Gods and Pawns (Company) Read online

  “No,” said Tanama. “We use gourds for that. Oh, dear, one of the beds broke. Shall I go get you another one?”

  “Most kind! But I wouldn’t hear of you fetching such a heavy piece of furniture, little goddess. If you’ll show me where another bed is, I’ll bring it back myself,” said Lewis, as smoothly as he was able. Tanama, however, bit her lip and backed off a pace.

  “I’m not supposed to—that is, Father says—”

  “It’s all right,” said Mendoza quickly. “I’ll just sleep hanging from the ceiling again. Don’t trouble yourself.”

  “Thank you!” said Tanama, and ran from the room.

  Lewis and Mendoza exchanged glances.

  “I had been about to tell you,” said Lewis, “that the royal family seems to be keeping a secret.”

  “I’d guessed as much.” Mendoza turned her head and eyed the doorway. “Something other than the obvious secret ingredient in terra preta?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Lewis. He told her what he’d overheard, and she frowned.

  “Why would a drooling inbred idiot be considered a bargaining chip?” she said.

  “Perhaps a negative one? In any case, I’m afraid we don’t have much choice,” said Lewis. “Company procedure, and all that.”

  Mendoza sighed. “Pass me a guava. It’s going to be a long night.”

  They sat up in silence as the night darkened. The soft mist became driving rain, thundering down on the broad leaves of the tree canopy above the house; soon there was a counterpoint of plinks and plonks from pots hastily placed in rooms Lewis’s thatching had not yet reached.

  Breathing deeply, Lewis attuned himself to the night. Under the drum and spatter of the rain, the fearful song of a million tree frogs chanting their lust. He made out the slower rhythms: mortal heartbeats, mortal breathing, a drowsy conversation, the popping of embers in a low fire. The creak of a bed frame: someone was tossing impatiently.

  There were the scents, too: the smoking fire fragrant as incense, the sweetness of overripe fruit, the bitterness of mold. Over all, the immense raw wet black smell of the night outside; under all, a faint mortal reek.

  The mortals grew still. The conversation drifted into snores. The impatient sleeper lay quiet, finally at peace.

  Lewis waited until he thought he could hear centipedes rustling through the garden mold. He opened his eyes and looked at Mendoza. Her eyes were wide and vacant, dreaming awake. Gently he took her hand. She turned her face to him blindly; gradually she pulled her consciousness to the here and now, and met his eyes. He smiled and rose to his feet, taking her with him.

  They walked out into the dark house.

  A black corridor stretched before them, and only faintly glowing mushrooms along the baseboards gave any light; but they needed none. Silent they proceeded over the damp flagstones, through the vacant wing of the palace where they had been housed. Empty rooms opened black mouths, all along the wall to their right; now and again an arcade opened to the left, where rain gurgled in all the cistern runnels of the courtyard.

  The mortal scent became stronger, the walls dryer and in a little better repair. It was now possible to see where painted frescoes had been, peeling and flaking away. No dainty ships or wasp-waisted ladies; only clubbed geometric figures, with here and there a dead-eyed face protruding its tongue through gapped teeth, and things that might have been intended to represent flowers or stars.

  And now, a surreal flickering on the wall, making the murals seem to writhe and grimace. Mendoza halted. Lewis raised a hand to point at the line of doorways ahead, where rush lights smoked and threw fitful illumination.

  They can’t harm us, he told her.

  I have nightmares, too. Mendoza stood rigid. Sometimes I dream I’m awake, and standing in the house where my mortal family lived. They’re lying there together in our bed, my mother and my father, and my little brothers and sisters. They’re all asleep; only I am awake and alone, in the night. I can’t wake them to keep me company, no matter how I try. And then I remember that they’ve all been dust this many a year, and I can never, never rest.

  Lewis put his arms around her. She clung to him. He held her until she stopped trembling. Without a word, then, he led her on along the corridor.

  They looked in through the first doorway. Orocobix, Lord of Abundance, lay on his plain bed. He was gaunt and ancient, composed as though he had been laid out on a bier. His clothing was neatly folded on a chest. Under the bed frame was a clay chamberpot.

