Island in the Sea of Time

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

October-November, Year 1 A.E.

The beach in Bronze Age England had changed since the Eagle's visit in early spring. The great encampment of the Iraiina was gone, most of it, emptied as they had dispersed to take up their steadings. The land it had covered drowsed in the late-summer sunlight. Grass mantled it, or red-brown fields ready to be sown with winter grain; Walker supposed the accumulated filth of the temporary city had manured the soil. Half a mile inland on a slight rise was a cluster of buildings. He leveled his binoculars. There was one largish oval hall, eighty feet by thirty across, with smoke trickling up into the morning air from three or four places on the thatched roof. The inward-sloping walls looked like turf, with a framework of heavy timbers. Smaller buildings were scattered around it, and piles of trimmed logs he thought were probably for a stockade. There were large stock pens up already, holding a herd of scrubby cattle, hairy sheep that looked to be more goat, and a dozen stocky hammerheaded little horses like Icelandic ponies. Daurthunnicar's ruathaurikaz, the Iraiina term for a high chiefs steading. Evidently the rahax kept a good lookout; men were boiling out of the buildings and hitching up chariots.

Like home, he thought sardonically. Minus a couple of millennia or so. He'd been raised on a ranch up in the Bitterroot country of western Montana, a miserable little cow-calf spread that had swallowed his father and his older brothers and broken his mother in a lifelong losing battle with the bank and the weather. Back to the cowshit, but not for long. He'd gotten out at eighteen, working harder to make the Academy than he'd ever done roping or branding.

There was an additional factor drawn up on the beach. Tartessian ships, two of them. They were the ships that'd been there last year, he recognized the horse heads at the bows. Isketerol must have been extremely persuasive back last spring to get his cousin to bring ships north this late in the sailing season; Walker didn't like the thought of taking one of those glorified rowboats through a winter blow in the Channel, or the Bay of Biscay. The Tartessians didn't seem inclined to go anywhere either, since they'd run up substantial-looking huts on the shore above the high-tide mark.

"They'll be here for the winter?" he asked Isketerol.

The Tartessian nodded. "Sail home this near the storm season?" he said. "In the Yare, yes. In those, never. The Hungry One eats enough of us as it is, without tempting Him."

Now, just how far can I trust my good buddy Isketerol? Walker thought. Oddly enough, rather far, I think. For one thing, the Tartessian seemed to take certain types of promise very seriously; for another, their ambitions ran in concert. Or so I think. But he's from a completely different background. His logic may be my madness. For that matter, look at how differently he and Alston thought, and they did come from the same background, more or less. Well, nothing ventured…

"You go set up the meeting with Daurthunnicar," he said. They clasped wrists. "This is the beginning of something good."

He watched the Tartessian depart, then called McAndrews and Cuddy; they stood quietly, waiting for him to talk. The voyage across the Atlantic had established discipline, at least. He stood, pressing his palms together and tapping the bunched fingers on his chin. Then, spearing a forefinger at each:

"All right, this is going to be tricky. We have to get in good with the locals; and incidentally, we have to watch our Tartessian friends, just in case they decide to get a jump on their part of the bargain. McAndrews, you're going to be in charge of the ship while I'm ashore." The black upperclassman was the most reliable of them all. He was in this to save his beloved black Egyptians; Walker had promised to send him to Pharaoh's court with a ship and a selection of goodies, when he was well set up. "I'll leave you Smith, Gianelli…"

He rapped out the orders, most of his mind on the dickering ahead, and a fraction wandering westward. If his luck was very good, Lisketter would manage not only to get killed-that was more or less inevitable-but to take the captain and the Eagle with her. Alston would certainly go after Lisketter first, with Chief Cofflin's wife along on that particular Ship of Fools; that was why he'd persuaded Lisketter that Ms. Martha Cofflin would be indispensable. With only moderate luck, it would be spring before the captain arrived in England-and by then he planned to be ready to depart for points south, or to have an unassailable position here. He'd read up a little on Lisketier's destination, and without her blinkers. They were going to be very unhappy when they got there.

Good luck with the People of the Jaguar God, Skipper, he thought ironically.

"Duck!"

Everyone on the decks of the Bentley did. The booms swung across the deck and sails slapped taut as the schooner's bow swung through the eye of the wind onto the other leg of her tack southwestward. Martha Cofflin felt her stomach heave again and forced it down by an effort of will. She closed her eyes on the painful brightness of the day and sipped again at the cup of broth.

When she opened them again, Lisketter was standing near her, clutching at a stay.

"It won't work," she said to the kidnapper.

"I know it probably won't," Lisketter said with a sad smile. That was enough to surprise a raised eyebrow out of Martha. "But I have to try."

"Try what!" Exasperation drove out anger and even nausea. "Do you really think seven thousand people on Nantucket are going to overrun a continent and… and shoot all the buffalo?"

Lisketter shook her head. "It's not that simple, although who knows what might happen in a few generations? But you've already begun trading with the Europeans, and they'll learn things from you. Alston said it herself-in a few years, they'll be able to sail here. What do you think they'll do, if we don't give the Native Americans some defense? They'll conquer the Americas, three thousand years earlier than in the world we left. I know the people on Nantucket aren't genocides, not really. But the… the Iraiina, or the Tartessians, what about them?"

