Wet leaves slapped at his face as the path narrowed. He followed her, drunk with the prospect of unwinding the cloth that tightly bound her hips. When at last she stopped, they stood before a dark cave entrance, a portal exhaling a cold breath. Distant sounds of the grotto’s revels merged with the nearer jungle chitter.
“I’ve been watching you at the Temple ceremonies,” Kina said.
Pacal had known that his role was public, yet it startled him to think that she had noticed him as an individual.
“We all know the apprentices’ names. My girlfriends have their favorites. You’re mine.”
“Why?”
The half smile reappeared, mocking, beguiling. “Because you cry at the executions.”
“I don’t.”
Her dark eyes held him. “It’s all right to cry. What the Temple does is murder.”
She had taken his hands in her own, and now he pulled away. “It’s not murder. And you can’t see that high up.”
Kina shrugged. “Binoculars.”
Despite the cool draft from the cave, his face grew hot. “Those are wondrous moments. You couldn’t understand.”
Her smile flattened. “Never mind, then.” She walked into the mouth of the cave, disappearing like a stone dropped in a pool.
Did she want him to follow her, or had he driven her from him? He peered into the cave, into what might be a black portal to Xibalba. Then he walked inside, where his skin sprouted an icy sweat. “Kina?” The cave’s version of his voice was pitifully small. No answer. She had shed him like an old garment.
He spoke into the blackness. “What would happen if we didn’t remove criminals from our land?” If she was there, she could hear. “If we let those with the violence gene procreate and transmit their violence to future generations? You see how criminals prey on decent folk. How a few hoodlums terrify us with killings and rape. Isn’t it better to cull such things from our genomes? Or would you rather have us dispatch undesirables in secret? Would you feel more pure if you didn’t observe?”
Her silence was her verdict. “You think I’m a monster,” he whispered.
An arm slithered along his waist. “No,” Kina said from close behind him. “I think you can change, that’s all.” She pressed her naked skin against his back.
He found himself quite willing to save moral discussion for another time. Pacal followed her to a bed of palm fronds on the cave floor. “I’ll never change, you know.”
“We will change together,” she said.
Hearing this, he thought she might be as new to sex as he was. To spare her the embarrassment of his fumblings, he said, “I’m supposed to lie with someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“Well, let’s not do what we’re supposed to.”
And then they didn’t.
The realm of Xibalba stripped their inhibitions, setting its dark powers loose in their blood. She kept pulling back from him, helping him last, sharpening his desire. During that hour Pacal fell deeply in love with this stranger who now knew his body better than anyone.
It was with some disgust, then, that he learned why she had lain with him. She rumpled the fronds to refresh them, and lay back in his arms. From the darkness she brought out a small square and held it aloft at arm’s length.
“It’s The Book,” she said.
His heart sinking, he reached out and touched it, feeling the bumpy leather, the tissue-thin pages. “Tell me this is not the Book of the Eastern god.” Tikal’s enemies called themselves the People of The Book, and they were intent on converts, whether by war or stealth.
Her pause made him sick. Rising up on one elbow, he stared at her, a dark soul in a world of blackness. He stood, snatching up his clothes and throwing them on. “Bahlum Kuk lost 15,000 warriors to the barbarians. How could you love them?”
Shadows stirred as she fumbled with her own clothes. “Pacal, what would happen if we didn’t allow all books to be read? Wouldn’t we be the barbarians?” Insufferably, her tone mimicked the one he had used earlier to defend his Order.
At the cave opening he paused. “How could you turn sex into preaching? Is this what your Eastern god commands?” He strode from the cave, feeling debased by what they had done together.
From the darkness her voice came, even clearer than when she lay next to him: “Your Temple doesn’t kill those with the violence gene, you know. They kill the People of The Book. That’s how they get rid of us. Not such a high calling after all, is it?”
“Is that why you lay with me? To change me?” he asked, feeling foolish for exposing that, even now, he cared what she thought.
“No. But I think you’re better than what you do.”
