“And that will be enough?”
“Who knows?” said Father Perez. “It may have to be.”
When God gave me this task, thought Columbus, I thought he would open the way for me. Instead I find that such a slender chance as this is all that I can hope for.
“Persuade the Queen,” said Father Perez.
“If I can,” said Columbus.
“It’s a good thing you’re a widower,” said Father Perez. “That’s cruel to say, I know, but if the Queen knew you were married, it would dim her interest in you.”
“She is married,” said Columbus. “What can you possibly mean?”
“I mean that when a man is married, he is no longer half so fascinating to a woman. Even a married woman. Especially a married woman, since she thinks she knows what husbands are like!”
Father Antonio added, “Men, on the other hand, are not troubled by this aberration. Judging from my confessional, at least, I would say that men are more fascinated by married women than by single ones.”
“Then the Queen and I are bound to fascinate each other,” said Columbus dryly.
“I think so,” said Father Perez, smiling. “But your friendship will be a pure one, and the children of your union will be caravels with the east wind behind them.”
“Faith for women, evidence for men,” said Father Antonio. “Does that mean that Christianity is for women?”
“Let us say rather that Christianity is for the faithful, and so there are more true Christians among women than among men,” said Father Perez.
“But without understanding,” said Father Antonio, “there can be no faith, and so it remains the province of men.”
“There is the understanding of reason, at which men excel,” said Father Perez, “and there is the understanding of compassion, at which women are far superior. Which do you think gives rise to faith?”
Columbus left them still disputing the point and finished his preparations for the journey to Córdoba, where the King and Queen were holding court as they prosecuted their more-or-less permanent war against the Moors. All the talk of what women want and need and admire and believe was ridiculous, he knew—what could celibate priests know of women? But then, Columbus had been married and certainly knew nothing about women all the same, and Father Perez and Father Antonio had both heard the confessions of many women. So perhaps they did know.
Felipa did believe in me, thought Columbus. I took that for granted, but now I realize that I needed her, I depended on her for that. She believed in me even when she did not understand my arguments. Perhaps Father Perez is right, and women can see past the superficial and comprehend the deepest heart of the truth. Perhaps Felipa saw the mission that the Holy Trinity put in my heart, and it led her to support me despite all. Perhaps Queen Isabella will also see this, and because she is a woman in a place normally reserved for men, she can turn the course of fate to allow me to fulfill the mission of God.
As it grew dark, Columbus grew lonely, and for the first time that he could remember, he missed Felipa and wanted her with him in the night. I never understood what you gave to me, he said to her, though he doubted she could hear him. But why couldn’t she? If saints can hear prayers, why can’t wives? And if she doesn’t listen to me anymore—why should she?—I know she will be listening for the prayers of Diego.
With this thought he wandered through the torchlit monastery until he came to the small cell where Diego slept. His son was asleep. Columbus lifted him out of his bed and carried him through the gathering darkness to his own room, to his larger bed, and there he lay with his son curled into his arm. I’m here with Diego, he said silently. Do you see me, Felipa? Do you hear me? Now I understand you a little, he said to his dead wife. Now I know the greatness of the gift you gave me. Thank you. And if you have any influence in heaven, touch the heart of Queen Isabella. Let her see in me what you saw in me. Let her love me one-tenth as much as you did, and I will have my ships, and God will bring the cross to the kingdoms of the east.
Diego stirred, and Columbus whispered to him. “Go back to sleep, my son. Go back to sleep.” Diego nestled tighter against him, and did not wake.
Hunahpu walked with Diko through the streets of Juba as if he thought the naked children and the grass huts were the most natural way to live; she had never had a visitor from out of town who didn’t comment on it, who didn’t ask questions. Some pretended to be quite blasé, asking questions about whether the grass used to make the huts was local or imported, or other nonsense that was really a circuitous way of saying, Do you people actually live like this? But Hunahpu seemed to think nothing of it, though she could sense that his eyes took in everything.
Inside Pastwatch, of course, everything would be familiar, and when they reached her station he immediately sat down at her terminal and began calling up files. He had not asked permission, but then, why should he? If he was to show her anything, he would have to be in charge; this was where she had led him, so why should he ask to use what she obviously intended him to use? He wasn’t being discourteous. Indeed, he had said that he was terrified. Could this very calmness, this stillness, be the way he dealt with fear? Perhaps if he ever became truly relaxed, he would seem more tense! Laughing, joking, showing emotion, engaged. Perhaps it was only when he was fearful that he seemed utterly at peace.
“How much do you already know?” he asked. “I don’t want to waste your time covering material you’re familiar with.”
“I know that the Mexica reached their imperial peak with the conquests of Ahuitzotl. He essentially proved the practical limits of Mesoamerican empire. The lands he conquered were so far away that Moctezuma II had to reconquer them, and they still didn’t stay conquered.”
“And you know why those were the limits?”
“Transportation,” she said. “It was just too far, and too hard to supply an army. The greatest feat of Aztec arms was making the connection with Soconusco, far down the Pacific coast. And that only worked because they didn’t take sacrificial victims from Soconusco, they traded with them. It was more of an alliance than a conquest.”
