Ice, Iron and Gold

by S. M. Stirling

  "On the contrary," Obregon said, his voice hard and flat. "You have forty men, light weapons, and one large tank—which must be short of fuel. Abandon the vehicles and the tank, taking only your hand weapons, and you will be allowed to leave, with your advance party. For every hour you refuse, one of the prisoners will die. And, Capitán—do nothing rash. This valley is protected by forces which are stronger than anything you can imagine."

  Flat sincerity rang in the old man's voice.

  Something seemed to have crawled into Martins' mouth and died. She tried to sit up and stopped, wincing at the pain, then doggedly continued. She was lying in a row of bodies, some of them groaning and stirring. They were all wearing white cotton tunics; a quick check showed nothing else underneath. The room was bare and rectangular, with narrow window-slits along one wall and a barred grillwork of iron at the other end, the holes barely large enough to pass a human hand and arm. Fighting weakness and a pain that made her sweat, she staggered erect and groped along one wall to the end. Beyond the grillwork was a plain ready room, with a bench and nothing else except a barred window and steel-sheet door.

  And a guard in the jaguar-spot local uniform, with an assault rifle across his knees. He gave her a single glance and turned his eyes back to the wall, motionless.

  Oh, this is not good. Not good at all, Bethany, Martins thought to herself.

  More groans came from her troopers where they lay like fish on a slab—an unpleasant thought she tried to shed. Jenkins was sitting with his head in his hands.

  "Goddamn native beer," he said, in a painful attempt at humor.

  "Check 'em, Tops," she said.

  A minute later: "Wong's missing."

  Martins chewed a dry tongue to moisten her mouth, striding back to the grillwork and trying to rattle it.

  "I demand to speak to your leader," she said in a calm voice, pitched to command. "Where is Private Wong?"

  The guard turned, moving very quickly. She was just quick enough herself to get her hand mostly out of the way of the fiber-matrix butt of the man's weapon, and take a step back sucking at her skinned knuckles.

  Jenkins unhunched his shoulders as she turned. "What's the word, El-Tee?"

  "For now, we wait until the captain and the Beast get here," she said quietly. "We—"

  A rising swell of noise from outside interrupted her, muffled by the high slit windows. Then it cut off, replaced by chanting. One commanding voice rose above the rest. Then a scream; words at first, in English, followed by a high thin wailing that trailed off into a blubbering don't . . . don't . . . and another frenzied shriek.

  Jenkins bent and cupped his hands. Martins set a foot in the stirrup and steadied herself against the wall as he straightened, then raised his hands overhead until her compact hundred-and-twenty pounds was standing on his palms. That put the bars on the slit windows just within reach. Grunting and sweating with the effort and the residual pain of the drug, she pulled herself up.

  Brightness made her blink. They were on one side of Cacaxtla's new square, the one with the odd-looking building. Her mind clicked, making a new association; the one with the unfinished stepped pyramid. Because it was unfinished, she could see quite clearly what went on on the flat platform atop it, over the heads of the crowd that filled the plaza below and the gaudily costumed priests on the steps. When she realized what was happening, she wished with all her heart that she could not. A dry retch sent her tumbling toward the floor; Jenkins' huge hands caught her with surprising gentleness.

  "What's going on, Lieutenant?" he said—the formal title a sign of real worry.

  "Wong," she said. "They've got him on the top of that pyramid thing. They're—" She swallowed, despite years of experience in what human beings could do to each other. "They're skinning him."

  "Enemy in blocking positions two thousand meters to our front," the tank said. "Shall I open fire?"

  Captain McNaught felt cold sweat leaking out from his armpits. The narrow switchback up to the pass had been bad enough, but the passage through the recent lavaflow was worse, barely any clearance at all on either side of the Mark III. Every once and a while it scraped the cutting, and sent showers of pumice rock bouncing downslope toward the UATVs.

  "Not yet, we'll wait until we can do 'em all at once," he said, and switched to the unit push. "Take up covering positions."

  Damn, damn. It was his fault. He'd let things slide, gotten apathetic—and the wound was no excuse. There were no excuses. The Company was his.

