Gods and Pawns (2 page)

“And what
is
the fabulous door prize, oh beloved Father of Heaven?” said his Mayan majordomo.

“Why don’t you tell them, best of slaves?” said Houbert coyly.

“At once, Divine One!” The majordomo cleared his throat. “The lucky holder of this week’s winning token will receive—a full week’s liberty for two, complete with air transport to the holiday destination of his or her choice!”

There was a silence.

“Is it my imagination, or did the irony level just drop in here?” whispered Mendoza.

“We’re all a bit stunned,” Lewis whispered back. “Generally he awards things like potted orchids or spa coupons.”

A Mayan waiter wheeled forth a dessert trolley on which sat a big glass bowl, filled with jade tokens.

“Victor, as our departing celebrity, perhaps you’ll do us the honor of selecting our winner?”

“Certainly, sir.” Victor stepped up to the bowl and delved in, stirring the tokens.

“Suspense suspense suspense suspense suspense suspense,” chanted the Mayan waiters, until Victor drew out a single piece of jade. He held it up with a flourish, and then read aloud what was engraved thereon:

“Nine Flower Monkey Rain Cloud!”

A moment of hurried clicking, like a roomful of scorpions, as the immortals grabbed up their jade tiles and examined them. Lewis looked around, waiting for someone’s exclamation of triumph.

“Hell,” said Mendoza. “I’ve got Nine Flower Jaguar Stone Star.” She looked across at Lewis. “Aren’t you going to check yours?”

“Oh, I never win these things—great Caesar’s ghost!” Lewis stared at his tile, unbelieving. “Nine Flower Monkey Rain Cloud! Oh! Oh, my gosh!”

“We have a winner!” shouted the majordomo, seizing Lewis’s hand and holding it up.

“Olé!” cried Mendoza, applauding. “Lewis, you can go to Paris! Rome! London! Bravo!”

And his fellow immortals joined in the applause, and Director General Houbert himself condescended to come forward to shake his hand, but as the roaring wave of congratulation broke over him all Lewis saw was Mendoza’s face, bright and happy for once, and for
him.

He had to use every ounce of invention and tact.

“You see, the awkward thing is, it’s specifically for
two,
” Lewis explained. “Myself and a guest. And, er, you know…I’m not a couple. Lucretia informed me it’s not only over, it never even began…”

“She’s an idiot, and you were too nice for her anyway,” said Mendoza firmly.

“Funnily enough, that was what she said, too,” said Lewis, grimacing at the memory. “So I thought, well, perhaps—after all, there we were, talking about that place in Bolivia you’ve always wanted to see, and then, bang, I won, and—perhaps it’s destiny or something!”

Mendoza blinked. “You’re going to use your week’s liberty on a field expedition?”

“We could actually get some work done!” said Lewis. “You could, anyway. And it would do me no end of good to get in a little wilderness experience.”

“Oh, Lewis, you can’t! I mean, I can’t—”

“Of course you can! It’s my door prize, after all; I can invite whom I please,” said Lewis. “And I’ve decided I really, truly want to explore Bolivia.”

“You perfect gentle knight,” said Mendoza, and threw her arms around him and kissed him.

He had imaginary heart palpitations for an hour afterward, and drew stares from the Mayan gardeners as he went skipping back to Administrative Residential Pyramid.

“You’re lucky the rainy season hasn’t started yet,” Grover informed them, ordering their shuttle to begin its descent. He was a very old operative, distinctly Neanderthal of brow, so much so in fact that he could no longer go out among mortals without drawing undue attention to himself. His duties these days were limited to on-base jobs like piloting shuttles.

“I suppose all that turns to impassable mud?” said Lewis, peering down at the plain below them. It was dry and brown, distinguished only by the curious forested mounds that rose here and there from the general flatness.

“No; it turns into a lake,” said Grover. “See all those hills? They’re actually islands. You want my advice, you’ll set up your camp on one.”

“Are there mortals down there?” Mendoza scowled at the network of raised causeways between the islands. “Certainly looks like it. That land’s been farmed.”

“Not in recorded history,” said Grover. “Thirty thousand square miles of isolation. You can play your music as loud as you like—nobody’s going to slap your wrist over anachronisms out here!”

“Good,” said Mendoza.

