Asimov's SF, September 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Maybe she should join the Peace Corps. Could the Peace Corps use an old but jubilant school librarian?

  She grunted. She could just see herself trotting through the jungle with her suitcases of granola bars and juice boxes.

  Now, what had she been doing? She scanned the hotel room, frowning. Ah! Her bag. But as she reached for it, the floor shifted under her feet. She grabbed the bed's footboard. The light bulb overhead swung gently, as if someone had breathed on it.

  The floor steadied. A tremor, that was all.

  Pearl breathed deeply to calm her thudding heart. In old Tenochtitlan, she had read, the air echoed with whoops as those who felt a tremor warned neighbors who might not have noticed. Then parents lifted their children by the neck so the earthquake would not stunt their growth, and everyone sprinkled their faces and their belongings with water.

  Pearl stifled an impulse to rush to the bathroom and splash her face. She zipped her bag, adjusted her voluminous denim skirt, and checked to make sure the pouch she had pinned inside was invisible under the folds. Then she squared her shoulders, opened the door, and found herself nose-to-nose with Sofía, the plump-faced maid who cleaned her room each day.

  The young woman's eyes widened. Pearl detected a flicker of shock, then amusement, and her sunburned cheeks grew even hotter.

  “Buenos días, Sofía,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  The young woman inclined her head. “Buenos días, señora."

  “¿Cómo están las niñas?” Pearl asked. Sofía had brought her two little girls to the hotel one day, and Pearl had played with them while their mother cleaned the room.

  “Muy bien, gracias, señora.” Sofía beamed. “Hablan mucho de la muy amable abuela norteamericana."

  The very kind American grandmother. Pearl smiled, remembering how the girls had shrieked with laughter when she attempted to teach them the hokey-pokey. Her granddaughter, Jasmine, had loved the silly dance at their age. Now Jasmine was nearly grown and lived an ocean away in Botswana, but on their all-too-rare visits they still did the hokey-pokey together until they were breathless.

  Pearl nodded to Sofía. “Las niñas son préciosas.” Truly precious. She tried to edge past the young woman and into the hallway.

  But Sofía raised a hand to her own cheek. “Señora, ¿necesita algo?"

  “No, gracias, muy amable."

  Sofía looked concerned. But she stepped back. “Que lo pase bien, señora.” Have a good day.

  Pearl escaped down the hallway to the creaky elevator.

  Outside the hotel, high gray clouds arched across the sky, masking the perilous Mexican sun. On the sidewalks, vendors set up tables, or arranged shoes and cell phones on blankets. Intrepid children rushed into traffic at stoplights to hawk snacks. On the corner, a woman tempted passersby with a glass of fresh orange juice, a just-peeled mango. Pearl's mouth watered. One more day of bottled water and juice boxes, she told herself, just one more day.

  Her legs ached from climbing the pyramids, but she walked briskly, to fend off pickpockets—across the busy Paseo de la Reforma, through the Parque Alameda Central, past the Palacio de Bellas Artes where she had seen the Ballet Folklórico. She slowed as she passed the elegantly tiled exterior of a restaurant. She was so tired of granola bars, and she hadn't had salad or vegetables in a week. Maybe she would take a chance and eat here tonight.

  She shifted her bag to ease the knot of pain in her shoulder and walked on.

  Finally the great expanse of the Zócalo, the city's main plaza, opened before her. The National Cathedral rose at her left, the National Palace stood guard across the plaza and to the right. Between them, a side street passed the remains of the once towering and bloody Temple.

  Pearl walked into the plaza until she could glimpse the ruins. She stopped and stared. Chills pulsed through her. The Templo Mayor, center of the Aztec universe. The Spaniards had leveled most of it, and what was left had lain buried for centuries. Then not even thirty years ago, electric company workers uncovered an enormous stone relief of a dismembered Aztec goddess, and the excavation of the Temple began.

  Pearl remembered her excitement when she had learned of the discovery. She had pulled out her old class notes, pored over museum guides, and read rare books that she could get only through interlibrary loan. The artwork, the design, the scale of the Temple fascinated her. But no matter how much she read, the sacrifices continued to distress her. She knew the reasons, the myths, the stories. But they did nothing to dispel the deep disturbance in her heart: Why did so many die here? Especially the children?

