It wasn’t clear if any of this raised him in the Mayan’s estimation, but gradually Zotz began to treat him with less overt contempt. That had to be counted as positive progress.
Why did he want to get in this man’s good books, if he had no intention of accompanying Xibalba on their fool’s errand?
Stuart couldn’t answer that.
But he reckoned the Conquistador could.
TWELVE
3 Skull 1 Lizard 1 House
(Friday 7th December 2012)
THEY HALTED AT midnight, mid-river. Zotz roped the canoe to a branch of a teak tree that had toppled into the water. The trunk reached almost all the way across to the opposite bank, like an unfinished bridge. They slept under blankets on the bare boards of the hull while the boat swung gently side to side in the current.
At first light they carried on, using the outboard now. The sound of the two-stroke motor putt-putting, as the boat cut through the tendrils of mist that drifted up from the river, was like someone lazily slapping congas. They passed hamlets where two or three families lived in cramped stilt-dwellings and eked an existence from fishing. Children waved as they went by – skinny, half-naked urchins, splashing barefoot in the shallows. “Hey, white man!” they yelled at Stuart. “Don’t melt in the sun!” It was a hilarious joke, worth repeating over and over until the butt of it was out of earshot. “Don’t melt like ice cream!”
Isolated communities of this kind could be found all over Anahuac, tribal folk living at subsistence level. It was one of the great ironies of the Empire that, while it had the wealth of the world at its disposal, its homeland was littered with pockets of extreme poverty. The Empire looked outward, and consequently paid little attention to what was on its doorstep. Outside the major metropolises – thriving industrial conurbations like Oaxaca, Palenque and Yaxchilan – the people of Anahuac benefited little from Imperial bounty. It was as though the Great Speaker took his own country for granted. Aztec hegemony had existed here for so long, it scarcely merited his interest any more. The newer conquests were more exciting, riper, worthier of cultivation.
No wonder, then, that anti-Empire sentiment was as rife in Anahuac as anywhere, fermenting in the wilds, in the darker, more distant reaches of the land. No wonder Xibalba could find a warm reception in so many places. The Empire wasn’t tending to its roots. That kind of neglect could lead to terminal rot.
STUART AND ZOTZ arrived back at the point they had set out from, a village that was little more than a landing stage with a handful of huts attached. Even as they approached, rounding a bend in the river, Stuart sensed there was something wrong. Yesterday there’d been noise and bustle, dogs scampering about, the inevitable pack of semi-feral children. Today, silence.
Nobody came out to greet them as they tied up the canoe at the jetty. Stuart’s ears detected furtive activity within the huts – muffled footfalls, hushed voices.
“What’s up?” he murmured to Zotz.
“No idea,” came the reply. “But I don’t like it.”
“Me either. We should move on upriver.”
“We hired the canoe here, we return it here. Besides, not much further on, the river becomes impassable. Rapids, rocks, waterfalls.”
As Zotz stepped out of the boat, he swore softly.
Jaguar Warriors had emerged from the largest of the buildings, which belonged to the canoe’s owner. There were four of them in all. Two had lightning guns, and Stuart could hear a faint whine. The weapons were charging.
“How should we handle this?” he said to Zotz out of the corner of his mouth as he, too, stepped onto the jetty.
“Play it by ear. It could be nothing, a routine visit.”
“If it isn’t? Those l-guns say they’re ready for trouble.”
“Anahuac Jaguars are always ready for trouble. Let me do the talking.” Zotz raised a hand in greeting. “Gentlemen! Good day to you. How are you this fine morning?”
The Jaguar group’s leader made a hand-slash gesture: cut the chitchat. “Who are you? Names.”
“Hunab Ku Zotz. And this is René Jolicoeur, a botanist from France. I’m his guide. I’ve been taking him into the forest to study plants.”
“Botanist, huh?” The Jaguar eyed Stuart sceptically. “What particular plants in our country interest you?”
“Well, all of them, I suppose,” said Stuart. “The diversity of flora in the region is remarkable.”
