robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain

by Robert N. Charrette

  The path, where there was a path, grew narrower and more treacherous. The climb became steeper and their pace slowed. Each time she looked back, Duncan's red-and-white HiClimber was farther and farther behind. One by one, Nak-aguchi's drones in their matching blue Rocker™ climbing suits passed him. An hour into the climb, he was trailing the entire group. Hagen, on the other hand, proved to be a superb climber, passing the other aides easily. He slowed his pace as he came up behind her.

  "Nice suit," he said. He wore one of the blue Rocker suits, but she noted that his harness held some nonstandard accessories. "How'd you find out?"

  "I've played these sorts of games before."

  "I'll remember." He dropped back to leave her climbing room.

  The Mexican angled around to the shadowed side of the mountain, leading the troop away from the warming sun. Almost immediately after she stepped out of the sun's direct rays, Pamela felt a warmth spreading from her fanny pack as the HiClimber's heater kicked in. It was cold up here, and only the HiClimber was keeping her from noticing just how cold.

  The slope here was gentler, easier to take, but they still climbed for another half hour. If the trip down took as long as going up, she doubted they'd be back to the camp until well after dark.

  Ahead she could see Azana sauntering across a high meadow. By the time she reached it, the Mexican was essaying an almost vertical climb past an old rockfall. Nakaguchi was close on his tail. Azana reached the top of the sheer stretch, clambered over a mound of small, loose rocks, and seemed to disappear into the mountainside. Nakaguchi dodged a couple of fragments that the Mexican had dislodged and followed, disappearing as well. Pamela trotted across the meadow and scanned the rock above her. No sign of them. She started up. As she neared the top of the old fall, she saw how the pile of small stones had kept her from seeing a small dark opening in the rock face. There was a cave.

  She managed to get over the piled rocks without kicking any down on Hagen, who had just reached the base of the fall. Nakaguchi hadn't shown such consideration for her.

  The cave entrance was barely a meter high. Piled stones stood in the corners of the opening, suggesting a breached wall. She guessed that the cairn over which she clambered had been made from stones that had once walled over the opening. She crawled into the darkness to join Azaiia and Nakaguchi. There was more room inside, enough to stand up. She did, brushing dust from the knees of her HiClimber. Azana was just turning on a battery lantern.

  The light reflected from the walls in thousands of tiny sparkles from the minerals embedded in the stone, revealing a cramped space, barely bigger than a public washroom. It smelled of dust. Scattered about the floor were more stones, many encrusted with what looked like hardened mud. Adobe? More stones still embedded in an earthen matrix were part of a second wall still partially closing a narrow cleft in the far wall; there was enough debris to have completely filled the gap. The lantern's light didn't reveal anything beyond the partial wall; she could only see deep darkness through the narrow slit.

  "This is where the offerings were?" Nakaguchi asked.

  Azana nodded.

  Nakaguchi examined a mud-encrusted rock. "The second wall was intact?"

  "As I told you, patron. Solid and undisturbed. Only the ritual holes."

  Stone grated outside the chamber and Azana jumped. Ha-gen's short, broad shape appeared in the entrance. He stepped inside, further crowding them, and swept the chamber with his gaze, a disapproving frown on his face. He picked up one of the encrusted stones and poked at the hardened mud. His frown grew deeper.

  "Well, Mr. Hagen?" Nakaguchi asked.

  "Looks plausible," he declared. "Been inside?"

  "Not yet."

  "It'll be awhile before the others get up here."

  Nakaguchi nodded. "Show me the inner chamber," he ordered Azana.

  Azana edged past him, the lantern throwing strange shadows on the rough walls of the chamber. They had to squeeze sideways to move through the opening into the mountain. Azana led them through the darkness, his lantern the sole, feeble source of light. Pamela didn't like the idea of following Nakaguchi into the darkness, but it was preferable to staying behind and waiting for him to come back and tell her secondhand what he found; he was not exactly a reliable source. Pamela slid down the goggles of her helmet and dialed up the light amplification circuits. It helped some. The lantern now provided enough illumination for her to see where she was going. She was careful not to look directly at the lantern.