“Those were the limits in space,” said Hunahpu. “What about the social and economic limits?”
She felt as if she were being given an examination. But he was right—if he tested her knowledge first, he would know how deeply he could delve into the material that mattered, the new findings that he thought would answer the great question of why the Interveners had given Columbus the mission of sailing west. “Economically, the Mexica cult of sacrifice was counterproductive. As long as they kept conquering new lands, they took enough captives from warfare that the nearby territory could maintain enough of a workforce to provide food. But as soon as they began coming back from war with twenty or thirty captives instead of two or three thousand, they were left with a dilemma. If they took their sacrifices from the surrounding lands they already controlled, food production would go down. But if they left those men on the land, then they would have to cut down on their sacrifices, which would mean even less power in battle, even less favor from the state god—what was his name?”
“Huitzilopochtli,” said Hunahpu.
“Well, they chose to increase the sacrifices. As a sort of proof of their faith. So production fell and there was hunger. And the people they ruled over were more and more upset at the taking of sacrifices, even though they were all believers in the sacrificial religion, because in the old days, before the Mexica with their cult of Witsil . . . Huitzil—”
“Huitzilopochtli.”
“There’d be only a few sacrifices at a time, comparatively speaking. After ceremonial war, or even after star war. And after the ball games. The Mexica were new, with their profligate sacrificing. The people hated it. Their families were being torn apart, and because so many people were sacrificed it didn’t seem to be such a sacred honor anymore.”
“And within the Mexica culture?”
“The state thrived because it provided social mobility. If yo
u distinguished yourself in war, you rose. The merchant classes could buy their way into the nobility. You could rise. But that ended immediately after Ahuitzotl, when Moctezuma virtually ended all possibility of buying your way from class to class, and when failure in war after war meant that there was little chance of rising through valor in battle. Moctezuma was in a holding pattern, and that was disastrous, since the entire Mexica social and economic structure depended on expansion and social mobility.”
Hunahpu nodded.
“So,” said Diko, “where do you disagree with any of this?”
“I don’t disagree with it at all,” he said.
“But the conclusion that is drawn from this is that even without Cortés, the Aztec empire would have collapsed within years.”
“Within months, actually,” said Hunahpu. “Cortés’s most valuable Indie allies were the people of Tlaxcala. They were the ones who had already broken the back of the Mexica military machine. Ahuitzotl and Moctezuma threw army after army against them, and they always held on to their territory. It was a humiliation to the Mexica, because Tlaxcala was just to the east of Tenochtitlán, completely surrounded by the Mexica empire. And all the other people, both those who were still resisting the Mexica and those who were being ground to dust under their government, began to look to Tlaxcala as their hope of deliverance.”
“Yes, I read your paper on this.”
“It’s like the Persian Empire after the Chaldean,” said Hunahpu. “When the Mexica fell, it wouldn’t have meant a collapse of the entire imperial structure. The Tlaxcalans would have moved in and taken over.”
“That’s one possible outcome,” said Diko.
“No,” said Hunahpu. “It’s the only possible outcome. It was already under way.”
“Now we come to the question of evidence, I’m afraid,” said Diko.
He nodded. “Watch.”
He turned to the TruSite II and began calling up short scenes. He had obviously prepared carefully, for he took her from scene to scene almost as smoothly as in a movie. “Here is Chocla,” he said, and then showed her brief clips of the man meeting with the Tlaxcalan king and then meeting with other men in other contexts; then he named another Tlaxcalan ambassador and showed what he was doing.
The picture quickly emerged. The Tlaxcalans were well aware of the restiveness both of the subject peoples and of the merchant and warrior classes within the Mexica homeland. The Mexica were ripe for both a coup and a revolution, and whichever one happened first would certainly trigger the other. The Tlaxcalans were meeting with leaders of every group, forging alliances, preparing. “The Tlaxcalans were ready. If Cortés had not come along and thrown a monkey wrench into their plans, they would have slipped in and taken over the entire Mexica empire, whole. They were setting it up to have every subject nation that mattered revolt all at once and throw their might behind Tlaxcala, trusting in the Tlaxcalans because of their enormous prestige. At the same time, they were going to have a coup topple Moctezuma, which would break up the triple alliance as Texcozo and Tacuba abandoned Tenochtitlán and joined in a new ruling alliance with Tlaxcala.”
“Yes,” said Diko. “I think that’s clear. I think you’re right. That’s what they planned.”
“And it would have worked,” said Hunahpu. “So all this talk about the Aztec Empire being ready to fall is meaningless. It would have been replaced by a newer, stronger, more vigorous empire. And, I might point out, one that was just as viciously committed to wholesale human sacrifice as the Mexica. The only difference between them was the name of the god—instead of Huitzilopochtli, the Tlaxcalans committed their butchery in the name of Camaxtli.”
“This is all very convincing,” said Diko. “But what difference does it make? The same limits that applied to the Mexica would apply to the Tlaxcala people as well. The limits on transportation. The impossibility of maintaining a program of wholesale slaughter and intensive agriculture at the same time.”
“The Tlaxcala were not the Mexica,” said Hunahpu.
