“Us, too,” Frank told him dourly.
“Of course I was kinda surprised at first. I think I puzzled these locals. They used all kinds of creatures and critters and sights to try and upset me, but all it did was remind me of Disneyland, so I laughed. You see, we have no equivalent of your kind of Hell. That is when they decided I did not belong here in this place.”
“That’s what they’re doing now, trying to decide what to do with us,” Frank said eagerly. “What happened then?”
“There was a lot of talking going on. While they talked I saw how filthy this place was. Myself, I am a stickler for cleanliness. My father’s mother kept the cleanest hogan in the whole Four Corners area, until we all moved into the big house. So while they all talked I just started to clean things, to keep busy. When they saw what I was doing they offered me a job. They’re not very good at cleaning up after themselves and when they assign some of their own kind to do it they end up making a worse mess or pulling off one another’s arms and things like that.”
“A job? Here?”
“Why not here? Have you ever been to the Four Corners area, friend?”
Frank shook his head, added absently, “Sonderberg. Frank Sonderberg.” He proceeded to introduce the rest of the family, leaving Mouse for last.
Burnfigers nodded. “Four Corners boils in summertime, but in winter and fall it’s such a cold place you cannot imagine. Something in me could not tolerate the cold. My family thought it was funny, big fella like me always being cold. One thing about this place here: it never gets cold. The pay is good, too. They pay me in gold, any kind of gold I want. Spanish doubloons, Imperial Roman coinage, Persian ingots—I have quite a collection now.”
“Where do they get all the gold?” Steven wondered, wide-eyed.
“I don’t know for sure, but I think a lot of it comes from some of the people who are given permanent residency here. Those kind of people always seem to acquire gold. Many are carrying it when they are brought in. Trying to take it with them, I guess. It doesn’t get any farther than the main gate.”
“Don’t you worry about accepting that kind of gold?” Alicia asked him.
Burnfingers moved his mop across the marble floor. “Why should I? Metal is innocent of its makers.” He gestured to the left. “I got a nice room here, private. So long as I do my job nobody messes with me. Also got a TV. I can get all the L.A. and Vegas stations. They must have a pretty good antenna around here somewhere. For keeping track of future guests, I guess. They even let me comfort some of the ladies who end up here.”
“They let you do that?” said Frank.
“They think it’s pretty funny. Tears make them laugh hysterically. But I don’t deceive anybody and they’re glad for a little last human contact. Some of the people I have met would surprise you. Some probably would not. Fewer politicians than you would think. More artists than you would suspect. A lot of bankers.”
“Doesn’t being stuck here worry you at all?” Alicia asked earnestly. “What if they changed their minds about you?”
“Got a contract.”
“Well, what about your soul, then? Your immortal soul?”
“If I got a soul it’s not around here. Don’t have a shadow, either. Too hot for it, I think.”
“Everyone has a soul.” When she spoke like that, Frank thought admiringly, she looked like a suburban madonna.
Burnfingers shrugged. “Maybe so. Maybe I’ll run into it again one of these days. In the meantime, I’m getting along okay without it. Nobody’s asked me about it, so I guess they’re not interested in it. Or me. I’m kind of a neutral here, not part of this world or the other. One thing, they appreciate my work. That’s nice. I’ve worked plenty of places in the real world where people just yell at you and call you names behind your back.” He smiled slightly. “Nobody’s ever called me a name to my face. Well, one fella. I think he’s around here now someplace.”
“They don’t call you names here?” Frank wondered.
“Oh, sure, but that’s different. Part of their work. In a way it’s almost affectionate.”
“You don’t sound mad to me.”
Burnfingers’s smile faded and he turned to stare intently at Mouse. “Now you are one enigmatic little lady. You I haven’t got figured out yet. Of course I am crazy. If I was not, living here would have driven me mad by now. Since it hasn’t, I must already be. If you need confirmation, go down to any of the Levels and ask the people there for Eternity what their opinion is of the mental condition of someone who would remain here voluntarily.”
While Burnfingers and Mouse appraised each other Frank had been thinking furiously. “Are you saying they let you go anywhere? That you’ve the run of this place?”