  Lewis scanned the room. Unable to take her eyes from the old mortal, Mendoza fumbled in the credenza case she had brought and took out a glass vial, tipped with a needle point. She passed it to Lewis, who stepped forward soundlessly and bent over Orocobix where he slept, placing a hand on his brow. Orocobix sighed; he passed into deeper sleep. Lewis jabbed his upper arm once with the cell collector; the vial filled with a pinkish mist, and its needle point retracted inward. He passed the vial to Mendoza, who capped it and put it away.

  In the next room was a wide bed, where Agueybana and Atabey curled together snoring. Their room was cluttered with what must have been the best surviving furniture from the palace; the atmosphere, even in that roaring wet night, was thick and airless. Mendoza withdrew two more vials from the case; Lewis stepped very carefully as he took cells from the mortals. Agueybana grunted and shifted, but did not wake; Atabey slept on.

  The room beyond was Cajaya’s. It was strewn with clothing and discarded ornaments. On a small table sat several jars of scent and powders, most of them with their lids ajar, diffusing a sickly sweetness. Some attempt had been made at daubing flowers on the walls here; Lewis examined them hopefully, but they bore no resemblance to the graceful lilies of Thera. The room’s mistress sprawled under furs, and her snore was high-pitched. She never so much as stirred when the needle nipped her arm.

  One more room, Mendoza noted, as they returned to the corridor. Lewis nodded. Prepared as they were for another shabby bedchamber, they stepped through the doorway and halted in astonishment.

  This room had been maintained above all others. The plaster seemed to have been renewed regularly, and it was painted, polychrome in barbaric splendor, red and yellow and black. Fernlike trees grew on black cone mountains, bowed with black fruit under winking stars. Birdlike things stalked and gestured. Abstract patterns shimmered by the fluttering light of the lamp. From an incense brazier a solid blue fume arose, smoke straight and thick as an arm, vanishing in a cloud of shadows near the ceiling.

  The incense did nothing to dispel the sickroom atmosphere. For it was a sickroom: upon a bed grand as an altar lay a young man in an agony of illness, feverish and shaking, emaciated. His body shone like gold in the lamplight. For one moment Lewis thought, Good gods! It’s El Dorado himself!

  He stepped close to see, and realized that the illusion came from the film of sweat over the boy’s skin, which was yellow as a harvest moonrise.

  But his bed had been decked with ornaments of shell and beaten gold, with bright-dyed cotton ribbon, with macaw feathers, and the massy crown upon his brow was gold, too. A jaguar pelt was spread on the floor beside the bed, where little Tanama was curled up like a devoted puppy. Something gleamed beside her. On closer inspection, it proved to be a great vessel of hammered gold. It stank like a latrine.

  Mendoza gasped for breath. He’s got the worst case of liver fluke I’ve ever seen.

  Lewis scanned him and winced. Chronic hepatic fascitis, all right; it was a wonder the boy was still alive. He must have been infested for years.

  His bones are poking through his skin. Mendoza dug in the case and thrust two more vials at Lewis. Hurry! I can’t bear it in here.

  She stepped to the side and looked away as Lewis bent over the bed. The young man opened wide dark eyes, but did not see him, or thought he was only one more in a lifetime of fever dreams. Lewis touched his brow gently, sent him into deep sleep, and looked for a likely place to take a sample; there was very little spare flesh.
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br />   Getting a sample from Tanama went much more easily. Lewis stepped away, turning to hand the vials off to Mendoza. She was staring fixedly at the back wall of the room, where the mural pattern swirled around a hole that opened into utter darkness.

  Do you realize what that is? she transmitted.

  A ventilation shaft?

  No! Triangulate its position. The composting chute is right below this room.

  It’s a…sewer drain?

  Mendoza pointed at the big vessel. They gave him a solid gold bedpan. That, and a golden crown. What compensation! The little girl waits on him, and dumps everything in here.

  How happy they’ll be to encounter Company plumbing. Lewis backed away from the smell, which intensified as a gust of wind backed and sent appalling vapor up the shaft.

  Let’s get out of here!

