Aztlan: The Last Sun

by Michael Jan Friedman

  Ecatzin and I were the only ones who had played in the Sun League. In fact, I had competed against him in the championship game five cycles earlier, me playing for Aztlan and Ecatzin for Yautepec. I was young then and he was an aging veteran, but I was the one who blew out my knee.

  No one had ever had a knee repaired and re-entered the tlachli, the professional ball court. The gods simply demanded too much of a man between the stone walls. Even for perfect physical specimens, it was hard to play the game. For someone as badly damaged as I was, it would have been impossible.

  Not that I’d had an easy time accepting that. Which was one of the reasons I had begun playing again a few cycles earlier, if only as an amateur in the city men’s league.

  Some nights the Scale Beetles won in that league, some nights we lost. That night we won, and we did so by kicking the ball through the hoop in the last few seconds.

  It was a proud thing for a man to score a goal, something to brag about at least until the next game. Two goals was a rare and exquisite occurrence, the gift of a kind and generous god.

  That night, I scored three goals.

  The walk from the stone court back to the locker room was a sweet one, full of whooping and singing and skull-rapping. It was always better to be on the winning side than the losing one, even if the practice of sacrificing the losers had gone out hundreds of cycles earlier.

  I wasn’t the kind who liked to lose myself in celebration, but I enjoyed watching the others have a good time. So I had a smile on my face as I stood in the shower and washed the beetle’s-blood paint from my body, and listened to my teammates jaw at each other.

  When I came out in my towel, Huemac was still holding court in the middle of the room. He had a broken nose, as usual, and a host of little, tomato-red wounds on his knees and elbows, but he didn’t seem to mind any of them.

  “So tell me,” ranted Huemac, who did like to lose himself in celebration, “why is it I’m out there busting my butt every thirteen days, fighting for the ball all by myself, getting knocked around by two or three guys at a time? Because Colhua’s poor little knee is too delicate. But all of a sudden, his knee is good enough to make a move like this!” And he swiveled his hips in an exaggerated circle, drawing laughter from the others.

  I didn’t answer. I just took my breeches off their wall-hook and sat down to slip them on.

  “You tell him!” cried Ocelopan, pointing a crooked finger at Huemac.

  Taking the imperative to heart, the big man held his hands out in an exaggerated appeal for reason. “He’s a little girl, this Investigator for the Empire. Am I right?”

  “You’re absolutely right,” said Atl, caught up in the spirit of the thing. “He should wear a skirt and braid his hair!”

  Another round of laughter, echoing from wall to wall. Atl and Panitzin contributed the loudest part of it.

  Suddenly, Huemac was looming over me. “You know what they call a guy like you, Colhua?”

  “No,” I said, playing along, “what do they call a guy like me?”

  Huemac leaned down until his nose was pressing against mine. “A monster of a ballplayer,” he roared, “that’s what!”

  Then he clapped me on the shoulder, nearly knocking me off my stool.

  “Quiet, Huemac,” said Ecatzin, “the gods will hear you!” After all, it was bad luck to praise someone in public.

  “Bugger them!” said Huemac. “Tonight we were gods!”

  The youngsters laughed, but the rest of us remained silent. It wasn’t wise to bait the Deathless Ones.

  In any case, the celebration abated soon afterward. In the end, it was only a single game. It wasn’t as if we had beaten the Hummingbirds in the championship round.

  I ended up walking out with Ecatzin. He was limping a little. When I took note of it, he smiled and said, “It’s not an old man’s sport, Maxtla. Not even at this level.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “you’ll be playing it with my grandchildren some day, teaching them as you taught me whenever we played Yautepec.”

  We laughed, both of us. But not loud enough for the gods to hear.

  “So,” he said, “all kidding aside, your knee must have felt pretty good tonight.”

  It felt good, all right. But the next game it might creak like a rusty wagon. “Good days and bad days, my friend. Good days and bad days.”

