The Sacrifice Game (50 page)

( 76 )

I
had them scrape me clean and get me up out of the caves, up the newly cleared interior staircase to the top of the mul. Even from inside I could hear that weird oceanic all-over noise. It wasn’t loud like an industrial-age battle, it was more just the amount and multiplicity of the voices that made it up, the shouts and dogs barking and the raiding drums and signal horns and bull-roarers all combining into a desperate whirring wave. My attendants screened the door of the sanctuary enough for me to peep out without being spotted. It was clear the situation was way hopeless. It was midafternoon on 20 Cayman. The lace blanket of the city around us was on fire at its edges and wide waves of pus-colored grass smoke rolled southeastward through the temple district. I couldn’t see much actual flame but from the amount of smoke behind the mountains it was obviously too late to put them out without help from a massive rainstorm, which the Chak-answerers said wasn’t likely to happen. I couldn’t see much of the defense from here, either, but it definitely looked disorganized. Thousands of refugees had pressed inward onto the peninsula, instead of doing the rational thing and taking off, and they were eddying around just outside the holy courts, not knowing what to do and expecting us to protect them with our nonexistent magic.

Severed Right Hand had attacked after dawn with at least ninety thousand bloods, about twice the number Hun Xoc had been able to get together for the defense. And it was probably just Severed Right Hand’s first wave. The attackers seemed to have picked up some of the Napoleonic tactics 2 Jeweled Skull had introduced, at least to the extent of going for the kill as a goal and not just the capture. Maybe through 9 Fanged Hummingbird.

It looked too late to do anything but leave. Severed Right Hand would be here in less than two days. And my brain spikes were getting so bad that I worried that at any moment I might collapse into a 75-IQ blob. Dag, I’ve really made a mess, I thought. I was in charge for the shortest possible time and I got the whole place trashed. If I died today—I mean, if I died forever today—I wouldn’t have too much to be proud about.

I pulled back into the dim antechamber and took my mat. There were twelve other people crowded into the little room, not counting attendants. Hun Xoc went into his report. He said that for the last three suns the Rattler partisans had been holding the Puma alliance off with walls of dart fire, and how we’d been getting desertions and mass suicides and the clans weren’t going to hold out another night. Tomorrow would definitely be Ix’s last sun. I cut him short and motioned for 14 Black Gila, 1 Gila’s son. He kneeled over and crouched in front of me.

He reported that 1 Gila had kept his group together and that nearly five hundred score of Koh’s Rattler families were still with him. He was camped around the eastern palisades, his son said, and so far holding off Severed Right Hand’s men, but he was going to be forced to retreat northward. I had the feeling 1 Gila was going to come out of this whole thing on top, and maybe even ahead. Which was fine, it’s nice when at least a few people know what they’re doing.

We’ll blood to your father, I said to 14 Black Gila, if he can take so many dependents with him.

Speaking for his father, 14BG pledged that he would.

And once they set the fires in the temple district, I want him to order our bloods to surrender, I said. The closest word they had to
surrender
was
suicide,
so I had to explain what I meant. He promised that too. Hun Xoc set a small screenfold book on the altar table in front of me and spread it out. The pages were way too hurriedly done, nothing like the right style for this job, but it looked complete. I held up my left hand and he pricked the palm with a stingray spine. I dipped the end of a wet lettering brush into the blood and drew a set of four glyphs on each page. It wasn’t exactly a will, but it commended or pledged all my bloods and goods and land and rights—except the tombs of me and my new ancestors—to 1 Gila of the Spider House as the legitimate head of the Star Rattler Society. I blotted and folded the book, slipped it into its deer-stomach case, tied it, and handed it to 14 Black Gila.

“By your hand only to his only,” I said. He acknowledged the order with an I’ll-die-to-protect-this gesture and left. Snotty little bastard, I thought.

So, what else did I have to do around here? I wondered. Any important assassinations? I wondered if I should make doubly sure they torched my office at the Ocelot House. No, not necessary, I thought.

Any messages to send out? The rest of Koh’s followers were under this new Rattler person. No use talking to him. Or to the other bacabs. 14 Wounded had been killed, supposedly. Alligator Root was coming with me to repay part of his of his burden to Koh. And it was Mask of Jaguar Night’s job to die with me. Maybe I should have the rest of Mask of Jaguar Night’s acolytes killed, too, I thought. No, also not necessary. They probably wouldn’t get that far anyway. They were double traitors as far as the Pumas were concerned.

I wondered what Marena was up to. Would be up to. She would have been able to deal with all this stuff, I thought. Better than I did, anyway.

Fine, I thought, it’s no fun ruling Egypt by myself anyway. The hell with this ring-ding-run country. I feel like Boris Yeltsin.

