“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“But it seems as though he confided in you to some extent. Favoured you. After all, he killed those others but let you live. Why?”
“Beats me. I think he had a soft spot for me. Or felt sorry for me. One or the other.”
The answer seemed to jibe with the Great Speaker’s own view. “Yes, that sounds about right. He does like his pets, does old Quetzalcoatl. Fond of the lesser beings and the afflicted. Like Xolotl. And that disgusting syphilitic old cripple Nanahuatzin. So he didn’t mention me at all?”
Reston searched his memory. “Maybe. Sort of. Indirectly. In passing. He talked about not doing what Xibalba was hoping to do, not resorting to drastic measures. A nonviolent resolution. And there was something about ‘unfinished business.’ I suppose that might apply to you, the Empire, all of that.”
“Nonviolent,” said the Great Speaker, musing. “That would be just like him. Always thinking he’s above such things, always trying to plant his flag on the moral high ground, when really he’s no better than anyone else.”
“But he isn’t the actual, genuine…” Reston began. Then his voice dropped, taking on a note of numb resignation. “He is, isn’t he? There’s no point trying to fight it any more.”
“Yes.”
“But then that would mean…”
“I, Mr Reston, am what I appear to be, and so much more.”
By now Mal was beyond confused. It seemed the two of them had lapsed into talking in riddles. She was seized by the urge to butt in and demand they speak straight, stop being so damn cryptic…
All at once, the Great Speaker tensed. His whole body went rigid, right to the fingertips, every inch of him alert.
“Your Imperial Holiness?” said Tlanextic, partway unsheathing his macuahitl. “What is it?”
“Quiet!” The Great Speaker turned his head, fixing his attention on the eastern horizon. “Oh yes,” he said slowly. “There you are. Peekaboo. I see you.”
Mal followed the line of his gaze but could see nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. It was the exact same view as before: the lake, the far-off shore, the folds of hill beyond.
“Come on, then,” the Great Speaker said. “It’s time we had this reunion. Long overdue, I’d say.”
“Sir,” said Tlanextic, “is there trouble? Perhaps we should get you inside, down to one of the command bunkers. You’ll be safe there.”
“No, it’s not trouble, colonel. At least, nothing I can’t handle. I think what’s coming could be called an official delegation.”
Reston was looking eastward too, and Mal could tell he was anxious, even though there was no obvious threat.
Then she spotted them — a trio of tiny dots in midair, dark against the shimmering hazy blue of the sky.
Some kind of aircraft?
They came closer, growing in size. They were moving fast, quicker even than an aerodisc could travel.
They were…
People?
Three of them.
Winged.
Flying.
The hairs on the back of Mal’s neck stood on end.
“Colonel Tlanextic?” said the Great Speaker. “I’d recommend you don’t do anything rash or precipitous. You’ll regret it. Just stay where you are. That applies to all of you. Be calm. Show due deference.”
He spread out his arms.
“Gods are coming.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Same Day
They descended, landed.
All three were unusually tall, like the Great Speaker, and were kitted out in sleek versions of traditional Aztec dress. The pairs of wings, attached to them by ornate harnesses, were rigid arcs of metal which swivelled on pivots, for steering and braking. The shoulder-mounted units from which they sprouted were clearly what lent the wearers the power of flight. They gave off a familiar faint hum; portable neg-mass generators.
The wings stowed themselves automatically as the three men landed, retracting and folding neatly away behind their wearers’ spines. The neg-mass units fell silent. The three looked around at the group assembled on the terrace. One of them, the tallest and by some margin the handsomest, bestowed a look of recognition on Reston — a slightly frowning one, as if surprised or puzzled to see him. Hesitantly, warily, Reston returned it. It was obvious to Mal that they knew each other, and some of Reston’s recent conversation with the Great Speaker began to make sense. These were the people they were talking about, the ones Reston had had a run-in with in the rainforest.
But who were they?
