The Other Time

by Mack Reynolds

  “Poor shipwrecked souls,” Olmedo murmured, crossing himself.

  Don agreed to that, at least in part. “Yes, many of them are poor souls and on relief.”

  Cortes said, “Tell me, what language do you speak in this country of yours?”

  He was treading on thin ice again. The English of the year 1519 was not the English of his own era; however, it was probably near enough to it that if any of these knew Englishmen they might recognize it. English was out. He said carefully, “We speak many languages, but one that practically all our people learn in their youth is, uh, Pig Latin.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Let me hear you speak in this tongue,” Cortes demanded.

  Don gave him a few sentences of Pig Latin, in which he covered his opinions of the legality of the relationship between the Captain-General’s mother and father and also his sexual preference for little boys and animals.

  Cortes shook his head. “Gibberish. But now we come to the question, Don Fielding. Dona Marina has suggested that if, perhaps some years from now, I head an expedition north, you could accompany us as a guide and interpreter.”

  Don looked at the girl and understood that for some reason she was again sticking out her neck to rescue him. He looked back. “Yes. I would be glad to.”

  Sandoval said mockingly, “Why? Surely you realize it would be a military expedition. Would you betray your own people?”

  Don’s mind began to race again. He took a breath and said, “I am not interested in war or politics. I am a teacher and scholar.” He looked at Fray Olmedo. “It would be most interesting for me to see Fray Olmedo and Padre Juan Diaz bring their message to my people; in fact, it would be impossibly interesting. When I was last in my country, I came to the conclusion that my countrymen could use a little faith… of some sort or the other.”

  Cortes looked at him narrowly. “But the good Father has informed me that you are not a Catholic and that you even refused to take instruction from him—not to speak of being baptised.”

  “While it is true that I have not taken instruction from the Fathers, thinking them much too busy to waste their time upon me, I have asked many questions of the men and have on occasion read some of the religious material the more pious carry. Thus I have assimilated a good deal of the message.”

  Cortes looked at Olmedo.

  The Fray eyed Don quizzically and said, “My son, how many brothers and sisters did Our Lord have?”

  Don was on shaky ground. So opposed was he, intellectually, to organized religion that he had acquired less than even average of his contemporary beliefs in the field. He said carefully, “Our Savior had no brothers and sisters, Father. Mary, the Mother of God, died a virgin and was immediately taken into Heaven where she joined the Holy Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  His fingers were crossed. He hoped he had got that right. He knew that some of the Christian sects believed that Jesus had brothers and sisters and they had quotes from the Bible that seemingly proved it. But he remembered vaguely that other sects, and he thought the Catholics among them, or at least he hoped, believed that Mary died childless, save for her immaculately conceived son.

  Fray Olmedo turned to Cortes. “This man has been studying our faith, as you can see. Undoubtedly, he truly desires that the holy message be brought to his country.”

  Cortes thought about it and came to a conclusion. “Very good; for the time we will continue on the present basis. That is, on your parole you have the freedom of the enclosure here. However, you are not to leave it except in the presence of Bernal Diaz and you are not to leave the city without my own permission.”

  “And my classes?”

  “Continue them. And the boys will be released from their daytime duties to attend. The sooner we have their services, the better.” Cortes looked at the priest. “Father, as soon as they have sufficient Spanish to understand, you and Padre Diaz must take over their instruction so that they can be baptized and pass on the message of the Holy Mother Church in this dog’s language the Indians speak.”

  So, now he was free to continue his class and in the open at that. Nevertheless, a great deal of it had lost its point. The Spanish would be aware that the Indian boys understood them and would guard their language. On top of that, Cuauhtemoc would not be able to attend.

  In fact, on the very next day Cuauhtemoc was almost taken as a spy himself. Chiefs and other officials were free to come to the quarters of Motechzoma and consult with him, but they were not given a free run of the areas devoted to the Spanish and their Indian allies. The sentries kept a careful eye upon them.

