Captive Universe

1

No, he could not start forward, not as easily as that. He fell back against the solid rock of the entrance and pushed his shoulders tight to its surface.

This was where gods walked and he did not belong here. It was asking too much. Certain death waited behind him, on the other side of the stone, but it was the kind of death he knew about; almost an old friend. He had actually gone so far as to press the broken knife under the doorway again before he took a firm grip on his cowardly nature.

“Be afraid, Chimal,” he whispered into the darkness. “But do not crawl like an animal.” Still shaking he rose and faced the black emptiness ahead. If it was to be death, then death. He would walk forward and face it: he had cowered enough of late.

With the fingertips of his left hand he traced the rough surface of the rock wall, the broken knife was extended before him in bold, though weak, defense. He walked forward, on his toes, keeping his breathing shallow and trying to make no sound at all. The tunnel curved and he was aware of a dim glow ahead. Daylight? The way out of the valley? He went on, but stopped when he saw the source of light.

It was very hard to describe. The tunnel continued on ahead, and seemed to straighten out, but at this spot there was what appeared to be another tunnel opening off to the right. Before this dark opening, set into the rock ceiling above, was something that glowed. There was no other way to talk about it. It was a round area and looked smooth and white, yet light came from it. As though there were a tunnel behind it down which the sun shone, or perhaps a burning torch that shone through this new substance. He could not tell. Slowly he came toward it and looked up at it, but being close did not help him at all to understand what it was. It did not matter now. It gave himlight here in the rock, that was enough to know. It was more important to find out where this other tunnel might lead.

Chimal stepped forward to look into the tunnel and stared up at the twin heads of Coatlicue no more than an arm’s-length distance from his face.

Inside his chest his heart gave a tremendous leap, piling his chest as though it would burst, choking his throat and stopping his breathing. She stood there, twice his height, looming over him, fixing him with the steady serpent’s gaze of her round red eyes. Her poison fangs were as long as his hand. Her kirtle of living snakes was just below his face. Wreaths of dried human hands and hearts hung about her neck. The great edges of her claws were stained dark with human blood.

She did not move.

Seconds passed before Chimal realized this. Her eyes were open, she looked at him, yet she did not move. Was she sleeping? He had no thought that he could escape her, but he could not bear to be this close to her. The overwhelming fear of her presence started him down the tunnel, and once he began to run he could not stop.

An interminable time later weariness slowed his legs and he tripped and sprawled his length on the rough stone of the tunnel floor. Once down he could not move; he just lay there drawing breath after shuddering breath into the burning cavity of his chest. Still Coatlicue did not strike. When he was able to, he lifted his head and looked back down the tunnel, where the spots of light marked its length, growing dimmer and dimmer until they finally vanished. He was not being followed. The tunnel was still and nothing moved.

“Why?” Chimal asked aloud, but there was no answer from the solid rock around him. In the silence and the loneliness another kind of fear began to possess him. Would this tunnel ever have an end that emerged outside the valley? Or had he penetrated to some realm of the gods where, like a termite in a tree, he might bore on forever, unnoticed and ignored, in an endless sealed passageway. Everything was so different here that the rules of the valley did not seem to apply, and there was a fogginess in his head when he thought about it. If it were not for the pain, and hunger and thirst now, he could almost believe that he had died when the rock had swung shut behind him.

If he were not dead already he would certainly die here in this barren tunnel — or freeze. The rock on which he lay was cold against his skin and he began to shiver once the heat of his exertion had ebbed away. Pulling himself up against the wall he walked on.

After he had passed eight more of the glowing spots of light the tunnel ended. When Chimal came closer he saw that it was not a real ending, but rather that his tunnel came into another tunnel that extended off to the right and left. This new tunnel had smoother walls and was much brighter than his, and the floor was covered with some sort of white substance. He bent to touch it — then jerked his hand away. It was warm — and soft- — and for a moment he thought it was some great white animal that stretched out there, a worm of some kind. But, although it was warm and soft, it did not appear to be alive, and he gingerly stepped out onto it.

To his right the tunnel vanished into the distance, its walls unbroken or marked, but to the left he saw dark patches on both walls. This was something different so he turned and went in that direction. When he was close to the first one he saw that it was a door, with a small knob on it, and appeared to be made completely of metal. This would have been a marvel in the valley. He pushed and pulled at the knob but nothing happened. Perhaps it was not a door at all, but served some other more mysterious function. Anything was possible here. He went on, past two more of the plates, and was just coming to the third when it swung open toward him.

He crouched, tense, his fists clenched, the knife-stub ready, waiting to see what emerged.

A black figure stepped through, swung the door shut behind it with a loud clang, and turned to face him. It had the face of a young girl.

Time stopped as each of them stood, unable to move, looking at the other, sharing the same expression of shocked disbelief.

Her face was human and, when he examined her black coverings more closely, her body seemed to be human under their guise. But their strangeness baffled him. A hood of shining black material completely covered her head except for her face, which was thin, very pale and bloodless with dark, widened eyes and thin black eyebrows that met over her nose. She was more than a head shorter than himand had to lean back to look up into his face. The rest of her body was draped tightly in some soft woven material, not unlike that of a priest’s gown, that changed to shiny, hard-looking coverings that reached from her knees to the ground. And all about her body were gleaming lengths of metal; fastened to the outside of her arms and legs, girding her body, supporting her head, bending at her joints. Around her waist was a shining belt from which hung unknown dark objects.

When her eyes swept over his bare body, noting the cuts, bruises and clotted blood, she shuddered and her hand flew to her lips. Her fingers were also encased in black.

It was Chimal who spoke first. He was drained of fear, there had been too much of it, and her fright at his presence was obvious.

“Can you talk?” he said. “Who are you?”

She opened her mouth and only gasped, then tried again. She said, “You are not here. It is not possible.” Her voice was shrill and weak.

He laughed aloud. “I am here, you see me. Now answer my questions.” Emboldened by her fear he reached out and pulled at one of the objects at her waist. It was metal and fastened to her somehow because it did not come free. She squawked and tried to pull away. He let go suddenly and she fell back against the wall.

“Tell me,” he said, “Where am I?”

Her frightened eyes still upon him, she touched a square thing at her waist and it dropped into her hand. He thought it might be a weapon and he made ready to take it from her, but she raised it to her face and put her lips near it. Then she spoke.

“Over seventeen porfer staynet Watchman Steel. There is an oboldonol lonen in tunnel one nine nine bay emma, can you read me…”

“What are you saying?” he woke in. “You can speak yet some of the words you speak do not mean anything.” Her actions baffled him.

She kept talking, still looking at him wide-eyed. When she had finished speaking her incomprehensible mixture of words and nonsense sounds she put the object back at her waist then slid very slowly to a sitting position on the floor of the tunnel. She put her face into her hands and began to sob uncontrollably and ignored him even when he pushed her with his foot.

“What are you doing this for? Why won’t you speak words to me that I can understand?”

Her bent head shook with the force of her crying and she took her hands from her face and clutched at something that hung about her neck, on a string that seemed to be made of small metal beads. Chimal pried it from her fingers, angry at her now for her incomprehensible actions and lack of intelligible response, and easily overcame her her feeble attempts to hold onto it. It was black, like everything else about her, and just as baffling. Smaller than his hand, and in shape not unlike a small brick of adobe. There were six deep openings cut into one side and when he turned it toward the light above he saw that each of them had a number at the bottom of the opening.

This was meaningless, as was the shining rod that came out of one end. It did not push or twist, or apparently move in any way. He tried to press on it but it hurt his finger: it was tipped with many small barbs that bit into his skin. Meaningless. He dropped it and the girl snatched it up at once and pressed it to her breast.

Everything about the girl was a mystery. He bent and touched the wide metal band that came up behind her head. It was fixed to the material that covered her entire head, and hinged at the back of her neck so it moved when she did. A shout sounded from far down the tunnel.

Chimal jumped back, his broken-bladed knife ready, as another girl hurried up. She was garbed like the first and paid him not the slightest attention. Bending over the first girl she made comforting noises and spoke to her softly. There were more shouts and a third, almost identical, figure came out of a metal door and joined the first. This one was a man, yet he acted no differently.

Three more of them appeared and Chimal backed away from their growing numbers, even though they continued to ignore him. They helped the first girl to her feet and talked together, all at once, in the same maddening mixture of words and nonsense that the girl had used. They appeared to have reached some kind of decision because, most reluctantly, they admitted Chimal’s existence, darting looks at him then turning quickly away. An older man, who had cracked lips and lines about his eyes, even took a pace toward Chimal and looked directly at him, then spoke.

“We go to the morasoraver.”

“Where?”

The man, strangely reluctant, and turning away while he said it, repeated the new word over and over again until Chimal could repeat it — although he still did not know its meaning.

“We go to the Master Observer,” the man said again, and turned away as though starting down the tunnel. “You come with us.”

