“You could try negotiating with him again, couldn’t you?”
“You saw how well that went last time.”
“But you’ve had a bit of a barney and now the air’s been cleared. You could both say enough’s enough and call a truce, and everyone will still have their dignity. That’s how it is with boys and their willy-waving, isn’t it? You make your point, then tuck them away again.”
Quetzalcoatl smiled at her turn of phrase. “There is so much ill will between my brother and me. Too much. Our meeting earlier was a formality as much as anything. This — this conflict — it was the inevitable, the only outcome. It had to be. You must appreciate, surely, that I’m not fighting just for myself? This isn’t purely for my own satisfaction, not at all. I’m fighting in order to make amends to you, and all humans, for my intemperate, badly-thought-through decision half a millennium ago. I’m trying to reverse the consequences of a great failure.”
“Better late than never, I suppose,” Vaughn said.
“I like you,” Quetzalcoatl said with a chuckle. “Reston, I like your mate.”
“She’s not my — ”
“I’m not his — ”
“She speaks her mind,” the god went on. “She doesn’t kowtow. She’s precisely the reason the human race appeals to me. You have drive, vigour, a zest to be more than you are. When I first came here, I saw such potential in you all and I knew it was my duty to coax it out of you. I promise you now, if Tezcatlipoca is defeated — when he is — I shall resume exactly where I left off. I’ll help guide you forward to become the very best you can be. Decades from now, you’ll be so transformed, you’ll scarce be able to recognise yourselves. You’ll possess every last scrap of our technology and have the wisdom to use it well, you’ll live longer than you could ever imagine, and, oh, the places you’ll go and the things you’ll see…! Here, right now, is when it could all begin anew for you.”
All at once, Ah Balam Chel’s words returned to Stuart: It’s a period of transition as oneworld age pivots around and becomes the next. Creation begins anew. Life is transformed.
“Seems you might have been right after all, you wily old bastard,” he murmured.
“Didn’t catch that,” said Vaughn. They were approaching the lakeshore — one of its dark, forested, uninhabited reaches, a ragged littoral of swampland and stream inlets.
“I was just remembering Chel. The leader of Xibalba.”
“And he…?”
“…told me not so long ago about the Mayan calendar and how it predicted that the world is about to come to a pivotal moment. A crossroads, I suppose you could say. And here, it seems, we actually are.”
“The end of the fourth world age, the beginning of the fifth,” said Quetzalcoatl. “Yes, I know of this. Why do you think we came back now, of all times?”
“Even you believe there’s something to it?”
“Everything goes in cycles, Stuart. The seasons, the planets. Why not time itself? The Mayan astronomers were clever people. They kept immaculate records, observed the patterns, made the calculations. They knew about wheels within wheels. The earth rotates on its axis but also orbits the sun. A whirlpool turns, and within it are independent eddies. As in nature, so in time, for time is integral to nature.”
“Hold on, what is all this bollocks?” Vaughn demanded. “Can one of you kindly explain what you’re rabbiting on about?”
Stuart paraphrased as best he could what Chel had told him about the Popul Vuh, b’ak’tun s and world ages. “It’s all coming to a head,” he said. “The big day’s arriving. Soon. Very soon. In fact, anyone know today’s date? What with one thing and another, I’ve lost track.”
Vaughn frowned. “Three Rain One Movement One House. But I had to think about it. That’s the kind of day it’s been.”
“Then that means tomorrow’s Four Flower. Tomorrow’s it. When the counter zeroes and resets.”
Quetzalcoatl gave a confirming nod. “No coincidence. I’m not one to ignore the immense pull of time’s tides. The world has reached a crux. Tezcatlipoca knows it too. That’s another reason why he’s holding himself in reserve. He senses that, come tomorrow, he will be in line for either total victory or total catastrophe, and so shall we. All is poised in delicate balance. The fifth age will begin either with the Smoking Mirror more secure than ever on his throne or else cast down and destroyed, and whatever state the earth is in when the new age commences, so will it remain until the age after that. The status quo at tomorrow’s end will be the status quo for the next five thousand solar years. And that is why we must beat him. We are humankind’s one and only chance of being rid of Tezcatlipoca, its one and only chance of a bright new dawn, and so we are acting at the most auspicious time there is for us to act.”
He led Stuart and Vaughn in a decelerating descent towards a patch of rainforest. They threaded through the canopy and between the trees, down to an area Stuart thought he recognised, even in the darkness. The gods’ inverted ziggurat lay belowground here.
“This is where we part company,” Quetzalcoatl announced as they touched down. “You two may carry on to wherever you wish.”
Stuart detected a hidden current in the Plumed Serpent’s voice, a note of invitation.
“Or,” Stuart said, “we can come in with you. Maybe as allies?”
“Yes,” said Quetzalcoatl, casually, as if it hadn’t occurred to him. “If that’s what you’d like.”
“Why?” said Vaughn.
“Why?” The god mused. “Good question. Let me see. Could it be that, as humans, you might have a vested interest in the future of earth? It is, after all, your planet. Your home. And could it be that I would value having the two of you fighting at my side? I saw how well the two of you fared against that gunship, how you prevailed in the teeth of overwhelming odds, the teamwork you showed…”
“Teamwork?” Stuart and Vaughn exclaimed in unison.
“Not to mention your evident resourcefulness — purloining those suits of armour and adapting to their use so swiftly.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Vaughn. “You’re recruiting us?”
“Asking if you’d care to help out, yes,” Quetzalcoatl replied. “The struggle is as much yours as ours.”
“But you don’t need us, surely.”
“Two more assets in the theatre of conflict? Two more arrows in my quiver? Why ever not?”
“We’re not gods.”
“No, but you’re humans and therefore ought to be as keen to fight for your destiny as we are, if not far more so. But if the idea doesn’t appeal…”
At a gesture from Quetzalcoatl, the opening in the undergrowth appeared, just as Stuart remembered it. A pillar of light shone up from below, and through the rectangular hatch the tiers of the upside-down ziggurat could be glimpsed, shelving away deep into the ground.
“Bloody hell,” was Vaughn’s only comment.
Quetzalcoatl made to go down the steps. “I’m glad to have made your acquaintance, both of you. I know now for certain that humankind is worth fighting for and preserving, and indeed worth dying for. Perhaps, if nothing else, you could wish me luck?”
“No,” said Stuart. “Wait.”
Quetzalcoatl halted at the lip of the staircase. Didn’t look round.
“What the hell, I’m in.”
“Reston…” said Vaughn.
“He’s right, Vaughn. This is about us. Our future. It would be wrong not to get involved.”
“Are you nuts?”
“So you keep assuring me. But listen. This is the fight I began as the Conquistador, against the Empire. The same campaign, only taken to the highest level. It’d be a shame to have come so far and not go all the way. Might as well see it through to the end.” He added, “It’s not as if I’ve got much else to do with my life.”
“Don’t,” she said as he moved towards the hole. “Don’t go down in there with him.”