  When we got to the rail station, Ecatzin went up the stairs for the eastbound line and I went through the concrete tunnel for the westbound. I got home that way after every game, so I knew the schedule pretty well. The next carriage would be along in a matter of minutes.

  I was halfway through the tunnel when I realized I wasn’t alone.

  Looking back over my shoulder, I saw two figures, both of them wearing hooded shirts with their hoods up. They were just standing there, looking in my direction.

  Trouble, I thought.

  “I’m an Investigator,” I called out, my voice echoing wildly in the tunnel. “You sure you want that kind of headache?”

  They started walking toward me, undeterred by the warning. A moment later, I understood why. The tunnel mouth ahead of me was blocked by two other men. They too wore hoods.

  And because the lighting was better in that direction, I could see that under the hoods they wore masks.

  Every police officer carried a hand stick, even when he wasn’t on duty. I was no exception. With an economy of motion, I extracted it from my pouch and unfolded it. Its obsidian blades would cut to the bone, if necessary.

  And it looked like it would be necessary.

  The two ahead of me started walking my way as well. Little by little, they closed the jaws of their trap.

  “Last warning,” I said.

  It had no more effect than the first one.

  They took out sticks of their own, the kind people can get in the Merchant City if they know where to look. No blades, but with the odds in their favor they didn’t need any.

  Suddenly, everything began to speed up. That was fine with me. The faster they came at me, the better.

  No doubt, they were expecting me to wait for them and try to defend myself. Instead, I went for the pair who were up ahead of me.

  As I had hoped, one of them got ahead of the other and took a swing at me. I stopped it with my stick, then drove my fist into his face. As the other one tried to slam the end of his weapon into my temple, I reached across my body and caught that attack too.

  I had intended to hit him in the ribs, thinking it would open the way in front of me. But he parried my attack with a move of his own, taking away my advantage.

  And by then, the guys behind me had joined the festivities.

  Whirling, I took a shot at the closer of the two and felt my blades sink into flesh. But before I could go after his partner, I got hit in the back of the head. Hard.

  I felt myself stagger, found a wall with my hand, righted myself. Then I got hit again, this time in the jaw.

  Suddenly, the concrete flew up and hit me in the face. Before I could push myself up, a weight settled onto my back. I tried to roll out from under it, but it was too heavy.

  Then my ribs began to ignite, one after the other, over and over again. I think I cried out in pain, but I’m not sure. Anyway, it wouldn’t have sounded like much with my face pressed into the cement.

  At some point the punishment stopped, and the weight lifted off me. For a heartbeat or two, as I lay there, I thought my tormentors had left—until I felt a hand on my shoulder, and realized that one of the masked faces was close to my ear.

  “The murder at Centeotl,” it said in a rough voice, “let it go. For the sake of the gods we revere, forget it happened. Or you’ll be next.”

  Then someone kicked me in the ribs again and the beating resumed.

  Chapter Five

  I blacked out at some point.

  When I woke up, the guys in the masks were gone. But they had pounded me pretty good. My face was on fire and my ribs screamed every time I took a br
eath. If their goal was to get my attention, they had succeeded—admirably.

  I got up on my hands and knees, spit out some blood, and thanked the gods they hadn’t seen fit to claim me yet. Obviously, the Lands of the Dead were crowded enough as it was.

  Just then, I heard what sounded like little whip cracks somewhere beyond the tunnel. Footfalls, I thought, my heart beginning to pound in my chest. They’re coming back for another go at me.

  I listened more closely. But to my relief, all I could make out was the sighing of the wind.

  Funny, I thought. You get the life beat out of you, you start hearing things.

  I found my hand stick lying on the cement a body length away. Crawling over to it, I saw that my attackers had broken it in half. For emphasis, no doubt.

  Picking up the pieces, I put them in my pouch. Then I dragged myself to my feet, put my hand against the tunnel wall for support, and stood there for a moment. I moved my hands and feet one by one. Everything worked, though not without complaint.