“Why should I?” Chimal said belligerently. He was tired, hungry and thirsty, and annoyed at these things that he did not understand. “Who are you? What is this place? Answer me.” The man just shook his head hopelessly and made little beckoning gestures.

The first girl, her eyes red and her face stained with tears, stepped forward. “Come with us to the Master Observer,” she said.

“Answer my questions.”

She looked around at the others before answering. “He will answer your questions.”

“The Master Observer is a man? Why didn’t you tell me that in the beginning?” They did not answer; it was hopeless. He might as well go with them, nothing could be gained by staying here. They must eat and drink and perhaps he would find some of that along the way as well. “I’ll come,” he said, starting forward.

They moved quickly away in front of him, leading the way. None of them thought to go behind him. The tunnel came to a branching, then to another, passing many doorways, and soon he was completely confused as to direction. They went down wide stairways, very much like the steps of the pyramid, that led to more caverns below. Some of them were large and contained devices of metal that were incomprehensible. None of them appeared to contain food or water so he did not stop. He was very tired. It seemed a long time before they entered an even higher cavern and faced a man, an older man, who was dressed just like the others except that his coverings were colored a deep red. He must be a leader or a chief, Chimal thought, or even a priest.

“If you are the Master Observer I want you to answer my questions…”

The man looked past Chimal, through him, as though he didn’t exist, and spoke to the others. “Where did you find him?”

The girl gave one of those incomprehensible answers that Chimal was beginning to expect by this time. Impatiently, he looked about the chamber at the twisted and brooding, infinitely strange objects. There was a small table against one wall with some unidentifiable things on it, one of which might very well have been a cup. Chimal went to look and saw that one of the containers held a transparent liquid that could be water. He suspected everything in this world now, so he dipped his fingertip into it and tasted it carefully. Water, nothing else. Raising the container to his mouth he drained over half of it at once. It was flat and tasteless, like rain water, but it slaked his thirst well. When he poked at some gray wafers they crumbled to his touch. Chimal picked one up and held it out to the man who was standing close by.

“Is this food?” he asked. The man turned his head away and tried to edge back into the crowd: Chimal took him by the arm and spun him about. “Well, is it? Tell me.” Frightened the man nodded a reluctant agreement, then moved swiftly away as soon as he was released. Chimal poked the broken knife into the waistband of his maxtli and began to eat. It was poor stuff, with no more flavor than ashes, but it filled the stomach.

When he had taken the edge from his hunger, Chimal’s attention was drawn back to the affairs in progress. The girl had finished talking and the red-garbed Master Observer was considering her report. He paced before them, hands clasped behind his back and lips pursed with thought: the room was silent while they waited patiently for a decision. The worried lines about his eyes and the wrinkles into which his frowning mouth was permanently set showed that responsibility and decision-making were his accepted duties. Chimal, washing down the food with the remaining water, did not try to interfere again. All of their actions had an air of madness about them, or one of the games children play where they make believe someone isn’t there.

“My decision is this,” the Master Observer said, turning, to face them, his motions heavy with the weight of responsibility. “You have heard the report of Watchman Steel. You know where—” his glance flicked toward Chimal for the first tune, then quickly away, ” — he was found. Therefore it is my statement that he is from the valley.” Some of the audience turned to look at Chimal now, as though this placing had given him a physical existence he had not had before. Tired and sated, Chimal leaned against the wall and pried some of the food from behind his teeth with his tongue and swallowed it.

“Now follow closely my thoughts because they are of the loungst importance. This man is of the valley yet he can not return to the valley. I will tell you why. It is written in the klefg vebret that the people of the valley, the derrers, shall not know of the Watchers. That is ordained. This one will not then go back to the valley.

“Now listen closely again. He is here, but he is not a Watcher. Only Watchers are permitted here. Can anyone tell me what this means?”

There was a long silence, broken finally by a weak voice which said, “He cannot be here and he cannot be in the valley too.”

“Correct,” the Master Observer said, with a stately nod.

“Then tell us, please, where can he be?”

“That is the question you must ask yourselves, and search your hearts for the answer. A man who cannot be in the valley or cannot be here, then cannot be. That is the truth of it. A man cannot be therefore is not, and a man who is not is therefore dead.”

This last word was clear enough, and Chimal had the knife in his hand and his back to the wall in an instant. The others were much slower in understanding, and long seconds passed before someone said, “But he is not dead, he is alive.”

The Master Observer nodded and called the speaker from the crowd, a bent man with an old and lined face. “You have spoken correctly, Watchman Strong, and since you see so clearly you will solve the problem for us and arrange that he will be dead.” Then he issued completely incomprehensible instructions to the man, turning back to the others as the watchman left.

“Our tikw is to guard and protect life, that is why we are watchmen. But in his wisdom the Great Designer…” when he said this he touched the fingers of his right hand to the small box that hung about his neck and there was a quick flurry of motion as the others did the same, ” — did provide for all wbwmrieio and there is close by that which we need.”

As he finished speaking the elderly watchman returned with a piece of metal the size and shape of a large log of firewood. It fell heavily to the floor when he put it down, and the watchers stepped aside to make room for it Chimal could see that it had a handle of some kind on one end, with large letters beneath it. He tilted his head to see if he could read them. T…U…R…N… Turn. They were the same kind of letters he knew from the temple school.

“Turn,” the watchman said, reading aloud. “Do that, Watchman Strong,” the Master Observer ordered.

The man obeyed, twisting on the handle until a loud hissing began. As soon as the noise stopped the end came off in his hand and Chimal could see that the object was not solid, but was a metal tube. The watchman reached in and pulled out something shaped like a long stick with bumps and projections on it. A piece of paper fell to the floor as he did this and he looked at it, then handed it to the Master Observer.

“PUIKLING STRUSUN,” he read aloud. “This is for killing. The part with the letter A on it is held in the left hand.” He, and everyone else, looked at Watchman Strong as he turned the device over and over in his hands.

“There are many letters in metal,” he said. “Here is a C, here a G…”

“That is understood,” the Master Observer snapped. “You will find the part with an A and you will hold it in your left hand.”

Trembling under the cold lash of the words, the watchman turned the object around until he found the correct letter and, clutching it in his left hand, held the device for killing triumphantly out before him.

“Next, then. The narrowing of the rear with the letter B on it is held in the right hand,” he glanced up as this was quickly accomplished, “then the rear of the device with the letter C is placed against the right shoulder.”

They all looked on expectantly as the man raised the thing and poked it against his shoulder, his left hand holding it from underneath and his right hand from the top. The Master Observer observed this, then gave a brief nod of satisfaction.

“Now I read how to kill. The device is pointed at the thing that is to be killed.” The Master Observer looked up and realized that he was directly in front of the device. “Not at me, you fool,” he spat angrily, and bodily pulled the watchman around until he was facing the side of the room where Chimal stood. The others moved back to each side and waited expectantly. The Master Observer read on.

“In order to kill, the small lever of metal with the letter D on it, which is on the bottom of the device, must be pulled back with the index finger of the right hand.” He looked up at the watchman who was trying vainly to reach the little lever.

“I cannot do it,” he said. “My finger is on top and the lever is on the bottom.”

“Then turn your bowbed hand over!” the Master Observer shouted, out of patience.

All of this Chimal had been observing with strong feelings of disbelief. Could it be that these people had no experience with weapons or killing? This must be true or why else should they act in this impossible manner. And were they going to kill him — just like this? Only the unrealness of the dreamlike scene had prevented him from acting before. And, in truth, he wanted to see how this strange weapon operated. He had almost waited until it was too late, he realized, as the elderly watchman turned his hand over and his groping finger reached out and depressed the metal lever.

Chimal dived to one side as the thing turned to point at him. As he did so there was a quick blast of heat and one of the devices against the wall behind him exploded and began to bum smokily. People were screaming. Chimal hurled himself into the thick of the crowd and the weapon sought him out and fired again. This time there was a screech of pain and one of the women fell over, the side of her head as scorched and blackened as if it had been thrust into a fire.

Now the large chamber was filled with fearful, running people, and Chimal pushed through them, knocking down any who came in his way. The watchman with the weapon was standing still, the device dangling, has eyes widened with shock. Chimal struck him in the chest with his clenched fist and pulled it away from his weak grip. Now, feeling stronger since he held the killing thing, Chimal turned to face any attack.

There was none, just confusion and a welter of shouted orders. He was ignored again, even though he held the device. He walked through the identically garbed crowd until he found the girl he had first met in the tunnel. He could have picked anyone: perhaps he chose her because he had known her the longest in this strange place. Pulling her by the arm he led her to the exit from the chamber.

“Take me away from here,” he ordered.

“Where?” she asked, twisting with weak fright in his grip.

Where? To some place where he could rest and eat some more. “Take me to your home.” He pushed her out into the corridor and prodded her spine with his new weapon.

2

In this corridor even the walls were of metal, and other substances he did not recognize, with no sign of rock anywhere. Door after identical door opened from the corridor and Chimal, walking behind the girl, almost ran into her when she stopped abruptly.