“More or less. I pretty much work around the station. Messy as your average imp and demon is, there’s enough to keep me busy here. And I don’t like going past the Gate, down to the Levels. Even though it’s pretty much an Anglo idea of Hell, it’s still not very pleasant to look upon. Besides which it’s an impossible place to clean. Take me centuries just to make a start on the brimstone stains. This place I can handle.”
“I still don’t understand why they’d hire you in the first place,” Alicia murmured.
Burnfingers smiled thinly. “Apparently admissions are way up. Personnel hasn’t been able to keep pace, even with a lot of the staff putting in extra overtime. Being so close to Las Vegas, this is one of their busiest checkpoints. The Gate here is open round the clock and the traffic never dries up entirely, though I’m told things slow down some around Christmas.”
“How long have you been here?”
He moved his cart out of the bathroom. “Hard to say. Time never much interested me and I don’t own a watch. There are clocks all over the station, but they don’t have numbers on them. I have had to let my own biorhythms set my pace.”
Frank relaxed enough with Begay to take a seat. “What did you do before you ended up here? You sound pretty sharp to me.”
“They tested me once, back when I could stand school. My IQ is, I don’t know. Two hundred and ten, something like that. I was off their scale. Unfortunately, being crazy I can’t do much with it. Grandfather, now, he was smarter than me. They wanted him to run the Nation. The Navajo Nation, that is. But he would not have any part of it. He was only interested in sheep and corn and watching the weather.
“The schoolteachers kept trying to interest me in different subjects. When I was in high school I got interested in something they call amorphous silicon. I thought you could make high-efficiency solar cells from it. My teachers would not listen to me, so I forgot about it. Then for a while I thought I wanted to be a diesel truck mechanic. There was much talk of a football scholarship, too, until I found out I preferred avoiding people to running over them. That is not the kind of attitude that turns on college recruiters.
“Finally I just picked up and went my own way. Traveling suits me best.” He winked. “This is not the only interesting place where I have worked.”
“And you don’t find this kind of work, your situation here, degrading?” Frank asked interestedly.
“No hard work is degrading. Ask yourself sometime who you would rather have go on strike: the physicists or the garbage collectors? I have done both kinds of work. I spent much time in a plant in northwest Texas assembling nuclear weapons.”
Steven’s eyes got real big. “Atom bombs?”
Burnfingers nodded. “My job was to help with the final assembly and checkout. When no one was looking I made improvements to each warhead I worked on.”
Frank tried to envision a self-proclaimed crazy assembling nuclear devices. It made him sweat harder. “What kind of improvements?”
“On the ones that I helped prepare for shipment, I adjusted them so that if they were set off, all the radiation would be confined within a quarter-kilometer radius. The rest of the energy released would take the form of harmless fireworks, like big Fourth of July sparklers.” He grinned.
“That’s sabotage!” Frank said angrily. “You’ve weakened our national security.”
“Oh, I always even things out, Frank. I did the same work for a time in a Soviet assembly plant near Lake Baikal. The Russian bombs will make red and yellow sparklies, the American ones red, white, and blue.” He allowed himself a chuckle. “If they are ever used there are going to be some very surprised generals on both sides.”
“I love your bracelet.” Alicia gracefully changed the subject. “Is it Navajo?”
Burnfingers raised his left arm. The flannel sleeve slid back from his wrist to expose a mass of worked silver and turquoise. “My father gave it to me. It is old pawn. Myself, I prefer to work in gold. That is why I am collecting so much of it. I have a mind to make something one day.”
Abruptly, the hall door opened to admit the three demonic juveniles who had been tormenting Steven earlier. They entered laughing and cackling.
Steven saw them, let out a scream, and fled to the bathroom. One of the demons got an arm and leg between the closing door and the jamb and forced the door open. His companion resumed picking on the hapless ten-year-old.
“Hey, that’s about enough!” Frank moved to aid his son.
One of the juveniles whirled on him. “You keep out of this, blood bag!” He had pupilless red eyes and when he hissed, two narrow streams of flame shot from those inhuman orbs. Frank reeled back from the heat. The creature chortled nastily and turned to join in the fun.
Burnfingers Begay took a step toward the bathroom. “This is a holding area. You do not belong in here.”
“You stay out of this, too.” Eyeballed flame reached toward the tall Indian.
