Текст книги "Captive Universe"

Автор книги: Harry Harrison

Соавторы: Harry Harrison
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3

The number of the months is eighteen, and the name of the eighteenmonths is a year. The third month is Tozoztontli and this is when the corn is planted and there are prayers and fasting so that the rain will come so that in the seventh month the corn will ripen. Then in the eighth month prayers are said to keep away the rain that would destroy the ripening corn…

The rain god, Tlaloc, was being very difficult this year. He was always a moody god, with good reason perhaps, because so much was asked of him. In certain months rain was desperately needed to water the young corn, but in other months clear skies and sunlight were necessary to ripen it. Therefore, in many years, Tlaloc did not bring rain, or brought too much, and the crop was small and the people went hungry.

Now he was not listening at all. The sun burned in a cloudless sky and one hot day followed another without change. Lacking water, the small shoots of new corn that pressed up through the hardened and cracked earth were far smaller than they should have been, and had a gray and tired look to them. Between the rows of stunted corn almost the entire village of Quilapa stamped and wailed, while the priest shouted his prayer and the cloud of dust rose high in the stifling air.

Chimal did not find it easy to cry. Almost all of the others had tears streaking furrows into their dust-covered cheeks, tears to touch the ram god’s heart so that his tears of rain would fall as theirs did. As a child Chimal had never taken part in this ceremony, but now that he had passed his twentieth year he was an adult, and shared adult duties and responsibilities. He shuffled his feet on the hard dirt and thought of the hunger that would come and the pain in his belly, but this made him angry instead of tearful. Rubbing at his eyes only made them hurt. In the end he moistened his finger with saliva, when no one was looking, and drew the lines in the dust on his face.

Of course the women cried the best, wailing and tearing at their braided hair until it came loose and hung in lank yellow strands about their shoulders. When their tears slowed or stopped, the men beat them with straw-filled bags.

Someone brushed against Chimal’s leg, pressing a warm and yielding flank against him. He moved further down the row, but a moment later the pressure had returned. It was Malinche, a girl with a round face, round eyes, a round figure. She stared, wide-eyed, up at him while she cried. Her mouth was open so he could see the black gap in the white row of her upper teeth, she had bit on a stone in her beans and broke it when she was a child, and her eyes streamed and her nose ran with the intensity of her emotions. She was still almost a child, but she had turned sixteen and was therefore a woman. In sudden rage he began to beat her about the shoulders and back with his bag. She did not pull away, or appear to notice it at all, while her tear-filled round eyes still stared at him, as pale blue and empty of warmth as the winter sky.

Old Atototl passed in the next row, carrying a plump eating dog to the priest. Since he was the cacique, the leading man in Quilapa, this was his privilege. Chimal pushed his way into the crowd as they all turned to follow. At the edge of the field Citlallatonac waited, a fearful sight in his filthy black robe, spattered all over with blood, and thick with embroidered skulls and bones along the bottom edge where it trailed in the dust. Atototl came up to him, arms extended, and the two old men bent over the wriggling puppy. It looked up at them, its tongue out and panting in the heat, while Citlallatonac, as first priest this was his duty, plunged his black obsidian knife into the little animal’s chest. Then, with practiced skill, he tore out its still beating heart and held it high as sacrifice to Tlaloc, letting the blood spatter among the stalks of corn.

There was nothing more then that could be done. Yet the sky was still a cloudless bowl of heat. By ones and twos the villagers straggled unhappily from the fields and Chimal, who always walked alone, was not surprised to find Malinche beside him. She placed her feet down heavily and walked in silence, but only for a short while.

“Now the rains will come,” she said with bland assurance. “We have wept and prayed and the priest has sacrificed.”

But we always weep and pray, he thought, and the rains come or do not come. And the priests in the temple will eat well tonight, good fat dog. Aloud he said, “The rains will come.”