“This is mine,” she said, still half-dazed with fear of the unknown.

“How do you know?” he asked suspiciously, worrying about traps.

“Because of the number.” He looked at the black figures on the metal of the door and grunted, then kicked at the door which flew open. He pushed her in ahead of him, then closed and put his back to the door.

“This is a small house,” he said.

“It is a room.”

The room was no more than a man’s height wide and about twice as long. Something that was probably a sleeping mat lay on the ledge, and cabinets were against the wall. There was another door that he pulled open. It led to an even smaller room that contained a seat with a hid and some devices fixed to the wall. There appeared to be no other way out of this room.

“Do you have food?” he asked.

“No, of course not Not here.”

“You must eat?”

“But not in my room. At the teykogh with the others, that is the way it is.”

Another strange word, his head ached from so many of them. He had to find out where he was and who these people were, but he needed rest first: fatigue was a gray blanket that threatened to fall and smother him. She would call for help if he went to sleep; there was the box that talked to her that had brought aid when he had first found her.

“Take that off,” he ordered, pointing to the belt and hanging things about her waist

“It is not done with others present,” she said, horrified.

Chimal was too tired to argue: he struck her across the face. “Take it off.”

Sobbing, the red imprint of his fingers clear on her white skin, she did something to the belt and it loosened and fell to the floor. He threw it against the far wall.

“Is there a way out of this little room with the seat,” he asked, and when she shook her head no he believed her and pushed her into it. Then he closed the door and lay down against it so that it could not be moved without disturbing him, placed his head on his arm, held the killing thing against his chest and fell instantly asleep.

He awoke after some unknown length of time. The light came from above as it had before. He shifted position on the floor and went to sleep again.

The pushing annoyed him, and he mumbled in his sleep but he did not awake. He moved, to stop the irritation, and something about this bothered him and drove him up out of a heavy and engulfing unconsciousness. When he opened his eyes, thick with sleep, he could not imagine where he was: he blinked at the black figure that was running across the room away from him. Watchman Steel was at the door, opening it, before his befogged senses stirred to life. He heaved himself forward, reaching out, and just managed to clutch her ankle as she started through. Once he touched her all resistance stopped completely and she just lay inert, weeping, as he dragged her across the floor then rose and kicked shut the exit. He leaned against it, shaking his head, trying to wake up. His body was sore all over and he was still tired despite the sleep.

“Where is there water?” he said, stirring her with his toe. She only moaned louder, eyes open and filled with tears, fists clenched at her sides. “I’m not going to hurt you, so stop that. I just want some help.” Despite what he said he grew angry when she didn’t answer and he slapped her again. “Tell me.”

Still sobbing deeply the girl rolled over and pointed to the room where she had been imprisoned. He looked in and saw that the little chair had a cover that lifted on a hinge, and beneath it. was; a large bowl of water. When he bent to scoop some out the girl screeched incoherently. She was sitting up, shaking her finger, horrified.

“No,” she finally gasped out. “No. That water is… not for drinking. There, on the wall, the nodren, that water you can drink.”

Worried by her obvious alarm, Chimal forced her into the room and made her explain its functions. She would not even look at the seat-bowl, but she filled another bowl on the wall with cold water that ran out of, a piece of. metal when she touched it the right way. After he had drunk his fill he poked at the other devices in the room and she told him what they were. The shower delighted him. He fixed it so that it ran hot and steaming, then tore off his maxtili and stood under the spray. The door was left open so he could watch the girl, and he paid no attention when she screamed again and ran to face the far wall, trembling. Her actions were so inexplicable that he did not attempt to understand, nor care what she did, as long as she did not try to escape again. When he pressed the button that made the soap foam it hurt, but his cuts felt better afterwards. Then he worked the handles to make the water the coldest it could be, before using the other control that blew warm air on him. While his body was drying he rinsed out his maxtili in the bowl-chair that she would not look at, then squeezed it out and put it back on.

For the first time since he had entered the door in the rock he had a moment to stop and think. Up until now events had pushed him and he had reacted. Now, perhaps he could get some answers to the multitude of questions that filled his head.

“Turn around and stop that noise,” he told the girl, and seated himself on the sleeping mat. It was very comfortable.

Her fingers were splayed against the wall, as though she were trying to push her way through it, and she remained that way while she turned her head, hesitantly, to look behind her. When she saw him seated she turned to face him and stood stiffly, her hands clasped before her and her fingers turning over and over.

“That’s much better.” Her face was a white mask, her eyes red rimmed and set in black circles from the continual crying. “Now tell me your name.”

“Watchman Steel.”

“All right, Steel. What do you do here?”

“I do my work, as it is ordered. I am a trepiol mar…”

“Not what you do, you yourself, but all of you, here in these tunnels under the mountains.”

She shook her head at the question. “I… I don’t understand you. We each do our ordered task, and serve the Great Designer as is our honor…”

“That means nothing, be quiet.” They talked the same way, yet some words were new, and he could not make her understand what he wanted to know. He would start from the beginning then, and build things up slowly. “And stop being frightened, I don’t want to hurt you. It was your Master Observer who sent for this thing that kills. Sit down. Here, sit beside me.”

“I cannot you…” She was too horrified to finish.

“I what.”

“You are… you have not… you are uncovered.”

Chimal could understand that. These cave people had a taboo about going about uncovered, just as the women in the valley must wear huipil to cover the bare upper parts of their bodies when they went to the temple. “I wear my maxtili,” he said, pointing to his loincloth. “I have no other covering here. If you have something I will do as you ask.”

“You are sitting on a blanket,” she said.

He found that there were layers to this sleeping mat, and the top one was made of soft and rich cloth. When he wrapped it around him the girl visibly relaxed. She did not sit by him, but instead pressed a latch on the wall and a small, backless chair fell into position: she seated herself upon it.

“To begin,” he said. “You hide in the rock here, but you know of my valley and my people.” She nodded. “Good, so far. You know of us but we do not know of you. How is that?”

“It is ordained, for we are the Watchers.”

“And your name is Watchman Steel. Then why do you watch us in secret? What are you doing?”

She shook her head helplessly. “I cannot speak. Such knowledge is forbidden. Kill me, it is better. I cannot speak…” Her teeth clamped into her lower lip so hard that a thick drop of blood formed and trickled down her chin.

“That is a secret I will have,” he told her quietly. “I want to know what is happening. You are of the outside world beyond my valley. You have the metal tools and all the things that we are cut off from, and you know about us — but you keep hidden. I want to know why…”

A deep booming, like the striking of a great song, filled the room and Chimal was on his feet instantly, holding ready the thing that kills. “What is that?” he asked, but Watchman Steel was not listening to him.

As the sound came again she dropped to her knees and bent her head over her clasped hands. She was muttering a prayer, or incantation of some kind, and her words were lost in the greater sound. Three times the gong struck, and on the third stroke she held up the little box that hung [missing text in original] until one of her fingers was bare. On the fourth stroke she pressed down hard on the rod of metal so that it first slipped into the case, then slowly returned. Then she released the box and began to cover her finger again. Before she could do this, Chimal reached down and took her hand, turning it over. There was a small pattern of indentations in her flesh from the barbs on the metal rod, and even some drops of blood. The whole pad of her finger was covered with a pattern of tiny white scars. Steel pulled her hand away and quickly slipped the cloth over the exposed flesh.

“You people do many strange things,” he said, and took the box from her hand. She was pulled close to him when he looked in the little windows again. The numbers were the same as before — or were they? Had not in the last number on the right been a three? It was a four now. Curiously, he pushed on the rod, even though it hurt his fingertip. Steel cried out and clawed for the box. The last number was now five. He released it and she pulled away from him, cradling the object, and ran to the far end of the room.

“Very strange things,” he said, looking at the dots of blood on his finger. Before he could speak again there was a light tapping on the door and a voice said, “Watchman Steel!”

Chimal sprang silently to her side and clamped his hand over her mouth. Her eyes closed and she shuddered and went limp. It could be a ruse on her part: he held her just as firmly.

“Watchman Steel?” the voice spoke again, and a second one said, “She is not here, open the door and look.”

“But think of privacy! What if she is here and we enter?”

“If she is here why doesn’t she answer?”

“She did not report for femio last yerfb, she may be ill.”

“The Master Observer ordered us to find her and said we must look in her quarters.”

“Did he say look for her in her quarters or at her quarters? There is a great difference in the meaning.”

“He said in.”

“Then we must open the door.”

As the door began to move tentatively open Chimal pulled it wide and kicked in the stomach the man who was standing outside. He collapsed at once, falling onto the killing thing which he held. There was a second man who tried to run, but he had no weapon and Chimal caught up with him easily and hit him with his fist on the side of the neck and knocked him down, then pulled him back to the room.

Chimal looked down at the three unconscious bodies and wondered what to do. More searchers would come soon, that was certain, so he could not stay here. But where could he hide in this strange place? He needed a guide — and the girl would be easiest to manage. He picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, then took the killing thing. The corridor was empty when he looked out, so he turned and went off swiftly in the opposite direction from which they had come.