  Obregon's voice came though. "This is your last warning," he said.

  "Fuck you."

  If they thought an avalanche would stop the Mark III, they could think again. Or an antitank rocket. They might damage one of the treads, but that was a worst-case scenario; there was no precipice they might hope to sweep the tank off, not here.

  "Follow when I've cleared the way," he went on to the waiting troopers. Some of the guilt left him. He might be behind a foot of durachrome alloy, but he was leading from the front, by God.

  The tank trembled. "Seismic activity," it said helpfully. "Instructions?"

  "Keep going! Bull through. We're going to rescue Martins and the others at all costs. D'you understand, you heap of tin?"

  "Acknowledged." Rock ground by, pitted and dull, full of the craters left by gas-bubbles as it hardened. "Anomalous heat source to our left."

  There was no view, but the rumbling underfoot grew louder. "What the hell are they doing?"

  "Insufficient data," the tank said. "Estimated time to firing position—"

  Obregon's voice: "You are in the hands of Xotl-Ollin," he said regretfully. "Feel his anger while I dance for Xipe Totec. Better if this had been a Flower War, but the god's will be done."

  The indig chief had clearly gone nuts. The problem was that the world seemed to have done so too. The restraints clamped tighter around McNaught as the Mark III shook. Rocks and boulders and ash cataracted down around it, muffled through the armor but thunder-loud in the pickups until the guardian AI turned it down. Something went off with a rumbling boom, loud enough for the noise alone to make the tank vibrate slightly.

  "What was that, what was that?" McNaught shouted.

  "No weapon within known parameters," the Mark III said. "Searching."

  At first McNaught thought that the wall of liquid was water, or perhaps thick mud. It wasn't until he saw patches of dried scrub bursting into flame as it touched them that he recognized it. That was when he screamed.

  It was not entirely the lava that made him bellow and hammer with his hands at the screens. The one slaved to Martins' helmet was showing a visual; it was showing Obregon. He was dancing, and he was covered in skin—Trooper Wong's skin, skillfully flayed off in one piece and then sewn on to the old man like an old-fashioned set of long-johns. Hands and feet flopped empty as he shuffled and twirled, his eyes staring through holes in the sagging mask.

  The molten stone swept over the Mark III in a cresting wave.

  The guard proved unbribable, to anything from promises of gold to offers of more personal services; and he never came within arm's reach of the grillwork.

  The attendant who brought them water did. Martins' eyes met her NCO's; from the man's frightened scurry, they both did an identical, instant evaluation of his worth as a hostage. He was old, older than Obregon and withered with it, nearly toothless.

  Somewhere between nada and fucking zip, Martins decided.

  "Agua ," he said.

  Martins crouched to take the canteens through the narrow slot near the floor.

  "Gracias," she whispered back.

  That seemed to make the man hesitate; he glanced over his shoulder, but the guard was staring out the window at the pyramid. The screaming had stopped long ago, but the chanting and drumming went on.

  "It is a sin against God," the servant whispered fearfully. "They worship demons, demons! It is lies, but the people were afraid—are afraid, even those who don't believe in Obregon's lies."

&nb
sp; "Afraid of what?" Martins whispered back, making the slow drag of the canteens on the rock floor cover the sound. "His gunmen?"

  "The Jaguar Knights? No, no—they fear his calling the burning rock from the mountains, as he has done. As he did to cut us off from the outside world."

  Oh, great, one sympathizer and he's another loony, Martins thought.

  The man went on: "It is lies, I say. I saw the machines he brought, many years ago—machines he buries all about the valley. He says they are to foretell earthquakes, but he lies; he makes the earth shake and the lava come! It is machines, not his false gods!"

  The guard shouted in the local language, and the servant cringed and scurried out.

  "What'd he say?" Jenkins asked.

  "We're in the hands of the Great and Powerful Oz, Tops," Martins said with a bitter twist of the mouth. "But I don't think this one's a good guy—and this sure isn't Kansas, anyway."

  "No shit."

  This is where we're supposed to make a rush, Martins thought. If this were movieland. One of us would get a gun . . .