“Meaning?”
“In their desperate struggle for survival against a relentless, powerful enemy—a struggle which the Mexica had never faced, I might add—the Tlaxcala abandoned the fatalistic view of history that had crippled the Mexica and the Toltecs and the Mayas before them. They were looking for change, and it was there to be had.”
By now, it was getting late in the workday, and others were gathering around to watch Hunahpu’s presentation. Diko saw now that the fear had left Hunahpu, and so he was becoming passionate and animated. She wondered if this was how the myth of the stoic Indie had begun—the cultural response to fear among the Indie looked like impassiveness to Europeans.
Hunahpu began to take her through another round of brief scenes showing messengers from the king of Tlaxcala, but now they were not going to Mexica dissidents or subject nations. “It is well known that the Tarascan people to the west and north of Tenochtitlán had recently developed true bronze and were experimenting heavily with other metals and alloys,” said Hunahpu. “What no one seems to have noticed is that the Mexica were completely unaware of this, but Tlaxcala was right on top of it. And they aren’t just trying to buy the bronze. They’re trying to co-opt it. They’re negotiating for an alliance and they’re trying to bring Tarascan smiths to Tlaxcala. They will certainly succeed, and that means that they’ll have devastating and terrifying weapons unavailable to any other nations in the area.”
“Would bronze make that big a difference?” asked one of the onlookers. “I mean, the flint hatchets of the Mexica could behead a horse with one blow, it’s not as if they didn’t have devastating weapons already.”
“A bronze-tipped arrow is lighter and can fly farther and truer than a stone-tipped one. A bronze sword can pierce the padded armor that snagged and turned away flint points and flint blades. It makes a huge difference. And it wouldn’t have stopped with bronze. The Tarascans were serious in their work with many different metals. They were starting to work with iron.”
“No,” said several at once.
“I know what everybody says, but it’s true.” He brought up a scene with a Tarascan metallurgist working with more-or-less pure iron.
“That won’t work,” said one onlooker. “It’s not hot enough.”
“Do you doubt that he’ll find a way to make his fire hotter?” asked Hunahpu. “This clip is from a time when Cortés was already marching to Tenochtitlán. That’s why the work with iron came to nothing. Because it hadn’t succeeded by the time of the Spanish conquest it was not remembered. I found it because I’m the only one who believed that it mattered to try to look for it. But the Tarascans were on the verge of working with iron.”
“So the Mesoamerican bronze age would have lasted for ten years?” someone asked.
“There’s no law that says bronze has to come before iron, or that iron has to wait centuries after the discovery of bronze,” said Hunahpu.
“Iron isn’t gunpowder,” said Diko. “Or are you going to show us Tarascans working with saltpeter?”
“My point isn’t that they caught up with European technology all in a few years—I think that would be impossible. What I’m saying is that by allying themselves with the Tarascans and controlling them, the Tlaxcalans would have had weapons that would give them a devastating advantage over all the surrounding nations. They would cause so much fear that nations, once conquered, might stay conquered longer, might freely send the Tarascans tribute that the Mexica would have had to send an army to bring back. The boundaries would have increased and so would the stability of the empire.”
“Possibly,” said Diko.”
“Probably,” said Hunahpu. “And there’s this, too. The Tlaxcala already dominated Huexotzingo and Cholula—small nearby cities, but it gives us an idea of their idea of empire. And what did they do? They interfered in the internal politics of their client states to a degree that the Mexica never dreamed of. They weren’t just extracting tribute and sacrificial victims,
they were establishing a centralized government with rigid control over the governments of conquered nations. A true politically unified empire, rather than a loose tribute network. This is the innovation that made the Assyrians so powerful, and which was copied by every successful empire after them. The Tlaxcalans have finally made the same discovery two thousand years later. But think what it did for the Assyrians, and now imagine what it will do for Tlaxcala.”
“All right,” said Diko. “Let me call in Mother and Father.”
“But I’m not through,” said Hunahpu.
“I was looking at your presentation to see if you were worth spending time on. You are. There was obviously a lot more going on in Mesoamerica than anybody thought, because everybody was studying the Mexica and nobody was looking for successor states. Your approach is clearly productive, and people with a lot more authority than I have need to see this.”
Suddenly Hunahpu’s animation and enthusiasm disappeared, and he became calm and stoic-looking again. Diko thought: This means that he’s now afraid again.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “They’ll be as excited as I am.”
He nodded. “When will we do this, then?”
“Tomorrow, I expect. Go to your room, sleep. The hotel restaurant will feed you, though I doubt they have much in the way of Mexican food so I hope standard international cuisine will do. I’ll call you in the morning with our schedule for tomorrow.”
“What about Kemal?”
“I don’t think he’ll want to miss this,” said Diko.
“Because I never even got to the transportation issue.”
“Tomorrow,” said Diko.
The others were already drifting away, though some lingered, obviously hoping to speak to Hunahpu directly. Diko turned to them. “Let this man sleep,” she said to them. “You’ll all be invited to his presentation tomorrow, so why make him tell things tonight that he’ll tell everybody tomorrow?”
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