There were more doors here, but he had to go a little distance at least before the search began. He took one turning, then another, every moment tense and waiting to meet someone. He was still alone. Another turning brought him to a short hall, carved from rock again, that ended in a large door. Rather than go back he leaned on the handle and swung it open. He had the weapon ready, but there was no one waiting inside. This was a very large cavern that stretched into the distance. It was broken into many aisles that held bins and countless shelves. A storehouse of some kind. This would do until the girl came to, then he would make her lead him to some safer place — and some food. Perhaps there was even food here, that was not an impossible idea. He ran far into the cavern, to a dark aisle where not much light reached, and dumped her onto the floor. She did not stir so he left her there while he prowled through the place, opening boxes and picking things from the shelves. In one of the bins he found many bundles of black cloth that had been sewn in strange shapes. When he pulled one out he realized that the dangling lengths were like arms and legs and that these were the clothes that the watchers wore. He took up two armloads and went back to the unconscious girl. She still had not moved. He dropped his load and, squatting under the light, tried to find the manner in which the garment was closed. The air here was cooler than in Steel’s room and he would not mind wearing something to keep his body warm.

After a good deal of experimentation, and cutting one of the garments to ribbons in his anger, he discovered that a small metal button, set under the wearer’s chin, could be made to move down if it was turned first. When it moved the cloth parted behind it, opening straight down between the legs and halfway up the back so that the garment almost split in two. He opened a number of the things this way, but threw them away in disgust when he found he could force his legs barely halfway into them. The garments must be made in different sizes and the ones he had found were all of the smallest. There had to be a way of finding the large ones: the girl would know. Chimal went to her but she still lay with her eyes closed, breathing hoarsely: her skin had a grayish tinge to it and, when he touched it, was cool and slightly damp. He wondered if anything was wrong. Perhaps she had been injured when she fell. Moved by curiosity, he twisted the button under her chin and pulled it down as far as it would go and spread the cloth aside. She was not injured as far as he could see. Her skin was white as paper and her ribs poked against it from beneath like hard knuckles. Her breasts were low mounds, like those of a half-grown girl, and he felt no stirrings of desire at all when he looked at her flaccid nakedness. There was a wide belt of some gray substance about her waist, secured at the front by a piece of cord threaded through the ends. He snapped the cord and pulled the belt off and saw that where it had gone around her body, her skin was red and inflamed. When he passed his finger along the inside of the belt it felt both rough and sharp, as though it were lined with many tiny cactus thorns. It was beyond understanding: he threw it aside and looked at the pads that held the flexible rods to her body. Perhaps she was very weak and the rods helped hold her up. But was everyone here that weak? When he pushed at the piece of metal that supported the back of her head it came away, pulling her hood with it. Her hair had been shaved close to her skull and was now only short, dark stubble. None of this could be understood easily. He closed her garment and put the hood into place as he had found it, then sat back on his heels and wondered about these things. He sat there patiently for some time until she stirred and opened her eyes. “How do you feel now?” he asked. She blinked rapidly and looked around before she answered. “I’m all right, I think. I feel very tired.”

This time Chimal used patience when he talked to her; if he hit her and she started crying again he would learn nothing. “Do you know what these are?” he asked, pointing to the pile of clothing.

“They are vabin — where did you get them?”

“Right here, there are many of them. I wanted one to cover my body but they are all too small.”

“They are numbered inside, there, see,” she sat up and pointed inside one of the garments.

“I’ll show you where they are. You find me the one I can wear.”

Steel was ready to help, but she staggered when she tried to rise. He helped her to her feet and in her discomfort she did not seem to be bothered by his touch. When he showed her the bins she checked the numbering and pointed to the last one. “In there, they are the biggest” She closed her eyes and turned her face away when he broke open a bundle and started to pull one of them on. It stretched to a smooth fit and felt warm.

“There, now I look like anyone else,” he said, and she glanced at him and relaxed a bit.

“May I go now?” she asked, hesitantly.

“Very soon,” he told her, lying. “Just answer a few questions first. Is there any food here?”

“I — don’t know. I was only in the warehouse one time before, a long time ago…”

“What is that word you used, about this place?”

“Warehouse. A place where things are stored.”

“Warehouse. I’ll remember the word.” And I will learn what a lot of other words mean before I leave this place. “Can you see if there is food here?”

“Yes, I suppose I can look.”

Chimal followed a few yards behind her, ready to leap and hold her if she tried to run, but stayed far enough away to give her an illusion of freedom. She did find some tightly sealed bricks that she told him were called emergency rations, things to be eaten when other food was not available. He took them back to the secluded corner he had first found before he opened them.

“It doesn’t taste like very much,” he told her after he had broken the transparent skirt and tasted the paste inside.

“It is very nutritious,” she told him, then hesitantly asked for some for herself. He gave a package to her after she had explained what this new word meant.

“You have lived here all your life?” he asked, licking his fingers.

“Yes, of course,” Steel answered, startled by the question.

Chimal did not respond at once, but frowned in concentration instead. This girl must know all the things he needed to know — but how to get her to tell them? He realized that he had to ask the right questions to get the right answers, as though this were a child’s game with different rules. I am a turkey. How can you tell that I am a turkey? What were the proper questions here?

“Do you ever leave here, to go to the world outside the valley?”

She seemed baffled. “Of course not. That is impossible…” Her eyes widened suddenly. “I cannot tell you.”

Chimal changed the subject quickly. “You know about our gods?” he asked, and she nodded agreement. “Do you know about Coatlicue?” Coatlicue who had entered these tunnels.

“I cannot tell you about that.”

“There seems to be very few things that you can tell me about.” But he smiled at her when he said it, instead of hitting her as he might have done earlier, and she almost smiled back. He was learning. “Haven’t you wondered how I came to the place where you found me?”

“I had not thought about it,” Steel admitted frankly: she obviously had little curiosity about things unknown. “How did you get there?”

“I followed Coatlicue in from the valley.” Was there no way of getting information out of the girl? What did she want to hear? “I want to return. Do you think I could?”

She sat up and nodded happily. “Yes, that is what you should do.”

“Will you help me?”

“Yes…” then her face crumpled. “You cannot. You will tell them about us and that is forbidden.”

“If I told them — would they believe me? Or would they take me to the temple to release the captive god from my head?”

She thought hard. “Yes, that is what would happen. The priests would kill you at the temple. The others would believe you possessed.”

You do know a lot about us, he thought — and I know nothing at all about you except the fact of your existence. That is going to change. Aloud he said, “I cannot return the way I came, but there must be another way…”

“None I know of, except for the vulture feeding.” Her hand went to her mouth, covering it, and her eyes widened as she realized she had said too much.

“The vultures, of course,” he almost shouted the words. He jumped to his feet and paced back and forth the length of the aisle. “That is what you do, you feed them. You bring them your sacrifices and your dead instead of burning them. That is how the meat got to the ledge, the gods did not bring it.”

Steel was horrified. “We do not give them our sacred dead. The vultures eat meat from the tivs.” She broke off suddenly. “I cannot tell you anymore. I cannot talk to you because I say things that I should not.”

“You’ll tell me much more.” He reached for her but she shrank back and tears filled her eyes again. This was not the way. “I won’t touch you,” he said, going to the far end of the aisle, “so you don’t have to be frightened.” How could he make her help him? His eyes went to the tumbled heap of clothing and to the end of the belt that protruded from beneath. He pulled it out and waved it at her.

“What is this thing?”

“A monasheen, it should not be here.”

“Teach me that word. What does it mean?”

“Mortification. It is a holy reminder of purity, to clarify the thoughts in the correct manner.” She stopped, gasping, her fingers flying to her waist. A wave of red suffused her face as she realized what had happened. He nodded.

“Yes, it’s yours. I took it from you. I have power over you, do you understand that now. Will you take me to the place of the vultures?” When she shook her head no he took a single step toward her and said, “Yes you will. You will take me there so I can return to my people and you will then be able to forget about me. I can do you no harm when I am back in the valley. But if I remain with you, I know what to do with your taboo. I will do more this time than remove your mortification. I will open your clothes, I will take them off—”

She fell, but she did not faint He did not help her up because he knew that his touch might push her too far and she would then be of no help to him at all. Now it was just fear of what might be done that drove.

“Get up,” Chimal said, “and lead me there. There is nothing else that you can do.”

He stepped back as she pulled herself up on the shelves. When she started out he went one pace behind her, not touching her, with the killing thing ready in his hand.

“Stay away from people,” he warned her. “If anyone tries to stop us I will kill them. So if you call to them you will be killing them.”

Chimal did not know if his warning meant anything to her, whether she took deserted passages or that this way was normally empty of people, but in any case they encountered no one. Once there was a flicker of motion at a crossways ahead, but when they reached it there was no one there.