  She'd seen an old, old vid about that once—some snotnose got a vid hero into the real world, and the stupid bastard got himself killed, or nearly.

  In reality, a dozen unarmed soldiers with automatic weapons pointed at them were simply potential hamburger. The door in the grillwork was too narrow for more than one person to squeeze through at a time, and there were grenade launchers stuck through the high slit windows on either side of the prison chamber.

  Jenkins muttered under his breath: "We could crap in our hands and throw it at them."

  "Can it, Tops. Wait for the captain. I got us into this, no reason more should get shorted than have to."

  Although it was taking an oddly long time for the Mark III to make it. The ground had trembled after Wong . . . died . . . and then nothing, for hours.

  She walked out from the huddle of prisoners. Hands pulled her through the slit door and clanged it behind her, pulled off the tunic and left her nothing but a loincloth. Others bound her hands behind her back and led her out.

  The sun was blinding; no less so was the fresh paint on the pyramid, the feathers and jade and gold and bright cloth on the priests. She ignored them, walking with her eyes fixed on the horizon and the smoking volcano above the town. Her heart seemed to beat independently of herself.

  Crazy bastard, she thought, as she trod the first step. The stone was warm and gritty under her feet; twenty steps up it started to be sticky. She could smell the blood already, beginning to rot under the bright sun, and hear the flies buzz. Sheets and puddles of it lay around the improvised altar; she supposed they'd build something more imposing when the pyramid was finished, but the block of limestone would do for now.

  At the top, Obregon waited. They'd washed the blood off him—most of it—when he shed Wong's skin.

  Like a snake, she thought, lightheaded.

  "Lord of the Mountain," she said in a clear, carrying voice. He frowned, but the chanting faded a little—as it would not have for screams. "The Mountain that Walks will come for me!"

  Obregon gave a curt sign, and the drums roared loud enough to drown any other words. Another, and the priests cut her bonds and threw her spread-eagled back across the altar, one on each limb pulling until her skin creaked. Her skin . . . at least they didn't have the flaying knives out.

  "You are brave," the old man said as he stepped up to her, drawing the broad obsidian knife. "But your tank is buried under a hundred feet of lava, and the valley sealed once more." The plumes nodded over his head, and his long silver hair was streaked and clotted with crusty brown. "Tell the Sun—"

  "That you're a fucking lunatic," Martins rasped, bending her head up painfully to look at him; the sun was in the west, and she could just see Venus rising bright over the jagged rim of the valley. "Why? Why the lies?"

  Obregon replied in English, slowly raising the knife. "My people needed more than tools and medicines. More even than a butterfly-effect machine that could control venting. They needed to believe in their guardian." A whisper: "So did I."

  The knife touched the skin under her left breast and then rose to its apogee.

  Braaap.

  The ultravelocity impact that smashed Obregon's hand cauterized the wound. It twirled him in place like a top, until his head sprayed away from the next round.

  One of the priests released her left foot and snatched for his own knife. Martins pivoted on the fulcrum of her hip and kicked the other at her feet in the face. Bone crumpled under the ball of her foot. Something smashed the man with the knife out into the shadows of gathering night. One hand slacked on her wrist; she wrenched it free with a brief economical twist and flipped erect, slamming the heel of her free hand up under the last priest's nose. He dropped to the blood-slick stone deck, his nasal bone driven back into his brain.

  Martins stood and walked to the head of the steep stairway down the pyramid, the only living thing on its summit. Below her the crowd screamed and milled, and behind them . . .

  Mountain that Walks. It looked it, now, with the thick crust of lava that covered it from top deck to the treadguards. Cooling and solidifying, smoking, whirled and dripping like hot wax. A few antennae poked through, and the muzzles of the infinite repeaters.

  Two treads were gone, and the machine kept overcorrecting for their loss.

  "Light," she whispered.

  Actinic glare burst out from the Bolo, making it a hulking black shape that ground forward and shook the earth. The same searchlight bathed her in radiance; she couldn't see much detail of the square below, but she saw enough to know that townsmen and Jaguar Knights alike had fallen on their faces.