And how come they had personal antigrav capability? That wasn’t possible, as far as Mal was aware. The Japanese had expended huge amounts of time, money and resources on trying to scale down the size of neg-mass technology from its original specifications. They hadn’t managed to by much, and if they couldn’t, no one could. The dream of individual flight had yet to become a reality. Except, here it was.
The Great Speaker turned his head, looking at each of the three arrivals in turn. Finally he said, “Well, well, well. It was inevitable, I suppose. You left me alone for long enough. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.”
“I wish,” said the tallest.
“Oh, so that’s how it’s to be, is it?”
“No, I apologise. It was a cheap shot.”
“So you’ve come to kiss and make up. Or am I to view this visitation in a more sinister light? As a prelude to something worse?”
“It all depends.”
“On?”
“How you choose to play things.”
“It’s been a long time. Can’t we simply let bygones be bygones?”
“I’d be glad to. But some deeds are hard to overlook, or forgive.”
“Such as?”
“What you’ve been up to in our absence, for starters,” growled another of the three. This one was superbly muscled and completely hairless, with a belligerent jut to his jaw.
“You don’t like what I’ve done with the place?” The Great Speaker put a hand to his chest in the manner of someone mortally offended. “And here was I thinking I’d been an exemplary caretaker. Preserving the legacy. Making the most of what we’d started. Maximising on the potential.”
“This was never what we envisioned,” said the third of the flying men. “A worldwide dictatorship based on conquest and terror — that was never the plan. Quite the opposite.”
“Then perhaps you should have thought about that before you all flounced off and left me to it. If you’d been really committed to the project, you’d have stayed on and helped see it through. Instead, you abandoned me here on my own. That gave me carte blanche to continue as I saw fit. You can’t hold me solely accountable for how everything’s turned out. You’re to blame, too, by walking away.”
“You’ve interfered with the climate,” said the first, sidestepping the Great Speaker’s accusation.
“Wouldn’t you have?” the Great Speaker said affably. “The planet needed warming up. Who in their right mind would want to live in the Arctic Circle, or even a temperate zone, if there didn’t have to be one? Thanks to me, hundreds of thousands of square miles of permafrost and tundra is now fertile land, freed up for agricultural use. I’ve helped feed the world. Besides, these are the kind of temperatures I’m used to. Call me sentimental, but I wanted to make earth more like good old Tamoanchan — more like home.”
“You’ve not shared all the knowledge, as we agreed. You were meant to introduce further technology in stages, as and when mankind was ready.”
“So I’ve held a few items back? So what? There’s plenty to keep the humans going as it is, and they have fun reverse-engineering and customising what they’ve already got. If you ask me, they’re not to be trusted with the full repertoire of what’s available. They’re such little tinkerers. They might misuse it.”
“Use it against you, you mean?” said the hairless, hostile one. “To overthrow you?”
“That’s one possibility. Or against each another. They’re their own worst enemies, humans are. They need an eye kept on them at all times, to stop them recklessly abusing and harming their own kind. That’s one of the many beneficial functions this Empire of mine performs. It brings peace and stability.”
“Stability?” said the handsome one. “They murder one another and call it sacrifice.”
“A necessary evil. Our original scheme, as it stood, was a recipe for anarchy. You realise that, don’t you, Quetzalcoatl? You were going to hand the humans everything we have, with few limitations in place. They’re an innately irresponsible lot. They’d have ended up destroying themselves in no time. Without me, without the curbs and vetoes I’ve imposed, it’s a safe bet that there wouldn’t now be an Earth for you to come back to. You’d be standing on a charred, devastated ball of rock, another lifeless satellite of the sun. You should be thanking me for making the best of the hand you dealt me, which was, if I may say, an unenviable one. Instead, you come swanning back after an inordinately lengthy absence and you have the nerve to act all superior and judgemental.”
“I’ve been no such thing,” said the one the Great Speaker had called Quetzalcoatl. “I’ve been quite reasonable, I feel. So far.”
“Typical. That ‘so far.’ That’s just like you. Can’t help yourself, can you? Such self-righteousness. Such forbearance. The great and mighty Plumed Serpent, who thinks he’s so much better than the rest of us, so pure and untainted. Yet beneath that ‘I’m so perfect’ exterior, you’re just as venal, just as calculating, just as fallible.”