“I am sixteen,” she said, and when he did not answer she added, “I make good tortillas and I am strong. The other day we had no masa and the com was not husked and there was even no lime water to make the masa to make the tortillas, so my mother said…”

Chimal was not listening. He stayed inside himself and let the sound of her voice go by him like the wind, with as much effect They walked on together toward the village. Something moved above, drifting out of the glare of the sun and sliding across the sky toward the gray wall of the western cliffs beyond the houses. His eyes followed it, a zopilote going toward that ledge on the cliff… Though his eyes stayed upon the soaring bird his mind slithered away from it. The cliff was not important nor were the birds important: they meant nothing to him. Some things did not bear thinking about. His face was grim and unmoving as they walked on, yet in his thoughts was a twist of hot irritation. The sight of the bird and the memory of the cliff that night – it could be forgotten but not with Malinche’s prying away at him. “I like tortillas,” he said when he became aware that the voice had stopped.

“The way I like to eat them best…” the voice started up again, spurred by his interest, and he ignored it. But the little arrowhead of annoyance in his head did not go away, even when he turned and left Malinche suddenly and went into his house. His mother was at the metatl, grinding the corn for the evening meal: it would take two hours to prepare it. And another two hours of the same labor for the morning meal. This was a woman’s work. She looked up and nodded at him without slowing the back and forth motion.

“I see Malinche out there. She is a good girl and works very hard.”

Malinche was framed by the open entranceway, legs wide, bare feet planted firmly in the dust, the roundness of her large breasts pushing out the huipil draped across her shoulders, her arms at her side and her fists clenched as though waiting for something. Chimal turned away and, squatting on the mat, drank cool water from the porous jug.

“You are almost twenty-one years of age, my son,” Quiauh said with irritating calmness, “and the clans must be joined.”

Chimal knew all this, but he did not wish to accept it. At 21 a man must marry; at 16 a girl must marry. A woman needed a man to raise the food for her; a man needed a woman to prepare the food for him. The clan leaders would decide who would be married in such a way that it profited the clans the most, and the matchmaker would be called in…

“I will see if I can get some fish,” he said suddenly, standing and taking his knife from the niche in the wall. His mother said nothing, her lowered head bobbed as she bent over her work. Malinche was gone and he hurried between the houses to the path that led south, through the cactus and rock, toward the end of the valley. It was still very hot and when the path went along the rim of the ravine he could see the river below, dried to a sluggish trickle this time of year. Yet it was still water and it looked cool. He hurried toward the dusty green of the trees at the head of the valley, the almost vertical walls of stone closing in on each side as he went forward. It was cooler here on the path under the trees: one of them had fallen since he had been here last, he would have to bring back some firewood.

Then he reached the pond below the cliffs and his eyes went up along the thin stream of the waterfall that dropped down from high above. It splattered into the pond which, although it was smaller now with a wide belt of mud around it, he knew was still deep at the center. There would be fish out there, big fish with sweet meat on their bones, lurking under the rocks along the edge. With his knife he cut a long, thin branch and began to fashion a fish spear.

Lying on his stomach on a shelf of rock that overhung the pool he looked deep into its transparent depths. There was a flicker of silver motion as a fish moved into the shadows: it was well out of reach. The air was dry and hot, the distant hammer of a bird’s bill on wood sounded unnaturally loud in the silence. Zopilotes were birds and they fed on all kinds of meat, even human meat, he had seen that for himself. When? Five or six years ago?

As always, his thoughts started to veer away from that memory – but this time they did not succeed. The hot dart of irritation that had been planted in the field still stirred at his mind and, in sudden anger, he clutched at the memory of that night. What had he seen? Pieces of meat. Armadillo, or rabbit perhaps? No, he could not trick himself into believing that. Man was the only creature who was big enough to have furnished those lumps of flesh. One of the gods had put them there, Mixtec perhaps, the god of death, to feed his servants the vultures who look after the dead. Chimal had seen the god’s offering and had fled – and nothing had happened. Since that night he had walked in silence waiting for the vengeance that had never arrived.

