by Kage Baker
Interesting family dynamic. And…Lewis, there’s another mortal in the house.
“Hem! Well,” said Lewis, “quite right, great Orocobix. To continue, then: I take it that some members of your family are not presently here?”
“Tonina is refreshing himself in the void,” said Orocobix. “We expect his return to the flesh presently. As for Kolibri…he is engaged in certain duties. You understand, of course, that there are matters beyond a servant’s comprehension? Very good. Let it suffice that he also sends his most cordial greeting to our brother Maketaurie.”
“Certainly, great Orocobix,” said Lewis.
I think the one inside must be sick, Mendoza transmitted, from what I can pick up of his life signs. And of course gods are never sick, so they’re keeping it a secret, aren’t they? Or perhaps he’s just too inbred to be presentable.
I suppose so. Lewis studied the royal family critically. There were a few signs of genetic trouble; Cajaya’s high narrow chest, a trace of scoliosis in Agueybana. Poor things. They must have been marooned here for generations. I wish I really were an emissary from another god; they could use some new blood.
I somehow doubt the Company’s going to patch up their little pantheon with a gift of chromosomes.
Lewis cleared his throat. “All this will I relate to my master, of course. No doubt his munificence will be extraordinary. In the meanwhile, is there any service we may render you, divine ones?”
“Oh, of course not,” said Orocobix airily. “Which is to say, other than one or two little things…I scarcely like to bring them up, they’re hardly worth notice…but if you could see your way to, perhaps, putting a new roof on the palace? Now that the rains have begun, the leaks will be dreadfully inconvenient, you know.”
“And the garden needs weeding,” said Atabey.
Climbing the ladder with an armful of cut reed, Lewis reminded himself that he was exploring a lost civilization, after all. He peered down through the roof beams at the humble interior below—somebody’s bedchamber, rough furniture many times repaired with jungle liana or braided cotton fiber.
“So great Orocobix floated in the void and ate a lot of fish,” he speculated to himself. “And fought with storm-spirits. A seagoing culture, obviously, and they found themselves obliged to adapt to specialized agriculturalism.
“And if they came from some other place, let us say somewhere in the Caribbean, perhaps that was why they hadn’t any interest in teosinte and grew manioc instead. But rain forest soil’s dreadful to grow things in, so…Orocobix the First, clearly a clever chap, devised elevated fields of terra preta.
“The thing is, how? What, and from whence? Gosh, I wish I’d been programmed in anthropology…”
He worked on, lashing reeds in place with liana cord, wondering how Mendoza was faring down on the garden terrace. A voice floated up from some room in the house below him. A child? Yes, the little girl Tanama…
“…they look very lively for dead people to me. And not at all like bats! Except for their clothes, which are sort of loose and shiny, like folded bat wings. The boy is pretty and nice, but the girl is angry. What do you suppose the dead have to be angry about? Anyway, isn’t it exciting?”
A silence followed her remark. Or did it? Had there been a faint reply?
“You know what I think? I think the world is possibly a lot bigger than they always told us it was. And realer! Maketaurie is real. Coaybay beyond the sunset is a real place. I could tell Mother and Father were surprised by it all, they didn’t know what to do. And you should have seen Cajaya being nice! It was just hysterical. She smiled and smiled and smiled until I thought her face would crack!
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if she went away to Coaybay to be a queen? I wonder what would happen then? I suppose we’d have to get a new Cajaya from somewhere. But if I ask Grandfather—”
“What a splendid job you’re doing, child,” remarked Orocobix, wandering out to peer up at Lewis. “I shall certainly commend you to your master, when at last we meet. And such quickness! But then, the dead work swiftly, don’t they?”
“Thank you, sir. We do our best,” said Lewis, descending the ladder in some haste.
The little girl brought them their supper—a platter loaded with guavas—in the guest room they had been given, a dank chamber wherein painted murals were just visible on the crumbling plaster walls.
“You ought to like it in here, dear dead people,” she said cheerily. “It’s nice and dark. I’m afraid the beds aren’t very good, but then you sleep hanging from the ceiling, don’t you?”
