The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis

Author:Connie Willis [Willis, Connie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780593499863
Publisher: Del Rey Books; Penguin Random House
Published: 2023-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Never draw to an inside straight.”

—Maverick

“There,” Francie said happily, “I told you he knew where he wanted to go.”

“Yeah, but there’s just one problem.”

“What?”

“We don’t know what this tsurrispoinis is. Or where it is.”

“But it’s a start. And now that we know the word for it, we can ask him what it means.”

“Fine,” Wade said. “Indy, what’s a tsurrispoinis?”

No answer. His tentacles remained blank.

“Is it a place?”

Still blank.

“A thing?”

No response.

“Which way is tsurrispoinis?”

No response.

“Are you sure tsurrispoinis isn’t just some other Apache word he heard in the movie?” Wade asked.

“Yes,” Francie said, though she wasn’t. “Indy, is the tsurrispoinis where you want us to take you?”

“YES YES YES HURRY.”

“Yes, well, we could hurry a lot faster if you’d tell us where it is,” Wade said. “It’s too bad cowboys were the strong, silent type. If they’d talked more, Indy would’ve heard the word by now.”

“You’re not helping,” Francie said. “Go help Joseph find someplace to stop for the night, and I’ll talk to Indy,” and as soon as he was gone, she asked, “Indy, do you know where the tsurrispoinis is?”

No response.

“Do you know what it is?”

“YES YES YES INDY NOTHES.”

He means “knows,” she thought, and asked, “Can you show me what it is?”

Nothing.

“Is that because we haven’t showed you one yet?”

“YES YES YES.”

So it wasn’t a town, a mountain, a butte, a sagebrush, a billboard, a deck of cards, a casino, a canteen, Monument Valley, or a rattlesnake. Or any of the dozens of other things they’d shown him. But that still left thousands of things it could be. That meant Joseph would have to keep showing him Westerns. And she’d have to think of some other way to approach this.

“Do you remember when Captain Gatewood talked to the chief in Fort Comanche?” she asked. “And sometimes he called him Itza-Chu and sometimes Great Hawk?”

“YES YES YES.”

“Itza-Chu was how the chief’s Apache name sounded in English and Great Hawk was what his Apache name meant in English. Can you tell me what tsurrispoinis means in English?”

His tentacles went—and stayed—blank.

I hope that means he’s thinking about it, she thought, like before, when I asked him to tell me how his name would sound, and he’ll suddenly scroll it at some point.

In the meantime, she tried another tack. “Can you tell me why you need to go to tsurrispoinis?”

There was a long pause, and then he scrolled, “HELP SRENNOM.”

Great. Another word she didn’t know.

“Is srennom the thing you need to do at tsurrispoinis?”

“NO NO NO.”

“Is srennom a place?”

“NO NO NO.”

“Is srennom a thing, like an apple or a deck of cards or a car?”

“NO NO NO,” and this time there was a tinge of red to the letters that could have meant he was insulted by the very idea. “SRENNOM FRANCIE WADE JOSEPH INDY.”

“Srennom’s a person?”

“NO NO NO SRENNOM INDY.”

“Srennom’s someone like you.”

“YES YES YES.”

So he was an alien, and Srennom was his name. “Is Srennom a relative?”

“SHOW RELATIVE.”

“Someone who’s part of your family. A brother or a nephew or a…” She stammered to a stop.

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