Pastwatch

by Orson Scott Card

  The TruSite II at once began displaying shipbuilders at work. Hunahpu showed them the standard ocean-going kanoa of the Tainos and Caribs of the islands to the east, then the differences in the new ships that the Zapotecs were building. “Rudders,” he said, and they could see that the tiller was indeed being transformed into the more efficient steering device. “And now,” he said, “look how they’re making the ships larger.”

  Sure enough, the Zapotecs were reaching for a greater carrying capacity than would ever be possible in a dugout canoe made from a single tree. At first it consisted of wide decks straddling the sides of the canoe and reaching beyond, but this became unwieldy, making the boat too likely to tip. A better solution was to shape a second tree into a vertical extension of the sides of the canoe, lashed to the hull by the use of holes bored into the sides. To make it watertight they smeared the surfaces with sap before they put them together, making a glue-like bond when it was lashed tight.

  “Clever,” said Kemal.

  “It doubles the carrying capacity of the ships. But it slows them down, too—they tend to wallow in the water. What matters, though, is that they’ve learned to join wood and make it watertight. Single-tree construction is over. It’s just a matter of time before the original one-tree canoe becomes the keel, and planks are used to make a much wider, shallower hull.”

  “A matter of time,” said Kemal. “But you don’t actually see any being made.”

  “What they lack is adequate tools,” said Hunahpu. “When Tlaxcala takes over the Aztec empire, the bronze of the Tarascans will come to the Zapotecs, and they’ll be able to make boards more efficiently and with more reliably smooth surfaces. The point is that when they make any innovation, it spreads quickly. And the Zapotecs are also under pressure from the Aztecs. They have to find sources of supply because the Mexica armies have forced them from their fields. In this swampy land, farming is always precarious. So look where they’re sailing.”

  He showed them the clumsy, wallowing Zapotec ships carrying large cargos from Veracruz and the Yucatán. “Slow as these ships are, they carry enough cargo on each trip to make the voyages profitable. They’re far enough up the coast of Veracruz now to be in contact with the Tlaxcalans and the Tarascans. And here.” Again the view changed. “This is the island of Hispaniola. And look who’s coming to visit.”

  Three Zapotecan ships slipped up to the shore.

  “Unfortunately,” said Hunahpu, “Columbus was already there.”

  “But if he hadn’t been there,” said Diko, “it could have extended the reach of a Tlaxcalan empire out to the islands.”

  “Exactly,” said Hunahpu.

  “There was already extensive contact between Mesoamerica and the Caribbean islands,” said Kemal.

  “Of course,” said Hunahpu. “The Taino culture was actually an overlay by earlier raiders from the Yucatán. They brought the ball court with them, for instance, and established themselves as the ruling class. But they adopted the Arawak language and soon forgot their origins, and they certainly did not establish regular trade routes. Why should they? The boats didn’t carry enough to make trade profitable. Only raiding was worth the effort, and the Caribs were the raiders, not the Taino, and since they came out of the southeastern Caribbean, Mesoamerica was even further out of reach. The Taino knew about Mesoamerica as a fabled land of gold and wealth and mighty gods—that’s what they meant when they kept telling Columbus that the land of gold was to the west—but they had no regular contact. These Zapotecan ships would have changed all that. Especially as the ships got bigger and better. It would have been the beginning of a sailing tradition that would have led to ships that could cross the Atlantic.”

  “Very speculative,” said Kemal.

  “Forgive me,” said Diko, “but isn’t that what your entire project is? Speculation?”

  Kemal glowered at her.

  “What matters,” said Hunahpu, anxious not to antagonize Kemal, “is not the details. What matters is that the Zapotecs were innovating, they reached the islands with ships that could carry larger cargos, and they were also a familiar sight to the Tlaxcalans along the coast of Veracruz. It’s unthinkable that the Tlaxcalans would not have seized upon this new technology just as they reached for the bronze-working of the Tarascans. It was an age of invention and innovation in Mesoamerica, and the only barrier was the ultraconservative Mexica leadership. That was doomed—everyone knows it—and it seems obvious to me from this evidence that the Tlaxcalans would have become the successor empire, and as the Persians far outstripped the empire of the Chaldeans, so also the innovative, politically sophisticated Tlaxcalan empire would have oulreached the empire of the Mexica.”

