The streets of Reston were still clogged in a frenzy of seekers, pilgrims and the generally curious when we
drove the camper back into the city center. Syha was driving and it took all of her focus to weave her way very carefully around this pedestrian congestion, even a mile or more from the city center.
"I can't believe I'm back,"
Tindar huffed, shaking his head.
It was truly overwhelming. When we had dropped the 5th Gate team at the airport, it was easy to tell the flood of curious types was far from done pouring into
the relatively small community. There was hardly a space to be had on incoming flights, though those leaving were all but empty as
Serghan had predicted, so our friends had little trouble booking passage for their journey.
Tindar's talk radio station blared on in the background about the strain on very basic local resources...no accommodations to be had, the enormous job of providing food and particularly water and bathroom facilities to the
masses. I couldn't help thinking of the fabled sermon on the mount...or perhaps Woodstock, to compare it to another era. In fact, it is quite possible each of those gatherings happened for very similar reasons. The radio host blathered on with the hourly update of the swelling population, "experts now estimate 13,000 strangers have gathered..."
Having just recently brought this up to 13,003, we returned to our more immediate problem...what to do? The debate had been dragging
on ever since we'd left the airport, probably because not one of us had a faint clue what the plan should be.
"No one here has any particular reason to be helpful to us. We can't expect cooperation from the police, the museum...anyone. We have no credentials to speak of," I argued.
"None of those groups has the statue, I'm sure," Tindar countered.
"No, but they could certainly make it a lot easier for us to investigate. The first job has got to be finding out who
has the artifact. Without that, we're just flailing in the dark," my voice raised slightly.
"We don't need to find out who has it, or where it is my dear. Our job is to find a way to make them want to bring it to us. There is really no other reasonable way to approach this whole needle and haystack problem," Tindar grumbled.
"And how to you propose we do that?" I asked.
"As our friend Serghan would say, 'I don't know'," Tindar smirked.
The radio again
caught my attention as the announcer said to a caller, "So what you're telling me is this is cultural evolution...that Wanderers have disappeared because they were inferior, and that what ever trinkets they may have stashed away wouldn't be of much use to more advanced cultures along the evolutionary scale."
The caller clearly wasn't sure she recognized what she had actually said in the shock jock jargon. But under all that intent to incite, she must have found a kernel of
the original statement, "I guess so. I just meant that cultures value different things sometimes..."
Again the litany of ratings-stoking effusions interrupted her "So what you want to know from our listeners (particularly our out-of-town guests who are listening) is if they really think this mad hunt for pot shards has any value for modern sophisticates like ourselves?" He paused just long enough to imply an opening for a response from her, whether she was still on the line
or long since cut off, she had clearly served her purpose as a caller. "I'm going to open up the lines ladies and gentleman. I want to hear what you have to say. Are Wanderer treasures really of any value to us?"
Tindar left the front of the camper long enough to retrieve the phone. He was dialing as he returned to his seat.
One caller was arguing, "What about the tombs of ancient Egypt? There was a fortune there uncovered from a lost civilization."
"So if we
measure Wanderers on the gold standard, this might be a worthwhile enterprise," the host led his caller puppet.
The marionette seemed to sense the strings for the first time, "Well, sometimes the history itself makes things valuable."
Syha had pulled over into a park area, it being completely impossible to travel further by road now because of the mass of people milling about. She turned her attention to the program along with the rest of us.
Tindar had apparently
gotten through as far as the call screener. As he reached to turn down the radio he said into the phone, "I must get on the air to speak with your host." There was a lengthy pause during which Tindar nodded impatiently to what ever was being said on the other end of the line, then he responded deliberately, "I am a Wanderer".
Syha gasped.
"Tindar!" I practically hissed. "You promised..."
"I promised to use my cunning wiles to retrieve the Reston artifact," he
amended.
"So this isn't just you losing it at a radio call-in show again?" I asked, half believing him.
"You argued before we have no credentials with anyone here in Reston," Tindar reminded me. "But we have one very important credential...one card to play that brings us front and center into the fray."
"And how does this help in any way to flush out the people who possess the artifact?" I wanted to know.
"Because having the statue means nothing right now to
who ever holds it," Syha smiled. "They'll just hand it over to who ever asked them to get it for a price."
Tindar winked at Syha, building on the thought for her, "But if we make it known we have the key to unlocking this treasure..."
"Then they will seek us out," I finished feeling nothing short of awe.
Tindar held up one finger and turned his attention back to the phone.
"Yes sir, that's right, I am a Wanderer. The reports of my cultural extinction have
been greatly exaggerated. And if you want to know just how valuable that treasure is, listen closely," Tindar beamed a huge smile.
Suddenly, we had the beginnings of a plan, not to mention the attention of the entire Reston region along with over 13,000 pilgrims.
"What have we done?"
