Burnt Man, who Three-Rivers also called Holy Robinson, had instilled in Three-Rivers the laws of Space-Time, or at least Three-Rivers liked to think so. One thing that Three-Rivers did understand was this; that one of the thunder-hoops known by Sunset People as a capacitator was within and a part of him. These hoops permitted travel between worlds by using Time like a river. Sunset People called this time-travel. Every world had the same places, and unless one was being summoned one only travelled from time-to-time not place-to-place. This could be done from one Sunset time to another.

One could select any year from 2844 A.D. all the way back to 99,999,999 B.C. Travel beyond these parameters was not possible. One could not travel beyond the year 2844 for reasons that had not been made clear to Doctor Robinson by the people of that time who had finally constructed the device that he had designed in the year 2009. One could also go only eight digits back in time because there were only eight bands on the dials. The doctor had explained time as a tree, with the worlds of Sunset comprising the trunk, and the worlds of Mother Earth and Winter Past comprising branches One and Two. Three-Rivers had taken a hoop that was supposed to grow another time-branch so-to-speak and had stolen and now somehow eaten it, and it was in him. He was, quite profoundly, a thunder-thief.

The manner of stealing the hoop and taking it into the future should have changed it from a branch capacitator, which could not move from world-to-world and could summon and send time-travelers, into a loop capacitator which could move from world-to-world and should not be able to summon or send time-travelers. Three-Rivers did not like this limitation, and was determined to wrestle with the vexing numbers that floated behind his mind’s eye in an effort to bend them to his will.

They are after all just numbers! I am Thunder-Boy. I should command the numbers of the thunder.

Seek repose.

Yes Father. I shall stand and meditate beneath this terrible place on Furthest Sunset. Then I shall return with my companions.

He was working out by what means he should access the powers of the hoop within him. He had no dials on his belly! He also had to remind himself by what principals the hoop worked. On a loop capacitator being used to access another branch of time, one would set the translocator dial to the number of that branch, and one would go to the only time available—not a concept he understood. On the other hand, if one were to set the hoop to travel back to 1600 A.D. for instance, one would go back to the Sunset place of that time; into the very world that was doomed to be overrun by the Whites.

To summon a person, one needed the last 8 digits of the person’s number, to be set with the activator dial while the tanslocator dial was set to the time-branch or the trunk-time occupied by the operator. To send someone was easiest, just setting the target dates while they held the hoop. Of course, he was the hoop now! Retrieving someone just sent was done by resetting the translocator dial to the date or branch of the operator. Eddie had done this often with DeathSong, so he had spoken to him about it.

This science-medicine of Sunset is vexing Father!

You are not a number-conjurer of Sunset. You are a spiritual medium, an escort of souls, and now a Voice of Beginning. Science is not yours to use. Thunderer and his birds understand you my son. Rely upon prayer. It is in this way that the Seven Aspects of Beginning are beseeched by such as us.

Yes Father, I understand.

T.T. and Eddie were pinching him and waving their hands before his eyes when he noticed them. Gerald was even worried about him, “Boy ya bes’ leave dat crystal-meth alone!”

T.T. was worried, “You alright kid?”

Eddie was insistent, “Yo son, whuz up wit gettin’ outa dis messed up joint?”

“Thank you friends, for giving me time to commune with Father. Men hold my hand, squirrel hold on—to skin, not clothes!”

After giving instructions to his disciples in English and squirrel, he sang his prayer in the Longhouse dialect of the Flint-Place-People, among who he had long ago been born to Mother Earth, “Thunderer, I would split your sky like the white light and fall from your clouds like rain; run down the mountains of your Sister’s body like water; be the river of your Son’s wisdom. Thunderer! Let me return to Mother Earth with friends and totem to guard her virtue against the Whites…”

He heard his voice echoed in a storm cloud in the darkening sky above, a cloud that had not been there a moment ago. The world beneath his feet wobbled awkwardly and they were seared with lightning, not lightning that issued from the sky, but bolts of blue-gold light that issued from him. He felt their pain, their memories, their grief and their hopes. Their numbers combined with his, and with His within. They flew upon his back as he soared outward from the icebound world, past Old Mother Moon, and down the spiral arm of cloud and star. He could feel their every desire and dread as they clutched to his great feathered neck.

He was the thunderbird…