Jack didn’t reply; this blasphemous fantasy wasn’t even worth challenging. He said, “I know you’re lying. Do you really imagine that I’d leave the boys alone here?”
“They’d go back to America, back to their father. How many years do you think you’d have with them, if you stay? They’ve already lost their mother. It would be easier for them now, a single clean break.”
Jack shouted angrily, “Get out of my house!”
The thing came closer, and sat on the bed. It put a hand on his shoulder. Jack sobbed, “Help me!” But he didn’t know whose aid he was invoking any more.
“Do you remember the scene in The Seat of Oak? When the Harpy traps everyone in her cave underground, and tries to convince them that there is no Nescia? Only this drab underworld is real, she tells them. Everything else they think they’ve seen was just make-believe.” Jack’s own young face smiled nostalgically. “And we had dear old Shrugweight reply: he didn’t think much of this so-called ‘real world’ of hers. And even if she was right, since four little children could make up a better world, he’d rather go on pretending that their imaginary one was real.
“But we had it all upside down! The real world is richer, and stranger, and more beautiful than anything ever imagined. Milton, Dante, John the Divine are the ones who trapped you in a drab, grey underworld. That’s where you are now. But if you give me your hand, I can pull you out.”
Jack’s chest was bursting. He couldn’t lose his faith. He’d kept it through worse than this. He’d kept it through every torture and indignity God had inflicted on his wife’s frail body. No one could take it from him now. He crooned to himself, “In my time of trouble, He will find me.”
The cool hand tightened its grip on his shoulder. “You can be with her, now. Just say the word, and you will become a part of me. I will take you inside me, and you will see through my eyes, and we will travel back to the world where she still lives.”
Jack wept openly. “Leave me in peace! Just leave me to mourn her!”
The thing nodded sadly. “If that’s what you want.”
“I do! Go!”
“When I’m sure.”
Suddenly, Jack thought back to the long rant Stoney had delivered in the studio. Every choice went every way, Stoney had claimed. No decision could ever be final.
“Now I know you’re lying!” he shouted triumphantly. “If you believed everything Stoney told you, how could my choice ever mean a thing? I would always say yes to you, and I would always say no! It would all be the same!”
The apparition replied solemnly, “While I’m here with you, touching you, you can’t be divided. Your choice will count.”
Jack wiped his eyes, and gazed into its face. It seemed to believe every word it was speaking. What if this truly was his metaphysical twin, speaking as honestly as he could, and not merely the Devil in a mask? Perhaps there was a grain of truth in Stoney’s awful vision; perhaps this was another version of himself, a living person who honestly believed that the two of them shared a history.
Then it was a visitor sent by God, to humble him. To teach him compassion towards Stoney. To show Jack that he too, with a little less faith, and a little more pride, might have been damned forever.
Jack stretched out a hand and touched the face of this poor lost soul. There, but for the grace of God, go I.
He said, “I’ve made my choice. Now leave me.”
Author’s note: where the lives of the fictional characters of this story parallel those of real historical figures, I’ve drawn on biographies by Andrew Hodges and A.N. Wilson. The self-dual formulation of general relativity was discovered by Abhay Ashtekar in 1986, and has since led to ground-breaking developments in quantum gravity, but the implications drawn from it here are fanciful.
OBSIDIAN HARVEST
Rick Cook & Ernest Hogan
Rick Cook is a frequent contributor to Analog, and has also sold fiction to New Destinies, Sword and Sorceress, and elsewhere. His many novels include Wizard’s Bane, The Wizardry Compiled, The Wizardry Consulted, The Wizardry Cursed, The Wizardry Quested, The Wiz Biz (an omnibus volume of the first two titles in the Wiz series), Limbo System and Mall Purchase Night. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
Ernest Hogan has sold stories to Analog, Amazing, New Pathways, Semiotext(e), Last Wave, Pulphouse, and Science Fiction Age. His novels include Cortez on Jupiter and High Aztech.
