Ruins (8 page)
Pepe splashed across a narrow stream, placing it in his mental map of the area, knowing indisputably where he was, how close he had come to his destination. Xitaclan lay just up ahead.
In a thicket of fragrant hibiscus shrubs on the bank of the stream, the underbrush rustled. Something heavy splashed into the water. He recognized the reptilian eyes, the sleek form of a night-hunting cayman—large, and hungry, judging from the ripples that arrowed through the water toward him. Pepe quickly slogged through the mud, climbing the bank and rushing into the underbrush to get safely away from the crocodile-like creature.
Above, he heard more movement, crashing branches, falling leaves. He hoped it wasn't a night-prowling cat, ready to drop down on him to rip him apart with curved claws and powerful feline muscles—then he heard the scolding of a group of awakened monkeys, disturbed by his flight from the cayman. He sighed, feeling a shiver tingle through him. The old religion had revered jaguars, but he would not have felt blessed to encounter one of the jungle panthers alone in the night.
For centuries, the Catholic priests had done their best to squash continued practice of the old beliefs. In the village Father Ronald railed with stories of hellfire and eternal damnation whenever he found evidence of ritually shed blood, of scars from self-scourging, even missing fingers or toes cut off with razor-sharp obsidian knives in personal mutilation.
The villagers apologized, did their penance, behaved with meek shame in front of the priests ... but altered none of their thinking. Their hearts had not changed since the coming of the Spaniards five hundred years ear-lier.
Sometimes pure sacrificial blood washed away stains the frequent jungle rains could never obliterate.
Pepe remembered quite vividly, while his father lay dying of the scorpion sting, his mother kneeling outside the door of their hut. She drew a thorny vine through her mouth, ripping her tongue open so that she could spit bright, fresh lifeblood onto the earth in her own sacrifice.
The sacrifice had not worked, though. Pepe won-dered if the old gods had demanded more blood than she was willing to give.
In the golden past, the Maya gods had feasted on blood, on hearts torn out of willing victims, on sacrificed prisoners hurled to their deaths into the sacred limestone wells beside the great temples.
Now only ruins and artifacts remained of all that glory. Perhaps the gods had tired of blood after all.. ..
Finally, after another hour of trying to slip like a thief through the jungle's night, Pepe arrived at the forgotten metropolis of Xitaclan.
Parting the wide, slick leaves of a banana tree, he gazed into the moonlit clearing, the rough hummocks of fallen temples, the sculpture-laden walls showing the hook-nosed masks of the rain god Chac, the numerous feathered serpent motifs now defaced by moss and vines, the impressive Pyramid of Kukulkan tall in the night, but smothered with vegetation.
Some of the thick trees had been chopped down and hauled away as the archaeological team had worked on their initial excavations, clearing the site of the densest foliage to remove the blanket of undergrowth deposited by undisturbed time. The trenches and shorn tree stumps stood like raw wounds in the earth.
The American team had been gone for only days, but the jungle had already begun to reclaim its territory.
In the center of Xitaclan's plaza, the stepped pyramid dominated the scene.
The regularly spaced platforms had partially crumbled on one side, huge blocks tugged free by the strength of roots and vines. But at the ziggu-rat's apex the temple to Kukulkan, the god of wisdom, flanked by his feathered serpent guardians, remained intact.
Pepe would have to go inside the pyramid, rummage around the narrow passages until he found a few more alcoves containing jade artifacts, intact pots, glyph-painted tiles. Fernando Aguilar would make up a fanci-ful story or legend for whatever Pepe found, increasing its potential worth. Pepe had merely to bring back the treasures, for which he received his share of the money.
With a lightness to his step, he started forward into the plaza clearing—then Pepe looked up as he noticed a flash of movement, mysterious independent shadows gliding down the pyramid's crumbling steps, like hot oil trickling across water.
He held still, but the shadows kept moving . . . toward him.
Above, the branches rustled again with a slithering sound. On the ground, the tall feathery ferns waved as something large crawled through the leafy underbrush.
Narrowing his eyes, Pepe flicked his gaze from side to side. Smearing cold perspiration away from his face, he held up the gleaming arc of his father's machete, ready to fight an attacking jaguar or wild boar. He drew a long breath, his senses fully alert, then took another step away from the trees, glancing up to make certain that no huge predator could drop down on him from above.