  Cuauhtemoc, pretending to be one of the servants, had been ranging about with increasing lack of care. He was checking out the placing of the cannon, the stationing of the sentries and guards, the rooms used to store weapons. He was checking out, too, the morale of the Indian allies. The some four hundred Spanish were nothing without their Indians, who numbered several thousands. Although the whole army had seen Cuauhtemoc in Cempoala, he had found that, dressed in a loincloth and barefooted rather than in his finery as an ambassador, none recognized him.

  On the occasion in question, he actually walked brazenly past Hernando Cortes, who was going along in the company of Malinche across a courtyard before the quarters of Motechzoma. The Captain-General didn’t blink an eye in recognition although he, above any of the others, had been face to face with the young Indian for at least several hours in Cempoala.

  But Don Fielding, to one side, saw a look of questioning come over the face of Dona Marina. She cocked her head slightly to one side, turned, looked thoughtfully after the nonchalantly receding Cuauhtemoc, then turned back to her Captain-General companion. She was obviously still thinking about it.

  Don knew that although she had stuck out her neck for him, for whatever reason, her sympathies were all for the Spanish and she was sleeping with Cortes. She was as competent at intrigue as anyone in the invading army’s camp and in many ways superior to them since they were working in a strange country peopled with a strange folk most of whose ways were incomprehensible to the Europeans. She was the power behind the throne and as interested in the overthrow of the Tenochtitlan power as any of her white masters. In short, she was poison to Cuauhtemoc, deadly on contact.

  As soon as he could do so unobtrusively, Don hurried after his Indian friend. He overtook him in the courtyard once removed from the one in which Malinche had spotted him.

  Don darted a look around. No Spanish were present. He put a hand on the other’s arm. “Cuauhtemoc! Get out. Get out immediately. Malinche has recognized you. Her spies will have let her know that you’ve been raised to war chief level. She’ll know you are spying. Get out!”

  Cuauhtemoc looked at him and laughed softly. “So you are blood brother indeed, my giant friend. You risk being seen with me, although your own position is not as though you were comfortably taking your bath. Thank you and farewell.”

  He headed for the gate.

  Moments later, a squad of the Spanish came trotting through, Malinche beside them urging speed.

  Her Spanish was getting very good, Don decided. Shortly, Aguilar, as the middle man, wouldn’t be required.

  As she passed him, she shot him a questioning look but then hurried on.

  His own life went into a routine. Evidently, orders had gone out. With the exception of Pedro de Alvarado and his brothers, Don Fielding became reasonably well received by the rest of the army and especially so with Fray Olmedo, though Padre Diaz seemed to continue to hold reservations about him. There was also a something about Sandoval which was difficult to put his finger upon. He got the feeling that the young conquistador knew that he was playing a part—or various parts—and was out to unmask him. Thus far, Sandoval hadn’t sufficient evidence to present a case to his leader and fellow townsmen. Orteguilla, the page, loathed him, Don knew, and it probably went back to when he had caught the kid out in Cempoala. Well, it wasn’t a bad average in an army of four hundre
d. Bernal Diaz he got along with excellently, and Avila was at least always pleasantly courteous.

  He had his troubles. On the third day after his reconciliation with the Captain-General, he wandered into a courtyard in which the Spanish soldiery, an eagle eye being kept on them by Padre Juan Diaz, were melting down the Aztec treasury, insofar as gold and silver were concerned. Historically, he knew it had happened, but when he saw it in actuality, he was horrified. It was all going into the melting pot to be poured into ingots—little gods, ornaments, decorations, plate, jewelry. The soldiers sat there with their knives, prying out the jewels, tossing the remaining metal into the iron melting pots, laughing and jesting.

  Don was aghast.

  Bernal was among the others. He would make a trip into the treasury to issue forth with a load of the worked precious metals and toss them to the ground to be sorted out.

  Don blurted, “You’re being fools. The gold is worth more in its form as art objects than it is melted.”

  Bernal laughed at him. “Who in Spain would wish such ornaments? Besides, it is more easily transported this way.” He tossed a delicately worked pendant into the bubbling pot of gold.

