The Gate of Worlds, page 9
"Fine. Everything is ready. We leave tomorrow, Seven Eagle."
I gulped. "But-"
"But what?"
"I'm due to be presented at court tomorrow! Quequex is taking me to the King!"
"There is no time to wait. For months now we have worked toward setting out on Seven Eagle. I cannot postpone it."
For one uncomfortable moment I wrestled between seeing the royal court and setting out with Topiltzin. Then ambition prevailed over curiosity, and I abandoned my hope of visiting the splendor of the palace.
"I'll visit the King some other time," I said. "I'm going with you!"
EIGHT
We Overestimate Ourselves
I dined with Topiltzin that night, and dined well, but I slept in my hotel room. In between dining and sleeping I went to search for Quequex, for I could not leave Tenochtitlan without seeing him again.
In a city of nine million souls, how do you find one fleshy charlatan if you don't know where he lives? I had surprisingly little difficulty. Since he was a sorcerer by profession, I sniffed around the religious quarter first, going to the Great Pyramid and hunting out a priest. I asked for Quequex and was told, "He is with the King." So I crossed the plaza to the palace. I could not enter, of course, but I gave a slave my message, and after a while he returned to say, "Quequex will see you."
I was conducted to an inner room in one of the minor buildings of the palace complex. Quequex rose when I entered, his chins atremble, and touched his hand to my forehead in some sort of benediction. He looked solemn, but his eyes were twinkling.
Before I could speak he said, "You played well today."
"You saw me?"
"Everyone saw you. There is much talk of you, Dan. The King himself is eager to know you. You'll make your fortune here yet, boy."
I looked shamefacedly at the mosaic floor and said in a little voice, "I won't be seeing the King tomorrow."
"That devil Topiltzin! He's led you astray!"
"How…?"
"He was in the game today, wasn't he? The tall one, the one who scored the goal. Come, you can tell me. I spread no tales. That was Topiltzin!"
"Yes," I admitted miserably.
"So you saw him, against my advice. You let yourself be swayed by him. And now, instead of accepting the honor of a royal audience tomorrow, you will go off on his foolish adventure and die in the desert."
"You know of that?"
"Of course I know of that," said Quequex. "It's my business to know of everything. Topiltzin has been organizing this madness for nearly a year. To invade the peaceful farmers, to make himself a king-of course. Of course. And you've been taken in by him. I thought you had more sense."
"Quequex, I'm sorry. I didn't come to Mexico to touch hands with kings, really. I came to do the sort of thing I'll be doing with Topiltzin."
His face drooped, and the animation went out of it. "I know. You're young, and you're bold, and you're foolish, or you wouldn't have left home in the first place. And you won't listen to me. I have seen this all in your future."
"You can see the future?"
"Of course!"
"Tell me, then, what lies ahead for me."
"You would not want to know."
"Tell me, Quequex! If you can see it, tell me!"
He sighed and led me over to a marble pedestal on which stood a polished sphere of jade of such a deep green hue that it was the color of the depths of the sea, and I looked into its shining core and saw worlds within worlds.
Quequex said, "You recall what I told you of the Gate of Worlds? This sphere helps me see beyond the Gate. But one thing alone is uncertain: I do not know whether I see the real world, or some phantom world of another future line."
"What do you see of our expedition?"
"Death and disaster."
"What will happen to Topiltzin? Will he be a king?"
"He will have an early death."
"And I?"
"Wanderings and sufferings. You will see many nations. You will fall among spies and villains. You will flee from the Hesperides."
"No."
"I tell you only what I see."
"It's some other future line, I know it is!"
"If you enjoy deluding yourself, go ahead," said Quequex. "You are at the splitting-point of two lines now. If you go with Topiltzin tomorrow, one chain of events will ensue. If you remain here and meet King Moctezuma, your line will be different. Stand at the Gate of Worlds, and you can see them all. But you yourself can travel only one path, and you choose that path tomorrow."
"What else do you see?" I prodded.
