The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  'And the population?'

  'Chichen Itza was about 200,000 according to Morley,' said Halstead. 'Uaxuanoc might run upwards of a quarter-million.'

  'That's a devil of a lot of people,' I said in astonishment.

  To build the immense structures they did required a lot of hands,' said Fallon. These were a neolithic people, remember, using stone tools to carve stone. I expect the centre of Uaxuanoc will be about one hundred acres, if we can rely on Vivero's map, so the outer city would have been populous, with more people in it man in the whole of Quintana Roo .now. But there'll be no trace left of the outer city, timber buildings don't last in this climate.'

  He tapped with the pointer again. 'Let's get on with it. So we have fifteen cenotes to look at, and if we don't find what we're looking for we'll have to go further afield. That will be unfortunate, because within twenty miles of here there are another forty-nine cenotes and it's going to take a long time if we have to investigate them all.'

  He waved the pointer at the pilot. 'Fortunately we have Harry Rider and his helicopter so we can do it in reasonable comfort. I'm getting too old to tackle the forest.'

  Rider said, 'I've already had a look at some of those water-holes, Mr. Fallon; in most of them there's no place to put down -- not even my chopper. It's real thick.' Fallon nodded. 'I know; I've been here before and I know what it's like. We'll run a preliminary photo survey. Colour film might show up differences in vegetation due to underlying structures, and infra-red might show more. And I'd like to do some flights early morning and late evening -- we might get something out of the shadows.'

  He turned and regarded the photo-mosaic. 'As you can see, 'I've numbered the cenotes under consideration. Some are more likely than others. Vivero said there was a ridge running through Uaxuanoc with a temple at the top and a cenote at the bottom. Cenotes and ridges seem to be associated in this area, which is bad luck; but it cuts the possibles down to eleven. I think we can forget numbers four, seven, eight and thirteen for the time being.' He turned to Rider. 'When can we start?'

  'Any time you like -- I'm fuelled up,' said Rider.

  Fallon consulted his watch. 'We'll fix up the cameras, and leave directly after lunch.'

  I helped to load the cameras into the helicopter. There was nothing amateurish or snapshottery about this gear; they were professional aerial cameras and I noticed that the helicopter was fitted with all the necessary brackets to receive them. My respect for Fallen's powers of organisation grew even more. Allowing for the fact that he had more money to chuck about than appeared decent, at least he knew how to spend it to the best advantage. He was no playboy of the jet-set circuit spilling his wealth into some casino owner's pocket.

  After a quick: lunch Fallon and Halstead made for the helicopter, I said, 'What do I do?'

  Fallon rubbed his chin. 'There doesn't seem to be anything you can do,' he said, and over his shoulder I saw Halstead grinning widely. 'You'd better rest up this afternoon. Stay out of the sun until you're used to this heat. Well be back in a couple of hours.'

  I watched the helicopter take off and disappear over the trees feeling a little silly and like an unwanted spare part. Katherine was nowhere to be seen -- I think she'd gone into the hut she shared with Halstead to unpack their personal gear. I wondered what to do and wandered disconsolately to the far end of the clearing to look at the Mayan building Fallon had mentioned.

  The cenote was about thirty feet in diameter and the water lay about fifteen feet down in the pit. The sides of me pit were almost sheer, but someone had cut rough steps so as to get to the water. I was startled by the sudden noisy throb of an engine close by and found a small pump run by a petrol engine which had apparently come into operation automatically. It was pumping water from the cenote up to the camp -- another bit of Fallonese efficiency.

  I didn't find a building although I looked hard enough, and after half an hour of futile searching I gave up. I was about to go back to the camp when I saw two men on the other side of the cenote looking at me. All they wore were ragged white trousers and they stood as still as statues. They were small, sinewy and brown, and a stray sunbeam falling through the leaves reflected in a coppery sheen from the naked chest of the nearest man. They regarded me solemnly for the space of thirty seconds and then turned and vanished into the forest.

  III

  The helicopter came back and Fallon dumped a load of film spools on the table in the big hut. 'Know anything about film processing?' he asked.

  'In an amateur sort of way.'

  'Umph! That might not be good enough. But well do the best we can. Come with me.' He led me into another hut and showed me his photographic department. 'You should be able to get the hang of this,' he said. 'It's not too difficult.'

  There was no dabbling in trays of hypo for Fallon; he had the neatest darkroom set-up I'd ever seen -- and he didn't need a darkroom. I watched him as he demonstrated. It was a big box with a sliding, light-tight door at one side and a slot at the other. He slid open the door, put a spool of undeveloped film into a receptacle and threaded the leader through sprockets. Then he closed the door and pressed a button. Fifteen minutes later the developed colour film uncoiled through the slot on the other side, dry and ready for screening.

  He took the cover off the box and showed me the innards -- the sets of slowly turning rollers and baths of chemicals, and the infra-red dryer at the end -- and he explained which chemicals went where. 'Think you can handle it? It will save time if we have someone who can process the film as quickly as possible.'