  Something tugged at her skirt—she looked down at a tiny round-faced boy, his cheeks gray with dirt. Five fat fingers reached toward her, and his gaze fixed on her face as if she were a saint. Pearl caught her breath, barely stopped herself from patting his head, caressing his hair. His hand stretched insistently, his face shone.

  She dug into her purse and found a few coins and the roll. She bent and put the coins into his palm.

  His fingers closed over them, barely large enough to hold them all. The other hand snatched the roll.

  She knelt, and he took a step back.

  “¿Cómo te llamas?” she asked.

  His mouth made a little round o. She repeated the question.

  “Rubén,” he whispered. A smile lit his face. Then he ducked his head and ran. She glimpsed a double cowlick of black hair as he darted away. A double cowlick, just like her son, Philip. She knew what that had meant to the Aztecs: children with double cowlicks had been sacrificed to the god Tlaloc to bring rain.

  Her imagination obliged her with the sudden vision of a group of weeping children stumbling toward their deaths—no, they had ridden singly on litters, she reminded herself, trying to turn the vision off as if it were a disagreeable video.

  But the unwanted images haunted her as she strode briskly toward the Temple. Children, bought from their mothers, doomed by double cowlicks or unfortunate birth signs. The more they cried, the more rain would fall.

  She shook her head. The adults, the god-impersonators and warriors, all believed—presumably—that the gods required their blood. Perhaps they even welcomed a sacred manner of death.

  But the children—what could they possibly have understood? And the poor mothers. How had they borne seeing their children led off to die? From the moment she had held the already fatherless Philip in her arms, she had known that she would defend him with her life. Surely Aztec mothers had felt no differently.

  At the gate into the Temple's archaeological zone, the woman who took her entry fee offered her a guided tour in her choice of languages. Pearl declined. No living person could answer the questions that mattered to her now. She stepped onto the narrow pathway that led through the ruins, walked slowly, and let the questions come: Whose hands had cut those black and red stones? Whose had mortared them into place? Had they been proud of their work? And those snake heads that now eyed the cathedral—what sculptor had carved them? Who had painted them? Had the artists seen their work spattered with blood when those who had given their hearts to the gods rolled from the altar to the bottom of the steps?

  Pearl shook the image from her mind, turned a corner, and came upon a tour group gazing earnestly into the depths of the Temple. Two shrines rested there, open to the air after centuries in darkness. Under them, she knew, lay two more, still older, and still unexcavated. The original Temple had been enlarged six times, with each successive Temple built on top of the older ones. Now only these early shrines survived.

  Pearl looked into the double temple's heart. On the left, a reclining figure with lifted head, a chacmool, stared into the sky with white-painted eyes. His reddened hands still clutched the carved vessel that had received hearts and blood to nourish the rain god, Tlaloc. On the right, a rectangular chunk of stone marked the spot where priests had split human chests for Huitzilopochtli, Hummingbird-on-the-Left, mighty god of war and manifestation of the sun. No statue of Huitzilopochtli had survived the Conqu
est, Pearl had read, though some might lie hidden still in caves, safe from European invaders.

  Or Euro-American tourists.

  She turned from the unwavering gaze of the chacmool and studied the tour group. They ranged from toddlers to old men, not a blonde head among them. The young men in front leaned against the rail as if their old empire pulled at them from the past.

  How different for them, Pearl thought. To be able to say, my ancestors did this. My ancestors killed here—and died here. My ancestors built Tenochtitlan and conquered the Valley and met Cortés.

  Pearl swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. They had every right to stand here. But what right had she, the child of invaders, to gape at the remains of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli as if they were broken toys?

  A girl of six or so glanced at her, clapped a hand over her mouth, and buried her face in her mother's skirt. Pearl grimaced and turned away. The sunburn must be Huitzilopochtli's revenge, she decided, his and Tlaloc's. Tlaloc sent rain so that unwary visitors forgot their sunscreen, then Huitzilopochtli commanded the sun to scorch their faces through the clouds.

  She leaned toward the double shrine.