"Dark hair, dark eyes, a laughing face. An ocean voyage. Violence. A scar on your flesh. A deep longing for someone you have lost. Tears and laughter."
"Is this the real world you see?"
"I cannot say. Stay in Tenochtitlan a while longer," he urged.
"I must go with Topiltzin."
"For him, a speedy grave. For you, much hardship."
"I'll risk it," I said. "Thanks for all your help, Quequex. I'll never forget you. Perhaps we'll meet again."
He looked at the jade sphere.
"We will never meet again," he said sadly, softly, and pressed my hand between his. Then he smiled. "Perhaps you will be a rich man after all, Dan Beauchamp. But it may not happen soon."
I went out from there, a considerably sobered man. But as I passed through the outer gate of the palace complex it occurred to me that if Quequex could really see the future, he might well have picked a different hotel in Chalchiuhcueyecan and thus avoided that pair of bandits. Unless, of course, his second sight told him also that he would be rescued and come to no harm. My head throbbed with bewilderment. I went to my hotel and tried to sleep.
* * *
At daybreak Sagaman Musa thundered on the door of my room.
"Wake up! Wake up! We're leaving!"
I groped to the door. "So soon? We've hours yet!"
"Plans are changed. We leave early. Come with me."
I washed and dressed and gathered my belongings together. The African had a motorcar idling outside, its boiler hissing with steam. I paid my bill. We left. Shortly we were passing out of Tenochtitlan by the western causeway.
Mists of dawn still hovered on the hill of Chapultepec as Topiltzin's little army assembled. He had six motorcars, of varying ages and conditions, and about thirty men. The army was a mixed lot: mostly Aztecs, but a sprinkling of redskins from the eastern part of the Upper Hesperides, a couple of Chibchas from the Inca province of Bogota, and a fugitive medicine man from a fishing village on the northern continent's northwest coast. And, of course, one Inca-Manco Huascar-and one African-Sagaman Musa. And an Englishman named Beauchamp. The three of us were the lieutenants, Topiltzin the general. I admitted I could drive, and Topiltzin put me in one of the cars, in command of the two Chibchas, the medicine man, and a sleepy-looking Aztec named Tezozomoc.
Our boilers were lit. Topiltzin, in the lead car, gave a signal. Our creaky, sputtering caravan surged forward, northward bound to adventure and empire.
I'll skip lightly over the details of our journey. A dreary trip it was, but why inflict that dreariness on you? We drove through unending dry heat, and I who was accustomed to autumn fog and chill did not enjoy this desert climate. The Aztec road was superb as far as it went, but it went only a hundred fifty miles north of Tenochtitlan. After that, we had a road of lesser quality for a while, which at least was paved, and finally we found ourselves on a simple dirt track studded with bits of gravel. If it had rained, we would have been wallowing in a sea of mud. But I don't think it has rained in that region of Mexico since the twelfth century, at the latest.
Dryness.
Dryness everywhere: the land burnt brown by the sun, no grass, no trees, only stunted thorny little gray-green shrubs sticking out of the sandy ground. To our left, most of the way north, a range of mighty mountains paralleled our route. To the right all was desert. In the day the heat was unbearable; at night the temperature fell fast, and we shivered and cursed. We went days at a time without seeing other human beings; then we would come upon tribes of desert barbarians, and small company they were! From them we bought such provisions as they had to offer. But we would have perished nine times over had we not brought most of our own food and drink with us from Tenochtitlan.
The motorcars were unreliable, and at least one of them broke down every day-usually in the hottest hour. Repairs were a time-consuming business. Sagaman Musa was our chief mechanic; I learned that in Africa he once had owned a factory that made cars and steam engines; but, so Manco Huascar whispered, he had become involved in unwise speculations and was bankrupted. I sympathized, remembering my father's own unhappy finances. Like Sagaman Musa, he had tried to get too rich too fast, and had lost everything instead.
