Christopher Evans - Aztec Century

Behind the stage, there was only a chalet-like building with a black felt roof, too small to house any kind of secret installation. How could this be? Did the tunnel only generate its exit when it was activated? Or did the infiltrators from my world simply blink into existence in this one after transference? But that would allow them no means of getting back, whereas Extepan had told me Aztec agents regularly returned after their explorations.

The building was a drab municipal structure, used for storage and fenced off. I searched the surroundings thoroughly, rooting in the leaf litter under sycamore and holly trees for the smallest piece of evidence, an artefact or item inadvertently dropped, something disposable carelessly thrown away – a cigarette butt, a tzictli wrapper, a button or ring or footprint which indisputably came from my Aztec world. Anything would have convinced me. But there was nothing.

Victoria was agitated with the noise of the steel band, unsettled by the disruption and strangeness of London. It was growing dark, and I knew I had to get her home to the cottage that same day. I made one last desperate reconnoitre.

Nothing.

The fruitless visit to London undermined my confidence more than I first imagined. As the weeks turned into months and I remained ensconced in the cottage with Victoria, so our past lives seemed to me to become more like a dream, a mere figment of my own imaginings, while this world pressed its claims as the only true reality simply because we had to live in it day by day, to accept its domesticities and the sheer weight of its own normalcy. I think the aftereffects of the Aztec drugs intensified this impression, distancing me from my memories, making them seem surreal.

Perhaps that’s why I decided to write this account, to try to restore their legitimacy. Yet sometimes I wonder whether it may have the reverse effect, whether to put things down in words, make a story of them, is to make them fiction. Sometimes I imagine the Bevan of this world as a true innocent. I imagine him coming upon these pages and reading them. What would he think? That they were the deluded ramblings of a lonely woman who has to care for a debilitated sister in a part of the country where she knows no one? That I wrote them as a fantasy to divert and deliver myself from the drab realities of everyday existence? That I am, myself, mad?

Yet I hold to my beliefs, despite my growing doubts. I have to. And there are small victories, affirmations of the past which I cling to. A few days ago, while rummaging in the dressing-table drawer, I came upon a necklace secreted at the back. A bead necklace of jade and obsidian. Extepan’s betrothal gift to me.

Every evening, when my work is done and Victoria is safely in bed, I go to the window and stare down the valley. I watch and wait. Extepan hasn’t finished with us yet, I’m certain of that, otherwise he wouldn’t have provided for us. He wouldn’t have put us here, in this place, he wouldn’t have left the necklace as a remembrance, he wouldn’t have arranged for this other Bevan to be on hand. He hasn’t finished with us because he’s scarcely started with this world. The Aztecs now rule mine, but they live by conquest. I know it’s only a matter of time before they build tunnels big enough to send whole armies through, tunnels which will enable them to extend their empire by conquering another world. Here, things are different, and they will find armies aplenty to test their mettle. But none, ultimately, to resist them. In the end, their onslaught will be irresistible.

I don’t know when it will come, but I’m certain it shall. So I sit at the window each evening, turning the necklace in my hands, looking down the valley while Victoria sleeps and the house lies silent around me. I search the skies for points of light which will tell me that at last it has begun, at last it has begun again.

They will come in their shining ships to conquer and destroy, barbarians of gold and feathers and serpents of fire. There are days when I firmly believe this, days when I consider it an absurd delusion. Every evening I watch and wait with fear and longing.

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Aztec Century

Capella’s Golden Eyes

Chimeras

Icetower

In Limbo

Mortal Remains

Omega

The Insider

The Twilight Realm (writing as Christopher Carpenter)

Christopher Evans (1951–)

Born in Wales in 1951, Christopher Evans won the BSFA award in 1993 for his novel Aztec Century . In the 1980s, he co-edited three Other Edens anthologies with Robert Holdstock, and as well as the science fiction published under his own name, he is the author of a number of well received books for younger readers under the pseudonym Nathan Elliott, and a handful of film novelisations. His recent work, Omega , was his first for adults in almost a decade.

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © Christopher Evans 1993

All rights reserved.

The right of Christopher Evans to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 10255 2

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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