It was a very long time before they came to the side cavern that branched off from the main one. Steel, swaying with fatigue, pointed wordlessly to it, but she nodded agreement when Chimal asked her if this was the tunnel that led to their destination. It reminded him very much of the way he had first entered. The flooring was of smooth rock, while the walls and ceilings were rough-hewn, still bearing the marks of the tools that had cut them. There was one important difference here: two thin bars of metal were fastened to the floor and vanished into the distance with the arrow-straight tunnel.

“Leave me,” she begged.

“We stay together, every foot of the way.” There was no need to tell her yet that he had no intention of leaving the tunnels, that he was just gathering information about them.

It was a very long way and he regretted not taking water with them. Watchman Steel was staggering now and they stopped twice so she could rest. In the end the tunnel emerged into a larger cavern. The metal bars continued across the floor and into another tunnel on the far side.

“What is this?” Chimal asked, looking around at the unknown fittings of the place.

“There is the way,” she said, pointing. “You can move that cover to look through, and those are the controls that open the door.”

There was a large metal panel set into the wall where she pointed, with a disk in its center. The disk moved aside when he pushed it and he could see out through the opening it revealed. He found himself looking through a cleft between two rocks at the afternoon sky. There, blue in the distance, he could see the cliff and the range of peaks that lay beyond Zaachila. Directly in front of him was a shadowed ledge and the stark silhouette of a vulture. It extended its wings while he watched and launched itself out into the sunlight, soaring away in a great slow circle.

“This is Watchman Steel,” he heard her say, and he turned quickly. She was across the cavern and was talking at a metal box that hung on the wall. “The one is here with me. He cannot get away. Come take him at once.”

3

Chimal grabbed the girl by the arm, pulling her away from the metal box and throwing her to the floor. The box had a round disk on the front, and buttons, as well as a slotted opening. A voice came from it.

“Watchman Steel, your report has been heard. Now we are checking the ralort. What is your exact location…”

Chimal raised the killing thing and pressed the metal lever. It killed black boxes as well. The voice spluttered and stopped and the box exploded with flame.

“That won’t help,” Steel said, sitting up and rubbing her arm, her lips curved into a cold little smile of success. “They can find out where I called from, so they know you are here. There is no way to escape.”

“I can return to the valley. How does that metal door open?”

Reluctantly, she crossed to the spot where a bar with a black handle protruded from the wall, and pulled the bar down. The plate swung outward silently, and daylight flooded the cavern. A vulture, about to land on the ledge outside, frightened by the motion, flapped loudly and soared away. Chimal looked out across the valley, smelling the familiar cool air above the odor of bird excrement

“They’ll kill me at once if I go back there,” he said, and pushed the girl out onto the ledge.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, then screamed as he pushed the handle the other way and the door began to close. Her loud wails were cut off suddenly as rock thudded against rock.

There was a rising, whining sound coming from the tunnel behind him, and a gentle breath of air was driving out of its mouth. Chimal ran and put his back against the wall close to the opening and raised the killing thing. The noise increased and the wind from the tunnel blew faster. These people had great powers: what strange thing were they sending after him, to kill him? Chimal pressed his body hard against the rock as the noise grew louder — and from the tunnel burst a platform with many men on it. There was a great squealing and it shuddered and stopped and Chimal saw that the men all carried killing things. He pointed his weapon at them and pulled the lever. Once, twice the flame burst out, striking among the men, then the thing died in his hands and nothing more happened no matter how hard he pulled and, in desperation, he squeezed too hard and the lever broke off. Swinging it like a dub he attacked.

Chimal thought he would die before he advanced a foot, and his skin crawled, waiting for the fire to wash over him. But his two blasts had struck among the crowded men and had done fiery work. Some were dead, and others were burned and in pain. Violence and inflicting death were new things to them; but not to Chimal who had lived with these twin inhumanities all of his life. As long as he could move, he would fight. Before a single flame could blast at him he was in among the men, swinging the metal thing about like a flail.

It was an unequal battle. Six men had entered the cavern, yet within the minute two of them were dead and the others wounded and unconscious. Chimal stood over them, panting, waiting for some movement. The last one that had stirred had received a blow on the head and was now as motionless as the others. Throwing away the useless killing thing, he strode over and pushed the handle that opened the feeding door. Watchman Steel was slumped against the rock, as close to the door as she could get, her face buried in her hands. He had to drag her in because she made no move to help herself. She stayed where he dropped her while he removed the wounded and dead from the platform, being careful not to touch the little shining buttons and rods at the front. He was beginning to learn about them. When it had been cleared, curiosity got the better of him and he examined the thing. Underneath there were wheels, such as were sometimes used on children’s toys, that rode on the metal bars that were attached to the rock floor. Some power, controlled from the top, must make these wheels turn and move the platform along. The most interesting part was the shield that rose up in the front. It appeared to be as hard as metal, yet it was clear as water: he could look through it as though it were not there.

The platform rode the bars of metal. He followed them with his eye as they crossed the large cavern and vanished into the smaller tunnel ahead. Perhaps he would not have to go back to face any more of the killing things.

“Get up,” he ordered the girl, dragging her to her feet when she did not respond at once. “Where does this tunnel go to?” She looked first, in horror, at the wounded men dumped on the floor, then followed his pointing finger. “I don’t know,” she finally stammered. “Maintenance is not my work. Perhaps it is a maintenance tunnel.”

He made her explain what maintenance was before he pushed her to the platform. “What is the name of this?” he asked.

“It is a car.”

“Can you make it move? Answer without lying.”

Violence and death had drained her of hope. “Yes, yes I can,” she answered, almost in a whisper.

“Show me then.”

The car was very simple to operate. He put a new killing thing into it and sat beside her while she showed him. One lever made it go forward and back, and the further it was pushed the faster the car went. When it was released it returned to its middle position while a second lever did something that slowed and stopped the car. Chimal started them forward slowly, bending over when they entered the tunnel until he saw that there was a good deal of space between his head and the rock above. The lights, he had learned that word too, moved by faster and faster as he pushed on the lever. Finally, he had it jammed forward as far as it would go and the car raced at a tremendous speed down the tunnel. The walls tore by on each side and the air screamed around the transparent front. Watchman Steel crouched beside him, terrified, and he laughed, then slowed the speed. Ahead of them the row of lights began to curve off to the right and Chimal slowed even more. The curve continued, until they had turned a full right angle, then it straightened out once again. Immediately after this it began to start downward. The slope was gradual, but it continued endlessly. After some minutes of this Chimal stopped the car and ordered Steel out to stand against the wall.

“You’re going to leave me here,” she wailed.

“Not if you behave, I won’t. I just want to see about this tunnel — stand up straight, will you, as straight as you can. Yes, many Chimalman bless me, we’re still going down — to where? Nothing lies inside the Earth except the hell where Mixtec, the god of death lives. Are we going there?”

“I…I don’t know,” she said, weakly.

“Or you won’t tell me, it is the same thing. Well, if it is to hell, then you are joining me. Get back into the car. I have seen more wonders and strange things these last few days than I have ever dreamed, awake or asleep. Hell can be no stranger than them.”

After a period of time the slope flattened out and the tunnel went on, straight and level. Finally, far ahead, light filled the width of the opening and Chimal slowed and approached at a crawling pace. A much larger cavern gradually appeared, well lit and apparently empty. He stopped the ear short of it and approached on foot, pushing Watchman Steel before him. They halted at the entrance, peering in.

It was gigantic. A great room as big as the pyramid, carved from the solid rock. The tracks from their tunnel ran across the floor of the chamber and disappeared into another tunnel on the other side. There were lights along the sides and set into the ceiling, but most of the illumination poured in from a great hole in the roof at the far end of the chamber. The light looked like sunlight and the color was very much like the blue of the sky.

“’That just cannot be,” Chimal said. “We turned away from the valley when we left the place of the vultures, I’ll swear to that. Turned away into the living rock and went down — for a long time. That cannot be sunlight — or can it?” A sudden hope swept through him. “If we went down we could have gone through one of the mountains and come out in another valley that is lower than our valley. Your people do know a way out of the valley, and this is it.”

The light was growing brighter, he realized suddenly, pouring in through the hole above and shining down the long ramp that led up to it. Two tracks, very much like the ones that carried their car, only much larger, ran down the ramp and across the floor, to finally descend through an opening in the floor that was just as large as the one at the far end.

“What is happening?” Chimal asked as the light grew stronger, so brilliant that he could not look in the direction of the opening.

“Come away,” Steel said, pulling at his arm. “We must move back.”

He did not ask why — he knew why. The light blazed in and then the heat came, blasting and searing his face. They turned and ran, while behind them the light and heat, impossibly, intensified. It was scorching, a living flame playing about them as they threw themselves into the shelter of the car, arms over their eyes. It grew, light as hot as fire splashed about them — and then lessened.

After its passing the air felt chill, and when Chimal opened his eyes they had been so dazzled by the light that at first he could only see darkness and whirling spots of color.

“What was that?” he asked,

“The sun,” she said.