We’re not going to pull this off, he thought. I know bugger-all about any of this stuff if he tries to cross-examine me. He calculated which of the Jaguars to attack first. One of the pair with guns stood close by. A few quick steps, a well-aimed jab to the throat, he could have the weapon out of the man’s hands, shoot the other gun holder before the element of surprise was lost.
“But especially,” said Zotz, “medicinal herbs. Monsieur Jolicoeur works for a pharmaceutical company based in... Rennes, is it?”
He looked to Stuart, who nodded.
“They’re constantly on the lookout for new drugs to develop from traditional natural remedies. Like jatoba bark.” Zotz took out a handful of his own supply from his pocket, to show the policemen. “It’s a huge market, and Anahuac is at the centre of it. As ever, the Land Between The Seas leads the way, and the rest of the world follows. What we have, everyone else desires.”
The Jaguars nodded to one another as though Zotz had uttered pearls of great wisdom.
“And Anahuac has provided the cure to all ills,” said Zotz, still pursuing his not-so-subtle subtext.
“True,” said the Jaguars’ leader. Abruptly he turned back to Stuart. “I’d like to see some ID, if I may.” He held out a hand. Stuart fished out his bogus passport.
He’ll see that it’s been doctored. He’ll ask me to show him plant samples I’ve collected. The whole charade was about to crumble to pieces. Stuart tensed, preparing himself for a quick, dirty fight.
“Seems to be in order.” The Jaguar handed the passport back. “I wish you luck, Mr Jolicoeur.” He turned and motioned to the other three with a circular sweep of his arm. “Let’s move out, men. We’ve wasted enough time here. We’ve another half-dozen of these hick-towns to cover today.”
They tramped out of the village along the path that led to a nearby dirt track. Shortly, there was the sound of two-stroke engines spluttering into life. Motorbikes. The waspish drone faded into the forest.
“Whew,” said Stuart to Zotz. “Nicely done. I thought they were here looking for me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Englishman. Like I said, routine. Jaguar patrols come through every so often. They shake down the villages. Kick in a few doors, prise up a few floorboards. Not sure what they hope to find. Some sort of contraband. There isn’t any. What do these people have? Nothing. Mainly it’s a show of power, to remind everybody, even in the boondocks, who’s carrying the biggest stick. A bit of swaggering. The locals know to keep their heads down and wait until they pass.”
Sure enough, with the Jaguar Warriors gone, the villagers emerged from indoors. In just a few minutes the air was filled with shouting and hurly-burly again. Normal village life had been resumed.
“Still,” said Zotz, as he and Stuart began the arduous four-hour hike uphill to the village where Xibalba were billeted, “we’d better tell Chel. There’s a chance one of them might not be as lazy and complacent as the Jaguars round these parts usually are. He might check with his counterparts in France to see if there really is a botanist called René Jolicoeur.”
“And is there?”
“Yes, there is. That’s his stolen passport you’re carrying. Trouble is, he doesn’t look a bit like you.”
AH BALAM CHEL agreed that they had a problem. The encounter with the patrol was unfortunate. He’d known having Stuart among them would be a risk. A tall white man in the company of a group of short, brown-skinned Anahuac nationals was always going to attract attention.
“You are, at least as far as physical appearance goes, a liability, Reston. And it m
eans, I’m afraid, that we must abandon this cosy little perch sooner than planned.”
“And go where?”
“Where we have to go,” Chel replied cryptically. “To the place the military would call our forward operating base. The bad news is, we won’t be travelling by truck. We can’t. We’ll be too visible on the roads – you will be. We’ll have to go cross-country instead, on foot. But we have enough time, that’s the main thing. Still enough time. We’re ahead of schedule.”
“Schedule? What schedule? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“The countdown, Reston. The cosmic clock is ticking.”
“You what?”
“Come now, don’t look like that.”
“No, you’re really going to have that explain that remark.”
“I will, I swear. But tomorrow, after we head out. Go get some sleep. You look done in. In the morning, we march.”