  Well, I thought, there’s something to be thankful for.

  From the opposite wall, a colorful rendition of the goddess Chantico glared at me with big, dark eyes beneath her crown of green cactus spikes. Her face was an angry red, as livid as if she had been rubbed raw by the enormous serpent entwined around her hips and legs.

  Chantico was the embodiment of fire, both the explosive fury of the volcano and the gentle flames of the hearth. She seemed to be asking me a question, but I was too battered to figure out what it might be.

  Still hugging the wall, I shuffled the length of the tunnel to its exit. The sound of my soles scraping the ground echoed around me, again making me think I wasn’t alone.

  The stairs were bad. I felt like there were weights tied to my ankles, making each step up an adventure. It seemed like a long time before I reached the rail platform.

  The time dial by the platform told me I had missed my carriage by a half hour—no more. Funny, it felt like I had been lying there all night.

  When was the next carriage? I knew they didn’t all stop at Chantico Street.

  I was about to look for a schedule when I saw a headlight in the distance, all the way down the track. I’m in luck, I thought. Yes, it had been one lucky night all around.

  Fortunately, there was no one sitting in the carriage when I got on. No one I needed to assure that I was all right, no one to whom I needed to explain anything. It was quiet there, peaceful, except for the regrets that kept popping up in my head.

  Idiot, I thought.

  It was a tunnel. It was late at night. You should have looked around before you walked in.

  But I had walked through that tunnel every thirteen days, cycle after cycle, and I had never had a problem. Not even once. Why would I have expected to have one this time?

  One thing was certain—if I had ever entertained the possibility that the murder was the work of a single sick mind, that possibility had gone out the window. Clearly, it was the effort of a group, and a dangerous one if it wasn’t reluctant to take on an Investigator of the Empire.

  “For the sake of the gods we revere,” one of the masked men had said.

  That sounded like something the cultists would say. Or maybe it was just someone trying to sound like the cultists.

  And who would that be? I had no idea.

  I got off the carriage line at my stop, Quetzalcoatl Street, and walked stiff-legged the three blocks to my pyramid. By then everything was cramping up on me. I felt like a man forty cycles older, and one in bad shape at that.

  The door attendant had never seen me that way. Wide-eyed, he asked me if I needed medical attention. I thanked him and said I was all right, and crossed the lobby to the lift.

  I pushed the button. Eventually, the compartment arrived and the doors slid apart.

  It occurred to me, if only momentarily, that there might be somebody inside waiting to jump me as I’d been jumped earlier. But that didn’t make sense. If the masked guys had wanted to kick me around some more, they could have done that back in the tunnel.

  Anyway, the place was empty. There was nobody to kick me around except myself.

  I rode the compartment to the top floor. Being an Investigator had certain perks. Even after paying for Aunt Xoco’s place, I could afford a nice view in a nice building.

  It wasn’t easy to open my door with my hands shaking. Still, I managed to punch in the security code on the third try. As the door slid aside, I again got the feeling that there was someone waiting on the other side of it.

  There wasn’t.

  The first thing I did was go the cold cabinet in the kitchen and take out a frosty bottle of cane water. Even though it hurt a little to press my mouth against the bottle, the water felt good going down. But then, getting beaten up always gave me a thirst.

  Only after I had quenched that thirst did I go to the bathroom to check myself out in the mirror. It wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. Some blood, some swelling, mostly around my mouth and under my left eye, but it could have been worse. In fact, I’d sustained more gruesome injuries in the Arena.

  I washed away the blood with a wet cloth. Then I got out an ice tray, emptied its contents over a second cloth, pulled the ends of the cloth together, and tied them off with olli bands.

  Holding the compress against my eye, I went back into the kitchen and got out some pineapple extract. A swig of it had always accelerated the healing process when I played for Aztlan. I figured it would help this time as well.

