“So I’ve held a few items back? So what? There’s plenty to keep the humans going as it is, and they have fun reverse-engineering and customising what they’ve already got. If you ask me, they’re not to be trusted with the full repertoire of what’s available. They’re such little tinkerers. They might misuse it.”
“Use it against you, you mean?” said the hairless, hostile one. “To overthrow you?”
“That’s one possibility. Or against each another. They’re their own worst enemies, humans are. They need an eye kept on them at all times, to stop them recklessly abusing and harming their own kind. That’s one of the many beneficial functions this Empire of mine performs. It brings peace and stability.”
“Stability?” said the handsome one. “They murder one another and call it sacrifice.”
“A necessary evil. Our original scheme, as it stood, was a recipe for anarchy. You realise that, don’t you, Quetzalcoatl? You were going to hand the humans everything we have, with few limitations in place. They’re an innately irresponsible lot. They’d have ended up destroying themselves in no time. Without me, without the curbs and vetoes I’ve imposed, it’s a safe bet that there wouldn’t now be an Earth for you to come back to. You’d be standing on a charred, devastated ball of rock, another lifeless satellite of the sun. You should be thanking me for making the best of the hand you dealt me, which was, if I may say, an unenviable one. Instead, you come swanning back after an inordinately lengthy absence and you have the nerve to act all superior and judgemental.”
“I’ve been no such thing,” said the one the Great Speaker had called Quetzalcoatl. “I’ve been quite reasonable, I feel. So far.”
“Typical. That ‘so far.’ That’s just like you. Can’t help yourself, can you? Such self-righteousness. Such forbearance. The great and mighty Plumed Serpent, who thinks he’s so much better than the rest of us, so pure and untainted. Yet beneath that ‘I’m so perfect’ exterior, you’re just as venal, just as calculating, just as fallible.”
“You can’t provoke me.”
“Oh, but I can,” said the Great Speaker. “I know how. I know precisely which buttons to push. As I once proved, didn’t I, brother?”
Brother?
thought Mal. She looked from the Great Speaker to Quetzalcoatl and back again. She could see Reston doing the same, and he was as taken aback as she was. If the Great Speaker was Quetzalcoatl’s brother...
“All of you,” he went on, addressing the three. “I know how to irk you, how to goad you, how to mislead and dupe you. That’s always been my way. My role. Every family has to have its black sheep, and I’m sorry, Xipe Totec, but it’s not you, however much you’d like to think it is.”
The hairless man gave a careless shrug.
“But it isn’t. You’re a dark horse, maybe, but never a black sheep. You’re violent and cruel, but you toe the line. When push comes to shove, you always side with the majority. You do as you’re told. As do you, Huitzilopochtli.”
The third of the three glowered at him.
“The Hummingbird. Bright as the sun. But none too bright in other ways. A good footsoldier but hardly an independent thinker.”
“Ignore him, Huitz,” said Quetzalcoatl. “You too, Xipe. He’s trying to get a rise out of us. Let’s not give him the satisfaction.”
“Don’t you
want
to be antagonised, Kay?” said the Great Speaker. “Isn’t that secretly, deep down, the very thing you’ve come for? An excuse to lash out at me? I’m sure it is. That business with Quetzalpetlatl, it’s got to be eating you up inside, even now. Our beautiful sister. So fresh. So innocent. So voluptuously fertile. How long had you been quietly lusting after her, unable to admit it even to yourself? How long had you been watching her, yearning to have her? How long, and then I gave you the opportunity to? I never forced you to sleep with Quetzalpetlatl, or her with you. You desired her, she reciprocated, and all I did was pave the way, arranging it so that the feelings you’d both kept locked inside could come out. And did I get any recognition for that? Any gratitude? No. Just an explosion of temper, the hissy fit to end all hissy fits, and then this exile, like a ship’s captain being marooned on a desert island by mutineers. ‘It’s all yours. You look after it. No telling when we’ll be back, if ever.’ You think you’ve got a bone to pick with me, Kay? I have a whole skeleton’s worth to pick with you.”
The Great Speaker’s voice didn’t rise once during this tirade, but a distinct note of petulance entered it. All at once he came across as less than the supreme, all-powerful emperor he was supposed to be.
At the same time, Mal was halfway to becoming convinced that he was more. Much, much more.