  Don turned to the priest. “Surely an educated man such as yourself is opposed to the destruction of these beautiful objects.”

  Around his neck Padre Juan Diaz had a foot-long religious cross gaudily worked with semiprecious stones, gold, and silver. It was a slob of an ornament. In Don’s day it would have been called camp.

  The priest held it up proudly and said, “This is the only true art, my son. All else is worthless.” He gestured at the Indian goldwork on the ground. “These are but heathen geegaws, and it is well that they be destroyed. They would offend the eyes of His Majesty in Spain.”

  Don was more shaken by the affair than he had expected to be. He had reconciled himself to the fact that Tenochtitlan would fall and his Indian friends go down with it—all in the name of inevitable progress. Was this the progress he anticipated?

  But it was the following day that really got to him.

  He came upon Fray Olmedo, assisted by a dozen or so of the soldiers, burning the Indian archives. The tecpan of Tenochtitlan was not only its administration center, the home of its principal chiefs, and what amounted to a gigantic hotel, but it also contained the national library.

  As a student of Mexican history and anthropology, Don Fielding had studied the Mexican codices that had come down to his time. They had numbered less than a dozen and were scattered about the world’s museums, and most of them he had to peruse in reproduction, though he had seen the originals in the National Museum in Mexico City. In actuality, there hadn’t been even that number of Aztec codices; the sum total included Mayan books, some of those actually written and drawn after the Conquest, such as the Codex Mendoza. Unfortunately, the few that had survived were usually on subjects of comparatively little interest to the scholar—astrology, say, rather than history.

  Now he could see these literally priceless volumes going up in flames, thousand upon thousands of them. It was as though somebody deliberately burned the Library of Congress in Washington. No, it was much worse since the contents of the Congressional Library were practically all duplicated elsewhere. But these were all originals. There were no copies run off on printing presses by the thousands. And now, there never would be…

  His eyes wide with horror, if not disbelief, he put a hand on the priest’s arm.

  “Father Olmedo, these Indian books are priceless. They contain the history, the medicine, the arts, the governmental system, the sciences of these people. To destroy them is barbarism. They contain all the knowledge that the Tenochas have accumulated in centuries.”

  For once, Olmedo was less than kindly toward him. He held up his Bible. “All necessary knowledge is here contained, my son.” He indicated the burning codices. “These are the work of the devil!”

  “But how do you know?” Don said desperately. “You can’t read them. If they are preserved, some day scholars will be able to decipher them and a considerable knowledge will have been gained.”

  “What knowledge?” the other said scornfully. “Of what use are the beliefs of these savages? So long as such vile books are allowed to remain to them, the true word will be ignored.”

  Don Fielding slumped. He turned away, not being able to stand the sight.

  In his own day, any one of the Indian books would have been worth a million dollars to any library or museum in the world. A million? No; the sum was meaningless. No scholar could put a price on an Aztec codex. Some things have no price. They have value, yes; but not price.

  This, then, was the progress the Spanish were bringing to Mexico? As he stumbled away, he was so sick that he all but vomited. He knew his history. The melting down of the Indian art and the burning of the books shouldn’t have hit him like this. He knew it had happened. He knew it would also happen when the Spanish hit Yucatan and found the tens of thousands of Mayan books. However, seeing it happen was another thing; it was the difference between hearing about a grisly accident and seeing it in slow motion.

  Matters were developing rapidly. With what they thought was the Tenochtitlan government (Motechzoma!) in their hands, the Spanish began to consolidate their position. They got hold of the tribute lists of the confederation and determined which cities that the Indian armies had conquered provided gold to Tenochtitlan and her allies. To those that were nearest, they sent out expeditions both to pick up whatever additional gold and silver was on hand and to check the source of supply, the streams and mines from which the previous metals were extracted.

  Sandoval was sent on down to Vera Cruz to take over the command of the force there, now that Escalante was dead. Which was a relief to Don Fielding. The dapper young conquistador was almost as keen to eliminate him as was Pedro de Alvarado and his brothers.