  I was going to sit down with my compress and contemplate what had happened when my radio buzzed. I got up, crossed the room, and removed the radio from my pouch. Then I said, “Colhua.”

  It was Necalli. He didn’t sound happy.

  “Where under the heavens have you been?” he asked. “I’ve been calling you forever.”

  “I was in a tunnel down by Chantico Street Station. You know, just lying there.”

  A pause. “What are you talking about?”

  “I was jumped by four guys in masks. Apparently, they didn’t want me to continue my investigation into the Centeotl murder.”

  “You were attacked?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not,” I assured him.

  “You were really attacked? Are you all right?”

  “I’ll live.”

  Another pause. “How do you know that’s why they attacked you? Because of Centeotl, I mean.”

  “They said so.”

  Necalli cursed again. “I don’t like the idea of police officers getting assaulted, Colhua. For any reason. Investigators especially. And you have no idea who they were?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m glad you’re still alive.”

  “So am I.”

  “Because we’ve got another murder on our hands, and it would be a pain in the butt for me to have to break in a new Investigator.”

  I felt a chill climb my spine. “Another one? Like the disaster at Centeotl?”

  “Yes. Same deal. Heart ripped out and replaced with a burning candle.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “At the Atlaua building.”

  “Another pyramid,” I thought out loud.

  Like Centeotl, Atlaua had been sanctified recently and was primed to open on the holiday.

  “Seems like someone is trying to keep these pyramids from opening,” Necalli observed. “And get this—it’s the same developer. Lolco Molpilia. You know who that is, right?”

  “I do. I saw him on the Mirror not too long ago.”

  “You think it’s a coincidence?” asked Necalli.

  I sighed. “Maybe not.”

  Was Necalli’s suspicion right? Was someone trying to hurt Molpilia by de-sanctifying his buildings?

  And if so, who was it?

  Only the gods knew.

  “I’m sending an auto-carriage for you,” said Necalli. “That is, if the guys who jumped you haven’t talked
you out of pursuing them. Have they?”

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  I had just enough time to put some bandages on my face and change my clothes before the carriage showed up. Strangely enough, I thought as I climbed in, my knee still felt good. But it was the only part of me that did.

  At Atlaua, it wasn’t a security guard who had discovered the body. It was a maintenance team working on the pyramid’s eastern flank, replacing a section of bulbs that had shorted out.

  I questioned them as I had questioned Chimalma at Centeotl. They looked as pale and shaken as she had. But then, it wasn’t every day a maintenance team turned up a body.

  Especially in the kind of shape this one was in.

  If they were curious about what had happened to my face, they didn’t say anything about it. They just answered my questions, went off together into a corner of the lobby, and sat down to await further instructions.

  And I went outside to see what had happened.

  The Atlaua property, I noticed, was bigger and hillier than that of Centeotl. It seemed the body was in a low-lying area between two of the hills.

  In this case, the officers keeping it company were from the Twelfth District rather than the Seventh, so they wore blue tunics rather than yellow ones. But like the guys from the Seventh, they would rather have been doing almost anything else.

  It wasn’t just that it was a corpse. It was what it looked like.

  I didn’t kneel beside the poor bastard. I was too stiff from the beating I had taken. Besides, I could see all I needed to without bending down.

  As Necalli had said, it was the same deal as before. The same splintered ribs, the same gaping cavity where the victim’s heart should have been, the same pallid pool of candle wax congealed in his gut.

  But this victim was a lot more prosperous-looking than Patli had been. His clothes were made of the finest fabrics, so fine that one might almost have mistaken him for a nobleman.

  Except for the jewelry, of course. Unlike a nobleman, he wasn’t wearing any.

  “Colhua?” said a familiar voice.

  I looked back over my shoulder and saw Necalli coming over the hill. He looked tired. But then, it was late, and I had no doubt he would rather have been in bed.