The Emperor's Men 7: Rising Sun

by Dirk van den Boom

  It was … unreal.

  It was bright, glistening and something moved behind it like a glittering waterfall.

  It wasn’t that far away. A bird passed by, and the animal flew behind the crack.

  Threateningly close, the prince felt fear. A damn deep sense of impending calamity.

  The movement inside the phenomenon became clearer. The glare disappeared, was covered.

  Then something black and powerful pressed itself out of the crack.

  Large.

  Very large.

  Chitam involuntarily took a step back. But a Prince didn’t run away. He conquered his instinct for flight, while others around him dropped everything and bolted screaming. Panic. Panic everywhere. Feelings like a storm, but the Prince stood like a rock, out of defiance, out of stupidity, out of dignity … or all of that at one and the same time.

  Chitam stared up.

  The black thing fell like a stone, but not far, maybe ten, maybe twenty meters, straight to the top of his father’s mausoleum, and as if to forcefully end the silence of the whole process, it crashed deafeningly into it. The ground shook as if a gigantic hammer had hit the ground.

  And it impacted like a hammer on the half-finished building.

  Now Chitam finally moved.

  Stones fell down. The ominous creaking of the black thing into the temple generated a piercing sound. Chitam stumbled, almost fell, looked around, just couldn’t avert his gaze, caught in a deadly fascination.

  The black object wavered. It fought for its balance, as it came to rest across the dented temple, despite the swirling dust and falling debris well visible.

  The crunching subsided. The screaming of the people became louder again.

  The crack in the skies was gone. The heavens calm, innocent, as if nothing had happened. Birds flew. The clouds promised rain. People ran and ran.

  Chitam didn’t. He turned and wiped dust on his face, covered his nose, coughed several times.

  He heard someone yelling instructions. One who had overcome the shock.

  The Prince took a step forward, then another. The smoke spread. The big black thing rested in the middle of the pyramid and didn’t move.

  Chitam’s eyes narrowed. That wasn’t quite right. Something was spinning at one end, fast, shoveling the air and the remaining smoke around. He thought he heard a whirring sound that accompanied the strange wheel in its rush. The wheel sat right at the end of the strange apparition and did nothing but turn around completely uselessly, but it got slower and slower. It was clear to see that it came to a stop. It wasn’t a wheel. There were three leaves, as if from a tree, suspended from a pole, apparently made of obsidian.

  Damn, that thing was big. It looked as heavy as it had fallen, and it was … long, round, with an elevation in the middle … He had never seen anything like it and had never heard of it.

  Still, it reminded Chitam of something, and he wondered a little about the image he had in mind – it looked like a fish that a man had captured with his spear from the river, a fish that had been thrown to the ground and then to be killed with a quick blow, but before its dead it twitched desperate and outside of its element.

  The fact that this phenomenon reminded him of a fish was certainly due to the fact that there was water everywhere! The black thing glistened wet in the morning sun and dripped along its sides. In fact, it had emerged from the crack along with a larger amount of water, now puddling everywhere, like a rainstorm. A strange smell filled the air. It smelled … weird.

  Some of the traders – the few that traveled to the shores of the great waters to negotiate with the villages for exotic fish and crabs for the King’s table – reported the specific smell of the sea. The water there was not drinkable, they had reported, and it had a different smell than that from the rivers or the big cisterns where the citizens of Yax Mutal collect the precious liquid.

  Did this enigmatic object come out of the big waters?

  How did that happen?

  Chitam took another step forward. He saw soldiers of the palace guard appear. Officers shouted something, gave instructions, but everything was very uncoordinated, hectic.

  Chitam stretched, raised his arms, and shouted, “Listen to me!”

  He had a clear, far-reaching voice. Screams became quieter. Eyes turned to him, he was recognized.

  “Bring the wounded away!” Chitam called loudly. “Close access to the pyramid! Bring more soldiers!”

  Clear commands, a clear direction. Activity followed, this time purposefully.

