Asimov's SF, September 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The great rumbling noise grew nearer and louder. Pearl turned just as a dense crowd of running men overtook her. She raised the object on her arm to fend them off—a shield, she saw now, and the strange vest was padded body armor. Her strength surprised her, and she stared at her arm. The skin was smooth and taut, and revealed muscles she hadn't seen in years. She flexed the fingers on her free hand. Her arthritis was gone.

  The men pushed her forward, shouted in her ears, shoved her with their shields. She pushed back with her new, young strength. The light brightened, and the shields flashed turquoise, mother-of-pearl, quetzal-feather green. The thumps that had puzzled her earlier were simply the shields colliding.

  Pearl turned her head and craned her neck, looking for someone to talk to, someone to ask about this bizarre place. But the gray-featured warriors did not meet her eyes—not until her gaze fell upon a face that stunned her, eyes that looked into hers, narrowed, then brightened in recognition.

  The man smiled.

  "Señor Rueda?” she whispered.

  * * * *

  As in most museums, books and souvenirs crowded the entrance to the Museo Nacional de Antropología, and the thing Pearl most wanted to see stood farthest away. Mexico had a long history—three miles of exhibits, the guidebook said—and most of it stood between her and the Sun Stone. She sighed. She could have spent her whole week here. Just as well that she had saved the museum for last.

  Pearl shouldered her bag and trudged through centuries and cultures. In the Oaxaca gallery she paused to study some Zapotec deities: the Goddess of the Thirteen Serpents, hands crossed on her breast, gaze aimed piously skyward. A grimacing Old God. Xipe Totec, his face masked by a flayed skin. The Aztecs, she knew, had also worshipped Our Lord the Flayed One. Some had worn human skins for an entire month, until they stank like dogs.

  Pearl's skin tingled with sympathetic pain. She hurried on.

  Finally, in a darkened room, the illuminated ten-foot disk of the Sun Stone loomed before her, staring across a broad platform. She paused, feeling the need to mark the occasion—to touch holy water, genuflect, make an offering. After a moment she walked slowly to a convenient bench, sat down, and stowed her bag between her feet.

  I'm here. I made it, Señor Rueda.

  She took a deep breath and gazed into the face at the Stone's center. It was round and grim, compassionless, with a flint knife for a tongue, and flanked by clawed fists that clutched human hearts. Pearl's books had not agreed on the identity of the face. Perhaps it was the sun disk, perhaps the earth monster. But no one disputed the identity of the symbol in which the face rested: ollin, movement, a reminder that the present world, the fifth sun, would end in the shaking of the earth.

  She studied the twenty signs that circled ollin and the face, trying to identify the sacred day-names, rabbit and dog and reed and death and the others. But age had softened the carvings and she could not match name and figure. She would have to look them up later, she supposed, to learn after the fact what she had seen. Perhaps life was the same way. Not until life was over—or nearly so—could one see it for what it was.

  Weariness settled over her. She let her eyes close.

  Hushed museum voices and the scuffle of slow footsteps soothed her. Her sore muscles relaxed and her mind calmed. Surely, she thought, the other visitors understood the great paradox of the Aztecs no better than she: how could so sophisticated a people, lovers of poetry and children, shed so much blood?

  For they had not been barbarians. Barbarians could not have turned a swamp into a city, or created the Sun Stone. Barbarians would not have told their children: Life is full of pain and suffering. But you are precious as turquoise stones and quetzal feathers. Live cleanly. Work hard. Avoid drunkenness and bad company. Be faithful to your spouse and respect your elders. Parents of any age and place might offer such advice to their children.

  But these parents had also drenched themselves in death—bloody, sharp-scented, sacrificial death.

  Pearl shook her head. She knew the arguments for the ceremonies, the justifications: that the Aztec rulers used their religion as an excuse to kill people, to gain power through terror; or, that the rulers and people alike were helpless victims of their imaginary but bloodthirsty gods.

  No, Pearl thought. Surely there was something more. Something was missing from her understanding.