“Sometimes,” said Lewis. “I’m sure we’ll be quite comfortable, thank you.”
“What’s it like in the land of the dead?”
“Er…well, it’s…lovely, and everyone is happy,” said Lewis.
“Is it dark there, on the other side of the sunset? Grandfather said he was going to go there and I just thought he meant he was going to die soon. I didn’t think he meant it, you know, literally, or maybe he was going to take some Magic Medicine and dream he was going there, not really get in the boat and go there,” Tanama chattered. “But he did! What a surprise!”
“Yes, wasn’t it?” said Lewis, wishing Mendoza would take some part in the conversation. She merely sat on one of the low chairs with her arms crossed, clearly impatient for the little girl to leave. When Tanama left at last:
“Why is that child under the impression we’re a pair of fruit bats?” she inquired.
“It’s part of Taino mythology,” said Lewis, sitting down. “The dead turn into bats, and go to live in the west, and eat a lot of guavas. At least, that’s the story I’m getting from my folklore database. You don’t have it?”
“I’m only a Botanist, remember?” Mendoza selected a guava and looked at it critically. “I wasn’t programmed with that stuff. You’re the Literature Specialist.”
“It’s a rather nice afterlife,” said Lewis, a little wistfully. “No concept of eternal damnation or reward either, for that matter. Ever so much pleasanter than the Mesopotamian model. You just fly about in the night and have all the sweets you want. Not unlike Halloween.”
“Not that we’ll ever know,” said Mendoza. “But I’ll tell you something I did find out, Lewis. Ask me how my afternoon went!”
“How did your afternoon go, Mendoza?” Lewis said, drawing out his knife and slicing the top off a guava.
“It was an afternoon of discovery. I pulled a lot of weeds,” she said. “And rebuilt a couple of dry-stone walls which had crumbled. Noted a lot of rare herb plantings; I’ll tell you, Dr. Zeus’s pharmaceuticals branch is going to be interested in those. Watched as little What’s-her-name came and gathered watercress from one of the fish ponds, which are crawling with snails, to which the geese have no access. A textbook setup for parasites. Our hosts must have one helluva problem with liver flukes.”
“Oh, dear. All that and inbreeding, too.”
“Nasty, isn’t it? But I digress! I worked my way around to the far side of the island, Lewis, following these cunning little Machu Picchu–style terraces, and guess what I found over there?” She withdrew her own dagger, sliced open a guava, and bit into it with gusto.
“The chariots of the gods?” said Lewis. “Prester John?”
“I’ll tell you what I found,” said Mendoza. Her eyes burned at him. “A structure of stone, like an enormous grain silo tipped on its side, or maybe a chute roofed over with slates. It runs from the back of the palace all the way down the hill to the lake below. And, all the way down that hill, the brush has been kept clear and the tree branches cut back, so that this immense stone tube gets full sunlight during the hottest part of the day. You know what else?”
“What?”
“It was steaming,” said Mendoza, as though that were terrifically significant.
“So…it’s a hot water conduit?” Lewis ventured.
“No,” said Mendoza patiently. “It’s a composter. The biggest composter in the world. I climbe
d up the hillside to see what went in at the top. Charcoal, broken pottery, fish bones, fruit and vegetable peels, and, yes, feces in astounding quantity. The smell would knock you down.
“Then I climbed down the hillside to see what comes out at the bottom, after what must be about two years of ripening in its slo-o-ow passage down the hill, pushed by all the muck thrown in above it. Guess what I found down there, oozing into the sunlight?”
“Terra preta!” cried Lewis.
“Bingo,” said Mendoza calmly, reaching for another guava.
“It’s just compost?” said Lewis. “How anticlimactic.”
“No, no. It’s made with compost; but there’s some microbial content I can’t identify. The stuff that makes it work like sourdough starter, I guess.”
“A secret ingredient,” said Lewis.
“That’s right,” said Mendoza. “A completely organic, self-renewing fertilizer so powerful it could convert the Sahara to prime farmland. And these mortals are the only ones left who know how to make it.”