  Chitam breathed in the salty air, gazing at the small tower sticking out of the object, and the big sign, red on white, a radiant, rising sun.

  He was pretty sure that the time of surprises was not over yet. The apparition looked as if it would come to rest after this effort. But what happened when it shook off its own confusion and awoke to new life? And no matter how dull he felt, he knew at this moment that it meant something to be the Crown Prince of Yax Mutal.

  It was time to accept the duties that were involved.

  But why, Chitam thought as he continued to watch the object intensely, why did he now have a very, very bad feeling?

  7

  Something cracked. It woke Aritomo.

  He moved his head and felt a strong pain. With difficulty, his hand reached up. He touched his hair, felt moisture, felt more pain as he fingered his scalp. He opened his eyes. It was pitch dark. He couldn’t actually see the hand in front of his eyes.

  He found himself on the ground, and he felt … crooked. He felt a wall on his back, and gravity pushed him slightly against it. Aritomo listened. No noise from the machine. The boat was completely still. With luck, it didn’t sink but floated in the water at a certain depth or at the surface. In that case, there was hope for all of them.

  He blinked. No, the darkness was real, it wasn’t his eyes, as far as he could tell. He tried to ignore the throbbing pain in his skull, fought the burgeoning exhaustion, the recurring urge to close his eyelids and just have a little …

  What had happened?

  Aritomo lacked any memory. Unconsciousness, probably due to carbon dioxide poisoning, he remembered. But after that? How long had he passed out? What about the boat and its crew? And why did the air smell fresh, as if it had never …?

  He felt around. The wall wasn’t smooth, his hands slid over instruments, screws, then his fingertips reached a small box. In his mind, Aritomo saw what it could be … With luck …

  He slipped sideways. Apart from the obvious head injury, he seemed to be fine, and the pain, with him giving his attention to new activity, gave way to a dull throb. It was hopefully nothing worse. But he needed light to find out – and other survivors.

  He heard a moan, not far from him.

  Aritomo was relieved, more than he wanted to admit. He wasn’t alone.

  “This is Second Lieutenant Hara!” he said aloud. “Has anyone awakened? Speak if you can!”

  “Ishida here, Lieutenant,” he heard a strained voice. Ishida was one of the men deployed in the control room. He was responsible for blowing and balancing the tanks. A short, stocky man with wide-set eyes, the target of good-natured mockery, which he always stuck away with a smile.

  “Ishida, are you hurt?” Aritomo asked.

  “No, sir, I do not think so. I was flung out of my seat and came to rest on the ground, but apart from a few bruises, I’m fine. Someone is lying on me, though. What should I do?”

  “Stay where you are … I believe … ah!”

  Aritomo had opened the box, his fingers were searching through the contents and quickly found what he was looking for: the flashlight.

  It wouldn’t last long. The batteries were weak. They had to act fast.

  The pale light illuminated the surroundings, as he turned it on. He saw that the boat was indeed crooked sideways. The ballast was not balanced. The stern was lower than the bow.
The men in the control room had slipped backwards once overwhelmed by unconsciousness.

  “Ishida!”

  The man moved, half buried. The man on top of him was the motionless captain.

  “Free yourself carefully. To the engine room. The electric motors. We have to get them working. Raise Sarukazaki if he doesn’t move yet. Take one of the other emergency lights.”

  “Immediately, sir.”

  Aritomo saw the man get up a little unsteady and shone his way to access another emergency light. Once Ishida was able to orient himself, Aritomo moved out of his lying position and struggled uphill toward the main controls. He needed to know how deep the boat was.

  Other men moaned. Everyone seemed to wake up gradually. He didn’t care about it anymore. His eyes fell on the Prince, who had slumped in a corner, but seemed to be unharmed. He breathed. Good news.

  Aritomo reached the depth gauge and illuminated the numbers with the lamp. He wiped his eyes, winked. Then he tapped the instrument with his knuckle, first weaker, then a little stronger.