  Bethany Martins raised both hands, fists clenched, her body spattered with blood and bone and brains. She remembered treachery, and Wong screaming. One word, and everyone in ten miles' space would die.

  She remembered famine and bandits, and bodies in ditches gnawed by rats or their own kinfolk.

  "They do need a guardian they can believe in," she muttered to herself. "A sane one." Whether she was still entirely sane was another matter, but she had more to think of.

  A statue stood at the base of the stairs, squat and hideous. Her right fist stabbed at it, and stone fragments flew across the square, trailing sparks. It was important to know when to stop. The rest of the Company wouldn't take much talking around—and it was best to get things straight with the locals right from the beginning. Hit 'em hard and let 'em up easy, as her father had always said.

  "Amplify."

  "YOU HAVE FOLLOWED FALSE GODS," her voice bellowed out, relayed at an intensity enough to stun. "BUT THERE WILL BE MERCY."

  The people of Cacaxtla shuddered and pressed their heads to the ground, and knew that a god—a goddess—stronger than the Lord of the Mountain had come.

  He had brought fire from the stone. She had made stone walk.

  The Sixth Sun

  The American soldiers gathered at the base of the sacrificial pyramid. Morning sun shone bright on the fresh-cut limestone, and on the bougainvillea that was already beginning to curl up from the base. Two months had washed away the last lingering traces of the smell of rotten blood, leaving only the scents of dust and people and growing things in the plaza. Around them the town of Cacaxtla was bustling to life, a group of children on their way to school, farmers heading out to the fields. The put-put of a methane-fired tractor slapped back from the walls of the buildings around the plaza.

  That was louder than the burbling of the ceramic diesels in the UATVs waiting to leave; the little six-wheeled jeeps were almost hidden under sacks and crates of supplies, netting bags of squirming live chickens and bunches of bananas.

  "Sure you're not coming?" Captain McNaught asked. His freckled brow wrinkled. "I've got a feeling we're going to need every good soldier we can find back home."

  Lieutenant Bethany Martins smiled and shook her head.

  "There's no home back there, at least not for me, Captain," she sa
id.

  "Me neither, sir," Company Sergeant Jenkins—Tops—agreed. "Bad's it was in my neighborhood, I think I'm happier rememberin' the way it was than seein' it the way it is."

  Behind the big black NCO, privates Michaels, Smith, McAllister, and Sanchez nodded solemn agreement. They'd been down in the Republic of San Gabriel for years, and the news out of Reality—the United States—had gotten steadily worse every one of them.

  McNaught's eyes narrowed. "Maybe you're right. Maybe there's nothing left to go home to. But I've got to know."

  Bethany winced and looked away from the bright sunlight. The captain had a wife and three kids in New Jersey. Had. Who knew now, with the way things were back in Reality.

  But there was no one waiting for her, or the others. "These folks need us too," she said, waving a hand out over the upland valley drowsing in the sun. "We ran out those lunatics who were running the place."

  A vivid flash came to her, the feather-decked Jaguar Knights and the rough grit of the altar against her skin as they bent her back and raised the obsidian knife to cut out her heart. Political scientists were bad enough, but an anthropologist run amok on Identity Politics was something else again.

  "If we all leave, seven different brands of bandit will be all over them like ugly on an ape—they'll be dead or starving in a month, like everyone else down here."

  Like everyone else everywhere, she thought but did not say.

  "All right," the captain said, his eyes distant, as though already seeing the Jersey shore. "I won't force it. You people've got a right to your own lives. You've been good soldiers. It's been an honor serving with you." He drew himself up to attention, his clean but ragged uniform loose on his thin frame, and snapped them a salute straight out of West Point.

  Martins, Tops, and the rest answered him in the same brisk, professional manner. Then the captain went down the row shaking hands.

  When he got back to Bethany he said softly: "I'll miss you, Lieutenant."

  Bethany felt a lump in her throat. She whispered hoarsely, "I'll miss you too, sir." Her throat was tight. "Damn, it would be good to see Santa Fe again."