THIRTEEN
4 Deer – 6 Water 1 Lizard 1 House
(Saturday 8th – Monday 10th December 2012)
THE RAIN WAS like no rain Stuart had ever known. Britain had its downpours – torrential cloudbursts that could soak you to the skin in seconds. They seldom lasted long, though. They came, they went.
This rain was relentless, merciless, endless.
The deluge started shortly after dawn, and Stuart expected that Chel would postpone departure. But instead, Chel claimed the rain was a great opportunity. “It’ll keep the Jaguar Warriors off our backs. If we wait for it to stop, we could be hanging around for days.”
So, heads bent, packs on backs, they set out. Within minutes they were drenched. The trees were no protection. The forest canopy didn’t act as an umbrella; instead, the foliage served to channel and focus the rain, turning it into thick rods and shimmering, sluicing sheets. It was like taking a tepid shower, fully clothed. You couldn’t see much further than a dozen yards ahead. Everything beyond dissolved into a haze of falling water.
The Mayans didn’t appear to mind. They marched along in a line, singing a song in a language unfamiliar to Stuart but not dissimilar to Nahuatl. The melody was dirge-like, but peculiarly haunting, as it vied with the rapid staccato drumming of the rain.
“Old Mayan lullaby,” Chel explained, “learned at one’s mother’s knee. A tradition the Aztecs haven’t managed to eradicate, not for want of trying. Most of these men don’t understand the actual words. Mayan is a dead language, its use forbidden. But they know what the song is about.”
“Which is?”
“The twin brothers Hunahpu and Xbalanque and how they played the ball game against the Lords of Death in the underworld. The Lords of Death cheated, trying to injure the twins both on and off the court. They still couldn’t beat them, so they killed them.”
“Cheery.”
“It has a happy ending. Happy-ish. The brothers were resurrected and turned the tables. They tricked the Lords of Death into letting themselves be slain with a knife, making them believe that they would be resurrected too. From that day on Death no longer had quite such a hold over humankind. Its power was not completely broken, but it had to play fair forever after. No more luring the innocent and unwary into its domain, as it had done.”
“So then, inspirational.”
“Very much so. Afterwards, Hunahpu and Xbalanque rose into the sky to become the sun and moon, eternally alternating but interconnected.” Chel chuckled, casting an upward glance. “Not that we’re seeing much of Hunahpu today.”
“You said something last night about a schedule. A cosmic clock.”
“I did. You’d like me to explain?”
“Anything to take my mind off this pissing rain.”
“Well now, first off, I don’t want you getting the impression that I’m some kind of fruitcake who puts his faith in prophecies and the like.”
Stuart shot him a wry sidelong look. “From the sound of it, that’s exactly what I’m going to end up thinking.”
“The truth is, I do sincerely believe that the Empire’s dominance is coming to an end. Things can’t go on like this. The Empire has become decadent and corrupt at every level. It’s had its time; its comeuppance is due. You feel that too, don’t you? That the Age of Aztec has run its course?”
“All empires collapse eventually,” Stuart said. “Although this one does seem to have lasted longer than most. Alexander the Great didn’t manage to conquer the entire world. Neither did the Romans. But has the decline begun? I don’t know. Perhaps.”
“It just so happens that we’re in a time of endings. Have you heard of the long count calendar?”
“Vaguely. It’s the Mayan equivalent of the tonalpohualli.”
“Equivalent!” Chel snorted. “It was the forerunner. The Aztecs copied their calendar from us. Mayan astronomers devised it, the Aztecs took it and modified it and claimed it as their own, much as they do everything. The tonalpohualli is based on our dual calendar, which consists of the haab and the tzolk’in. The haab is the solar calendar, and the tzolk’in the base-twenty calendar, with a two-hundred-and-sixty-day cycle. The two calendars turn and turn, one inside the other, a wheel within a wheel, meeting again at zero every fifty-two years. However, there is a further, larger unit of time called a b’ak’tun, roughly four centuries. Thirteen b’ak’tuns constitute a ‘world age,’ the time it’s reckoned it takes for Creation to commence, evolve, and be complete. That’s approximately five thousand, one hundred and twenty-five solar years. With me so far?”
