Wild Cards 14 - Marked Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  "Great. Well, we'll have the advantage of being able to hide quickly." McCoy was trying to convince himself. "What do the tz'ite seeds say, Uman?"

  "Danger lies ahead of us as well as behind." Uman looked to the east.

  "No offense, but I could have guessed that one."

  "Closer. There's a rebel encampment southwest of here. EGP, maybe, or I've heard there are some offshoots of the Shining Path operating up here now. That could be bad. They don't care for non-Maoists much. Small, though, just five or ten men." Suzanne closed her eyes for an instant, and the image of the camp as seen by a band of howler monkeys flashed into her mind. "Lots of guns. In fact, they could be drug dealers or running guns to the guerrillas."

  "And just how do you know that? Been reading Uman's crystals? Or are they friends of yours?" McCoy's voice held sudden suspicion. Suzanne realized that she had been keeping most of her knowledge of their surroundings to herself, and most particularly how she was getting it. Having both herself and Uman as oracles must have been irritating the hell out of McCoy. McCoy had been thinking of her as simply the Doctor Doolittle of Guatemala.

  "I'm no guerrilla. We'd have guns and protection if that were true. Sorry." Suzanne and Bagabond warred for a moment inside her head. This time, Suzanne won. "I, uhh, see through their eyes and use their ears to listen. The other senses as well."

  "Say what?" McCoy was obviously wondering if he was following a madwoman around Guatemala.

  "Now, remember what you said about learning to believe in wild card powers. I have a ... connection to wild creatures. I can share their perceptions." Bagabond made her stop short of discussing now much influence she could wield over their behavior.

  "What the hell. My girlfriend has wings." He sighed with feeling. "But I'm not sure I'll ever get used to all this."

  "How far is this logging road?" Uman was impatient. Suzanne suspected that he had figured this out many kilometers back.

  "Another half hour of hacking." Suzanne reached for the machete, but Uman had already turned and begun swinging. Instead, she and McCoy followed the older man, pulling out the vegetation as he cut a path through it and arranging it behind them as naturally as possible. McCoy began humming "Talk to the Animals," and she threw a nice, thorny branch at him. He went back to cursing.

  Stepping onto the lumber road was like stepping into heaven. They were re-energized by the instantaneous ease of passage, compared to what they had just endured. Balam had kept pace with them in the undergrowth, but now she bounded ahead and out of sight. Suzanne knelt and the taltuza marched down her arm and onto the soft earth.

  "Walk on the crown. You'll leave less noticeable tracks in the gravel and rocks there." Suzanne put them in a single file.

  Moving east toward Belize once more, the three fugitives walked as quickly as possible down the rough road. It was obvious it had not been used in some time, so there was little worry about drivers seeing them. Every hundred yards or so they skirted or clambered over a fallen tree blocking the track. But after the claustrophobic jungle, Suzanne felt terribly exposed. Seeing the deep blue sky overhead only made her more nervous. Now Uman was at a disadvantage. The speed at which he could struggle along set their pace. More than once, Suzanne and McCoy traded glances at the set of his face and agreed not to help him unless asked or the situation became critical.

  After three hours and a good six kilometers, Suzanne - listening with sharper ears than her own - heard the heart-stopping rhythm of helicopter blades. They took immediate shelter in the dense growth beside the track. Uman was most appreciative of the forced rest stop. The helicopter prowled low, following the lumber road's turns only a few feet above the treetops. They froze as it passed directly overhead, pressing themselves into the shadow of a fallen mahogany ignored by the loggers. When not even Bagabond's borrowed ears heard the gunship's rotors, they got up and brushed themselves off.

  "They'll be back." McCoy shook his cameras back into place. "This country's too damn small"

  "Be happy. If it were any larger, we'd have no chance of walking across it, would we? Maybe they're just looking for that rebel encampment back a few kilometers." She pushed stray hair back off her face with both hands and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm. She opened her eyes to return the dubious gaze of the journalist. "Just a thought ..."