  When the sounds of Azana's passage began to echo, she knew they'd come to a less closed-in area. She was relieved. New light blossomed as the Mexican turned on a second lantern. Pamela quickly slipped off the goggles; there was no need to be blinded.

  Azana had led them to a nearly circular chamber almost ten meters across. The walls had been smoothed by human hands and plastered over. They were covered in paintings and glyphs that looked a lot like some of the decorations she'd seen in Mexico City. The paintings were old; a glasslike sheen of calcite lay over some of them where mineral-bearing water had seeped from the rock. It was clear from the tools lying about that some work had recently been done to uncover one of the more obscured paintings.

  "They look Aztec," she said.

  "They are," Nakaguchi answered absently. He seemed absorbed in examining a particularly convoluted glyph. Hagen took up a lantern and stood by his shoulder, grumbling.

  Pamela didn't understand. What were Aztec paintings doing here? "Wasn't this Inca territory?"

  "As much as it was any tribe's," Hagen said.

  "What do you mean by that?" she asked him, but the little man ignored her.

  Nakaguchi abandoned the glyph and moved to a door-sized patch of almost undecorated wall. A dark circle was centered in it about ninety centimeters from the floor and there were three smaller dark circles at the bottom, touching the floor.

  Nakaguchi ran his fingers along the wall's surface and then across—no, into—the central dark circle, revealing it to be a hollow.

  "It is intact," he said dreamily. "The oracle hole. The paths of the lesser life. Everything."

  "As I told you, patron. The workers will not break the wall. Olivares has told them this is a bad place, great magic."

  "What would this Olivares know about it?"

  "The workers, they say he is a sorcerer."

  "A what?" Pamela asked. She didn't believe she had heard correctly.

  "A sorcerer," Azana repeated.

  Two years ago she would have laughed in the man's face. Now, she held her tongue.

  "And is he a sorcerer?" Nakaguchi asked.

  "I would not know, patron."

  Hagen looked up from the glyph he'd been studying. "Dynamite the cave," he said abruptly.

  Nakaguchi snorted. "Don't be ridiculous."

  Pointing at the glyphs, Hagen asked, "Can't you read it?"

  "Well enough."

  Pamela was surprised. "What does it say?"

  "It says that this is the place where the feathered serpent awaits death," Nakaguchi replied.

  "Dynamite the cave," Hagen repeated, this time more insistently.

  "No," Nakaguchi snapped.

  Pamela found the split between the two interesting.

  In a more reasonable tone, Nakaguchi continued. "If it hadn't been for your help, we would never have found this cave. Now you want to destroy it?"

  Hagen glared for a moment, jaw working beneath his beard. "I thought you understood the danger that the sleepers pose."

  "I understand the power they offer."

  "You're a fool."

  "And you're in danger of losing your job."

  Perhaps with you, Nakaguchi. Pamela was beginning to see Hagen as a potential ally. But she needed a lot more information. "I asked once before, Nakaguchi. Are you ready yet to tell me who you think this sleeper is?"

  "I thought I knew before. Now I am sure."

  "And he is?"

  "The Mayans called him Kukulcan. The Guatemalans cal
led him Gugumatz. I suppose he is best known by his Aztec name, Quetzoucoatl. Their languages were different, but to all of them, he was the feathered serpent."

  "Quetzoucoatl?" Pamela couldn't quite believe it. These sleepers were supposed to be men. Wasn't Quetzoucoatl a god?

  "Surely you've had some contact with the legend?"

  She had heard stories, but it had been a long time ago. Legends about gods were things of her childhood, long abandoned.

  Nakaguchi didn't wait for her response.

  "Quetzoucoatl was quite influential in the Central American region, though he wasn't a native. He and his companions arrived by ship from a place far to the east. Since he was black-skinned, you should have a good idea of where he actually came from, in a continental way, at least. He was a being with godlike powers who brought an age of peace and plenty. The primitives were saddened when he announced that he could not remain among them, but they were cheered when he said that he would return. They waited for him, making his doings into myth and always remembering his promise to return. When the Spaniards came, the Aztec coast watchers mistook the shining armor of the soon-to-be conquistadors as his sign, their coming a fulfillment of the prophecy of his return. They were wrong, of course."

