Age of Aztec

by James Lovegrove

  Stuart had to concede that the people in the inverted ziggurat had access to some highly advanced technology.

  But gods?

  No. Never.

  TWENTY

  Same Day

  AS STUART ENTERED the camp he found the guerrillas busy around a portable gas stove. Two of them were pouring a viscous brown liquid out of a cooking pot into small jars, and the others then took a jar each and ran the contents through a sieve, mashing out excess water with a spoon until all that was left was a resin-like paste. Stuart’s best guess was that they were preparing curare for their blowpipe darts. The original brown liquid was a stewed mulch of leaves and bark fragments from the curare plant.

  They were so intent on their work that they didn’t even notice Stuart was there watching them. He had to clear his throat to get their attention. Immediately they leapt to their feet. Guns and knives appeared. The guerrillas moved in on Stuart, Zotz to the fore.

  “Where have you been?” Zotz demanded.

  “‘Welcome back, Englishman,’” Stuart said sardonically. “‘We missed you. We were worried.’”

  “Don’t piss about. What happened last night? We heard an l-gun discharge, and then you’d vanished and Auilix too.”

  “Where is Auilix? Is he all right?”

  “Asleep in his tent. He’s shaken up but fine. At first we assumed you must have killed him and run off. Then we heard him calling. He was stuck halfway up a tree, terrified out of his wits. He was gibbering, saying something about hurtling up into the air – something about a big black insect with wings. We thought he’d been at the tequila but he swears not. What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you. I need to speak to Chel. He around?”

  “I’m around,” said Chel, emerging from the cabin. “Zotz poses a very good question. What is going on? We were under the impression you’d deserted us. Maybe even run off with a view to betraying our whereabouts to the Serpent Warriors. Hence the curare.” He indicated the gas stove. “We’re making a fresh batch in anticipation of a Serpent attack. Now that you’re back, is it safe to assume that no such attack is coming?”

  “No attack to the best of my knowledge, no.”

  “Can I believe that answer?” said Chel, taking a few steps closer to Stuart.

  “I’m here, aren’t I? If I’d sold you out to the Serpents, why would I return?”

  “To lull us into a false sense of security. Then, when they arrive, they make sure to kill everyone else but spare you.”

  “But it would still be a foolish risk,” said Stuart. “And judging by the way you’re all acting now, I’d have been justified in not taking it.”

  “Forgive me, but it’s going to take a bit more than that to convince me. Men?”

  Chel nodded to Stuart’s left and right, and Stuart glanced around him and cursed himself. While he’d been talking to Chel, guerrillas had sneaked round and taken up position on either side of him. He’d been so focused on protesting his innocence that he hadn’t noticed he was being flanked. He made to turn, to defend himself, but too late. The guerrillas pounced, and within seconds he was being gripped tightly and painfully by several sets of strong hands. One man had a chokehold around his neck, and two others were twisting Stuart’s arms backwards. He struggled, but he was helpless.

  “Listen to me,” he said, having to force the words out through his constricted larynx. “You’re not alone in this forest. There’s somebody else here and they want you out.”

  “Of course we’re not alone in this forest,” said Chel. “It’s a big damn forest. But as for somebody wanting us out – I sincerely doubt that. Xibalba is popular. You’ve seen it for yourself.”

  “But these people –”

  “Reston,” Chel interrupted. “Do you know what a lethal dose of curare does to a person?”

  Stuart tried to let nothing show in his eyes. “I’ve a pretty good idea.”

  “Do you?” Chel gestured to one of his men, and in no time he had a blowpipe dart in his hand. The tip had been dipped in the paste. He approached Stuart. “Then I’m sure you’re aware that it’s not a pleasant death. Curare is a muscle relaxant. In weak doses, it merely incapacitates. Remember when we rescued you at the theatre in London; we’d decided we would not kill Jaguar Warriors if it could be avoided. Shame they didn’t return the courtesy, but there you go. Each one we hit with a dart went down in an instant, paralysed, without use of their limbs for an hour or so. Well, in more concentrated form, as has just been brewed here, curare causes every muscle in the body to stop functioning. Ultimately death comes in the form of asphyxiation. Your diaphragm fails and your lungs cease to work. But it can take up to twenty minutes, and the horror of it is, you’re conscious the whole time, fully aware of what’s happening to you but powerless to do a thing about it. You lie there unable to move, unable even to scream, feeling yourself gradually, inexorably shutting down. It is, I imagine, a truly terrifying experience.”

