Harry Harrison: Captive Universe

Just below the ledge Chimal stopped to rest with his toes wedged into a crack. There was an overhang above him and there seemed to be no way around it. Searching the blackness of stone against the stars his glance went over the valley and he shuddered and pressed himself against the cliff: he had not realized before how high he had climbed. Stretching away below was the dark floor of the valley with his village of Quilapa, then the deep cut of the river beyond. He could even make out the other village of Zaachila and the far wall of the canyon. This was taboo — Coatlicue walked the river at night and the sight alone of her twin serpent heads would instantly kill you and send you to the underworld. He shuddered and turned his face to the stone. Hard rock, cold air, space all around him, loneliness that possessed him.

There was no way to know how long he hung like that, some minutes surely because his toes were numb where they were wedged into the crevice. All he wanted to do now was to return safely to the ground, so impossibly distant below, and only the wavering flame of his anger kept him from doing this. He would go down, but first he would see how far the overhang ran. If he could not pass it he would have to return, and he would have done his best to reach the ledge. Working his way around a rough spire he saw that the overhang did run the length of the ledge — but an immense bite had been taken from the lip. At some time in the past a falling boulder must have shattered it. There was a way up. With scratching fingers he hauled himself up the slope until his head came above the level of the ledge.

Something black hurtled at him, buffeting his head, washing him in a foul and dusty smell. A spasm of unreasoning fear clamped his hands onto the rock or he would have fallen, then the blackness was gone and a great vulture flapped his way unsteadily out into the darkness. Chimal laughed out loud. There was nothing here to be frightened of, he had reached the right spot and had disturbed the bird that must have been perched up here, that was all. He pulled himself onto the ledge and stood up. The moon would be rising soon, and was already glowing on a high band of clouds in the east, lighting the sky and blotting out the stars there. The ledge was clear before him, empty of any other vultures, although it was foul with their droppings. There was little else here of any interest, other than the black opening of a cave in the rising wall of rock before him. He shuffled toward it, but there was nothing to be seen in the blackness of its depths: he stopped at the dark entrance and could force himself to go no further. What could possibly be in it? It would not be long before the moon rose and he might see better then. He would wait.

It was cold this high up, exposed to the wind, but he took no notice. The sky was growing lighter every moment and grayness seeped into the cave, further and further from the entrance. When at last the moonlight shone full into it he felt betrayed. There was nothing here to see. The cave wasn’t a cave after all, just a deep gouge in the face of the cliff that ended no more than two men’s lengths inside the opening. There was just rock, solid rock, with what appeared to be more rocks on the stony floor. He pushed his foot at the nearest one and it moved squashily away from him. This was no rock — what could it possibly be? He bent to pick it up and his fingers told him what it was at the same instant his nose identified it.

Meat.

Horror drove him back and almost over the edge to his death. He stopped, at the very brink, trembling and wiping his hand over and over again on the stone and gravel.

Meat. Flesh. And he had actually touched it, a piece over a foot, almost two feet in length, and as thick as his hand was long. On feast days, he had eaten meat and had watched his mother prepare it. Fish, or small birds caught in a net, or the best of all, guajolote, the turkey with the sweet white meat, cooked in strips and laid on the mashed beans and tortillas. But how big was the biggest piece of meat from the biggest bird? There was only one creature from which pieces of flesh this big could have been wrenched.

Man.

It was a wonder he did not keep going to his death when he slid over the edge of the cliff, but his young fingers caught of their own accord and his toes dug in and he climbed downward. He had no memory of the descent. The stream of his thoughts broke into drops like water when he remembered what he had seen. Meat, men, sacrifices the zopilote god had placed here for the vultures to eat. He had seen it. Would his body be chosen next to feed them? Trembling uncontrollably when he reached the bottom, he fell and long moments passed before he could force himself up from the sand to stumble back toward the village. Physical exhaustion brought some relief from the terror and he began to realize how dangerous it would be if he were discovered now, coming back this way. He crept cautiously between the brown houses, with their windows like dark, staring eyes, until he reached his own home. His-petlatl was still lying where he had left it; it seemed incredible that nothing should have changed in the endless time that he had been away, and he gathered it up and pulled it after him through the doorway and spread it near the banked but still warm fire. When he pulled the blanket over himself he fell asleep instantly, anxious to leave the waking world that had suddenly become more frightening than the worst nightmare.

The number of the months is eighteen, and the name of the eighteenmonths is a year. The third month is Tozoztontli and this is when the corn is planted and there are prayers and fasting so that the rain will come so that in the seventh month the corn will ripen. Then in the eighth month prayers are said to keep away the rain that would destroy the ripening corn …

The rain god, Tlaloc, was being very difficult this year. He was always a moody god, with good reason perhaps, because so much was asked of him. In certain months rain was desperately needed to water the young corn, but in other months clear skies and sunlight were necessary to ripen it. Therefore, in many years, Tlaloc did not bring rain, or brought too much, and the crop was small and the people went hungry.

Now he was not listening at all. The sun burned in a cloudless sky and one hot day followed another without change. Lacking water, the small shoots of new corn that pressed up through the hardened and cracked earth were far smaller than they should have been, and had a gray and tired look to them. Between the rows of stunted corn almost the entire village of Quilapa stamped and wailed, while the priest shouted his prayer and the cloud of dust rose high in the stifling air.

Chimal did not find it easy to cry. Almost all of the others had tears streaking furrows into their dust-covered cheeks, tears to touch the ram god’s heart so that his tears of rain would fall as theirs did. As a child Chimal had never taken part in this ceremony, but now that he had passed his twentieth year he was an adult, and shared adult duties and responsibilities. He shuffled his feet on the hard dirt and thought of the hunger that would come and the pain in his belly, but this made him angry instead of tearful. Rubbing at his eyes only made them hurt. In the end he moistened his finger with saliva, when no one was looking, and drew the lines in the dust on his face.

Of course the women cried the best, wailing and tearing at their braided hair until it came loose and hung in lank yellow strands about their shoulders. When their tears slowed or stopped, the men beat them with straw-filled bags.

Someone brushed against Chimal’s leg, pressing a warm and yielding flank against him. He moved further down the row, but a moment later the pressure had returned. It was Malinche, a girl with a round face, round eyes, a round figure. She stared, wide-eyed, up at him while she cried. Her mouth was open so he could see the black gap in the white row of her upper teeth, she had bit on a stone in her beans and broke it when she was a child, and her eyes streamed and her nose ran with the intensity of her emotions. She was still almost a child, but she had turned sixteen and was therefore a woman. In sudden rage he began to beat her about the shoulders and back with his bag. She did not pull away, or appear to notice it at all, while her tear-filled round eyes still stared at him, as pale blue and empty of warmth as the winter sky.