They landed and were left with four crates of gear, and the cheery promise that Grover would return for them in a week’s time. Lewis watched the shuttle vanish away to the west. Lowering his head, he regarded the island-hill before them and felt the first slight qualm of concern, with a deeper uneasiness following.

“My gosh, that’s dense undergrowth,” he said. “I’m not sure we’re really dressed for adventuring. We look like a Dresden shepherd and shepherdess.”

“What?” said Mendoza. “My whole ensemble’s khaki. We’ll be fine!”

“I suppose so,” said Lewis, reflecting that seventeenth-century costume in khaki was still seventeenth-century costume.

“Besides,” said Mendoza, hoisting a crate on one shoulder, “I hate those damned Company-issue coveralls.”

Halfway up the hill, however, she was using language that rather shocked Lewis, or at least it did after he did a quick idiom access of sixteenth-century Galician Spanish. He ducked as first one and then the other of her high-heeled shoes went flying down the trail.

An hour later, however, there was a neat camp on the plateau at the top of the hill, on one edge so as to take advantage of the view.

“All the comforts of home,” said Mendoza happily, setting up a folding chair. “Did you bring the gin?”

“And a bottle of olives,” Lewis replied, hunting for the cocktail shaker. He found it, activated the self-refrigeration unit, and set it aside to chill. “Shall I build a fire?”

“We’ve got something better,” said Mendoza, reaching into the depths of a crate. She pulled out a cube of something resembling thick glass, about the size of a hatbox. Further search revealed a wrought-iron base for it; Mendoza set it out, placed the cube on top, and switched it on. “There we go!”

Lewis watched as the cube lit up and began to radiate heat, with stylized holographic flames dancing across its surface. “Oh, my! How did we mere Preservers rate that kind of field technology?”

“We didn’t,” said Mendoza smugly. “Pan Li in Accounting owed me a favor. Nice, huh?”

“Splendid,” said Lewis, setting up his own chair.

“And, look at this perfect camping spot! Guava trees. Brazil nut trees. Peach-palms. Anyone would think it had been someone’s little private orchard.”

“Paradisial,” Lewis agreed.

They relaxed, sipping cocktails as the gigantic tropical evening descended, and listened to the night coming to life. Drowsy parrots nestled together in the high branches; far off, some monkey set up a low monotonous hooting. The stars swarmed like white moths.

“Now,
this
is solitude,” said Mendoza in satisfaction. “No fussy department heads. No tedious meetings. No mortals!”

Except for one,
Lewis thought to himself. He gazed across at Mendoza and imagined once again the specter of the mortal man she had loved, looming beside her. He had long since learned that he’d never supplant Nicholas Harpole, though the man had been dead the best part of a century. Lewis cleared his throat and said: “Wonderful, isn’t it? What shall we do tomorrow?”

“Go exploring!” said Mendoza. “Take the field credenza and go in search of specimens yet unclassified.”

“Search for lost worlds and dinosaurs? Ancient civilizations? Forgotten colonists from lost Atlantis?” Lewis suggested.

They laughed companionably and clinked glasses.

Later, as she sat in the entrance to her tent, combing out her hair without the least self-consciousness, he watched her and thought:
This, at least, I have. And it’s more than she’ll grant to anyone else.

A field bivvy is a compact and useful piece of gear, lightweight and eminently portable. Once zipped inside, however, Lewis found it rather cramped.

He lay flat on his back, staring up at the mesh screen scant inches from his nose. It was hot, but the profusion of little insects whining on the outside of the screen dissuaded him from unzipping the flap. He turned over, and the tarpaulin underneath crackled disagreeably. He attempted to punch some comfort into his flat camping pillow, and failed.

God Apollo,
he thought irritably,
I used to tramp through half of Europe dossing down in ditches, and slept like a baby. Have I really grown so soft?

Just as sleep began its hesitant approach, something out on the far plain shrieked. Lewis gave up and resigned himself to a night of insomnia.

For a long while he listened to Mendoza’s distant breathing and heartbeat. The night sounds grew louder: tree frogs peeping by the millions, immense stealthy insects, moon-eyed things that haunted the upper branches…

He heard, quite distinctly, the crash of a metal door rolling open. A soft white light, only just brighter than moonlight, flooded the camp. Lewis opened his eyes and saw that a door had opened in the hillside. Little people were emerging.

