Stuart was tiring; the Mayan, too. They lumbered together in a bear hug, scrabbling below the water with their feet to kick each other’s legs from under them. They toppled simultaneously and rose to their knees, panting furiously. They grabbed each other’s shirtfronts, holding each other up now rather than brawling. One of Zotz’s eyes was swelling shut. Stuart could feel blood pouring from his nose.
“Enough!”
It was Chel, striding across the clearing, doing up his belt as he went. Chimalmat was close behind, fastening one strap of her dungarees back into place.
“What is this?” the Xibalba leader bellowed. “I leave you alone for two minutes and a brawl breaks out? Explain yourselves!”
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 unequivocaclass="underline" 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.”