Wild Cards IV

by George R. R. Martin

  “You are different; you have always known this.” Ix Chel smiled down at him. It was the smile of a crocodile, not a grandmother. He grinned up at her, wishing he’d wake up. Now.

  “You are a thief.”

  He began thinking about how he was going to get out of this dream. He had remembered the more troublesome parts of the ancient myths—the decapitations, the houses of multiple horrors …

  “You should use your abilities to gain power.”

  “Hey, I’ll do that. You’re right. No problem. Just as soon as I get back.” One of the rabbits who was attending the three gods watched him intently with head canted to one side and nostrils twitching. Occasionally it wrote frantically on an odd, folded piece of paper with a brushlike pen. He was reminded of a comic book he had once read, Alice in Wonderland. There had been rabbits in her dream too. And he was getting hungry.

  “Go to the city, Xbalanque.” Itzamna’s voice was squeaky, pitched even higher than his wife’s.

  “Hey, isn’t there a brother in this somewhere?” He was remembering even more of the myth.

  “You’ll find him. Go.” The ball court began to quiver in front of his eyes, and the jaguar’s paw struck him in the back of the head.

  Xbalanque grunted in pain as his head slid off the rock he had apparently been using as a pillow. He pulled himself upright, shoving his bare back against the rough limestone. The dream was still with him, and he couldn’t seem to focus on anything. The moon had gone down while he’d been passed out. It was very dark. The uncovered stones of the ruin glowed with their own light, like bones disturbed in a grave. The bones of his people’s past glory.

  He bent over to pick up his stolen treasures and fell to one knee. Unable to stop himself, he vomited the gin and tortillas he had eaten. Madre de Dios, he felt bad. Body empty and shaking, he staggered up again to begin the descent from the pyramid. Maybe that dream was right. He should leave, go to Guatemala City now. Take what he had. It was enough to let him live comfortably for a while.

  Christ, his head hurt. Hungover and still drunk. It wasn’t fair. The last thing he picked up was the stingray spine. Its barbs were still coated with his blood. Xbalanque reached up to touch his ear gingerly. He fingered the hole in the lobe with pain and disgust. His hand came away bloody. That was definitely not part of the dream. Swaying, he searched through his pockets until he found the earplug. He tried to insert it into his earlobe, but it hurt too much and the torn flesh would not support it. He was almost sick again.

  Xbalanque tried to remember the strange dream. It was fading. For the moment all he recalled was that the dream recommended a retreat to the city. It still sounded like a good idea. As he alternately tripped and slid down the side of the hill, he decided to steal a Jeep and go in style. Maybe they wouldn’t miss it. He couldn’t walk all the way with this headache anyway.

  Inside the dark, smoke-filled thatch house, José listened gravely to Hunapu’s tale of his vision. The shaman nodded when Hunapu spoke of his audience with the gods. When he finished, he looked to the old man for interpretation and guidance.

  “Your vision is a true one, Hunapu.” He straightened up and slid from his hammock to the dirt floor. Standing before the crouching Hunapu, he threw copal incense on his fire. “You must do as the gods tell you or bring us all misfortune.”

  “But where am I to go? What is Kaminaljuyu?” Hunapu shrugged in his confusion. “I do not understand. I have no brother, only sisters. I do not play this ball game. Why me?”

  “You have been chosen and touched by the gods. They see what we do not.” José put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “It is very dangerous to question them. They anger easily.

  “Kaminaljuyu is Guatemala City. That is where you must go. But first we must prepare you.” The shaman looked past him. “Sleep tonight. Tomorrow you will go.”

  When he returned to the shaman’s home in the morning, most of the village was there to share in the magical thing that had happened. When he left them, José walked with him into the rain forest, carrying a package. Out of sight of the village, the shaman wrapped Hunapu’s elbows and knees with the cotton padding he had brought with him. The old man told him that this was how he had been dressed in José’s dream the night before. It too was a sign that Hunapu’s vision was true. José warned him to tell those he met of his quest only if they could be trusted and were Lacandones like himself. The Ladinos would try to stop him if they knew.