  Pamela knew how wrong the Aztecs had been. Mexico still groaned under the legacy of that fatal error.

  Nakaguchi shrugged. "And, of course, he is not a god. Godhood, for him, was merely the inspired awe of a primitive people who had no true understanding of his nature."

  Had Pamela heard correctly? "You said is. Is not a god."

  "Of course I used the present tense, Ms. Martinez." Nakaguchi turned back to the undecorated wall and ran his fingers along the edge of the hollow. "Quetzoucoatl is not dead. He merely sleeps, awaiting the time of his return."

  Nakaguchi detached a climbing hammer from his belt. Hagen stepped up to him and, disregarding all corporate etiquette, laid a hand on Nakaguchi's arm.

  "If you won't destroy it, at least leave it be."

  "Take your hand away," Nakaguchi said coldly.

  Nakaguchi's voice was hard as steel and sharp as broken glass. Hagen removed his hand and took a step back. Hefting the hammer in his hand, Nakaguchi stared at Hagen until the small man took another step backward.

  Nakaguchi turned back to the wall. Thrusting tool and hand into the darkness of the central aperture, he twisted his wrist to set the alloy spike against some unseen resistance. He tugged. A spidery crack ran from the edge of the hole. Nakaguchi tugged again. Powdery adobe exploded out as a stone shifted in the wall. Nakaguchi wrenched until he ripped the stone free from the wall to fall behind him. Attacking the wall again, he jerked and yanked until he tore another stone free, and another, until he had opened a half-meter hole. He peered through.

  "Azana, the lantern!"

  The Mexican stepped up. Pamela crowded closer as well. She had come this far to be in on the uncovering; she wanted to see. Azana shoved the lantern partially into the opening. Light speared into the space beyond, to be reflected in a dazzle of ruddy glints from something within the darkness. Pamela gasped when she realized she was seeing a golden face, serene and perfectly composed. Turquoise and emerald studded a headband from which a riot of plumage emerged. The regal face did not so much as twitch or lift an eyelid.

  "Quetzoucoatl!" Azana gasped.

  The Mexican jerked back and dropped the lantern, but Hagen caught it before it struck the floor.

  Nakaguchi attacked the wall with a will, ripping and tearing until he had removed enough of the stones to squeeze through. Pamela and Hagen exchanged worried glances. Nakaguchi's hand thrust back from the other side.

  "The lantern!" he shouted. "The lantern!"

  Hagen handed it to him, then squeezed through the gap himself. Pamela had no desire to meet a god, but neither did she want to remain behind with the cowering Azana. Wondering what sort of fool she was being, she slipped through the opening.

  Like the chamber on the other side of the wall, this one was plastered and painted. Nakaguchi stood in the center, bowing to the seated figure and throne that dominated the small chamber.

  The sleeper gave no sign of awareness.

  Pamela realized why: the gold visage was not a face but a mask. A death mask? She looked closer. The figure on the throne appeared to be enfolded in a cloak of feathers. Appropriate for Quetzoucoatl. Where the figure's limbs emerged from the covering they were sticklike and shrunken, like a mummy's. Was Nakaguchi wrong? Was his sleeper just another royal mummy? Such a find would have archaeological significance, but it was hardly the sort of thing the Charybdis Project sought.

  But it was the sort of answer Pamela preferred when told an ancient god had just been rediscovered.

  "The museums will be pleased with your find," she told him.

  "He is not for the museums."

  "Open your eyes, Nakaguchi. It's just a goddamn mummy!"

  Nakaguchi continued to stare at the mummy. "Open your own eyes, Martinez."

  Pamela looked more closely at the withered shell of the ancient Indian ruler. The mask was magnificent, a work of art. The cloak would have once been magnificent and might be again after the restorer removed the dust of the centuries. This ancient king must have been a powerful ruler to rate such an elaborate robe; it fell in heaping folds around his legs. Too bad the feathers there had become so dirty.

