Gary Jennings - Aztec

I grinned and dropped the pretense. "It would depend on how many you can provide and the price you ask."

"You see here my entire stock of working material as of this day." He waved at the one wall of his workroom which was all shelves, from thatch to ground; on every shelf, nestled in bolls of cotton, were the rough quartz stones. They were distinctive only for the angular, six-sided shapes in which they came from the earth, and they ranged in size from that of a finger joint to that of a small maize cob.

"Here is what I paid for the stock," the artisan went on, handing me a bark paper bearing numerous columns of numbers and symbols. I was mentally adding up the total when he said, "From this stock I can make six twenties of finished crystals of varying sizes."

I asked, "How long would that take?"

"One month."

"Twenty days?" I exclaimed. "I should have thought one crystal would take that long!"

"We Xibalba have had sheaves of years in which to practice," he said. "And I have seven apprentice sons to help me. I also have five daughters, but of course they are not allowed to touch the rough stones, lest they ruin them, being females."

"Six twenties of crystals," I mused, repeating his provincial mode of counting. "And what would you charge for that many?"

"What you see there," he said, indicating the bark paper.

Puzzled, I spoke to the interpreter. "Did I not understand correctly? Did he not say that this is what he paid? For the rough rock?" The interpreter nodded, and through him I again addressed the crystalsmith:

"This makes no sense. Even a street vendor of tortillas asks more for the bread than she paid for the maize." Both he and the translator smiled indulgently and shook their heads. "Master Xibalba," I persisted, "I came here prepared to bargain, yes, but not to steal. I tell you honestly, I would be willing to pay eight times this price, and happy to pay six, and overjoyed to pay four."

His answer came back, "And I would be obliged to refuse."

"In the name of all your gods and mine, why?"

"You proved yourself a friend of the Macoboo. Hence you are a friend of all the Chiapa, and we Xibalba are Chiapa born. No, protest no more. Go. Enjoy your stay among us. Let me get to work. Return in one month for your crystals."

"Then our fortune is already made!" Blood Glutton exulted, as he played with the sample crystal the artisan had given me. "We need not travel any farther. By the great Huitztli, you can sell these things back home for any price you ask!"

"Perhaps," I said. "But we have a month to wait for them, and we have a surplus of goods we still can trade, and I have a personal reason for wanting to visit the Maya."

He grumbled, "These Chiapa women are dark of skin, but they far excel any you will find among the Maya."

"Old lecher, do you never think of anything but women?"

Cozcatl, who did not think of women at all, pleaded, "Yes, do let us go on. We cannot come this far and not see the jungle."

"I also think of eating," said Blood Glutton. "These Macoboo lay an ample dinner cloth. Besides, we lost our only capable cook when we lost Ten."

I said, "You and I will go on, Cozcatl. Let this lazy ancient stay here, if he likes, and live up to his name."

Blood Glutton groused a while longer, but, as I well knew, his appetite for wandering was as strong as any of his other appetites. He was soon off to the marketplace to procure some items he said we would need for jungle travel. Meanwhile, I went again to the Master Xibalba and invited him to take his pick of our trade goods, as an earnest against my paying the balance of his price in harder currency. He again mentioned his numerous offspring, and was pleased to select a quantity of mantles, loincloths, blouses, and skirts. That pleased me as well, because those were the bulkiest things we carried. Their disposal unburdened two of our slaves, and I had no trouble in finding ready purchasers right there in Chiapan, and their new masters paid me in gold dust.

"Now we visit the physician again," said Blood Glutton. "I was long ago given my protection against snakebite, but you and the boy have not yet been treated."

"Thank you for your good intent," I said. "But I do not think I would trust Doctor Maash to treat a pimple on my bottom."

He insisted, "The jungle teems with poisonous serpents. When you step on one, you will wish you had stepped into Doctor Maash's hut first." He began to tick off on his fingers, "There is the yellow-chin snake, the coral snake, the nauyaka..."

Cozcatl paled, and I remembered the elderly trader in Tenochtítlan telling how he had been bitten by a nauyaka and had cut off his own foot to keep from dying. So Cozcatl and I went to Doctor Maash, who produced one fang apiece of each of the snakes Blood Glutton had mentioned, and three or four more besides. With each tooth he pricked our tongues just enough to draw blood.

"There is a tiny dried residue of venom on each of these fangs," he explained. "It will make you both break out in a mild rash. But that will vanish in a few days, and thereafter you will be safe against the bite of any snake known to exist. However, there is one further precaution you must bear in mind." He smiled wickedly and said, "From this moment for ever, your teeth are as lethal as any serpent's. Be careful whom you bite."

* * *

So we departed from Chiapan, as soon as we could pry ourselves loose from the insistent hospitality of the Macoboo, and of those two female cousins in particular, by swearing that we would soon return and be their guests again. To continue eastward, we and our remaining slaves had to climb another mountain range, but the god Tititl had by then restored the weather to the warmth appropriate to those regions, so the climb was not too punishing, even though it took us above the timberline. On the other side, the slope swept us precipitously down and down—from the lichened rock of the heights, to the line where the trees began, then through the sharp-scented forests of pine and cedar and juniper. From there, the familiar trees gradually thinned, as they were crowded out by kinds I had never seen before, and those appeared to be fighting for their lives against the vines and lianas that climbed and curled all over them.

The first thing I discovered about the jungle was that my limited eyesight was no great handicap in there, for distances did not exist; everything was close together. Strangely contorted trees, giant-leafed green plants, towering and feathery ferns, monstrous and spongy fungus, they all stood close, they pressed in and hemmed us about, almost suffocatingly so. The canopy of foliage overhead was like a green cloud cover; on the jungle floor, even at midday we were in a green twilight. Every growing thing; even the petals of flowers, seemed to exude a warm, moist stickiness. Though that was the dry season, the air itself was dense and humid and thick to breathe, like a clear fog. The jungle smelled spicy, musky, ripe-sweet and rotten: all the odors of rampant growth rooted in old decay.

From the treetops above us, howler and spider monkeys yelped and countless varieties of parrots screeched their indignation at our intrusion, while other birds of every conceivable color flashed back and forth like warning arrows. The air about us was hung with hummingbirds no bigger than bees and fanned by fluttering butterflies as big as bats. Around our feet the underbrush was rustled by creatures stirring or fleeing. Perhaps some were deadly snakes, but most were harmless things: the little itzam lizards which run on their hind legs; the big-fingered frogs which climb trees; the multicolored, crested, dewlapped iguanas; the glossy brown-furred jaleb, which would scamper only a short way off, then stop to peer beady-eyed at us. Even the larger and uglier animals native to those jungles are shy of humans: the lumbering tapir, the shaggy capybara, the formidably claw-footed anteater. Unless one steps incautiously into a stream where alligators or caymans lurk, even those massive armored beasts are no hazard.