In the flamboyant, colourful, and hugely entertaining story that follows, audaciously mixing the mystery genre with the Alternate History tale, they join forces to take a hard-boiled Private Eye down some Mean Streets much meaner, much weirder, and much more profoundly dangerous, than any ever seen by Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade…
I have always liked you, my boy,” Uncle Tlaloc rumbled. He smiled at me, showing a row of jade-inlaid teeth.
I nodded politely, sipped my bitter chocolate and listened to my head throb. I wondered what the old bastard had in store for me this time.
Classical music keened and thumped to a crescendo on the main floor of the Hummingbird’s Palace as the tone-deaf current object of Uncle Tlaloc’s affections belted out the line about the unhappy ending of the romance between Smoking Mountain and White Lady. She didn’t even come near the high note. In the old days they skinned singers for performances like that. But times change and the world decays as cycles end; so she smiled, bowed and received enthusiastic applause as she blushed through her yellow skin dye. The combination of the blush and the dye made her look more jaundiced than attractive.
The pungent mixture of tobacco and drug smoke stung my eyes as it blended with the piney-sweet reek of burning copal incense, almost hiding the odours of spices, citrus flowers—and a hint of stale urine creeping in from the privy in back.
Uncle Tlaloc, as fat and ugly as his Rain God namesake, leaned back in his chair, the one with Death carved beneath his right hand and the Earth Monster beneath his left. “In fact I consider you more of a nephew than an employee.”
Something bad. Whenever Uncle went into that almost-a-relative routine it meant he had something especially nasty in store for me.
He signalled the kneeling pulque girl, and she glided forward to refill his cup. Her eardrums had been pierced so she could not hear, but he kept silent until she had withdrawn, as noiselessly as she had come.
He glanced around conspiratorially and leaned forward towards where I knelt at his feet, took a hefty swig of pulque out of the skull he used for a chalice and belched malodorously. “I have a small task for you.”
“I am yours to command, Lord Uncle.”
“Your cousin, Ninedeer… “
About as bad as it can fucking get!
“I know him, Uncle-tzin.” My voice betrayed nothing.
“He is an acolyte of the Death Master, I believe.”
“So I have heard.”
“The Death Master has — something — in his temple. I would like to know how it came to die and whatever else your cousin might know about it.”
“Am I permitted to know what this thing is, Uncle-tzin?”
Uncle Tlaloc paused, as if considering whether to tell me, and leaned even closer.
“It is a huetlacoatl. An important one.”
It was raining when I stepped out of the Hummingbird’s Palace, a soft, warm drizzle that felt like Tlaloc Himself was pissing on me. Just like his whoreson namesake inside. I pulled my cloak tighter around me, fingering the single row of featherwork at the neck of my cape. Hummingbird feathers, the mark of a warrior, of the war god, Left-Handed Hummingbird Himself, and hence an inalienable symbol of nobility. Of course, the greater nobles supplemented hummingbird feathers with the plumes of the quetzal, symbol of Lord Quetzalcoatl; but it had been a while since I had any dealings with the nobility, minor or otherwise.
It had been a good deal longer since I had dealt with any of my clansmen. My relatives and I would much rather it stayed that way. But Uncle Tlaloc commanded, and his word was the closest thing there was to law down
in English Town. I stepped over a sleeping beggar on the sidewalk, threw back my head, squared my shoulders, and marched off towards the Death Master’s temple—every inch a Child of the Hummingbird on his way to his destiny on the Field of Flowers.
The guards at the Temple Precinct passed me on the strength of my cloak, the clan tattoo on my cheeks—and my bearing. None of Uncle’s other employees could have entered the sacred quarter of the Atlnahuac so easily, which was why the old bastard had chosen me for this job.
The Death Master’s temple was at the far end of the sacred quarter, close to the bay and downwind of the major temples. I strolled easily and unremarked among the other nobles, priests and servants who were out at this hour. Floodlights cast the painted and carved friezes in garish light. Here and there neon tubes outlined the temples on top of the pyramids in reds, the colour of fresh blood, and purples, the shade of clotted blood. It was different—harsher—than I remembered, and yet I knew the sacred quarter hadn’t changed.
