Chief Three Hydrogen Bombs glared his son into silence. Then he turned to Jerry Franklin. “Your message and your gifts. First your message.”

“No, Chief,” Bright Book Jacket told him respectfully but definitely. “First the gifts. Then the message. That’s the way it was done.”

“I’ll have to get them. Be right back.” Jerry walked out of the tent backwards and ran to where Sam Rutherford had tethered the horses. “The presents,” he said urgently. “The presents for the chief.”

The two of them tore at the pack straps. With his arms loaded, Jerry returned through the warriors who had assembled to watch their activity with quiet arrogance. He entered the tent, set the gifts on the ground and bowed low again.

“Bright beads for the chief,” he said, handing over two star sapphires and a large white diamond, the best that the engineers had evacuated from the ruins of New York in the past ten years.

“Cloth for the chief,” he said, handing over a bolt of linen and a bolt of wool, spun and loomed in New Hampshire especially for this occasion and painfully, expensively carted to New York.

“Pretty toys for the chief,” he said, handing over a large, only slightly rusty alarm clock and a precious typewriter, both of them put in operating order by batteries of engineers and artisans working in tandem (the engineers interpreting the brittle old documents to the artisans) for two and a half months.

“Weapons for the chief,” he said, handing over a beautifully decorated cavalry saber, the prized hereditary possession of the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, who had protested its requisitioning most bitterly (“Damn it all, Mr. President, do you expect me to fight these Indians with my bare hands?” “No, I don’t, Johnny, but I’m sure you can pick up one just as good from one of your eager junior officers”).

Three Hydrogen Bombs examined the gifts, particularly the typewriter, with some interest. Then he solemnly distributed them among the members of his council, keeping only the typewriter and one of the sapphires for himself. The sword he gave to his son.