He laughed, though it was far from what he felt. How could he be better than Master Altun, or the Order that tried to eradicate cruelty from their lives? With ritual cruelty. It was better so. Better, he said with each stomp of his feet through the underbrush. Better.
As Xibalba occupied the sky, the brazier’s smoke carried Pacal’s blood to the Heavens. The strips of paper that had caught his few drops of blood curled on the embers. Pacal reached down to cut himself one more time.
“Enough,” came the voice from the western portal. Altun Ha stood there, dressed now in the simple tunic of an educator and scientist. “It’s supposed to be purification, not torture,” the master said.
“Some need more purification than others,” Pacal dared to say. Though his investiture was only three days away, his former devotion was receding from him. Kina’s voice needled at him: Not such a high calling, is it? She had given him her body, but taken his certainty. It was not worth the trade.
Pacal rewound his loin wrap as Master Altun stood beside him, staring at the coals.
Altun Ha said, “Let us be the judge of who is pure and who is not.” With more warmth he added, “I cut myself a lot when I was your age. I felt responsible for what our Order must do.” He turned to gaze at his student. “But I learned that I am not that important. Only the Temple, our city, our people have that importance.”
Pacal had used a desensitizer, but his loins began to hurt. He managed to stay professional, keeping expression from his face.
Altun Ha motioned for an apprentice to remove the brazier, lest Pacal attempt further mortification. “Tonight I go to sit by the new king’s bedside, to soothe his dreams. He, too, doubts his worthiness of office.” He smiled. “It’s contagious, perhaps. Get some sleep, boy.”
Pacal obeyed for a while. Then he rose from his bed, and walked the Temple halls. His aimless steps led him to the Repository. Flickering lights threw shadows on the walls storing the genomes of the 700,000 residents of Tikal. Though all the genomes had been sequenced, not all had been read. It was the difference between a library and a deepened scholar, between information and knowledge.
The genomes were organized by birth year and designated by engraved names: Kan-Xul, Lady Zak-lay, Uayeb, Mah-Cit, Yax-Ikal . . . and so on, across the vast wall, displaying the work of the last five cycles of Mayan scholarship. The implications of this knowledge were terrible and profound. Once knowing the trajectory of a life, Pacal’s Order could prevent its fruition. For the sake of the larger society.
It was terrible. It was fair.
Just ahead in the dim hall was Master Altun’s domain, a small stone cubicle with a simple chair and several digital machines. A light still burned, although the master was gone for the evening.
Gone for the evening. It was as though Kina herself whispered in his ear. Pacal entered the master’s room.
It took only a moment to find the data files for the next Temple ceremony. A person named Wac Chanil Ahau would meet the obsidian blade tomorrow.
Pacal glanced through the portal toward the Repository, but all remained quiet. Quickly, he scanned for the V-gene. He missed it the first time through. Hands slick with sweat, he keyed in a closer look at the genetic code, then scanned more deliberately for the telltale segment. Still nothing.
Xibalba held the
heavens, and the Temple slept. Altun Ha could return at any moment, or the guards come checking, but Pacal persisted. Next he looked up the last person to require sacrifice, just a few days ago. No V-gene. Nor the one before that. He checked a dozen names.
Then, selecting the date of his investiture, he searched for the identity of the intended sacrifice. When the name appeared on the screen, he paused, his hands like claws on the keyboard. Here was a young woman who could not have the slightest violence in her. Her only unkindness had been her half smile, when he had wanted the full one. So he was to sever her neck for the crime of reading The Book. His world tipped out of balance.
In his intense concentration, he didn’t notice that he had company. The master. Pacal looked up. No, not the master. It was Chel.
Chel moved to Altun Ha’s machine and shut down the program. “So, then,” he said, “you know.”
Pacal could barely look at this young man that he thought he’d known, a man of the Temple’s highest Order, his friend Chel—his corrupt friend.
“You would have been told before your investiture. It is the next level of initiation.”
“The initiation that began when I slept with a woman whom I am to murder?”
