Stuart looked at Zotz, Zotz at Stuart. In the Mayan’s eyes Stuart glimpsed what he took to be approval. Stuart nodded to him, an almost imperceptible tipping of the head. They had both performed as required. There was respect now, and the guerrillas knew Stuart was not to be trifled with.
“It was nothing,” said Zotz to Chel. “A misunderstanding. I think Reston’s grasp of Nahuatl may be faulty.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Stuart said. “I used the wrong verb tense. Got my syntax muddled up. What sounded like a rude remark wasn’t meant to be. I’ll be more careful in future.”
Chel appraised them both. His expression said he understood what was going on but couldn’t be seen to condone it. “Get out of the water, the pair of you. Don’t let this happen again.”
As Stuart and Zotz waded exhaustedly out of the pool, Chel turned to Chimalmat. “Now, where were we? You said the neg-mass drive has been playing up.”
“Yes,” said Chimalmat with a sly smile. “But I’m sure we can have it lifting off again in no time.”
Chel reappeared at dinnertime, looking deeply satisfied with his lot in life. He ate a hearty meal, and when the table talk strayed in the direction of what had been seen in the forest, as it couldn’t help but doing, he steered it back to more mundane subjects.
That night, however, he posted men on guard round the edge of the clearing, on four-hour shifts. He said it was just a basic precaution, in case a Serpent patrol should happen by.
If anyone believed that, they were a fool.
SIXTEEN
8 Monkey 1 Lizard 1 House
(Wednesday 12th December 2012)
“You’re still with us,” Ah Balam Chel said to Stuart. “You haven’t fled for the hills. That must mean you’re still interested.”
“Where am I going to go round here? There’s a lot of rainforest to get lost in.”
“You’d find your way back to civilisation if you had to. I think it’s now time I clued you in on the master plan. You’ve earned it. Follow me.”
He led Stuart across the clearing. It was midmorning, after an uneventful night, and the men of Xibalba were taking the opportunity to laze around and do as little as possible. Some cleaned their rifles in a desultory fashion. Others flirted with Chimalmat, who enjoyed the attention and had fun parrying their innuendo with even cruder remarks of her own.
“Hold on, we’re going inside thedisc?” Stuart gave a droll smile. “Does Chimalmat know?”
Chel gave Stuart a blank look. The man had a remarkable capacity for ignoring the things it suited him to ignore.
Inside, the aerodisc revealed itself to be a cargo transport model. There were few seats. Most of the interior was hold space, stripped of all adornment, bare down to the ribs of the airframe. The fittings showed their age, even a few specks of rust visible. Stuart reckoned the disc was at least forty years old, close to the end of its lifespan.
“This’ll fly?”
“It got here, didn’t it? And Chimalmat’s taken it up a couple of times since, to test it out.”
“But it looks ready for the knackers’ yard.”
“It is of some vintage, I admit. In fact, its destination before we got hold of it was the Mojave Desert.”
Where it was going to be scrapped. There were aerodisc decommissioning plants all over the American southwest. Dismantling neg-mass drives was hazardous work, best carried out in remote uninhabited locations in case of accident. Antigrav particles, if not handled correctly, were deadly stuff.
“But Xibalba has contacts in that region,” Chel continued.
“Xibalba has contacts everywhere, it seems.”
“Fellow travellers. Some of the native Americans in the southwest, especially the Anasazi and the Mogollon, haven’t forgotten how the Aztecs swept up across the border and subjugated them. Nor will they forgive the Empire for the way it treated all Americans, natives and settlers alike, during the War of Independence.”
Every schoolchild was taught that the American War of Independence, more properly called the Act of Necessary Suppression, was a vainglorious failure. George Washington and his cronies foolishly attempted to sever all ties between their portion of the country and the Aztec-controlled areas. As well as battling on various fronts with their militiamen, they roped in the indigenous peoples in the southwest, using them to attack the Imperial territories from within, hoping to undermine through sabotage.