I gave the order to set up my entombment.

( 77 )

M
y bearers lifted me off the Ocelot mat and Mask’s acolytes rolled it up for the last time. They carried me to the doorway and handed me my double-headed serpent bar scepter. I could smell lime plaster burning. The fires were already lapping at the stone precinct. The bloods and dependents were laid out below in their ranks and files and orders and levels, with only a few absences. There were four squads of five-score bloods each stationed at the base of the mul, with orders to defend it indefinitely. They looked a little uncertain. I wondered how long they’d actually stay after we disappeared. They all made their unified gestures of submission. But they seemed to be sinking into the sour haze and my horns and stone drums sounded muffled. I couldn’t even see the Nest of One Harpy, the Mountain of the East. The sun died behind me as if it were trying to reenact my seating as ahau, only it didn’t look so good this time.

Nothing like a little pomp ’n’ circumstance while everything goes to hell, I thought. At least there were enough people watching so there won’t be any question about where I was going.

What I was doing had been pitched to the public, if you could call them that, as a royal autosacrifice. Or that’s what anthropologists would call it. In Ixian it would be more like “freeing all our greatfathermother’s uays to intercede for us at the smokers’ hearths.” It wasn’t uncommon. In fact, after ruling for a k’atun
you were really supposed to do away with yourself, unless you could fudge it with a proxy the way 9 Fanged Hummingbird had with me, way back in the day. I was just taking an early retirement as a grand gesture. Supposedly my uay would protect the city from the invaders, as long as my body stayed in its mul. I kind of hoped the poor bastards wouldn’t buy it, though. Maybe they’d wise up and finally get the hell out. Anyway, my body wouldn’t actually be under the mul at all. It would be way back in the cave under the hills, ideally covered with a few hundred tons of pulverized karst.

We should go in before we get smoke-cured, Hun Xoc said behind me.

I signed. The musicians stepped it up and crescendoed. The crowd answered. I withdrew my divine fucking presence and we stumbled back into the sanctuary.

At this point the only bloods in the sanctum were me, Hun Xoc, Alligator Root—who was acting as his hands—and Mask of Jaguar Night. Then there were my four bearers holding my mat and staff and private box, five attendants, and thirteen workmen huddled in clusters on heaped bags of gravel, holding unlit torches and bundles of flint axes. I signed for them to open the floor-door to the Nether Throat.

You should really go with 1 Gila, I said to Hun Xoc.

I wouldn’t enjoy it, he said,

“Now that I’m just a lump of dough with eyes.”

I next to you am sorry about that, I gestured.

Just tell your new clan about all the ball games we won, and list the captives we took, he said.

I said of course I would. Yeah, I’ll tell the gang that once there was a fleeting wisp of glory that was known as Camelot. And they’ll be like, so what?

Still, I did at least get the Sacrifice Game skillz, I thought. And the drugs. That’s something I haven’t quite fucked up on. Yet.

If it still works after all that time. Maybe when you take it out of Toyland the magic drains out—

Squelch. Cancel. Can—

But wait, even if everything works, how likely is it that your little rotten brain is going to work? Not bloody. Memember, Mebecca? They’ll screw it up, you’re just going to rot. I wasn’t even sure I’d made enough gel, the lodestones I’d managed to get seemed weak, maybe I didn’t have enough salt, maybe it was too wet down there, the sandbags might not work—

FOCUS, I yelled to the projectionist behind my eyes. Don’t even think about it.

The true flaming hell of it was, I thought, I didn’t even feel displaced or centerless or whatever here anymore. I felt at home. Even if I did get back to Planet Dismal I’d feel exiled there. I guess that’s part of the punishment, I thought, you only get things when you don’t want them anymore.

I sent a single torchbearer down ahead of us and let them carry me down the steep inner stairs. They were still dirty from the last excavation. Everyone followed except six of the workmen, who were going to fill the staircase up after us. The ventilation tubes had been cleared, too, and the Jaguar-adders’ singing from the ritual outside came in through the pipes and feedbacked around in the stone. I’d say it was like a death march except its melody didn’t repeat or resolve itself, it was more kind of an ever-rising fugue of sad, extended tonal interrogations, questions you felt you must have asked a long time ago and now somebody was asking you, and you didn’t have any answers. We went down three hundred and sixty steps from the top of the mul into the Jaguar’s caverns, the bearers lowering me in time with the beat of suspended logs on the façades resonating through the stone, the entire mul acting as a drum:

Throoomb,

Throoomb,

Throoomb . . .

( 78 )

T
hrooomb,

Throoomb
 . . .

FOMP
.

