They were all tall, like the formerly skinless man. They had that in common, but little else. A couple of them were extraordinarily old, withered to the point of desiccation. Others were young and almost impossibly healthy-looking, vibrant with life. One man was so dark-complexioned he seemed to have been hewn from black marble. Another man was clearly quite physically incapacitated, his twisted frame showing deformities of all sorts, from a club foot to tumorous growths. Next to him was a person who could have been male or female, with sensuous lips and swept-back hair. Loose clothing draped his or her physique, making gender even harder to determine.
Seated at the head of the table was a very handsome, olive-skinned man with eyes that were both kindly and grave – the eyes of someone who knew the worst but tried to see the best. He rose, pushing back his chair, and nodded to Stuart.
“Nice to see you up and about. Glad you’re feeling better. Take a seat.”
This was the man Stuart had overheard earlier talking to Toci, the one who’d incapacitated him in the forest with an explosion of light. The one Toci had addressed as Kay.
The androgynous man-or-woman drew out an empty chair next to him or her in invitation. Stuart sat down. One of the other people at the table, the dark man, grumbled: “Shouldn’t be here. No right.” His neighbour, an elderly woman with a regal bearing and a spectacularly sumptuous bosom, hushed him.
Food lay heaped on dishes in the centre of the table. A plate was set in front of Stuart. He helped himself. It was good fare, simple, classically Aztec, centred on the twin staples of maize and agave. He stuffed his belly, aware of everyone’s eyes on him, not caring. They seemed, most of them, to regard him as an interloper. Well, so what? He never asked to be here.
“So,” said the one called Kay, as Stuart cleared a second plateful of food. “I expect you have questions, Mr Reston.”
“Are you going to answer them honestly?”
“Yes.”
“Then I do. First off, what is this place? It feels like we’re underground. Partly that’s an instinct, but also an inverted pyramid makes no sense otherwise, in practical architectural terms. Am I right?”
“Very good. We are underground. As to our location, we’re not far from what your friend Mr Chel described as his forward operating base. A few miles to the west, within spitting distance of Lake Texcoco.”
“Should you be telling him this much?” griped the dark man. His body was massively muscled, of bodybuilder proportions, while his voice was like gravel grinding on granite. “Should you be telling him anything?”
“I don’t see why not, Mic,” Kay replied. “Mr Reston is our guest. We brought him to our lair. So why hide the truth from him?”
“
You
brought him here.”
“He was hurt. He needed our help. I had no choice.”
“But we’re not ready to make our presence known. This could ruin everything.”
“I’m sure we can rely on Mr Reston, a.k.a. the Conquistador, to be discreet. He, perhaps more than anyone else on earth, understands the value of keeping secrets.”
“Oh, yes,” said the person who was either a feminine man or a masculine woman. His or her voice was pitched mid-range, indeterminately husky. “He has led a double life. He has balanced on the tightrope between what is and what seems to be. He knows how to appear one thing and be the other.” The androgyne placed a slender hand on Stuart’s arm and caressed it approvingly.
“Of course we could always kill him,” said the hairless man matter-of-factly. “I can do it right now if you like. Fork, table knife, bare hands, whatever you prefer.”
“Enough, Xipe,” Kay rebuked him. “Save the resident-psycho act for when it’s really needed.”
“Just saying.”
“No one is killing Mr Reston. He is under my protection. I’ve been keen to meet him. I was hoping he and I might have a quiet chat in the forest last night, but that was not to be. I blame myself for that. I should have anticipated his reaction to the sight of Xolotl reiterating his own words, in his own voice. Anyway, he’s here now, among us, and that’s just how it is. All of you accept that and move on.”
“Why me?” Stuart asked. “That’s my next question. You’ve singled me out for some reason, some purpose. What?”
“Because you’re mixed up in this Xibalba business, this plot to assassinate the Great Speaker. But unlike the ringleader, Chel, you strike me as someone who’s open to debating matters – someone who’s less committed to a certain course of action than the rest of them are – someone I can deal with on a polite, diplomatic level.”
“I’m not as hell-bent on suicide as the others, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s the impression I get from our surveillance.”