When he could finally see again it was nighttime. They went forward once more into the large chamber, now illuminated by the lights above and in the walls. The night sky of stars was visible through the opening, and Chimal and the girl walked slowly up the ramp toward it, until the ramp leveled off at ground level. The star? above came closer and closer, swooping down brighter and brighter until, when they emerged from the tunnel, they found themselves standing among them. Chimal looked down, with a fear that went beyond understanding, as a glowing star, a disk as big as a tortilla, crawled down his leg and across his foot and vanished. With a slow dignity, born of fear and the effort needed to control it, he turned and led the girl slowly back down the ramp into the welcoming shelter of the cavern.

“Do you understand what has happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know, I have heard about these things but I have never seen them before. Dealing with these matters is not my work.”

“I know. You’re a watchman and that is all you know, and you won’t tell me about that either.”

She shook her head no, her lips clamped shut in a tight line. He sat, pulling her down next to him, with his back to that opening and the inexplicable mystery of the stars.

“I am thirsty,” she said. “There is supposed to be emergency rations at these places so far distant. Those must be cupboards, over there.”

“We’ll look together.”

Behind a thick metal door were packages of rations and transparent containers of water. She showed him how to open a container and he drank his fill before handing it to her. The food was just as tasteless, and just as filling, as before. While he ate he was conscious of a great and overwhelming tiredness. In his mind as well as his body, because the thought of the sun passing close to him and the stars crawling at his feet was so inconceivable that it did not bear thinking about. He wanted to ask the girl more questions but now, for the first time, he was afraid to hear the answers.

“I am going to sleep,” he told her, “and I want to find you and the car here when I wake up.” He thought for a moment and then, ignoring her feeble bleatings and resistance, he took the box, on its chain of metal beads from around her neck, and weighed it in his hand. “What do you call this?” he asked.

“It is my deus. Please give it back to me.”

“I don’t want the thing, but I do want you here. Give me your hand.” He wrapped the chain around her wrist, and then about his own hand with the deus held inside against his palm. The stone looked hard but he did not care: almost as soon as he closed his eyes he was asleep.

When he awoke the girl was asleep next to him, her arm outstretched and bent so that her body would be as far away from his as possible, and sunlight was streaming through the opening at the top of the ramp. Could the sun be coming again? He had a moment of intense fear and shook the girl rudely awake. Once he was fully awake himself he saw there was no immediate danger and, after unwinding the chain from his stiff fingers, went to get food and water for them both.

“We’re going out there again,” he said when they were finished, and pushed her up the ramp ahead of him.

They stepped out of the opening onto the blue sky. It felt hard under foot and, when Chimal hit it with the back of the killing thing, a patch of blue chipped away revealing the stone underneath. It made no sense — yet it was the sky. He followed it up and away from him with his eyes, up to the zenith and back down to the mountains on the distant horizon. As his gaze reached them he cried out and staggered back, his sense of balance suddenly disrupted.

The mountains, all of them, were facing toward him, tilted up into the sky at a 45 degree angle.

It was as though the entire world had been pushed up from behind, tipped up on its near edge. He did not know what to think: these events were too impossible. Unable to bear the vertigo he staggered back down the ramp to the solid safety of the hewn chamber. Watchman Steel followed after him.

“What does all this mean?” he asked her. “I can’t make myself understand what is happening.”

“I can’t tell you, this time because I don’t know. This isn’t my work, I’m a watchman and the maintenance people never talked about this. They must know what it means.”

Chimal looked down the darkened tunnel into which the sun had vanished, and could not understand. “We must go on,” he said. “I must find out what these things mean. Where does the other car tunnel go?” he asked, pointing to the opening on the far side of the large chamber.

“I don’t know. I’m not maintenance.”

“You’re not much of anything,” he told her, with unconscious cruelty. “We’ll go on.”

He brought the car slowly out of the tunnel and stopped it while she loaded food and water aboard. Now that he was beginning to distrust reality he wanted his own supplies with him. Then they crossed the cavern and plunged into the tunnel opposite. It was flat and straight though, for some reason, the row of lights ahead appeared to be going up hill. Yet they never came to the hill: the tunnel remained perfectly flat. Some difference in the texture of the tunnel appeared ahead and Chimal slowed the car until it was barely moving and crept forward, stopping when he came up the ladder rungs that were set into the solid rock of the tunnel wall. They went up the wall and into a pipe-like opening that had been cut through the ceiling.

We’re going to find out where this goes,” Chimal said, forcing her out of the car. He stood back while Steel started up the ladder ahead of him. It was about a twenty foot climb up the hole, which was just a bit wider than his shoulders, and two lights were set into it to show the way. The uppermost light was just under a metal lid that covered the top of the shaft

“Push up against it,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to be sealed.”

It was thin metal, hinged at one side and she opened it easily as she climbed up and through. Chimal followed, up and out of the solid rock and onto the blue sky. He looked up, first at the small white clouds that drifted overhead, and then past them at the valley, with the thin cut of the river and the two brown villages, one on each side, which hung directly over his head.

This time he did fall, pressing himself to the solid surface of the sky and grasping at the edge of the hole. He had the sensation that he was faffing straight down, plunging from the sky down to broken death in the fields by the river. When he closed his eyes to cut out the fearful vision it was much better. He felt the solid rock beneath him and the weight of his body pressing against it. After getting slowly to his hands and knees he opened his eyes and looked down. Blue paint of some kind over solid rock; it chipped when he picked at it around the edge of the hole. There were even dusty footprints on it where others had walked, and metal tracks passed close by. Wide-spaced tracks like those that had carried the sun. He went over to them, still on his knees, and clutched the solidity of the blue metal bar. It was worn on the top and shiny. Raising his eyes slowly he followed the tracks across the sky, as they grew closer and closer and finally vanished into a black opening high above, up the smooth curve of the sky. He tried not to think about this or to understand it. Not yet. He had to see everything first. Then, slowly, he rolled onto his back, still clutching the rail.

Above him was the valley, visible from end to end just as he knew it should look. On both sides were mountains, pointing straight up at him, and more mountains beyond the valley ends. There was the barrier of rock and the swamp at the north end, the wandering path of the river between the fields, the brown buildings and the dark splotches of the two temples, the trees in the south and a glint of silver from the pond. The waterfall was barely visible; but there was no sign of a river leading to it. There were a few mountains there and the blue bowl of the sky began directly behind them.

A flicker of motion caught his eye and he turned just as Steel vanished down the shaft in the rock.

His vertigo was forgotten now as he jumped to his feet and ran to the opening. She was climbing down fast, faster than he would have thought, not looking up. As he started down behind her she reached the tunnel below and jumped from the ladder. He went a few more rungs, then let go and dropped the rest of the way, landing heavily on the solid rock below. Fire washed over his head.

Steel had the killing thing ready, waiting for him to emerge so she could destroy him. Now she gaped at the blackened rungs and wall and, before she could correct her aim, he was upon her, tearing the weapon from her hands.

“Too late for that,” he said, throwing it into the car and pulling her around, up against the wall. He clutched her chin tightly, swinging her head back and forth. “Too late to kill me because I know the truth now, all about you watchmen and the world and all the lies I have been told. There is no longer any need for me to ask you questions, now I can tell you.” He laughed, and surprised himself when he heard the shrill edge to the sound. When he released her she rubbed at the marks his hard grip had made on her chin, but he did not notice this.

“Lies,” he told her. “My people have been lied to about everything. It is a lie that we are in a valley on a planet called Earth, that goes around the sun — which is a burning ball of gas. We believed it, all this nonsense, floating planets, burning gas in the air. That flash of fire Popoca saw and that I saw, when the sun set, was a reflection from the tracks, that is all. Our valley is the world, there is nothing else. We live inside a giant cave hollowed out of the rock, secretly watched by your people. Who are you — servants or masters? Or both? You serve us, your maintenance people watch our sun for us and see that it always shines as it should. And they must make the rain come as well. And the river — it really ends in the swamp. Then what do you do with the water — pump it back through a pipe and over the falls again?”

“Yes,” she said, holding her deus in both hands and lifting her head high. “We do just that. We watch and protect and keep you from harm, by day and night through all the seasons of the year. For we are the watchmen and we ask nothing for ourselves, asking only to serve.”

There was no humor in his laugh. “You serve. You serve badly. Why don’t you make the river run strong all the time so we can have water, or bring the rain when we need it? We pray for rain and nothing happens. Aren’t the gods listening — or aren’t you listening?” In sudden realization he stepped back. “Or are there any gods at all? Coatlicue stands quiet in your caverns and you bring the rain when you wish.” With sudden sorrow and realization he said, “Even there you have lied to us, everywhere. There are no gods.”

“There are none of your gods — but there is one god, the God, the Great Designer. He was the one who made all this, who designed and built it, then breathed life into it so that it began. The sun rose from its tunnel for the first time, took fire and rolled on its first voyage across the sky. The water sprang out from the fall and filled the pool and dampened the waiting river bed. He planted the trees and made the animals and then, when He was ready, He peopled the valley with the Aztecs and placed the Watchers to guard over them. He was strong and sure, and we are strong and sure in His image, and we honor Him and fulfill His trust. We are His children and you are His infants and we watch over you as He has ordained.”

