Burton sat forward. “These will be the priests, I imagine.”
The bright gantlet dissolved when the last “priest” had stepped to the edge of the large, flat dais. The torchbearers set their lights about the dais while the costumed ones divided into two groups. One took to the raised platform, the other formed a semi-circle to one side.
“The victims, perhaps,” Burton whispered.
Yoshi ground her teeth. “The band, perhaps,” she gritted, and before Burton could retort, lively atonal chords were indeed struck, and the “priests” began to dance and sing and chant.
Rhys found he could actually understand a few words and phrases that had been passed down to the modern Etsatat language of the region. The audience responded with hoots and chirps and pounded their oddly jointed knees in applause. Professor Burton withdrew so far against the trunk of their tree that Rhys almost forgot he was there.
oOo
Just before dawn, they were packing up their blind and preparing to move out, when Burton, still on the supporting platform, uttered a startled grunt and moved the holocam into operating position.
Rhys, sitting at the platform’s edge, scrambled to his feet. “What is it?”
“Put your glasses on, Dr. Llewellyn. You should be interested in this.”
Rhys did as told and saw immediately what had Burton so excited. A wagon had come down the broad main avenue of the Etsatat town and pulled to a stop in the market plaza right next to the neat stack of baskets. Two men in uniforms garish even in moonlight, debarked and carefully lifted the baskets into their wagon.
“Recognize the costume?” Burton asked.
Rhys nodded. “From Sper-ets. The fellows on the gate lintel, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Having second thoughts about that tribute train theory?”
“Maybe.” Rhys watched as the wagon turned and rolled away. “Do we follow?”
Burton grinned fiercely. “What do you think?”
They trailed the wagon at a discreet distance, optics set for night scanning. It was a long trek through hilly, forested countryside, but all four of them were in good physical condition and the wagon, heavy and heavily laden, moved slowly.
At one point, Rhys had stopped to refasten his boot closings when Burton let out an exultant cry and thumped him soundly on the back. When he picked himself up and reoriented his optics, he thought for a moment Burton had given him a concussion. Where there had been one wagon there were now two ponderous vehicles making their dusty way toward the complex.
In another half mile or so, a third wagon appeared from a rutted side road and joined the caravan. By the time they drew within sight of Sper-ets’s gated walls, there were six wagons, each with its uniformed drivers, each with its load of brightly dyed baskets, and Rhys had to allow that Burton’s tribute theory looked very good, indeed.
The sun was rising as they worked their way up into yet another huge and bulbous tree (ficus frogus, Rick called them). They could hear the rumble of the wagons, the calls and shouts and whistles of the uniformed men, the roar of the fire in the tower’s hot core. In the broad plaza below and between the lavishly painted temples, the baskets were unloaded from the first wagon and grouped according to color. When that task was complete, a commanding figure appeared in the doorway of the Chapel.
Burton grasped Rhys’s shoulder painfully. “It’s Ets-eket himself!”
The warrior priest, his elaborate headdress making him stand head and shoulders above the other men, strode from his abode to meet the wagoneers. From each he received what appeared to be a necklace of the rectangular coins.
Rhys brought his optics into tight focus on Ets-eket’s hands. The coins were strung on a thong, much like the one around Ets-eket’s neck. The priest pulled a thick-bladed knife from his belt and proceeded to score each rectangle. He then returned the string of coinage to the driver, who settled it around his own neck before returning to his wagon and driving away. This process was repeated for each driver, the only variation occurring when Ets-eket paused to remove several rectangles from the driver’s thong to string them on his own. This done, he replaced them with new coins from a bag on his hip.
Out of the corner of his eye, Rhys saw Yoshi put her hand over her mouth.
A quick inspection of the baskets was next, which Ets-eket ended by clapping his hands together. A host of uniformed men poured from the Chapel and the two temples and began hoisting baskets with chaotic dispatch. A method emerged from the seeming madness: Blue and green baskets went to the eastern temple; brown and black ones went to the western temple; the few red baskets found their way into the Chapel; and yellow baskets were set at the foot of the tower where uniformed men scurried to open them and spill their bundled contents to the earth.
Yoshi began to giggle.
Burton shot her an annoyed glance. “Really, Llewellyn, if your assistant can’t control herself—”
Wayne and Rhys gasped simultaneously, jerking Burton’s attention back to the tower where, at that very moment, the stone doorway was rolled back by a quartet of huge, sweating Etsatats, revealing a blast furnace interior. The four big men then took up crescent-topped staffs from a rack and proceeded to use them to scoop up the “tribute” and fling it into the fiery maw.