  He held the dart up in front of Stuart’s cheek.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Stuart said.

  “Wouldn’t I? One prick, and a long, lingering death awaits you. So tell us the truth. Where have you been these past eighteen hours? Are there Serpent Warriors on their way?”

  He brought the dart closer. Stuart strained away from it. The guerrilla who had him in a chokehold pressed his head towards it again.

  “No, no Serpents, I swear.”

  “Or Jaguars?”

  “No, no bloody Jaguars either. But these others I’m talking about, they definitely don’t like having you around. They’re who I’ve been with all this time, and they’ve asked me to ask you to leave. They have plans for the Great Speaker and you’re standing in the way.”

  “Plans? What plans?”

  “I – I don’t know. They didn’t say.”

  Chel gave a scoffing laugh.

  “But you’d be wise to do as they ask,” Stuart went on. “They have weaponry, skills... abilities. They outclass you in every department. Auilix’s ‘big black insect,’ that was one of them. And those mystery figures stalking us through the trees the other morning – them again. And the ants. Remember the ants?”

  “Ants!” Chel boomed. “I’m supposed to be intimidated by a bunch of ants?”

  “Someone controlled them, made them act as they did. You can deny it, but we all saw it, how they built a human figure. I’m not saying it’s ants themselves you should worry about. But someone who has the technological knowhow to get insects to obey commands – you’ve got to at least wonder what else they might be capable of.”

  The dart hovered at Stuart’s cheek, a hairsbreadth from his skin. The point loomed as large as a javelin in his vision, the curare a thick dark smear. He felt a bead of sweat roll from his hairline, down his forehead, out along his eyebrow.

  “Who are they, then, this unseen enemy of ours?” Chel wanted to know. “And why should what they want take precedence over what we want?”

  “They’re your enemy only if you make them your enemy by not conceding to them. This isn’t about who’s got first dibs or who has more of a claim on the Great Speaker or any of that. It’s about who’s carrying the bigger stick, simple as that, and from what I’ve seen, the answer isn’t Xibalba. You’re up against a superior force, Chel, a bunch of very determined and well-equipped people. A couple of them could even be genuine psychopaths.”

  “And our own fighting prowess can’t compare?” Chel sounded offended. “Now you’re belittling us?”

  “I’m being as honest as anyone would be with a poison-tipped dart being waved at them.”

  “Fear of death will make a man say anything to save his skin.”

  “So what’s the point in threatening to kill me? Eh? If you’re not even going to believe what I tell you. Look at it this way. Would I have come up with a story as preposterous as this if it wasn’t true? I could just have given you some bollocks about wandering off and getting lost for a day. I didn
’t. Fact is, I’m trying to help you. I’m delivering an ultimatum from some very serious people, and I urge you – beg you – to listen up and act accordingly. You may not survive if you don’t.”

  Chel gave this some thought. Behind those warm eyes and that chubby, easygoing face lurked an iron resolve, a will that was like a torrential river, carving its own channel, meeting resistance with force.

  The dart dipped away from Stuart’s cheek, just fractionally.

  “You need to choose, my friend,” Chel said softly, grimly. “You need to commit yourself one way or the other. You did that as the Conquistador, but it seems you’ve lost your bearings since you last put on your armour. You’ve weakened. And I can’t have weakness on my team. It’s a liability. So decide, once and for all. Are you with us or against us? Look inside your heart and make that call. It doesn’t have to be right now, but it must be soon, because time is marching on, the b’ak’tun is drawing to an end, the hieratic synod is imminent, and our hour of reckoning is approaching. Are you going to carry through your mission as the Conquistador to its logical conclusion? Or are you going to be a coward?”