Chimal was not impressed. The chant of words and the light in her eyes reminded him very much of the priests and their prayers. If the gods were dead, he did not mind seeing them go at all, but he was not adding any new gods that quickly. Nevertheless he nodded agreement because she had the facts that he must know.

“So it is inside out,” he said, “and we have been taught only lies. The ball of gas is gone and the Earth is gone and the stars are little spots of light. The universe is rock, rock, solid rock forever and we live in a little cave hollowed from the center of it.” He bent a bit, almost flinching away from the weight of that infinity of rock that surrounded them,

“No, not forever,” she said, clasping her hands before her swaying. “There will come a day when the end will come, the chosen day when we will all be set free. For look,” she held out her deus, “look at the number of the days since creation. See how they mount and revel in their passing for we are doing our duty by the Great Designer who is father to us all.”

“186,175 days since the world began,” Chimal said, looking at the numbers displayed. “And you have kept track all that time yourself?”

“No, of course not. I am not yet seventy years old. This deus is a revered treasure given to me when I took the oath of Watchman…”

“How old are you?” he asked, thinking he had misunderstood. Seventeen?

“Sixty-eight,” she said, and there was a touch of malice at the corners of her smile. “We hew to the days of our service and do our duty, and the faithful are rewarded with the years of their lives. We are not short-lived like the lower animals, the turkey, the snake — or you.”

There was no answer for this. Watchman Steel appeared to be in her early twenties. Could she possibly be as old as she claimed? This was one more mystery to go with all the others. In the silence, the tiny, distant whine buzzed like an insect against his consciousness.

The sound grew, and the girl recognized it before he did. Pushing away from the wall she began to run back down the tunnel, in the direction from which they had come. Chimal could catch her easily, but as he turned he recognized the sound too and stopped, poised on the balls of his feet, uncertain.

Another car was coming.

He could catch the girl, but he would be caught himself. Get the killing thing — but what would be the point in killing her? The different courses open to him ticked by, one after the other, and he discarded them. The car would have many men in it with killing things. He would have to flee, that was the wisest course to follow. They would stop to get the girl and that would give him time to get ahead of them. Even as he was deciding this he jumped into the car and pushed the lever forward as far as it would go. Something whined shrilly under the floor of the car and it shot forward like a released arrow. Yet, even as the car picked up speed he realized that this wasn’t the complete solution. Was there anything else he could do? Even as he thought this he saw a dark spot in the tunnel ahead: he quickly pulled on the other lever and brought the car to a bucking halt next to the ladder.

It was another exit from the tunnel, with the rungs climbing up through the opening — to what? To the sky overhead, undoubtedly, next to the sun track. This was the second of these openings, and the chances were that there should be more. As soon as he thought of this he jammed the speed lever forward again. By the time he reached the next one — if there was one — he would have figured out what he had to do. It meant taking a chance, but everything in this strange new world meant taking a chance. He had to plan.

Food and water, he must take that with him. Using one hand, he opened the front of his clothing part way and stuffed in as many of the food packages as would fit. Then he drank his fill from the open water container and threw it aside. He would carry the full one with him. The only remaining problem was the car. If it remained below the opening they would know he had gone out that way and would follow him. He did not know if he could escape from a number of men at once. Was there any way that the car could drive on by itself? After all, it would keep moving just as long as the lever was pushed forward: even a child could do that. He looked first at the lever, then around the car. There was nothing to fasten onto, or he would have tied it forward. What about pushing it? He tugged at the seat next to him and it moved slightly. Then, still holding the lever forward with one hand, he stood up carefully and turned around, bracing his back against the panel that held the levers. He pushed one foot against the back of the chair, harder and harder, until something cracked and it toppled over. Yes, if he jammed it in hard it looked as though it would fit nicely. Just as he sat down again he saw the next ladder far ahead.

Chimal was out of the car even before it had stopped moving. He dropped the container of water and the killing thing by the ladder and grabbed up the broken-off seat. The other car was not in sight, but he could hear the growing, far off whine. Bracing the bottom of the broken seat against the other seat he jammed the top against the lever. The car leaped forward, brushing against him and knocking him aside — then slowed and halted as the seat slipped out of position. He ran after it as the sound of the other car grew louder behind him.

This time he turned the seat end for end, with the square-edged bottom against the lever. He jammed it down hard and jumped away. Whining angrily the car lurched forward and kept going, faster and faster. Chimal did not stay to watch it. Head down he pelted back to the ladder as the sound of the approaching car grew closer. He grabbed the water and the killing thing to his chest in one arm and sprang for the ladder, almost running up it, moving as fast as he could with a single arm.

His feet were just clear of the tunnel when the other car shot by underneath. He waited, holding his breath, to hear if they were stopping. The sound grew fainter, slowly and steadily, until it had vanished completely. They had not seen him and they were not stopping. By the time they had discovered what had happened he would be far from this spot. They would not know which of the exits he had used, which would make his chances of escaping that much better. Slowly, a rung at a time, he climbed up to the sky above.

As he emerged from the opening he felt the sunlight warm upon him. Wanner than he was used to,

In sudden fear he turned and saw the great, burning sun rushing down upon him.

4

Standing there, halfway out of the hole, he stood fast for a sudden moment of panic. This passed quickly when he realized that the heat was not increasing and that the sun was growing no closer. It moved, of course, but slowly in order to take a half a day to cross the sky. Even though it was hot, it was not uncomfortably so, and he would be out of the way long before it passed. With calculated speed he threw his burden out upon the blue surface of the sky and closed the cover behind him. He kept his head turned from the sun since its light was blinding when he looked anywhere in its general direction. Then, with the water in one hand the weapon in the other, he put his back to the sun and started toward the north end of the valley, beyond which lay the concealed tunnels of the Watchers. His shadow, black and very long, stretched far out in front of him to the point the way.

Now that he was a little more used to it, there was an excitement to all that was happening that was greater than anything he had ever experienced before in his life. He walked, filled with a great elation, over a wide blue plain. It was flat in front of him, and apparently endless, while on both sides it swept up in an easy curve. Above him, where the sky should have been, the world was suspended. Sharp-tipped mountains came down on both sides and cut across in front of him. It was ground, solid rock beneath his feet, he knew that now, so that it no longer bothered him that the world he had grown up in, the only one that he had known up until a few days ago, hung over his head like a monstrous weight. He was a fly, crawling on the ceiling of the sky, looking down on the poor prisoners trapped below. When he had placed enough distance between himself and the sun he stopped to rest, sitting on the blue sky, and opened the container of water. When he raised it to his lips he looked up at the valley above, at the pyramid and temple almost directly over his head. He put the water down and lay flat on his back, his arms under his head and gazed down on his home. When he looked hard he could almost make out the workers in the fields. The cornfields looked rich and green and would be ready for harvest soon. The people went about their work and their lives without realizing that they were in a prison. Why? And their captors, prisoners themselves in their termite tunnels, what was the hidden reason for their secret observation and the girl’s strange talk about the Great Designer?

Yes, he could see tiny figures moving from the fields toward Quilapa. He wondered if they could see him up here, and he moved his arms and legs about and hoped that they could. What would they think? Probably that he was some kind of bird. Maybe he should take the metal weapon and scratch his name in the sky, flake away the blue so that the rock could be seen. CHIMAL it would say, the letters hanging there in the sky, unmoving and unchanging. Let the priests try and explain that one!

Laughing, he rose and picked up his burdens. Now, more than ever, he wanted to find out the reason for all this. There had to be a reason. He walked on.

When he passed over the rock barrier that sealed the end of the valley he looked up with interest. It was real enough, though the great boulders looked like tiny pebbles from here. Beyond the barrier there was no continuation of the valley, just gray rock from which rose the peaks of mountains. Artificial, all of them, made to give an illusion of distance, since the farther peaks were smaller than the ones closest to the valley. Chimal walked over them and past them, determined to see what lay beyond, until he realized that he was walking up a slope.

It was only a small angle at first, but the slope quickly steepened until he was leaning forward, then climbing on all fours. The sky ahead stretched in a monstrous curve up and up until it reached the ground, but he was never going to get there. In a sudden panic, afraid that he was trapped in this barren sky forever, he tried to climb higher. But he slipped on the smooth sky and slid backward. He lay, unmoving, until the fear had ebbed away, then tried to reason his way out of this.

It was obvious that he could not go ahead — but he could always retrace his steps if he had to, so he was not really trapped out here. What about moving to the left and right? He turned and looked up the slope of the sky to the west, where it rose up and up to meet the mountains above. Then he remembered how the tunnel under the sun had appeared to curve upward yet had been flat all the way. There must be two kinds of up in the world outside the valley. The real up and the one that just looked like up, yet appeared to be flat when you walked on it. He took the container and the weapon and started for the mountains high above.