Martha finished the broth and crossed her arms. "I don't suppose it occurred to you that you might persuade the Town Council to open peaceful contact with the more advanced Amerindian cultures? There would be profit in it for the island, as well. No, you have to hare off on this crazy stunt-"

"They never listened to me! I was silenced!"

"You and Andrea Dworkin," Martha said scornfully. "They listened to you, all right; they just didn't agree with you. Which isn't surprising, considering the way you treated them like idiots or bad-mannered children. Did you think you could scold them into agreeing with you?"

"I told them the truth," she said quietly. "Now, Martha-"

"That's Ms. Cofflin to you, Pamela Lisketter."

"Ms. Cofflin. We're here, you're here, and I hope you'll be reasonable and help us. You have knowledge that will be crucial."

Martha regarded her bleakly. "I'll do my best to keep you alive," she said, laying a hand on her stomach in unconscious protective reflex. "I daresay you won't listen to me about that, either."

"I-we-intend to consider carefully anything you can tell us. Making contact with the Native Americans-"

"Olmecs, isn't it?" At the surprised look: "I do note what research people do."

"Yes, they seem to be the most likely to benefit from what we have to offer. In any case, making contact will be a very delicate matter. We don't want to frighten them, or disrupt their culture more than absolutely necessary."

Oh, Lord have mercy, Martha thought. Does she really think that the Indians are so fragile that twenty people in a boat can bring them crashing down? Their bacteria might, of course, but Lisketter seemed to have been very careful about that.

Instead Martha switched back to practical matters. "Do you really think you can get away with it? Think, will you? The Eagle is probably on our track right now."

"Unless they're following that… that… Walker to Europe," she said. "In any case, what can they do? We took the guns."

"Those that Walker didn't hijack to Europe," Martha said with malice aforethought. There was a certain satisfaction in seeing Lisketter flush. "You shot Jared and Captain Alston, Lisketter, but you didn't kill either of them. Never do an enemy a small injury." Particularly if the enemy is smarter and tougher than you'll ever be. You and your brother both seem to think firearms are Evil Magical Talismans that you can wave and everyone has to obey you. No use telling her it didn't work like that.

It was amazing what a combination of strong emotion, faulty assumptions, and inexperience could do. Make a high-IQ type act like an utter natural-born damned fool, for instance.

The one good thing about this, Marian Alston thought, is that tacking broad means we cover more ocean and are more likely to blunder into 'em.

The Eagle lay hard over with her port rail nearly under and white water foaming from the bow and hawse holes; the wind was out of the south-a little to the east of south-and they were making sixteen knots with all sail set. She locked her hands behind her back and gritted her teeth, taking little of her usual pleasure in the dolphin grace of the big windjammer's passage or the blood-flogging breeze and spindrift in her face. Sixteen knots by the log, but they were tacking, zigzagging up into the teeth of the wind and making more mileage left and right than forward. Eagle was square-rigged on her two forward masts, which meant she couldn't point anything like as near to the wind as a schooner. That gave the Bentley a two-knot advantage in actual sea miles covered southward, overall, sailing straight into wind like this. She looked up into a cloudless sky. If the wind were to back and come out of the north, she could cannonball down at twice the Bentley's best rate; schooners were at a disadvantage running before the wind, and the one she was chasing was no greyhound, nor was it well manned, probably.

On the other hand, if I could run her straight before the wind, I might well simply sail past Bentley. The ship's radar had a limited coverage, and it was a big, empty ocean. If Lisketter changed her plan and ran the Bentley into the Chesapeake or one of the big Gulf rivers, there wouldn't be the chance of a Klansman at a Black Muslim convention of finding them. Everyone was keeping an eye out, too, not just the posted lookouts; that was an old Coast Guard tradition.

Tom Hiller cleared his throat. "Very well, Mr. Hiller," she said.

"Aye aye, Captain." Louder: "Ready about!"

The orders echoed louder than they had before the Event, without the continual burr of generators and fans; those were secured for emergency use only, now.

Feet thundered across the deck. At least they had a full crew-overfull. Walker had taken only six of the Eagle's complement with him, thank God. None of them were men she would miss, except McAndrews, and she could guess how Walker had scammed the black cadet; no women among the deserters, she noted without surprise. As it was, there were a hundred and fifty sets of hands available for this maneuver where thirty would do at a pinch.

Commands cracked out, to the helm, to the hands on the lines across the decks. Everything had to be adjusted throughout the maneuver, and precisely, with split-second timing.

"Fore manned and ready," shouted the foremast captain.

"Main manned and ready."

"Mizzen manned and ready."

"Helm's alee!" she ordered. "Right full rudder."

The four hands standing on the platforms beside the wheels heaved at the spokes. Down in the waist and on the forecastle deck came a chorus of heave… ho as the lines controlling the yards that held the square sails braced to starboard were paid out and their mirror images drawn taut.

"Ease the headsail sheets!"

The ship's bowsprit began to move from port to starboard, left to right. Dacron thuttered and flapped in thunder-cracks up aloft. She could feel the ship's deck swaying back toward the level as the wind lost leverage on the sails. This was the critical part of the maneuver; unless they were hauled around sharp and the vessel's momentum was sufficient to carry her through the dead spot, she could be taken aback and held in irons-sliding humiliatingly sternward.

"Haul spanker boom amidships!"

"Rise tacks and sheets!" Clewlines hauled the square sails up, spilling wind.