  Well, when you put it like that, it’s no choice at all. “If you’re trying to win me over, Chel, you’ve got a damn funny way of going about it. But I will tell you that, threats notwithstanding, basically I’m still onside. In spite of everything” – Stuart lowered his eyes to the deadly dart – “you can count on me.”

  “Can I?”

  “Yes. Now, please put that bloody thing away and tell your men to let me go.”

  Chel pondered, then with some finality jerked the dart back and passed it, flighted end first, to the man who had fetched it for him. A flick of Chel’s fingers, and Stuart was released.

  “Be careful,” the Xibalba leader said to him. “Watch your step. Every move you make from now on is going to be scrutinised. More than ever you will have to prove you are worth the huge trouble we went to, the lives it cost us, to find you and bring you here. Don’t give us the slightest excuse to doubt you again. You will not live to regret it.”

  “And about what I’ve been saying?” Stuart said. “These people I’ve told you about?”

  Chel was striding away. He didn’t look back, just flapped a hand dismissively in the air. “If they’re coming, let them come. They won’t find us easy prey. Xibalba knows how to fight. We don’t give up on our goals, no matter what the obstacles. We’re dead already, remember? So we fear nothing.”

  The guerrillas around Stuart echoed the sentiment with a low cheer.

  “Well, I gave it my best shot,” Stuart said, mostly to himself, but also for the benefit of anybody who might be observing, eavesdropping by means of some sensitive listening device. “I really did.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  10 Reed – 12 Eagle 1 Lizard 1 House

  (Thursday 14th – Saturday 16th December 2012)

  TWO DAYS PASSED, and no move from Quetzalcoatl and his cohorts, no sign of an attack.

  Preparations in the camp stepped up several notches. Chel began drilling the guerrillas, demonstrating what they would do in the moments immediately after the aerodisc touched down at Tenochtitlan. He ran through several possible permutations of the event: what if the Serpent Warriors insisted on coming aboard to perform a security check, what if one of them smelled a rat and they stormed the disc, what if the Great Speaker wouldn’t come quietly and had to be coerced...

  According to Chel’s informant in China, the Speaker was due to arrive in Beijing at seven o’clock the evening before the conference. Extrapolating backwards from that, and allowing for changes of time zone, the aerodisc which would be transporting the Great Speaker across the Pacific would be departing at twelve noon on that same day, 1 Movement 1 Movement. The Xibalba disc should therefore turn up a few minutes in advance of that other disc.

  The landing point for private flights in and out of Tenochtitlan was always the roof of the city’s main building, the Speaker’s palatial private residence. On the way in, the Xibalba disc would almost certainly receive a radio challenge asking its pilots for identification and clearance codes. Chel’s intention was to prevaricate and bluster until they were so close to the residence that it didn’t matter. If his assumptions were correct, and if providence was on their side, the Speaker would be waiting at the apex of the building, accompanied by a travelling retinue of personal servants and a bodyguard of no more than four Serpent Warriors.

  It was the boldness of his scheme that was its strongest suit, he maintained. Nobody – nobody in the world – would expect enemies of the Empire to have the effrontery to swoop in on the capital itself and snatch the Speaker away in broad daylight, from under the very noses of his elite bodyguard. Xibalba would succeed through sheer balls alone.

  Several times they rehearsed the kidnap, with Stuart dragooned into the role of stand-in Great Speaker. The guerrillas raced down the gangplank, dispatched imaginary Serpent Warriors, grabbed Stuart and hustled him aboard. They were as gentle with him as they would doubtless be with the Speaker himself, which is to say, not at all. They yanked him along like some recalcitrant donkey, oblivious if he tripped and fell, or barked a shin, or was accidentally winded by a flailing elbow.

  Stuart endured the mistreatment with great forbearance. Partly he wanted to show willing – I can be a team player, see? – but also he was convinced Xibalba’s days were numbered, meaning nothing they did to him mattered. The longer the “gods” held off from attacking, the more certain he became that an attack was inevitable.