  Xepon was small. Perhaps thirty multicolored houses clustered around the church on the square. Their pink, blue, and yellow paint was faded, and they looked as though they crouched with their backs to the rain that had begun earlier. As Xbalanque bounced down the mountain road into the village, he was happy to see the cantina. He had decided to take the most isolated roads he could find on the worn road map under the driver’s seat to get into the city.

  He started to park in front of the cantina, but instead decided to park around the side, away from curious eyes. He thought it was strange that he had seen no one since entering town, but the weather was fit for no one, especially him and his hangover. His Reeboks, another gift from the norteamericanos, flopped against the wet wood walkway that ran in front of the cantina before he entered the open doorway. It was a disconcerting sound amid a silence broken only by dripping water and the rain on the tin roofs. Even the dimness outside had not prepared him for the darkness within, or the years of tobacco smoke still trapped between the narrow walls. A few tattered and faded Feliz Navidad banners hung down from the gray ceiling.

  “What do you want?” He was assaulted in Spanish from behind the long bar that lined the wall to his left. The force and hostility behind the question hurt his head. A stooped old Indian woman glared at him from behind the bar.

  “Cerveza.”

  Unconcerned for his preferences, she removed a bottle from the cooler behind the bar and flipped off the cap as he walked toward her. She set it on the stained and pitted wood of the bar. When Xbalanque reached for it, she put a small gnarled hand around the bottle and nodded her chin at him. He pulled some crumpled quetzals from his pocket and laid them on the bar. There was a crash of nearby thunder and they both tensed. He realized for the first time that the reason she was so hostile might not have anything to do with an early customer. She snatched the money off the bar as if to deny her fear and put it into the sash around her stained huipil.

  “What do you have to eat?” Whatever was going on certainly had nothing to do with him. The beer tasted good, but it was not what he really needed.

  “Black bean soup.” The woman’s answer was a statement, definitely not an invitation. It was accompanied by more thunder rolling up the valley.

  “What else?” Looking around, Xbalanque belatedly realized that something was extremely wrong. Every cantina he had ever been in, no matter where or how large, had some old drunks sitting around waiting to try to pick up a free drink. And women, even old women such as this one, rarely worked in bars in these small villages.

  “Nothing.” Her face was closed to him as he looked for a clue to what was happening.

  Another peal of thunder turned into the low growling of truck engines. Both their heads swung toward the door. Xbalanque stepped back from the bar and looked for a back way out. There was none. When he turned again to the old woman, she had her back to him. He ran for the door.

  Green-clad soldiers piled off the backs of two army transports parked in the middle of the square. The paths of the trucks were marked by the broken benches and shrubs they had run over on their way across the tiny park. As the soldiers hit the ground, they pulled their machine guns into firing position. Two-man teams immediately left the central area to search the houses lining the square. Other armed men moved out of the square through the rest of the village.

  Palms spread against the plaster, Xbalanque slid along the outside wall of the cantina for the safety of the side street. If he could get to the Jeep, he had a chance to escape. He had made it to the c
orner of the building when one of the soldiers spotted him. At the soldier’s order to halt, he jumped for the street, sliding in the mud, and dashed for the Jeep.

  Shots into the ground in front of him splashed him with mud. Xbalanque threw his hand up to protect his eyes and fell to his knees. Before he could get back up, a sullen-faced soldier grabbed his arm and hauled Xbalanque back to the square, his feet slipping in the thick mud as he scrambled to stand up and walk.

  One of the young Ladino soldiers stood with his Uzi pointed at Xbalanque’s head while he was shoved facedown in the mud and searched. Xbalanque had hidden the artifacts in the Jeep, but the soldiers found the stash of quetzals in his Reeboks. One of them held the wad of money up to the army lieutenant in charge. The lieutenant looked disgusted at the condition of the bills, but he put them in his own pocket anyway. Xbalanque did not protest. Through the excruciating pain in his head that had begun when he fled the soldiers, he was trying to decide what he could say to get out of this. If they knew the Jeep was stolen, he was dead.