  She studied the Stone as she pondered once again the myth that described the creation of the fifth sun. A pitiful, sore-covered god called Nanahuatzin threw himself into a fire at Teotihuacan, after all the other gods refused to immolate themselves. Nanahuatzin was transformed into the sun, but he hadn't enough strength to rise into the sky. He sat impotent on the horizon, until one by one the other gods sacrificed themselves. And not willingly, either—they whined and stalled and even tried to shoot down the newly born sun to avoid their fate. But only their sacrifice could set the sun in motion.

  Pearl caught her breath. The gods—even the gods had had no choice. Was that the missing piece? Her own culture conceived of God as almighty, omnipotent, able to arrange the universe as he pleased. But in the world of the Aztecs, even the gods had to submit to the cosmic order, an order that required human death for its survival—a requirement not without logic, Pearl realized. Every day, her own survival depended on eating plants and animals that died to nourish her. She, like the gods, consumed the dead. What if the universe were a living thing, requiring similar nourishment, but on a much grander scale? What if it survived only on human blood and tears?

  Pearl felt cold, right down to her bones. If the Aztecs had doubted, if they had even suspected themselves to have a choice, then they had committed the cruelest acts imaginable. But if they had truly believed, had known, that the cosmos needed their sacrifices, she could see in them only a tragic determination.

  She closed her eyes once more, tried to imagine herself into that mythic world, to know the universe as a living being dependent on human blood for food, on children's tears for rain. She became dizzy with the effort, but all she sensed was a vast emptiness.

  A low, resonant voice interrupted her musings. She opened her eyes and saw a young man standing on the platform with one hand on the Stone. His other hand held a small book, and he read aloud, his voice subdued but emphatic, his face intense. Pearl thought she recognized the sound of Nahuatl.

  He snapped the book shut and vanished into the shadows without looking up. Pearl stared after him. So Señor Rueda had not been the only one to perform that strange ritual. What could it possibly mean?

  Pearl scanned the galleries for anyone who might see her. But she found only glass cases and the blind eyes of stone gods. She was alone with the Sun Stone.

  To touch the Sun Stone is a special thing.

  She glanced around once more. She imagined her embarrassment should she be caught, a librarian of all people, breaking museum rules. Then she grabbed her purse, hurried across the floor, stepped onto the platform, and lifted her trembling hand to the Sun Stone.

  The Stone was cool and rough, pitted with age. She let her fingertips explore the crevices, puzzle out a decorative shape as if reading Braille. The stone warmed under her hand, seemed to soften under her touch. She whispered: Cuix oc nelli nemohua in tlalticpac?

  The world shuddered to a halt. All sound and movement stilled, as if the earth paused between breaths. Pearl tried to step away and couldn't. For a moment she panicked. Then her thoughts turned some strange corner in her mind. Pain lanced her heart, a desperate hunger filled her belly, and she knew, she felt with her whole body, the terrible dependence of the Aztec world on human ritual, the horrific cost of creation. She saw in her mind's eye the apocalypse that would descend if the sacrifices ended, the world shaken into dust by earthquakes. No choice. Truly, they had had no choice. She shook, then wept, and the gods wept with her.

  Approaching voices startled her. The world seemed to take a breath, to resume its movement. She jerked her hand away, wiped her tears, stepped back from the
Sun Stone. A Mexican family gathered to look at the Stone, four children with their mother and father. The adults were studying the guidebook, but the children stared at Pearl. She turned as casually as she could and pretended to look at another exhibit. When the family moved into another gallery, she fled the museum, unable to bear any longer the gaze of the Aztec gods.

  Out in Chapultepec Park, well away from the museum, Pearl lowered herself onto an empty bench. Stop trembling, she told herself. Your imagination, that's all it was. Your overly active imagination.

  But even her imagination wasn't usually that vivid. Had it been a dream, then? she wondered. Or even a hallucination? She was tired, that was obvious, too tired to think clearly, to trust her senses. Something had happened. But what?