Stripped down to a breechcloth, the man from Mali spent long hours underneath our cars, tinkering with them until the boiler would boil again and the engine turn. His coal-black skin could stand the devilish sun well enough; I kept covered, though, and I noticed that even the Mexicans avoided exposing themselves. It was nothing for Sagaman Musa to go practically naked as he worked. Sweat gave his body a magnificent sheen. Now and then he would punctuate his work with an astonishing stream of unintelligible African profanity, mingled with African obscenity, all in that ultra-deep opera-singer voice of his. And then he would rise, flicking sand from his skin, and say, "I think we can continue now."
I learned to handle a pistol on the trip. Topiltzin had brought guns for all, and whenever the caravan halted for repairs, which was often, he decreed a session of target practice. I had never fired small-arms before, and mistrusted them mightily, for I had heard that the powder has a nasty way of exploding in the barrel and killing the one who shoots. But that never happened with these Mexican weapons. My first few shots kicked up tufts of sand short of the target; then I got the hang of it and blazed away merrily at the tall, gnarled leafless things called cactuses, which made a satisfying plonking sound when they were hit.
Then, too, we had knife-throwing practice, for when a man's powder is wet he can still use his knife. I was the tutor here. I showed them how to grip the knife, how to stand, how to aim, how to make the muscles of the back do their work, how to throw-thwick!-and land the blade deep within its objective. I didn't mind giving such lessons, for I was easily the best knife in our company, and what man takes offense at having others admiringly watch him perform?
In the chilly evenings we sat around fires of dry desert wood and talked. I got to know my three fellow officers fairly well, though I had little to do with our common soldiers.
Topiltzin: ambitious and lazy all at once, keenly intelligent, a lively companion, very much skeptical of Aztec greatness and not at all awed by what his people had done. He had a streak of arrogance in him as broad as the Ocean Sea, but perhaps that was forgivable, he being the nephew of one of the world's greatest kings. Now and then Topiltzin treated us somewhat like servants, but it was apparently unintentional. I liked him, once I got past his surface mannerisms, the drawl, the aloofness.
Sagaman Musa: a shrewd, deep man, older than the rest of us, physically powerful, self-confident, self-contained. He talked a great deal, but said very little about himself. I knew he had come to Mexico for much the same reasons as I-to recoup lost fortunes and win power. He told many jokes, few of them fit for polite company, and talked much of world politics. I didn't mind his endless talking, because his rich, melodious voice fell easily on the ears, and when I got tired of what he was saying I merely tuned out the sense and listened to the sound as pure sound.
Manco Huascar: a mystery. He claimed to be, like Topiltzin, of royal blood. Yet Topiltzin conducted himself always as a monarch might, while Manco Huascar put on no regal airs. He never told us just how closely he was related to the Inca, or Emperor, of Peru, nor did he reveal what he had done to earn himself exile. In fact, he told us very little of anything, and did far more listening than talking. He was a pleasant enough companion, but gave nothing of himself.
We talked of what we would do when we were rulers.
"Build a palace for myself," said Topiltzin, "with a hunting park of vast size."
Said Sagaman Musa, "Gather my money until I can bathe in it, and then return to Mali and buy a lordly estate."
And Manco Huascar: "To take a hundred wives and found an Inca dynasty in the northlands."
Lastly, Dan Beauchamp, who said piously, "I will send money to my family in England, and make them rich beyond their dreams. And then I will travel around the world."
"Go to Africa first," said Sagaman Musa. "Africa is the coming land of glory. The Aztecs have had their day. The Incas are finished. The Russians, the Turks-on their way out. You will see the future arise in Mali, in Ghana, in Songhay, in the black kingdoms. It is our turn now."
Topiltzin and Manco Huascar both looked irritated at Sagaman Musa's casual dismissal of the Aztecs and Incas, but they said nothing. I spoke up: "Does anything in Africa match the splendor of Tenochtitlan?"
"Give us fifty years! We are just beginning!"
"Why have you waited so long?" asked Topiltzin. "Man was created in Africa no later than he was in Mexico or Peru."
"China was great long before Mexico. Egypt was great before China. The scepter of greatness moves from land to land. Only now is it reaching us," said Sagaman Musa.