"Mainsail… haul!"

The Eagle was through the eye of the wind, and the orders continued:

"Shift headsail sheets!"

"Ease spanker!"

"Ease the helm!"

The wheels spun, pointing her rudder amidships.

"Let go, and haul! Set the main!"

Eagle tilted to starboard. The sails swung, set, braced, filled out into lovely white curves. Feet moved across the deck in a dance more neatly choreographed than any ballet, making lines fast to belaying pins, cleats, and bits.

"On the port tack, ma'am," Hiller said, satisfaction in his voice.

Alston looked at her watch and the clinometer, and overside. They were almost back up to speed, slicing southeast instead of southwest. "Six minutes forty-five seconds. Very good, Mr. Hiller."

He nodded. That had been very good. There was an easier way to come about onto the other tack, but it meant going the wrong way for a few minutes, and took a bite-sized chunk out of your forward passage.

And there was no time to spare. One small consolation was that they knew, pretty well, where the Bentley was headed. The other was that Cofflin knew better than to nag her over the radio; she'd had superiors in uniform who hadn't grasped the futility of jogging a subordinate's elbow nearly so well. Even as it was, she felt an impatience that seemed strong enough to urge the Eagle faster through the water by a sheer effort of will.

Swindapa came bounding up the gangway stairs from the waist, where she'd been helping out on the line teams. You never have to tell her twice, or find her work to do, Alston thought, fighting back a grin she knew would be both unprofessional and silly. The impulse faded quickly, driven out by worry. There would probably be fighting at the end of this trip, one way or the other.

Loving means giving hostages to fortune, she told herself grimly. Do your best; it's all anyone can.

"That's the Coatzacoalcos River," the yachtsman among Lisketter's followers said.

Silence fell as the Bentley ghosted forward under an unmerciful noon. The air here where the Isthmus of Tehuantepec narrowed was hot, hazy and hot and damp, still and full of the smell of vegetable rot. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico-Martha supposed it should be called that, for want of another name-beat on the shores as the schooner coasted down along them; sometimes on beaches of white sand, as often on marsh and forest growing tangled to the water's edge. They had stopped at islands for wood and water, never seeing a dweller. There were Indians in the Caribbean, she knew, but they were few and scattered. Farming hadn't penetrated there yet, and wouldn't for some centuries. Mile after mile, white beaches that turned jungle-green at the high-tide mark, islands like lush emeralds in the unbelievably blue sea.

Martha listened to the conversation behind her at the wheel with half an ear, already convinced that the sailor was right. The maps were unreliable for the smaller things, lesser streams, shoals, reefs, the precise outlines of coasts; such had changed too much in the three millennia between now and the day the charts were drawn. That said, mountains and the great rivers were much the same as they'd be in the twentieth. This river was broad and deep, fringed by mangrove and marsh along the coast, rising up to dense jungle behind. Ebony, mahogany, dyewood, great buttressed trunks coming into view as the schooner slowed still more and breasted into the current. Vines laced them together, thicker than her thigh and running up to the tops of the canopy nearly two hundred feet above.

The engine of the Bentley burbled into life for the first time in weeks. Sails came down with a rattle, to be roughly lashed to the booms. As the diesel blatting echoed back from the near bank of the river, birds exploded out of it. There were thousands of them, showers of feathered shapes in canary yellow, red, blue, sulfur gold, and sunset crimson. Parrots, macaws, others she couldn't name, their cries loud and raucous in the heavy air. Alligators slipped off mud-banks into the water with little rippling splashes like low-slung dragons. Insects rose from the river and the swamps along it in clouds, and without the sea breeze to scatter them soon had everyone on the schooner's deck slapping and scratching.

"Do you have a depth sounder on this ship?" Martha asked.

"No," the yachtsman said. "But this looks pretty deep."

Oh, God, Martha thought, wiping at her face with a handkerchief. Sweat lay oily, refusing to dry. At least she'd stopped getting so sick.

Most of the crew-she supposed that was the way to describe Lisketter's followers, after a couple of weeks at sea-were resting along the rails of the schooner, pointing and chattering. Everyone was tanned dark, and they looked shaggy and ragged, but they'd managed to get here without sinking or running onto something, rather to Martha's surprise.

She turned to Lisketter. "You should have someone checking the depth," she said. "And shouldn't you break out the guns, after all the trouble you went to to steal them?"

Lisketter had been staring out at the passing wilderness of wood and jungle, transfixed. She came to herself with a start. "Whatever for?" she said. "There's nobody here but the Native Americans we've come to help."

Martha reined in her sarcasm with a massive effort of will. "They might… they might misunderstand you," she said. "After all, we can't talk to them until someone's learned their language. How do you expect them to know you're friendly?"

"Well, they'd certainly misunderstand any show of force," Lisketter said, shrugging. "We'll demonstrate them when we get to their leadership. From what I've read, the Olmecs had a deep spiritual relationship with nature, so it'll probably be priests or priestesses of some sort."