  “Okay, you got me,” she whispered. The chacmool did not respond. But a cloud of butterflies danced through her line of sight and disappeared behind the stones.

  She did not remember until she stood in the adjacent museum that dead warriors and sacrificial victims were believed to turn into butterflies and hummingbirds after bearing the sun on its rounds for four years. Was that why butterflies flitted about the old temple complex?

  Pearl impatiently dismissed the thought. Turning to the display cases, she moved from artifact to artifact, reading all the labels like a good librarian. But when her stomach began to rumble and her feet to ache, she went back outside, found a seat on a stone wall, and pulled out her sandwich. A gang of children wandered past, begging, and she gave them all her granola bars.

  Yet even as life moved around her, she thought only of death—the flowery death, the Aztecs had called it. Did consciousness end abruptly, she wondered, with the knife thrust into the chest, or did the victims watch the priests lift up their beating hearts? Did they feel their bodies begin the long roll down the Temple steps? Perhaps the old men had sat here, where she now sat, waiting to carry the dead away, dismember them, and distribute them for ritual meals.

  She looked at her sandwich, suddenly not the least bit hungry.

  “Mrs. Richards?"

  Pearl jumped.

  A paunchy man in a white shirt and straw hat, unmistakably American, leaned toward her and held out his hand. “Joe Werner. The bus to the pyramids?"

  She shook his hand. “Yes, of course.” Now she remembered—his thick wrists, the enormous black opal on his ring, the way he had overflowed his half of the bus seat. They hadn't talked much, and she had quickly outdistanced him and his wife at the ruins. Last she'd seen him, he'd been surrounded by locals trying to sell him ceramic whistles and “authentic” artifacts.

  Pearl hoped he would just say something polite and move on. But he sank onto the wall next to her and sat panting. His shirt was drenched from his underarms to his waist. She noted with satisfaction that his nose was bright red. So she wasn't the only one who'd forgotten the sunscreen.

  He smiled at her. “Sun got you, too."

  She winced. “Unfortunately."

  “That your lunch?"

  They both looked at Pearl's flattened peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. For once Pearl was glad for her sunburn; it disguised a blush handily. “I was sick last time I was in Mexico,” she said. “Really sick. So this time I brought my own food."

  “You just got to know where to eat,” Joe said. “The best hotels. Everything cooked. No ice. Never had a problem."

  “Good for you. E. coli's a nasty bug."

  Joe took off his hat and rubbed what was left of his white hair. “Yup. Plenty of E. coli in Korea. And worse. But I was young then. Gotta be more careful these days."

  Korea. So he'd fought there, like Burney. Pearl glanced away, ashamed now that she had wished herself free of him. She suppressed an impulse to ask if he had known a Burney Richards. What were the chances? Thousands had fought in Korea. But she smiled, determined to be friendly.

  “Is your wife with you?” she asked.

  Joe grunted and nodded toward some stalls. “Over there. Loves to bargain. What she came for.” He shrugged. “I came for this.” He gazed across the Temple ruins, his eyes narrowed and focused, as if he were looking for something.

  Pearl studied him, as he studied the ruins. “You came to see the Temple?"

  Joe glanced at her sideways. His mouth spread in a sheepish smile. “Yup. Boyhood dreams and all that. Always wanted to be an archaeologist. Saw those Indiana Jones movies a hundred times. But it was the Aztecs I loved. Or whatever they called themselves."

  “Mexica,” Pearl said, pronouncing the x as a soft sh, the way Señor Rueda had taught her.

  “That's it. Mexica. I guess you've done some reading."

  Pearl nodded. “I had a Spanish professor who talked about his Aztec—Mexica—ancestors. He loaned me books, taught me a little Nahuatl. So I always wanted to come to Mexico. But the first time, well—” She shrugged and grimaced. “After I got sick, I hardly made it out of the hotel. But when I learned they'd found the Temple, I knew I'd have to see it."

  Joe grinned. “Me, too. When I was a kid, I read whatever I could get hold of. Wasn't much. Some great books were getting published just when I got drafted. The ones that Spanish priest wrote."

  “The Florentine Codex?” Pearl couldn't believe that Joe had heard of it.