Where had the years gone? What had happened to the boy who was always in trouble, always asking questions that had no answers? The prod of irritation struck deep and Chimal stirred on the rock, then rolled over and looked up at the sky where a vulture, like the black mark of an omen, soared silently out of sight above the valley’s wall. I was the boy, Chimal said, almost speaking aloud, and admitting to himself for the first tune what had happened, and I was so filled with fear that I went inside myself’ and sealed myself in tightly like a fish sealed in mud for baking. Why does this bother me now?

With a quick spring he was on his feet, looking around as though for something to kill. Now he was a man and people would no longer leave him alone as they had when he was a boy. He would have responsibilities, he must do new things. He must take a wife and build a house and have a family and grow old and in the end…

“No!” he shouted as loudly as he could and sprang far out from the rock. The water, cool from the melting snows of the mountains, wrapped around and pressed onto him and he sank deep. His open eyes saw the shadowed blueness that surrounded him and the wrinkled, light-shot surface of the water above. It was another world here and he wanted to remain in it, away from his world. He swam lower until his ears hurt and his hands plunged deep into the mud on the pool’s bottom. But then, even while he was thinking that he would remain here, his chest burned and his hands of their own thinking sent him arrowing back to the surface. His mouth opened, without his commanding it to, and he breathed in a great chestful of soothing air.

Climbing out of the pool he stood at the edge, water streaming from his loincloth and seeping from his sandals, and looked up at the wall of rock and the falling water. He could not stay forever in that world beneath the water. And then, with a sudden burst of understanding, he realized that he also could not stay in this world that was his valley. If he were a bird he could fly away! There had been a way out of the valley once, those must have been wonderful days, but the earthquake had ended that. In his mind’s eye he could see the swamp at the other end of the long valley, pressed up against the base of that immense rabble of rock and boulders that sealed the exit. The water seeped slowly out between the rocks and the birds soared above, but for the people of the valley there was no way out. They were sealed in by the great, overhanging boulders and by the curse that was even harder to surmount. It was Omeyocan’s curse, and he is the god whose name is never spoken aloud, only whispered lest he overhear. It was said that the people had forgotten the gods, the temple had been dusty and the sacrificial altar dry. Then, in one day and one night, Qmeyocan had shaken the hills until they fell and sealed this valley off from the rest of the world for five times a hundred years at which tune, if the people had served the temple well, the exit would be opened once again. The priests never said how much time had passed, and it did not matter. The penance would not end in their lifetimes.

What was the outside world like? There were mountains in it, that he knew. He could see their distant peaks and the snow that whitened them in winter and shrank to small patches on their north flanks in the summer. Other than that he had no idea. There must be villages, like his, that he could be sure of. But what else? They must know things that his people did not know, such as where to find metal and what to do with it. There were still some treasured axes and corn knives in the valley made from a shining substance called iron. They were softer than the obsidian tools, but did not break and could be sharpened over and over again. And the priests had a box made of this iron set with brilliant jewels which they showed on special festival days.

How he wanted to see the world that had produced these things! If he could leave he would – if only there were a way – and even the gods would not be able to stop him. Yet, even as he thought this he bent, raising his arm, wailing for the blow.

The gods would stop him. Coatlicue still walked and punished and he had seen the handless victims of her justice. There was no escape.

He was numb again, which was good. If you did not feel you could not be hurt His knife was on the rock where he had left it and he remembered to pick it up because it had cost him many hours of hard work to shape the blade. But the fish were forgotten, as was the firewood: he brushed by the dead tree without seeing it. His feet found the trail and in welcome numbness he started back through the trees to the village.

When the trail followed the dried up river bed he could see the temple and the school on the far bank. A boy, he was from the other village of Zaachila and Chimal did not know his name, was waving from the edge, calling something through his cupped hands. Chimal stopped to listen.

