Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True - Kris Saknussemm [0]
A Del Rey Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2011 by Kris Saknussemm
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey Colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Saknussemm, Kris.
Enigmatic pilot: a tall tale too true / Kris Saknussemm
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51902-3
1. United States—History—19th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.A425E55 2011
813’.6—dc22 2010042113
www.delreybooks.com
Cover design and illustration by Faceout Studio/Charles Brock
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Revelation Creek, Dakota Territory, USA, 1869
Part 1 - All Things are Hidden in the Mind
Chapter 1 - Time of the End
Chapter 2 - A New Kind of Animal
Chapter 3 - The Necessity of Adventure
Chapter 4 - River of Secrets, River of Mercy
Chapter 5 - The Ambassadors from Mars
Chapter 6 - A Lust for Learning
Chapter 7 - Wild Science
Chapter 8 - Midnight Is a Door
Chapter 9 - The Hunger for Secrets
Part 2 - The High Cost of Bewonderment
Chapter 1 - Rara Avis
Chapter 2 - Ascension and Deception
Chapter 3 - On Glory’s Fragile Wings
Chapter 4 - The Price of Surprise
Chapter 5 - Fleeing from Grace
Part 3 - United We Escape
Chapter 1 - Awakening West
Chapter 2 - A Different Kind of Darkness
Chapter 3 - No One Sees the Thunder
Chapter 4 - Fetish
Chapter 5 - Reliable Omens
Part 4 - A Quickening of Riddles
Chapter 1 - Strange Languages
Chapter 2 - The Blinking of an Eye
Chapter 3 - The Quest and Questions of the Quists
Chapter 4 - I Show You Plenty Ghosts
Chapter 5 - Looking Alive
Chapter 6 - Justice Street
Chapter 7 - Something in Between
Chapter 8 - Dead of Night
Chapter 9 - A Bend in Another River
About the Author
Revelation Creek, Dakota Territory, USA, 1869
A U.S. SEVENTH CAVALRY LIEUTENANT WITH THE UNGAINLY NAME of Mortingale Todd peered through his government-issue field glasses across the steep-sided flash of frothing ditchwater that on his still crude reconnaissance map had no name, and now seemed to be running much higher and faster than when he had arrived at the bank only moments before.
As a passable scout and a skilled surveyor, his attention focused first on terrain, and beyond the many thoughts that were passing through his mind—principally the threat of a Sioux arrow ripping through his gullet and the likelihood of ambush (just the concept of ambush)—he was forced to accommodate a very unsoldierish, or at least un-surveyor-like notion that the landscape he was confronting was changing before his eyes in a way that he could not quite pin down. “How odd,” Todd mumbled to himself (and whenever he used the word “odd” he was made uncomfortably aware of his name and memories of childhood heckling).
Rapidly rising ground always raises questions in a mapmaker’s mind, and the young point man for his division was beginning to get consciousness-raising ideas that he felt were unmanly and demonstrated the lack of internal discipline that his father, back in Turnip, Illinois, had warned most of their neighbors about.
Indeed, they brought to mind a whole tribe of concerns and speculations that he had been doing his young man’s best to suppress. Most of these circled their horses around the question of what he and his unit were doing in such a beautiful but hostile place—which now seemed to him to be simultaneously dishearteningly barren and lushly blooming. What were they really doing?
On the surface, it appeared to be a scout mission for the United States government. Investigation