ReVISIONS (25 page)

 

 

 

 

W
HEN the obsidian blade fell upon the king's neck, tears streamed down Pacal's face.

Altun Ha performed the execution himself, in full regalia. As he straightened from delivering the blow, blood droplets fell from his mask of quetzal feathers. Amid the pounding of Tunkul drums, an apprentice came forward to take custody of the blade, and others adjusted King Bahlum Kuk's body for proper drainage into the blood reservoir.

Pacal stood with the other Temple apprentices in a steep row from the bottom stair to the summit, witnessing the king's sacrifice, his atonement for defeat in battle against the Eastern army. From the pyramid's summit, Pacal looked out over the tree canopy, imagining enemy warriors stomping the jungle to the ground. But they were still far away, and they were not giants. Indeed, their religion proved how small they were.

The hard sun dried Pacal's tears—a good thing, because he didn't want Master Altun Ha to think him weak. As the solemn odor of blood soaked the air, Pacal sucked in a deep breath. With his investiture in eight days, he would wield the black knife for the first time, sanctifying once more the people, and the city of Tikal with the immemorial ritual.

Well, actually, he would rid the populace of another violent criminal. Looking out over the thousands gathered in the plaza below, Pacal knew that many of them saw Temple sacrifice in just those terms: as societal cleansing. Knowing each citizen's genotype did allow some purging of villainy. As Tikal's population geneticists read the citizens' genomes, the sequencers would search for the genetic variations associated with violence, and those with the V-gene fell to the obsidian blade. But of course, the Temple's ceremonies meant more than mere justice.

He watched as apprentices carried Bahlum Kuk's body through the portal of the Temple, the doorway framed by stone snake jaws, symbolizing the threshold between the Middleworld and the Underworld, over which Heaven arched. Through these three worlds the Tree of Life rose, symbolically linking the domains.

Pacal was a modern student, trained in single nucleotide polymorphism analysis. But his cultural roots went deep, and he felt their tug. The sacred blood metaphorically nourished the three worlds, bringing prosperity to all. The king's sacrifice was especially noble since he was no criminal, but the city's highest symbol. Blood was the purifying sacrifice, and had been for a hundred twenty-year cycles of Mayan progress. Pacal looked at his bare toes and fingers, a sum of twenty, the logical basis of Mayan numbers. The numbers of the Eastern tribe were based upon half the number of human digits—another sure sign that their culture was inferior.

Poking through the jungle canopy was the summit of a neighboring Temple—by its presence helping to sanctify the landscape, physically linking geography and ritual. In this profound moment, Pacal felt tears accumulate again, but blinked them away as Altun Ha strode past, his face beaked and feathered, pocked here and there with the king's blood.

Pacal followed his master into the robing room, deep and cool in the pyramid recesses, where he helped Altun Ha remove the feathered cape and regalia of office.

As Altun Ha removed the quetzal mask, Pacal could see a lingering trace of ecstasy on the old man's face. Altun Ha and Bahlum Kuk had long been friends, but the master spoke with only the slightest quaver in his voice: “He was a good king,” he said. Such was the professionalism Altun Ha could command.

“A good king,” Pacal repeated in hushed tones.

The king's sacrifice proved that.

 

Nighttime was a good time for sex. So Pacal had been told by those who'd lain with women. Nighttime was the intoxicating reign of Xibalba, when the dark underworld rotated above the earth. It was also the time when thugs lurked in waiting to slit throats and steal the clothes off your corpse. So this night, to find Pacal a woman, his friends accompanied him well armed and in a group.

They sped along the branching canals in a power boat, with his friend Chel at the helm, dodging other traffic with ease, flying the pendant of the Temple, and commandeering the lanes by right of their Order. Overhead, Jupiter lay in alignment with Chicchan's star, a fine configuration for first sex. It was nearly the same alignment that would, in six days, smile on Pacal's investiture. He was eager to begin his purification rituals instead of carousing with friends, but it was a tradition that no executioner be a virgin, and Pacal was one who followed tradition.

Arriving in the grotto, Chel and the others found their girlfriends, leaving Pacal with a voluptuous older woman. The night's magic settled over him as she poured their wine. Then a slim hand snatched the cup from the woman, and Pacal turned to face a beautiful girl with hair cut evenly at chin level.

She cocked her head to dismiss the other woman, and handed Pacal the wine. “I thought you'd be taller,” she said. It was a rude thing to say, but her eyes smiled over the edge of the cup she was draining.

“I am taller when I do my duty.” He meant when he stood on the Temple stairs, but her mocking grin informed him what she interpreted as “duty.”

“I also thought you grew feathers from your face. Glad to see you don't.” One side of her mouth curled up. “I'm Kina.”

He drank quickly, trying to think of a retort, or how to escape this arrogant girl who mocked his Order.

Laughter rose and fell in the grotto like the chatter of birds. He noted Kina's dark beauty, and her half smile. He wondered which side of her smile was meant for him. She resolved that question, taking him by the hand, and leading him into the forest.