  He had barely finished one of his classes in Spanish one day when Bernal Diaz came in and said, “You wouldn’t be a carpenter by any means, would you?”

  Don eyed him blankly.

  Bernal laughed. “Or a blacksmith, or shipwright, or toolmaker, for that matter.”

  “I’m a teacher.”

  “Then you’re safe. The Captain-General is combing the army. I too am safe, and as Lord Jesus Christ is my judge, it’s a relief. I’ve never been anything save a soldier.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don Hernando becomes uncomfortable about our position here. We arc completely surrounded by water, and these Indian dogs can even cut the causeways by removing the wooden beams that bridge them periodically. So our Captain-General has decided to build four brigantines about forty feet in length apiece and with sufficient capacity so that if we must retreat, they could carry us and the horses to the mainland.”

  Don said, “How about your Tlaxcalan allies?”

  Bernal Diaz seemed surprised that he should ask. “Undoubtedly, they could fend for themselves.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Don said with sarcasm.

  Bernal said, “It happens that Martin Lopez, one of the footmen, is an experienced shipwright. Pedro and Miguel de Mafia are carpenters who have worked at shipbuilding before. Heman Martin is a blacksmith capable of turning out the stools needed. It is amazing the diversity of trades in our small army. Pedro Hernandez was also a blacksmith before leaving Spain. Juan Gomez de Herrera has had experience caulking ships. On my faith, we shall have a fleet in no time at all. And then the Captain-General plans to send the shipbuilding crew down to Vera Cruz to build a caravel.”

  Don frowned. He hadn’t known about this, either from his history or current gossip. He said, “What for? He beached or scuttled the ships he had. Now he builds a new one?”

  Bernal laughed and winked. “It is necessary to bring over to our cause the Emperor and his court. Don Hernando plans to send to Spain the royal fifth, thus cementing our position.”

  “Did you finish melting down the Indian gold?”

  “Why not? Let me tell you,
Don Fielding, there is a great satisfaction in realizing that the portion that is mine will make me wealthy to an extent I have never dreamed of before.”

  A germ of an idea was growing in Don Fielding’s mind. A mere germ, but there. It had been sparked by Bernal’s description of the workers that Cortes had found when it became necessary to build his brigantines. And side by side with it was another germ. Only germs, as yet.

  He said, “You dreamer, you.”

  Bernal eyed him. “What do you mean?”

  “Come now. Do you really think you will receive this fortune?”

  The other held a long silence and his face was less friendly than Don had ever seen it. “What do you mean?”

  Don scoffed. “On this expedition the army has already several times managed to acquire large amounts of gold and silver. Come now; how much of it did you wind up with? How much do you have right now, right as of this minute?”

  Bernal growled, “I have been unlucky with the dice.”

  “But when they split the spoil—Cortes, Alvarado, Sandoval and the others—what came to them, and what came to you?”

  “The Captain-General is the head of the expedition. His share is a fifth. The other captains all contributed ships and horses, money and weapons.”

  Don said sarcastically, “So their share is larger as well. And then, of course, the emperor gets his royal fifth. On top of which, it is oh-so-necessary to spread around a few bribes in Spain to gain the support of important members of the court. When all is done, what kind of a share do you get, Bernal Diaz, all you who stand and fight and bleed in the front rank, who die for the greater glory of these gentlemen? Where do you stand when the loot is distributed?”

  In sudden anger the other turned and strode off.

  Don looked after him thoughtfully. He wondered how well the initial seed had been planted.

  Shortly afterward, Cortes sent an expedition down to Vera Cruz to pick up some of the fittings, sail and rope that he had stripped from his destroyed fleet. Martin Lopez requisitioned a sizable number of Indians and took off for a grove of oak that the Spanish had located on the mountainside. It would take Spanish carpenters working with iron saws to make the final planks, but the Indians could chop down the trees and do the initial trimming.