“Temple…” he shouted, and something that sounded like Tezcatlipoca, which Chimal hoped it was not since the Lord of Heaven and Earth, inflicter and healer of frightful diseases, was not a name to be spoken lightly. The boy, realizing that he could not be heard, clambered down the far bank and splashed through the thin stream of water in the center. He was panting when he climbed up next to Chimal, but his eyes were wide with excitement.

“Popoca, do you know him, he is a boy from our village?” He rushed on without waiting for an answer. “He has seen visions and talked about them to others and the priests have heard the talk and have seen him and they have said that… Tezcatlipoca,” excited as he was he stumbled over speaking that name aloud, “… has possessed him. They have taken him to the pyramid temple.”

“Why?” Chimal asked, and knew the answer before it was spoken.

“Citlallatonac will free the god.”

They must go there, of course, since everyone was expected to attend a ceremony as important as this one. Chimal did not wish to see it but he made no protest since it was his duty to be there. He left the boy when they reached the village and went to his home, but his mother had already gone as had almost everyone else. He put his knife away and set out on the well trodden path down the valley to the temple. The crowd was gathered, silently, at the temple base, but he could see clearly even where he stood to the rear. On a ledge above was the carved stone block, cut through with holes and stained by the accumulated blood of countless years. A youth was being tied, unprotesting, to the top of the block, and his bindings secured by passing through the holes in the stone. One of the priests stood over him and blew through a paper cone and, for an instant, a white cloud enveloped the young man’s face. Yauhtli, the powder from the root of the plant, that made men asleep when they were awake and numbed them to pain. By the time Citlallatonac appeared the lesser priests had shaved the boy’s head so the ritual could begin. The first priest himself carried the bowl of tools that he would need. A shudder passed through the youth’s body, although he did not cry out, when the flap of skin was cut from his skull and the procedure began.

There was a movement among the people as the rotating arrowhead drilled into the bone of the skull and, without volition, Chimal found himself standing in the first rank. The details were painfully clear from here as first priest drilled a series of holes in the bone, joined them – then levered up and removed the freed disk of bone.

“You may come forth now, Tezcatlipoca,” the priest said, and absolute silence fell over the crowd as this dread name was spoken. “Speak now, Popoca,” he told the boy. “What is it that you saw?” As he said this the priest pressed with the arrowhead again at the shining gray tissue inside the wound. The boy replied with a low moan and his lips moved.

“Cactus… in the high bed against the wall… picking the fruit and it was late, but I was not finished… Even if the sun went down I would be in the village by dark… I turned and saw it…”

“Come forth, Tezcatlipoca, here is the way,” the first priest said, and pushed his knife deep into the wound.

“SAW THE LIGHT OF THE GODS COME TOWARD ME AS THE SUN WENT…” the youth screamed, then arched up once against his restraining bonds and was still.

“Tezcatlipoca has gone,” Citlallatonac said, dropping his instruments into the bowl, “and the boy is free.”

Dead also, Chimal thought, and turned away.

4

It was cooler now as evening approached, and the sun was not as strong on Chimal’s back as it had been earlier. Ever since leaving the temple he had squatted here in the white sand of the riverbed staring into the narrow trickle of stagnant water. At first he had not known what had brought him here and then, when he had realized what was driving him, fear had kept him pinned to this spot. This day had been disturbing in every way and Popoca’s sacrificial death had heated the ferment of his thoughts to a boil. What had the boy seen? Could he see it too? Would he die if he saw it?

When he stood his legs almost folded under him, he had been seated in the squat position so long, and instead of jumping the stream he splashed through it. He had wanted to die earlier under the water, but he had not, so what difference did it make if he died now? Life here was – what was the right word for it? – unbearable. The thought of the unchanging endlessness of the days ahead of him seemed far worse than the simple act of dying. The boy had seen something, the gods had possessed him for seeing it,, and the priests had killed him for seeing it. What could be so important? He could not imagine – and it made no difference. Anything new in this valley of unchange was something that he had to experience.

