The Other Time

by Mack Reynolds

  Don, in his amusement, failed to see Xochitl, the Quequetzalcoa, glaring down at them from halfway up the stairs to the temple atop the pyramid of Huitzilopochtli.

  But Cuauhtemoc saw, and realized that undoubtedly the fanatic priest had already heard reports of the innovations which the white man was bringing that conflicted with the rituals and taboos of the Tenochas.

  They finally headed the primitive wagon back to the street of the woodcraftsmen, and Don pointed out that the vehicle could be used as other than a wheeled litter to transport chiefs. Put sides on it and it made a conveyance that would permit much heavier loads than could be carried on a man’s back or in a wheelbarrow. He was gratified to see gleams of understanding in the eyes of the men. Backward they might be, by the standards of European society of the time, but stupid they were not.

  The rickshaw came next and that gave him more thought than anything that had come before. The original design wasn’t so bad and his workers were rapidly gaining knowhow. Their wooden wheels were improving considerably. But the trouble was, he had no idea whatsoever of how to create some sort of springs. When his new vehicle was completed, it gave a terribly bouncy ride, smooth though the streets were, here in the city. On any kind of a rough road at all, the passenger would have been in danger of breaking his spine.

  But then something came to him. He said to Cuauhtemoc, “You have balls of olli with which you play the ballgame tlachtli.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Don indicated the rim of the wheels, and even as he did so, he realized that he was going to have to introduce the spoked wheel. These were much too heavy, particularly for a single man to pull around at a dogtrot.

  He said, “Would it be possible for the men who work the olli into balls and for whatever else it is utilized to make it into strips and glue it here, or however else attach it?” He knew that the rubber he was requesting came from the Tabasco area down on the coast.

  “But why?”

  “It will make the vehicle more comfortable in which to ride and easier to pull, as well.”

  “We can find out.”

  From time to time Cuauhtemoc or one of the chiefs would pass on information to him on the advance of the Spanish army. Thousands of Tlaxcalans were accompanying them now, in addition to the Totonac porters they had brought all the way from Cempoala. The march was becoming a triumph, and small towns and villages came over to the white men they thought gods.

  Cholula was entered, and when the local chiefs proved stubborn and fell short on supplying the food and other demands of the Spanish, a massacre was precipitated. The numbers killed differed in the varying reports, but a chill of apprehension swept through Tenochtitlan.

  Motechzoma again summoned Don Fielding and this time the full Tlatocan, the council of chiefs, was present, as was the high priest Xochitl, his eyes as mad as ever. The First Speaker, seated on his half-chair, was obviously on the verge of terror.

  He blurted, before Don and Cuauhtemoc had hardly entered the room, “Malintzin is in Cholula where he has killed many of the chiefs and warriors. What will he do now, Magician?”

  Don had given up the attempt to deny himself a wizard. He said, “He will rest his army for a few days, then march on Tenochtitlan. On the way he will recruit the warriors of the city of Huexotzinco, who will come over to him without a fight, since they hate you so much.”

  “No! No! He will not come to Tenochtitlan. I have sent another embassy with presents, to forbid him to come further toward the city.”

  Don sighed and said, “He will not listen. The Spanish are so greedy for gold that nothing could stop them now. Cortes will be on the causeways before seven days have elapsed.”

  Motechzoma moaned.

  The Snake-Woman was looking at the war chief contemplatively. He said, “Perhaps we should summon our host. Call upon our allies. Recruit every warrior in the valley. March out upon them.”

  “No! They are teteuhs! They would destroy us all, as they destroyed the Tlaxcalans who resisted them. As they destroyed the Cholulans who fought.”

  One of the other chiefs, whose name Don Fielding had forgotten, said, “Each day that goes by, their force grows. And now this teteuh here, the white giant, tells us that Huexotzinco too will come over to them. At this pace, soon we will not have enough of a force to resist them.” Motechzoma was as though crushed. “We can’t resist gods,” he moaned.

  Cuauhtemoc caught the eye of the Snake-Woman and they looked at each other deliberately, then thoughtfully back at their elected war chief. The Snake-Woman shook his head.

