Clash of Star-Kings (14 page)

The Indians, listening, burst into tears. “
Viejos Poderosos
, do not leave us! Stay with us and restore the days of old, for we have waited for them as we have waited for you!”

The smile of the Elder Old One was something less than, something more than, melancholy. Something akin to, something other than: “No one and nothing, younger brothers, can restore the days of old. Can one restore the melted snows? Can the bird return to the egg? And yet, younger brothers, new snows will fall, much like the old; and new birds will hatch from new eggs. Think no more, or at least think not much, of the days of old which may have been good. Think instead of the new days to come which may be good.” The Elder Old One gestured. Another of his kind moved forward, holding in his arms a great chest. He set it down and regarded, first it, then the weeping and now beginning to murmur Moxtomí with gentle wonder not unmixed with mild pleasure. “Here is something which we had almost forgotten, for it is not a thing we value.
The sweat of the sun, the tears of the moon
. What are they called in more modern words?”

Old Santiago Tue, tears still wet upon his face, but even more than a mystic disappointed, a hunter and a farmer and a man more familiar with facts than with dreams; Santiago Tue looked up with quickening excitement and said, “Gold? Silver?”

“Some silver. More gold. Yes…. The years which were years of lost labor because of your lost lands, younger brothers, ah … gone forever. But the land remains, the earth abides. Take it, then, tokens that we are not false altogether. It will regain the lost lands for you, and one will hope that new years and good years will grow therefrom for you.”

Macauley and Clay shook their heads when asked about Luis’s family. He had had no hopes in that family; that family had had no hopes in him. All of his hopes had been with the Moxtomí, and in their now-realizable hopes of reclaiming through purchase the lost Moxtomí communal,
ejido
, lands, the Moxtomí were fulfilling all of his dreams which were worthy of fulfillment.

Mac said, “I didn’t even think he was listening when I explained about the dynamite. I didn’t even think he was paying attention when the balloon started going up, down there inside of the
Monte
. But he had been and he was, sure enough….”

Jacob Clay winced, nodded. “It didn’t occur to
me
. Not to do what he did, not even to realize what he was doing when he was doing it.” But the memory of the young man came back strongly and clearly as he spoke: Luis, face no longer blissful and enchanted, but a strong and totally calm male face. Luis bending to pick up Macauley’s still lit, still burning
puro
, waiting until all the others — Great Old Ones, Moxtomi, and Jacob (with the help of young Deuh) carrying Macauley — had gotten out of the cave, then himself moving with deliberate haste and lighting the fuses from the cigar and tossing the sticks of dynamite — one against the opening through which most had entered, one against the larger opening the Old Ones had made for themselves — then moving purposefully against the third opening, the doorway of escape, and standing there with the burning charge in his hand so that none others might pass.

Until it, too, had gone off.

• • •

Side by side the two Americans walked down towards the town. “We might have asked them for, oh, I don’t know — some sort of a souvenir, maybe,” Macauley said. “What do you think? Hey?”

Jacob didn’t think so. “No one would believe us, anyway,” he said. “Unless we turned up with that whatever-it-was that they had. That machine or engine or …”He waved his hand, at a loss for words. “And from what they tell us about that, the sooner it gets lost, the better.”

A passing herd-boy paused a moment as he came up to them.

“Did you feel the
temblor
, Señors?” he asked.

“What
temblor
, young one?”

“Ah, you did not feel it, then. During the night, Señores, a
temblor
in the town. It cracked several of the steps upon the Monte Sagrado, and overthrew that old archway on the edge of the town. Other than that, no damage — ” He broke off to lope after his cattle.

Macauley grunted. “As I understand it, though, after the exchange … or the transformation … whatever you want to call it
— you
saw it! Damn it! Did those things slide between the subatomic particles coming in and out and back again, or
what?
Hell…. But anyway, it’s my impression from what they were telling us that neither remaining … what’s the word I want? ‘Device,’ there … that neither remaining device is harmful.

“Oh, well. You’re probably right, though. Nobody would believe us. Unless maybe the Saucer Cultists, and I guess we can do without that…. What do you suppose the devices are good for,
now?”