“You can’t provoke me.”
“Oh, but I can,” said the Great Speaker. “I know how. I know precisely which buttons to push. As I once proved, didn’t I, brother?”
Brother? thought Mal. She looked from the Great Speaker to Quetzalcoatl and back again. She could see Reston doing the same, and he was as taken aback as she was. If the Great Speaker was Quetzalcoatl’s brother…
“All of you,” he went on, addressing the three. “I know how to irk you, how to goad you, how to mislead and dupe you. That’s always been my way. My role. Every family has to have its black sheep, and I’m sorry, Xipe Totec, but it’s not you, however much you’d like to think it is.”
The hairless man gave a careless shrug.
“But it isn’t. You’re a dark horse, maybe, but never a black sheep. You’re violent and cruel, but you toe the line. When push comes to shove, you always side with the majority. You do as you’re told. As do you, Huitzilopochtli.”
The third of the three glowered at him.
“The Hummingbird. Bright as the sun. But none too bright in other ways. A good footsoldier but hardly an independent thinker.”
“Ignore him, Huitz,” said Quetzalcoatl. “You too, Xipe. He’s trying to get a rise out of us. Let’s not give him the satisfaction.”
“Don’t you want to be antagonised, Kay?” said the Great Speaker. “Isn’t that secretly, deep down, the very thing you’ve come for? An excuse to lash out at me? I’m sure it is. That business with Quetzalpetlatl, it’s got to be eating you up inside, even now. Our beautiful sister. So fresh. So innocent. So voluptuously fertile. How long had you been quietly lusting after her, unable to admit it even to yourself? How long had you been watching her, yearning to have her? How long, and then I gave you the opportunity to? I never forced you to sleep with Quetzalpetlatl, or her with you. You desired her, she reciprocated, and all I did was pave the way, arranging it so that the feelings you’d both kept locked inside could come out. And did I get any recognition for that? Any gratitude? No. Just an explosion of temper, the hissy fit to end all hissy fits, and then this exile, like a ship’s captain being marooned on a desert island by mutineers. ‘It’s all yours. You look after it. No telling when we’ll be back, if ever.’ You think you’ve got a bone to pick with me, Kay? I have a whole skeleton’s worth to pick with you.”
The Great Speaker’s voice didn’t rise once during this tirade, but a distinct note of petulance entered it. All at once he came across as less than the supreme, all-powerful emperor he was supposed to be.
At the same time, Mal was halfway to becoming convinced that he was more. Much, much more.
“Take it off,” said Quetzalcoatl, biting back anger. “The mask. I want to see your face. I don’t want to talk to the Great Speaker any more. It’s the person beneath the mask I’m interested in.”
“This? Off?” The Great Speaker rapped the mask with his knuckles. It rang like a bell. “Why not? Gets so stuffy in here anyway.”
He placed a hand either side of the golden head-covering and hoisted it off, setting it down on a nearby table.
“There. That’s better. Fresh air.”
The face that stood revealed was a handsome one like Quetzalcoatl’s. There was a clear resemblance between the two of them, from the high domed forehead to the prominent cleft chin. They could easily, as the Great Speaker was claiming, be brothers. Twins, even. The Great Speaker, however, had a less attractive cast to his features. He looked haughty, where Quetzalcoatl looked noble. His eyes were that little bit closer together and deeper set, that little bit less frank and open. His complexion was several shades darker, too, black coffee as opposed to Quetzalcoatl’s cafe-au-lait. As the two of them faced each other, it was as if one was the distorted image of the other, a reflection seen in a mirror that somehow removed sincerity and replaced it with cunning.
“There you are,” said Quetzalcoatl. “Just as I remember. You haven’t changed a bit, Tezcatlipoca.”