  During the day hours and in the company of Cuauhtemoc, Don Fielding got by reasonably well. The city was so interesting and the innovations he was introducing so occupied his time that he had no opportunity to consider his situation. It was at night that the despair hit him.

  He was able to tell himself that he would have to make his peace with Cortes. But how? He tried to delude himself into believing that the attempted assassination was the act of an individual who had come to rob him and that Cortes knew nothing about it. But he knew better, particularly after Malinche’s warning. Cortes had undoubtedly ordered the execution. And now that it hadn’t come off—and instead, one of his own men had been killed—Cortes would be that much more enraged at Don Fielding.

  No; once the Spanish found him here, he was a goner.

  He considered briefly heading north for the land of the Tarascans. Possibly, they would take him in. They were a people that the Tenochas had never been able to conquer and were at least as advanced as the Mexican valley confederation. Among other things they worked copper better than any other tribe in Mexico. Perhaps he could win them over with a few innovations. For instance, was copper tough enough to be used as a wood saw?

  But no, he was kidding himself. Even if the Tarascans did take him in, rather than killing him on the spot or sacrificing him, within a short time after the fall of Tenochtitlan the Spanish were slated to send forth their expeditions to conquer the rest of Mexico. Mexico? Hell, within a few years they would extend from California and what were in his days the southwestern states all the way down to Chile! There was no place to run, no place to hide. The Coronado expedition was slated to go as far north as Kansas, in less than twenty years after Mexico City fell.

  The messages came through that the Spanish army had left Cholula. He estimated that it would take them from three to four days to arrive. Their speed was held down to the pace of the heavily laden porters who carried the cannon, the other equipment, and the supplies of food.

  For once, Cuauhtemoc was not around. Don understood that Motechzoma had sent him on one of the several embassies that the war chief was sending to Cortes in hopes of dissuading him from approaching any closer to Tenochtitlan. It had done no good for Don to tell him that the Spaniard would continue to march anyway.

  Walking more or less haphazardly, Don strolled across the great square. He had been thinking about introducing the potter’s wheel, although he knew precious well that his knowledge of ceramics was all but nil, and besides, he didn’t have the time now. And what was the point? The Spanish would bring it in shortly anyway, as soon as European craftsmen came from the Old Country.

  There was a scream, and then a series of screams and yells from directly ahead, near the wall of the great complex of buildings that was the central home of the Eagle calpulli, the clan to which Cuauhtemoc, Motechzoma, and the Snake-Woman all belonged.

  He looked up sharply. There was a milling and continued shouts and screams. This sort of thing was unknown, so far as he knew, in Tenochtitlan—certainly here in the big square.

  He started forward at a run.

  The initial gathering of persons, possibly some forty in all, were streaming away in all directions as fast as they could make it. Some stumbled and fell, hustled up again, continued the retreat.

  And now he could see what it was.

  An Indian, naked save for a loincloth, had obviously gone amok. He was wildly swinging a maqu
auhuitl in each hand and dashing here and there in an attempt to get at new victims. He had already downed or viciously slashed a half-dozen, most of whom were trying to crawl away from the vicinity. It was a scene of chaos and carnage.

  A child, certainly less than a year of age, sat in the middle of it all, screaming in fear.

  A young woman, not more than sixteen or seventeen, hardly more than a child herself, came dashing in, bent low. She snatched the baby up, turned to run, screaming. She slipped on blood already shed and came to her knees and the berserker was on her, flailing his Indian swords wildly.

  And Don shot him between the eyes.

  PART THREE

  Chapter Thirteen

  Don Fielding looked up from where he sat on his three-legged stool at his rickety table.

  In the doorway stood Cuauhtemoc. Behind him was Tlilpotonque the Cihuacohuatl, Snake-Woman, head chief of Tenochtitlan; behind him, a priest that Don vaguely knew as Panitzin, one of the priests of the Eagle clan.

