“Superior?” said Mal scornfully. “That’s a laugh. You’re so superior, how come you just signed our planet’s death warrant?”
“I’ll say it again: come with me. We’ll join the others. There’s still time. We can leave. Tamoanchan lies just a sidestep away. Our underground ziggurat isn’t just our beachhead, it’s our transportation — a gateway through the interstices between worlds.”
“Go with you,” said Stuart, “and be treated like talking monkeys for the rest of our lives?”
“It won’t be like that.”
“Oh, no?”
“I can look after you. I’ll — I’ll hold you up as ideal specimens of your kind.”
“Specimens,” snorted Mal.
“Look at the two of you. Oneness in duality. Duality in oneness. My people will respect you. Revere you, even. I guarantee it.”
The sky had begun to shimmer — waves of gossamer iridescence rippling across the blueness. The surface of Lake Texcoco pulsed and heaved. The walls of Tenochtitlan quivered. Birds took to the air, squawking in fright.
“It’s that or perish,” Quetzalcoatl insisted. “I’m offering you survival. Just you two, alone out of billions. You should be flattered. Honoured.”
Stuart and Mal looked at each other.
“Choose,” said the Plumed Serpent, holding out a hand to them. “Now or never.”
THIRTY-THREE
Same Day
They alighted atop a high, undamaged tower. They removed their helmets, smoothed out their hair, raised their sweat-drenched faces to the breeze.
You could feel it. Hear it. The earth groaning. The world turning on itself, harming itself. Hot, unnatural gusts of wind blew, constantly shifting direction. Whitecaps criss-crossed on the lake in overlapping layers. The sun seemed to dance in the sky.
“So,” said Mal to Stuart.
“Be fair to him, it was a generous offer.”
“Motivated by pure guilt. The bastard never really meant it.”
“I think he did. But we’d never have lasted there. Tamoanchan. We’d have been curiosities at best. Zoo creatures.”
“We’ve done the right thing.”
“We’ve done the right thing. We should feel proud.”
“The only thing I feel is scared.”
He slipped an arm round her and hugged her close, even though it was exquisite agony for him.
“Gods are lies,” he said. “And liars. They leave nothing but pain and disaster in their wake. We’re better off without them.”
“Yeah, better off.” Mal gave an acerbic laugh. “Volcanoes are blowing their lids all across the globe. Seas are going to boil. Earthquakes are going to crack continents in two. But hoo-fucking-ray for us, we don’t have gods any more.”
“It’ll be quick.”
“You think?”
“I hope.”
“And no chance of…?”
“Civilisation pulling through somehow? Doubt it. The skies will be clouded with ash for years to come. Maybe some people won’t be killed instantly, a few, but there’ll be no sunlight, no crops, nothing for them to eat.”
“Shit.”
“Precisely.”
They were silent for a while, listening to the far-off, elemental rumbling that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
“I don’t love you, Stuart Reston,” Mal said, “but I could have.”
“I’m very loveable, once you get to know me.”
“You stuck-up arsehole.”
“True. True.”
And so they sat side by side on the high tower, at the heart of a decapitated Empire, and waited for the world to end.