Ninedeer hadn’t changed either. He was as thin and gangly as I remembered him. Adulthood hadn’t cured his weak chin, and the elaborate jade lip plug he affected only heightened the deficiency. We had never particularly liked each other.
“I didn’t expect to ever see you again,” he said when a temple servant ushered me into his presence.
I cast an arm at the stone tables behind him and the draped burdens a few of them bore. “Working here? Surely I would have thought you’d expect me to turn up sooner or later.”
The years had done as much to improve his sense of humour as they had to improve his jawline. “I didn’t expect to see you alive,” he amended. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”
I smiled in the way I had learned since I had been with Uncle Tlaloc. “You could call the guards and have me sent away,” I said mildly. “Of course, then I would have to seek you elsewhere to conduct our business.”
His expression told me that rumours about what had happened to the last relative who crossed me had leaked into clan gossip. “What do you want?” he asked sullenly.
“I want a look at one of your charges,” I said. “And I want to know what you can tell me about it.”
“It? You mean an animal?” That was possible, of course. The Death Master’s duties included collecting the bodies of animals who had died in the city, as well as dead humans, sacrificial victims and executed criminals. But he knew damn well it wasn’t any animal, and his voice showed it.
“I mean the huetlacoatl.”
Ninedeer flinched as if I had slapped him. “No! Absolutely not.”
I leaned against the wall in an attitude of exaggerated ease. “One way or another, cousin. One way or another.”
He hesitated, weighed his alternatives, and decided it would be better to give me what I wanted now. He shrugged, gestured and led me down a short corridor. The room at the end was narrow and low, but cleaner than the main receiving chamber. There were sweet herbs strewn on the floor and the gas torches gave a steady, bright light. Normally a room like this would be used to receive the bodies of high nobles and other important functionaries. What lay on the table now was not a noble, and perhaps not a functionary, but it was clearly important.
“Make it quick,” he said as we entered the chamber. “They are coming for the body soon.”
I gestured and Ninedeer flung back the red cotton sheet that draped the corpse.
The thing on the slab was man-sized and had walked on two legs. Beyond that there was little enough resemblance to a human. The skin was greenish-grey, shading to fish belly white between the legs. The head had a prominent muzzle filled with sharp teeth made for tearing. The huge middle claw on each foot was drawn back in the rigor of death. The hands were more delicate and supple, but were frozen in a raking gesture. The corpse lay half on its side because its tail would not let it lie on its back.
Huetlacoatl, the old Serpent Lords, mysterious inhabitants of Viru, the continent to the south. In spite of hundreds of years of trading, raiding and occasional open warfare, and in spite of the fact that they had a trading post on an island in the bay, I had never seen one in the flesh before.
“Satisfied?” Ninedeer demanded and made to recover the body.
I frowned and gestured him away. The corpse was split from the crotch almost to the neck. There were other wounds on the body, stab wounds to the upper chest showing how the creature had died, and a dark line around the neck that I took to be the bruise left by a garrotte.
I pointed to the gaping wound and cocked my eye at Ninedeer. “It was done after he was dead,” he admitted. “At least if the thing works like a human being or an animal. The heart—or whatever kept its soul — had stopped pumping.”
“Is the heart still here?”
“Quetzalcoatl, yes!” Ninedeer exclaimed, wide-eyed. “As least as best the Death Master can tell. This one wasn’t sacrificed, if that’s your meaning.”
I bent down to examine one of the three-fingered hands with its raking talons. “Any blood?”
“No. Nor on the big claw on the foot, either. Now will you please get out of here?”
“Shortly. Now what else can you tell me?”
