uneventful, Paha Sapa riding the gelding and leading the mare in a wide arc to the west to avoid the roads and heavily traveled paths the wasichus used to get to their mining town of Deadwood.

  In later years, especially when taking his son on their own small oymni wandering time to the Black Hills and what was left of the open Great Plains, Paha Sapa will find it very difficult to explain what the world was like during these days of his people’s proud years, when the Lakota gods still listened to their worshippers and when the earth was alive for them.