  “You’ve made that case very well.” said Kemal.

  Hunahpu almost allowed himself a sigh of relief.

  “But you have claimed much more than that, haven’t you? And for those claims you have no evidence.”

  “Columbus’s discovery erased all the other evidence,” said Hunahpu. “But then, the Intervention also erased Columbus’s crusade to the east. I think we’re on equal ground here.”

  “Equally shaky,” said Kemal.

  “Kemal is heading the speculative aspects of our research,” said Tagiri, “precisely because he is profoundly skeptical about it. He doesn’t believe an accurate reconstruction is possible.”

  That thought had never occurred to Hunahpu—that Kemal was predisposed to reject all speculations. He had assumed that his only task was to bring Kemal to consider another possible scenario, not that he had to persuade him that it was possible to construct a scenario at all.

  Diko seemed to sense his consternation. “Hunahpu,” she said, “let’s leave aside the issue of what can and can’t be proved. You must have developed the rest of the story in your mind. Let’s regard it as likely that Tlaxcala has conquered and unified the whole of the old Mexica empire, and that now it’s running smoothly with Zapotecan ships trading far and wide and Tarascan bronzeworkers making weapons and tools for them. What then?”

  Her guidance helped him recover his confidence. Trying to convince the great Kemal against his will was too much to contemplate; talking about ideas he could do. “First, you have to remember,” said Hunahpu, “that there was one problem of the Mexica that the Tlaxcalans had not overcome. As with the Mexica, the Tlaxcalan practice of wholesale sacrifice to their bloodthirsty god would have drained away the manpower they needed to feed their population.”

  “So? How do you resolve it?” asked Kemal. “You wouldn’t have come here if you didn’t have an answer.”

  “I have a possibility, anyway. There’s nothing in the evidence, because Tlaxcala hadn’t had to govern a real empire yet. But they couldn’t have succeeded if they made the same mistake the Mexica made, slaughtering the able-bodied men of their subject populations. So here’s how I think they would have solved it. There is a hint of a doctrine among the priestly class that their warrior god Camaxtli becomes especially thirsty for blood after he has exerted himself to give Tlaxcala a victory. The existence of this idea makes it possible for the Tlaxcalans to evolve the practice of only offering huge mass sacrifices after a military victory, because that’s the only time that Camaxtli is especially in need of blood. So if a city or nation or tribe willingly allies itself with Tlaxcala, submits to their overlordship, and allows the Tlaxcalan bureaucracy to administer their affairs, then instead of being sacrificed, their men are left to work the fields. Perhaps, if they prove to be trustworthy, they can even join the Tlaxcalan army, or fight alongside it. The mass sacrifices are only performed using captives from armies that resist. Aside from that, peacetime sacrifices in the Tlaxcalan empire would stay at a tolerable level—the way they were before the Mexica arose to form the Aztec empire in the first place.”

  “It gives the surrounding nations a reward for surrendering,” said Hassan. “And a reason not to rebel.”

  “Just the way so much of the Roman Empire didn’t have to be conquered,” said Hun
ahpu. “The Romans seemed so irresistible that kings of neighboring countries would make the Roman senate the heir to their thrones, so that they could live as sovereigns until they died, and then their kingdoms would pass peacefully into the Roman system. It’s the cheapest way to build an empire, and the best, since there’s no war damage to the newly acquired lands.”

  “So,” said Kemal. “If their god isn’t bloodthirsty except after victory, they become peaceful and their god goes to sleep.”