  He could imagine Quetzalcoatl and friends debating the issue hotly amongst themselves in their underground lair. Xipe Totec and Mictantecuhtli would be the ones urging a pre-emptive strike the most vociferously. Quetzalcoatl himself would counsel caution, saying that Chel should be given every last chance to reconsider and withdraw. Coatlicue, for all her airs and graces, was a belligerent old witch and would be in favour of hostilities. Quetzalcoatl’s sister Quetzalpetlatl would side with her brother, thanks to their more-than-merely-sibling bond. Ometeotl, parent of all, would typically be unable to make up his/her mind either way.

  In the end, though, the pro-aggression faction would win. The pantheon had a tendency to go for destructive solutions. The divine myths were a gory litany of bloodshed, vindictiveness and murder. There was no reason to think these would-be gods would behave any differently.

  It was ludicrous, Stuart knew, to picture the people he’d met as though they really were what they claimed to be. But it was also unavoidable. They, by their own lights, were the gods. They behaved according to the character traits enshrined in holy lore. They had the gods’ known mannerisms down to a T. Though he had spent only a short time in their company, he could see that they had established an exact replica of the taut, contrary network of relationships which gave the pantheon its unique piquancy. Their common artifice had become a kind of reality, in as much as it was utterly real to them themselves, and he couldn’t help but treat it that way too, albeit with considerable irony.

  By dawn of the third day, Stuart knew they were coming. The gods were coming. He sensed it the moment he woke up, could almost taste it. Danger like a scent in the air, a tang on the breeze. A dam ready to burst.

  Quetzalcoatl’s words came back to him: My advice to you would be get as far away from this place as you can before the trouble starts.

  Easier said than done. The guerrillas were keeping a weather eye on him all the time. They were also patrolling the clearing’s perimeter and the adjacent patch of rainforest more diligently than ever before. Skulking off without getting spotted and challenged would be next to impossible.

  Instead he opted for making one final go of it with Chel. He clambered out of his tent and went to the cabin. A dishevelled, bleary-looking Chimalmat responded to his knock.

  “Yes?”

  “Is he up?”

  Chimalmat grimaced. “Hear that?” Heavy snoring buzzsawed from within. “There’s your answer.”

  “Gi
ve him a kick. Get him out of bed. He and I really need to talk.”

  “He hates having his sleep interrupted.”

  “He’ll hate it even more if what I think is about to happen happens and he’s not awake to face it.”

  “And what is about to happen?”

  “Nothing, if I can just get Chel to see reason.”

  “You’re being very cryptic, Englishman,” said Chimalmat. “It would make everyone’s life simpler if you just –”

  A scream from the forest cut her off.

  A raw-edged, keening wail.

  The sound of a man in pain and abject terror.

  Stuart was too late.

  It had begun.

  FIRST TO ENTER the clearing was Mictlantecuhtli.

  The Dark One sauntered out from the trees as calmly as though taking a summer stroll. His great black head was split by a fierce smile. With one hand he dragged a body behind him – Tohil, part of the pre-dawn sentry shift – pulling it along by the ankle as a child might pull along a toy wagon. The Mayan had been slashed open from pubic region to sternum. A knot of intestines trailed in his wake, gradually uncoiling into a single long ribbon as it bumped over the grass.

  Stuart’s immediate assumption was that Tohil was dead. Then he realised, to his horror, that this was not the case. Tohil’s eyes were wide open and rolling. His jaw worked, shaping soundless cries. One hand kept pawing the slit in his belly, vainly trying to scoop his entrails back into place.

  “Humans!” Mictlantecuhtli bellowed. “You were given due notice of our wishes. You failed to heed them. We have been more than patient and more than fair. You’ve brought this on yourselves.”

  He upended Tohil, grasped his other ankle as well, then slowly, massive muscles bunching, tore him in two. He split him like some giant wishbone, longitudinally and downwards. First the crotch. Then the hips. The spine, which unfastened like a zip. Finally the ribcage. Tohil hung limp, a ghastly V of carcass, parts of him spilling out and spattering down around Mictlantecuhtli’s feet.