“Hey,” he said, and tried to sit up. To his horror, he found that he was unable to move. But they had heard him; they came quite purposefully and yanked up the bivvy stakes, and commenced dragging him, doubly shrouded, toward the door in the hill.

“NO!”
he shouted, managing at last to thrash about, and sat up face-first into the mesh. Moonlight, shining into his face, dappled through the jungle canopy; silence. No door, no little people.

“Lewis, are you okay?” Mendoza’s voice was cautious.

“Bad dream,” he said.

“Oh. Sorry,” she replied.

“Quite all right,” he said, and lay down and stared up at the mesh, knowing he’d never close his eyes again.

But the next thing he saw was red radiance everywhere, and a concerted morning birdcall backed up by little monkeys screaming at the sun.

Lewis turned over, focused his eyes, and recoiled at the number and size of the insects perched all over the bivvy mesh. He heard Mendoza give a muffled shriek and begin flailing away, as bugs flew off in all directions from her bivvy.

“Horrible, aren’t they?” he called.

“Ugh, ugh,
ugh.
” Mendoza unzipped her bivvy and scrambled out, and danced up and down. “Goddamned tropics! We should have brought one of those electronic bug killers.”

“Watch out,” said Lewis, beating upward to dislodge two tarantulas and a dragonfly with a twelve-inch wingspan. Mendoza retreated to one of the equipment crates. Lewis crawled forth into the morning and dutifully looked elsewhere as Mendoza got dressed.

“Oh! There are pineapple guavas growing over here,” he announced. “Shall I pick some for our breakfast?”

“Go ahead,” said Mendoza, sounding muffled. Lewis spent the next few minutes busily gathering fruit. Then a tarantula reached out of a clump of leaves and grabbed back a guava he had just picked, at which point Lewis discovered just how far he could jump from a standing start.

He came skittering back with his arms full of guavas, just in time to see Mendoza step forth from the crate dressed in hip waders, into the top of which she had tucked the hem of her gown. It looked more than odd. She met his stare and said proudly, “I don’t care. I’m insect-proof!”

“You know, you’ve got a point,” Lewis replied and, setting down the guavas, dove into a crate himself, to root through his gear for his own waders.

Fully armored against insect peril, they sat down and dined. The freshness of the morning was rapidly boiling away, as steam rose from the broad leaves all around them. Far to the horizon, where mountain peaks were visible, lay a low line of slaty cloud.

“Is it storming over there?” Mendoza remarked, frowning as she spooned up guava juice.

“I suppose so,” said Lewis. He peered out at the distant clouds, bringing them into close focus. “Oh, dear, we may not have escaped the rainy season after all.”

“We’ll just take rain ponchos,” said Mendoza, shrugging. “Never understood the way mortals get upset by a few drops of water. England, now—
that
was a rainy country. And wretchedly cold.”

They finished breakfast in a leisurely fashion and loaded on their field credenza packs, after which they made their way down from their hill to the plain. Close to, it was possible to see that irregular bands of dark earth circled each of the islands on the wide land.

“Ah-ha!” said Mendoza, pointing. “Teosinte!”

“Where?” Lewis turned his head.

“There! Growing all over the
terra preta
. See?”

“That stuff that looks like giant crabgrass?”

“Well, yes, it does,” said Mendoza impatiently. “But do you realize how significant its presence is here? Nobody thought teosinte was cultivated this far down the continent! The indigenes farmed manioc and amaranths instead.”

“You don’t say,” Lewis replied, as his brain went into comfortable shutoff mode, its custom whenever Mendoza started in on the subject of botany.

For the next few hours he trotted after her through the shimmering heat as they explored farther afield, nodding and making polite exclamations, occasionally holding things when asked or standing beside plants she was imaging so as to provide a reference of scale. As he watched Mendoza working, his primary consciousness was focused in a pleasant fantasy.

The hip waders impaired his imaginings somewhat, but still there was something of human passion about her when she worked, not like the other immortals at all, with such an intensity she seemed ever so slightly dangerous.

And how could something lithe as a tigress have such apple-blossom skin? Her hair was coming undone as she worked, floating like flames around her face, and the long coiled braid drooping down…if he were to reach out and take hold of it, what would she…