  Cuauhtemoc was in his regalia as an Eagle Knight, complete to the hooded headdress composed of feathers and the head of an eagle. Don had seen him dressed thus on only one other occasion, some sort of ceremony. The Snake-Woman was also in his finery, undoubtedly the costume of his office.

  Don Fielding knew he was in ultimate trouble. He had killed a member of the Tenocha tribe—no matter what the circumstances. He realized, too, through his studies, that the institutions of the Tenochas resembled those of the Moslems when it came to the insane. These were the afflicted of Allah, and holy. The Mexican Indians, too, thought the insane to be in the power of the gods and thus not to be thwarted, whatever.

  On top of this, Don Fielding was familiar with the workings of the primitive clan when it came to bloodshed. The blood right had to be paid. And he had no resources.

  And the matter had to be handled, if it could be handled, between the chiefs of the two clans involved.

  He didn’t have a clan or a chieftain to handle his troubles. He had killed a man and he was, so far as they considered, without kin to protect him. He was a stranger in a strange land, and among primitives the word stranger is synonymous with enemy. All are enemies save the members of your tribe or confederation of tribes, if your society has evolved to that point. Don had neither confederation, tribe, nor clan.

  He looked up at his once-friend, Cuauhtemoc, blankly. The other’s face was expressionless, empty. So this was it. This was it.

  Cuauhtemoc said, “Honored brother, we have come to invite your adoption into the Eagle calpulli, even though you are a teteuh, and thus far above us.”

  In his time, Don Fielding had often read about the jaw of a character dropping. When a fictional character was greatly surprised, his jaw invariably dropped. However, in real life Don had never actually witnessed it in another nor gone through the experience himself. Now he did.

  Cuauhtemoc said formally, “The woman was my woman, honored brother. The child was my only child.” In his eyes was something like fire. Pride, perhaps—or love.

  Don Fielding looked at the Snake-Woman whose face was also expressionless.

  And Tlilpotonque said, equally formally, “If you will honor us, teteuh. There has not been an adoption into the Eagle calpulli for many years, but it is part of our tradition.”

  The priest remained silent—Don Fielding was not getting along too well with the priests of Tenochtitlan—but he was obviously present as a clan representative.

  The ceremony later was impressive. And fascinating to an anthropologist.

  Don Fielding had to be born again. Into the Eagle clan.

  And since a babe comes into the world naked, he was stripped nude for the ceremony.

  The whole clan was present, even Motechzoma, complete in full regalia, including the jade lip plug and heavy earrings, including impressive headgear of green and golden Quetzal feathers, the holy bird of the Tenochas which lurked in the southern jungles. The whole scene was one of barbaric splendor. In the background was a hellish clamor of kettledrums, whistles, conches, rattles, and pipes. There were ceremonial dancers, ceremonial singers, the chanting of priests.

  The ceremony itself was symbolic. The mother of Cuauhtemoc stood in such wise, her skirts held high, that Don was able to crawl between her legs—symbolically born again. He had read as a student that the ancient Jews had used the same ceremony in adoptions into their early tribal sibling groups. He would have given a good deal to have been able to present a paper on the subject to one of the anthropological journals. It would have made his name, until he was required to cite his sources!

  Upon his emergence—born again—the ceremony went wild. The alleged music became a fire drill in Bedlam. Youngsters came rushing in with foaming jars and cups of what turned out to be pulque, the fermented juice of the maguey and ordinarily allowed for elderly people alone or during certain religious festivals.

  Don quickly redressed, having felt like a fool, spanking naked before the multitude. They had been amazed at the whiteness of his skin where the clothing had prevented his acquiring a tan such as he had on his face.

  Pulque Don Fielding had sampled before, though not in this age. He found that they had various mixtures unknown in his own time when it had become the swill of the Mexican poor. They mixed it with honey; they mixed it with nuts; they mixed it with vanilla. After the first two or three quarts, he decided it was delicious. Although a moderate drinker under ordinary circumstances, Don had been known to take a few martinis or highballs in his day. This parlayed up, over the hours that followed, into more than a few cocktails. He was obviously meant to get blind drunk, as was everyone else, especially Cuauhtemoc, his mother, and his wife.