  Nothing happened. The numbers remained unchanged. She stood at zero. The boat was therefore no longer under water, it had to be on the surface. He remembered now. Before he was unconscious, he had felt the boat breaking through the water. But why was the position of the vessel so awkward? There had to be something wrong with the ballast. But after all, they were apparently not trapped under water.

  Or was the depth gauge broken?

  Aritomo continued to observe the instruments, decided to try the periscope. At that moment, a sudden humming filled the ship, and the lights went on again. In the engine room, someone had obviously been successful to re-energize the electric motors. Men scrambled up everywhere. The Prince blinked as well, as one of his bodyguards bent over him with a worried expression.

  Aritomo raised the periscope and looked through.

  Yes, they were definitely not under water anymore. He stared into a cloudless blue sky. The weather must have improved rapidly, really in no time. It was difficult for him to turn the periscope and at the same time stay firmly on his feet, but nevertheless he began a slow 360-degree turn.

  First there was only more sky.

  Then there were …

  Trees.

  Buildings.

  Very strange buildings.

  And then people. Many people who somehow looked up to him.

  People with brown skin and usually dressed in very colorful robes.

  He had never seen anything like it.

  This wasn’t Japan.

  The boat wasn’t in the water, actually nowhere near any ocean.

  This was … nowhere.

  Aritomo’s head tilted back. He looked into the void for a moment, trying to sort out the impressions, to understand. No sea at all. The boat rested on something … evidently an elevation, because the view down to the staring people went far, surely close to twenty meters. And the boat rested unevenly so the periscope’s angle was tilted.

  Aritomo looked again, just to be sure. No hallucination. People who mingle around excitedly. Men with spears and shields who began to instill a degree of order. Excitement. Fear.

  How did that happen? Was he still unconscious, numbed by his head injury, which now caused him delusions? No.

  He felt a movement beside him. The Captain had moved toward him and was apparently unhurt. He was struggling, but the fact that his first officer was already at the periscope distracted him from his own shock, reminding him of his duty.

  “And? Our position?”

  Aritomo turned the eyepiece of the periscope in his direction. “Please see for yourself, Captain. I can’t explain.”

  Inugami gave his first officer a questioning look but didn’t say anything further and took the periscope. He also didn’t say anything when he looked through it. He remained silent as he turned away from the eyepiece. He looked pale. Then he let go and looked around, saw Sawada, the teacher. He was the man closest of being a scholar.

  “Mr. Sawada, if you would just look through this? Maybe you can make sense of it,” Inugami said politely. The older man, who had taken care of the somewhat confused Prince, nodded. Aritomo and his superior watched intently as the man completed his observation.

  Then he took a step back and shook his head. He also looked confused and scared, but his voice was firm as he spoke.

  “I …” he began hesitantly. “I’m not sure I can really make sense of it, gentlemen, but I know pretty well what the periscope shows us.”

  “What?” Aritomo and Inugami asked in unison.

  “It can’t be. It’s impossible in many ways, and I have to be deceived by my mind.”

  “Pyramids. Big stone buildings. Dense forests and many people, warriors with spears, all with brown skin and many full of fear and confusion,” Aritomo summed his impression up.

  Inugami nodded. “If that’s a delusion, then I’m its victim, too.”

  Sawada looked at them both. “Me too. So I see what I see. It can’t be.”

  “Speak, Sawada!” Inugami ordered.

  “I saw drawings in an older work from our library – from the book of an American named John Lloyd Stephens. In it, he laid down his exploration of Central American jungle areas and had it illustrated by a talented draftsman. I have read this book a long time ago, but as far as I can remember, the drawings showed exactly the kind of buildings that we have here … Anyway, the people who are staring at us must come from a long extinct civilization, from an Indian people we call the Maya.”

  Aritomo shook his head.

  “Maya?” Inugami looked blank. “Indians?”