"Then what are you doing here?" goaded Manco Huascar. "Why not stay home and wait for the scepter to arrive?"
It was the African's turn to look irritated. "I am here because I am here," he said stonily. "But listen to my words; we will live to see Peru and Mexico rot as the Turks have rotted."
"Impossible!" blazed Topiltzin. "Our empire-"
"The Turkish empire," said Sagaman Musa, "once stretched from Baghdad in the east to London in the west. What do they have now? A few wretched countries centered on Istanbul! True, they've left their language and their religion behind in Europe-the ghost of an empire. But what good does that do?" He jabbed a forefinger at Topiltzin's jade-decked chest. "The same will come to you, Aztec! Only be patient!"
Topiltzin sighed. "I have an odd feeling, Sagaman Musa, that you may be right."
* * *
The desert was still with us, now, but we had entered into our future empire. We had come to the land of the farming villages.
Here through this world of dryness ran a river from north to south, and along the river there were villages and farms. The people belonged to that redskinned race that inhabits both the Hesperides, but they were as different from the Aztecs as the Aztecs were from the Incas. These were short, rather stocky people, tending a bit toward fatness, with round faces, full cheeks, snub noses. Their villages consisted of square huts of mud, roofed with wooden beams; in some places the houses were four or five stories high, veritable apartment houses, and in others they were only one or two stories high, arranged in long rows separated by streets. The color of the houses was the color of the local mud: pink or even vermilion to the south, and varying shades of brown, gray, or tan as we proceeded northward.
It was a dusty country. The late-year wands came down like knives, scraping away the sandy topsoil and strewing it in the air. Swirling dust-devils of brown or gray or tan sand cavorted in the streets and alleys of the town, whipped across the big plazas, danced into the barely-open windows of our cars. I have never seen so much dust in my life, nor have I ever eaten so much, for the flat cornmeal cakes we were given tasted gritty with sand. (Topiltzin explained that the sand was rubbed off the soft sandstone slabs on which the native women grind their cornmeal, but I maintain that the stuff blew into the meal from the streets.)
We had a friendly reception; the locals are hospitable people by nature, and in this case they could clearly recognize a lanky Aztec prince at the head of our force. Of course, they had no way of knowing that Topiltzin was a rebel prince on his way to overthrow the Taos garrison. No doubt they thought he was bringing reinforcements or replacements for the garrison. So we were treated well in each village up the string. We stayed to the east side of the river, where the mud towns had names like Isleta, Sandia, Tesuque, Nambe, Picuris. There were just as many on the other side, but this was a mission of war, not a tourist trip, so we did not visit them.
We camped at Picuris-a handsome place in a cool valley flanked by pine-covered mountains-to plot the strategy of our attack.
If you're inclined to moralizing, you're probably telling yourself that a nice English boy like me had no business on this campaign of conquest. Wrong. Because we weren't making war against the farming folk; we were simply attacking a garrison of Aztecs.
I wouldn't have gone along with any attack on the farmers. I'm no Turk, and I won't impose rule by force. But the farmers have already accepted Aztec "protection," more or less voluntarily, and all we proposed to do was substitute one bunch of protectors for another. If anything, we'd be kinder masters than the present set. Incidentally, we'd get rich on the tribute we received, but that wasn't immoral or unethical, since we planned to give value for value by protecting the locals. There was plenty to protect them from, not only mythical Inca invasions but also the very real attacks by nomad marauders living to the north in the desert and on the great plains. The nomads had stolen horses from civilized folk, and now were breeding them and launching troublesome raids.
At our planning session, Sagaman Musa suggested that we inform the local people who we were and why we had come, and get their help in defeating the garrison. Presumably they'd be glad to rebel against the Taos soldiers.
"No," said Topiltzin. He said it in a way that left no doubt it was a final no.
"Why?" asked Sagaman Musa.
Topiltzin ticked the reasons off on his fingers. "One, because these people are poor fighters. Two, because they may not want to help us anyway. Three, because I have no spare weapons to give them, and they have none themselves. And four, because we're able to do the job without help."