It was all in vain, and the Empire’s retribution was swift and absolute. The punishments they meted out afterwards were terrible even by their own standards, and although the settlers suffered — Washington himself being hacked to death with an axe — it was the native Americans who bore the brunt. All members of the Hohokam nation, for instance, were forced at gunpoint to kill and eat one another. Most refused, and were repaid for their obstinacy by being staked out under the sun and skinned alive, then having fire ants poured on their flensed bodies. Many, though, did as bidden. Parents murdered and consumed their children, husbands their wives, in the belief that they would be allowed to live as a reward for their compliance. They weren’t.
The history books were unequivocal: they had it coming. But even as a boy, Stuart had been appalled as he read the eyewitness accounts and studied the sometimes very graphic illustrations. In quelling the native Americans and ending the American uprising, the Empire had come very close to committing absolute genocide. They had also snuffed out whatever small spark of selfhood America had been kindling in its breast, leaving it what it was now — a spacious, largely undeveloped land full of natural resources which the Empire plundered freely and at will.
America had had the potential to be the Empire’s greatest rival in the world. The Aztecs had turned it into a ghost country.
“My friends in America got wind that I was looking for an aerodisc,” Chel said. “This one belonged to a German freight airline. Not the most elegant of vessels, but beggars can’t be choosers. It was diverted on its way to the breakers in Mojave and brought here. The official records have it lost at sea. A malfunction in the antigrav over the Atlantic. No great surprise, given its age and state of repair.”
He showed Stuart to the cockpit. The controls were marked in German. Someone — Chimalmat was the likeliest candidate — had stuck pieces of tape on several of the instruments, with the Nahuatl words for their functions written on in marker pen.
“You know,” Stuart said, “if I was a pro-Empire kind of guy and someone asked me ‘What have the Aztecs ever done for us?’ I’d have to say that the power of flight is certainly a point in their favour.”
“Ah, but did they? Weren’t they just passing on a gift from the gods?”
“True. If you believe that sort of bollocks.” Stuart slapped the cracked leather headrest of the pilot’s chair. “So, what are we intending to do with this particular fine specimen of Aztechnology?”
“We” — Chel approved of Stuart’s use of the plural pronoun — “are going to fly it to Tenochtitlan and land there.”
Stuart gave a hollow laugh. “And get blasted to buggery the moment we step out.”
“Not if we don’t step out.”
“Just sit there on the landing pad, then, and wait for Serpent Warriors to board. The slightest hint of something dodgy going on, and they’ll storm the disc all guns blazing. In a confined space, against dozens of them, I don’t rate our chances.”
“Neither would I,” said Chel. “What you’re not seeing, Reston — and it’s not your fault, because you’re not in possession of the full facts — is that the Great Speaker himself will walk voluntarily up the gangplank, straight into our waiting arms.”
“Yeah, right. Because he does that, climbs aboard random aircraft that touch down on his roof.”
“He will if he’s under the impression that this is the disc that’s been chartered to fly him to China for a High Priestly conference due to take place on Two Flint Knife.” Chel grinned. He’d just played the card he’d been keeping up his sleeve all this ti
me, and he was convinced it trumped all.
“Conference?” said Stuart. “I didn’t know there was one happening.”
“It’s not been widely advertised. These hieratic synods rarely are, for security reasons. Only much closer to the date does the information get released, a day or so, and then it’s touted all over the news networks, the biggest thing since, well, the last one. I happen to have heard about it well in advance thanks to an insider in Beijing. Preparations at the Forbidden City have been going on for months. It’s supposed to have been kept under wraps, but you can’t hide that much construction work or that level of heightened security around the venue. The more hush-hush the activity is, the more obvious it becomes that something big is in train.”
“And your man in China knows for a fact that it’s a conference? All the High Priests are going to attend?”