  They fled back through the nightmare corridors.

  So…the family has some genetic resistance to liver fluke, Lewis theorized. Except for one or two members in a generation.

  Dr. Zeus will be interested in whatever gives them immunity, Mendoza replied. Possibly even more than in the source of terra preta. Oh, God, how I want a hot shower in a clean room.

  They ducked back into their chamber. It seemed almost fresh and wholesome to them now, and they sucked in great breaths of dank air.

  You’ll take the bed tonight. Lewis led her to it with a firm grip. Mendoza did not resist, but sank down on it.

  I think I’ve had a bit more mortal company than I can stand… She lay back and curled on her side. You’re very kind, Lewis…

  The rain intensified, roared down in torrents, and thunder cracked sullen and slow. Lewis leaned against the wall, avoiding a leak that streamed in, and watched as Mendoza slept.

  When he opened his eyes, after a long night of being hyperaware of the bacterial life of the wall, he saw Mendoza awake. She was sitting up with the credenza on her lap, studying its screen while she munched a Zeusola bar. The rain had stopped.

  “Morning, Lewis,” she said. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Good morning.” Lewis stretched painfully and looked around for the cache of bars. He had torn one open and was wolfing it down before the import of her words sank in on him. “Mmf?”

  “I’ve been running analysis on the samples from the males,” said Mendoza, rubbing her eyes. “I’m running the boy now. Guess what? The old man and his son aren’t entirely Indians. Had a lot of odd genetic markers. Closest match I could find was the aboriginals of the Canary Islands.”

  Lewis did a fast access. “What, the Guanches?” He slapped his forehead. “Of course! And they call themselves the Guanikina!”

  “Do they? And the Canary Islands have a lot of volcanic activity. Villages wiped out by eruptions, survivors paddling off to other islands in the chain to start new villages. My guess is, at some point in the past somebody paddled due west and wound up in the Caribbean,” said Mendoza. She shrugged. “It isn’t exactly Atlantis, but…”

  “But it’s fascinating!” Lewis rubbed his hands. “What a story, what a journey it must have been! And then…they must have conquered a Taino tribe somehow or other, and…and interbred, but not much. And later emigrated here to the mainland, where they founded this astonishing agricultural civilization! What else have you been able to find out?”

  “Not a lot,” Mendoza admitted. “I’m a botanist, remember? If they were maize cultivars instead of mortals, I could really do some analysis. That’ll have to wait for the anthropologists. At least now I know where the African cotton came from.”

  “Of course,” said Lewis automatically, but his mind was racing with speculation. “Maybe this would explain how the royal family survived whatever it was that killed off all their subjects! They were from the Old World! They had a greater genetic variation, therefore greater resistance to disease—”

  “Maybe,” said Mendoza. “Access the data. Old World natives have better immunoresponse to disease; New World natives have better immunoresponse to parasites.”

  “Which would explain why that poor boy is so ill with liver fluke!”

  “But why’s the rest of the family perfectly healthy, then?”

  “Oh.” Lewis frowned. “Favorable mutation? Or some miracle herb in their garden?”

  “I think we’d better leave this for the Company to figure out,” said Mendoza.

  She was silent a moment, and then added: “By the way…sorry about last night. I behaved like an idiot.”

  “Not at all! Perfectly understandable, under the circumstances.”

  “I have issues with mortals,” said Mendoza stiffly. It was the most outrageous piece of understatement Lewis had heard in a while, but he merely nodded and reached for another Zeusola bar. The credenza beeped. She peered down at the screen. Her eyes widened.

  “Well, this is interesting,” she said. “The boy’s different. Significantly…”

  “Isn’t he related to the others?” Lewis leaned past her to look, but made out only dense columns of code.

  “Oh, no question, but look…” Mendoza ordered up other columns of code and juxtaposed them with the other results.

  “It’s probably whatever genetic variation that makes him susceptible to the liver fluke, when the others aren’t,” said Lewis.

  “Maybe,” said Mendoza, sounding unconvinced. She looked at the screen suspiciously. “I think I need to do a blood analysis, too.”

  They left the credenza running tests on the samples, and slogged away to their respective tasks.