By staying close to the swamp at the north end of the valley he remained unseen, circling the corn and maguey fields that encircled Zaachila. This was unwanted land, just cactus, mesquite and sand, and no one saw him pass. The shadows were stretching their purple lengths along the ground now and he hurried to be at the eastern wall of the cliff beyond Zaachila before the sun set. What had the boy seen?

There was only one bed of fruit-bearing cactus that fitted the description, the one at the top of a long slope of broken rubble and sand. Chimal knew where it was and when he reached it the sun was just dropping behind the distant peaks of the mountains. He scrambled up on all fours to the top of the slope, to the cactus, then clambered to the summit of a large boulder. Height might have something to do with what Popoca had seen, the higher the better. From his vantage point the entire valley opened out, with the village of Zaachila before him, then the dark slash of the riverbed and his own village beyond that. A projecting turn of the cliffs hid the waterfall at the south end of the valley, but the swamp and the giant stones that sealed it to the north were clearly visible, though darkening now as the sun slipped from sight. While he watched it vanished behind the mountains. That was all. Nothing. The sky went from red to a deeper purple and he was about to climb down from his vantage point.

When the beam of golden light spun out at him.

It lasted only an instant. If he had not been looking intently in the right direction he would never have seen it. A golden thread, thin as a slice of fire, that stretched across the sky from the direction of the vanished sun directly toward him, bright as the reflection of light upon the water. But there was no water there, just sky. What had it been?

With a sudden start that shook his body he realized where he was – and how late it was. The first stars were coming out above him and he was far from the village and his side of the river.

Coatlicue!

Ignoring anything else he hurled himself from the boulder and sprawled in the sand, then came up running. It was almost dark and everyone would be bent over the evening meal: he headed directly toward the river. Fear drove him on, around the bunched darkness of the cactus and over the low, thorny shrubs. Coatlicue! She was no myth: he had seen her victims. Reason fled and he ran like an animal pursued.

When he reached the bank of the riverbed it was completely dark and he had only the light of the stars to show him the way. It was even darker below the bank – and this was where Coatlicue dwelled. Trembling, he hesitated, unable to force himself down into the deeper blackness below.

And then, far off to his right in the direction of the swamp, he heard the hissing as of a giant snake. It was she!

Hesitating no longer he threw himself forward, rolled over and over on the soft sand and splashed through the water. The hissing came again. Was it louder? Tearing with desperate fingers he climbed the far bank and, sobbing for air, ran on through the fields, not stopping until a solid wall loomed up before him. He collapsed against the side of the first building, clutching the rough adobe bricks with his fingers and sprawling there, gasping, knowing he was safe. Coatlicue would not come here.

When his breathing was normal again he stood and made his way silently between the houses until he came to his home. His mother was turning tortillas on the cumal and she looked up when he came in.

“You are very late.”

“I was at another house.”

He sat and reached for the water bottle, then changed his mind and took the container of octli instead. The fermented juice of the maguey could bring drunkenness, but happiness and peace as well. As a man he could drink it when he wanted to and was still not used to this liberty. His mother looked at him out of the corners of her eyes but said nothing. He took a very long drink, then had to fight hard to control the coughing that swept over him.

During the night there was a great roaring in his dreams and he felt that he had been caught in a rockslide and that his head had been hurt. A sudden blaze of light against his closed eyelids jerked him awake and he lay there in the dark, filled with unreasoning fear, as the great sound rumbled and died. Only then did he realize that it was raining heavily; the roar of drops on the grass thatch of the roof was what had penetrated his dreams. Then the lightning blazed again and, for a long instant, illuminated the ulterior of the house with a strange blue light that clearly showed him the fire stones, the pots, the dark and silent form of his mother sleeping soundly on her petlatl, the billowing of the mat in front of the doorway and the runnel of water that ran in onto the earthen floor. Then the light was gone and the thunder rolled again with a great noise that must have filled the entire valley. The gods at play, the priests said, tearing apart mountains and throwing giant boulders about as they had once thrown them to seal the exit here.