This was the up that really wasn’t. It was as though he were walking in a giant tube that turned toward him as he advanced. Down was always beneath his feet, and the horizon advanced steadily. The mountains, which had been above him when he started, were halfway down the sky now, hanging like a jagged-edge curtain before him. They drifted downward steadily with every step he took forward, until they finally lay directly ahead, pointing at him like so many giant daggers.

When he came to the first mountain he saw that it was lying flat on its side against the sky — and that it only came up to his shoulders! He was past surprise, his senses dulled by days of wonder. The peak of the mountain was tipped with something white and hard, apparently the same substance as the sky only of a different color. He climbed onto the tip of the mountain that lay flat on the ground of the sky and pointed at him like a great wedge, and walked along it until the white ended and he came to the solid rock. What did this mean? He saw the valley, now only halfway up the sky ahead of him and tilted on edge. He tried to imagine how this spot would look from the valley, and closed his eyes to remember better. Looking from the base of the cliff beyond Zaachila you could see over the pyramid to the great mountains outside of the valley, and the even more distant, immense and high mountains, that were so tall that they had snow on their peaks all year round. Snow! He opened his eyes and looked at the shining white substance and laughed. Here he was perched on a snowy mountain peak — if they could see him from the valley he must look like some sort of monstrous giant.

Chimal went on, climbing among the strange, lying-down mountains, until he came to the opening in the rock and the familiar metal rungs that vanished out of sight below. It was another entrance to the tunnels.

He sat down next to it and thought very hard. What should he do next? This was undoubtedly an entrance to the burrows of the Watchers, a part he had not been to yet, since it was far across the valley from the doorway he had first used. He had to go down here, that Was certain, since there was no place to hide among the barren rocks. Even if there were a place to hide, his food and water would not last forever. This reminder of the food sent a rumble of hunger through him and he took out a package and opened it.

What was he to do after be entered the burrow? He was as alone as no one had ever been before, with every man’s hand turned against him. His people in the valley would kill him on sight, or more probably hamstring him so the priests would have the pleasure of giving him a protracted death. And the Master Observer had called him a non-person, therefore a dead person, and they had all worked very hard to put him into that condition. But they had not succeeded! Even their weapons and their cars and all the things they knew had not helped them. He had escaped and he was free — and he intended to stay that way. In which case a plan was needed to insure this condition.

First he would hide his food and water out here among the tumbled rocks. Then he would enter the tunnel and, bit by bit, would explore the surrounding caverns to discover what he could of the secrets of the Watchers. It was not much of a plan — but he did not have any other choice.

When he had finished he hid his supplies, and the empty food wrapper, then threw open the lid of the entrance. The tunnel below was rock floored and began just below the opening. He went along it cautiously until it joined a wider tunnel that had two sets of tracks down the center. There were no cars in sight, nor could he hear any approaching. He had no choice but to go down this tunnel. Holding the killing thing ready he turned right, toward the valley’s end and set off between the tracks at an easy trot, covering the ground quickly. He did not like this exposed position and he turned into the first opening that appeared. This proved to be the opening to some circular metal stairs that ran down and around and out of sight in the rock below. Chimal started down them, going steadily even though he became dizzy from the constant turning.

As he went lower he heard a humming sound that grew louder while he descended. At the bottom he came out in a damp tunnel that had a trickle of water down the middle, and the hum was now a hammering roar that filled the shaft with sound. Chimal went forward carefully, alert for any motion, until the tunnel ended in a high cavern that held towering metal objects from which the torrent of sound poured. He had no idea what their function might be. Great round sections of them vanished up into the stone above, and from one of these sections came the dribble of water that ran across the floor and into this tunnel. From the security of the entrance he ran his eye down the row of immense things, to the far end where brighter lights shone on a board of smaller shining objects before which a man sat. Chimal drew back into the tunnel. The man’s back was to him and he had certainly not seen the intruder yet. Chimal went back down the tunnel and past the metal stairs. He would see where this led before he went back to the chamber of cars.

As he walked the noise behind him lessened and, when it had died away to a distant hum, he was aware of the sound of running water coming from somewhere ahead. Darkness filled the mouth of the tunnel. He stepped through it onto a ledge above the blackness. A row of lights, curving away to his left, reflected from a dark surface. He realized that he was looking at a vast underground lake: the running water sounded far out ahead of him and small waves trembled the reflections on the surface. The cavern that held the water was vast and the echoes of the falling water sounded on all sides. Where was this place? In his mind he ran through the turnings he had made, and tried to estimate how far he had come. He was much lower than when he had started, and had come north, and then east Looking up he could imagine his route — and there above would be the swamp at the north end of the valley. Of course! This underground lake lay beneath the swamp and drained it. The things back there in the cavern did something to force the water through pipes back to the waterfall. And where did the row of lights go that skirted the edge of the dark lake? He walked forward to find out

A ledge had been cut from the rock of the cavern wall and the lights were spaced along it The rock was slippery and damp and he went carefully. One quarter of the way around the water it went, then ended at another tunnel. Chimal realized that he was tired. Should he go on, or return to his hiding place? That would be the wisest thing to do, but the mystery of these caverns drew him forward. Where did this one lead? He started into it. It was damp, mustier than the other tunnels, though it was lit by the same evenly spaced windows of light No, not as even as the others, a black gap showed ahead like a missing tooth. When he came up to this spot he saw that one of the smooth objects was inset there — but this one’s fire was gone and it was dark. The first one he had seen like this. Perhaps this tunnel was rarely used and this had not been noticed yet. At the end of the tunnel was another round stairway of metal up which he climbed. This emerged into a small room that had a door in one wall. When he put his ear to the door he heard nothing from the other side. He opened it a narrow crack and looked through.

This cavern was quiet, empty, and the largest one he had yet encountered. When he entered it the sound of his footsteps made a tiny rustle in its towering vastness. The lighting here was far less than that of the tunnels, but it was more than enough to show him the size of this cavern, and the paintings that adorned the walls. These were lifelike and strange, people and unusual animals and even odder metal objects. They were marching, all of them, a torrent of frozen motion, going toward the far end of the cavern where there was a doorway flanked by golden statues. The people of the paintings were dressed in different and fantastic Ways, and were even of different skin colors, but they all went to a common goal. The pressure of these silent marchers drove him that way too, but not before he looked about him.

The other end of the cavern was sealed with immense boulders that, for some reason, looked familiar to him. Why? He had never been in this place before. He walked closer to them and looked up at their piled magnitude. They reminded him very much of the rock barrier that sealed the end of the valley.

Of course! This was the other side of that same barrier. If the gigantic boulders were removed the valley would be open, and he did not doubt for a second that the powers that had been used to carve these tunnels and build a sun could be used to throw aside the rocks in front of him. From outside there had appeared to be no exit from the valley — because the exit was sealed inside the rock. Could the legends be true? That some day the valley would be open and his people would march forth. To where? Chimal spun about and looked at the high opening at the far end of the chamber. What did it lead to?

He passed between the large, golden statues of a man and a woman that flanked the portal, and then continued down the tunnel beyond. It was wide and straight and patterned with gold designs. Many doors opened off it but he did not examine any of them: that would wait They doubtless contained many things of interest, but they were not the reason for this passageway. That lay ahead. Faster and faster he walked until he was almost running, up to the great double doors of gold that sealed the end. There was only silence behind them. There was a strange tautness in his chest as he pushed them open.

Beyond was a large chamber, almost as big as the other one, but this one was undecorated and dark, with just a few small lights to show him the way. There was a rear wall and sides, but the far wall was missing. The opening faced out on the star-filled night sky.

It was no sky that Chimal had ever seen before. There was no moon in sight and no valley walls to form a close horizon. And the stars, the stars, the overwhelming quantity of them that broke over him like a wave! The familiar constellations, if they were there, were lost in the infinity of the other stars as numberless as grains of sand. And aft of the stars were turning, as though mounted on a great wheel. Some faint, tiny; others blazing like torches of many colors, yet they all were hard and clear points of light without lie flickering of the stars above his valley.

What could this mean? In uncomprehending awe he walked forward until he collided with something cold and invisible. The sudden spurt of fear dissipated as he touched it with his hand and realized it must be the same kind of transparent substance that covered the front of the cars. Then this entire wall of the room was a great window, opening out on — what? The window curved outward and when he leaned into it he could see that the stars filled the sky to left and right, above and below. He had a sudden vertigo, as though he were falling and pressed his hand to the window, but the unaccustomed cold of it was strangely ominous and he quickly pulled away. Was this another valley facing the real universe of stars? If so, where was the valley?

Chimal stepped back, unsure, frightened by this new immensity, and as he did he heard a faint sound.

Was it a footstep? He started to jump about when the killing thing was suddenly jerked from his hand. He fell back against the cold window and saw the Master Observer and three other men standing before him, all of them pointing the deadly flame weapon at him.

“You have come at last to the end,” the Master Observer said.