Yoshi’s giggles collapsed into wild hiccups.
“It’s a … a garbage dump!” whispered Bell.
“And recycling center,” added Yoshi, punctuating the sentence with a hiccup.
Burton sputtered. “Impossible! What about the stone icons! The … the potsherds, the animal bones . . .” His voice trailed off dismally.
Rhys sat back against the ficus frogus’s gnarled trunk. The gnawed animal bones. Of course. It made perfect sense, but even he had been too smitten by the romance of archaeo-theology to see that any well-organized group of people must have some way of dealing with their discardables.
He shook his head. “Don’t feel too badly, Professor. I’m as stunned as you are. And the evidence was all there, too, if only we’d been open-minded enough to read it. The small animal carcasses, the caches of gnawed bone, the cellulose deposits, the extreme concentrations of potsherds, the tally cards.”
Yoshi sighed, pulled off her optics and wiped tears from her eyes.
“Shovels,” muttered Burton. “They were carrying shovels. Garbage scoops.” He uttered a low growl that dissolved into a wheezing chuckle. “Staffs of office, indeed!”
“Well,” said Bell philosophically, “I swear I’ll never look at a potsherd the same way again.”
“Pass the canteen,” said Burton. “I need a drink.”
Yoshi fished it out of the field kit. “It’s only water, sir.”
Burton gave her an arch glance. “Indeed. Well, I seem to have enough imagination for two men. I’ll just pretend it’s something stronger.”
oOo
They had to spend the day perched in the great tree overlooking the dump. The time passed easily enough; they were shaded, relatively cool, had enough food and water for two days and plenty of activity to feast their eyes upon. By the end of the day, the system was quite clear: organic wastes went to the southern pits, broken stuff such as potsherds and glass went into the eastern “temple,” recyclable articles went to the west, burnables were sent straight to the fiery furnace. The “icons” they had found there, they reasoned, might have been toys that made it into the yellow basket by mistake.
After dark, they hiked the five or six kilometers back to the shuttle, their shadows cast indigo against the ground by the intense moonlight. Their departure from the planet was silent, the homing lock on the cutter’s temporal grid transporting them in a blink through space and time to its shuttle bay.
There was little conversation as they prepared for the shift forward. No mention of illegalities or arrests. Rhys knew without asking that Burton would bring the Feathered Serpent into synchronous orbit over the village exactly 5,000 years to the minute of when they’d left. It would be a matter of Rhys’s word
against his if accusations were made. He decided accusations would serve no one.
Hence, 5,000 years later they stood in the Serpent’s docking bay. Rick was safely stowed aboard Rhys’s shuttle and would likely sleep for another day or two—long enough for a return trip to Tson, where Danetta Price would listen with feigned interest as they described their “vacation”—omitting one important detail.
“Well, Llewellyn, I don’t suppose I could talk you into staying on a bit. Helping out with the dig?” Burton was looking at the wall of the bay, not at Rhys’s face.
Rhys felt a tingle of the same joy he’d experienced when Burton had first invited him to Etsatat. Still, he said, “I don’t know, sir. I suppose that depends on what you intend to do about … certain matters.”
“Well, I’ve, em, rethought my position on some of the artifacts, if that’s what you mean.” He glanced at Rhys with a glint of humor in his pale eyes. “In fact, I’m thinking of completely rewriting my journal. I think it might benefit from a different point of view. I have the feeling that if I study the Sper-ets collection from a slightly more…pragmatic perspective—perhaps contrast and compare modern Etsatat cultures—I might even advance some new … theories.”
“I rather think,” Rhys said carefully, “that your relations with nonhuman colleagues could also benefit from a different point of view.”
Burton had the good graces to look uncomfortable. “I’m an old dog, Rhys. You know what they say about old dogs. I’m not unaware of my bias.”
“Prejudice,” said Yoshi.
Burton glanced at her. “Prejudice,” he agreed. “I can only plead that my lack of exposure to … other races of people has ill-prepared me to deal with them. I have never liked reptiles. The sight of a six-foot tall talking lizard gives me goose flesh. But I suppose if I closed my eyes, Tzia would seem as human as the next qualified archaeologist.” He met Yoshi’s eyes. “I will try to listen to her without looking.”
Catching Yoshi’s barely perceptible nod, Rhys bowed to his mentor. “I believe we’d be interested in renewing our collaboration under those circumstances. I’m glad you’ve had a change of heart.”