Chel closed his eyes for a moment. Then: “It is unusual. But Altun Ha doubts you.” He glanced away, saying the next thing with as much dignity as he could muster: “He saw your tears at Bahlum Kuk’s ceremony.” Then, meeting Pacal’s gaze, he added, “You have another chance. Kina will be your test of loyalty. Sometimes we must perform the ceremony on those we know. It does happen. We have to be professional.”
Pacal shoved past Chel into the Repository. “She has no violence gene. We’re not saving society, we’re ruining it.”
Chel caught up with him, grabbing Pacal’s elbow and spinning him around. “Listen to me. The Temple is the glue that holds society together.” He pointed past the stone walls, toward the kingdom of jungle and temples. “How long before the masses run riot in the streets, overtaking the king, the Temple, all that keeps order? Even if they have no violence gene, they’re doing a fine job of running riot.”
“So you cook up a story that we’re doing a big job keeping society orderly?”
Chel shrugged. “It’s working, isn’t it?”
“By killing people who follow other religions?”
Chel frowned. “Who said we were? We read the genomes, but so far we can’t figure out how beliefs are encoded.” He paused. “We’re culling those without the V-gene.”
At Pacal’s look of consternation, he went on: “Tikal needs to be strong. The Eastern army is only one predator. There’s Calakmul and Uaxactun, both drooling at the prospect of our fields and temples.” He held up his hands against Pacal’s objections. “How do you think Tikal stays strong? Through violence, that’s how. Matching our strong warriors against theirs. Only a courageous people send their young fighters against invaders. We can’t afford the gene variants that make us soft.”
Pacal leaned against the wall holding the genomic Repository. He rubbed at the etched name under his fingertips, thinking that all this should be erased. No one had the right to know so much. The notion surprised him. He was a scientist. He’d never thought there should be a limit to knowledge.
Chel put his hand on Pacal’s shoulder. “Soft will kill us.”
“I think hard is killing us.”
“Go to bed, Pacal. We all have this reaction, at first. It’s only natural.”
Pacal turned to leave, desperate to be alone, to turn off Chel’s voice.
“One more thing,” Chel said. “About Kina. If you don’t follow through with the ceremony, someone else will. You can’t save her, any more than Altun Ha could save the king. The difference between Kina and Bahlum Kuk is that he knew he had to die for his city. Kina is not so wise.”
Pacal staggered off to his bed.
Close to dawn on his investiture day, Pacal had slept little. In the sweltering predawn, he sat alone on the altar at the head of the Temple stairs, where the massive stones pumped out their stored heat. The day that he had anticipated for so long now began to color the sky. But he would rather hurl himself down the endless stairs than wear the feathered mask.
Kina waited in the cells beneath the Temple, along with all the other innocents. She was one of Tikal’s best, one of the soft ones. Pacal looked at the obsidian blade in his hand, its edge one molecule thick. Turning it on himself, his death would be swift. But it wouldn’t save Kina.
Bird cries arose from the jungle, as they began their daily plea for mates, calling their songs to demonstrate their genetic superiority. And the female birds, what sequencers did they have, to judge worthiness?
“The ceremony is still hours away, my boy.”
Altun Ha stood in the portal, a mere shadow.
Without turning around Pacal said. “No, it’s closer than that, really.” He had never said no to the master before, and its sound now charged the silence between them. Pacal turned to face his old teacher.
Altun Ha noted the black knife that Pacal held loosely at his side. “Do you love the girl that much?”
Balanced on the edge of the stairs, Pacal planned to tumble down before he would relinquish the blade to this man. “No. I love what she is.”
The old man drooped his head. When he raised it again, his face had sagged with age. “Oh, Pacal, I worried about you from the start. Yet I hoped . . .”
“Hoped? Hoped that I would follow in your steps, execute the peaceful?”
Altun Ha stepped forward, but Pacal shoved out a hand, warning him. Still, the old man advanced. “Give me the blade, son.”