“Take it off,” said Quetzalcoatl, biting back anger. “The mask. I want to see your face. I don’t want to talk to the Great Speaker any more. It’s the person beneath the mask I’m interested in.”
“This? Off?” The Great Speaker rapped the mask with his knuckles. It rang like a bell. “Why not? Gets so stuffy in here anyway.”
He placed a hand either side of the golden head-covering and hoisted it off, setting it down on a nearby table.
“There. That’s better. Fresh air.”
The face that stood revealed was a handsome one like Quetzalcoatl’s. There was a clear resemblance between the two of them, from the high domed forehead to the prominent cleft chin. They could easily, as the Great Speaker was claiming, be brothers. Twins, even. The Great Speaker, however, had a less attractive cast to his features. He looked haughty, where Quetzalcoatl looked noble. His eyes were that little bit closer together and deeper set, that little bit less frank and open. His complexion was several shades darker, too, black coffee as opposed to Quetzalcoatl’s café-au-lait. As the two of them faced each other, it was as if one was the distorted image of the other, a reflection seen in a mirror that somehow removed sincerity and replaced it with cunning.
“There you are,” said Quetzalcoatl. “Just as I remember. You haven’t changed a bit, Tezcatlipoca.”
M
AL HAD PASSED
beyond astonishment and entered a state of being where nothing felt solid or certain and where everything that had once made sense no longer did. A kind of wild hilarity kept bubbling up inside her, threatening to break out as a mad cackle. Had Aaronson not been next to her and looking not one iota less stunned, she’d have wondered if she was losing her grip on sanity. Was she dreaming? Was she in the throes of a drug trip which she couldn’t remember embarking on?
Had the Great Speaker really just removed his mask before her very eyes?
Had Quetzalcoatl really just addressed him by the name Tezcatlipoca?
Were these four beings on the terrace – these four who were sharing the same space as her, breathing the same air – really none other than the Four Who Rule Supreme?
It was inconceivable.
Impossible.
Absurd.
And yet Mal knew it was true. It must be. She felt it at a level inside her that had nothing to do with rationality and everything to do with intuition. Her brain was screaming at her that this was all some extraordinary, elaborate stunt. Someone was having her on. Any moment now, the four of them would turn round and wink and say, “Gotcha!” Meanwhile, her heart, her gut, her
soul
, was insisting that yes, it was exactly as it appeared. There could be no mistake. She was witnessing a meeting of the full complement of the Four, the first in five hundred solar years. Gods had returned to the earth. Or, in Tezcatlipoca’s case, had never been away.
“Look at them,” said the Great Speaker, alias Tezcatlipoca. “What a staggering revelation this is to them.” He meant Mal, Aaronson and Reston, of course; Colonel Tlanextic gave every indication that he had known his master’s true identity all along. He was coolly enjoying the startlement on the others’ faces. “They’ve been led to believe the Great Speaker is Moctezuma the Second, but that was just a cover story, a convenient fabrication. It came down to a choice. Which would be the easier to swallow, that a man could be granted extraordinary longevity, or that Tezcatlipoca now ruled them?
“People might wonder, why Tezcatlipoca? Why not one of the other divine visitors? Why not Quetzalcoatl himself? I was aware I wasn’t the most popular of the Four. So I concocted the role of Great Speaker, usurping the identity of an emperor already beloved of his people. Moctezuma himself was none too pleased when he learned that he was about to be forcibly supplanted as ruler. Ironic, really; here was a man who had presided over so many human sacrifices, who had chalked up countless deaths in the name of his own glory, yet he was profoundly reluctant to give up his own life. He struggled quite a bit. Screamed and bit like a howler monkey under my hands.”
“You... killed him?” said Mal.
“Someone had to,” Tezcatlipoca replied airily. “Seemed simplest to do the job myself. It happened in his private quarters, not far from this spot. There were no witnesses. It was just Moctezuma and myself in a room, the last true Aztec emperor and the last god left on earth. He perished, I disposed of the body so as not to leave a trace behind, and next day this entity called the Great Speaker emerged, claiming to be a Moctezuma energised by godly power, a Moctezuma who would live and rule forever by divine decree.