“Oh, dear,” Lewis murmured. He looked at Mendoza with wide eyes. “You do realize, don’t you, that once we make our report, the Company is going to do a lot more than send anthropologists to study these people? It’ll do whatever it takes to get the secret out of them.”
Mendoza shrugged. “Yes. Could it be much worse than leaving them up here to become a bunch of inbred idiots?”
“I suppose not,” Lewis said. “Still…we discovered a lost world, perfectly intact, perfectly unchanged until we made contact with it. And now…it’ll burst like a soap bubble.”
Mendoza stared at the floor. “Funny how that happens, isn’t it?” she said wearily. She took another bite of guava.
Lewis balanced precariously, straining to reach the roofbeam. He grabbed, made the cord fast, and dragged the next bundle of reed thatching into place. Pushing away to reach the ladder again, he looked down into yet another dark and empty room. The palace must have housed dozens of mortals at one time; but most of the rooms he had seen had clearly been unoccupied for years.
What had happened? Not famine, that much was certain. An epidemic of disease was much more likely. Not liver fluke. Probably something that killed swiftly…An epic tragedy, Lewis thought, and the rest of the world never even noticed.
“Good morning, Slave of Maketaurie,” said someone at the base of the ladder. Lewis glanced down between the rungs and spotted Cajaya, peering up coyly. “Leave that work, for now. I’ve brought you a nice guava to eat.”
“Many thanks, fair goddess,” said Lewis, reflecting that he was going to be heartily sick of guavas soon. He descended the ladder and accepted the guava with a bow. Recalling his conversation with Mendoza, he scanned Cajaya for liver fluke. To his surprise, the girl was quite free of parasites.
Cajaya smiled widely at him—it really did look as though she found it painful—and waved her goose-wing fan.
“We’ve scarcely had any time to talk since you arrived here! And I was so hoping to pry a few details from you concerning dear Lord Maketaurie,” she said.
“What do you wish to know, radiant Cajaya?” Lewis inquired.
“Well, silly, I want to know what he’s like!” Cajaya demanded, blushing. “Tell me! Has he a man’s form, like yours?”
“Why, yes, he does,” said Lewis, wondering which lucky anthropologist was going to be assigned the role of Maketaurie by Dr. Zeus Incorporated.
“But he’s taller than you are, I assume,” said Cajaya, looking him up and down appraisingly. “And his skin’s a better color, I hope,”
“I think so, goddess,” improvised Lewis. “I, er, don’t look at his divinity directly, you see. It’s not proper etiquette for a servant.”
“Oh! Well, that’s understandable,” said Cajaya. She gave him a sidelong look from behind her fan. “I wonder what you can tell me about his other wives? Does he give them many presents? Golden nose rings? Feather cloaks? Has each her own household, with a proper train of servants? They aren’t all crowded together in one palace, are they?”
“I believe my master is very generous, goddess,” said Lewis. He wondered what a Company Facilitator would say in his position. He decided an extravagant falsehood was likely. “And I believe each lady has quite a spacious suite to herself, but—”
“And are any of them as beautiful as I am?”
“Goddess, that is something on which a mere servant cannot possibly offer an opinion,” said Lewis desperately. “I should be committing a grave breach of propriety, were I to do so.”
“Of course,” said Cajaya, touching his arm with her fan. “However…I shall give you an opportunity to do me a service, gentle dead man. You shall advise your master of my desires—indirectly, of course, dropping little details here and there in the most nonchalant fashion, about what you have observed. Let him know I expect a palace of my own, and servants, and heaps of gold—nose rings, ear plugs, necklaces, the whole lot. My favorite color is scarlet, although violet is acceptable.”
“I will endeavor to let my master know these things, goddess,” said Lewis.
“Discreetly, do you understand?”
“Without fail, goddess.”
Cajaya turned and walked away a few paces; then turned back. She pulled a gold bead from the fringe of her gown and tossed it to him.
“I nearly forgot. For your trouble,” she said.
Lewis was trudging back up the steps, dragging a sledge loaded with new-cut reeds, when he saw Atabey waiting on the near landing. He smiled and bowed, but his heart sank as he realized she was intent on speaking to him.