  “Well, that would be nice,” said Hunahpu, “but part of their theology was that besides needing sacrifices after victory, Camaxtli liked the blood. Camaxtli liked war. So they could put off the huge sacrifices until they won a victory, but they would still keep looking for more fights that might lead to such a victory. Besides, the Tlaxcalans had the same social-mobility system as the Mexica in their pre-Moctezuma days. The only way to rise within their society was either to make a lot of money or to prevail in battle. And making money was only possible for those who controlled trade. So there would have been constant pressure to start new wars with ever-more-remote neighbors. I think it wouldn’t have taken the bronze-wielding Tlaxcalans long to reach the natural boundaries of their new seafaring empire: The Caribbean islands to the east, the mountains of Colombia to the south, and the deserts to the north. Conquests beyond those boundaries would not have been cost effective, either because there were no large concentrated populations to exploit economically or to offer as sacrifices, or because the resistance would have been too strong as they came in contact with the Incas.”

  “So they turned to the empty Atlantic? Unlikely,” said Kemal.

  “I agree,” said Hunahpu. “Left to themselves, I think they would never have turned eastward, or not for centuries. But they weren’t left to themselves. The Europeans came to them.”

  “Then we’re right back where we started,” said Kemal. “The superior European civilization discovers the backward Indies and . . .”

  “Not so backward now,” said Diko.

  “Bronze blades against muskets?” scoffed Kemal.

  “Muskets weren’t decisive,” said Hunahpu. “Everyone knows that. The Europeans simply couldn’t come in large enough numbers for their superior weapons to overcome the numerical advantage of the Indies. Besides, there’s something else to consider. The Europeans wouldn’t have come straight to the heart of the Caribbean this time. The later discovery would almost certainly have come from the Portuguese. Several Portuguese ships landed on or sighted the coast of Brazil quite independently of Columbus as early as the late 1490s. But the land they saw was dry and barren, and it didn’t lead to India the way the coast of Africa would. So their exploration, instead of having the urgency that Columbus brought to it, would have been occasional and desultory. It would have taken years before Portuguese ships would have entered the Caribbean. By then, the Tlaxcalan empire would already be well established there. Now, instead of Europeans finding the sweet-natured Taino, they would meet the fierce and hungry Tlaxcalans, who would be getting frustrated by the fact that they weren’t able to expand easily beyond their current borders around the Caribbean basin. What do the Tlaxcalans see? To them, the Europeans aren’t gods from the east. To them, the Europeans are new victims that Camaxtli has brought to them, showing them how to get back on the path to productive warfare. And those big European boats and muskets aren’t just strange miracles. The Tlaxcalans—or their Tarascan or Zapotecan allies—would immediately start taking them apart. Probably they’d sacrifice enough of the sailors to persuade the ship’s carpenter and the ship’s smith to make a deal, and unlike the Mexica, the Tlaxcalans would keep them alive and learn from them. How long would it take them to have muskets of their own? Big-bottomed ships? And in the meantime, the Europeans are hearing nothing at all about the Tlaxcalan empire, because any ships that reach Caribbean waters are being captured and their crews never get home.”

  “So the Tlaxcalans aren’t independently developing technology anymore,” said Tagiri.

  “That’s right. All they needed was to be advanced enough to understand the European technology when they encountered it, and to have an attitude that would allow them to exploit it. And that’s what the Interveners understood. They had to get Europeans to discover the new world before the Tlaxcalans came to power, back with the relatively incompetent, decadent Mexica.”

  “That does work,” said Kemal thoughtfully. “It does allow for a believable scenario. The Tlaxcalans build European-style ships and make European-style muskets, and then come to the shores of Europe fully prepared for a war whose purpose is to enlarge the empire and at the same time bring sacrifices to the temples of Camaxtli. I suppose the same pattern would apply in Europe, too. Any nation that resisted them would be slaughtered, while those that allied themselves to the Tlaxcalans would only have to endure a tolerable level of human sacrifice. I don’t think it would be difficult to imagine Europe fragmenting over this. I don’t think the Tlaxcalans would lack for allies. Particularly if Europe had been weakened by a long and bloody crusade.”