The moon slipped behind a cloud, hiding its weak but comforting light. Pepe froze, listening—and the jun-gle seemed to become alive with movement, creatures slipping toward him with imperfect silence. In the renewed darkness, he saw a faint glow limning the edge of the Pyramid of Kukulkan, like a luminous mist that seemed to rise from the dark mouth of the cenote well.
Swallowing hard, Pepe stepped away from the dan-gling branches of a tall chicle tree, wishing he knew where he could find shelter. He was far from any village, from any help. Could he hide inside the pyramid or one of the other temples? In the debris-littered ball court where Maya athletes had played a violent sport in front of cheering crowds? Should he run back into the forest, away from Xitaclan? Pepe didn't know where to go.
With daybreak, the low jungle would be a much safer place. But not now, not at night. Never at night—he should have known.
Then he saw two long, supple forms coming over the piled rocks, the stone blocks of another fallen tem-ple covered by moss and time. The creatures glided with reptilian, liquid motions mixed with a bird-like grace, jerky yet somehow delicate movements: the two shadows he had seen descending the steep pyramid steps. He found it entirely unlike the ominous, slug-gish advance of the scaly cayman he had seen in the jungle stream.
At the edge of the ball court stood a glyph-adorned stela, a stone monolith used by the Maya to record their calendar, their conquests, their religion. A third shadow separated from the side of the stela, slithering toward him.
Pepe slashed his father's machete in the air, hoping the threat would frighten the creatures off. Instead, they came at him faster.
The high, thin clouds drifted apart, and the moonlight returned, spilling details into the murk of the excavated plaza. Pepe's heart pounded, and he gasped his amaze-ment in the ancient language his mother and father had spoken. In the plaza before him, he saw monsters that emerged from the myths and legends he had heard since he was a boy.
The feathered serpents moved with the speed of danc-ing lightning—larger than crocodiles but with a power and intelligence that surpassed any other predator. They came at him from three sides, stalking, confident.
"Kukulkan!" he cried. "Kukulkan, protect me!"
The three feathered serpents hissed with the sound of water spattered on fire.
They reared up, flashing long fangs as sharp as any sacrificial knife.
With bright clarity Pepe knew what he had to do.
In awe even greater than his terror, Pepe used the edge of his machete to slash open his arm, feeling the warm gush of blood, yet experiencing no pain whatso-ever. He extended his arm, offering them his blood as a sacrifice, hoping to appease the benevolent Kukulkan's servants with what he knew of the ancient rituals, the old religion.
But instead of satisfying them, the scent of the fresh warm wetness drove the creatures into a frenzy. The feathered serpents charged toward him with the sound of rushing water, crackling leaves. In the moonlight, feath-ered scales gleamed ... bright teeth ... long claws from vestigial limbs.
Tonight, Pepe thought, the old gods would get their sacrifice. His machete dropped to the dirt. The feathered serpents fell upon him.
Cancun, Mexico Thursday, 4:21 p.m.
With some amusement, Scully watched Mulder heave a sigh of relief as the crowd of partying senior citizens filed off the chartered airplane and ambled toward the baggage claim area and customs station in the Cancun air-port. They waited by a row of stations where uniformed men took their tourist cards and stamped their passports, before turning them loose to retrieve their luggage.
The man at the counter stamped Mulder's passport and handed it back.
"If I ever start wearing plaid pants, promise me you'll stop me before I buy a ticket for the Love Boat," Rubicon said, as if forcing a joke. "I'm never going to retire."
Dozens of people hawking tour packages swarmed among the tourists, stuffing brochures into every empty hand. After conquering their luggage, the senior citizens tour group descended upon the bus aisle outside and climbed aboard their specially chartered Luxury Coach like lost chickens being rounded up and ushered back to the coop. Young men—certainly not airport employees— bustled about to help with the baggage, hoping for a tip. Scully led the way through immigration to the baggage pickup area where they grabbed their luggage, passed through customs without incident, and went to find the courtesy van that would take them to their hotel. Though neither she nor Mulder spoke Spanish, nearly all signs and shops around them catered to English speakers.
