Kirby laid about himself with the machete, enthusiastically clearing a path up through the thicket to the clearer part, where he paused, tinked an artfully casual foot-square stone with the machete tip, and waited for the city boys, a bit out of breath, to catch up. “Like I told you in New York,” he said, “I’m no archaeologist, I don’t know much about this kind of thing, but what I guess is, the temple probably starts right around here.”
Feldspan was the first to notice the stone. “Look!” he cried, excitement quivering in his voice. “A paving block! This has been shaped!”
Kirby nodded in thoughtful agreement. “It was seeing a few of those blocks around that first got to me. Then I went down to Belmopan and talked to the government people there, and everybody said there’s just no Mayan cities or temples or anything at all like that in this area. They said it’s all been studied and checked out, and there’s just nothing here.”
“They’re wrong,” breathed Witcher. The paving stone must have weighed 40 pounds, but he had picked it up anyway, stood tilted forward a bit, gazing at the stone, turning it slowly and awkwardly in his hands.
Feldspan said, “What’s the name of this place?”
“Probably nobody for a thousand years has known the name of this temple,” Kirby told him. “The Indians around here call this hill Lava Sxir Yt.” (He pronounced it “Lava Shkeer Eat,” and then spelled it.)
“Lava Sxir Yt,” Feldspan echoed, reverently, as though the words were an incantation to call up an ancient savage Mayan priest.
Kirby said, “Let’s go on up.”
Witcher carefully replaced the stone, and they continued up the slope, soon coming to partly cleared steps, obviously part of the temple’s outer wall. Witcher and Feldspan chattered happily over that discovery, until Kirby shepherded them on upward. Near the top, where they could already look back over the jungle canopy to the tiny blue-and-white plane parked toylike in the field below, they came upon what at first appeared to be a low tombstone, perhaps two feet wide and six inches thick, jutting less than a foot from the ground, tilted slightly forward. The top and sides had been squared off by rough chisel-work, and some sort of scratches were etched deeply into the forward side.
This really got to Witcher and Feldspan, who fell to their knees in front of the stone, Feldspan spitting on it and spreading the wet with his fingertips, the better to see the etched-in scratches, while Witcher clawed away at the loose dry soil at the thing’s base, revealing more of it. “Jaguar,” breathed Feldspan, tracing the lines. There it was; the topmost portion of a typical stylized Mayan drawing of a jaguar’s head. The lines continued down into the area Witcher had cleared, and presumably some distance below.
“Scorpion,” said Kirby mildly.
They both jumped backward, scrabbling in panic on the weed- grown steps, struggling to their feet. “Where?” cried Witcher.
“No, no,” Kirby said. “I just meant to look out for them. I wouldn’t dig barehanded around here, believe me.”
“Oh, I see,” said Feldspan, beginning to recover his poise. “You’re absolutely right.”
“This stela,” Witcher said, pointing at the stone, “could be very valuable. Depending on the condition of the rest of it.”
“There’s a bunch of them here,” Kirby said casually, watching Witcher and Feldspan exchange a quick hungry look. “Let’s go on.”
This time they continued all the way to the top, where they found a mostly flat weedy area about 12 feet square. In one comer the old paving stones were completely uncovered. Walking back and forth, alternately staring down at the paving stones and out at the view of jungle and clearings and, in the western distance, the bluish hulking shapes of the Maya Mountains, Witcher and Feldspan were clearly caught up in the myth and the magic of it all; here were they, two New Yorkers, sophisticates, antique dealers, used to the ways of the most modem of civilizations, and they had traveled in the course of one day more than a thousand years into the past. The blood of human sacrifice must have soaked these paving stones. The few visible steps in the overgrown sides of the temple would have been lined with savage worshipers in their bright cloaks and feathers. Here — here — the priest would have waited, the rough stone knife held high over his head.
“The temples,” Witcher said, and was overcome by emotion, and started again: “The temples were painted red. In the old times, when the Mayans were here. Imagine; from miles and miles away in the jungle you could see the great red temple rearing up into the sky.”
“Fantastic,” breathed Feldspan.
“Must have been something,” Kirby agreed. His job was to be slightly the rube, to their greater sophistication, just as he was meant to be a bit less honorable than they and a bit more dangerous. He enjoyed all parts of the game, including this one.
You take a man out of the world he knows, you sing him your song, you tell him about the mermaids, you put on your shadow show, and if you do it all well enough he believes the whole thing. And then you make your sale.
Witcher said, “When can we begin?”
“We’ll have to wait a few weeks,” Kirby told him. “The ground back toward the coast is still too wet for the bulldozer, and there aren’t any roads around here.”
Looking around, Feldspan’s expression grew pensive. “It’s too bad, really,” he said.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Kirby told him, as well he did; he’d helped the occasional customer through pangs of conscience before. “What we’re standing on here isn’t merely treasure,” he said, “not just gold and jade and valuable carvings. It’s the heritage of a people.”
“That’s true,” Feldspan said. (Witcher too was now looking a bit abashed.) “You phrased that very well, Mister Galway,” Feldspan said.
Why not; he’d had enough practice. “I have the same feelings you do,” Kirby said, “and I wish there was some better way to handle things. If I had the money— Listen, I feel I know you two guys well enough now, I can level with you.”
Witcher and Feldspan looked alert, ready — depending on the revelation — to be amused, sympathetic, outraged on his behalf, or generally male-bondive. Kirby gazed out over his private jungle and said, “When we met last month, I told you I was a charter pilot, and I am, but there aren’t that many jobs for a private pilot down here. Not legal ones, anyway.”
“Ah,” said Feldspan, though it wasn’t clear what he thought he saw.
“What I mostly fly in that plane down there,” Kirby said, nodding at it, “is marijuana.”
Witcher nodded. “I’d suspected as much,” he said.
“There was a certain faint... aroma,” Feldspan added.
“I wouldn’t do it if I could afford anything else,” Kirby said. “I have expenses. Mortgage on this land,” he lied, “payments on the plane,” he lied, “various other expenses. That’s the only reason I make those runs.”
“Of course,” murmured Feldspan.
“And it’s the only reason,” Kirby went on, “I’d even consider selling this Mayan stuff.” Permitting himself to sound defensive, he said, “I did go to the government first, but they wouldn’t listen. Nobody’s paying me to preserve all this.”
“That’s true enough,” said Witcher.
“That’s why I was glad to run into you fellows, back in New York,” Kirby said. “I knew you were decent guys, well-connected with people who would really care about these Mayan things.”
“Oh, absolutely!” said Feldspan, flushing with pleasure at being thought both decent and well-connected.