Jacob shrugged. “Making rain, maybe,” he said. They both laughed.

Neither could resist going back to the Monte Sagrado and joining the crowd which stood and examined the cracked steps. “Securely, it was nothing more than a minor earthquake, such as has happened time after time here in the Valley,” someone was saying; (Jacob recognized him — the merchant Lopez, member of the Constitutional
Ayuntamiento
of the town) “possibly because of the proximity of
los volcanes.”

But not everyone agreed with him. And one old man, so agitated that he removed his enormous old-style sombrero and struck it with his hand, cried, “And I tell you, Don Procopio, that, securely, it is nothing of the sort! It is the work of
el Tlaloc!
A warning that he is not to be molested — ”

Don Procopio Lopez scoffed. “Do you call yourself a Christian?” he demanded.

The old man wagged his head. “I do, I do, and I tell you what every child knows: that
el Tlaloc
is himself a Christian, converted,
probablemente
, by the blessed Apostle Señor Thomas himself when
el santo
visited Mexico after the death of Our Lord — as witness that the emblem of the Tlaloc is a cross.” The crowd murmured. “Can anyone deny this?” the old man demanded.

A market woman, of those who knelt hour after hour, usually, alongside a pile of produce, without visible show of weariness, now nodded her head vigorously.

“Mira
, Don Procopio, he has reason, this old one,” she said, emphatically. “The Tlaloc is very well where he is. It is said that he is himself a quality of saint — the saint of rain. How is it otherwise that the Holy Hermit made his home above the Tlaloc? Have the priests been molested by our Tlaloc? Has the bishop? No! Why then should the government and the military molest him?”

Don Procopio began to perspire very slightly. On the one hand, he was a member of the government and obliged to defend its doings; on the other hand, he was a businessman, and his customers were right here in the crowd and not among
los burocráticos
in the Federal District. “You also have reason, Señora Veronica,” he declared. “I can assure you that is not the motive of our institutional and revolutionary government to molest el Señor Tlaloc, no, no — on the contrary — it is nothing more than the intention, without embargo, to remove him from his present obscure position in which he faces danger of destruction by earthquake and thus to bestow him with the utmost respect to a position of equal honor and greater salubrity — ”

Macauley tugged at Jacob’s sleeve and muttered in his ear, “Let’s get on up and see what’s doing.” Jacob nodded. They gently slid through the crowd, which was already beginning to evince a degree of persuasion.

“The time is past,” they heard Don Procopio orating, “when our national treasures and patrimonial heritages can be suffered to molder in the darkness. Does not the work of the Revolution still continue? Are not new schools, new centers of health and maternal care — ”

Macauley murmured that he would not be surprised if Don Procopio did not eventually rise to the position of Alternate Member of the Chamber of Deputies, or something equally commensurate with his talents. “He’s wasting them peddling galvanized nails here in Los Remedios — hello!
Soldados.”

Sure enough, the entire cavalry troop seemed to be engaged on something quite important on and inside of the Monte Sagrado — not, to be sure, on horseback, though. There was much running back and forth, excited shoutings, and — as a sort of double-take — their way was barred by an armed guard. “Damn,” Mac said, low-voiced. “Look — picks, shovels, pit-props…. They’re going to excavate! I suppose that we might have known that they’d excavate! We should have realized! The
militario
was sent here to secure the Tlaloc … and they are damned well going to
secure
the Tlaloc! … or know the reason why. Damn, damn, damn.”

The guard continued to face them with a sort of this-is-merely-me-in-my-official-capacity attitude, without menace or resentment.
Orders, Señores, are orders
, his face said …
another time, and you can buy me a drink … but just don’t come any further or I shall be obligated to fusillade you
.

Jacob said, “I just thought of something. You suppose there’s anything
left
of the Tlaloc?”

His friend sighed and shrugged and winced. “
I
just thought of something. You suppose there could be anything still
alive
in there?”

“Ugg. Christ. Yes, I mean, I hope
no
. You mean — ”

“I mean.” They faced each other. “Of course, there aren’t — weren’t — many of them….”