The shock wave punched through the stone and then the sound came and went suddenly, a round echoless explosion like a report shell in a sound studio, and then migraineish pain through my head over an absolute silence I’d never experienced before. The pressure had popped my eardrums.

So what, I thought, I won’t need them. Finally, after a lifetime of noise. It was a kind of peace you could get used to.

I was already in the uterus-shaped sarcophagus, sitting upright like it was a bathtub. I must have looked kind of silly. There were only three other people in the room, Hun Xoc, Alligator Root, and my attendant. Mask of Jaguar Night and the rest of the workmen and attendants had been out in the collapse. Just as well I can’t hear them screaming, I thought, if that’s what they’re doing. That would have harshed me out. Hun Xoc was leaning his callused elbow-stumps on the rim of the casket. We smiled at each other. A drop of blood scrolled out of his ear, wobbling on his cheek, threatening to detach and fall on me, but then it didn’t. I pointed to my ear and Hun Xoc nodded and made a casting-off gesture. I thumped my right hand on his left shoulder, the equivalent of a thumbs-up. He raised his left elbow-stump to his right shoulder, the pledge position. Still just a couple of old vets.

The tomb’s inner chamber hadn’t been decorated, but the prepared white limestone walls were covered with charcoal cartoons for reliefs that would never get carved. The small square room was bare except for the four piles of lodestones, one in each corner, and in the center the mahogany scaffolding surrounding the ovary-shaped coffin with its arm-length-thick granite walls. The thick stone lid hung a half a rope-length above me, suspended on hemp ropes and counterweighted by two huge embroidered sandbags plopped on the ground like severed testicles. Then there were four big bulging liquid-baskets suspended from the ceiling, two on either side of the scaffolding, filled with the thin solution that formed the base of the aminoplastic gel. It was basically salts, my imitation camphor powder, and a few different anesthetics suspended in a mixture of urea formaldehyde, and methanol. Each basket held more than enough of the stuff to overflow the casket. The rest were just for fail-safe. And that was about it.

Okay, Step Two, I thought. It’s easy. Don’t rush it.

I signed a “now” to Alligator Root. He poked a bone dagger into the marked zero on the liquid-baskets. Horrible-smelling yellow stuff shot out, like the thing was a urinating mastodon. He got the attendant to hold the bamboo trough under the stream so that it flowed into the casket. The stuff felt colder than water, like rubbing alcohol, and at first it splashed up over my face. Alligator Root wiped me off and handed me the Little Cup, mint pulque mixed with about five percent of belladonna tea and a few other tranqs. I chugged it down. If I’d dosed it right it would have me nearly knocked out just before I drowned. No matter what anybody says, suffocation is not a fun way to go. He reached in and folded my pillow-sandbag so I could keep my head up out of the liquid.

Cool. Step Three.

I reached down and opened my right femoral vein with my little finger-knife. The Formalin-like compound stung the wound for a few beats before the anesthetics numbed it out. The idea was that as I slowly bled to death some of my body tissues would soak up the solution to replace lost body fluid. Not that this would keep the body viable—that part was going to be a total loss—but just to more closely approach a state of deep hypothermia. I took a last look at eight jars of salted toads and scorpions and puppy dog’s tails and stuff I’d packed where my other foot used to be. They looked okay. I was bringing back enough little druggy-critters to dope up a herd of wildebeest.

Four. I signaled to Alligator Root. Hun Xoc made a wan grin that meant, “Sorry I can’t help out too.” Alligator Root held up a sealed jar the size of a coffee can. I eyed another okay and he broke the top off and poured the hardener into the casket near my feet. It was thicker than the base solution, like maple syrup, and when it hit the pooling liquid in the casket it extruded out of its glob in threads, folding over my legs, spreading and dispersing in the solvent. Basically I was being cast in a kind of a simple organic epoxy, with a few extra metal salts that were supposed to preserve my neuronal structure more or less perfectly—not so much that you could get the same brain going again, but enough so that you could map the changed connections onto the new brain, Jed
₁
’s brain, enough to recover the memories.

Memories, I thought. Not consciousness. You’re dying, dude. It’s going to be Jed
₁
hanging on to them, not you. Not you, your
self
—

Cancel. Cancel. Step Five. Alligator Root handed me the Big Cup.

It was a thinned version of the hardener. If everything worked, it would spread through me and react with the solution as it spread into me through my skin and lungs. A thin skin had formed on the surface. I poked through it and drank the rest in two quick drafts like I’d practiced. Ghac yuk. It was thinned with honeyed pulque
but it was still just a total bitter disgusto-sting. Ghastly. Just don’t barf, I thought, just don’t barf, just don’t barf. Do! Not! Barf!!! ’Gator handed me another cup of pulque and practically forced it down my throat to wash the goop down. I got spit all over his hand but he got me back together and he helped me lean back into the casket. I sank onto the sand cushions, settling an arm-length below the rim, still gagging, struggling to keep the stuff down. It was like cold chrome bocce balls were growing in my esophagus. I dry-swallowed a few times and it was like the balls supercooled and I was all numb inside, just a shell of feeling.