Burton snorted. “Change of heart? What was it Wayne said—that he’d never again look at a potsherd in the same way? Let me tell you something; I have immersed myself in Mesoamerican antiquities for over forty years. After our little jaunt, I shall never look at Caracol or Tikal or Teotihuacan the same way ever again. I shall wonder about every pyramid and stele, every mural and icon. Dear God, do you realize that the statue of Chac Mol at Chichen Itza might have been an advertisement for Lamaze classes?”
As if finding that thought supremely amusing, he rolled away from his guests leaving a trail of guffaws.
Rhys looked after him for a moment, then put his arm around Yoshi’s shoulders. “He’s right, you know. If this escapade has served a purpose, it’s been to make us question our assumptions … about a lot of things. Now, let’s go collect our duffel and hie down to the surface. Rick can sleep it off in the shuttle.”
Yoshi nodded, her brow creased with evident concern. “Sir,” she said, and he sighed inwardly. “Is this a good time to tell you about the graffiti on the side of Dr. Burton’s shuttle?”
He stared at her. “You put graffiti on his shuttle? Good Lord, Yoshi, I realize you don’t like the man, but—”
She was shaking her head. “No. I didn’t do it. I only noticed it when we debarked just now. It wasn’t there when we went down.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying?”
She nodded, eyes glinting. “That there’s a reason one of the calendar symbols looks like a little shuttle.”
“No.” Rhys steered her through the open hatch of their own lander. “I will not buy into this. You’re having me on, for reasons known only to yourself.”
She craned her head to glance back into the bay. “You’re not even going to look?”
“No. Most emphatically not. We are not space gods, we did not interfere with this culture, and no one painted graffiti on Dr. Burton’s shuttle.”
Yoshi smiled—wickedly, Rhys thought. “Okay, but I bet when we get back to Etsat you’re going to look at a lot of things very differently.”
She was right, of that much he was certain. He would look at everything differently. And Yoshi, he thought as they reboarded and battened down, I believe I shall start with you.
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Copyright & Credits
ALL THE COLORS OF TIME
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Book View Café edition June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-389-8
Copyright © 2014 by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
www.mysticfig.wordpress.com
Production Team:
Cover design by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Cover artist: Bruce Rolff
Proofreader: Jeffrey A. Carver
Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
Digital edition: 20140529vnm
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About the Author
Maya became addicted to science fiction when her dad let her stay up late to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still. Mom was horrified. Dad was unrepentant. Maya slept with a night-light in her room until she was 15.
She started her writing career sketching science fiction comic books in the last row of her grade school classroom. She was never apprehended. Since then her short fiction has been published in Analog, Amazing Stories, Century, Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Paradox and Jim Baen’s Universe. Her novelette, The White Dog, was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award.
Her debut novel, The Meri (Baen), was a Locus Magazine 1992 Best First Novel nominee. She is a sometime collaborator with Michael Reaves, with whom she’s penned three Star Wars novels, and a Del Rey original, Mr. Twilight. Their collaboration, Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a New York Times Bestseller.
Maya lives in San Jose where she writes, performs, and records original and parody (filk) music with her husband and awesome musician and music producer, Chef Jeff Vader, All-Powerful God of Biscuits. The couple frequently serves as Guest of Honor at science fiction/fantasy conventions and at filk music gatherings, and has been honored with Pegasus Awards for Best Parody and Best Performer. They’ve produced five music albums: RetroRocket Science, Aliens Ate My Homework and Grated Hits (parody), and the original music CDs Manhattan Sleeps and Mobius Street. To top it off, they’ve also produced three musical children: Alex, Kristine, and Amanda.
Other Books by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Coruscant Nights Book Four)
Del Rey/Lucas Books, 2013
with Michael Reaves
STAR WARS: SHADOW GAMES
Del Rey/Lucas Books, 2011
with Michael Reaves
A PRINCESS OF PASSYUNK
Book View Café, 2010
TACO DEL AND THE FABLED TREE OF DESTINY
Book View Café, 2010
SHAMAN (A Collection of Short Science Fiction)
Book View Café, 2013
About Book View Café
Book View Café is a professional authors’ publishing cooperative offering DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world. With authors in a variety of genres including mystery, romance, fantasy, and science fiction, Book View Café has something for everyone.
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Book View Café authors include New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award winners, World Fantasy and Rita Award nominees, and winners and nominees of many other publishing awards.
www.bookviewcafe.com
All the Colors of Time Page 24