  Sawada shrugged and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  “It can’t be. Ancient kingdoms, long since overgrown by the jungle, the descendants suffering for a long time under Spanish rule,” Sawada added. He scratched his head, not even believing what he was saying. “But what we see out there is not overgrown and downtrodden, and … does not look like Central America, which I know from travelogues and photographs.”

  “Why Central America?” Inugami asked, still clearly struggling to see any sense in all of this. He made no progress with it, and all the others who had now straightened up, followed the discussion of the three men with utter incomprehension.

  “I don’t know and can’t explain how we got here,” Sawada. “We are on land. I guess the boat is right on one of those big temples we see everywhere. On a pyramid, it seems.”

  “Absurd! That’s all absurd! A joke. The periscope is damaged,” muttered Inugami. “That’s impossible. It is inexplicable. There must be another cause for all this.”

  Aritomo looked at Inugami. “There is only one way to be sure, Captain.”

  Inugami nodded. “Hara, our pistols. Mr. Sawada, if you could ask the Prince’s bodyguards? We don’t have too many weapons on board, and my men are no infantrymen.”

  Sawada nodded, turned away. He spoke to the bodyguards, who immediately took stance and removed their rifles from their backs.

  Inugami watched Aritomo take the pistols from their shared cabin. They were Nambu Type 4 guns, a 22 mm weapon with a magazine with eight bullets. They had a small box of spare magazines on board, but the normal crew didn’t normally carry their own weapons. They still had two more pistols for emergencies in a gun cabinet.

  The Prince’s two bodyguards, however, not only wore their own Nambus, but also each carried an Arisaka Type 55 rifle that shot out of 50 mm cartridges. And they carried swords. Such were also at the disposal of the two officers, well stowed under the bunks they claimed for themselves.

  That was their complete weaponry.

  Aritomo hoped to impress the “Maya” sufficiently with what they had. When he checked his weapon and clicked the magazine in, he felt more secure. Whoever or whatever was out there, he wouldn’t face it defenseless. The two guards also made a determined impression. They were probably a l
ot more qualified to fight than Aritomo. It was good that they were there.

  He looked at the Captain, who hesitated a moment and then nodded.

  “We’re going to open the tower, Mr. Hara. We’ll check it out.”

  8

  Chitam saw his father arrive and how the Palace Guard began to clear the place. Many of the people were only too willing to gain as much distance between themselves and this apparition as possible, so that their efforts were quickly crowned with success.

  Siyaj stood next to his eldest son and followed his gaze, which lay constantly on the massive object. The King turned his broad face to the ruined temple with piercing black eyes. Chitam couldn’t discern if he was particularly worried that his own tomb was now a podium for … something that had completely crushed the half-finished point with its weight. Although his death might be imminent, it was typical of Siyaj that he was more concerned about the city as a whole than his long-term salvation.

  “What’s that thing made of?” the master of Mutal muttered. “Is that black obsidian?”

  “Possible,” Chitam replied. “But who knows? Nobody has ever seen such a construction. Look at it. It is wet.”

  “It came from heaven?”

  “Right above the pyramid.”

  “Then the gods sent it.”

  Chitam nodded. This conclusion was indeed very obvious; in fact, it was the only possible explanation. The big picture with the bright sun painted on the black walls of the object suggested that it was a vehicle of Hunapù who, as sun god Kinich Kakmó, was watching over the Maya. His father had evidently come to this conclusion, for he had two priests armed with parchments at his side, ready to consult ancient scripture. If Chitam recognized it correctly, it was rituals for the worship of the sun god. He nodded in satisfaction. With luck, they could do everything right and prevent further destruction.

  “What does Hunapù intend to do with this apparition?” the King asked one of the priests. Chitam just had to take a quick look into the man’s eyes to see that he had no idea. He was an old man, familiar with all the rituals since his earliest youth, and therefore no one who was afraid of the King – except that Siyaj was considered a very mild man anyway, who in no way tended to punish others for their ignorance too harshly.