Martha closed her eyes and sighed, sinking back on the blanket, only to come alert again when voices rose in excitement. The river had narrowed, though it was still hundreds of yards across. On the north side was a village in a clearing, set on the natural levees that always flanked a lowland river like this, given to seasonal floods. Fields surrounded it; plots of maize stood green, overgrown with bean vines, and interspersed with cotton and other plants she couldn't begin to identify. The houses were rectangular, thatched, with sides of mud and wattle to waist height and rolled-up screens of matting below. Canoes were drawn up on the dirt beach that fronted the slow-moving river, some of them quite large; others were out on the water, fishing. The buildings straggled, except for some larger ones grouped in a square of beaten dirt around a rectangular earth platform in the center. That held something much larger atop it, still timber and thatch but with corner posts intricately carved. Smoke drifted up from hearths outside the doors of huts and from a larger fire on the platform.

Must be a few hundred people at least, Martha thought. They were dressed simply, a twisted loincloth for the men and a short skirt for the women; otherwise their brown skins were bare to the late-day sun. As the Bentley came into sight they stood for a moment stock-still and amazed. They were almost close enough to see expressions, more than close enough to hear the terror that sent men and women pelting screaming back toward their homes, that drove canoes ashore with flashing blades. A warbling, bellowing sound came from the low earth platform in the center. Conch-shell trumpet, she knew with a tremor that chilled even in this steam-oven heat. From there, order spread through the panic and chaos of the village. A small knot of men descended from the mound, the sun bright on their cloaks and masks and vestments, on nodding plumes and banners. They moved among the villagers, pushing and shoving them into silence, shouting, haranguing, slapping faces. Men dashed off to their huts, returned with spears and other weapons she couldn't make out. They moved down to the shore.

Despite herself, Martha leaned forward in fascination. Among the crowd on the riverbank, circles opened up, and men were swinging lines around their heads. From them came a whirring, thuttering roar that shivered down into the bass notes and back up again, each a little out of time with the others. Bullroarers. The conch trumpet wailed, and beneath it came the beating of a drum-a massive, booming, thudding sound that echoed down from the mound and against the trees on the other side of the river. Her head came up. Faint and far, another echoed it, the same irregular staccato rhythm.

"Signal drum," she said, touching Lisketter on the arm. "They're sending the news upstream."

They waited, sweating, as the sun crept lower in the sky.

She tried not to think about Jared, without much success. Poor bear. He'd be fretting so… Lisketter paced, watching the shore.

"Why don't they send anyone out?" she asked fretfully, slapping at her face. A red splotch appeared where the mosquito had been. "What are they waiting for?"

"Waiting for us, I think," Martha said. Lisketter glanced at her, and she sat back against the rail. "No. This foolishness is your idea. You can force me into the boat, but you can't make me think or talk."

David Lisketter was thin and pale, but the wrist hadn't festered. He pushed forward. "I'll do it, Pam," he said. "I've been studying that Mayan dictionary."

Much good may it do you, Martha thought, but did not say. The archaeologists didn't have a clue what language the Olmecs spoke, since they hadn't left any written records. The theory that they'd been Mayan-speakers depended on a single very late inscription resembling the Mayan calendar. For that matter, the language ancestral to modern Mayan would be unrecognizably different in the thirteenth century B.C. Only a professional linguist would be able to tell that some barbarian dialect in Germany-to-be this night was going to turn into English in the course of the next three thousand-odd years.

There was a good deal of arguing, but eventually David Lisketter and three others lowered the boat that hung at the Bentley's stern and tumbled down the rope ladder into it. She saw that he had a pistol strapped to his left hip; Lisketter saw in the same instant, opened her mouth, and then closed it. Silence fell as the boat approached the shore. The thudding drum on the platform rose to a crescendo and then stopped along with the conch and bullroarer; it was only then she knew how the great drum had come to dominate the scene, like the heartbeat of a giant who'd swallowed them all. Then she realized that it hadn't stopped, not completely. The upstream echo of the rhythm went on for three seconds after the drum in the village had halted. Then true silence fell, quiet enough that the cries of the birds were the loudest things they heard. Flocks swirled in toward the treetops backlit by the setting sun. The way the river bent southward here put a tongue of jungle between them and the west.

The schooner's lifeboat grounded among the beached canoes of the villagers. David Lisketter and his companions advanced toward the clump of brightly clad watchers, their open hands-only one, in his case-held out in sign of peace. Headdresses of plumes and fur nodded as the locals stood to meet them.

"I can't see what's going on," Pamela Lisketter fretted.

"It wouldn't do you any good if you could," Martha muttered. You couldn't predict what a people this alien were going to do on first contact. It all depended on how the strangers fit into the local belief structure. Did gods come from the east? Cortez had used that myth, which might or might not be present here-and-now. Or perhaps they had a belief like the Balinese, that evil came from the sea and goodness from inland. Or they might be perfectly ready to deal with strangers as humans, odd but otherwise like themselves.

A tossing confusion went through the meeting ahead. Shouts arose. Then a sound this river had never heard before: the flat snapping crack of a light automatic pistol. "What is he doing?" Lisketter cried, shrill fear in his voice.

Trying to save his life, Martha knew. It was the only reason someone like Lisketter's brother would shoot at his precious Olmecs.

Everyone on board had eyes glued to the shore now, difficult though the fading light made it. There was a swirling eddy in the crowd around the Americans, shouts and screams. Weapons moved, flourished overhead or driving forward; she couldn't see precisely what they were, except in a general way. Despite the danger, Martha felt a small chilly satisfaction. She'd been waiting for something like this since Lisketter's brother came into her library behind a gun. That gun cracked again and again, and men toppled-some of them men in elaborate cloaks, as well as the near-naked peasant spearmen. A bubble of space grew around the Americans for a second, and they took advantage of it, toppling backward into their boat and shoving off. Two dragged a third, and David Lisketter walked backward toward them, holding the gun threateningly.