Wet leaves slapped at his face as the path narrowed. He followed her, drunk with the prospect of unwinding the cloth that tightly bound her hips. When at last she stopped, they stood before a dark cave entrance, a portal exhaling a cold breath. Distant sounds of the grotto's revels merged with the nearer jungle chitter.

“I've been watching you at the Temple ceremonies,” Kina said.

Pacal had known that his role was public, yet it startled him to think that she had noticed him as an individual.

“We all know the apprentices' names. My girlfriends have their favorites. You're mine.”

“Why?”

The half smile reappeared, mocking, beguiling. “Because you cry at the executions.”

“I don't.”

Her dark eyes held him. “It's all right to cry. What the Temple does is murder.”

She had taken his hands in her own, and now he pulled away. “It's not murder. And you can't see that high up.”

Kina shrugged. “Binoculars.”

Despite the cool draft from the cave, his face grew hot. “Those are wondrous moments. You couldn't understand.”

Her smile flattened. “Never mind, then.” She walked into the mouth of the cave, disappearing like a stone dropped in a pool.

Did she want him to follow her, or had he driven her from him? He peered into the cave, into what might be a black portal to Xibalba. Then he walked inside, where his skin sprouted an icy sweat. “Kina?” The cave's version of his voice was pitifully small. No answer. She had shed him like an old garment.

He spoke into the blackness. “What would happen if we didn't remove criminals from our land?” If she was there, she could hear. “If we let those with the violence gene procreate and transmit their violence to future generations? You see how criminals prey on decent folk. How a few hoodlums terrify us with killings and rape. Isn't it better to cull such things from our genomes? Or would you rather have us dispatch undesirables in secret? Would you feel more pure if you didn't observe?”

Her silence was her verdict. “You think I'm a monster,” he whispered.

An arm slithered along his waist. “No,” Kina said from close behind him. “I think you can change, that's all.” She pressed her naked skin against his back.

He found himself quite willing to save moral discussion for another time. Pacal followed her to a bed of palm fronds on the cave floor. “I'll never change, you know.”

“We will change together,” she said.

Hearing this, he thought she might be as new to sex as he was. To spare her the embarrassment of his fumblings, he said, “I'm supposed to lie with someone who knows what they're doing.”

“Well, let's not do what we're supposed to.”

And then they didn't.

The realm of Xibalba stripped their inhibitions, setting its dark powers loose in their blood. She kept pulling back from him, helping him last, sharpening his desire. During that hour Pacal fell deeply in love with this stranger who now knew his body better than anyone.

It was with some disgust, then, that he learned why she had lain with him. She rumpled the fronds to refresh them, and lay back in his arms. From the darkness she brought out a small square and held it aloft at arm's length.

“It's The Book,” she said.

His heart sinking, he reached out and touched it, feeling the bumpy leather, the tissue-thin pages. “Tell me this is not the Book of the Eastern god.” Tikal's enemies called themselves the People of The Book, and they were intent on converts, whether by war or stealth.

Her pause made him sick. Rising up on one elbow, he stared at her, a dark soul in a world of blackness. He stood, snatching up his clothes and throwing them on. “Bahlum Kuk lost 15,000 warriors to the barbarians. How could you love them?”

Shadows stirred as she fumbled with her own clothes. “Pacal, what would happen if we didn't allow all books to be read? Wouldn't
we
be the barbarians?” Insufferably, her tone mimicked the one he had used earlier to defend his Order.

At the cave opening he paused. “How could you turn sex into preaching? Is this what your Eastern god commands?” He strode from the cave, feeling debased by what they had done together.

From the darkness her voice came, even clearer than when she lay next to him: “Your Temple doesn't kill those with the violence gene, you know. They kill the People of The Book. That's how they get rid of us. Not such a high calling after all, is it?”

“Is that why you lay with me? To change me?” he asked, feeling foolish for exposing that, even now, he cared what she thought.

“No. But I think you're better than what you do.”

He laughed, though it was far from what he felt. How could he be better than Master Altun, or the Order that tried to eradicate cruelty from their lives? With ritual cruelty. It was better so.
Better
, he said with each stomp of his feet through the underbrush.
Better
.

 

As Xibalba occupied the sky, the brazier's smoke carried Pacal's blood to the Heavens. The strips of paper that had caught his few drops of blood curled on the embers. Pacal reached down to cut himself one more time.

“Enough,” came the voice from the western portal. Altun Ha stood there, dressed now in the simple tunic of an educator and scientist. “It's supposed to be purification, not torture,” the master said.

“Some need more purification than others,” Pacal dared to say. Though his investiture was only three days away, his former devotion was receding from him. Kina's voice needled at him:
Not such a high calling, is it?
She had given him her body, but taken his certainty. It was not worth the trade.

Pacal rewound his loin wrap as Master Altun stood beside him, staring at the coals.

Altun Ha said, “Let us be the judge of who is pure and who is not.” With more warmth he added, “I cut myself a lot when I was your age. I felt responsible for what our Order must do.” He turned to gaze at his student. “But I learned that I am not that important. Only the Temple, our city, our people have that importance.”

Pacal had used a desensitizer, but his loins began to hurt. He managed to stay professional, keeping expression from his face.