  Uman had propped himself against the trunk of a ceiba. He was gray and could barely hold himself up, even after their nerve-wracking rest. McCoy offered him a hand, which he shook away.

  "We've got to stop for rest. We haven't eaten in hours or gotten any sleep. Nobody can keep up this pace. Even you have to get tired sometime, don't you?" McCoy never looked at Uman, but Suzanne saw and felt the problem. She was surprised that the front she was trying to keep up was still working, but she felt like Uman looked right now. She was not happy about it. This part of the Peten was about to turn into savannah. Crossing that grassland of little or no cover would be the most dangerous part of their trek. After that, it was only a few more kilometers of rain forest to the border. Just a little matter of ten or twenty.

  "Okay, but let's move back from the road." She frowned as she examined their immediate options. Viewed through the animals' eyes, the terrain held no completely sheltered spots. It was a measure of her exhaustion that she almost forgot to call Balam back in.

  "There is a place nearby. It should be safe." Uman pushed himself fully upright while trying to hide the pain he was suffering.

  McCoy followed the shaman across the road and into the bush on the north side. Suzanne hesitated, switching her vision among the animals without seeing their possible destination. She shook her head, but after a pause to gather up the taltuza, she made her way into the wall of jungle after them.

  After half an hour of climbing over and picking their way around the huge trees and the tangled underbrush, Uman led them into a partially cleared area that opened up one side of the ruins of a pair of Mayan temples. They were small, as befitted their location in an outlying town under Tikal's influence. Their platforms rose about fifteen feet above the floor of the forest. Other mounds could be discerned as dark shadows in the rain forest behind them. The temple on the right was a pile of tumbled stones, torn apart by the roots of the chicle trees growing on top of it. But the left temple was partially intact, its entry framed by a combination of hieroglyphs and plaster god-masks. From what little research she had done, Suzanne believed that she recognized the face of the mythological character known as God K by his forehead mirror. The ridiculous nature of the name given him by archaeologists had stuck with her. A trench a meter or more deep ran up to and under the temple. Thieves had been here, but the ditch was old and crumbling in on itself. She was amazed the masks had survived. Maybe they had forgotten their chainsaws.

  Uman was transfixed by the inscriptions carved into the stones of the ancient building. Suzanne compared them with his own scarifications. The words carved into his flesh were different, although it was more a feeling of style rather than direct comparison that made her believe it. Another dialect or perhaps just the hand of the artist. She was still curious to know if he could read any of them, but was loathe to interrupt him.

  McCoy was hauling himself up the side of the platform before she made the connection that her weariness had almost hidden.

  "Stop! McCoy." Still mindful of their surrounding, she kept her voice imperative but low. He halted one hand poised to grab the next upturned step.

  "Now what's the problem? I'm getting out of this heat." McCoy glared down at her.

  "Don't move." Suzanne glared right back, but still refused to raise her voice.

  The first contact was always the most difficult, especially with animals of higher intelligence. After frequent contact, such as hers with Balam, it seemed that neural pathways formed that led her into the areas she needed to access. Her mind penetrated that of the temple-dweller, twining around his fight or flight instinct that had begun to trigger when he heard them blunder into
his home ground. Balam had scented their invasion of another's territory and stayed at a respectful distance, but Suzanne had missed it. Probing gently, she pushed gently at flight, not making his choice but influencing it.

  When the puma burst out of the temple and onto the overgrown platform, McCoy did not have to be reminded to remain still. He froze, staring at what should have been the agent of his death. The puma's head swung toward him, but Suzanne again redirected his attention, this time to herself. She walked to the base of the platform as the puma delicately picked his way to the ground. Their eyes met and held, recognition of a kinship beyond that of fur and skin or claws and nails in both. Suzanne withdrew part of her influence and the cat, with a strange mixture of a whine and a growl, leapt across the clearing to disappear into the forest.

  Suzanne looked up at McCoy, who had turned and was sitting on a displaced block from the staircase. He stared down at her as if he had never seen her before.

  "You really do talk to them, don't you?" McCoy watched Balam enter the clearing and pace to Suzanne's side before turning her gaze after the puma. She dropped the body of a peccary on the ground.