Some of the Olmecs had fled-all villagers in loincloths, Martha noted, not the men in bright costumes. Others stood their ground, waving weapons and fists; several lay still, or writhed groaning on the ground. The ones still hale took fresh heart when the boat slid out into the water.

The… priests? nobles? officers? Martha wondered; men in authority, at any rate-pushed and yelled them forward. The boat went slowly. Pamela Lisketter's hands gripped the rail with a force that turned the fingers white as flung spears and darts beat the water around it or stuck quivering in the wood. Her brother fumbled with the pistol, reloading, then began to shoot back as the others rowed. Another Olmec toppled, but most of the bullets went astray or inflicted only wounds; it was too far, the boat too unstable, and the light too uncertain for the gun to be very deadly.

Then one of the rowers stood, screaming. A black-hafted dart sprouted between his ribs. He fell, thrashing and moaning, and the boat capsized with him. The others were thrown into the water. Lisketter screamed again and again. Others rushed aimlessly around the deck of the Bentley; a few with more presence of mind dashed below and returned with weapons. Martha intercepted one of them and snatched the gun away; it was a.22 target rifle, a bolt-action toy with a tubular magazine. She'd never done any shooting to speak of herself, but Jared had shown her some things on general principle. Men from the village danced and screamed triumph on the beach; others were manning and pushing off in canoes, emboldened by their victory over the pale wizards.

If we can beat them back, we can get out of here, Martha thought. Not even Lisketter would be crazy enough to linger after this.

Because she was looking northward, Martha was the first to see what came around the bend in the river. A moment later everyone did, as the flotilla of canoes whipped their torches into flaring life and the drums began to beat again. For a long instant she stared slack-jawed at the spectacle approaching them.

Most of the canoes were simple dugouts, holding four to twelve men. But leading them were a pair of giants, double-hulled craft with the floats eighty feet long and linked by a broad platform. Burning torches on tall poles gave detail a ghastly clarity. Each held forty paddlers to a side, standing and digging their leaf-bladed oars into the water with a chant of hi-hi-ye-YI, hi-hi-ye-YI, repeated endlessly. Flamelight glistened on the sweat-slick skin of their muscular bodies. Water coiled back from the prows, which curled up in a ten-foot figurehead carved in the form of a snarling jaguar pug face. Great drums stood on the platforms, man-high, with two drummers each beating out BOOM-ba-da, BOOM-ba-da with yard-long wooden mallets. Behind the drummers the platforms were crowded with warriors in garish cloaks and trappings, carved helmet-masks fantastically colored and sweeping up to impossibly tall plumes of flamingo and quetzal feathers. They waved spears and weirdly carved wooden club-swords and rakes edged with the teeth of sharks or with obsidian chips. At the rear of the giant catamarans hulked platforms on which the commander squatted, and above that more jaguars-this time in frozen wooden leaps. Every inch of the big canoes that she could see was carved, painted, inlaid, in a riot of grotesque imagery.

Both catamarans held at least forty armed men. Scores of canoes followed after.

Martha grabbed the yachtsman who had served as Lisketter's captain. "Get us out of here!" she screamed in his ear, shaking him, tasting sour vomitus at the back of her throat. Features slack with bewilderment and fear firmed a little, and he turned and dashed for the wheel. "Shoot, you fools! Shoot!" she called to the others.

"No-we came to help-" Lisketter began.

For once her followers ignored her. The diesel coughed and roared into life. When it did the men sitting cross-legged on the platforms at the rear of the catamarans sprang erect. They held up masks overhead in both arms, making pushing motions toward the schooner. Magic of their own, Martha thought wildly. She aimed at one of the men, remembering what her husband had told her- breathe out, squeeze the trigger-and felt the light kick of the.22 against her shoulder. The man looked up as the ceremonial mask tugged in his hands, then returned to his gestures. Martha worked the bolt and shot, again and again until the magazine was empty. She wasn't sure if she had hit anything. The schooner lurched under her feet as the helmsman tried to take her downstream and ran up against the anchor. The Bentley swayed and dipped, throwing people off their feet. Someone with more presence of mind than most ran to the bows and leaned far overside, chopping at the mooring line with a machete.

Martha saw a warrior in the lead catamaran set an atlatl dart in his spear-thrower. The arm whipped forward and the American hung upside down, pinned to the side of the schooner like an insect in a collector's cabinet. More of the darts whistled by in flat fast arcs, and slingstones cracked. The schooner's engine gave a cough and died. Martha went down behind the meager protection of the low deckhouse; some impulse made her pull Lisketter down beside her. The catamarans swept in on either side, throwing grapnels pronged with wood and stone. They bound fast to the bows of the Bentley, and the rowers threw themselves flat. Over them, vaulting off their backs, came the warriors in their garb of feathers and skins and painted wood. What followed could hardly be called a fight. She saw one Olmec slam a three-pronged pick shaped like claws into an American's shoulder, haul him close like a gaffed fish, and stab into his belly with a knife of volcanic glass. Another crewman reeled back with his chest gashed open by a shark-toothed rake.