  The sound of more gunfire made him wince into the mud. He raised his head slightly, knocking it into the barrel of the gun above him. The soldier holding it pulled back enough for him to see another man being dragged from inside the dilapidated yellow school on the west side of the square. He heard children crying inside the small building. The second prisoner was also an Indian, tall with eyeglasses knocked askew on his narrow face. The two soldiers escorting him allowed him to regain his feet before presenting him to the lieutenant.

  The schoolteacher straightened his glasses before staring directly into the lieutenant’s mirrored sunglasses. Xbalanque knew he was in trouble; the schoolteacher was deliberately trying to anger the army officer. It could only result in worse consequences than they already faced.

  The lieutenant brought up his swagger stick and knocked the teacher’s glasses off his face. When the teacher bent down to pick them up, the officer struck him across the side of the head. With blood dripping down his face onto his white, European shirt, the teacher replaced his glasses. The right lens was shattered. Xbalanque began looking for an escape route. He hoped that his guard might be sufficiently distracted. Looking sideways up at the young man with the Uzi, he saw that the boy had not taken his eyes off him.

  “You are a communist.” The lieutenant made it a statement, not a question, directed to the teacher. Before the teacher could reply, the officer glanced toward the schoolhouse with annoyance. The children inside were still crying. He swung his swagger stick toward the school and nodded at a soldier to his left. Without aiming, the soldier panned his machine gun across the building, breaking windows and pocking the plaster. A few screams erupted from inside, then silence.

  “You are a traitor and an enemy to Guatemala.” He brought the stick up across the other side of the teacher’s head. There was more blood, and Xbalanque began to feel sick and somehow wrong.

  “Where are the other traitors?”

  “There are no other traitors.” The teacher shrugged and smiled.

  “Fernandez, the church.” The lieutenant spoke to a soldier smoking a cigarette leaning against one of the trucks. Fernandez tossed away the cigarette and picked up the thick tube propped beside him against the truck. While he aimed, another of the men around the trucks shoved a rocket into the launcher.

  Turning toward the old colonial church, Xbalanque saw, for the first time, the village priest standing outside arguing with one of the search teams as the soldiers stood there holding silver candlesticks. There was an explosion from the rocket launcher, followed a split second later by a blast as the church fell in on itself. The soldiers standing outside had seen it coming and fallen to the ground. The priest collapsed, from shock or injuries, Xbalanque could not tell. By now he was feeling the pain in every joint and muscle.

  The rain mixed with the blood on the teacher’s face and, as it dripped down, stained his shirt pink. Xbalanque didn’t see any more. The pain had grown until he curled up in the mud, clutching his knees to his chest. Something was happening. It must be because he had never felt such fear before. He knew that he was going to die. The damned old gods had led him to this.

  He barely heard the order given to move him up against the school wall with the teacher. The lieutenant didn’t even care who he was. For some reason the fact that the officer hadn’t even bothered to question him seemed the worst indignity of all.

  Xbalanque shook as he stood with his back against the already bullet-marked wall. The soldiers left them there alone and backed off, out of the line of fire. The pain had begun to come in waves, driving out his fear, driving out everything except the enormous weight of the agony in his body. He stared through the soldiers gathering for the firing squad at the rainbow forming between the bright, jade green mountains as the sun finally came out. The teacher patted him on the shoulder.

  “Are you all right?” His companion actually looked concerned. Xbalanque was silent as he gathered sufficient energy not to collapse to the ground.

  “See, God has a sense of humor.” The madman smiled at him as if at a crying child. Xbalanque cursed him in the language of his Quiche grandmother, a tongue he had not spoken before his dream of Xibalba.

  “We die for the lives of our people.” The schoolteacher lifted his head proudly and faced the soldiers’ guns as they were raised to aim.

  “No. Not again!” Xbalanque rushed the guns as they fired. His force knocked the other man to his knees. As he moved, Xbalanque realized in one small part of his brain that the exquisite agony had gone. As the bullets sped to meet his charge, he felt only stronger, more powerful than he ever had before. The bullets reached him.