  "In my way." Suzanne turned to look for Uman. In the time it had taken her to ask the puma to leave, he had opened his cotton sack and begun removing what she took to be religious objects. He looked up when he felt her eyes on him.

  "We should ask permission and blessings before we encroach on the place of gods." He was using the lowest intact step as his altar, carefully placing the copal incense on the ancient stones.

  "It's clear." Suzanne smiled maliciously at McCoy, who was coming backward down the side of the platform. "Not so much as a fer-de-lance."

  He hesitated for just an instant before taking his next handhold.

  "We can use all the help we can get. Let him go for it." Once down on solid ground, McCoy bared his teeth back at her. She shrugged.

  "Just make sure there's no smoke." She rocked her head back and looked up through the small break in the trees above them. Fighting back exhaustion, she skipped through the senses of the arboreal creatures in a search for another helicopter. She heard nothing through the ears of the howler monkeys, but she caught herself swaying when she came back. She knew her range was not nearly as wide as it should have been. Suzanne put her hand to her forehead as if that could stop the pounding and collapsed slowly to the ground. "No smoke."

  Bracing her head on her hand, Suzanne sat in the dirt and watched Uman light the incense and begin a soft chant. Suzanne tried to concentrate on Uman's ritual. In her village - former village - the people practiced traditions that were obviously pre-Columbian, rituals for childbirth, planting, harvesting and the other major events of life. But they had not had an ajk'ij or any kind of religious leader. Whatever couple served as the village leaders took on that role as well. Despite the mix of traditions, they all thought of themselves as good Catholics.

  Uman continued his prayer as he offered tobacco leaf and a splash of aquardiente to his gods or saints. How much difference was there between Uman's words and gifts and those presented here thirteen hundred years ago? Of course, this time there was no human blood. Uman bowed before the ruined temple, apparently asking permission for them to enter.

  Despite herself, she found herself disarmed by McCoy's respect for the ceremony. The reporter crouched to Uman's left. His ever-present cameras sat on the ground out of reach. Looking intently into Uman's face, he occasionally held out objects from the priest's bag to the Daykeeper as the ceremony progressed. Finally, the Maya placed his seeds on the altar and waved some of the incense over them in what she took to be a last blessing. He bowed once more and began disassembling his altar, removing the traces of worship.

  When Uman turned to look at her, a calm had come into his face that she hadn't seen in days of travel with the quiet man. It impressed her, but she was envious of his peace. Hers was disintegrating with every passing minute.

  Balam was up the temple's tumbled steps in four leaps. Suzanne took rather more time and effort to gain the top. She surveyed their surroundings once more before turning and entering the small chamber, with her flashlight in hand. McCoy swore at her again when he saw it.

  The chamber was in remarkably good shape. It looked safe in the small circle of light that she shone around the roof. The center arch high above them was intact. As she played the light across the walls, all three were startled by the murals. Incomplete, but still holding much of their original bright color, scenes of battles and the courts of the gods were divided by bands of inscriptions. The musky scent of puma only added to the alien feel of the site. Alien to McCoy and herself. Uman could have been one of the men pictured here. What she noticed most were the recreations of the royal courts presided over by gods, but containing rabbit scribes and other animal advisors. That part was familiar to her.

  "You know, Menotti, when you smile, you actually look part human." McCoy dumped his belongings on the bench running across the back wall of the room. He was careful to avoid scuffing the art.

  "Being around you, McCoy, doesn't give anyone much reason to smile." It was a half-hearted slam. Suzanne sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor. "Jose, can you read any of the hieroglyphs?

  "Some are familiar. Others are too different." He rubbed his left arm unconsciously. "A different time, another world."

  His words, shaded by a millennium and a half of pain and loss, echoed in the room. Suzanne clicked off the flashlight.