The noise died, except for a screaming that went on and on until a warrior stabbed downward to end the annoyance. A few of Lisketter's followers fled belowdecks. Olmecs followed them, poking ahead gingerly with their spears and holding torches high. Others scoured the deck. Martha came to her feet cautiously, holding up empty hands, trying not to shake. The onslaught had been so quick and brutal that it was hard to grasp; it seemed impossible that people who'd been whole just a few seconds before were now bleeding lumps of meat. Eyes turned toward her, and toward Lisketter where she crouched in shock-driven silence. Pride stiffened her spine; she crossed her arms on her chest, resisting the impulse to lay protective hands over her swelling belly. They can kill me, but I'm the only one who can make myself act like a disgrace, she told herself. And she didn't think that groveling would do much good with this bunch.

The warriors seized her, and hauled Lisketter to her feet. They were hustled forward to the clearer space near the bow; there was only one other living prisoner, dazed, bruised, and battered. The Indians were laying a gangway from one catamaran to the deck of the schooner. The man from the platform at the rear stepped up onto it, and it shuddered under his tread. He was big, tall and massively built, heavy muscle moving under a generous coat of fat. Cross-straps over his shoulders held an ornate pectoral of colored woods inlaid with rosettes of stone. Over it hung a concave mirror that she recognized as polished hematite, iron ore, polished until it reflected torchlight as brightly as glass might have done. On his head was a mask-helmet in the shape of a jaguar's head cunningly fashioned from wood, bone, and real fur, with his own thick-lipped, heavy-featured face staring out through the fanged muzzle. A cloak of jaguar skin half-hid his massive upper arms, and one hand bore a curious ceremonial weapon, four basalt claws fixed at the end of a yard-long shaft.

He walked with an odd swaying gait, each foot turned a little sideways as it went forward. Of course, Martha thought, dazed. He's trying to imitate a panther… no, a jaguar. Her glance darted aside. The warriors were much like the folk she'd seen on visits to the Yucatan over the years; darkish brown, of medium height, their faces almond-eyed and big-nosed; these men were tremendously lithe and muscular as well, many of them hideously scarred under their finery. She remembered how they'd advanced howling into gunfire, undaunted by death utterly mysterious and supernatural. Their commander looked different enough to be of a separate race, even discounting the obesity. Or maybe an inbred royal family? Priest-king, she decided. It was a label no more likely to mislead than any other.

There was no mistaking the look in his eyes, though. Power, raw and absolute. It showed too in how the warriors bowed low as he passed. Others held the prisoners forward for his inspection. A word, and they were stripped as well, and torches brought close to examine them. The big man seemed fascinated by the strangeness of their skin and hair, pinching and tugging. When he came to Martha his eyes lit and he touched her rounded belly, smacking his lips as he did so. His teeth were filed to points; they glittered in the torchlight. The pupils of his eyes were wide, wider than the dimness would have made them. Next he turned to Lisketter.

"We came to help-" she began.

There were shocked cries from the warriors, and raised weapons. Evidently you didn't speak until spoken to, with Big Chief Baby-Face. The back of his meaty hand smacked across her mouth, leaving blood trickling in its wake. Lisketter's eyes went even wider with shock; she looked around, as if the blow had brought her out of a stupor and made her realize that this was real. The priest-king's hand rose to strike again, and then froze. He gave back a step, pointing at Lisketter's face. He shouted something in his own language, a tongue that seemed to consist mostly of "u."

"x," and "z" sounds.

No, not at her face! Martha thought, with a trickle of desperate hope. At her eyes, that's what he's frightened by.

What… of course! Lisketter had greenish-yellow eyes, about as close as a human could get to the way the eyes of one of the big cats looked. Were-jaguar cult. Nobody knew for sure, but the Olmec myths-or at least some of them-seemed to center on a mating between a woman and a divine jaguar that produced a race of part-felines. Evidently the archaeologists and anthropologists had guessed right this time. I get off because I'm pregnant, and Lisketter because she's cat-eyed.

Spared. Who knew for how long, and for what purpose? But every moment you were alive was one you weren't dead… The fat chieftain recovered his composure, enough to signal again with his claw-pick. The warriors holding the two American women dragged them back a few paces. More forced the next captive to his knees and pulled back his head. A flat-bottomed ceramic bowl was brought forward, one big enough to hold gallons. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, heard the brief desperate gasping and a long scream cut off in a gurgle. Slowly- it was the hardest thing she had ever done-she forced the lids open again. The warriors were dragging the corpse away by its ankles-away to the catamaran, with the other bodies, those killed in the fighting. She thought she knew why. The priest-king held the flat-bottomed bowl up to his lips and drank deeply, trickles of red running down from the corners of his mouth, then passed it to his followers. Then what she had expected happened; fire on a big wooden ship was a menace they'd be unlikely to understand, not having anything with enclosed decks. Flame belched out of a porthole, and the remaining Indians poured up the companionways, yelling in panic.

The gangway thundered under the chiefs steps as he retreated to his own vessel. His followers hustled the Americans in his wake and the rest poured after. The oarsmen rose from the crouch where they had waited like statues and pushed their craft away. By then fire was licking upward from every door and porthole, red tongues of flame casting a flickering light on the river, and the roar became loud. Martha watched motionless, ignoring the grip on her arms. Beside her Pamela Lisketter stood as silent, weeping slow tears that fell from her face. The canoes rowed for the land, with a last fierce heave by the oarsmen that sent the keels of the twin hulls riding up on the slick mud.