“I wasn’t entirely sure at first that people would fall for it. The priesthood, especially, I thought would see through the imposture and demand proof that I was the emperor in new clothes. In the event, everyone was duped. Some perhaps had their doubts, but went along with it anyway because up until then Moctezuma, with the gods’ aid, had overseen expansion of Aztec territory on an unprecedented scale, and as the Great Speaker I quickly established that the future would hold more of the same, even though the gods were now gone. I promised them the world, as a matter of fact. It was what the Aztecs wanted to hear, so they were willing to set aside any misgivings they might have had and take me at face value. I told them that the gods had raised me up, elevated me to a higher order of being. I planted the seeds of a story which grew into a legend and from there to a simple fact of truth, a cornerstone of the Empire. People will believe anything if it’s in their interest to do so.”
“A grotesque hoax,” said Quetzalcoatl.
“But it worked, and it’s what I do best – sleight of hand. Am I not the Smoking Mirror? Do I not distort and obscure? We can’t help our natures. Might as well criticise Xipe for being a feral beast or Huitz for being worthy but dull. Or yourself, Kay, for being a stuck-up prig.”
“Be very careful what you say,” Xipe Totec growled.
“Oh, I do. All the time. Am I not great at speaking?”
“I mean it.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me? You’re welcome to try, Flayed One. But you know as well as I do that we’re evenly matched. It would take a lot more than you’ve got to finish
me
off. I reckon, in truth, that I’m the equal of the three of you put together, and that’s barehanded, without armour or any other form of defence or weaponry. Shall we put that to the test?”
Huitzilopochtli and Xipe Totec looked at Quetzalcoatl, who offered a tiny shake of the head.
Not here; not now
.
“Thought so,” said Tezcatlipoca. “What do you want from me, then? Am I to relinquish my Empire to you? Is that it? Step down and let you take from me something I’ve spent five centuries building?”
“I’d like you to reconsider your position, at the very least,” said Quetzalcoatl. “We can dismantle what you’ve created and raise something better in its stead, something more in line with our original aims. We won’t throw out everything you’ve done. We’ll keep what works and discard the rest.”
“The Empire is the glue that binds this world together. Get rid of it, and I assure you, the human race will tear itself to pieces in pretty short order. There’ll be chaos like you couldn’t imagine. Nation pitted against nation. Ancient, long-buried antagonisms rising up again like reanimated corpses. I know what these people are like. I’ve been living among them for far longer than you ever did. Colonel Tlanextic? Am I not right? You tell them. Without the Empire, how long do you think this planet would last?”
“Couple of years,” said Tlanextic, “if not months. Not long. Everyone scrambling for advantage, trampling on everyone else in the stampede to get to the top. Powder keg, and billions of sparks shooting in all directions. Next stop, extinction.”
“I never said it would be easy,” said Quetzalcoatl. “Rectifying the situation will require time, great care and trouble. But it can be done, I’m sure of it. I’m prepared to put in the effort. We all are. We co-ordinate, administrate, make the transition from dictatorship by personality cult to multi-state democracy as smooth as possible. I’ve drawn up plans. A timetable. I could show you, Tez. It’ll take a decade, no more. A decade, by which time humans will have learned how to manage without the Empire and be living in relative harmony and prosperity. What we do first of all is set up a global governing body, a talking shop where individual countries can air their grievances and settle disputes without recourse to conflict. It could even be here on this very island, manned by elected representatives from all of –”
Tezcatlipoca interrupted him with a noisy, elaborate yawn, fanning his mouth with one hand. “Sorry. Drifted off there for a moment. What were you saying? Some guff about a global government. Well, I can tell you right now, it’ll never work. Humans can’t agree on anything, unless they’re forced to. You conjure a lovely utopian idyll, Kay, but take it from me, it’s unrealisable; not here, not on this planet. A pipe dream.”
“I have faith in people.”
“And I have knowledge of them,” Tezcatlipoca shot back. “And my practical, hands-on experience trumps your ignorant optimism. Let’s face it, this whole enterprise of ours was doomed from the very start. We set out to nurture and enhance an entire species, make it as civilised and united as it could be, evolve it to a higher level of sophistication, but the only way we were ever realistically going to do that is the way I’ve done it, through fear and intimidation. Humans just don’t have it in them to behave themselves, to act responsibly. They need to be bullied. That’s how they treat each other all the time. It’s the only language they understand.”