“Slave of Maketaurie, a moment of your time,” she said.
“Of course, great goddess.” Lewis pulled the sledge level and stopped. He drew off his hat and bowed. Atabey regarded his hair with displeasure. She reached out and touched it gingerly.
“Your hair is the color of dead grass. Appropriate for a dead person, I suppose, but—is your master’s hair the same way?”
“I don’t believe so, great goddess.”
“What about his other traits? Is he—how shall I put this?—suitably virile?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Atabey pursed her lips. “Has he many sons by his other wives?”
“Oh. Indeed, great goddess, mighty Maketaurie has begotten abundant sons.”
“Has he? Very good. And daughters?”
“Of course. He may rule the land of the dead, but is not himself dead, you see?”
“Oh, good! Yes, that’s an important distinction. I wonder whether he would consider sending a few of his children by Cajaya back here, once she’s settled in and bearing him sons on a regular basis?”
“Madam?” Lewis blinked at her.
“But, of course, you wouldn’t know that,” said Atabey, frowning and waving a dismissive hand. As though to herself, she muttered: “All the same…it never hurts to ask.” She turned to Lewis again, and smiled graciously. “I merely inquire, you see, because we do need to keep our august and ancient family present in this plane of existence, and one does require a body of flesh in which to manifest, after all. And for that—” She gave a little embarrassed laugh. “One does need daughters, doesn’t one?”
“I suppose so, great goddess,” said Lewis, wishing hard that he were in a peaceful room somewhere far away, Londinium perhaps, with a martini at his elbow and a copy of the Iliad or perhaps the plays of Aristophanes…
“And, of course, there is the question of servants,” Atabey went on. “Your master will certainly want to see that his in-laws are well attended. A mere hundred or so to see to our personal needs—really, we wouldn’t require much. Oh, the difficulties and inconveniences we’ve had to face, the last few years!”
“I can imagine,” said Lewis, doing his best to sound sympathetic.
“I don’t think so,” said Atabey severely, now clearly uncomfortable to have unburdened herself before a lesser creature. “It has been a great trial.”
“Terribly sorr
y, great goddess.” Lewis lowered his eyes.
“You may continue with your task,” said Atabey, and stalked off. Lewis scanned her as she went; no sign of liver fluke at all, contrary to Mendoza’s expectations.
I wonder who’s eating all the watercress, then? he wondered. He sighed, gritted his teeth, and took another haul on the sledge.
Lewis had just thrown a bundle of reeds across his shoulder and was starting up the ladder when he spotted Agueybana approaching him. He stepped back down, dropped the bundle, and dusted his hands.
“Good afternoon, god Agueybana,” he called, “Would you like a word with me in private?”
Agueybana winced and hurried nearer.
“Not so loudly, if you please,” he said in an undertone. “Or we’ll have them all about us, babbling away with their nonsense. Look here—we need to discuss a few practical matters.”
“Such as, great god?” said Lewis innocently.
“Such as a bride price, for one thing,” said Agueybana. “I’m sure your master is a practical fellow; he’s sure to see what an advantage it’ll be for him to take our Cajaya to wife. We are, after all, the most ancient of the divinities! To say nothing of the wealth of this land of ours.”
“It is, indeed, a fruitful country,” said Lewis.
“So it is,” said Agueybana, with a sly look. “Let us just say that he who weds Cajaya shall never lack for guavas, eh? But, of course, he can’t expect such advantages for nothing. We ought to be provided for properly.”
“What did you have in mind, great one?” said Lewis.
“Mortal slaves,” said Agueybana, without hesitation. “As well as building stone and artisans. A few thousand mortals to maintain the gardens, a retinue for the house. Preferably highborn—we couldn’t be expected to put up with field slaves waiting at table.”
“Ah,” said Lewis, nodding noncommittally. He scanned the mortal for liver fluke infestation, continuing to murmur “Yes,” and “I see,” as Agueybana rambled on with demands.
No, the man was in perfect health, like the ladies…except…No! There was some trace of something after all…Lewis concentrated and focused his scan, going slightly crosseyed with effort, though Agueybana failed to notice.