Mal had passed beyond astonishment and entered a state of being where nothing felt solid or certain and where everything that had once made sense no longer did. A kind of wild hilarity kept bubbling up inside her, threatening to break out as a mad cackle. Had Aaronson not been next to her and looking not one iota less stunned, she’d have wondered if she was losing her grip on sanity. Was she dreaming? Was she in the throes of a drug trip which she couldn’t remember embarking on?
Had the Great Speaker really just removed his mask before her very eyes?
Had Quetzalcoatl really just addressed him by the name Tezcatlipoca?
Were these four beings on the terrace — these four who were sharing the same space as her, breathing the same air — really none other than the Four Who Rule Supreme?
It was inconceivable.
Impossible.
Absurd.
And yet Mal knew it was true. It must be. She felt it at a level inside her that had nothing to do with rationality and everything to do with intuition. Her brain was screaming at her that this was all some extraordinary, elaborate stunt. Someone was having her on. Any moment now, the four of them would turn round and wink and say, “Gotcha!” Meanwhile, her heart, her gut, her soul, was insisting that yes, it was exactly as it appeared. There could be no mistake. She was witnessing a meeting of the full complement of the Four, the first in five hundred solar years. Gods had returned to the earth. Or, in Tezcatlipoca’s case, had never been away.
“Look at them,” said the Great Speaker, alias Tezcatlipoca. “What a staggering revelation this is to them.” He meant Mal, Aaronson and Reston, of course; Colonel Tlanextic gave every indication that he had known his master’s true identity all along. He was coolly enjoying the startlement on the others’ faces. “They’ve been led to believe the Great Speaker is Moctezuma the Second, but that was just a cover story, a convenient fabrication. It came down to a choice. Which would be the easier to swallow, that a man could be granted extraordinary longevity, or that Tezcatlipoca now ruled them?
“People might wonder, why Tezcatlipoca? Why not one of the other divine visitors? Why not Quetzalcoatl himself? I was aware I wasn’t the most popular of the Four. So I concocted the role of Great Speaker, usurping the identity of an emperor already beloved of his people. Moctezuma himself was none too pleased when he learned that he was about to be forcibly supplanted as ruler. Ironic, really; here was a man who had presided o
ver so many human sacrifices, who had chalked up countless deaths in the name of his own glory, yet he was profoundly reluctant to give up his own life. He struggled quite a bit. Screamed and bit like a howler monkey under my hands.”
“You… killed him?” said Mal.
“Someone had to,” Tezcatlipoca replied airily. “Seemed simplest to do the job myself. It happened in his private quarters, not far from this spot. There were no witnesses. It was just Moctezuma and myself in a room, the last true Aztec emperor and the last god left on earth. He perished, I disposed of the body so as not to leave a trace behind, and next day this entity called the Great Speaker emerged, claiming to be a Moctezuma energised by godly power, a Moctezuma who would live and rule forever by divine decree.
“I wasn’t entirely sure at first that people would fall for it. The priesthood, especially, I thought would see through the imposture and demand proof that I was the emperor in new clothes. In the event, everyone was duped. Some perhaps had their doubts, but went along with it anyway because up until then Moctezuma, with the gods’ aid, had overseen expansion of Aztec territory on an unprecedented scale, and as the Great Speaker I quickly established that the future would hold more of the same, even though the gods were now gone. I promised them the world, as a matter of fact. It was what the Aztecs wanted to hear, so they were willing to set aside any misgivings they might have had and take me at face value. I told them that the gods had raised me up, elevated me to a higher order of being. I planted the seeds of a story which grew into a legend and from there to a simple fact of truth, a cornerstone of the Empire. People will believe anything if it’s in their interest to do so.”
“A grotesque hoax,” said Quetzalcoatl.
“But it worked, and it’s what I do best — sleight of hand. Am I not the Smoking Mirror? Do I not distort and obscure? We can’t help our natures. Might as well criticise Xipe for being a feral beast or Huitz for being worthy but dull. Or yourself, Kay, for being a stuck-up prig.”
“Be very careful what you say,” Xipe Totec growled.
“Oh, I do. All the time. Am I not great at speaking?”
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