People of the Morning Star Read Free Page A

expression. “Destroy the … We’re, uh, not destroying anything.”
    “What were you smoking when you cooked up this ‘Alien’ crap, anyway?” He looked at the big guy who had stood from his chair, irritation in his eyes.
    “I’m an archaeologist. We’re just trying—”
    “Yeah? Ph.D.?”
    “That’s right. Look, we’ve got a schedule to keep. And not a lot of budget. If you’d—”
    “Where’d you study?” John asked mildly. “Who’d you study under? Tell me about your dissertation.”
    “That’s none of your business.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I get it. If you’ll tell me the Internet address, maybe I’ll become an MD next week.” He held up a hand. “No! Wait! It’s coming to me: You’re another con job all hot to run a load of fantasy lies for some cable channel to make a fast buck.” He pointed. “Look out there. From St. Louis in the west, all the way past that bluff top on the east, for as far as you can see from the north, to way down past where you can see in the south, this was all city. At its greatest, Cahokia was bigger than contemporary London and Paris put together. My people did that.”
    “Then why did your people build the mounds?” the cameraman asked warily. “They got them from the Egyptians, right?”
    “My people had been building mounds along the Mississippi for fifteen hundred years before the Egyptians first set one stone atop another to build their first pyramid.” John shook his head. “God, you guys are pathetic.”
    “No offense,” the fat guy said, “but Aliens sell.”
    “No offense? Bigoted racists like you always say ‘no offense.’” John lowered his voice to a deadly sibilance. “Sorry, offense taken.”
    “Hey!” the cameraman jerked himself up straight. “I’ve never been a racist in my life.”
    “Yeah,” John snorted. “Then what are you doing right now?”
    Wig MacGuire stomped forward. “We’re doing a show on Aliens building Cahokia. There’s nothing racist about it, asshole.”
    John cocked his head, a thin smile on his lips. The fingers of his right hand caressed the Smith & Wesson’s wooden grip where it stuck out past his belt. “Are you that stupid? My ancestors, the Dhegiha Sioux built this city. By claiming Aliens built it, you’re defaming me and my ancestors.”
    “That’s bullshit!” MacGuire threw his arms wide. “We’re not insulting anyone. We’re solving the mystery of Cahokia.”
    John’s smile thinned. “The assumption behind your film is that my ancestors were too stupid to build anything like Cahokia. First rule to dispossessing and marginalizing a people? Deny their heritage. You guys have tried the lost tribes of Israel, then the lost Welshmen, then the Vikings, the Phoenicians, the Mayans … and now its Aliens.”
    The cameraman growled, “How could a bunch of prehistoric people plan all this out? It’s east-west, north-south. They didn’t have compasses.”
    “Wrong again, asshole,” John roared, feeling the anger build. “They had expert surveyors when they built new Cahokia during the Big Bang! Leveled the whole thing, sometimes with up to eight feet of fill. Laid it out with a graded slope and drop so it would drain. They had a standard unit of measurement, did the geometry with squares and arcs. And how did they know the directions? You can see the Woodhenge from here. That circle of posts? It’s a big honking celestial observatory, you bigoted white fool!”
    “An observatory? It’s a circle of posts. ”
    “Cahokians were plotting the movement of planets, the eighteen-point-six year cycle of the moon, and the seasons, when your white kings in England and France were wading through sewage in the streets and picking lice out of their beards.”
    “Where are the Indian cathedrals? Huh? Tell me that, smart guy.”
    “What the hell do you think you’re standing on, bigot? If it was nine hundred years ago, we’d be inside a five-story-tall building.”
    “All I see is a big pile of