  They proceeded to do so.

  He managed to get at least part of the story before his personal fog rolled in and before he had gotten to the point where he didn’t care whether or not school kept.

  Off to one side with Cuauhtemoc, who was now, it would seem, literally his brother so far as the Eagle clan saw it, he was told that his victim had not been insane, as he had thought, but under the influence of the hallucinogenic mushrooms which sometimes filtered up from Oaxaca. What did they call them? Psilocybel? It was forbidden the Tenochas and those who took it were drummed out of their calpulli and became kinless ones who had to find employment as common laborers, tlacotli—the nearest thing the Tenochas had come to slaves—for their subsistence.

  The party evidently lasted until dawn. Not that Don knew it. For the first time in his life, he had passed out. For that matter, he had seldom enough even been moderately tight. The last time had been at a New Year’s party.

  When he awakened, his head was splitting. His mouth told him he had been eating mule hoof soup; his eyes were burning, and his stomach felt as though any minute it was going to launch whatever green concoction it contained. He groaned misery.

  Where was he? He lifted his head just enough to allow him to look about. Next to him was his new blood brother, Cuauhtemoc, out like a light, but, even in sleep, his face flushed. And beyond him, his petite wife whom Don had met the night before. She was a pretty little thing and gushingly thankful for his rescue. What was her name? Centyautl, or something like that. All three of them were sprawled on the usual Indian beds, nothing more than mats and blankets.

  Beyond the girl, in a highly decorated Indian equivalent of a cradle, was the baby, and it was beginning to stir. Save for some chests or trunks of wood and leather, the cradle was the room’s sole article of furniture. The walls were decorated as tastefully as usual with tapestries, the floor with colored mats, but otherwise furniture was nil.

  Don Fielding was obviously in the home of Cuauhtemoc, in the complex of buildings that were the principal residence of the Eagle clan of Tenochtitlan.

  He rolled over and groaned again.

  Cuauhtemoc looked up and had it in him to laugh. “Well, my giant brother, so you will drink the god pulque.”

  “The god pulque,” Don protested in agony. “If you must de
ify even such things as an alcoholic drink, please be accurate enough to call this one a devil, not a god.”

  The Indian laughed again, turned, and spoke to his wife, who scrambled immediately to her feet, smiled shyly at Don in the way of morning greeting, and hurried from the room after pushing the tapestry which covered the door to one side.

  Don Fielding was only slightly put off by her presence. He knew the lack of European or American-type modesty among these people and that also several families would often pack into one room. Cuauhtemoc and his wife saw nothing amiss in his sleeping with them. He shook his head, closed his eyes, and groaned again. That was the last time he was going to overdo on pulque.

  A warrior, wearing a maxtli loincloth decorated with the design of the Eagle clan, appeared at the door and spoke briefly to Cuauhtemoc in too low a voice for Don to hear.

  After he was gone, Cuauhtemoc turned to his new blood brother.

  “Malintzin and his army spent the night at Itztapalapa.”

  “Where is that?”

  “On the edge of the lake, at the end of the causeway which leads south.”

  The girl came back bearing two small cups. She handed one to Don, one to her husband.

  “Drink, giant brother,” Cuauhtemoc said, knocking back his own.

  Don looked at it suspiciously, then smelled it. It smelled horrible—by appearance, some concoction of roots and herbs.

  “I could never get it down.”

  “Drink!”

  Don shrugged, closed his eyes and gulped. It tasted as bad as it smelled. Worse.

  He said, “What is Motechzoma going to do?”

  The other grimaced. “Nothing. Come; we must get your things from the tecpan. The Snake-Woman has ordered that it be emptied so that the teteuhs and all their force can be accomodated there. It is proper that you move here, anyway, since now you are a member of the Eagle clan.”

  It came to Don Fielding, in a wave of shock, that his hangover had suddenly fled. His head was cleared of fumes, his stomach of nausea; even his eyes no longer stung. He was astonished. That brew, whatever it was, would have been worth a fortune in his own age.