Whoa, it’s really comfy in here, I thought, it really did feel like a womb must feel. The solution had filled it up faster than I’d thought and was flowing over the rim. It smelled worse than the courts of Xibalba, though. I wished I could have popped my nose along with my ears. A shot of cold ran down my throat into my groin, and I got a flash from when I was in the Warren Hospital for Special Diseases when I was ten and they gave me total anesthesia, and I tried to stay awake and then realized I had to just dive into the big zero and see if there had been any water in the pool and I just let myself slide, and that was okay and I was still here, dammit. Six. I signed again. Gator bent down and pushed the knife into each of the two big bear-hide sandbags that counterweighted the lid. I could see a bit of the dry silver jets of fine sand, but I couldn’t see any motion in the lid at first. It’s stuck, I thought, it’s going to crash down and shatter and the whole thing’s fucked. But then the shadow grew slightly, it was coming down, gently, like an eyelid. I squinted up at it. It was convex on the lower side to push any air bubbles out of the surface of the liquid. For Keeps, the lid said. Except that was still too weak. It exuded this total eternal stay-putness no matter what.

Alligator Root took the sandbag out from under my head and it sank back, just floating on top of the liquid. It was getting to about the consistency of homogenized milk. The dark lid grew over me like the earth looming under a nocturnal skydiver. No parachute. I repositioned the wax-sealed box on my chest and folded my left arm over it. There were two things in it, Koh’s folded feather-cloth Game-mat and a doeskin book filled with my detailed and probably redundant notes on the Game. I was actually pretty proud of the notes, I figured that with them and the drugs a quick study like Marena would learn the Game overnight. She’ll handle it, I thought, she’ll play and beat the Smokers of Randomness, and in her first play, she’ll see past the rim.

I held my right hand on Hun Xoc’s forehead until the lid was about six finger-widths from the rim, and then pulled it back into the box. We got a last look in each other’s eyes. Before the stone came between us I turned away, to the left, to looked at Koh’s profile in the last swallow of light. She was still great-looking and all shiny in her coat of liquid wax. Her head was floating a little on the gel. It’s a shame we didn’t get to bring your brain back, too, I thought. I held her hand. The silence grew in volume but in my head it was like I could still hear them singing that counting rhyme with the parts of the deer. Relax, I thought. Safe. Safer than walking around waiting to die. I settled into the eternal subterranean cool. I felt like a bottle of great old Burgundy. We’ll gel no brine before it’s time. My leg was cold, but not shivery cold, and then it was gone, like it had passed directly to frostbite. The colloid was hydrogen bonding to the walls of my capillaries.

This isn’t so bad, I thought. It wouldn’t be too bad if I just stayed down here forever. Totally separate, out of my old time, out of my new time. Civilizations would flower and seed and rot and I wouldn’t have to sweat any of it. And eventually in a nanofraction of that universeful of time I’d be born, I’d be a little boy, I’d grow up and have friends and enemies and do stuff and meet Marena and come right back here and meet Koh and not be able to protect her, and the universe would spiral out to unimaginable emptiness again while I stayed all cozy right here dreaming in infinite slow motion, free of the clock like a demon on a beam of light. Maybe it was okay, I was finally where I was always going to be and Koh and I could finally rest for real, just be in ourselves, never have to go and do any goddamned things again. Rolled round in Earth’s diurnal course.

Okay, don’t forget to wink, I thought. Supposedly there was this French aristocrat who was executed during the Terror who told some of his friends to be sure to watch his execution, and he made sure the headsman was going to take his head out of the basket and hold it up to the crowd. And the idea was that if he was still living and conscious, he’d wink, just as an experiment. And his head did wink. So what I meant was not to wink, exactly, but to see whether I could still think or whatever after my heart had stopped, and for how long. It was just something I was interested in. A last little treat.

My heart was already bumping kind of hard, THUB-bub, THUB-bub. Settle down, you’re doomed, I thought. I sucked in a deep breath and had to stifle a cough from the dust from the cave-in and the smoke of the mint-and-musk torch sputtering in the reduced oxygen.

Cortez and Pisarro and DeLanda can trash this place all they want, I thought. I’ll rebuild it, and I’ll rebuild it better, Ocelot will rise, the Lords of the Mat can crack the skull-ball again out into the next age, the blue—