Out on the river the masts of the schooner fell into the blaze; there was chanting and singing ashore, dancing, fires built high in the hot insect-swarming night. Martha and Lisketter were dragged up to the earthen mound, past larger buildings of wood and thatch, past hearths being prepared for cooking. Behind a massive wood table was a cage; hands thrust them inside, and spearmen stood as guards. The giant priest-king seated himself on the table-throne, perhaps?-and sat like a statue with legs crossed. His warriors stood before him, then went to a resting posture on one knee, weight back on that heel. Their feather crests bobbed in the slight breeze, casting grotesque shadows as the feast was prepared; they and the platform-throne cut off sight of what was being done.

A little later a woman came with bowls of food: cakes of maize and cassava, fish, beans, and a small bowl of meat. The two Americans began to eat mechanically, after a while.

"I wouldn't touch that," Martha said quietly when Lisketter reached for the bowl of meat.

The kidnapper looked up dully. "Why not?" she said.

"You can't smell what's cooking out there, stuffed up like that." The other woman had been weeping until her nose ran. "I can."

Lisketter's eyes and lips framed a question. There was no need for speech. After a moment she pushed the bowl violently away and curled around herself on the earth platform stacked with cut grass that served the cage as a bed. Martha doggedly forced down as much as she could. There was a gourd of fermented maize as well, like a thin gruel-beer. She drank that too. Tomorrow and in the days that followed she would need strength, and the baby had to be fed.

When the time came… she looked around. They'll need to know we're alive.

Alston lowered her binoculars. "No sign of them," she said, keeping her face carefully blank. It was illogical to feel disappointed. Not sensible to expect the Bentley to be trapped neatly here, but there was a feeling of letdown all the same.

"They'll have gone upriver, Captain," Ian said. "That's definitely the Coatzacoalcos."

"Or they foundered on the way here, or passed on farther south, or stopped farther north," Alston noted. Still, this was the maximum probability…

"Ma'am!"

The forward lookout called. "Something floating!"

The winds were faint, and the echo sounder showed these waters to be shallow. It took some time to maneuver the Eagle close to the debris, and a few minutes more to lower a boat to hook onto it. Alston stood like stone, feeling the sweat trickling down her flanks even under the light tropical uniform with its short-sleeved shirt. The heat didn't particularly bother her; it was even a little homelike-summers in the Carolina low country were much like this. Her gathering suspicions of what they would find, however…

The sailor in the ship's boat next to the flotsam prodded at something. "There's a body here, ma'am, legs tangled in something. Looks like one of ours, from the clothing. Been in the water a while, couple of days."

"Well, you were right," she said quietly to Arnstein. To the sailing master: "We'll anchor here, Mr. Hiller."

Tom Hiller looked around at the estuary of the Coatzacoalcos. The land was low and flat, and the sea stretched behind them like hammered metal. "We could get a nasty blow out of the Gulf any time, ma'am," he said. "It's hurricane season."

"That's not the only nasty thing 'round here," she said, nodding downward.

The body was-had been-an American; the clothing was unmistakable. She heard Doreen swallow a retch behind her, but the Coast Guard officers were all familiar with the bloating that went with a submerged body and the way the sea life ate its way in. What drew her eye was the broken-off shaft that protruded from the dead man's ribs.

"Think of a few thousand of the locals coming out under cover of darkness," she said. "Especially if we were farther in, where the banks are close and there's no room to maneuver."

He nodded. "How are we going to get up the river at all, then, Captain?" he asked.

"Cautiously, in small boats, and with difficulty, I suspect, Mr. Hiller," she said thoughtfully. "But first we'll have to find out what went on, and where everyone is. Call Mr. Toffler, and get his transport ready."

Assembling the ultralight was difficult in the cramped quarters of the Eagle's waist deck; the wings were long enough to overlap the rails on both sides. It was essentially a big hang glider with an aluminum trapeze below, a tiny pusher prop and engine behind the seat, and rudimentary controls.

Sort of like a beginner's sketch of an airplane, the Kentuckian pilot thought. A far cry from going "downtown" in an F-4 Phantom; more like being a forward air controller, not a trade he'd ever wanted to take up before. The sodden heat was familiar enough, though, and the look of the shore. They were all sweating hard, and in this oily humidity it didn't evaporate, just got into your shorts and chafed.

Sailors and cadets finally mounted the frame on the cut-down metal canoes that served for floats and bolted the wing to it. The boom came around; two dozen hands held steadying ropes, while others hauled at the line that hoisted it free of the deck.

"Careful, there," he muttered; no point in saying it aloud.

They slid it out sideways, threading the wings between the rigging and then swaying them around bit by bit until they were parallel to the ship. After that it was fairly simple to pay out the ropes until the God Help Us lay bobbing slightly beside the big windjammer. He'd named it himself, after the first flight back on the island.

"Eagle, the Coast Guard's first aircraft carrier," he said as Captain Alston came up beside him.

She nodded, as expressionless as usual. Toffler wasn't quite sure about her. He didn't really approve of women in situations like this, and he certainly didn't approve of her private life; he was a good Baptist. On the other hand, he was pretty certain she wouldn't lose her nerve. If she went wrong, it would be the other way.