  She closed her eyes and let her thoughts approach the Stone again, trying to recover the experience, the way she could sometimes remember a dream if she sat very still. But as her mind brushed up against that terrible pain and hunger, a deep anguish awakened in her, and she groaned. Tears flowed from under her eyelids and poured down her cheeks. She wrapped her arms around herself, bit her lip, and tried to hold the tears back. So many deaths. How had one people willingly caused—and borne—so many deaths?

  “¿Señora?” Something soft touched her knee. Pearl opened her eyes and saw a small brown hand, dirty fingernails bitten to the quick. She looked up into a girl's enormous dark eyes. The child lifted her hand, as if to touch Pearl's face.

  “¿Le duele tanto la cara?” she said in a piping voice. “¿O es que alguien se ha muerto?"

  Pearl made herself smile. No, she told the girl, her face didn't hurt much, and no one had died. Then she added in English, mostly to herself, “I'm just an old woman poking about in things I shouldn't. I'll be fine."

  The girl tilted her head. Pearl smiled again. The girl smiled back, then took off before Pearl could offer her anything. The loose soles of her sneakers slapped on the concrete as she ran.

  Pearl felt an urge to call out, to stop her. But what would she say, what would she do? She couldn't take the child home with her. And even if she could, she would leave many behind.

  She thought of the Aztec children. They, at least, had been cherished, even—perhaps especially—those who had been sacrificed, for they gave their lives to ensure the survival of their people. These street children—who cherished them? Who told them that they were as precious as turquoise and quetzal feathers?

  She sat for a moment to gather herself, feeling her helplessness in the face of so much need, so much pain past and present. Finally she took a bottle from her purse, poured some water into her palm, and splashed her face. For the first time since she'd arrived in Mexico, she felt every inch her age. Her feet hurt, her joints ached, and the wrinkles in her face burned. She should go back to her room, take a nap, have some dinner. In the morning she would board the plane and return to the twenty-first century and her little house in Ohio. Let someone else try to understand the Aztecs now, she thought. She had understood all she could bear.

  Pearl pushed herself to her feet and wearily crossed the park. As she approached the Metro stop, yet another street child stepped into her path, hand outstretched. The boy was nearly as tall as she, dusty-faced, lean and wary.

  “Señora, por favor."

  Pearl reached into her purse and pulled out her last juice box. Then she thought better of it, and dug into her hidden skirt pocket, pulling out a few bills. They were more than she usually gave, but she held them out. “Que Dios te bendiga,” she said softly. God bless you.

  The boy's eyes grew wide. He snatched the money and ran.

  * * * *

  Señor Rueda's smile broadened. He looked young, as young as when he had patiently taught Pearl the difference between ser and estar, to be and to be.

  "One-vulture,” he said gently, as if correcting a slight pronunciation fault.

  "What?"

  He deflected one of the gray soldiers with his shield, and raised his voice. “Here we are known by the signs under which we were born. My birth sign is one-vulture. Ce-cozcaquauhtli. A good sign, auguring long life."

  "How old were you?” Pearl asked.

  "Eighty-four."

  "What happened?"

  "Car accident. The sun was in my eyes.” He nodded toward the ever-brightening dawn. Suddenly Pearl understood. Huitzilopochtli, Hummingbird-on-the-Left. The god had killed Señor Rueda, and her professor had passed into the afterworld of the sacrificed Aztec warrior.

  And so, somehow, had she.

  * * * *

  It was deep winter, past Christmas, and the sunburn had long since faded when Pearl's hairdresser, Phyllis, gently parted her hair, rubbed her scalp lightly with a finger, frowned (as Pearl watched in the mirror), and said, “I don't remember this mole. It looks funny. Maybe you should have somebody look at it."

  “It doesn't hurt,” Pearl said.

  “Sometimes they don't."

  Then Pearl remembered Mexico, the sunburn, and the Sun Stone. Her stomach knotted, but she mustered a smile for Phyllis. “Thanks,” she said. “I'll have it checked."

  When she got home she used a hand mirror to peer at the top of her head. A bluish lesion spread across her part. She called Dr. Moulton and made an appointment. Then she turned on her computer to research her newest concern, reading long into the night.

