Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

The whites were courteous, but vague. They shrugged expressive shoulders. The steamy jungles that rolled interminably inland up to the gaunt ramparts of the Siena Madre were places most assuredly not to be visited. They were impenetrable, malarial, full of ticks and yellow fever, quaking with bottomless bogs, inhabited only by poisonous snakes and fierce animals, and, said his informants expressively, the Indians would not like it.

Sam Ward grinned at this latter bit of news. He felt perfectly competent to take care of himself. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with lean, hard muscles that rippled smoothly as he walked. He had been in jungles before, and he had faced men wilder than any beast or snake. A holster flapped carelessly at his side, and it housed a six-chambered revolver. It was fully loaded and Sam had used it with effect and deadly accuracy on certain necessary occasions. There were more bullets in his cartridge belt. No, Sam Ward did not much worry about the dislike of the Indians. He had a job to do for which his employers had paid liberally, and it would be done.

“But why,” he asked carefully, “would the Indians not like it?”

His informant shrugged again. He was the mayor of San Felipe, short, stout, and a trifle asthmatic. “They do not tell, señor,” he acknowledged. “They are Mayas, descendants of a stiff-necked race. Those jungles are sacred to them. There have been men gone in there, señor, but they never come out. So--”

Sam tried the Indians. They were tall and straight and handsome in a copper-colored way. No, señor! They would not guide him into the jungle, not even for twenty dollars Mex. Why? The god Quetzal would not like it; he was asleep, biding his time.

It was then he found Juan, outcast from white and red alike, vainly trying to cadge another drink of the fiery tequila from a flinty-hearted tavern keeper. Sam set him up, promised more, mucho more, for guidance into the forbidden territory. Juan babbled confusedly in terror, but yielded after a few more drinks skillfully applied.

Then came hours of hacking through thorny jungles, hours of slogging through bogs and fighting ticks and mosquitoes. It was a hell hole. Yet there were certain areas where the trees might be planted, if only the natives could be cajoled into work. A gamble any way you looked at it, Sam thought. He was ready to turn back.

Juan saw his gesture of disappointment. He thought fast. He knew how these fool Americans paid generously to be shown bits of stone in the jungle. His drink-colored brain had lost all fear.

“Maybe I show the gracious señor where Quetzal he sleep? Maybe eet ees worth fifty dollars Mex, huh, senor?” he said hopefully.

Sam pricked up his ears. “Quetzal? Nonsense! Every guttersnipe in Central America will show you where that fabulous god sleeps, for a consideration. I’ve seen enough unnecessary stones in Yucatan to last me a lifetime. Besides, the old Mayas built no cities on the Pacific side.”

“Thees ees different,” Juan persisted. He had noted joyfully that there had been no objection to the fifty dollars, and in his greed he lost all sense of superstitious fear. “Thees—what you call it—real theeng. I listen once to priests making talk in time of full moon.”

Sam considered. The Sierra Madre loomed jagged and high a bare half dozen miles farther east. A smooth, symmetrical cone plumed lazy smoke into the air, tiredly, as though it had been doing so for incredible ages.

“Done!” Sam decided suddenly. Bananas had not worked out very well. Perhaps archaeology might. Another Chichen-Itza? “But remember—no Quetzal, no money.”

And now he stood, disappointed, staring at the smooth flanks of the volcano, and at the half overgrown, very low, plain pyramid that was almost lost in its shade. Mayan ruins, no doubt, and in a virgin territory. But he had seen hundreds of similar ruins which had yielded nothing of particular importance.

“Quetzal in there,” Juan insisted. “Please, señor, geeve me the fifty dollars Mex and let Juan go queekly. Quetzal maybe get angry.”

Sam shook his head. “No sale,” he grunted. “Show me Quetzal and I’ll double it.”

But he was talking to thin air. For the half-breed had swung suddenly on his bare heel, let out a startled yell, and dived headlong into the tangled jungles that inclosed them.

“Here, what the devil!” Sam cried and jerked at his gun.

Then he stopped, and his mouth set in a grim gash. He had seen certain gliding forms slip noiselessly through the thorn bushes and vanish. Mayas! They had been on his trail for hours, dogging his crashing progress through the jungle. Juan, he decided, would never get back to San Felipe. The odds were against Sam Ward’s return, either, he thought quietly.

Slowly, he backed up to the overgrown pyramid, gun trained for the slightest movement in the encompassing jungle. There was none. If he could climb the ruin’s crumbling, vegetation-covered slopes, he might be able to orient himself, find a way through the trackless forests.

His foot caught in a depression; he stumbled. He jerked around, nerves tense. There, at the base of the slope, practically screened from view by a mat of creepers, was a black hole. His foot had crashed through the tough lianas, burst them asunder.

Still wary, expecting every moment to hear the whistle of a blowpipe dart through the air, he bent to examine it. Luckily, he had a flashlight. He sprayed it down. The questing light illumined a passage, steeply slanting, straight, stretching fathomlessly.

Feverishly, Sam clawed away the remaining creepers. He forgot even the lurking Mayas, waiting to slay this invader of their ancient secrets. Maybe the drunken half-breed had been right, after all. For this passage was squared by human hands, and in a fashion different from those of the Yucatan pyramids. Vague familiarity tugged at his brain, exploded into sudden knowledge. He had seen passages just like this in Egypt, at the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

He knelt, sniffed at the air. It was cold and dank with the must of the underground, but it was breathable. He took a swift glance backward. There was not a rustle in the jungle, not even a bird cry. He smiled grimly. The Mayas were waiting patiently. Time was of no particular value to them. Well, let them wait. He also had plenty of time to die.

Meanwhile, the pyramid tugged at him, flooded him with eagerness. Its very shape, overgrown as it was, showed Egyptian influences. If he could prove that thesis, then the whole problem of the Mayas might be solved. If! He laughed harshly. He had no illusions. The chances of his breaking through to San Felipe were mighty slim. Then he shrugged, even as the mayor had shrugged, even as a certain Kleon had shrugged over two millenniums before. His life was in the lap of the gods. In the meantime--

He ducked quietly into the passageway. Rocks and loose dirt slithered in after him. The echoes were like muffled thunder. Carefully, he picked his way along, always down, spraying the flash before him. The walls were rough-hewn, but neatly jointed, bare of all carving. It was cold and the air somewhat foul. Which meant that there was no other exit to the tunnel to create a ventilating draft.

Down, down he went, cautiously, watchful. Behind him were the Mayas, resentful of his desecration of their secrets; before him was—what?

He found out fast enough. He was staring blankly at a solid, barring wall. The tunnel had ended abruptly. He flashed his light carefully over its surface, and his heart leaped. Very faintly, almost smudged by obliterating time, he noted thin, straight cracks. A final capping stone had been heaved into position, incredible ages before. That meant there was a chamber within, sealed by long-forgotten men.