  “Yup. Read the first volume. Left for the Army.” Joe fanned his face with his hat.

  Pearl tried to imagine him as a retired archaeologist, and failed. “So what happened?"

  He leaned forward, propped his arms on his knees. “Don't know. Life, I guess.” He sighed. “Or death. Can't avoid it with the Aztecs. Saw way too much death in Korea. Didn't want to read about it. And she—” He glanced toward the stalls. “She was ready to get married. A normal life. After the war, that sounded good. Real good."

  Pearl found herself gazing at his wedding ring. Plain gold, the sheen softened by wear and age.

  “Are you sorry?” she asked.

  Joe put his hands on the wall and stretched out his legs, lifting the tips of his dirty white walking shoes. “Nope. Not sorry. I've had a good life. But—wistful sometimes.” He nodded. “That's it. Wistful."

  Pearl struggled to apply the soft, fragile word to the large sweaty man beside her.

  “Can't change anything now.” Joe gestured toward the Temple. “You been through?"

  Pearl nodded.

  “Amazing, huh? The wife asks what I see in them. The Aztecs. I tell her, best damn poets I ever read. But when I looked at that chacmool. Imagined the hearts in its bowl—” He shook his head as if trying to clear his brain. “Maybe it's impossible. Understanding them, I mean. But I try."

  “So do I,” Pearl said softly.

  “No blood, no world. That's what they thought, I guess.” Joe sat very still. His voice dropped to an anguished whisper. “But how could they kill the kids?"

  Pearl sat silent. She still had no words to bridge that gap between her and the people who had built the Temple. Perhaps there were none.

  Joe sat up straight and put on his hat. Then he slapped his knees. “How about lunch? A real one. Our treat."

  Pearl considered her stale sandwich. A good meal would be wonderful. And Joe had turned out to be much more interesting than she could have guessed. But she didn't need another distraction to keep her from the Sun Stone.

  “That's very nice of you,” she said. “But I'm kind of on a schedule. Last day here, things to see."

  “You're sure?"

  She nodded.

  “Well, the wife's waving at me. Must need more money.” Joe replaced his hat, pushed himself up from the wall. “Have a good trip home. Stay away f
rom that E. coli."

  Pearl smiled as she shook his hand. “Nice to see you again. Say hello to your wife for me."

  Joe lumbered off toward the stalls. Pearl watched him join his wife. He put a hand on her shoulder, and their straw hats touched as she pointed to something in a merchant's stall. A lump formed in Pearl's throat. The same scenario must have played out for centuries in this very place—the haggling between seller and buyer, man and woman, the exchange of merchandise for dollars, pesos, gold, cacao beans.

  She sighed, bit into her sandwich, and chewed mechanically as she surveyed the ruins. What was it, she wondered, that pulled so many like her, like Joe, to the Temple? Did they really hope for some epiphany of understanding? Or were they no better than voyeuristic motorists gaping at a bloody traffic accident?

  The peanut butter stuck in her throat and she coughed, then tossed the remainder of her sandwich toward a pigeon. Señor Rueda had spoken about Aztec human sacrifice in the very first class, astonishing her with his directness. Your ancestors, too, sacrificed human beings, he had said. Don't judge without trying first to understand. She had found the latter good advice, and not only in dealing with the Aztecs. But what happened when one tried and tried to understand, and couldn't? Did that deny one forever the right to pass judgment?

  She stood and brushed off her skirt, then gazed one last time across the ruins—broken stones and low tin roofs, where once had towered a magnificent structure higher than the cathedral. Little remained of the outermost walls of the Temple. But deep within, two shrines had been preserved and once more received visitors. Within them two others lay secret. On street corners, she heard men declaiming in Nahuatl. How much, after all, had the Spaniards destroyed, and how much lay underground like the oldest shrines, waiting?

  * * * *

  Pearl struggled to her feet. Heavy clothing made it hard for her to bend at the waist. She patted her stomach. What on earth was she wearing? A vest of some sort covered her chest and stomach, thick and stiff as cardboard, with the texture of heavily starched cotton. A long cloth was wrapped around her hips and tied in the front, the ends hanging to her knees. Her legs were bare. Simple sandals protected the soles of her feet.