"Keep in close contact and follow the program," she said. He nodded. "Remember that they may have rifles. And good luck."

"Thanks, Captain," he said.

I am certainly not going to forget that they may have rifles, he thought, climbing over the side. You didn't necessarily get less brave as you got older, but you did start realizing that you could really, really, really die, and how easy it would be. Sometimes he wondered if war would be possible at all without that nineteen-year-old conviction of immortality. Well, you're here, aren't you? he asked himself sardonically. And you're getting into this miserable goddam excuse for an aircraft, aren't you?

Crewfolk were holding the ultralight steady for him. He stepped onto one of the floats, ignored the alarming bob and dip, scrambled up into the seat, and strapped himself in. The earphones went on next.

"This is GHU," he said into the microphone before his lips. "Testing, testing."

"Eagle here. Loud and clear. Keep in touch."

"Roger wilco that."

The engine caught with a lawn-mower buzz. Toffler looked up to check the wind direction, came into it, and pushed the throttles forward. The little Rogallo-wing aircraft came up off the surface as if angels were pulling on rubber bands. He banked; the GHU was maneuverable enough, but only about as fast as a car. The height and stiff wind cut the muggy heat to something more nearly bearable, and he felt the exhilaration he always did aloft. Certainly more interesting than flying a puddle-jumper between Hyannis and Nantucket, ferrying tourists. Looking for whales and schools of fish had been getting pretty routine, too.

The river wound through the forest beneath. He looked at the map taped to the frame to his right, and then at the compass strapped to his left forearm. "Heading west," he said.

"Roger."

The lesser canoes peeled off to villages along the riverbanks as they headed west. Martha and Lisketter had a good view; they were kept near the throne-seat of the chief at the rear of the catamaran. The settlements were much like the first they'd seen, but they grew larger and more numerous, the jungle between them less, as they traveled. None were very far from the river's banks, though, or the banks of the tributaries that gave into it. Despite weariness, Martha found herself a fascinated spectator. We knew so little…

Crops grew more densely on the rich silt of the riverbanks. Canoes and rafts passed ever more thickly, but the water still teemed with life and the sky was always full of wings. And the people… Oh, damn, what I wouldn't give for a camera, or even pen and paper to take notes! Part of her knew that the thought bordered on madness, but she pushed that away. Better than brooding on her helplessness.

The river narrowed and the current became stronger; the sun blazed down through a sky half-hazy, and she was glad of the shade at the rear of the craft. At intervals servants- she assumed that those near-naked figures were such- brought food and water or the weak maize-beer-gruel to the commander and his warriors, and to the two American women; this time it included small avocados juicy enough to be eaten by themselves, and once a hot liquid brewed at a clay hearth amidships. After a moment she identified it as unsweetened chocolate, harsh and bitter, and set it aside. Others fanned the obese figure that sat cross-legged and silent on his platform beneath the gaudy colors of the carved beasts, brushing away insects and bringing a little, little coolness to the constant clinging heat.

At last they came to a sudden fork, where the waters divided around an oblong island some miles across and more long. Most of it was covered with oxbow lakes, or drained for farming and speckled with thatched hamlets of clay huts. But the plateau at the southern tip had been sheered off and built up; suggestions of color and massiveness showed even at several miles' distance. The catamarans turned for the shore; the paddlers were too exhausted now to chant, grunting in unison instead. Ten yards from the edge of the water they stopped with a final panting shout, and the big vessel coasted forward, sliding to a halt with hardly a jar. Crowds of attendants waited for them on the beach; warriors, more villagers or servants in plain loincloths and skirts, other types she couldn't hope to identify. Drums beat, smaller than the great booming instrument in the bows of the catamaran; other instruments played, pipes, gourd rattles, shell whistles, and the people sang accompaniment. A dozen bore a huge litter, and those waded out into the water until the priest-king could step onto it dry-shod. They bore his massive weight without a bob or waver, walking back up onto the land and then swinging away in a disciplined lockstep trot.

"We're next," Martha said.

Another litter came down to the side of the catamaran. It was as ornately carved as its predecessor, but lacked the canopy above. Warriors shoved and pointed, indicating the two women should climb aboard it; around them were piled spoils from the Bentley.

"Why are they doing this?" Lisketter whispered, as the bearers swung up the beach and onto a packed-dirt road. She hadn't spoken since the previous evening.

"Who knows?" Martha said. "At a guess, we've stumbled into some sort of myth that's important to them-something to do with their primary god or goddess or whatever, the jaguar. We're starring actors in a play and we don't have any idea what the script is."

The bearers broke into a trot along the dirt road. It was embanked and neatly ditched, raising it a little above the soft black earth of the cornfields tasseling out around them and the cassava patches, vegetable gardens, groves.

"Why? It doesn't make sense, none of it makes sense."

"For someone who's supposed to be a multiculturalist," Martha said, "you had a really naive faith that everyone else's sense would be the same as yours. That's a little logocentric, isn't it?" Lisketter winced as from a blow. Martha put a hand on her arm. "Sorry, but… no, sorry. Just keep your eyes open. I have a very bad feeling about all this, and if we're to come out of it alive we need to keep our wits about us."

Shouts broke out among the Indians crowding around them, and the workers in the fields. They were pointing southward, into the sky. Martha turned.