“Nothing. Go away.” I didn’t need to be a spirit reader to follow his thoughts. As a lesser noble and scion of a Reed clan, I had every right to be here. But my clan membership, and my life, were the only things they had not taken from me when they cast me out. And in spite of a clansman’s theoretical rights, I doubted the authorities would appreciate even a clansman in good standing poking around something as sensitive as a dead huetlacoatl. If I were found here they might not spare my life this time. But whatever they did to me, Ninedeer would be in trouble, and that was all he cared about.
Since Ninedeer put more value on his record than I did on my life, the rest was easy. “I’ve got all night, you know.”
Ninedeer ground his teeth. “It was done where it was found, in the alley. At least if these things bleed the way animals do.”
That made sense. A deserted alley was as good as any other place for such butchery. I reached down and examined the hem of the thing’s drab cotton cloak. “What’s this?”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.”
I held the hem to my nose and sniffed, trying to drown out the snake stink. “Candle grease.” I dropped it and looked the body over. Whoever had done this had stood over the thing for a while.
Ninedeer was almost dancing with impatience. “The Speakers to the Huetlacoatl will be here any minute to retrieve the body. If they find you here it will be hard on both of us.”
“No sweet herbs and winding sheet?”
“We do not know what the huetlacoatls’ customs are on these things. Now go!”
There wasn’t much else to learn there, so I went. I stood in the shadows across from the Death Master’s temple for a while, under a carved Earth Monster that protected me from most of the rain, while I thought about what my cousin had told me. I wasn’t ready to return to the Hummingbird’s Palace. Uncle Tlaloc likes complete reports, not mysteries.
The first mystery was how the thing had died. A fight among the huetlacoatl? Possibly. They were supposed to kill by disembowelling with the ripping claws on their feet, but the wound had been made from the bottom up, not the top down. What’s more, the flesh was sliced neatly, not torn as by a claw. And the marks of the garrotte and the stab wounds to the chest suggested human assistance, at least.
Not for the first time I wondered what Uncle Tlaloc was doing sticking his nose in this business. That in itself suggested human involvement.
So, assume the huetlacoatl had been killed by men. It had taken several of them, one to hold it by the garrotte around its neck and more to stab it—probably two more, at least, judging from the stab wounds.
Then why had humans gone to all that trouble to kill a huetlacoatl? True, they were unpopular—so unpopular they seldom left their treaty island in the bay and almost alway
s travelled with an escort of human guards. Yet, there was neither sign nor mention of any guards. Was this one out on privy business?
The swish of rubber tyres on rain-slick pavement made me step back further into the shadows. A land steamer, long, low, and as black as the polished jet in Lady Death’s necklace, pulled up to the entrance to Death Master’s temple. Steam hissed from beneath the hood as the door swung open. A door too wide and low. Four heavily cloaked and hooded figures emerged silently; the first three as a group, followed after a moment by the fourth.
The three were human, in spite of their elaborate guise and stiff-legged walk. The fourth was not. It was fluid where the others were stiff, strutting where they were jerky, and completely natural where they were studied. It leaned forward and picked its feet high under the muffling cloak. The portal to the temple swung open and the four vanished silently inside.
So. Whatever this was, it was important enough to bring out a huetlacoatl in addition to the Speakers. I knew virtually nothing about huetlacoatl clans, but I did know they weren’t noted for family feeling. Clearly it wasn’t sentiment that had brought this one along with its human servants. This was looking more and more interesting.
Within minutes the portal opened again and the cloaked figures emerged, a human in the lead, then Lord Huetlacoatl; and then the others, carrying a wrapped bundle between them. The huetlacoatl entered the land steamer first, followed by the burden bearers and the third man. As the door silently closed, the land steamer belched once and then swished off into the night.
I turned and headed back towards the dock area, but not to the Hummingbird’s Palace. The night was young enough. The storm clouds were clearing to reveal the dull, starless night sky over the blackened waters of the bay. The colossal statue of the Storm Goddess on the quay smiled at me with chipped teeth and weathered lips. The city of Atlnahuac provided other avenues to explore.
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