“Who knows how they reproduce? Or what they might do? Just suppose that any of them are alive and say just enough to alert, say, the Air Force, to reconnoiter around the tops of Popo and Ixta before the Good Guys take off …?”

There was then, in the indeterminate distance, a muffled scream. A shout. Many shouts. Another, or perhaps the same, scream. Less muffled. Growing louder. Feet running, trampling, stumbling. Voice shouting. The guard moved warily so that he was able to cover with his weapon both the two foreigners and what until that second had been his rear. And another soldier came into sight, face insane with fear.
“
¿
Joven, que pasa?”
the guard cried.

“Ah — ah — ah — not masks — not masks — no hearts — no hearts!”
the fleeing one screamed and babbled
.
“Ai, Jesusmaria, men whose hearts were torn out! — things of nightmares — ai! — ai!”
He clawed at his eyes, staggered, slumped to the ground in a faint
.

“I guess that there
was
something still alive in there,” said Macauley, looking rather sick.

Jacob swallowed. “And I guess we can guess what they’ve been up — ” He stopped abruptly. His eyes, Mac’s eyes, the eyes of the guard, all swung around to the opened gate which led into the depths of the Sacred Mountain. The sound was ragged and prolonged. It was repeated. And again. Jacob said, “Three volleys….”

The guard had begun to tremble. “Oh, my mother,” he muttered. “What has this poor one seen? What are they shooting at in there?”

They never knew if he ever found an answer. Very shortly a file of soldiers appeared at port arms, eyes staring and mouths sagging; at their head, their commanding officer. “… don’t know and don’t want to know,” he was saying in a high, tight voice only kept by great self-control from being a shout. “Wall them up, what’s left, forever, and — ” He stopped short on seeing the two foreigners.

Macauley asked, crisply respectful, “Are all dead, colonel?”

“Securely, they are all dead, and pray God they all remain so!” Something seemed to click behind the eyes of
Coronel
Benito Alvarez Diaz. He drew himself up. “I do not know exactly or even approximately what you may think you may be referring to, Sir Macauley,” he said. “But this I
can
assure you: the United Mexican States constitute a secular, a totally secular Republic; and as an educated man and a freemason I not only do not fear, I indeed totally defy all superstition, whether Christian or pagan!”

His eyes blazed at them. Macauley made a gesture in between a salute and a bow. “I understand, Colonel, and I respect infinitely both your motives and the compliment of your confidence.”

“It’s well…. Now, for the love of God, get out of here, say nothing, and let us all have a good, stiff drink!”

• • •

It was quite a good while later before Jacob got back to his own patio, walking with exaggerated care, and smelling strongly of
Oso Negro
gin. He found Sarah in so deep a mood of self-sorrow that she barely bothered to scream, “Where have you been all night, you son-of-a-bitch?” at him, as he, breathing heavily, pulled off his shoes with all four hands and needing every one of them, too.

“Dispense, dispense,” he muttered. “Work of utmost importance to peace and happiness of future generations. Elder gods. Bad guys. Smelled real bad. Foreign names. Can’t pronounce. Don’t get wrong idea,” he cautioned, crawling onto the bed. “Some are all right. Best friends. But not in same neighborhood.”

Sarah began to weep. It was all too much. Not alone that he had been gone all night and now had come home stinking drunk. But Lupita, evil and wicked and faithless Lupita, had yet again and yet once more failed to show up. And so once more and yet again she, lovable and put-upon Sarah, was left with a pile of dirty dishes and greasy pots and nothing to wash them in, or with, but ice-cold water. “You bastard,” she sobbed. “A lot you care!”

From halfway along the bed Jacob opened one bloodshot eye. “Let one in,” he cautioned, “first thing you know: brings in his whole family.” He closed his eye, was instantly and catatonically unconscious, and began to snore like a demented lumber mill.

• • •

Señora Mariana, the landlady, and her sister, Señora Josefa, were properly sympathetic. “Ah, the poor pretty norteamericaness!” they sighed to her. “Yes, yes, we have sent to inquire, and the response is that la Lupita is not encountered at all today; no, no, Señora, she is not to be found. What barbarity!”

“But why?” Sarah demanded. “Where can she have
gone?”