The moment any one of them looked con-fused, two or three Mexicans appeared, smiling warmly and offering their assistance. Rubicon made a show of employing his linguistic abilities to get direc-tions and exchange their money. The old archaeologist seemed delighted to be useful as part of the expedition.
On the way to the Caribbean Shores hotel, they rode in the small van with a newlywed couple who were entirely preoccupied with each other. The driver played brassy disco music on the car stereo; he hummed along, tapping his fingertips on the steering wheel, the dash-board, or his leg.
Mulder sat next to Scully, flipping through a handful of colorful brochures the various tour representatives had forced upon him. "Listen to this, Scully," he said. "Welcome to Cancun, 'where the beautiful turquoise Caribbean Sea caresses the silky sand beaches.' The waters are 'filled with romantic coral reefs or mysterious and exciting sunken Spanish galleons.' Somebody must have a good thesaurus to concoct those descriptions."
"Sounds charming," she said, looking out the win-dow at the bright sun, the vibrant colors. Thick trees lined both sides of the road. "At least this is better than an Arctic research station or an Arkansas chicken-processing plant."
He flipped through other pamphlets, including a map of the hotel zone, a narrow spit of land between the Caribbean Sea and Nichupte Lagoon. Bright letters pro-claimed, "Nearly every room with an ocean view!"
Rubicon sat with his duffel across his bony knees. He seemed either to be listening to the disco music or preoccupied with his own thoughts. His blue eyes blinked rapidly against a sheen of dampness. Scully's heart went out to him.
The van driver honked his horn and muttered curses in Spanish as he swerved to avoid an ersatz old-fashioned motorized buggy that took up more than its lane in the road down into the hotel zone. The laughing American driver of the buggy waved and then honked his horn in return, a loud cartoonish ahooogah.
The driver of the van forced a smile at the tourists and waved back, then cursed again under his breath.
In the back of the van, the newlywed couple giggled and continued kissing.
Rubicon held on to the half-glasses hanging from a chain on his neck and turned to Mulder. "One of the hotels even brags about the golf course they designed so that the ninth hole is constructed around the ruins of a small Maya temple." His astonished-looking eyes now carried a look of weariness and dismay.
"It's sad that they should be allowed to do that," he said. "They've exploited their history and culture, cheap-ened it. You should see the Hollywood-style extrava-ganza at Chichen Itza. They charge a lot of money for their
'spectacular temple show' with lights and sounds, multicolored spotlights blazing across the pyramids every night, cheesy folk dances by professional actors wearing plastic feathered capes and gaudy costumes. The drumbeats pound out through stereo systems."
The scorn in the old archaeologist's voice surprised Scully. Rubicon gave a defeated sigh. "The Spanish Conquistadors were only the first devastating invasion of the Yucatan—next came the tourists." He forced a smile. "At least some of the tourism income goes toward funding restoration of the archaeological sites . . . like Xitaclan."
They sent their bags off with the bellman while Mulder and Scully waited in line to check in.
Rubicon murmured to himself, taking out his hand-written notes, anxious to make phone calls and track down potential guides for their expedition deep into the jungles. He did not want to waste a moment in the search for his daughter. The old archaeologist wan-dered around the lobby, looking at cast-plaster jaguar sculptures, bogus bas-reliefs, and stylized Maya glyphs.
"Welcome to the Caribbean Shores Resort!" The desk clerk handed them room keys and cheerily began his mem-orized spiel of the evening's planned events.
"Senorita, you cannot pass up your chance to go on a fun-filled party boat for an evening dinner cruise." He waggled his eye-brows.
Scully shook her head politely. "No, thank you. We're here for business, not pleasure."
"Ah, but there is always time for pleasure," he said. "We have a fine selection of lobster cruises or disco boats, even an adventure with the real pirates of the Caribbean." He continued to sound hopeful.
"Thank you, but I still have to say no." Scully took the keys and turned away.
The clerk called after them one last time. "Senor, surely you cannot pass up our famous limbo party tonight."
Mulder took Scully's arm and leaned close, whisper-ing in her ear, "The limbo could qualify as calisthenics for the Bureau's physical fitness requirement."