  The island rose above a lake of white mist now; the vapor flowed like a white river, trailing through the treetops, veiling the lower terraces. Lewis went splashing across the courtyard and found the bundles of reed he had cut yesterday, undisturbed by the storm. Hoisting one to his back, he went up the ladder with it and set to work.

  As he labored, Lewis let his awareness expand a little. He felt the little household coming to life in their corner of the vast ruinous palace. Creaking, grumbling, coughing, the padding of bare feet. Cajaya’s high thin voice raised in query. There was the raking back of coals, the snap of kindling catching fire. Tanama’s cheery voice beginning its chatter, like a bird greeting the day. Splashing from a cistern. The smell of amaranth porridge cooking.

  He watched when they came wandering out into the courtyard, one by one, avoiding the pools of rainwater. Cajaya folded a blanket on which to sit, complaining about the wet stone. Orocobix wandered out to the edge of the courtyard and seemed to pray a while, gazing out into the mist. Agueybana and Atabey were bickering, with no particular heat, about whether or not he ought to go hunting.

  Tanama came out, carrying bowls of pure gold and a cooking pot that steamed. Orocobix came back and sat down; the child dished up a serving for each of them, and then retreated back into the palace.

  “She’s left lumps in it again,” Cajaya said. “I never used to leave lumps in it.”

  “You certainly did,” said Agueybana.

  “Don’t eat them, if you don’t like it,” said Atabey. “Just think! Soon you’ll have servants cooking for you. Servants! And a divine husband. So you’ve nothing to complain about.”

  “I suppose not,” said Cajaya. “If that dead man is any kind of an ambassador.”

  “He’s doing a nice job on the roof,” Orocobix remarked, glancing up at Lewis. He caught Lewis’s eye and nodded graciously.

  “They really do seem to work astonishingly well,” said Agueybana. “Think what it’ll be like to have a few thousand of those laboring for us, eh? We’ll do nothing all day but sit about at our ease!”

  “How lovely!” said Cajaya, fanning herself.

  “How like ancient times!” said Atabey, with a sigh. Orocobix looked into his empty bowl and said nothing.

  And there they sat, in expectant pettiness, as they must have sat every day of their lives. They looked out on their empty kingdom. Lewis shook his head sadly.

  Did all mortal adventure end like this? Once, there ha
d been journeys into the unknown, and struggles against great odds, and grandeur.

  Around noon, Mendoza transmitted: Lewis, I’m back in the room. Thought I’d see how the analysis is going. You want another Zeusola bar?

  I’d love one, thanks.

  There was no reply. He worked on placidly, and had only paused to remove his hat and wipe sweat from his face when there came a wave of astonishment through the ether, without coherent words. Lewis cocked his head, turning, triangulating. Where was she? Still in the room?

  Mendoza, what’s going on?

  The emotion subsided a little. When he heard her again, he had the impression she was overwhelmed with disgust.

  I have the blood analysis results.

  Well?

  That boy has more than liver fluke, Lewis. He must be dying of septicemia.

  What? Lewis called up his memory of the ghastly room, the stick-thin figure on the bed. But…no. We’d have picked it up in our scans, if that were the case. Why do you think—

  His blood’s rotten with bacteria.

  What kind of bacteria?

  There was a long pause. The next burst of emotion nearly knocked him off the roof.

  When he had regained his grip on the ladder, Lewis heard Mendoza laughing.

  Well, we’ve just solved another mystery. I now know the secret ingredient in terra preta.

  Lewis thought rapidly. The mystery microbes? They’re from him?

  That’s right. Remember the drain in his room, that empties straight into the compost chute?

  No! You don’t mean…There’s some sort of bacteria that makes mortals deathly ill, but when passed into the soil—no, wait—

  Wait, that doesn’t add up—

  Maybe whatever it is that makes him particularly susceptible to the liver fluke—

  But that doesn’t make sense—because when you compare his DNA to the others… Her thought trailed into a sense of bewilderment, frustration.

  You’ve solved the mystery of Super-Compost, anyhow. You’ll get a Commendation, do you realize that?