  'I don't see why not,' I said.

  'Good! You can carry on with these, then. There's something I want to talk over with Paul.' He smiled. 'You can't really carry on a sensible conversation in a whirlybird -- too noisy.' He held up a spool. This one consists of stereo pairs; I'll show you how to cut it and register it accurately into frames when it's developed.'

  I got stuck in to developing the films, pleased that there was something I could do. All it took was time -- the job itself was so simple it could have been contracted out to child labour. I developed the last spool -- the stereos -- and took it to Fallon, and he showed me how to fit the images into the double frames, which was easy if finicky.

  That evening we had a magic-lantern show in the big hut. Fallon put a spool into the film strip projector and switched on. There was just a green blur on the screen and he chuckled. I seem to have got the focus wrong on that one.'

  The next frame was better and the screen showed an area of forest and a cenote reflecting the blue of the sky. It just looked like any other bit of forest to me, but Fallon and Halstead discussed it for quite a while before moving on to the next frame. It was a good two hours before all the pictures were shown and I'd lost interest long before that, especially when it seemed that the first cenote had proved a bust.

  Fallon said at last, 'We still have the stereo pictures. Let's 'lave a look at those.'

  He changed the projectors and handed me a pair of polaroid glasses. The stereo pictures were startlingly three-dimensional; I felt that all I had to do was lean forward to pluck the top-most leaf from a tree. Being aerial shots, they also gave a dizzying sense of vertigo. Fallon ran through them all without result. 'I think we can chalk that one off our list,' he said. We'd better go to bed -- we'll have a heavy day tomorrow.'

  I yawned and stretched, then I remembered the men I had seen. 'I saw two men down at the cenote.'

  'Chicleros?' asked Fallon sharply.

  'Not if chicleros are little brown men with big noses.'

  'Mayas,' he decided. They'll be wondering what the hell we're doing.'

  I said, 'Why don't you ask them about Uaxuanoc? Their ancestors built the place, after all.'

  'They wouldn't know about it -- or if they did, they wouldn't tell us. The modem Maya is cut off from his history. As far as he is concerned the ruins were made by giants or dwarfs and he steers clear of them. They're magical places and not to be approached by men. What did you think
of that building down there?'

  'I couldn't find it,' I said.

  Halstead gave a suppressed snort, and Fallon laughed. 'It's not so hidden; I spotted it straight away. I'll show you tomorrow -- it will give you some idea of what we're up against here.'

  IV

  We established a routine. Fallon and Halstead made three flights a day- -- sometimes four. After each flight they would hand me the films and I would get busy developing them and every night we would screen the results. Nothing much came of that except the steady elimination of possibilities.

  Fallon took me down to the cenote and showed the the Mayan building and I found that I had passed it half a dozen times without seeing it. It was just by the side of the cenote in thick vegetation, and when Fallon said, There it is!' I didn't see a thing except another bit of forest.

  He smiled, and said, 'Go closer,' so I walked right to the edge of the clearing and saw nothing except the dappled dazzle-pattern of sun, leaves and shadows. I turned around and shrugged, and he called, 'Push your hand through the leaves.' I did as he said and rammed my fist against a rock . with an unexpected jolt.

  'Now step back a few paces and have another look,' said Fallon.

  I walked back, rubbing my skinned knuckles and looked again at the vegetation through narrowed eyes. It's a funny tiring -- one moment it wasn't there and a split second later it was, like a weird optical illusion, bat even then it was only the ghostly hint of a building made up imperfectly of shadows. I lifted my hand and said uncertainly, 'It starts there -- -and ends . . . there?'

  'That's right; you've got it.'

  I stared at it, afraid it would go away again. If any army staff in the world wants to improve its camouflage units I would strongly advise a course in Quintana Roo. This natural camouflage was just about perfect. I said. 'What do you think it was?'

  'Maybe a shrine to Chac, the Rain God; they're often associated with cenotes. If you like you can strip the vegetation from it. We might find something of minor interest. But watch out for snakes.'

  'I might do that, if I can ever find it again.' Fallon was amused. 'You'll have to develop an eye for this kind of thing if you contemplate archeological research in these parts. If not, you'll walk right through a city and not know it's there.' I could believe him.

  He consulted his watch. 'Paul will be waiting for me,' he said. 'We'll be back with some film in a couple of hours.'

  The relationship between the four of us was odd. I felt left out of things because I didn't really know what was going on. The minutiae of research were beyond me and I didn't understand a tenth of what Fallon and Halstead were talking about when they conversed on professional matters, which is all they ever spoke to each other about.

  Fallon rigidly confined his relationship with Halstead to the matter in hand and would not overstep it by an inch. It was obvious to me that he did not particularly like Paul Halstead, nor did he trust him overmuch. But then, neither did I, especially after that conversation with Pat Harris. Fallon would have received an even more detailed report on Halstead from Harris and so I understood his attitude.