“Okay, so I’m beginning to get a handle on what’s been happening this past couple of days,” said Stuart. “You people have been trying to warn Xibalba off, haven’t you? We’re in your neck of the woods, on your turf. We’ve strayed into the middle of something that’s already in progress. We’re treading on your toes and you don’t appreciate that. Hence stalking us through the forest. Hence, also, that business with the ants. That was something you lot arranged, wasn’t it? Hoping to frighten us away.”
One man at the table, sporting a shock of red hair, held up a hand in acknowledgement. “Guilty as charged. Did you like my composite-colony figure? I thought it an impressive piece of ant wrangling. Great deal of finesse required to get it to wave its arm like that. You didn’t have to go and blow it to bits, though. My lads weren’t going to do you any harm. The colony’s pretty upset so many of them got vaporised. I spent the whole of yesterday having to soothe them and get them to calm down.”
“Your ‘lads.’ You talk to ants. And they have feelings.”
“Yes, I do,” said the redhead. “Not
talk
talk, of course. That would be absurd. Ants lack ears. It’s more... pheromonal and vibrational. And yes, they do have feelings. They may look all hard and military on the outside but they’re sensitive, too, underneath it all.”
“All right,” Stuart said sternly, slapping the tabletop, startling several of the people around him. “That’s enough. Let’s drop the charade. I get what this is now. I know who you’re pretending to be. It’s a clever act. The props are good, too. Doors that disappear, someone whose skin goes transparent, a dog that can talk... I’ve no idea how you’re doing any of it, although I suspect the dog was some sort of high-class ventriloquism act. But bravo, well done. Spectacular work. Round of applause.”
“Pretending to be?” said Kay, eyes crinkling. The rest seemed offended by their guest’s sudden outburst, but he was amused.
“Yes, Kay. Or should I call you Quetzalcoatl? And you.” Stuart pointed to the redhead. “Azcatl. The ‘red ant.’ The messenger. And you.” He turned to the androgyne next to him. “Ometeotl, the dual divinity, opposites reconciled. Not forgetting Xipe Totec over there, the Flayed One. And Mictlantecuhtli, if I’m not mistaken.”
The dark man just blinked slowly, otherwise impassive.
“The pantheon,” Stuart declared. “Pardon me if I can’t put a name to every face, but that’s who you’re all supposed to be, right? The gods and goddesses. It’s blindingly obvious, really. I was a bit slow on the uptake but I was disorientated and my blood sugar was low. Penny’s finally dropped.”
“Go on,” said the regal-looking woman.
“Coatlicue, I presume?” The matriarch, the earth mother, giver and devourer of life, mother of Huitzilopochtli.
A necklace of jewelled hands, hearts and skulls bounced on the woman’s deep cleavage as she nodded. Two bulky metal snake earrings clinked slightly.
“Well, I’m surrounded by some sort of religious re-enactment group, aren’t I? A society of role-players holed up in the Anahuac rainforest, fancying themselves the Aztecs’ long-gone deities, dressing the part, acting the part, even throwing in a few parlour tricks to add to the illusion. All very entertaining. I’m sure you all have super fun doing this in this splendid clubhouse of yours. You’ve spent some money on the place, too, so I imagine you’re pretty well off, or maybe just one of you is. But if you’re after me to join, the answer’s thanks, but no thanks. It’s a neat piece of performance art you’ve cooked up, and I’m grateful for the grub and everything, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
Just plain barking
, he nearly added.
“And now, I really should be going.” Stuart stood. “If someone could point me in the direction of the nearest exit...?”
“He speaks like that?” snapped the oldest person in the room, a wizened white-haired crone with a peevish cast to her features. “To
us
?”
“Well put, Tzitzi,” said Xipe Totec. “Told you we should kill him. Who’s in favour? Show of hands.”
There were loud murmurs around the table, a rumble of disgruntled agreement. Hands rose.
“Now, now,” said Quetzalcoatl firmly. “None of that. Everybody, settle. Mr Reston, sit back down.”
Stuart considered disobeying; weighed the options; sat.
“It’s interesting that you take this view,” Quetzalcoatl went on, “that we must be impostors.”
Stuart shrugged. “What else can you be? There are no gods. Never have been. And even if there were, I can’t imagine them being anything like you.”
“How so? In what way are we not what you imagine?”
“Gods aren’t physical. Touchable. Human.”
“Human we’ll set aside for now, but physical, touchable? Why not?”
“Where’s the otherworldliness? The mystery?”