  "Let's get some rest."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Balam's cry woke her, shattering her sleep from inside and outside her skull. It had to be about four AM. Dark outside. The moon was setting. Moving as little as possible, she prodded Uman awake with her foot and hissed at McCoy, sleeping on the ledge. Suzanne watched the guerrillas approach the temple from all sides. They were surrounded. Balam had scaled a tree to escape. The soldiers were ignoring her. It was the only positive aspect of the situation. The guerrillas had come from upwind, alerting few of the animals. Suzanne had simply missed the other warnings.

  In her mind, she retraced their steps, searching for any trail they might have left. If the guerrillas were on routine patrol - and no one thought to check the temple - they might come out of this alive. Then she remembered Uman's ceremony. The odds got much longer. He had cleared away the main debris, but the burn marks were left on the stones to be washed off in the morning. Another stupid mistake. She put her head down and hoped Uman's gods had paid attention the night before.

  Now that she was fully awake, she used the eyes of some howler monkeys to watch the rebels. To her disgust, the point man surveyed the temple steps and immediately spotted the remnants of the tiny sacrifice. He motioned to his captain. The captain looked up at the temple and waved five of the dozen men up the broken stones to the top of the platform. Their guns, a mix of Uzis and M-16's, were aimed squarely at the doorway. Before they could rush in, Suzanne stood up and walked out into their midst. The weapons snapped up to point at her.

  "I am alone," she told them in her worst Spanish. "An archaeology student."

  "Buenos noches." The captain was female, much to Suzanne's amazement. She had not known the guerrillas were quite so gender-blind. Suzanne winced as the captain ordered four of the men to search the temple. Without an altercation, Uman and McCoy were escorted out of the temple. The remaining moonlight was reflected from the limestone of the ruins as the captain looked back at Suzanne, who shrugged, the barrel of an Uzi four inches from her head.

  The rebel who acted as the point man drew the captain aside. She thought that they had to be discussing Uman, given the looks in his direction. When they came closer to inspect the hieroglyphs on his body, they were more respectful than she would have expected. She and McCoy were well-guarded but otherwise ignored. Suzanne took the opportunity to examine the guerrilla team. The mix of uniforms included traditional clothing. Usually, she understood, the Marxists and Maoists tried to break down tribal identity as being counter-re
volutionary. But there were two ladinos among the other ten indigenas. The captain herself was four feet, eight inches of solidly-built Maya, a woman she could have imagined seeing in Chotol. Without the Uzi. She was dressed in standard military fatigues that were a couple of sizes too big for her. But the turban and a thin band of embroidery across her shirt seemed to indicate she still followed some traditional ways. Suzanne couldn't see the embroidery sufficiently well to even guess at a people, but she guessed Kekchi from her face.

  Her attention moved on to the point man. At first, she thought he had painted his face with spots like an ancient Jaguar warrior. When he came over to search her, she saw instead that he was a joker. His body was covered in short fur, marked like the jungle cat's. When she moved too abruptly during his pat-down body search, retractable claws sprang from between his fingers to stop her. She was jealous.

  While Suzanne and McCoy had been body-searched Uman was simply asked if he carried weapons. When he indicated his machete, the captain removed it from his belt, but did not search him further. Nor did she check the bag he carried. Her pack, and McCoy's bag and cameras had been confiscated. What kind of rebels were these?

  Balam tracked them as they were led away to the north down the hidden trail the guerrillas had used to enter the small temple compound. Not fifteen words had been exchanged during their capture. Even McCoy kept his mouth shut. Suzanne and McCoy had their arms bound in front of them. Uman was unrestrained. The captain deferred to him in setting the pace. Watching them, Suzanne felt sure that the two guerrillas who walked beside him were more bodyguards than captors. Curiouser and curiouser.

  What was the affiliation of these rebels? They shouldn't have been in the Peten. With so few people down here, there were neither potential converts nor army patrols to fight. It was too far from the war zones of the Highlands to be a staging area. On the other hand, it was much safer than being guerrillas in the mountains. But these people were not playing at it. They were serious, well-trained and well-disciplined. If they were involved with smuggling, they would have killed them immediately. Thinking about the Kaibile unit following them, she wondered if they were about to get all the trouble they could ever have imagined.