  He was different with me. While regarding my ignorance of archeological fieldwork with a tolerant amusement, he did not try to thrust his professional expertise down my throat. He patiently answered my questions which, to him, I suppose, were simple and often absurd, and let it go at that. We got into me habit of sitting together in the evening for an hour before going to bed. and we yarned on a wide variety of topics. Apart from his professional work he was well read and a man of 'wide erudition. Yet I was able to interest him in the application of computers to farming practice and I detailed what I was doing to Hay Tree Farm. It seemed that he owned a big ranch in Arizona and he saw the possibilities at once.

  But then he shook his head irritably. 'I'll pass that on to my brother,' he said. 'He's looking after all that now.' He stared blindly across the room. 'A man has so little time to do what he really wants to do.'

  Soon thereafter he became abstracted and intent on his own thoughts and I excused myself and went to bed.

  Halstead tended to be morose and self-contained. He ignored me almost completely, and rarely spoke to me unless it was absolutely necessary. When he did volunteer any remarks they were usually accompanied by an ill-concealed sneer directed at my abysmal ignorance of the work. Quite often I felt like taking a poke at him, but I bottled up my temper for the sake of the general peace. In the evenings, after our picture show and discussion, he and his wife would withdraw to their hut.

  And that leaves Katherine Halstead, who was tending to become a tantalizing mystery. True, she was doing what she said she would, and kept her husband under tight control Often I saw him on the edge of losing his temper with Pallor -- he didn't lose his temper with me because I was beneath his notice -- and be drawn back into semi-composure by a look or a word from his wife. I thought I understood him and what made him tick, but I'm damned if I could understand her.

  A man often sees mystery in a woman where there is nothing but a yawning vacuity, the so-called feminine mystery being but a cunning facade behind which lies nothing worthwhile. But Katherine wasn't like that. She was amusing, intelligent and talented in a number of ways; she sketched competently in a better than amateur way, she cooked well and alleviated our chuckwagon diet, and she knew a hell of a lot more about the archeological score than I did, although she admitted she was but a neophyte. But she would never talk about her husband in any way at all, which is a trait I'd never come across in a married woman before.

  Those I had known -- not a few -- always had something to say about their mates, either in praise or blame. Most would be for their husbands, with perhaps a tolerant word for their weaknesses. A few would praise incessantly and not hear a word against the darling man, and a few. the regrettable bitches, would be acid in esoteric asides meant for one pair of ears but understood by all -- sniping shots in the battle of the sexes. But from Katherine Halstead there was not a cheep one way or the other. She just didn't talk- about him at all It was unnatural.

  Because Fallon and Halstead were away most of the day we were thrown together a lot. The camp cook and his assistant were very unobtrusive; they cooked the grub, washed the dishes, repaired the generator when it broke down, and spent the rest of their time losing their wages to each other at gin rummy. So Katherine and I had each other for company during those long hot days. I soon got the film developing taped and had plenty of time on my hands, so I suggested we do something about the Mayan building.

  'We might come up with an epoch-making discovery,' I said jocularly. 'Let's give it a bash. Fallon said it would be a good idea.'

  She smiled at the idea that we might find anything of importance, but agreed that it would be something semi-constructive to do, so we armed ourselves with machetes and went down to the cenote to hew at the vegetation.

  I was surprised to see how well preserved the building was once it was denuded of its protective cover. The limestone blocks of which it was built were properly cut and shaped, and laid in a workmanlike manner. On the wall nearest the cenote we found a doorway with a sort of corbelled arch, and when we looked inside there was nothing but darkness and an angry buzz of disturbed wasps.

  I said, 'I don't think we'd better go in there just yet; the present inhabitants might not like it.'

  We withdrew back into the clearing and I looked down at myself. It had been hard work cutting the creepers away from the building and I'd sweated freely, and my chest was filthy with bits of earth turned into mud by the sweat. I was in a mess.

  'I'm going to have a swim in the cenote,' I said. 'I need cleaning up.'

  'What a good idea,' she said. 'I'll get my costume.'

  I grinned. 'I won't need one -- these shorts will do.'

  She went back to the huts and I walked over to the cenote and looked down into the dark water. I couldn't see bottom and it could have been anything between six inches and sixty feet deep, so I thought it was inadvisable to dive
in. I climbed down to water level by means of the steps, let myself into the water and found it pleasantly cool. I splashed about for a bit but I didn't find bottom, so I dived and went down to look for it. I must have gone down thirty feet and I still hadn't found it It was bloody dark down there, which gave me a good indication of conditions if I had to dive for Fallon. I let myself up slowly, dribbling air from my mouth, and came up to sunlight again.

  'I wondered where you were,' Katherine called, and I looked up to see her poised on the edge of the cenote, silhouetted against the sun fifteen feet above my head. 'Is it deep enough for diving?'