“He does. He’s an Anahuac, a cousin of a cousin of mine. Works in the building trade over there. He’s been supplying labour to the site. They’re putting up a convention hall right where one of the main palaces in the Forbidden City used to stand. They’re also raising a brand new temple ziggurat. There’s going to be some serious sacrificing once the Great Speaker blows into town.”
“How do you know he’s on the level, your cousin’s cousin? Mightn’t the Empire have turned him? Could he be feeding you deliberate misinformation? Couldn’t this all be some Imperial plot to smoke Xibalba out?”
“Ah, so suspicious,” said Chel. “And you are wise to be. However, I’m in absolutely no doubt that he’s telling the truth. He’s sympathetic to our aims, and what with that and our shared blood, I trust him implicitly. That’s why I’ve obtained this aerodisc. That’s why I’ve cooked up this kidnap plan.”
“Kidnap? It isn’t going to stop at that, though, is it?”
“No.” Chel looked grave. “It can’t. The Great Speaker has to die. And he has to die publicly, screaming, begging for his life. As a man, not a god. In mortal terror.”
“In Beijing.”
“That would be the ideal location. The world’s press are going to be there. It’ll be the focus of international media attention. Before hundreds of cameras, before millions of watching eyes, Xibalba will unmask the Speaker and show him to be a human being, as frail as any of us and as capable of dying. We will cut him down just as his priests have cut down so many countless others, and the Empire’s reign of terror will be over.”
Off the top of his head Stuart could think of a dozen objections to this plan. The ways it could go wrong were many and obvious. For one thing, they had to make sure the Serpent Warriors at Tenochtitlan were fooled into believing this disc was the one that had come to fetch their master. For another, it was a distance of several thousand miles from Anahuac to Beijing. Could such a rusty old rattletrap make it that far? And assuming they got there in one piece and were able to stage a public execution for the Great Speaker, wasn’t there a chance people might be made to think it was faked? The Empire could claim the whole thing was a setup, with some hapless impostor duped into wearing a replica set of robes and golden mask. A replacement Great Speaker could be wheeled out at short notice and declare that a vicious prank had been played by enemies of the Empire and the world should pay it no attention.
Chel studied his face and saw all the doubts there.
But he saw something else as well.
“It’s not without its potential drawbacks,” he admitted. “I’m well aware of that. Some might even call it harebrained. But imagine if we manage to pull it off. Just imagine. The Empire is predicated on the fact that its Emperor is Moctezuma the Second, ancient and everlasting. If we were to prove convincingly otherwise, it would have nothing to stand on. It would fall heavily and hard. And…”
He moved a step closer to Stuart.
“What a grand gesture it would be. What a spectacular coup. I know your love of the bold, flashy statement, your flair for the dramatic. You understand that that’s what’s needed to get one’s point across. A slumbering public has to be woken up. It has to be shocked out of its complacency. People are numb, docile — sheep. What else was the Conquistador about if not throwing a metaphorical grenade in their laps? This would be the biggest grenade of all. The effects of its explosion would be felt for all time. It could change everything!”
Chel looked deep into his eyes.
“Let’s set it off. Let’s at least try.”
SEVENTEEN
Same Day
Stuart was on first watch that night. He and a man called Auilix patrolled the perimeter of the clearing separately, Stuart at one end, Auilix at the other. Every now and then they met in the middle to exchange nods and maybe a word or two.
Since his conversation with Chel, Stuart had oscillated between feeling the Xibalba leader was hopelessly deluded and wondering if he might not be on to something. If the plan could be carried out without a hitch, it would make everything Stuart had done as the Conquistador look small-time indeed. It might even, as Chel insisted, cause the Empire to crumble. At the very least, shake it to its foundations and leave significant cracks in its facade.
But…
The odds against success were inordinately, almost ridiculously high.
But…
If there was even a tiny percentage chance it would work, wasn’t it worth attempting?
One Flint Knife was half a trecena away. Stuart had seven days to make up his mind.