“Is that what you want from gods? Distance? Ineffability?”
“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to get?”
“Tell me, Mr Reston, how much exactly do you know about the pantheon?”
“You mean apart from all the mythology I had shoved down my throat during religious instruction lessons at school? The mystery plays I kept getting dragged to by my parents? The references that priests constantly insert into their public speeches? Oh, not much.”
“You must be aware, then, that the gods bicker, the gods try to outdo one another, the gods eat, shit, fart, fornicate, just like people do. The gods aren’t paragons. They can die, too. Take what happened to Mayahuel, for instance.”
“That wanton slut,” muttered the crone known as Tzitzi. This, Stuart assumed, was Tzitzimitl, queen of demons. Or rather, meant to be her.
“Fine way to speak about your own granddaughter,” said Quetzalcoatl.
“Girl was no better than she ought to be. She deserved what I did to her.”
“Yes, yes,” Stuart said. “A charming story. A lesson in family values. Mayahuel wanted to bring humans happiness, and so she decided to share with them the recipe for
pulque
. Tzitzimitl wasn’t too pleased about this.”
“Why should we have given humans
pulque
?” Tzitzimitl grumbled. “If they couldn’t figure out how to make it for themselves, why should they have any help? It doesn’t always bring them happiness, anyway. Just makes them maudlin and sick most of the time.”
This was turning into the most surreal conversation Stuart had ever had. These people, nutjobs all, were adamant that they were gods. They were immersed in their various divine personas, playing them to the hilt. There was little point in him trying to persuade them otherwise. They wouldn’t listen. All he could do was play along, humour them, and hope he could get out of this place before any harm came to him. He didn’t think any of them could outfight him, but with nutjobs you never knew.
“So Tzitzimitl sent some of her demons to stop Mayahuel,” he said, “which seems a bit petty to me, but there you go. Quetzalcoatl was on Mayahuel’s side and hid her in a tree.”
“Disguised her
as
a tree, I think you’ll find,” Quetzalcoatl said. “Camouflaged her.”
“But the demons, the Tzitzimime, found her anyway and tore her to bits. Quetzalcoatl buried her bones.”
“With great sadness. She was a lovely creature, Mayahuel. Naïve, but sweet.”
“And from her bones, so it’s said, a spiny plant grew – agave – and Quetzalcoatl taught the Aztecs how to milk it for its sap, ferment the sap to ‘honey water,’ distil that further for greater potency, and hey presto,
pulque
.”
“An accomplishment of which I am justly proud.”
“Not that any of it actually happened,” said Stuart. “It’s just an explanatory myth. If it’s of any interest, it’s because it informs us that even gods aren’t above killing one another.”
“True enough, Mr Reston,” said Quetzalcoatl. “Nevertheless, being familiar with this tale of vindictiveness and murderous jealousy, and knowing it to be typical of divine behaviour, do you really still feel gods are ineffable? Perfect? Shouldn’t they in fact behave more like, well, the way you’re seeing
us
behave?” He touched a finger to his own chest, then indicated his companions.
“I’m not saying you people aren’t accurate representations of the pantheon. I’ve already told you I think you’re making a nice job of that. I just think I’d prefer gods, if we must have gods at all, who are a bit more, well, godly. A god is something one should look up to, isn’t it? By definition. Not something that’s just a human with a few extra bells and whistles.”
“Death,” Mictlantecuhtli intoned. “This little thing, this crawling bug, this
worm
, he insults us at every turn. Every word that comes out of his mouth is another drip of disrespectful venom. He is as contemptuous and discourteous as any of his kind. Death, I say. Swift and sudden. He must pay for his temerity.”
“I agree, Dark One.” This from Xipe Totec, who was half out of his seat, with an item of cutlery glinting in his hand. Stuart got up too and backed away from the table in order to give himself room to manoeuvre. Xipe Totec – the man who was claiming to be Xipe Totec – took a menacing step towards him. Stuart ran through all the permutations for disarming and crippling an opponent. For all that Xipe Totec was fit-looking and young, for all that he had a mad gleam in his eye and a reasonably sharp knife in his hand, Stuart was confident about being able to beat him. If all the other so-called gods piled in as well, that would be a different matter, but if Stuart made his treatment of Xipe Totec sufficiently brutal and devastating, perhaps he could scare them off and buy himself time to make a getaway.