  To Hunahpu, this sounded like victory. Kemal himself had completed the scenario for him.

  “But it doesn’t work anyway,” said Kemal.

  “Why not?” asked Diko.

  “Smallpox,” said Kemal. “Bubonic plague. The common cold. That was the great killer of the Indies. For every Indie who died of overwork in slavery or from Spanish muskets and swords, a hundred died of disease. Those plagues would still have come.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Hunahpu. “That was one of the biggest problems, and there’s no way to find evidence for what I’m about to say. But we do know the way diseases work in human populations. The Europeans carried these diseases because they were such a large population with lots of travel and trade and warfare—lots of contact between nations—so that as far as disease organisms were concerned, Europe was one vast caldron in which they could cook, just like China and India, which also had indigenous diseases. In a large population like that, successful diseases are the ones that evolve so they kill slowly and are not always fatal. That gives them time to spread, and leaves enough of the human population behind that it can recover and bring up a new, non-immune generation within a few years. These diseases eventually evolve into childhood epidemics, cycling around the large overall population pool, striking here and then there and then over there and finally here again. When Columbus came, there was no region of the Americas that had such a large population pool. Travel was too slow and the barriers were too great. There were a few indigenous diseases—syphilis comes to mind—but that one was exceptionally slow to kill in the American context. Fast-moving plagues were impossible because they would spend themselves in one locality and run out of human hosts before they could get carried to a new locality. But that changes with the Tlaxcalan empire.”

  “Zapotecan boats,” said Diko.

  “That’s right. This empire is linked by ships carrying cargos and passengers all around the Caribbean basin. Now plagues can travel swiftly enough to spread and become indigenous.”

  “That still doesn’t mean that a new plague won’t be devastating,” said Kemal. “It just means that smallpox would travel faster and strike the whole empire almost at the same time.”

  “Yes,” said Hunahpu. “Just as bubonic plague devastated Europe in the fourteenth century. But there’s a difference now. The plague will reach the Tlaxcala empire from those earlier accidental Portuguese visitors, before the Europeans come in force. It sweeps through the empire with exactly as much devastation as it had in Europe. Smallpox, measles—they have their terrible effect. But not one nation in Europe fell because of these plagues. No empire collapsed, any more than Rome collapsed because of the plagues in their time. In fact the plague has the effect of giving them more favorable population densities. With fewer mouths to feed, the Tlaxcalans can now produce a food surplus. And what if they interpret these plagues as a sign that Camaxtli wants them to go and win more captives for sacrifice?
That might be the final spur to make them sail east. And now when they come, smallpox and measles and the common cold are already indigenous to the Tlaxcalans. They touch on European shores already immune to European diseases. But the Europeans have not been exposed to syphilis at all. And when syphilis first reached Europe in our history it struck viciously, killing quickly. It only gradually settled down to be the slow killer it had been among the Indies. And who knows what other diseases might have developed among the Tlaxcalans as their empire grew? This time I think the plagues would have worked the other way, against the Europeans and in favor of the Indies.”

  “Possible,” said Kemal. “But it depends on so many suppositions.”

  “Any scenario we think of will depend on suppositions,” said Tagiri. “But this one has one unique virtue.”

  “And what is that?” asked Kemal.

  “This one would have created a future terrible enough for the Interveners to think it worthwhile to go back and erase their own time in order to eliminate the source of the disaster. Think of what it would have meant to human history, if the powerful, technology-wielding civilization that swept to dominance over the whole world was one that believed in human sacrifice. If Mesoamerican cults of torture and slaughter had come to India and China and Africa and Persia armed with rifles and linked by railroads.”

  “And tied together with a single, unified, powerful, and efficient bureacracy, the way the Romans were,” added Diko. “The internal dissensions of Europe went a long way toward making their overlordship weaker and more tolerable.”