“My head’s starting to swim,” said Stuart, “but that could just be rainwater.”
“According to a Mayan sacred text, the Popul Vuh, the current world age – the fourth – began in 3114 BC Gregorian.”
Stuart did a swift bit of mental arithmetic. “Five thousand years ago, give or take.”
“It’s nearing its climax,” said Chel. “Another Creation is due to begin.”
“When, precisely? Soon?”
“Four Flower One Movement One House.”
“Very soon. That’s just over a trecena from now.”
“Fourteen days on the nose. Of course, none of this is widely known. When they invaded, the Aztecs suppressed all Mayan culture, including the Popul Vuh and the concept of world ages. They stole what they liked the look of and stamped out the rest. But we know. A few of us, true Maya, have kept our folklore and beliefs alive. We’ve passed our culture on down through the generations orally: the legends, the myths – like the story of Hunahpu and Xbalanque – the learning, the lore, all of it. We remember what we used to know, even if no one else does.”
Stuart thought of the books in his library. He’d done much the same thing as the Maya, in his own small way. He’d sought out and bought novels and works of nonfiction that pre-dated Britain’s fall. Extraordinarily expensive, some of them, and only available from a handful of very greedy and jealous collectors. Not illegal to own, but no self-respecting subject of the Empire would dream of having them in the home, let alone displaying them openly on shelves. Precious artefacts from the time when Britain was Great and a slave to none.
“So if the fourth world age is nearly over,” he said, “will there be a fifth? Or is now the time to find a remote cave and start stocking up on provisions?”
“Some believe the end of the fourth age heralds apocalypse,” said Chel. “Not me. I think there’ll be a fifth, and a sixth, and many more. Why not? The long count calendar is a cycle, not a straight line. Everything comes round again. What’s inarguable is that the completion of thirteen b’ak’tuns is a significant date. It’s a period of transition as oneworld age pivots around and becomes the next. Creation begins anew. Life is transformed.”
“The Empire falls.”
“If it’s to happen, when better? We can look on this as an auspicious time to be undertaking our mission. The stars are aligned in our favour. The universe is smiling on us. A state of flux approaches, and in flux anything is possible.”
IT WOULD HAVE been easy to dismiss outright Chel’s
talk of world ages and periods of transition – to treat it as meaningless mumbo-jumbo number wrangling.
Stuart, however, was in a state of flux himself. So was the forest he was trudging through, literal flux, as the clouds continued to dump water onto it in epic quantities, turning the ground to an ankle-deep mush of dirt and leaf mould. Nothing seemed stable, as the rain beat down on Stuart’s skull and made the world around him a smeary green blur. Time itself became elastic. So did distance. He lost all sense of the hours passing and couldn’t even guess how far he and the guerrillas had been walking. They climbed and descended ridges, pushing through thick stands of fern and bromeliad, ducking beneath vines, straddling over rotten deadfall trunks, wading through the slurry the soil had become. Only when the greyness of the daylight darkened did Stuart realise that nightfall was on its way.
They bivouacked beneath an enormous cedar that provided some shelter from the continuing rain. No one could get a cooking fire started, so they ate their tinned rations cold.
When they woke the next morning, it was still raining. They squelched on through the rain on a westward course. The Mayans were no longer singing to counteract the rain. Zotz cursed the rain. All Stuart could think about was the rain. The rain had soaked into his brain. He felt like a sponge filled with rain. His clothes hung heavy with rain. There was only rain. There had only ever been rain. There would only ever be rain. Rain reigned.
They spent another night shivering beneath the tarpaulins they were using as tents. Sometime during the small hours the rain stopped. Everyone snapped out of sleep, startled by the sudden hush. Nobody could quite believe the watery onslaught was over. Even the forest fauna took a while getting used to the idea, but once one animal let out a first tentative hoot, the others pitched in. The nocturnal chorus was back with a vengeance, louder than ever as if to make up for its silence the previous night. The frogs in particular were overjoyed, creaking and booming.
Age of Aztec Page 14