  “Hmph,” was all Dr. Moulton said at first, when she finally sat before him in a tiny examination room that smelled of latex and disinfectant. Pearl rolled her eyes. Was he going to scold her now for bothering him with something not worth worrying about? But he dug into a drawer for a magnifying glass. She felt his beard against her hair as he leaned closer. Then, in a gentler voice, he said, “Yes, I think that should come off, and soon. I'm going to send you to a dermatologist. Dr. Anderson. He looks like a kid, but he's very good."

  He startled her by patting her on the shoulder. So—it was something. But she had already guessed as much.

  The following week Dr. Anderson removed the mole under local anesthetic. He did indeed look like a shiny-faced kid, a Little League coach rather than a doctor. Pearl calculated his age from the dates on his diplomas and concluded he was nearly young enough to be her grandson. He remained carefully professional throughout her appointment, refusing to speculate on whether the mole was malignant or benign, but assuring her that the lab work would be done as soon as possible. When the anesthetic wore off her scalp hurt like hell.

  A few days after the excision he called her. Could she come in? That afternoon was fine.

  When Pearl arrived he greeted her without smiling and led her into his office. She sat next to his desk in a soft, upholstered chair and waited. He opened her folder and studied the page on top. Pearl leaned forward a little, but he shut the folder before she could decipher any of the contents. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together.

  Poor thing, Pearl thought. He can't have had much practice telling people they may die. She wanted to pat his arm. Instead, she lifted her chin. “Give it to me straight. How bad is it?"

  “It's hard to say for sure,” he replied cautiously. “The tumor was a malignant melanoma, yes."

  “What kind of melanoma?"

  His eyebrows drew together and he gave her a curious, doubting glance. “What kind?"

  “Nodular? Superficial spreading? Lentigo maligna?"

  “Oh. I see.” He looked at the floor. She could almost hear him think, Goddamned Internet. But when he raised his eyes she saw a flicker of amusement as well as concern. “You've done some research,” he said.

  “I'm a librarian."

  “Ah.” He smiled then, a full, friendly smile, and Pearl found herself suddenly, irrationally angry with him for smiling. “My Aunt Sue is a librarian,” he said. “She used to send me book reviews. Now she sends me website addresses. Lots of them.” Then the smile vanished, replaced by a practiced, professional concern. “As long as it doesn't distress you too much, read what you like. But you know that some sou
rces are more reliable than others."

  “Of course.” Pearl heard her own voice, curt and impatient, and knew for the first time how truly frightened she was. But she couldn't stop herself from going on. “What do you think? That I'm going to run off to Mexico for some so-called miracle cure? Not likely."

  One corner of Dr. Anderson's mouth twitched. Pearl could not tell if he was amused or annoyed.

  “If you are interested in alternative medicine,” he said, “I might be able to suggest something that would complement the standard treatments. But it's far too early to—"

  “I'm not interested.” Pearl took a breath and lowered her voice to keep it from quavering. “Just tell me what I have. And how long."

  The chair squeaked as Dr. Anderson leaned forward. “You have a nodular melanoma,” he said.

  “Invasive?"

  “Pretty deep. I believe I got everything that was on your scalp, but we'll need to do a lymph node dissection."

  “And if that's positive?"

  “We'll consider that when we come to it."

  “But don't nodular melanomas often metastasize early?"

  He sighed, and Pearl prepared herself to reject the well-meant but false reassurance that was surely coming. But he just nodded.

  The questions continued to spill out of her. “The prognosis for a melanoma on the scalp is poorer than for some other locations, right?"

  “Sometimes. Scalp, hands, feet. Mucous membranes."

  “So you're not optimistic?"

  He rubbed his chin and stared intently at some point behind her. “It's far too early to say. I think metastasis is likely, at least to the lymph nodes. But only tests will determine that. Have you had any other symptoms? Weight loss? Balance problems? Headaches? Pain?"

  “No."

  Pearl could see that Dr. Anderson thought she had answered too quickly. But he pulled out a pad of paper and scribbled on it. “My receptionist will schedule your tests. And remember what I said about your reading. It's fine as long as you watch your sources and don't become distressed. But don't spend all your spare time on it."