  Xbalanque hesitated as they struck. He waited an instant for the inevitable pain and final darkness. They didn’t come. He looked at the soldiers; they stared back wide-eyed. Some ran for the trucks. Others dropped their guns and simply ran. A few held their ground and kept firing, looking to the lieutenant, who was backing up slowly toward the trucks and calling for Fernandez.

  The warrior scooped up a brick from the street and, crying out his name in a mixture of fear and exhilaration, threw it with all his strength at one of the trucks. As it flew, it struck a soldier, crushing his head and splattering blood and brains across his fleeing companions before flying on toward the vehicle. The soldier had slowed its momentum. It was dropping as it streaked toward the truck. The brick struck the gas tank and the transport exploded.

  Xbalanque stopped his rush toward the soldiers and stared at the fiery scene. Men in flames—soldiers who had made the shelter of the troop carrier—screamed. The scene was right out of one of the American movies he had watched in the city. But the movies hadn’t had the smell of petrol, burning canvas and rubber, and underneath everything else the stench of burning flesh. He began backing away.

  Remotely, as if through heavy padding, he felt someone grab his arm. Xbalanque turned to strike his enemy. The teacher was staring down at him through the shattered glasses.

  “Se habla español?” The taller man was guiding him away from the square up a side street.

  “Sí, sí.” Xbalanque was beginning to have time to wonder what was happening. He knew he had never before been able to do anything such as this. Something was not right. What had that vision done to him? He was involuntarily relaxing and he felt the strength draining from him. He began to lean against the wall of a peeling pale red house.

  “Madre de Dios—we have to keep moving.” The teacher hauled at him. “They’ll bring up the artillery. You’re good with bullets, but can you fend off rockets?”

  “I don’t know.…” Xbalanque stopped to think about this for a moment.

  “We’ll figure it out later. Come on.”

  Xbalanque realized that the man was right, but it was so difficult. With the fear of death gone, he felt as though he had lost not only the new power but also his regular strength. He looked up the street toward the forested mountainside so far away above the houses. The trees w
ere safety. The soldiers would never follow them into the forest where guerrillas could be waiting to ambush them. The flat sound of a shot brought him back.

  The teacher pulled him away from the house and, keeping his hand underneath Xbalanque’s arm, steered him toward the green refuge ahead. They cut left between two small houses and moved sideways along the narrow, muddy alley that divided the clapboard and plaster buildings. Xbalanque was moving now, sliding and skidding in the slippery brown mud. Past rear gardens, the alley turned to a path leading up the steep hillside into the trees. The open ground was at least fifteen meters of utter exposure.

  He ran into his compatriot as the other man stopped and peered around the corner of the house on the left.

  “Clear.” The teacher had not relinquished his grip on Xbalanque’s arm. “Can you run?”

  “Sí.”

  After a frightened dash Xbalanque collapsed a few yards into the forest. The rain forest was thick enough to prevent their being spotted if they stayed still and quiet. They heard the soldiers arguing below until a sergeant came by and ordered them back to the square. Someone in the village would die in their place. The teacher was sweating and nervous. Xbalanque wondered if it was for their unwitting victim or his own unexpected survival. A bullet in the back was not as romantic as a firing squad.

  As they trudged deeper into the wet mountains seeking to avoid the soldiers, Xbalanque’s companion introduced himself. The teacher was Esteban Akabal, a devoted communist and freedom fighter. Xbalanque listened without comment to a long lecture on the evils of the existing government and the coming revolution. He only wondered at where Akabal found the energy to go on. When Akabal at last slowed down, panting as they worked their way up a difficult trail, Xbalanque asked him why he worked with Ladinos.

  “It is necessary to work together for the greater good. The divisions between Quiché and Ladino are created and encouraged by the repressive regime under which we labor. They are false and, once removed, will no longer hamper the worker’s natural desire to join with his fellow worker.” At a level section of the path both men paused to rest.