The rainforest was unusually loud this evening. The animals seemed to have recruited several new members to their nightly glee club. The racket made it hard to think. Stuart, as he did his semicircular circuits of the clearing, could scarcely hear his own footfalls.
Then, all of a sudden, it stopped.
A hush descended.
The hush stretched on, as eerie as it was absolute.
Stuart strode over to Auilix. The Mayan had the lightning gun, while Stuart had a semiautomatic rifle. Stuart could see he was perturbed.
“What’s up?” he whispered. “Why’s it gone so quiet?”
Auilix shook his head uncertainly, and both men stared into the darkness of the trees. The only sounds were the burble of the waterfall, the faint ripple of a breeze through high branches, and their own breathing.
“Sometimes, if there’s an apex predator around, the other animals are subdued,” Auilix said. “But not like this. Not this silent.”
Stuart felt the hairs prickle on the backs of his hands.
“Someone…” said the Mayan, so softly it was almost inaudible. “Someone is moving around out there.”
Immediately Stuart racked the bolt handle on the rifle. The sound seemed astonishingly loud, but he was happy with that. Whoever was in the forest, he wanted them to know he and Auilix were aware of their presence and ready to deal with them.
His eyes searched for movement. With the Eagles he had learned to use peripheral vision at night. The blind spot at your focal point, his training sergeant had said, could hide an elephant.
There.
Black amidst the blackness. Something shining. A glint.
Stuart raised the rifle and sighted along the barrel.
But the glint had gone. It could just have been moonlight reflected off a leaf.
But Auilix beside him had glimpsed something too. The l-gun began to whine.
Stuart moved closer to the trees, leading with the rifle. He was expecting to come under enemy fire at any moment. In his gut, he was terrified. In his head, he was calm. The real danger here was losing his nerve. Keep that and he might just keep living.
“Come on, you bastard,” he murmured under his breath. “Where are you? Show yourself.”
He reached the tree line. Behind him, Auilix grunted, urging caution, but Stuart didn’t pause. The best tactic, when facing the possibility of ambush, was to take the fight to the ambushers. Your opponents’ one advantage was their hidden position, and that could be negated by a direct, full-frontal approach, flushing them out from cover.
He en
tered the forest, and the tree canopy closed overhead, blotting out the moon. Everything was a play of silver and black, patterns of pale filigree light. He trod toe-to-heel, feeling for each step with his feet, never dropping his gaze once to look where he was treading.
The whole of the forest held its breath.
Then there was a yelp of surprise, and the percussive snap! of a lightning gun being fired.
Stuart whirled round in time to see Auilix disappearing.
Upwards.
The Mayan was whisked into the air above the clearing, suspended beneath something large, black and insectlike. Stuart glimpsed shiny curved contours, giant outspread wings — then the thing and its squirming human burden were gone, soaring out of sight. It had happened so swiftly that Auilix had managed to get off that single, reflexive shot with his l-gun, and that was all.
Stuart had time to wonder what the winged creature was. Then he heard voices. They were coming from nearby in the forest. Two of them. Conversing urgently and low. He couldn’t make out what was being said… but there was something weirdly familiar about both of the voices. The cadences, the timbres.
He couldn’t help Auilix. The Mayan was a captive now, possibly dead already. He could, he supposed, alert the rest of Xibalba. Chances were the l-gun discharge had done that anyway.
But the voices…
Who was talking? He had to find out.
Stuart turned and headed in the direction of the sound. He wasn’t so unwary as to think this might not be a trap; he was most likely being lured. But he had a weapon, didn’t he? That evened the odds somewhat.
He ventured away from the clearing, further into the forest. Everything had suddenly become strange. That thing, that flying creature — it didn’t make sense. Far bigger than any airborne animal he knew of. Encased in a hard armour like a beetle’s. What with that and those ants the day before yesterday… The world was topsy-turvy. This place, this sector of rainforest, harboured anomalies, phenomena that shouldn’t by all the laws of nature exist. He felt as though he was in some alien zone where the usual rules no longer applied.
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