  The feathers there?

  She looked closer. What she had assumed were feathers were not feathers at all, but a pile of insect husks tumbled in a talus slope from the throne. Tiny dry corpses. Pale bones of small animals lay among the empty shells, tumbled in piles on the floor around the throne, and lay in windrows against the arms of the mummy, white against the body's dark skin.

  A breeze puffed into the chamber, stirring the dust. The feathers of the crown rustled. Did that masked head nod? Or was it a trick of the light and the wind?

  Nakaguchi turned to them.

  "Gentleman and madam, may I present you to the Lord of Wind. His will be a wind of change, and it will fill our sails as we set our prows to the future."

  The stirring air felt very, very cold to Pamela.

  He became aware of others, nearby.

  Time had passed.

  Much time.

  How much he did not know.

  He was weak.

  Very weak.

  Their auras burned like distant fires in the night. Beckoning him. He reached out, all too aware of his weakness. He was eager, hungry. He—

  Stopped.

  The aura of the nearest one was different. He was not sure at first why, then he understood.

  This one bore the sign.

  The need would remain unfulfilled. For the moment. The hunger was strong, but his will was stronger. He had waited so long.

  He could wait awhile longer.

  Officer Shirley Hamett swung open the door of her GM Urban Patroller™ and looked around before she got out. Things didn't look any better outside the tinted Perspex windows. Something had gone down since she passed by earlier on her patrol. Whatever had happened had left the area looking more trashed than normal for this stretch of urban blight. A fire burned in a pile of trash spilling out of the alley behind the old Mallon Brothers warehouse. The fire made a mystery of the alley; the glitched thermal circuits on her Tsurei Com-Eye helmet couldn't handle it. The starlight circuit wasn't much better; at least not from this angle.

  She got out of the car and listened.

  Quiet. The streets were quiet and empty. The lack of streetlife was the strongest sign that there had been something going on down here. The only activity she could see was the crackling trash fire. So where was the fight that had been reported?

  "This is one-Zulu-twelve," she said into her helmet mike. "I'm on scene at Harris and Lovatt. It's quiet here. Over."

  "Zzzchk Zulu crkkkk. Kckckzz Dispatch. We've got no picture. Bzzzz."

  What a surprise. Seemed like the damned Tsurei ComEye helmets didn't transmit more often th
an they did. So much for milspec quality. She knew that it didn't help that she was down by the old rail yards, which put a lot of buildings between her and the tower, but that didn't ease her anger. The damned corps thought that they could slough off any old junk on the cops just because they worked for the government, and the government didn't care what it bought so long as the corps paid their nice fat kickbacks. And the media said that cops were corrupt.

  Of course, it also didn't help that Fumble Freer was on the dispatch console. Freer was a techno disaster; he'd probably spilled coffee on the keyboard again or cross-linked his entertainment program to the report channels and fritzed out the system.

  "This is one-Zulu-twelve. Trying alternate channels. Let me know if you get something."

  "ZzzcMzz-twelve. Still noth-ikkkk crkkkk."

  Great. Why couldn't they have a satellite-laser link like she'd heard they had down in the Bait-Wash sprawl? Probably 'cause it wasn't the kind of half-assed solution that the New England Cooperative's oh-so-wise politicians favored.

  Bitching didn't get the job done. "Dispatch, I'm gonna take a look around and check it out."

  "Nkatck, one-Zulu-twelve. Bzz-chratckkk. KKanzz [pop] xck backup on the way."

  "Say again, Dispatch. What was that about backup?"

  Fuzz and static.

  That was the way of it. Backup was people and things you could rely on. You had to work with what you could count on; Freer's promises of more cars weren't something a smart officer relied on. If she waited and the promised backup didn't show, she would be the one explaining why she'd spent time unproductively. The brass upstairs didn't like timid officers, especially timid female officers.

  Shirley switched her commo to her car's channel. "Hey, partner, give me some light down here. High beams."

  Her link with the Patroller's dogbrain was good; she'd made sure of that. The rent-a-nerd's fee had come out of her pocket, but it was money well spent.