As the humans say: ‘It was raining cats and dogs’ On Makossa the rain was pink - something to do with the copper in the hills. He drove slowly, didn’t want to get stopped by ‘the feds’ with what he had in the boot. Most of them just laughed at his Chevy, an outlandish ride compared with the silent soulless fusion boxes most people used for transport. Why cats and dogs? He’d have to ask someone when he got there. The fabricator looked like a small computer anyway so he didn’t have to disguise it too heavily. Just insulated some of the more incriminating circuitry and hoped they’d be distracted by his appearance. Dressed as a Lakota warrior he looked, according to Susan ‘like a prize fighter on the way to a fancy dress party’. She was not happy, accusing him of keeping secrets from her and only being with her to get on the programme. He knew she said most of this because she was frightened for him but she was right. Miss Truly did make really good eggs though. He was not proud of using her but she had been convinced by his sorrow and anger that she must help him. The soldiers of the 7th Cavalry had murdered his father while he was trying to negotiate a better deal for Spotted Elk’s people. They said he had a gun but his father had never used one in his life. The people at the Travel Programme were told he’d had a heart attack - why his mother told them that was unclear to him. Perhaps she thought they would order her back if they knew the truth but would not order a widow to do anything after a ‘natural’ death. Where the hell was she? He had heard nothing for almost an entire year! If she too was dead he would make them pay - not just for his parents but for all the insults and massacres over the years. He didn’t care that the timeline would be changed, probably dramatically, and the results were unpredictable. The morality of playing god with another species’ life and times gave him no pause - look at what they had become. Two world wars, the Holocaust, Global Warming - the list of crimes was unending. Anything he did could not possibly make things any worse. Perhaps if he could help this culture he so loved survive then the Earth would be a better place? His first instinct on hearing the news of his father’s death was to ask the Programme to let him travel back to before the tragedy so that he could warn his father and so avert his death. But they believed it to be a natural death and would allow no interference with the timeline of our species because of the fear of unpredictable consequences to our culture generally. My visit could only occur post mortem. He parked his Chevelle, giving it one last roar by flooring the accelerator. He would be replacing 500 horses with one soon.
Dr Sprokane greeted him and led the Lakota medicine man Twelvetrees to the embarkation centre. As he had hoped they only briefly examined his accessories, assuming the technology to be for use in his anthropological work. He was strapped into the pod and wished good luck in his adventure - it was all very everyday and perfunctory. He took a deep breath as the countdown elapsed and a buzz of technology took him surfing back into Earth history. The song of a bird of some sort greeted him as the pod door slid open automatically. Snow crunched under his uncertain foot falls. The scenery was breath taking. He was on a butte which overlooked the Cheyenne river. Down below he could just about make out figures within, what must be, the ‘Indian Reservation’ or concentration camp as Jimi thought of it. A tear slithered down his cheek as he imagined his parents seeing this sight for the first time. Now all he had to do was convince Spotted Elk that he was an emissary from Wovoka with powerful ’medicine’ to defeat the ’white eyes’. His Lakota was good but would it be good enough? He had always wondered if he really was a brave man - that’s one question that would be quickly answered. Above all he must stop his people going south just yet. They must not enter wounded knee creek without the fire power he had brought. He was startled by a war cry and realized it was him!
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