Pacal felt tears welling. He clutched the knife so close to his chest that it nicked his tunic. “Why, Altun? Why not just develop a micro-reservoir of the kind of genes you want, and infuse them into the peaceful? Why kill them?” He waved his bladed hand at the Temple. “Is it just for showmanship? All this blood, just for show?” He was crying openly. And the tears this time were true, not some whipped-up allegiance to culture.
Altun Ha was close enough now that Pacal could see the anger hardening his features. “You of all people should know that keeping power requires a commitment to violence. You, Pacal, have the V-gene. As do I.” Seeing the expression on Pacal’s face, he shook his head. “Why else were you drawn to this Order?”
The man’s words ran into him, water through cold stone. “No,” Pacal whispered.
Altun Ha shook his head with infinite weariness.
“It’s not a bad thing. We need it to do our job. Who else could stand to kill friends?” He looked down at the altar, perhaps remembering his own tests.
The sun sprayed its first light through the screen of the jungle, lighting up Altun Ha’s face. Pacal saw him clearly for the first time in his life: the easy grace, the good will, the evil. But he was no worse than Pacal himself.
Altun Ha knew what was coming a moment before Pacal himself. A look of alarm, like a frightened bird, lit in his face for a moment, replaced by the shock of the blade slicing in, as Pacal threw his weight behind the thrust. Altun fell forward, collapsing on the altar, sheltering the blade with his body.
V-gene, indeed. Pacal had it, in full. As he trembled, sweat ran from his body, releasing the accumulated poisons. Every cell in his body was contaminated. And not just genetically, but by all that he had done, by the ceremonies he had witnessed, by the apologies he had made for his Order. Everything was overturned, like the Underworld crawling into the sky at night.
Leaving Altun Ha’s body, he walked through the portal to the Temple’s inner world. He paused at a fountain, rinsing the blood from his hands and arms. A few drowsy acolytes were now afoot, but hardly noted him. Pacal found himself walking into the lower reaches of the Temple near the holding cells. There he roused a guard and, pointing to the stairs and the upper levels, babbled of murder and evil.
It was no more than the truth.
Their only chance was to travel swiftly toward the encroac
hing army, hoping for asylum. Pacal and Kina paddled unceasingly through the morning, using not the great canals, but the waterways overhung with jungle, too shallow for power boats.
The river current was with them, flowing into the ocean, the great half circle gulf that separated the great peninsula lands from the northern lands. Kina had spoken of life on those vast plains, filled with bison and the tribes she called “close cousins,” but Pacal hardly cared. It was only for Kina that he paddled. Because her life should not be forfeit.
Before long they did encounter the Eastern forces, who let them pass because Kina had The Book, and could quote it. They looked askance at Pacal, but during the last few days he had learned to lie, among other things.
They came to the blue gulf, where Kina said they could paddle north, hugging the coast. Pacal would leave her now that she was safe. Surely he could no longer be her favorite. He hadn’t changed as she’d hoped—in fact he had proved his violence. But he was unwilling to convert to a religion. Religion had ruined so much. Could the Eastern religion be far different?
As night fell, they made their camp on the beach. It was just an ordinary night, no great myth of antiquity. The stars poked through, their alignment a matter of indifference.
Kina drew near, opening The Book.
“Please, no preaching,” Waves hit the sand in a comforting drumbeat, healing his troubled thoughts.
Kina said, “It’s not religion as you know it, Pacal. It’s science.”
He sighed. She would preach no matter what.
She held the pages toward the campfire, illuminating a diagram. “The Tree of Life,” she said.
Pacal jerked away. “We had a tree of life in Tikal—the one that grows between the three worlds. It was full of rot. So is this one.”
Kina’s smile dented one cheek. “That was a symbol. This one is a diagram.”
Pacal looked more closely. It looked like a tree, but it had tiny writing all over it.
“The Maya aren’t the only ones that have been working on gene analysis. Across the ocean, our sisters and brothers have been working on genomes, too. All the genomes.” As Pacal took The Book in his hands, he peered more closely at the branches depicted there. Each one held not a leaf, but a species of plant or animal.
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