Chimal’s head hurt when he sat up; that part of the dream had been true enough. He had drunk too much of the octli. His mother had been worried, he remembered that now, since drunkenness was a sacred thing and should only be indulged in during certain festivals. Well, he had made his own festival. He pushed aside the mat and stepped out into the rain, let it wash over his upturned face and run down the length of his naked body. It trickled into his open mouth and he swallowed its sweet substance. His head felt better and his skin was washed clean. There would be water now for the corn and the crop might be a good one after all.

Lightning streaked across the sky and he thought at once of the spear of light he had seen after the sun had set Had it been the same sort of thing? No, this lightning writhed and twisted like a beheaded snake while the other light had been straight as an arrow.

The rain no longer felt good; it was chilling him, and he did not want to think about what he had seen the evening before. He turned and went quickly back inside.

In the morning the drums drew him slowly awake as they had every day of his life. His mother was already up and blowing the embers of the banked fire into life. She said nothing, but he could feel the disapproval in the angle of her back as she turned away from him. When he touched his face he found that his jaw was bristly with stubble: this would be a good tune to take care of it. He filled a bowl with water and crumbled into it some copalxocotl, the dried root of the soap tree. Then, taking the bowl and his knife, he went out behind the house where the first rays of the sun struck him. The clouds were gone and it was going to be a clear day. He lathered his face well and found a pool of water on the rock ledge that reflected his image and helped him to shave cleanly.

When he was through his cheeks were smooth and he rubbed them with his fingers and turned his head back and forth to see if he had missed any spots. It was almost a stranger who looked back at him from the water, so much had he changed in the last few years. His jaw was wide and square, very different from his father’s everyone said, who had been a small-boned man. Even now, alone, his lips were tight shut as though to lock in any stray words, his mouth as expressionless as a line drawn in the sand. He had many years of experience in not answering. Even his deep gray eyes were secretive below the heavy brow ridge. His blond hair, hanging down straight all around his head and cut off on an even line, was a concealment that covered his high forehead. The boy he used to know was gone and had been replaced by a man he did not know. What did the events of the past days mean, the strange feelings that tore at him and the even stranger things he had seen? Why was he not at peace like all the others?

As he became aware that someone had walked up behind him a face moved into view in the reflection, swimming against the blue sky: Cuauhtemoc, the leader of his clan. Graying and lined, stern and unsmiling.

“I have come to talk about your marriage,” the imaged head said.

Chimal hurled the bowl of soapy water into it and the reflection burst into a thousand fragments and vanished.

When he stood and turned about Chimal discovered that he was some niches taller than the leader: they had not met to talk for a very long time. Everything that he could think to say seemed wrong, so he said nothing. Cuauhtemoc squinted into the rising sun and rubbed at his jaw with work-calloused fingers.

“We must keep the clans bound together. That is,” he lowered his voice, “Omeyocan’s will. There is a girl Malinche who is the right age and you are the right age. You will be married soon after the ripening corn festival. You know the girl?”

“Of course I know her. That is why I do not wish to marry her.”

Cuauhtemoc was surprised. Not only did his eyes widen but he touched his finger to his cheek in the gesture which means I am surprised. “What you wish does not matter. You have been, taught to obey. There is no other girl suitable, the matchmaker has said so.”

“I do not wish to marry this girl, or any other girl. Not now. I do not wish to be married at this time…”

“You were very strange when you were a boy and the priests knew about it and they beat you. That was very good for you and I thought you would be all right. Now you talk the same way you did when you were young. If you do not do what I tell you to do then…” he groped for the alternatives. “Then I shall have to tell the priests.”

The memory of that black knife slipping into the whiteness inside Popoca’s head stood suddenly clear before Chimal’s eyes. If the priests thought that he was possessed by a god they would release him from the burden as well. So it was like that, he suddenly realized. Only two courses were open to him; there had never been any other choice. He could do as all the others did – or he could die. The choice was his.

“I’ll marry the girl,” he said and turned to pick up the container of nightsoil to take to the fields.